The Village Life - Part 1

---

With many field visits and days in the office under my belt, it was time to crank it up a notch and spend some quality time in a village. Village stays are a valuable way to build trust with farmers, gain insight to the challenges faced by the farmers, collect valuable information for the evaluation of the project to date, and have a great cultural experience. I am, after all, working in rural development though I have spent the vast majority of my time in a big city.

First, let me introduce you to the Kabuoyes, the hosts of my weeklong village stay. Mr. and Mrs. Kabuoye are the co-chairpersons of the Kakolo farmer’s cooperative. They have six children (Mrs. Kabuoye will be quick to point out to you that she bore them all with the same man) currently living at home, ranging from 1 to 17 years old. They seem to have written the book when it comes to diversification. They have chickens, ducks, goats, and cows are on the way. They grow maize, sorghum, potatoes, peanuts, and a number of other vegetables. They have banana, mango and papaya trees galore. And in the evening, their front yard doubles as a local pub. Mr. Kabuoye also has a day job as a mason.

The entrepreneurial spirit is clearly well-entrenched in this family. Not only that, but they have embraced their roles as leaders in the community. One of my priorities during my visit is to inspect the progress of the farmers in the construction of their beehives. Mr. Kabuoye has already completed what is the biggest and most impressive bee apiary in the community. Their excitement over the beekeeping project is contagious. They have embraced the opportunity to enter the world of commercialized farming through ZATAC.

They are also some of the nicest people you will ever meet. Gracious (albeit at times maybe too gracious, as you will soon see) hosts, loving parents, and humble community leaders.

Here are some stories and observations from the first half of my trip. More will follow in a later post.


Imagine you are walking down a road, in, say, downtown Toronto, and a giraffe walked by. Now imagine what the expression on your face would be like. That’s pretty much the same look I was getting from the kids when I first arrived. The youngest boy was staring me down like a boxer would glower at an opponent before a heavyweight title match. Just a tad uncomfortable was I. I tried to pretend that I wasn’t noticing their stares. I looked at the trees, the house, the sky, my shoes, but I could still feel six pairs of eyes on me and they didn’t seem to be averting themselves any time soon. In an attempt to break through the stifling awkwardness, I greeted with “Muli shaani?” (“How are you?) in hopes that I could maybe break the discomfiture. Each one of them broke into delighted laughter and with those two words it seems that I had just made six new friends, two of whom would double as my shadow for much of the next five days.

Mrs. Kabuoye went to work to make me as comfortable as possible right away. She asked me what I would like to eat and I explained to her that I would eat whatever they would eat were I not present. I have discovered since my arrival in Zambia that my immune system is Schwarzenegger-like (that would be Schwarzenegger the uber-manly and impossible-to-kill action movie star, not the governor Schwarzenegger, or the Schwarzenegger that played a pregnant man in ‘Junior’). I’ve thrown everything at my stomach since my arrival in Zambia and it has stood up to every challenge so far. I fear I may be entering a different league of potential traveller’s sickness here now, though.

But it turns out the food they eat here isn’t much different from what I’ve been eating up to this point, with every meal characterized by a generous helping of nshima. Their serving sizes defeated me on my first night, though. I skipped breakfast and was ravenous by lunchtime and ate a colossal amount of nshima. If rice is characterized be the fact that it only settles hunger for a brief period, then nshima is anti-rice. A good helping at lunch can keep hunger at bay for the remainder of the day. Come suppertime I wasn’t able to finish off my plate. I explained that the meal was very good, but I was simply too full from lunch, and I wasn’t used to eating nshima twice in a day.

I spent most of Monday just walking around the immediate area, meeting a few of the farmers, and just taking everything in. My primary goal for the week is to get around and meet the thirty farmers in the cooperative. But this is farmland and Kakolo is incredibly spread out, so making my visitations by foot would be impossible. I brought a bicycle, but its tires are flat and both pumps that I brought from work don’t work. It looks like I won’t be able to start making my way around town until Wednesday when Mr. Kabuoye returns from a project that he is working on in town.

I had been hoping to do some farming while here, but it’s the down season. The farmers will probably start preparing their land for the upcoming season soon, but right now there’s not much going on. Danny, the eldest son, decided that we should go for a walk to the Kafue River on Tuesday. I didn’t have much else to do, so it sounded like a good idea.

What Danny didn’t tell me was that the river is about 8 km away. We walked for over three hours under what is, for me, some pretty hot sun (though it’s going to get a lot worse over the next month or so, apparently.) I was pretty beat by the end of the walk, but so was Danny. He didn’t seem to think that I would be able to make it and was impressed by my walking skills. If walking was a sport, I’m pretty sure I’d be an Olympic athlete. (What’s that you say? Walking is a sport? Never mind, then. I’ll just stick to chess.)

