Umweni wakolwe...

Every month, our counterparts' group in conjunction with Safe Motherhood weighs all the children in the village under age 5. Zambian children don't regularly visit doctors for check-ups like American kids, so this is a way to monitor a child's growth and take early action if they are not growing as they should. Most every child in the village is mildly malnourished due to a lack of fresh vegetables and protein, but growth monitoring looks for severe malnutrition that could be life-threatening. Ba Allan tells us that during the hungry season, most childrens' weights dip.

The women in green is one of the twins' wife (dedicated young men in my English class). The woman in yellow is Ba Maureeni, my counterpart's (Ba Catherine's) younger sister.

Beauty pretending to be shy at the baby weighing. Don't let her fool you, she's the most charismatic five-year-old I know. Her mother, BanaPeggy, is the woman featured in the very last picture.

My first soya bean cooking demonstration. Chris and I pedaled soya beans a few months back, because we wanted farmers to grow them. They are very nutritious and contain more protein than other legumes.

As promised, I had a cooking demo to teach how to prepare them. Joan (our former PCV neighbor in the blue apron, who sadly finishes her service in a matter of days) was on hand to help, as was Ba Chongo the community development officer and his wife.

We prepared fritters made with soya flour, soya bean sausages, soya milk, and soya coffee. It was all surprisingly very tasty. Once Chris' harvest is ready, I want us to make our own soya milk. Joan serving up soya flour fritters.

Yangu! A Zambian man cooking?! BashiMpalo (father of the frequently mentioned rambunctious Mpalo) making fritters. When I specifically asked for a man to volunteer to help, most of the men snickered, but BashiMpalo wins brownie points for volunteering.

A view of the whole soya demo, with our house in the background.

Our visitors, Peace Corps trainees who will hopefully swear in as volunteers in a week. They visited us for four days to learn what it's really like to be a volunteer. Chris insisted on putting them to work in Ba Allan's garden. They are (from left to right) Amanda (AKA Musonda), Brian (AKA Chishimba) and Courtney (AKA Chileshe). The Zambians are their Bemba language trainer Ba Golden, and Ba Allan (who, according to Joan, has a "smile like sunshine"). Joan and I sat in the shade and roasted maize. One of the highlights of their visit is definately the feast Ba Allan fed us all; corn/millet nshima with chicken, chikanda ifisashi (African bologna in a creamy peanut sauce), cabbage, and beans.

On the trainees' first night, we organized a dance party under the full moon. The plan was for some of the village girls to sing, drum, and dance. We invited just our counterparts and neighbors whom we're friendly with, and planned to have it at our house. An hour before, our neighbor Mutale came with the message that we should move the party to the football pitch by our house, because more people would come than we expected. When we arrived, we found half of the village there waiting for us. There were probably over 150 party-crashers! I was amused that so many people would show up when we didn't invite them, but when I try to organize community educational events and send out many reminders, only a couple dozen people show up at best.

The dancing was a lot of fun; everyone really enjoyed when the trainees tied citenges around their hips and entered the dancing circle. Chris has Zambian dancing perfected and always hams it up, getting the bamaayos hooting. The next night, the girls pleaded for us to do it again, so we played a mixture of American dance music and Zampop on our iPod. The following night, they pleaded again. I said we were too tired and wanted to relax. We later found out we'd been spotted at Ba Allan's house on the second day, so people came to his house at night to wait for us because they thought we were coming to dance with the other half of the village.

Ba Astone and his family. Ba Astone is in my English class and works on farming with Chris. We teased his daughter Mary (covering her face) that we were going to take her to live with us. Ba Astone invited us to his house to see his permaculture garden (a method of farming Chris taught):

He didn't use chemical fertilizer, only intercropping with soya beans and double digging (to reach the more fertile underlayer of soil).

BanaPeggy and her permaculture garden. Unfortunately taken after she had harvested much of her corn and veg, so it's not in its lush, abundant glory. She's planted a living fence to keep out chickens, goats, pigs, and our dog.

We celebrated Chris' birthday on 13 April with a picnic in the jungle. There's a small waterfall and a shallow stream 1/2 a kilometer behind our house where we ate roasted maize and homemade tortillas with tuna fish. The dogs followed us and carefully avoided all water, being sure to bark agressively at every bird that sang in the canopy. I was a bit disappointed each time, because I thought they were barking at vervet monkeys. I sewed Chris a citenge patchwork guitar strap. We wanted to make a cake, but unfortunately we didn't ration our Blueband (butter we use at site that doesn't need refrigeration) well enough, so we had to wait until last night to make Chris a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting.

Sable has gotten serious about paving Luwingu Road (or rather, Luwingu Creek in the rainy season), and has started driving a bunch of construction machinery on our stretch of the road. They've actually compacted and redistributed the sand so that the road is straight, rather than riddled with potholes and a one meter deep gully on one side. Road construction has turned into a spectator sport. If you are trying to find someone and they are not at their house, more than likely they are sitting by the side of the road watching the development. The day Sable started, the village declared it an unofficial holiday. Girls were running around with their hair brushed and their Sunday dresses on, and the adults took the opportunity to brew and/or drink beer.

