Ndine munthu, sindine nyama! by Charlene

I have completed my two week course and I have been thoroughly initiated into the ways of the Zambian people. The course was really excellent and it covered topics such as Zambian history, culture, economics, traditional religion, the judicial system, the role of chiefs in today’s society and much more. Most of the topics had guest speakers who were experts in their field making it very interesting.

The course also included daily language training. Zambia has 12 official languages so most communications are done in English but I wanted to learn a few of the basics in Nyanga (nee-AN-ja). When I go on my morning walks and when I shop at the market I have been greeting local people with “Mwauka bwanji?” (mwa-OOO-ka BWA-ngee) which is always met with surprise, a smile and sometimes laughter. It seems that not many muzungus (white people) take the time to learn any local language. I think of it as bringing joy to someone’s day. Just like yesterday when Siggi passed me on the road and gave me a huge bunch of bananas still on the stem. I turned to carry them back home and there were a group of Zambians who actually pointed and shouted out loud “A muzungu carrying bananas!” Apparently it was terribly funny. Anyway, the language training was good but I couldn’t get my head around all of the phrases. The expression in the title of this blog is “I am a person, I am NOT an animal!” It was one of the first phrases we learned but I haven’t found occasion to use it but just in case the question arises, I’m ready for it!

We had a couple of outings as part of the course and meeting Christine was one of the most inspirational moments. This Scottish family moved here on business (she is a doctor and he is an accountant) and they have a tremendous heart for the street kids. To make a long story short, they started by inviting the street kids over for Sunday dinner and gave them an opportunity to bathe, wash their clothes, swim in their pool and have a nice big meal and that has developed over a couple of years to them now having 44 street kids living in their home with them! They send all of the school age kids to private school and they also teach the boys carpentry, welding, farm management and she has recently started a catering and baking business to teach more skills to her household. A completely amazing and inspirational family that has changed the future of these children forever.

Christine in her converted garage which is now a bedroom for 14 boys.

Tree Tops Trip - By Erin

On the 10^th of September my grade went to Tree Tops School Camp for a whole week. It was an eight hour long drive in our school’s smelly bus. When we got there everyone went to their dorms to have a shower and put on fresh clothes because everything is so dry and dusty here right now.

The kids did all the cooking ourselves and the food was great. We made things like: chicken and rice, mashed potatoes, Nshima with curries and pasta with tomato sauce. We did all of our cooking over an open charcoal fire.

Some of our activities were making plaster casts of animal footprints. Mr. Bowen said that our lion prints were the best ever! We did water color paintings of the river and we did a charcoal drawing of the humongous 2,000 year old Baobab tree in the camp. We did lots of safaris and saw: loads of pukus, a few impala, one huge elephant that charged at us, over 60 hippos, crocodiles, a cheetah, a leopard which ran away before all the kids could see it (I think we were a little loud on the bus), and the most amazing of all was 18 lions who had just started eating a dead hippo! The stomach was torn open and there was lots of half-digested grass falling out everywhere – the vultures had already gotten the eyeballs and brains!

We went on long safari walks through the bush in lion territory but we had Michael the guard with us and he had a gun to scare any predators away. Luckily on the long walk back to the camp the bus came to pick us up and for once the big, hot, stinky bus felt good!

We had a big bonfire one night and roasted marshmallows and had the best hot chocolate ever. It was made with sweetened condensed milk and it was sooooo good. One night we had a quiz on everything we saw and we learnt how to use a GPS.

The experience at Tree Tops was long, tiring, exciting, unforgettable and was the best field trip of my whole entire life!

Happy to be back home

Visit to Chisomo – by Charlene

Last week I had the opportunity to spend some time at the Chisomo drop-in centre which is one of MCC’s partner organizations here in Lusaka. We are helping them set up a basic website that they will be able to use in fund-raising efforts in the United States. Chisomo offers schooling, food and lodging to help get kids off of the street and I was there to take photos and get some stories of the children involved in the programs there.

