Journal Entry 4: Home in Choma

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Well, it’s been almost a month since I last wrote and since I have arrived here in this small town named Choma, my home. It has been a crazy month of new experiences, wonderful new friends and now highly raised expectations.

Choma is a town located on the main southern Zambian highway, linking the two big centers of Lusaka and Livingstone. Upon first sight, the town doesn’t seem like much, there is one major street with a couple of food shops, a couple of banks and a couple of small businesses. However, despite its initial quiet small-town appearance, after staying here for only a month and peeling back a few layers, I’ve discovered that there’s a hidden energy within the city that makes for a very interesting life.

The first thing to do after arriving in Choma was to find myself a house. Despite the cries of protest from many of the people in Choma that as a “Muzungo” (white person) I had to live in a big house surrounded by a stone wall in the wealthier district on the outskirts of the town. I instead opted for a little one room servants quarter in the center of town. I tried to find a place that would help me integrate into a regular Choma residents life, to help me earn respect amongst most people and to adapt to a Tongan way of life. What I found couldn’t have been better. You would be amazed at how far my little place has come in a month. When I first moved in, the place was little more then a concrete block the size of a garden shed with a corrugated asbestos roof. However, over the past month, my infant house has developed into a toddler as it has now been coated with a beautiful coat of baby blue paint, both water and electricity have been sort of installed, a sink and shelves have been put in to the area which is now called the kitchen, and yes, believe it or not, I even now have a window! Now, before all of you expect to see it on the next episode of lifestyles of the rich and famous, I must admit it’s not perfect. On good days the water operates for only a few hours and on bad days/weekends/weeks it doesn’t operate at all. It also has this habit of pretending it isn’t going to come out, instead just making this wretchedly loud hissing sound until you finally decide to inspect it by bringing your face right up to it. Only at this time does it violently shoots out all the water it had been withholding for the past minute all at once, completely soaking you. On the days without water I have a bore well located only about 100m away which makes me much luckier then most others in Choma. The power is sketchy at best but I think it’s getting better. But what makes this tiny abode a real steal, is that just outside my front door, grows a family of hugely overgenerous fruit trees. Whether it be oranges, grapefruits, guavas, mangos or these small pomegranate type fruits called grenadinas, depending on the season, all I have to do whenever I’m craving a little juicy delight is to go skipping out my front door and pluck a ripe juicy treat and sink my teeth into it’s sweet juicy goodness (except for the grapefruit, then it’s sour juicy goodness). Very slowly, piece by piece, what was just a simple gray concrete shack is now becoming my home. And I’m starting to love it.

With my new home, I also have myself a new family. Dorothy is the lady who owns my house and lives next door to me (her actual name is Dorith but she likes it’s “western country” equivalent, hmmmm, where have I heard this story before……Parker!). She has graciously brought me into her life as her son and I now call her my Ba-maama (mother in Tongan). Also staying with her is her mother who doesn’t speak a lick of English and hardly any Tonga. She is from a different tribe called the Bemba tribe who live mainly in northern Zambia. I call her Ba-nene (grandma in Tonga) and I’ve taken her to be my temporary Nana (I promise Nana, she’s only just temporary). She’s absolutely hilarious! Most of the time she is really mild mannered and quiet, especially when other people are around. But some mornings, just after I wake up and start picking my breakfast fruit, she waddles her brittle self all the way over to me acting all innocent and sweet. But once she gets to me, man you better watch out because she absolutely just rips into me. Yelling, screaming, waving her arms, shaking her fists, she lectures me in her native Bemban language. A couple of times she even starts grabbing her breasts and shaking them up and down. My friends, you don’t know how much self-restraint it takes not to break out into hysterics when a tiny old Zambian woman starts yelling at you while jumping up and down hoping from one foot to the other while cupping each of her breasts with her hands and shaking them up and down. Sometimes during these lectures I feel that she is vehemently angry at me, but I have absolutely no clue what she is talking about. These daily early-morning pep-talk sessions usually last for about 10 minutes until I’m late for work and I slowly start to back away while pointing to my watch hoping that she starts to get the hint (which she never does). With her still yelling and bouncing up and down I turn around and say goodbye. Funny, once I actually say goodbye to her in her Bemban language (pretty much all I know in Bemban), she instantly stops the angry lecturing, grows a huge smile and waves goodbye. What a lady! My Bamaama thinks that I’m going to start understanding her one of these days…..I’m skeptical.

