Around About Chipata

There’s not all that much to do in Chipata in the way of entertainment. So thankfully the weekends seem long here and in contrast working weekdays seem to fly-by. We’ve been exploring the hills that surround the town these past two weekends, Chipata occupies a bowl-like valley overlooked by hills in every direction – plus a scattering of mobile phone masts! Here are a few photos of our mini-adventures and some views of Chipata:

Just in case you thought we were starving...

If you thought we’d be eating Nshima (a hard porridge made from maize eaten for breakfast, lunch and dinner here in Zambia and much of Southern and East Africa) and tomato relish everyday for a year you’d be pretty mistaken. I’m definitely surprising myself by my new found fondness of the kitchen. Before coming to Zambia my baking habits just about stretched to carrot cake, banana cake and some pretty poor attempts at veggie lasagne. This past week alone I’ve managed to add pawpaw scones, home baked pita bread, pizza (from scratch i.e. no ready made base), tomato and mushroom stuffed aubergine, home baked chapattis and scotch pancakes to my repertoire. Henry’s become the master of the chip pan since creating some really tasty sweet potato chips and home made curried nut burgers and his banana cake went down a treat at last weekend’s party.

I was so excited last Saturday when I saw avocados in the market for the first time since we arrived. No…that’s not quite right I spotted some one day last week but the lady selling them told me I couldn’t have one until the next day. Some smarty pants later pointed out to me that she was probably saying that they wouldn’t be ripe until tomorrow not that I couldn’t take one home! Note to self – must hurry up and learn chiNyanja!

The market is one of my favourite things about Chipata. Every stall has at least tomatoes, onions and one or another variety of spinach stacked high. But there are so many hidden gems, huge aubergines, piles of bright green chillies, and every kind of bean you can imagine. I tried making hummus with one type the week before last but decided to use peanut butter in place of Tahini – it just didn’t taste the same! Mushrooms are a little scarce at the minute but we’re told that as the rainy season kicks in massive ones, as big as dinner plates, will start appearing at the market. Never thought I’d say this but hurry on the rain!

One month down...eleven to go!

It's hard to believe that we've been here a twelfth of our stay already, this last month really has flown by, which can only mean things are going well. We've been feeling really positive this past week in particular. Here's a 'little' run down of our last week.


Monday night we played host to our first dinner guests; Matthew and Kristin, a young Canadian couple who are here for another volunteering with a missionary. Despite me throwing a little pre-dinner nerves wobbly about not having enough vegetables in the cupboard Henry's curry went down a treat. And we're off hiking up Kanjala (hungry) hill with them this Friday afternoon, they've assured me that its unlikely we'll come across any snakes. We've had enough run-ins with exotic wildlife this week.


A couple of nights ago I heard a high pitched screech coming from the bedroom, a second later a paler than usual Henry comes running into the living room claiming to have seen the biggest spider this side of Timbuktu. Unfortunately he wasn't exaggerating. Mr Hitler (we've been naming the resident bugs in the hope that it makes them less scary), was as big as my hand. We zapped him with DOOM bugspray only to have to stand on the sofa for the next hour whilst he ran around with anger or delirium. We're telling ourselves that he disappeared into a little nook and curled up to die but I'm still taking extra caution when opening any cupboard doors!


The next morning we woke to find Lieutenant Pointy Snout swimming in the toilet. Pointy Snout was the resident mouse that we'd seen a week or so earlier scurrying about the kitchen. We tried flushing the loo and that didn't work, so we left him for the morning thinking he'd tire himself out and drown. Four hours later the little blighter was still treading water but thankfully some of Henry's colleagues were round for a workshop. One of the boys solved the problem, fished Pointy Snout out, popped him in his pocket and told us he'd enjoy spit roasted mouse for dinner! At least there's no chance of him reappearing. My natural vegetarian compassion seems to have gone out the window! I've made it sound as if our house is crawling with creatures but its really not that bad.


My employers were visited by a UK based grant-making trust on Tuesday and were awarded funds for a new programme entitled 'Chipata after Dark.' The project is designed to empower commercial sex workers to protect themselves against HIV, seek health advice and ultimately gain skills in income generating activities which will allow them to earn a living by means other than sex work.


In preparation for the donor's visit I was asked to organise a survey of a sample of local bars, the results were pretty upsetting but unfortunately not unexpected. The peer educators counted over 45 bars in only three small areas of town almost all of which had CSWs present, some as young as 12 years old. The reasons for such high numbers are numerous; poverty, the breakdown of traditional extended family support structures, food insecurity, gender inequalities, the impact of HIV & AIDS, the effect of being a border town on the main route between two capital cities...the list is endless. The need for such a project is obvious so working on it in its first year should be quite exciting. (The photo is of Tikondane peer educators showing the funders a drama sketch they'd prepared.)

Thursday was a bit of a turning point for me with one of the organisations I'm working for. I managed to convince the Zambian I'm working alongside that I'm not able to work miracles and magic money out of thin air, or single handedly design the entire peer education programmes from scratch. I've also started to overcome the problem of getting inaccurate answers to my many questions. It seems people have been telling me what they think I want to hear rather than what the reality actually is. For example, I've been asking if certain documents exist – like do peer educators sign any sort of code of conduct – and for the first week or so everyone kept saying they did even though no one had ever seen them let alone signed one. But Thursday's meeting was great because we sat down and chatted through everything I could think of to do with the peer education programme (or lack of it) and made a LONG list of things to go onto OUR action plan.