After a very short period of initial shyness the kids warmed up to me very quickly. It seemed that all it took was for me to take out my camera and then they were all ready to pose. Zambians love to have their photo taken and they are aware of digital technology and right away ask to see the picture displayed on the window on the back of the camera. Whenever I took a group photo the question was right away “Can you make them one, one, one?” Which translates to can they have one each.

The kids were keen to show off their talents and soon there were kids hanging upside down out of trees, kids drumming and kids singing and dancing. So much for the idea of being discreet and taking casual photos of everyday life!

These boys are making toy cars out of barbed wire

The Drummers

The Dancers

Most people in Zambia get their clothes from salaulas which are markets that sell used clothes that get donated from North America and the U.K. I got a kick out of reading all of their T-shirts, they said everything from Tim Hortons (sigh…), 4H, Spiderman, the Ontario Rodeo (who knew?) to Siemens electronics.

I also sat with a few of the kids to record their stories to go on the Chisomo website. The stories they told just boggled my mind but they spoke them very matter-of-factly and seemingly without exaggeration. I’d like you to meet a girl named Memory…

Memory

“I will be a nurse” was the statement from the quiet 11 year old when asked what her hopes are for the future. Not long ago, this girl didn’t have any dreams beyond getting her next meal.

Memory lived with her grandmother in Kabwe after her mother had died. While living with her grandmother she was not allowed to go to school and her grandmother would beat her and leave her in a room padlocked from the outside all day long and she did not get enough food. At night she and her siblings were forced to sleep on the floor rather than on the available beds. Memory describes her life there as a constant struggle.

One day she was told that they were going on a trip to visit some relatives and she was brought from Kabwe to Lusaka where her family abandoned her and left her to fend for herself on the streets. At only ten years old she was very scared and she spent the first night in a police station. While walking in town the next day, a woman stopped and talked to Memory and then took her to Chisomo drop-in centre.

Memory was spared from having to live on the streets and she is really enjoying staying at Chisomo. She is currently studying in Grade 4. She has very few memories of her mother but she remembers her as a beautiful, tall, slender lady with a dark complexion and she remembers that her mother said that nurses are good people so Memory has set herself a goal for when she grows up.

Pioneer Days - Zambian Style - By John

As we slip into September, I am reminded that Pioneer Days, that celebration of all things Mennonite and old fashioned, is held around now at the Mennonite Village Museum in Steinbach. You know, the place where they butcher a hog, just to show the kids how it was done in the old days? One of the things they would make from the pig would be tubs of Lard.

Lard happens to be one of the few things I have missed and have not been able to find in Africa. It just isn’t available, you can only buy something called "Half Fat Spread" or Baking Margarine, which is strange and unnatural, and so my pie crusts aren’t as flaky as they should be. Do you remember the old Lard commercial from the seventies?

When I bake a pie
For the apple of my eye
I bake it with a crust
I know that I can trust
I bake it so good he (or she) can smell it from the yard
I’ll tell you what my secret is
My secret is my Lard.

Well, I wanted a crust that was good and flaky and I needed good lard, so I decided to follow in my forefathers footsteps and try to make my own. First I had to find a pig. Luckily there was already a dead and dismembered one at Rudi's (“The Swiss Butcher”), and so instead of all that killing and skinning all I had to do was buy a bag of fat.

Mmmm, pig fat!

Then I took the fat home, cut it up into little pieces and put it in a pot to render. Unfortunately,
this was exactly the time that Zesco, the local power utility, decided to cut the power in our neighbourhood! What to do with that pot full of slightly warm pieces of fat (other than get out a fork and dig in)? Well, the Zambian way is to pull out the brazier, fill it with charcoal, light it up and render away, which is exactly what I did.

The cooking apparatus, much like the pioneers used

It worked out really well, actually. All the smelly cooking happened outdoors, and the fire was good and hot, and in no time we had a pot full of lard and some cracklings to snack on later.

