Another update

Hello again everyone!

Thank you so much for the replies, it's nice to get even a one sentence reply! This is about our first week in Zambia, it took me longer to write this, so you're getting this a little late. I hope you all had a great Easter!

Steph and I spend a week staying with families in a village. It was… AWESOME. Actually, it was just intense. I don’t want to sound cliché saying that staying in a rural African village was the most amazing thing I’ve ever done in my life and every person there is the best person I’ve ever met. That being said, it really was a wonderful week. Lusaka has lots of great things, 99.99% of people are great and just want to meet you and be your friend, but it’s also noisy, dirty, smelly and some people are trying to steal from you (I got pick pocketed for the first time, only about $15 though). So to go from that to a small village was nice. You probably could drop money on the ground there and people would collect it and walk 10km to give it to you, then cook you food and try to serve it to you while you sat in the best chair. I’m hardly exaggerating. We went to church on Sunday and then entire 1.5hr service was translated to English solely for the two of us. We were brought to the front and sat in chairs off to the side and asked to stand and say some words to the congregation. At home they would give us the best chair in the nicest spot to sit, bring water, give HUGE quantities of food and do pretty much everything for you unless you really insisted on helping out.

Steph and I stayed separately with two families in a village. People there are from the Tonga tribe. It is near Pemba, 3 hours southeast of Lusaka. It’s a village in a loose sense, it’s not a close collaboration of houses, but rather an area, that has houses and about 200 people. There are families spread out evenly over maybe a 14sq. km area (I’m guessing) and as far as I could understand, the sparse population just continues throughout Zambia. The family I stayed with was a 73 year old man, named Silas Muzuma, he is the village head man. He has two wives and many dependants (about 30 people are his household). He has a Sr. wife and a Jr. wife, and they rank accordingly in family affairs. He is the capstone to the lives of so many people. The mother of his Sr. wife lives there, some of his children, their children, his nephews, and other extended family. An example is that his wife’s nephew died so he brought the wife and child of that man to live with him. There were 2 little boys about 2 years old. One would giggle and want me to chase him, so I did, but the other little boy was with him and ran away crying in Tonga “The white man, he wants to beat me!” It took me all week to convince them that I didn’t want to hurt them...

There were about 7 houses in a 150m x 150m area that comprise his household. He has had 3 wives, 1 died. Of those 3 wives he has had 30 children, 20 have survived so far. Their houses are built with brick and have a tin roof and dirt floor (the nicest houses in the village). When he was a boy he said they just had stick houses with mud between the cracks in the sticks and grass thatched roofs and people wore animal skin clothes. He said back then the roofs had to be strong because sometimes lions would jump on the roof and try to get in, but if you put strong sticks, while the lion was separating the sticks, you could stab it through the cracks! There is no electricity there, and the drinking water comes from a borehole about 500m away.

It is beautiful there. At night the stars are so amazingly bright, there is even a spot that is a cloud of stars, it just looks like dust. One of my favourite things to do was to go outside at night and watch the stars. The temperature was ideal, perfectly comfortable and there were zero mosquitoes. Wherever there aren’t houses it is either “bush”( wild area with trees and bushes) or crops.

Most crops were on plots about 1 acre in size or less. They grew peanuts, corn, pumpkin, tomatoes, varieties of beans, oranges, mangoes, guavas, okra, lemons, squash, sweet potatoes, cassava. Until recently most people only grew corn, but NGO’s have been promoting crop diversification as a means of adding stability to farms. The main problems to growing more now are that farmers need capital and knowledge. The two families that Steph and I stayed with were model farmers who voluntarily teach other farmers proper techniques. Aside from production is the much more important challenge of access to markets. They are being taught to treat farming as a business, not a way of life (i.e. you don’t just grow food to eat and give away to hungry relatives, but measure the inputs and outpouts and sell your crop as a product), but if you can’t sell your product, it’s not much of a business. I don’t know how they will overcome this.