We got back from our walk at around 2, and boy was I looking forward to lunch, no matter what it was. But I waited and waited, and it didn’t seem like any cooking was going on, so I just drowned myself in water. A little later I watched as the kids devoured a papaya between them. My longing stare must have given away my hunger (or maybe it was the drooling) and then Mrs. Kabuoye hit me with this: “I did not prepare lunch today because you said that you only eat nshima once a day and I didn’t want us to eat while you didn’t.” Crap. To make me more comfortable her whole family of seven did not eat lunch that day. I apologized and gave her a quick lesson to pretend that I am not even there and that they should do exactly what they would normally do in my absence. She then asked me what I eat and I said “Anything.” “What about eggs?” she asked. “Yes, I love eggs. I eat them every day.”

As suppertime was approaching, I could see that Mrs. Kabuoye was preparing kapenta, which are small fish about the size of a paperclip that you eat whole. It’s certainly one of my least-favourite Zambian dishes, but I can get through it. The kids were digging in, elbows deep in kapenta. Mr. Kabuoye uncovered his dish to reveal a heap of tiny little fish (they're whole fish with the eyes intact, so they stare at you all the way to your mouth). I drew a deep breath, psyching myself up to eat and attempt to at least somewhat enjoy kapenta on this evening. I uncovered my dish and there, staring back up at me were two fried eggs. I am clearly losing the battle to live life exactly like the Kabuoyes. I explained once more to Mrs. Kabuoye that she needn’t prepare special dishes just for me.

The next morning I got up later than everyone else at around 6:30. Everyone else had already eaten and Mrs. Kabuoye prepared breakfast for me while I bathed. I knew that she had prepared the breakfast just for me, so I feared the worst. I uncovered the bowl and…three bread rolls. Victory! I’ve never been so pleased to have bread and tea for breakfast in my life.

Mr. Kabuoye returned from Kitwe on Wednesday and tracked down a pump to make us mobile so that I could finally get to work. He would be joining me on my visits. Each visit had basically three purposes: 1) Introducing myself. 2) Monitoring progress on beehive construction and addressing any questions or concerns from the farmers. 3) Getting feedback from last year’s paprika season, which was not very successful. And we’re off!

But, you see, I haven’t been on a bicycle since I was about twelve. They say it’s something that you don’t forget, but I wasn't convinced. Especially on these bikes, which look like they’ve been put together by electrical engineers (sorry guys...mechanical rules). The kick-stand was already busted on my bike and it hasn’t even gone anywhere yet. I had to adjust some screws and bend some metal just to make it so that the brake pads would touch the wheel. Once I deemed the bike to only be a mild safety hazard, I was ready to put the safety of the entire village of Kakolo at risk as I stepped up to get moving.

I sat up on the seat and lifted my feet to the pedals. But I started to fall over before I could even get moving, and I jumped off. I decided that I needed a running start. As I rolled forward this time, I lifted my feet to the pedals but again I started to fall over. But one quick thrust on the pedal and I righted the ship…er, bike. And I was off! “This is easy!” I thought. But then we started to make turns. And the roads wanted to test me. They got narrower and narrower. Sandier and sandier. And big boulders and plants were interspersed along the paths. I rode off course with regularity. I slid out of control in the sand. I hit boulder after boulder, plant after plant. I truly made a mockery of biking. Mr. Kabuoye, who is in his 40s and was carrying his son on the back of his bike, manoeuvred like a motocross professional.

What with the heat, exercise and my abhorrence of heat stroke, I had decided to wear shorts and sandals. Bad call. It wasn’t long before my shins were pretty roughed up and it looked like I’d taken a cheese grater to my toes. And my chain kept popping off. I was about ready to go berserk on my bike and smash it into a million pieces.

But I was buoyed by the thrill of doing some good quality development work. The farmers were making progress on their apiaries and were very enthusiastic about ZATAC bringing a musungu on board to help them. Some expressed some concern that red ants were showing up and scaring off their bees. I explained that some used oil should fix that problem. (Look at me! I’m helping!) They all expressed a passionate hatred for Paprika due to some very poor results last season, and I documented all of their thoughts.

We met up with the secretary of the cooperative. I took him on as a passenger. He jumped on the back of my bike. I told him that he was putting his life at risk, but he had faith in my abilities (either that or he didn’t understand what I was saying). I struggled noticeably, not because of the added weight, but because I couldn’t balance us both and was swerving from side to side. The chairman didn’t want me to get tired because it was still early in the day, so he put me on the back of his bike and the secretary rode my bike with Mr. Kabuoye’s son on the back.

These bikes aren’t designed to take passengers. My ‘seat’ was a spring-loaded latch attached to a few narrow bars used to hold cargo down. It’s no La-Z-Boy in terms of comfort, especially when riding on bumpy terrain. Quite simply, this experience was pure pain. To make matters worse, there was no place to rest my feet, so I had to hold my legs up off the ground. It was like doing one of those ab exercises where you lie on your back and try to keep your legs straight and lift your feet a foot off the ground and hold it. I felt like my legs were going to fall off. Had I actually been doing this as an exercise, I would have decided that I had maxed out at about the half-way point of the trip. But I really didn’t want the chairman to think I was a wuss, so I held on, pain be damned. But as I started to run out of strength my legs started to dip. Occasionally my foot would touch the ground, twisting my leg around violently. I’ve no doubt that I came close to tearing an MCL.