Most of the Sable workers are OK. One even offered to let Chris drive his compactor. The bwana is very nice and is letting me do an HIV/AIDS program with the men next week. A lot of the workers have gotten free condoms from us, and as a transient population with disposable income, they're at high risk for HIV, so I'm excited about doing this program with them. He's even agreed to pick us and drop us in the company Land Cruiser. There's one bulldozer operator named Bright who's always drunk that's decided Chris is his best friend. He's bragged that he's reached grade 9 and is the son of a chief. My favorite thing, though, was when he mentioned "the two tribes in South Africa; the blacks and the whites." I laughed openly at him.

Our neighbor, Mutale, is unable to continue to grade 8 because his parents can't pay his school fees. He's 18 years old (this doesn't mean he's failed, rather kids in the village start school late. It's not uncommon to find a 20-year-old in grade 5). This past year we have always spoken Bemba with him, peppered with the occasional English word if we don't know its Bemba equivalent. I always thought he only knew a few words in English. I was quite surprised when Brian, one of the trainees, who hasn't had time to learn much Bemba yet, had a long conversation with him in English, and that the conversation was mutually understood. Come to find out, he can understand Bemba decently well, but is less proficient at speaking it, which is why he prefers to use Bemba. This revelation came around the same time he asked me to teach him English because he can't continue to attend school, so I have been working with him. My mother sent some childrens' books that have been very helpful in practicing English. He reads in English and I have him translate it into spoken Bemba so I can be sure he understands. I gave him the homework to translate one of the books into Bemba without my help, and I think I'm going to write the Bemba below the English so that I can read it to the kids. We also understand better than we can speak, so the kids mostly get frustrated with my broken translations and flip ahead to the next page.

Mutale and I were talking about bushmeat one day, and he flipped through our African wildlife guide and showed me what exactly people eat. Usually, when they sell chunks, they only call it "bush meat," when it could be anything from antelope to wild cat. What is eaten: naked mole rats, bush rats, monkeys, wild cat, antelope, (and less commonly because there are poaching laws and you can only find them in the National Parks now days:) elephants, hippos, and water buffalo. What they won't eat: house rats (they are too closely associated with humans and disease-ridden), apes (too closely related to humans), zebra, wild dogs or wolves (because they are too much like dogs).

Best Zambian Names

All are actual, legal names of people we know

-- Wonder

-- Ten Ten

-- Passwell (a taxi driver)

-- Innocent

-- Loki

-- Obvious

-- Gift

--Bright

Traditional Beliefs

One day, our language lesson transformed into a culture lesson.

A lot of Bemba tradition was lost due to colonialism. The British encouraged the Bemba to assimilate more than other tribes to become Zambia's working class.

ICINKULA

A useless, bad luck child. If a baby's first teeth come in on the top rather than the bottom, they will bring bad luck to the family. You can't take these babies to the fields or they will bring bad luck, killing the crops, and causing hunger to the village. Prior to the 1950s, babies whose teeth came in on the top were killed.

TRAVELLING
If you're traveling and something bad happens by your home, you will be troubled with nightmares or bad luck. If you start your journey on an empty stomach, it's a bad omen for the remainder of your journey. You won't eat. If, however, you are travelling and pass a que of black ants across your path, you will eat well at your destination.

THE MOON

When the crescent moon is tilted vertically, it is pouring diseases down. Usually this happens in April or May.

MALARIA

Malaria is a catch-all name for any illness. Very rarely will people actually have malaria when they say they do. Usually it can be anything from a headache to abdominal pains. Panado (like aspirin) cures everything. The cure for toothaches in the village is to swish your mouth with petrol gasoline to numb the pain.

If you eat too many mangoes, you will get malaria.

ICISUNGU

Day-long initiation ceremony for girls. She is taught how to behave herself as a lady and how to take care of her body. At the end, sticks are thrown on the roof of her house to signal that she's now a woman.

FIRSTBORN CHILDREN

Pregnancies are hidden. You should never ask a woman if she is pregnant. There is a possibility that the woman will be bewitched and lose the baby if a witch with a vendetta finds out. For this reason, pregnant women should not urinate in the bush or a public place. If a pregnant woman dreams about a relative that has passed away, it's that relatives way of saying that they want the baby named after them.

It is preferred that firstborns are born at home rather than clinics. For one week after the baby is born, until the umbilical cord falls off, the father or others can't see the baby. It is kept inside the house. After it falls, the fathers' sisters bring a gift of miller and name the child after an honored dead relative. If the baby cries through the night after its born, it rejects the name.

DEATHS OF BABIES

Miscarriages or stillborns happen because the spirits have not meant for you to have the baby. If infants die, it's the parents' faults for engaging in a taboo. Maybe the father has been having an affair, or the parents are sexually active (they should abstain until the mother has finished breastfeeding). If the mother becomes pregnant while she is breastfeeding one baby, she must stop because her milk is contaminated.


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John- We weren't able to find Mercury and Venus in the sky. There are a lot of trees blocking our view of the horizon in the west, so maybe that was part of the problem? The big dipper is tilted in the north right over our house and we think Orion is in the west, but that's about all we can identify. There's also no lights for 80 kilometers, so you can see so many stars, which complicates matters too. We just received (in mid April) your fourth letter with the viewing glass for the eclipse. It was postmarked mid December from the U.S.