Thursday, November 4, 2010

Girls Just Want to Have Fun

I've managed to procrastinate updating this blog for a solid six months now. I'm embarrassed. I'm settling in with a cold coke and a new collection of music, with hopes that I can ignore my itchy mosquito bites long enough to regale you with tales from the bush.

I could offer a lengthy list of tedious excuses for my lack of posts here on Green Eggs and Zam, but I won't waste anyone's time. I may exist in an electricity-less world in my village, but that lends to even more time to contemplate what I could write. I think it comes down to two conflicting thoughts. Every time I have started an entry, one of two things happen. I become incredibly overwhelmed and have no idea where I should begin trying to explain my lifestyle, in a mud hut, in rural Africa. Words, pictures, nothing does justice. Imagine me carrying water on my head from the bore hole, battling rodents and termites for ownership of my thatched roof, teaching 60 first graders who know maybe a dozen English words. Slightly baffling, right? If I don't find myself in this state of stress, than I am at the opposite end of the spectrum and am boggled as to what to write about at all. This has become my life, and most things don't faze me anymore. This culture, these people, this is my reality and at times I wonder about who I was in America. I can't remember what life was like without the challenges and the beauty of Zambia. I forget that this is an extraordinarily unique circumstance. I suppose this is the point of Peace Corps, to become fully engaged in your community, so much so that you forget what life was like before you were a part of it. I absolutely still stand out (something about the color of my skin helps the cause), but the lines dividing who I am in and out of my village are quickly blurring. Life is crazy at times, yes, but it's all I know now. What would I ever have to say about it.

My guilt over these empty posts has brought me to you on this sleepy Thursday afternoon. I am in the provincial capital, bingeing on cold food and hot showers, and soaking up my connection to the internet. Wireless internet. Pure bliss.
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It's a Monday afternoon, high noon has passed and the sun is no longer directly overhead, beating down with its fiery rays. It's October, officially "hot season", and the oppressive heat leaves me paralyzed most afternoons to do little more than to sit and sweat and sew. Mondays are different, because this is when the Chimphangala Women's Club meets in my front yard. I have freshly bathed to find some relief from the heat and to wash off the day's layer of dust, though in a matter of minutes my feet will be dirty and I'll be dripping in sweat...yet again. It's 3:00PM, the time we are scheduled to meet, which means that the members will start arriving in about an hour. Zambia functions on polychromatic time, unlike America's monochromatic culture, and have no real concept of time. They don't see time as wasted or lost, quite different from our linear and strict understanding of time back home. Meetings start on average two hours late. Especially school meetings. I go no where without a snack and a book. I'll have to relearn punctuality when I head back to the States. This is coming from the girl who showed up to every class in college 20 minutes early. See, I'm already Zambian.

Before I get ahead of myself, let me rewind and explain to you how this club came about. When I was initially posted at my site, six months ago, the women in the village immediately became my support system. They accepted me into their circle regardless of my novelty, the language barrier, or the color of my skin. They would sit with me for hours, keeping me company so loneliness wouldn't pay a visit. We shared cultures and lots of laughter with our broken English and Nyanja exchanges. I wanted to do something to thank them for welcoming me, and that's how this club started. I hosted a meeting for women who would potentially be interested in starting a club, and after 30 women showed up, I decided to pursue it. Jacob Village is tiny in comparison to most of the communities around me, so there are no clubs of any kind. This would be a space just for females, the women who became my best friends, a club all their own.

So Mondays have become our weekly meeting day. It's starting to cool off even more, and the ladies start moseying over to my hut one by one, with babies in tow. My yard quickly becomes an estrogen haven sprinkled with their toddlers and newborns. When you reproduce at the pace of a Zambian, it's no surprise the meetings function doubly as a day care. They sprawl on reed mats, braiding each other's hair, chit chatting like they're out to lunch at a Panera Bread in Columbus, Ohio. This is what is so special about this club for me. It gives these women a chance to just "be" together -- no families to feed, no fields to harvest, no water to fetch. They are constantly doing chores from 5AM to 8PM, taking care of everyone who lives on their compound. This means a dozen children, a husband, maybe even more than one husband. But come Monday afternoon, they are given an hour or two to just be girls, with each other, where no one asks anything of them.

Sarah begins with a prayer, typical in such a Christian nation, while her little girl, Greta, sits in her lap sucking her thumb. With that, the meeting is officially open. Margaret, my very best friend in the village and the sole reason I can survive the hardest of days, is the Chair Person and leads the conversation. She's fierce, confident, and means serious business. She is also the only English speaker in my village. Glorious. We begin with the debate over our first project. As mentioned above, Zambians move at a slow pace, so it's taken a long time to organize our thoughts and move in the direction of starting a project. On this particular day, we are debating who to give the money to once we make a profit from sewing and selling school uniforms. Charity wants the money to pay school fees for the orphaned children who live in Jacob. AIDS makes that number higher than I wish it was. She has only stopped by because she must go finish baking her bread to sell in the market tomorrow. She's tall and lean and her strong yet graceful presence sways the women to agree with her idea. Margaret, who cares for her grandparents, suggests giving money to the elderly, as well. Age is important here, and respect is a big part of that. The older you are, the more respect you deserve. The 70 year old woman in the club is greeted in a special way, I even bow to her, but her callused feet and hands are evidence of her hard work that merits days of rest. Again, this cultural norm leads the women to nod their heads in agreement.

With business taken care of, we move on to our next tradition, which is English lessons. Since my knowledge of Nyanja is moving at a Zambian pace, the women decided to meet me half way and try to learn English. I pass out the paper and pencils. The excitement is electrifying. The pencil sharpener now makes its way around the group. You would think I was handing out large sums of money. Their giddiness over a ripped half sheet of paper and #2 pencils makes me smile and tears swell at the corner of my eyes. This is why I'm here. To give 20 women, who have become my family, moments of happiness like this. So I begin the lesson, but quickly Margaret takes over because of my lack of Nyanja and her knack for leadership. They are learning the difference between "Good morning" and Good afternoon" (greetings are an important part of village life) and the verb "to be". I run inside to grab my camera and come back to find both Sarah and Margaret teaching the lesson from the flip chart paper covered in my bubbly handwriting and drawings. A couple high school girls, Susan and Vida, are helping a few of the older women who don't know how to write. Again, the tears come back. This is why I'm here. To help them start a club, give them this boost, and know that they can take care of each other when I pack my bags in two years.

The sun is starting to set, which means it's time for these women to chase down their kids for a bucket bath and to start cooking their second meal of the day. They take their notes from the class which I ended up spectating from the other side of my house where I sang songs with the kids. We close each meeting with singing and dancing, African style, which my American hips just can't manage.

The members of this club have taught me the definition of sisterhood. They have showed me a kind of generosity and friendship that I have never known, especially to someone who is so foreign to them. They give me hope for what we can be to each other in this world.

I look up at that pink sky and the tears come back again, because I remember that one day I will have to leave these women behind. But for now, I'm right here, with them, holding hands and dancing under the African sky.