All I had to do was stir the pot

This is what it looked like while it was cooking

The result - almost 1Kg. of pure goodness

The final product will surely go into a yummy pie, just like Oma used to make.

Bon Appetit!

Polo, the sport of ....er....Farmers - by John

A few days ago we went to see our first Polo game. A friend of ours from church belongs to a local team and we thought it would be fun to get out to the country and see the horses run. My preconceptions around Polo have been formed by media coverage of the British royal family and the people who wear a certain brand of golf shirt, so frankly I didn’t have any clue about what we were going to see.

It turns out that because of the economics of horse ownership in Zambia (as it was explained to me), you don’t have to be a zillionaire to play Polo, you just have to be farmer. So, instead of the mink and manure set of people with very refined English accents and more pedigrees than the horses they were riding, we watched a bunch of rough and ready white Zambian and ex-Zimbabwean farmers, with a couple of South Africans thrown in for good measure, riding local ponies and whooping it up.

Going over the boards, Polo style

What a game! The action was fast and furious, the horses were aggressive and amazingly fast, and the players were not averse to some serious jostling, often at full gallop and while swinging a very long mallet. It was pretty thrilling to watch all eight players and two referees galloping past amid the thunder of hoofbeats. Half the fun was the fans, screaming support and offering scathing and hilarious criticism of the on-field action, often at the expense of their spouses. Everyone was very friendly, a player on one team asked if we were “horse people”. I said “I can recognize a horse at a fair distance” and he said “Great, come out to practice next week”. I think I will spare the horses that kind of suffering. In the end, “our” team, the Lilay Lodge beat the team from Mazabuka by 13-12, hurrah.

Everyone after the ball!

I just had to throw in this next picture. I went for a bike ride and luckily I had my camera along. I just don’t know what to think and can come up with no reasonable explanation, other than to think that western history isn’t a subject that gets a lot of attention here.

And they serve what?

Observed along the way

After a very active early July with Vince, Stacey, Madison and Carter things have settled down into a bit of lethargy. The weather is warming up a bit, it now regularly hits the low thirties in the afternoon, but the mornings are still cool and comfortable. Small details of life in Lusaka are getting our attention, here are some examples:

1) I was recently driving through Kabanana compound with our friend Mr. Mpundu when I noticed a very nice house among the very much less nice houses. This house was very large, had a very nice painted wall around it, a big electric gate and most incongruously, a nice patch of golf course quality green grass outside the wall. When I expressed my wonder to Mr Mpundu, he explained that it belonged to a certain rich lawyer. I was still a little curious and so asked “Why would a rich lawyer build a fancy house in the middle of a compound (i.e.slum). “Ah”, Mr. Mpundu explained “the lawyer lives in town, this is for one of his wives”. All has now become clear! I guess if you are juggling multiple wives it’s good to be a lawyer.

2) I have been fortunate to inherit Stefan’s mountain bike until the next SALTers come, and I have been taking every opportunity to bike around Lusaka. With the crazy traffic, you have to ride both defensively (everyone is going to cut you off) and offensively (darting between mini-buses before they cut you off). One of the great parts of biking around is discovering new places, I found a lovely little valley filled with market gardens, only about two kilometers from our place, an oasis of green during our dry season. Another fun experience is greeting all the little kids. When they see a white guy riding by they all shout “Muzungu” and point, and then say “HOWAREYOU?” (pretty much as one word). The correct reply is “I AM FINE, HOW ARE YOU?” to which they are supposed to say “FINE”. When you are biking along and about a hundred kids a minute are greeting you, it ends up being a non stop travelling greetings festival, sort of like “HOW ARE YOU FINE HOW ARE YOU FINE, FINE, FINE, HOW ARE YOU…”, you get the idea. I used the bike to ride over to Chimwemwe where Stefan worked, and not only got the standard greeting but also lots of “HELLO STEFAN” and “MR. EEEEP”. I guess a white guy riding Stefan’s bike and wearing Stefan’s helmet looks a lot like Stefan.