The main purpose for this week long visit was to develop a friendship with rural smallholder farmers (farmers with small farms 2-8 hectares) and understand their lives and some of the challenges they face. It was an easy purpose. People were so kind to us, and always wanted to chat, give food and shake hands, or hold hands (today I went for a 5 minute walk holding hands with another man, it’s common here, even interlocking fingers!).

Here are some wonderful and funny things people do here. Men hold hands. People freely interchange he and she “Steph asked me, well he told me, to bring you here”. People asked if steph and I were from the same tribe in Canada. I was asked if I took a plane of bus here from Canada. Women will breastfeed at any time, even while working in the fields without slowing down(the babies are tied to their backs or sides with cloth). People dress so well, suits and all, bathe often and really take care of themselves. People laugh and are genuinely kind. Even during a meeting people are laughing as they explain things. People care about family and will always help each other, always.

Quick disclaimer: I am making generalizations based on the things I have seen so far and realize that, so I ask that you accept them as generalized observations at this point and nothing more. People are people, some are lazy, some work hard, some are smart and kind, some are not, some are funny, some are hilarious, just like anywhere else.

I was trying to understand poverty and what it meant for these people. They are well fed (I ate so much more than I thought possible), there is clean drinking water 500m away, they all seemed quite happy, the children played, ran and laughed nearly all day, there is a secondary school 500m away and there was a clinic that had free medication. I asked Mr. Muzuma what he wanted. Electricity? Yes. tv? Yes. Car? Yes. Computer? Yes. I explained that in Canada, when people get those things, they aren’t any happier, they just want the next thing better, bigger tv, newer nicer car, bigger house, etc. Mr. Muzuma answered me very honestly. He said “Yes, it is true. The bible says you can never satisfy the heart. Me, when I married my first wife, I was happy, but after some time I saw another woman and thought that I would be happier if I married her, and was then no longer happier with my current wife. Then I married the other woman and soon wanted another, but said ‘no, you will never be satisfied.’ So it is true, the heart cannot be satisfied, but there is a basic level of living that is required for human beings so that you are not living like animals.”

I agree.

Although many things are good, many are bad, and his family is better off than others. Many do go hungry, there is even a season called “the hunger season” and people may eat only one meal a day or even one every few days. I guess I will take this space to write about some of the bad things now. Life is a lot of work, especially for the women. I really mean that. No one could work harder than they do. There is a long way to go in gender equality. That’s the politically correct way to put it, but suffice to say that life isn’t fair. I’ll leave it there for now. Everything is done by hand, all the farming, fetching water, laundry, everything is people powered. The high school is understaffed, as is the clinic, which doesn’t have any doctors, just one nurse. Even if you are really smart and do well in school, many many people can’t afford school fees (about $800/year for university and less for secondary). School is free until gr.7 so many people just make it that far, or finish high school but can’t afford university. The farther you get away from the road, the worse everything gets. People die. Lots of people die. On Friday the sister of the man Steph stayed with died during childbirth. The morning we left I awoke to screaming and crying, I now understand the term wailing, because our neighbor family 200m away lost their 2 year old boy during the night, probably to an easily preventable illness. After our families said their goodbyes they went to attend his funeral, and we took a luxury bus back to Lusaka.

So I agree, that there is a minimum standard of living that is required, which includes physical things like food, shelter, medical care, but also opportunities, like to go to school, university, and at least have a shot at the career you want to have. There are some interesting things about the rural Zambians I’ve met. (I’m going to make some big generalizations but it’s what I’m thinking now so I’m going to share it). They are innocent of so many things that we in the developed world are guilty of. They are so humble and willing to learn. They are not lazy, materialistic, or proud. Their government has not invaded and oppressed another country or group of people. They do not have trade regulations that keep countries poor. They have not destroyed the global environment. They are generous. They have not turned a blind eye to the poor or lavished themselves with ridiculous luxuries. Why? Are they just better people than we are at the core? I don’t think so. People are people. I think they are like this largely because of their situation. I just hope that as their situation changes, they remain the same in all these great ways.

Ben

p.s. My Zambia name, given by trail and error, is Benson Tembo. That's the most common response I get when I say Ben Campbell