leaving me to fend for myself for two weeks in Lusaka) now echoes with the busy chatter of the nine people who’ve descended upon it: mom Shelagh (executive director of St. Francis Mission Hospital in Katete), dad Ian, six (six!) kids, and cousin Sam from Australia. They’ve come to Lusaka to shuttle the eldest three off to boarding school and attend to the various hospital and personal business that they are unable to while out in the rural village they call home.A cheerful if weary bunch, they file in singly, flushed and sticky from the long, bumpy ride up from Katete, matted hair pressed to damp cheeks. First four-year-old Chiko (her place in this familial queue just the first evidence of who’s running this show); then Jim; then Kate, Jack, and Amy; then Ian and Sam; and, finally, Shelagh – bright cornflower eyes twinkling behind small wire frames, worn, dirt-smudged cargo pants hanging loosely on her hips (FUBU, funnily enough, but don’t mistake this brand choice for a finger-on-the-pulse-of-urban-fashion sentiment; these were likely scavenged from some mission donation box) – juggling Joshua and a bottle of wine in her arms. “Well, then. Thanks for havin’ us,” she says in a thin, bird-like English cockney. She thrusts the bottle of wine unceremoniously into my hands and moves past me in to the kitchen to corral her brood.
“Sure, it’s…” no problem, I finish in my head, trailing after her. Already the TV is on and tuned to the Cartoon Network, Chiko has changed from her sundress into her princess gown and scattered her toys, and Josh has begun his exploring, tiny fingers searching, opening, shutting, narrowly escaping certain mangling. Clearly, we are dispensing with any further formalities, so I head over to the counter, sink my fingers back in to the soft yeasty ball and continue kneading.
“S’how long have you been in Zambia?” Shelagh asks me, as she deftly – and simultaneously – unwraps a candy bar for Joshua, pours six-year-old Jim juice and enthusiastically lauds Chiko’s assembly of a jigsaw puzzle like it’s a newly discovered Klimt.
“I, um - ,” I stammer, swiping flour from my nose and blowing an errant tendril of hair from my face. Shelagh could successfully launch the next space shuttle mission whilst simultaneously reading her children Alice in Wonderland and performing a cesarean, but I apparently still struggle to master tasks of the chew-gum-and-walk ilk. “Six, er, I mean – uh, actually, about two months now,” I say and nearly trample Josh underfoot.
“Right. Yeah, ok,” she nods. “And what sort of work have you been doin’ since you got here?”
“Well, I was lucky enough to spend my first month out at a couple rural sites, doing some work with the data capture folks at each place,” I tell her. “We were at Chilonga and Mukinge for two weeks each. And I’ve been to Mwandi as well, but that was a couple weeks ago and only for three days. Unfortunately,” and here an involuntary sigh, “I’ve been stuck in Lusaka for pretty much the last month.”
“Ech,” Shelagh spits, her blue eyes darkening. “Lusaka’s a dump.”
Well. I’m just glad she said it.
Not that she’s exactly right. And not that I blame the capital city entirely, but my second month in Zambia has been markedly different from my first. With the exception, as I mentioned to Shelagh, of one three-day foray to Mwandi Mission Hospital to aid with a follow-up site assessment (formerly an independently-supported mission hospital, Mwandi will now be under the purview of the AIDSRelief consortium; consequently, it will both benefit from its considerable resources – AIDSRelief is supported by a multi-kajillion dollar PEPFAR grant – and suffer from the maddening red tape and bureaucracy that bind it; eh, you gotta give a little to get a little, I guess), I’ve been here in Lusaka. As the title for this entry intimates, I don’t so much care for it.
I recently tried, quite unsuccessfully, to describe for my mother what Lusaka was “like.” In some ways, it feels much like any American city – except of course that everyone is black and poor. A study in contradictions, it is highly developed – there’s public transportation, strip malls, satellite TV, and wireless communication towers soar above the flush, rainy-season-green flora – but (it seems) it’s been so rapidly developed that it lacks the sort of stable infrastructure necessary to keep such developments running smoothly – or often even running at all (like, for one tiny example, our wireless internet, which has been quite temperamental as of late). But then, when you foist the latest technological advancements on a people disinclined to change – and do it without providing for a more measured, gradual evolution – you might expect a certain stumbling, cart-before-the-horse condition.
And it’s difficult to reconcile the image of a sleek black Beemer or Mercedes rolling down Sable Road (our street) past the young shirtless boy in tattered, mud-spattered Bermudas and sneakers with no laces and soles worn so thin you wonder why he even bothers with shoes. Especially when you know the Mercedes will no doubt turn in to one of the gated, guarded drives on Sable, the yawning black tarmac neatly rending lush, manicured lawns and rich gardens, while the little boy will proceed, scarcely another 300 meters, to the crowded cinderblock shantytown up ahead – rutted, garbage-strewn dirt pathways a map to a decidedly less felicitous life. His mother will likely own a cell phone, though, and his family’s tiny, rectangular hut might even boast a giant satellite dish, looming like a watchful eye. But those shoes are probably his only pair and, outside of his school uniform, the shorts may be as well. It’s especially difficult when you realize that these disparate conditions are drawn – with exceptions, to be sure, but alarmingly few – almost exclusively along racial lines, evidence for a not-so-thinly disguised neo-colonialism.
