Akon and Taylor Swift

So, I’m probably not the best cultural informant when it comes to great American music. Most times, I prefer songs w/o words aka not the most inspiring for ELLs. But in times when I need that extra pop to swing the ulukasu at unyielding clay to avoid handing the hoe over to bunch of girls half my size with biceps twice mine, I play 2011 youtube hits. The title names were their favorites. I tossed some B. Dylan and The Band in. Went by unremarked. Any pump up playlists appreciated! Email or dbox!

On the 2nd day of digging, I at first think they’re talking about skin-lightening lotions.

Sara asks, “In America, are there stores?”
“Yes, we have many stores.”
“In the stores, do they have white skin or black or skin like yours?” I’m covered in red dust.
“All colors, black, white, brown, red,” I say, motioning to the clay. “Living together.”
Beatrice says, “Even blue?” I think about the musical performers, about Cirque du Soleil, about clowns. I wish I had books to show them.
“Every color,” I confirm. They find this hilarious. I opt not to dampen things w/homestate politics.

So the bricks will continue…

After we’ve written our names in the best-looking slabs of red clay, we troop to the well, rinsing our tools and our feet with a rapidity that I’ve seen when the banamayo are working together on a time-sensitive task. I could see their futures just then in the blue twilight: their vigor, & what that could translate into if more opportunities don’t surface for them. I give them lollipops, thank them, & say good night. Then they ask when we can finish the remainder. I resist, then say Saturday…

Bricks, V

Ba Esther Bwalya shows up. She’s a wiry, vocal & proud-to-be 56 year old, who is also the sec. of virtually every organization in Lubunda & the head of my housing committee. She observes the scene momentarily & then jumps in, turning the mud over faster & more efficiently than the 6 of us combined, me probably counting as half a person, really. As the sun dips below the horizon, we’ve made 27 bricks, Ba Esther’s sideline advice invaluable. Internally, I’ve decided that I’ll purchase the next 73.

Bricks, IV

The sun’s on its descent. When I arrived at Sara’s house, Cecilia’s also there, the two are inseparable, though Kalulu (“rabbit”) as her friends affectionately deem her, is half Sara’s height, Sara being exceptionally tall. Her dad didn’t have the mold, but Kalulu’s father is a bricklayer, so they ran off, literally, to borrow it. Now, in this giant pit, I’ve got 5 girls, agile & extremely dedicated shoveling mud & shaping bricks. They hold each other very precisely accountable, yet freely assist.

Bricks, III

I told them that in the US, ppl pay lots of money to put mud on their faces. They didn’t have a response to that. Musonda, who’d arrived mid-way through, presciently asked I had the mold in which to put the mud. Uh, nope. I’d assumed Violet’s dad, Ba Kapula, had one handy as he’s currently making 100s of bricks to build their new house. She shook her head, suggesting that I ask Sara, one the quickest & driven of the group. I biked over, hoping he has one, thinking of the mud streaking our bodies.

Bricks, II

Jacob had built a water catchment & made his own bricks, so I didn’t want to sit back & shell out some kwacha everytime I built something when bandume in Samfya could do it. I wonder if he had a hardcore troop of neighborhood gals to assist (and school) him. I don’t ask for help, and boys seldom offer. But almost as soon as I set out to do something mildly taxing, the same set of friends magic themselves onto the scene. When we added water, they jumped on top of the squelching, burping mud.

Bricks, I

If these children are any indication of the banamayo they’ll become, there’s no doubt that this community is bound to see something amazing blossom. At 15 hrs, w/the ulukasu in hand, I started chipping away at the sides of a gigantic red clay pit. Maybe 5 min. later, Violet, Agness & Beatrice arrived. I tried to dig as long as possible, even getting into this windmill-esque groove, but these kids are 80 lbs of muscle. The goal was to make enough mud for 100 bricks. Last time, I’d bought them.

Enter: Summer

Thus closes my first full day back in action! Having toured the cooler latitudes, the equatorial zone is now felt. Ala, the sun won’t sleep, and brunt isn’t to come until October.

