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.
A Story About a Lion 