I don’t know. Such observations tell only part of the story: only part of Lusaka’s, because I
know I haven’t been here long enough, haven’t witnessed enough, to truly understand or speak with any authority (real or of my own invention) on the economic, cultural and social ideologies and practices that form the city; and only part of mine, because – as with any craven impulse to complain – my feelings about Lusaka have very little to do with external factors and infinitely more to do with me, and the expectations I had for what I thought it would be like here. And what I expected was, well, I don’t know exactly… I guess I assumed I’d swoop in all eager and enthusiastic like, welcomed with open, grateful arms by the small corps of development workers stretched thin by all their do-gooder-ness and be put to immediate, fulfilling, tangible-results work.How naïve. How (wince) vain.
There’s just – ok, here’s where I surrender to the craven impulse – there’s nothing to do in Lusaka. It may offer all of the conveniences of a developed city but, without work – and, at the moment, there’s none for me here – there's little else to fill the time that those conveniences save. And there, my friends, is the rub. (I swear, I don’t suffer this angst, this ennui, when I am out at the sites – out there, there’s not only plenty of work, but – as earlier posts attest – there’s plenty of living). There are no parks or theatres or museums (actually, I think there might be one small museum) and the Kabwata “cultural village”, billed as a carefully preserved slice of authentic Zambian cultural life, is really more a scaled-down street bazaar, a place to buy curios and trinkets ostensibly hand-crafted by local artisans but which are, in reality, largely mass-produced and shipped in from Tanzania or Kenya. There’s not even the distraction of a three-hour load of laundry to occupy me because Virginia (the housekeeper we’ve been told we should hire because it’s good for the economy because hiring house-help creates jobs but who, consequently, honestly believes that white people don’t know how to launder clothes or wash dishes or scrub floors) does it for us.
In other words, I’m bored. Bored as a board, my best friend might say. (Hi La!) A discomfiting feeling because, after all, I came here to be of use; because – I told everyone – I came here to serve. I never expected I’d feel so unpurposed, so…aimless. I never expected I’d feel so dependent, or so like a captive to the demands life and work have placed on those who might otherwise free me: Chris and Amy (who might take me with them to another site) are back in the States (or they were when I started writing this); Nawa (who might give me a job) has a meeting with his U.S.-based team in Tanzania; Megan (who might show me around town) has a kid…
So (don’t laugh) I started baking bread. A lot of bread. And I started experimenting with dinner recipes. And I went to the cultural village at Kabwata anyway, and browsed the “authentic” curios (and found that, actually, many of them are - the copper pieces, amatite, and Mukwa carvings at least…), and visited the agricultural fairgrounds. I started taking the minibuses around (the public transportation “system”, though I use the term loosely); learned how to drive on the left side of the road with BAVs (Chris and Amy’s Big Ass Vehicle); and did a game ride on horseback at Lilayi, a small game farm about 25 minutes outside of the city, where I saw wildebeest and impala and zebra and a tiny baby giraffe out for a walk with its whole family. Alas, none of my pics came out, but did I mention I was on horseback when I saw them?!?!
And I walk. All around the city. For hours at a time. And though my walks often leave me feeling vaguely queasy (air pollution is a huge problem in Lusaka) they always lift my spirits. Zambians are, without question, the warmest, friendliest people I’ve ever encountered. No matter the burdens they may be carrying, no matter the baggage (literal or figurative), no matter how tired they might be or how focused on getting home, whoever I meet on my walks always greets me
with a wide, easy smile and a kind word. They are also, for reasons unknown to me, endlessly amused by the sight of a muzungu exercising. Especially the children, who – giggling madly – will ape my swinging arms, my wiggling hips, in comic exaggeration of my walk; or race me when I’m jogging. Although, I should point out, the racing is not exclusive to children. Once, while running through Kalingalinga, a sort of shantytown bordering my neighborhood, a man fell in step with me, cigarette in his hand, house slippers flapping on his feet.“Mah-dahm!” he shouts, gamely trotting alongside me. “You are exercising?”
“I am,” I say, stifling a giggle.
“I will go with you!” he yells and the people on the street begin cheering us on, clapping and waving their arms. “You are going a long time?” he asks, after about a quarter of a mile.
“Oh, a bit longer,” I say, and gesture distantly towards the end of the road. “Maybe another thirty minutes. Maybe forty-five.”
“Ah. Ok,” he huffs and slows. “I will just go with you tomorrow.”
I also accepted Shelagh’s invitation to accompany her family back to St. Francis for a week, or ten days, or however long it will take me to assess their data issues and determine whether or not I can help. I have no idea if I’ll even be able to but, for the moment, I am glad for the opportunity to escape.
Picture 1: Kabwata Cultural village
Picture 2: The Gardens at the agricultural fairgrounds
Picture 3: A (dead, poor thing) butterfly I encountered on one of my walks
No comments:
Post a Comment