After seeing the circular-biointensive deigns in Choma, I scrapped the boring beds for broken bricks & voluntary child labor (payment in sweeties….not really reinforcing good habits here) for a new layout. Mailo I’ll try my hand at brick-making! Gummies & Gatorade as shareable care pkg treats always welcome!

Into the Woods

Being in Peace Corps in Zambia, especially when you serve as a LIFE volunteer, means that you are given a darkened map that has the potential to offer all the resources you need, but you are the one charged with the task of unveiling and the pace of such illumination depends on you, the people you meet and the questions you ask. Thirty-five days ago, on my last day in the village before jetting to all of these trainings, I went on a holy grail quest, in search of one of my female counterparts. She was in her fields, not to return until the afternoon, a time when I had already scheduled another program. In my area, the women tend to the cassava and groundnut (peanut) crops deep in the forests, while the men care for the vegetable gardens in the dambo (wetlands).

During Community Entry, I’d visited gardens and seen the nearby maize and cassava fields, but I hadn’t yet accompanied bamayo to her fields. Due to soil infertility, every few years, these upland farmers push out farther and farther, seeking richer land. The fields now require a 1.5 to two hour hike, weaving through the woods on narrow, sometimes nearly invisible, interlocking paths. During harvest times, parents will leave their kids with relatives and sleep by their fields. Unsurprisingly, Ba Violet’s husband was skeptical of my objective to locate his wife.

Her location: somewhere in the woods of Kasengu, the one village in my catchment that I had yet to visit. Armed with the mental image of a map drawn into the dirt, the multiple names by which she could be identified, and the words, “Stay straight! Do not turn off the path!” impressed into my skull, I set off down the sandy path, through the clusters of thatched huts and into the woods. First, the children helped guide me to the right path, then the men and women who were traveling from the fields with kgs of cassava atop their heads and bikes, after expressing their confusion as to this mizungu‘s intention, would reconfirm my direction and again, in consternation, reiterate the warning to avoid all paths that branch out from the main strip. Overconfident, I continued forward, catching myself thinking how they must underestimate me. The path was wide and clearly defined.

But soon enough it turned into rocks and deep crevices that my better-but-not-exceptional-by-any-means mountain biking skills would (with a deep intake of air and a swift prayer from me to calm the nerves) plunge into and out of, the pedals grinding against the walls. Then the straight path bifurcated, the angle to the right equal to that of the left. I tried one side, ran into some kids, and turned around. Then the trail split again. I started to understand the passersby’s earlier expressions of doubt. I biked between fields of cassava, absent of people but full of brittle grasses and stick that nipped my calves. The footprints and tire marks that had patterned the sand disappeared. Finally at the fields’ edge, the path deteriorated into a rock-strewn trail threading itself between boulders and foliage. This was when my commitment to this quest wavered.

In moments like these, I remember this banal blond joke about three women trapped on a desert island, who decide to swim to an unknown but probable shoreline to escape their fate. The brunette swims out 20 miles, then drowns. The redhead swims out 50 miles, then drowns. Finally, the blond swims out 99 miles, get tired and swims the 99 back to die on the island, not knowing that she would have met the other shore had she swum one mile more. So it’s the stupid things that sometimes press me forth.

The rocks gave way to a staircase of sorts. As I carried my bike down the steps, the trees opened up and a golden valley spread out before me. The wind cooled my sweat and calmed my anxiety. Perhaps it was due to the unexpected arrival of peace on this wobbly, bullheaded adventure or inconsistent water intake, but this quaint valley seemed to pulse with a kind of splendid beauty I hadn’t yet experienced in all of my explorations throughout Lubunda thus far.

At the end of the journey, across a log laid over a narrow stream opposite the valley, I found the friends of Ba Violet, who guided me to the living grail. And, as it turned out, her husband had sent their children out, fanning out along the paths to find me, to guide me along the bisecting paths. They must have left just after me, as they caught up to me just as I was returning, though I was on a bike and they on foot. I felt guilty that they’d come on such little food to find the wandering mizungu, but still grateful that these sturdy children had all the time just been a turn in the bush behind me.