a week in the village

It’s been just over a week of village living and I’m happy to report things are going well.

I’m living with a family, the Chiindas, of which there are 11, 9 of whom are currently at home, while two of the girls are away at school. I don’t yet have a photograph since it’s rare for everyone to be home at one time, but there’s Lindah my housemate, her parents, her brothers Felix, Shaft and Emmanual, her younger sisters Harriet and Maggie and her nephew Helali.

Our home is a short walk from the small vegetable market and shops where we go to purchase our groceries and such. It’s also quite close to the Information Centre where I work from which is also nice.

Inside there is room for our double mattress, my backpack, her suitcase of clothing, a small shelf and a bit of space where we sit to eat some days, and shell peanuts on others. We live right on the road that passes through the village (but don’t let the word road fool you into thinking that cars go by) which means there are many visitors, and I have made many friends.

Since being here I’ve been the recipient of much generosity, from two large bags of groundnuts (peanuts), to a huge bag of sweet potatoes, a bag of popcorn, some candies and a chicken! Lindah’s brother thought I was joking when I said, being a vegetarian, “but what do we do with the chicken??” Never having received a chicken before, and not possessing much knowledge of poultry rearing, I really wasn’t sure what to do with it. Naively asking if it could just mingle in with the chickens already at Lindah’s house I was quickly assured it would run away (not a bad deal for the chicken if you ask me). Knowing of a lady who ran a small restaurant near the tarmac Lindah’s sister set out to find out if she would be interested in buying my chicken. I resisted the temptation to name it, knowing that it would soon be someone’s lunch, but when we sold it for K13,000 (just under $4) I made sure to pet it’s head a little and say goodbye.

Lindah, my housemate, my saviour out here, has been wonderful to live with, to become friends with and to learn from. I’ve been persistent in my attempts to be less dependent on her for cooking, cleaning, and everything else that needs to be done, but she’s always telling me “Ketty, I’m okay!” when I offer to help. Not being content to spend time sitting around and being taken care of like the small children, I’ve managed to get some leeway on what she’ll allow me to do. Cooking is thus far my furthest advancement, where I get to prepare our relish (side dish) to eat with our nshima (staple food, eaten all the time, the texture of home-made playdough without much flavour, hence the relish). I’ve even been allowed to do most of the work required to make nshima, but still with much needed supervision.

Cleaning is another matter. I’ve managed to get into a regular pattern on contributing to sweeping our yard every morning. However, when it comes to the house, I’m still quite incompetent. The blowing dust always defeats me and the house is never as nice as when Lindah does it. More progress to come though, I’m sure of it.

Coming back to a question I received earlier on bugs and temperature – where I am staying there are no mosquitoes, literally, none. I don’t know why but they’re just not here. Part of the explanation comes from the answer to the second half of the question though I’m sure – at night it is really, really cold. I sleep with pants, a sweater and socks on under two wool blankets, and still it’s really cold. Thinking it moderately silly at the time I none the less brought a toque as my packing list suggested and have happily been wearing it the past few nights before I go to bed.

Now, getting to the most important part of the village – the people – I have met many amazingly friendly and kind and spirited people in the past week alone. As I mentioned above I’ve been the recipient of many gifts and even more visits, not even counting the invitations I have yet to fulfill. I have been welcomed into more homes and fed more food in the past week than I can recall and I know it will continue for the rest of my time here. Whipping out the small map of Canada and the world that I bought right before leaving has been a wonderful way to open up to people and talk about our two countries. Talking about life in Canada has also been a fantastic way to get into conversations about life in Zambia, the challenges of living in the village, the government, NGOs and development. These conversations have been rudimentary thus far and I’m still in the process of digesting what I hear but it has been a great experience getting to know my community and it is one of the things I am most excited for in the coming months.

So there it is in short. It’s a tough experience to summarize so send me questions please and I can include the things you would like to know.

Thanks for reading,
~Kate~