I was just about to give-in/pass-out and ask Mr. Kabuoye to stop when a miracle happened. He stopped. Turns out he’s not so used to dragging around big lugs like me on his bike. I rejoiced internally and we walked the rest of the way to the next farm, where we dropped off the secretary.

Riding on that cargo seat had taken its toll on my keister. I got back to riding my own bike and every bump I hit was pure pain. But as I was concentrating on my pain instead of the road the ride actually became much easier and incident-free. With my thoughts now “behind” me, I was weaving around boulders and staying on the paths without any problems.

But a new problem arose. I started to feel pretty tired and a whole lot thirsty. I thought back to breakfast - 3 buns and a big glass of tea. Nothing like a litre of diuretic before going biking in the scorching Zambian sun for four hours. I started to get worried. I don’t have a good history with the sun. Lots of burnings, lots of dehydration, even some minor sunstroke. I needed water. I craved water. And I started to think about ice cream, Popsicles and swimming pools. Bowring Park and those purple ice creams you used to be able to get shaped like a ghost with a gumball for a nose. And Rockets: red, white and blue cold deliciousness. I decided that maybe I should try to focus my thoughts on water because a Dickie Dee’s wasn’t about to appear around the next corner - there was nothing but water for miles around (Kakolo has no electricity or stores). One of the farmers offered me a cup of water and though it sure didn’t look like it had been through a Brita filter, I couldn’t resist. I devoured half the cup and reluctantly heaved the rest out (50%!l(MISSING)ess parasites that way). We only had a one more visit left anyway.

By the time we got there I couldn’t even walk straight. I blazed through the interview with the farmer and stepped up to get a picture of his apiary. He said “Careful, these bees are vicious.” I wasn’t concerned. I’d been to dozens of apiaries and hadn’t had any problems. The last farmer I visited had even commented on how friendly his bees were. Damn him for jinxing me. A rogue bee came for me. I didn’t even have the energy to run away. All I could do was flap my arms around like I was drowning. Once it stung me, I decided that I would play things the manliest way possible to make up for my loss of composure in the midst of the attack - a display that could only be described as ‘sissy-like’. “He got me. Could you remove the stinger, please?” I said in my calmest and most casual of voices, as if I had been stung by a bee a thousand times before when in actual fact the last time I was stung I was about 10 and I bawled for an hour.

It really didn’t actually hurt much, though just enough to at least draw my attention away from my impending death from dehydration. We arrived back home shortly. The thought of downing some warm well water was more exciting to me than Christmas. Everyone laughed at how I ravaged glass after glass of water, but I didn’t care. Mrs. Kabuoye brought me over a glass of monkoyo (a sweet local drink which is really lumpy but kind of tasty) and I devoured that, too. I headed for a bench under a tree and sat down but within 0.2 seconds I was up again because, well, let’s just say that sitting on a narrow piece of wood wasn’t the most comfortable of resting stations for me at that moment. I went inside and lay down to reflect on the day and started to write. And this is where I am now. I’m sweaty. I’m dirty. I have a headache, am nauseous and probably slightly delirious. I am craving soft serve like nothing I have ever craved before. My legs and feet are cut up and tomorrow I may well need an ass transplant. But after all of this, today I feel like a development worker for the first time. I gathered important information from farmers, built a foundation of trust with them and really feel like our beekeeping project is going to help the people of Kakolo be more financially secure. So if you read this diary up until the beginning of this paragraph and then look at the sorry sight that I am right now (check out the picture), you would never think that this could possible have been a great day for me. But it was. I certainly hope that I don’t have to go through this every time I want to feel like a development worker, though.

---

Photos

Mrs. Kabuoye draws a crowd.
(That’s nshima on her plate.)

Mr. Eston Masuwa’s apiary.
Mr. Masuwa has completed his five hives and is ready to capture some bees and make some honey. From left to right: Mr. Kabuoye (check out his sweet hat), Mr. Masuwa, Chola (Mr. Kabuoye’s son) and Mr. Golden Chibiya (the cooperative secretary).

The Site of the Attack.
To quote Wiggan, my boss: "African bees are vicious."

Comments

[Geoff]

Glad to hear you're still alive Ed....I dont know if I could handle the sun like that. Looks like you got a crazy sunburn on the go. I guess you will miss the snow by the time you get back..haha How many more volunteers are with you in your area?

[Elaine]

I'm sorry to say, but your entry made me laugh so hard. I was last in Zambia two years ago and I totally know how you felt. You brought the memories back so vividly!