Who knew a cell phone company could get it right (Mukinge, Part II)

Ok, so…I love it here. Africa, generally; Mukinge, specifically. I love the people, I love the landscape, I love the language (so far, I prefer Kaonde, which is what is spoken here in Mukinge, to Bemba, which is what is spoken at Chilonga)… I mean, the bugs suck, the house we’re staying in still smells funky and gives me the creepy-crawlies from time to time, and it still takes an astonishingly long time to accomplish any “real” (ie, stuff at the hospital) work, but I otherwise totally absolutely frigging love it. I don’t know, maybe I just love the fact that I’m getting to have this experience at all, or maybe it’s because I know there’s an end in sight (at least theoretically – I have a return ticket anyway) and I figure I can do anything for at least a little while. I’m not sure. I’m afraid my vocabulary is failing me at the moment, but I guess I mean to say that, although life is often really, really hard here in the bush - for reasons I’ve mentioned and for others I don’t yet know how to express – life is also really, really good.

It suits me, I guess, though I could hardly tell you why. I mean, I like to think I’m someone who does a pretty good job “stopping and smelling the roses”, as it were, but the pace at which life is lived here – and, more often, the effort required for it – means stopping and smelling the roses (or at least slowing down for a sniff) is inevitable; required, even. And in slowing down, I am finding – to my surprise and my delight – that the kinds of things that would typically be considered inconveniences, or challenges, or even downright pains-in-the-ass at home, are pure joys here. It sounds absurd, I’m sure, but I actually love the fact that a single load of laundry (which I’m doing for us instead of the housekeeper we’ve hired) takes three hours and that I have to hoist a big-ass basket on my hip and lug it up the hill to the Kitchens’ house to use the machine there (maybe before I leave I’ll figure out how to balance it on my head like a true Zambian woman), then lug it back down to use the dryer at ours (there’s actually a washer at ours, too, but it is seriously straight out of 1952, with a manual agitator and crank wringer, and I would have used it – just for kicks – except that the wringer seems to be broken). I love that I have to walk (woo, a whole three minutes) to the hospital – and pretty much everywhere else, for that matter – any time I want to have a conversation with someone, walk home when I can’t find them, and then turn around and walk back 30 minutes later to try again; I love the way news and messages travel primarily by word of mouth – and that this is often faster than by land line or cell phone; I love the planning and creativity it takes to make a meal with a fast-dwindling food supply (there is no market nearby, as there was in Chilonga, so there are no quickie-quick “bun runs” or “veggie runs” or “milk runs”); and I love walking two hours to Steve and Heather’s village hut, taking a full four hours to prepare, cook (over coals, one pot at a time) and enjoy a meal, bathing outside under their bucket-rigged-with-a-soup-can-with-holes-poked-in-it “shower”, and then walking two hours back the next day.

I know it probably sounds trite. Or, at the very least, incredibly boring. But the ass-kicker is…it’s kind of the opposite. Even something as mundane as washing the dinner dishes feels like another opportunity to live richly, live fully (last night, at Tamar’s, the Canadian pharmacist who’s at Mukinge for a year-long mission, we had a regular assembly line going – Tamar scraped, Matt washed, I rinsed, and David dried – and we laughed and we talked and we laughed some more; it was almost more fun than dinner). I am channeling my inner commune-dwelling hippie, I suppose. But I kind of dig it.

It's funny. There are these goofy, pretentious cell phone service billboard ads all over the place here (even in the bush, where service is spotty at best) by this company call CelTel, and they’re always two words, like: “Experience. Freedom.” or “Exceed. Expectations.” or “Accomplish. Goals.” (there are a few where they - how dare they! - break the two-word paradigm and say something even more ridiculous, like: “Listen. With your soul.” and “Inspired. By you.” which for some reason send us in to peals of juvenile laughter every time we see them). Anyhoo, Amy and I were poking well-deserved fun at them recently, but then I saw one today that said “Enjoy. Life.” and, y'know? - I actually kinda got it. I mean, the “hard” that I’ve experienced here doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of the “hard” that the people in these bush villages experience every day. And yet – at least at Mukinge, anyway – people seem to enjoy life. Life is hard here, yes. And simple, too, but (I feel like a broken record here) it is also vibrant and rich and full and I find I am astounded every day by the things that bring me joy.

I have a Buddhist friend who always talks about living with intention (actually, I also had a pastor who said that everything we do – from our work, to our play, to our enjoyment of a meal, even – could, and even should, be an act of worship of the God who has made it all possible), and I guess I sort of understand in a new way what that means. Maybe it’s because there’s really nothing else to do here (there are very few distractions). You live, and the living is hard, and you work, and the working is hard. So you find yourself – if you’ll indulge me for a moment, I’m going to use the word “blessed” – blessed with the time to appreciate the sweet, slightly fermented smell of mangos on your walk up the hill to the Kitchens’ house to use their washer, and grateful for the opportunity to bask in the intermittent rainy -season sun on your way to the hospital, and thoroughly enjoying the tangy, earthy smell of dirt and potatoes that lingers on your fingers after you’ve peeled and sliced them for dinner. And you rejoice when, after hours and hours of training over days and days and days, the OPD (Outpatient Department) clerk successfully completes a task as simple as closing down the Excel document you’ve been working in and properly shuts down the computer. (I am not kidding, by the way – hours and hours over days and days. to close an Excel document and shut down a computer). And then you cry – but only a little, and later, when he can’t see you – after you tell him “Mwauba bulongo” (“You have done well”) and he bows his head and says, upon your parting – in his charming and limited-but-oddly-formal English: “In fact, when you go, I will very much be missing you. Because you have, in fact, taught me very much.” And you bloom with pride when Beenzu, one of the clinical officers (akin to a PA in America) tells your brother: “We love it when you come here to Mukinge. You know how to work with us. You are not like those other doctors that come – you make us feel good, because you know how to treat an African.”

And then you sit in front of your computer and try to write about it and find, for the umpteenth time, that you can’t. I actually began this post several days ago, while I was still at Mukinge, and now that I am back in Lusaka – we arrived just a couple hours ago – and I feel that familiar ache, that void that comes with leaving, I find that I am, once again, stuck. And I am frustrated, because I want very much to tell the story of my life here, but I am finding that the things I wish to communicate are the things I cannot write. I can only feel. And what I feel (among so many other things right now) is blessed and deeply, deeply grateful. And I hope that, each day, my living will reflect that; and that my work will be an act of worship.

Anyhoo, it's late, and we – as they would say here – “started off at six hours” this morning, so I’m tired. And I think I should get some sleep. Tomorrow will be a busy day of unpacking and laundry and checking emails and then beginning to pack again – we head out to Mwandi, in the Southern (I think, but it may be Western – although it’s kind of near Victoria Falls) province to activate a site. We think we will be gone for only a week this time, but it may be 10 days. And after that, it looks like I may have to spend some time in Lusaka, which actually kinda bums me out, so keep your fingers crossed that more opportunities for me to serve out in the bush will present themselves!

Love and peace to you all...

Picture 1: Walking to Kasempa, the boma nearest Mukinge Hospital
Picture 2: A young village girl, holding court with her friends
Picture 3: Steve and Heather's bucket-rigged-with-a-soup-can-with-holes-poked-in-it “shower”
Picture 4: Lunda, 4 year-old son of one of the hospital's clinical officers
Picture 5: Me, photographed by 4 year-old Lunda
Picture 6: My office-cum-dental room-cum-clincial exam room

Picture 7: Young village woman and her baby