3) Yoga has entered our lives in a big way. Before anyone gets worried that I will start wearing a loin cloth and a little red dot on my forehead, I should tell you that I am doing Yoga to increase my flexibility because I have a sore back, and I figure a little stretching wouldn’t hurt. Vince and Stacey brought us a couple of Yoga DVDs and Charlene and I have been doing the exercises very regularly. The DVDs feature some very attractive and flexible people doing Yoga in a park like setting (somewhere in BC I think), all to a super relaxing soundtrack somewhere between nature sounds and anesthesia. The teacher is incredibly buff and speaks with a blissed out voice peppered with phrases like “This should feel like someone is licking Ice Cream off your body” and “This should be shiver sweet”. Hmmm... you would think all of this would be very relaxing, eh? Meanwhile we are trying to do exercises in which we are told to touch our left ear with our right thigh and so on, and the soothing soundtrack doesn’t muffle our grunts, groans and the giggles of the girls watching our struggles. I think it’s making a difference, now I don’t notice the pain in my back because of the pain in my hips, thighs and abdomen.

4) Our IVEPers are on their way to North America. IVEP (International Volunteers Exchange Program) is a program of MCC where young adults from developing countries like Zambia spend a year in Canada or the U.S. This year MCC Zambia is sending two people, Alex and Ginah. We were going to send three, but for some mysterious reason the American visa process rejected Beverly, the other applicant. No rhyme or reason, just a form letter explaining that they have the right to reject applicants and you can’t really re-apply. We put Alex and Ginah on the plane on Thursday morning. Neither of them had ever been on an airplane before so they were nervous and to tell you the truth so were we, since they were routed through Jo’burg and London, two very big and busy airports. We are still waiting to find out that they have arrived at their orientation in Akron PA safe and sound. If you want a great experience, think about hosting an IVEPer for a year, you will get to know some great people and learn about another culture.

That's it for now, in a couple of weeks our new SALTers are coming and a new family (the Smiths, who are vaguely related to us in a fourth cousin by marriage kind of way) and who will be working in Kitwe. When everyone shows up, it will be busy and fun!

Back to Work - by Charlene

Our vacation time is over and it’s time to get back to work. We had a great time with Vince and Stacey and Stacey’s luggage finally arrived on the last flight into Lusaka before the one that was to take them home (Day 16!). At that point we were just really glad that it arrived at all and Danica was especially happy since her birthday present from Grandma and Grandpa was in there.

Before they left we spent a day at Chaminuka Lodge where we went on a safari drive and saw lions, a hyena, zebras, sables, giraffes, many impala and came eye to eye with an elephant who tried to confiscate my camera. We went horseback riding, had a fabulous buffet lunch and the kids got to go swimming in the first heated pool we have seen on this continent. We also got to tour a cheese factory and especially enjoyed the “cheese cave” where we got to sample their products and they made deep fried mozza sticks as well as a Swiss cheese fondue for us – yum, yum.

How close have YOU ever been to an elephant?

Ready to ride - Carter had to concentrate really hard on giving his "thumbs up".

Danica and Madi started off riding together but by the end Madi was on her own.

This week’s focus is delivering text books to community schools in Lusaka. These books arrived in the container that was sent from the U.S. a few months ago and the text books are in brand new condition. They were obtained for free since they were about to be shredded due to curriculum changes. Because Danica and Erin are on their school break they helped with the sorting of the thousands of books and within the next couple of days we will finish the distribution. We have a new volunteer arriving next month who will be spending some time with the teachers to instruct them on how to teach with textbooks since most of these schools have never had any school books before.Danica and Erin helping to sort the new school books

The students of Chimwemwe School helped to unload their boxes of new books.