Each morning I leave my house and wave goodbye to my Bamaama and Banene, wave goodbye to the ladies across the ditch from my place and greet the many ladies sitting in front of their houses as I walk to work in the morning and return from work in the evening. After doing this every day for a couple weeks I started wondering what the heck do these ladies do all day anyways? They don’t seem to move from where they are all day long. It seems like all they do is sit outside in the sun doing nothing. I decided that this question had to be explored into more depth. So one weekend, instead of going out to play football, I grabbed my pounding stick, put my hair up in a chilenge (cloth used for wrapping ones head apart from millions of other conceivable tasks), and I decided to become a Zambian woman…..for a day.

Romantic Zambia: Becoming a Zambian Woman.....for a Day

At work I share an office with a Zambian development worker named Joshua. Although Joshua works for a different organization (called CLUSA), we work almost hand in hand with each other since it is his job to work with farmers helping them to form groups and find access to markets for their produce. Joshua is a tremendous guy who has genuinely dedicated his life and work towards helping small-scale farmers. He has been a wonderful teacher for me and has also become my best friend here. Whenever I’m worried about doing something that is culturally inappropriate he is there to correct me and whenever I’m frustrated and having a hard day he’s there to hear me out and kick my butt back into gear so that I refocus and keep on trucking. It is amazingly refreshing to be working with such a great co-worker who understands the culture, the people, the history and the crazy maze of tiny paths that we have to weave through everyday on our motorbikes when we’re out driving in the villages.

Many of you have emailed me and want to know what a typical day is like for me here in Zambia and I kind of giggle because it’s very odd to call most days here typical. Whether it’s being swallowed up into a dancing horn blowing ancient Tongan traditional drumming ceremony during a farmers meeting, or catching an ox cart back to town with a evangelical Pentecostal church gospel singing group of women, each day brings with it certain experiences that are unique to Southern Zambia and very difficult to capture under a time-lined day entitled “typical”. Nonetheless, I’ve tried to do it anyway.

A Typical David Day in Zambia

(note: all times have a degree of accuracy of +/- 3 hours)

6:00am - I un-volunteeringly wake up to what always seems to be way too much noise, way too early in the morning. It seems that the second the hesitant sun decides to pop it’s little head above the horizon a starters pistol goes off as life here in Choma begins with everybody immediately starting to sweep the dirt off their floors (also made of dirt) and pumping water from the bore well. If it isn’t the outside noises that end up waking me up then the violent blasting hemorrhages in my kitchen caused by the water system turning definitely do the job. I then browse through my array of fruit trees, selecting the ripest specimens to squeeze into my morning maize porridge and enjoy the days lecture from Banene.

6:30am - 7:30am - Usually running late, I sprint to the Adult Learning school, very convieniently located 30 seconds away from my home where I do my daily Tongan lessons with my amazingly patient and accommodating teacher Fred.

7:30am - Before going to work I usually stop by and visit a friend of mine named Muhama. Muhama is about 13 years old and he sells fruit everyday in town. Muhama is a street kid in Choma meaning he doesn’t have any parents and he pretty much scrapes by a livelihood by doing small jobs such as selling fruit on the street. I haven’t yet prodded to find out what happened to his parents, but playing the statistics game I could make a stereotyped assumtion that at least one probably died of AIDS (which has infected 16-20%!o(MISSING)f the population here). I play a game with Muhama most mornings where we throw a bottle cap in front of us and try to shoot it using a different bottle cap. If Muhama wins, I pay extra for his oranges and if I win then I pay less. Funny thing is that the price I pay if I win is actually the local price and the price I pay if I lose is the Muzungo price that I would be charged as a foreigner……I’ve only won once in the past month but trust me, soon, this kid is going down!

