connecting flights over two days, we arrived in Lusaka around 8pm local time on Wednesday, January 3. I have to keep asking Chris and Amy what time it is, what day it is, because the last three have just sort of dissolved into one another. But we arrived in one piece, with all of our luggage, and – to our great astonishment – secured me a visitor’s visa good for three years, and all in less time than it takes ride the shuttle to concourse B at DIA. I should mention: Chris was here 8 months, as a resident and official employee of a governmentally-recognized relief organization, before securing his work permit. It’s now been over ten months, and Amy still hasn’t been granted hers (she’s on Chris’s as simply “wife” which, if you know Amy, is no small offense).This is how things work in Africa, which is to say – sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t (but usually they don’t, I’m told). Maybe the immigration official was having a particularly good day that day. Or maybe they’ve changed the application process, or loosened the restrictions. Or maybe (insert conspiratorial nod here) it was the two crisp fifties I threw down. We’d heard from everyone that a visa (valid for 30 days) would cost $100, so – y’know - we just assumed.
So we got in line and when it came my turn and they asked me the purpose and length of my stay, we told them. “She must pay?” the agent said to my brother, who until this point was doing all my talking for me. She wasn’t really asking, but this is the way one makes a statement in Zambia.
“Oh! Right!” I say and hand her my $100.
She takes my money and, as she’s stamping my passport, says, “Ok. Three years.”
“Excuse me?” I ask, unsure of my ears. “I – three years?” I probe, over Chris and Amy’s murmured, sides-of-their-mouths pleas of “Take it! Just take it!”
“I give you three years visa,” she says again.
“I – um…ok,” I say uncertainly, taking my passport from her. I feel that strange mix of guilt and giddiness that comes with getting away with something you know you shouldn’t.
We round the corner to baggage claim and Chris and Amy are atwitter. “I don’t believe it!” Amy breathes. “That never happens!”
And my brother, shaking his head: “No. It really doesn’t.” And then: “Unless…” he says, theorizing. “Maybe it was the hundred bucks. Y’know, I never actually asked how much it costs. And she never said...” He shakes his head, waffles. “Nah, I’m sure it’s not -” (beat) “But, well, then again...” He shrugs. “Yeah, you might have just bribed your way in to Zambia, Kate.”
I am giddy and guilty all over again.
*****
I’m doing my best to soak it all up here – and by that I don’t just mean the humidity (did I
mention it’s rainy season?), I mean the experience of this new, strange place I now inhabit – but it’s a trifle overwhelming. I want to take note of everything - every smell, every sound, every trick of this new, African light. But I have to keep reminding myself to be patient, that I don’t have to “get it” all today. Besides, I’m so frakkin’ pooped that everything just kind of blurs before me anyway. Literally. I’ve been struggling a bit with dizzy spells, doing that hips-low-feet-apart-to-keep-myself-from-swaying thing. And blinking. Like I’ve got a speck in my eye. Like maybe I can blink away the blur the way I do a fine piece of dust.So far, though, this is what I’ve noticed: the glut of foot traffic on all of the roads, and the slow, purposeful walk of the thin-boned Africans; how much more at home Chris and Amy seem here than in America, even after only ten months; the way my drinking glass sweats – a fine, beady
mist - the instant it’s filled (my drinking glasses never sweat in Colorado); the way my flippies fart on the rust-brown-colored parquet floors upstairs in the IHV house where we’re staying (it’s charcoal tile downstairs, but my flippies don’t fart downstairs); the ubiquitous uniformed guards at the gates of all the homes in the wealthy Lusaka neighborhood where the IHV house is; and the quiet, gentle way all Zambians seem to talk, so low you have to bend forward, shortening the distance between you - relinquishing the “personal space” we Americans covet so jealously - just to hear them. I feel awkward saying “what” and "excuse me" so many times; it seems impolite.We went shopping today, for food for the weekend (we’ll shop again in a couple days for the food we’ll bring out to the bush). It was a little like being in an alternate universe, where the basic paradigm is the same (shopping center with a discount store, grocery store, cell phone store, coffee shop, etc…) but the details are different (instead of Target, it’s called Game; instead of Safeway it’s Spar or Shop-rite; instead of a Starbucks, there’s a Vasilis – or Vasillis, depending on which sign you read – Patisserie; instead of Verizon, it’s CellCity). Inside the Game store I felt like I did when I was at the dollar store I used to frequent in New Haven when I was in college. Not because of the prices (9 US dollars for a bottle of mouthwash??) but because you know how when you’re at the dollar store you know that what you’re looking at is still glass cleaner or a sponge or a bag of potato chips, but it’s not called Windex® or Scotch-Brite® or Lays®? It’s called, like, GlassoSpectaculo or Soak-‘Em-Ups or Chippy Crisps? It’s kind of like that. At Game (or at Spar or Shop-rite), you can still find many of the name brands familiar to us in America but, for the most part, it’s the Zambian (or, more accurately, South African – which is where most of what stocks the shelves comes from) version of soap or potato chips or orange juice that you see.
This, of course, is only in the city. In the bush, I imagine it will feel less like an “alternate” universe and more like a completely different world. We head out on Monday, incidentally. We go first to Chilonga, to the Chilonga Mission Hospital (also known as Our Lady’s Hospital), in the northwest province of Zambia; it’s about a seven-hour drive from Lusaka. We plan to be there about two weeks, which is about how long we plan to be at each of the bush hospitals we’ll be visiting for the first couple months we’re here. It’s still unclear exactly what it is we’ll be doing – Chris and Amy especially aren’t sure what each site will most need from them when they get there, but they figure they’ll be working in the clinics, evaluating the efficacy of the programs they helped to establish over the last year, and doing more teaching – but it looks like I may have my first assignment! Apparently, the folks at Chilonga have a new system for capturing patient data but as they’re still getting used to the idea of computers in general, they’re not sure how exactly this program works (or even how to do basic data entry). They’re hoping I’ll be able to make sense of it and then to train the user(s) in a way that allows them to maximize the use of it. Of course, this is all contingent on the hospital getting the computers, with the software installed, which we still haven't actually confirmed.
After Chilonga, it’s to Mukinge, which is on the opposite side of the country, in the
Northeast province (a roughly 10-hour drive from Lusaka but about 15 from Chilonga). We have even less of an idea what we’ll be doing there, but Amy says it’s a site that employs many foreign nationals, so they’re accustomed to finding work for us. I may be cleaning out closets or organizing medical supplies in Mukinge, but – as with everything in Africa – we’ll figure it out when we get there.Until then, I’ll be doing my best to recover from jet lag and take note of all that’s new around me. We won’t have any internet access in the bush, so unless I write again before we go, this maybe my last post for a while.
Picture 1: The driveway in to the complex where the IHV house is
Picture 2: Outside the IHV house
Picture 3: Foot traffic on Bishop Road, the nearest cross street to Sable, the road on which we live
Picture 4: Behind a lorry on Great North Road, heading out of the city