8:00am - Again late, I head to my office actually located right next door to my school. Each day is completely different at my office because I am doing so many different things. But usually in the morning I spend planning the day with my partner Joshua and sorting out some daily administration

9:00am - We are off on our daily programs. This can range from all sorts of work activities including:

-heading out on my motorbike with Joshua to visit rural farmers who already have a treadle pump to make sure their pumps are working and to advise them on better growing techniques or linking them to various markets for their produce.
-heading out on my motorbike with Joshua to a farmers group meeting where we work with the farmers to build up their knowledge and capacity to work together and grow higher yields of nutritious crops
-staying in town and meeting with local welders, machinists and retailers trying to establish a local treadle pump manufacturing sector
-meeting with members of some of the other government and non-government organizations in town about how we can work together and integrate our programs together

Many times when I’m out in the bush I don’t get home until late, but for the days when I’m in town.

5:00pm - sunset (~6:30pm) - As most of you know, it is very important, both physically and mentally, for me to be involved in some sort of physical activity. In India I took to jogging through the mountains as a way for me to get away from all the craziness all around and collect my thoughts. I started the same when I first arrived here, but one day while I jogging through what I thought was in an area of solitude, I stumbled across a random group of young, shoeless, shirtless Zambian teenagers playing football and as soon as they saw me, a silly jogging Muzungu, I didn’t stand a chance of not playing. They welcomed me in adoringly and I felt as if I was a superstar. They were all wanting me to play on their team as I tried to explain that I really sucked at football. They didn’t seem to care and we started to play. I figured that playing football they would be nice and welcoming as Zambians usually are in everything else they do……man was I wrong. When it comes to football, these Zambians are animals and I’m surprised I made it out alive. Despite the fact that these kids are playing in bare feet, running on a dirt field covered in jagged rocks and probably haven’t eaten all day, they absolutely beat the crap out of me the second I touched the ball. I couldn’t handle it for more then 2 seconds before someone would dart right at me, steal the ball and leave me face first in the dirt with the entire crowd laughing hysterically. Nonetheless, after the match everyone returns back to their warm and kind selves and thank me generously for playing with them.

7:00pm - 8:00pm - I go home, bathe in my freezing cold bucket shower which I don’t know how long I’m going to be able to take considering the winter is beginning and it gets down to 4 degrees Celsius at night. I then cook up myself a typical Zambian dinner of Nsima mixed with vegetables; such as onions, tomatoes, rape (canola leaves); and then some protein in the form of meat, beans or these absolutely scrumptious soy-pieces.

8:00pm - 9:00pm - I try to spend this time hanging out with my landlord or my neighbors, listening to their daily stories, trying to learn more about typical Zambian life and practicing speaking Tonga

9:00pm - 12:00pm - While most Zambians go to bed around this time, being the night owl I am, I actually usually go back to work. I know that sounds sad, but I really love the work that I’m doing here and starting up a field office means that there is an unlimited amount of things to be done. Working at this time is also the most productive for me because there are very few disturbances.

12:00pm - I fall asleep - Reading in my bed

Of course that typical day is only a timeframe of the general activities that I’m doing and the real beauty and amazingness of my days lie in the stories of the extremely frustrating challenges I face, the insanely crazy experiences I live and the tremendously inspiring people that I meet everywhere I go. Choma, bring it on!

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Photos

Home
Front view of my pad!

Side View
Now a view from the side

Lizzy!
Lizzy is one of my three other roommates. Altough not the brightest guy (he keeps getting stuck in the sink), it's nice to have someone to come home to.

Ridin the Hog
Better watch out cause Joshua and I are a mean team riding our motorbikes