Most people work half day on Fridays. Last week my morning was filled by a meeting with a big international NGO (I'll omit their name just in case I upset someone rich and powerful!) The meeting started an hour late as many of the young people attending had walked 10klm to get there. The lady chairing the meeting decided to leave just before everyone eventually arrived to 'nip' to the pharmacy. When the meeting did finally start I proceeded to make my first enemy in Zambian. There's a lot of confusion about how this particular NGO fits into youth activities in Chipata so I thought as an newly arrived outsider I'd have nothing to lose by asking some probing questions like - why won't they promote condom use as part of an HIV prevention strategy? Apparently young people in Zambia don't know how to use condoms properly therefore it's too risky for them to try and use them, the idea of teaching people how to use them properly doesn't seem to have crossed their minds! Ahhhgggg I was fuming especially as I'm yet to hear any more encouraging messages from any HIV prevention projects in the area.. However not all is lost, I took one of the male peer educators aside after the meeting and we agreed that by the end of my time in Zambia every young person in Chipata will know how to use a condom, standing on their heads with their eyes closed.


Despite the mouse and spider fiasco we had a pretty good weekend. We went to a party Saturday night for all Eastern province volunteers. It got off to a great start when the power cut out on our way just at the moment when Roger, another VSO, had put his visa card into an ATM – hard to believe the timing! The party was pretty tame although we did get home after midnight which is an achievement in itself as we've been in bed by 09:30 every night so far.

And now I'm writing this on Sunday evening, we've done all our washing - by hand in the bath tub, ironed all our clothes to avoid the pusey flies (spelling?), played a bit of frisbee with the cute kids that hang around our front gate, had scrambled egg on toast and drunk endless cups of tea. Great!

Funny kind of motorbike!

After all the hullabaloo of carrying a motorbike helmet on the plane over here it’s been most useful in propping the door to our wardrobe open (it’s really scary if we close the door as you never know what creepy crawly will be waiting to jump put at you!). Apparently there’s no money in the kitty to give me a bike with an engine so I’m making do with a engine-less, gear-less, helmet-less pushbike!

I was quite pleased when Maurice from the VSO office told me there was no money in the kitty for a motorbike, what he failed to mention was that the cycle into town is a good half an hour up hill (no gears on the bike remember) on the road equivalent to Briatin's M1! On top of that the three organisations I’m working for are spaced out across town – and some of the target areas where I’m supposed to be doing outreach are a few miles in the opposite direction.

But hey, no one else at work has a motorbike. Some of the volunteer community caregivers are retired professionals and are probably well into their sixties. They walk miles every week to visit their patients at home so a pushbike is a privilege. Anyway at least there’s no chance of me getting too podgy despite the amount of peanut butter and bread I’m eating!

The use of pushbikes here is unbelievable. I went to order a couple of beds for our spare rooms the other day and asked the carpenter if he had means to deliver them. He said he could get them to us for about a quid – I asked how and he said on the back of a bicycle!!! I’ll have to get some photos but people carry charcoal piled at least one storey high, water containers and baskets hang off at all sorts of angles. There are bike taxis that carry up to three passengers on the pannier rack – these bikes have no gears and the drivers look no bigger than Henry at his skinniest I’ve no idea where they get their strength! The funniest but saddest thing I’ve seen is a goat strapped onto the bike rack more than likely on its way to the stew pot. How on earth the rider managed to get it tied on without losing an eye or two I don’t know! There’s also a huge contradiction between rackety old bikes and big shiny, gas guzzling 4 by 4s…you rarely see anything in-between.

Henry

For those of you wondering how Henry’s getting on he’s writing a blog at http://positivelyzambia.wordpress.com. It’s aimed largely at P&P groups as part of his Global Education Project but he’s including diary entries and his own comments on Zambia. We write quite different things so you should find it pretty interesting.

Starting work...

I’ve spent the past week trying to get to grips with what it is I‘ve been employed to do here. My official job title is Peer Education Coordinator, working with behaviour change programmes attached to two home based care organisations – Chisomo and Tikondane (the offices in the picture). In addition, I’m told I’ll be working with Kwacha Ku’mawa another organisation concentrating on peer education but more media focused.

It seems that my role will be to inject some new energy into the peer education projects. Many of the peer educators and staff at these organisations are slowly running out of steam – as dedicated and enthusiastic as they are – many haven’t been paid for months but continue to turn up and work for free.

At the moment the behaviour change programmes use dance, drama, sport and peer-to-peer counselling to get across their messages on HIV prevention, care and treatment, the stigmatisation of people living with HIV, child abuse and the promotion of gender equality. The problem here appears to be that people know about HIV, and how the virus is transmitted but people are slow to change their behaviour.

I’ve been disappointed to learn that the HIV prevention messages in Chipata focus largely, or even solely, on promoting abstinence rather than safe sex. Whenever I tentatively begin to challenge such an approach staff at one of the organisations just repeat ‘but we’re a faith-based organisation.’ There could be a steep hill ahead! Abstinence only programmes just aren’t working. I spent one morning last week at an antenatal clinic in one of the poorest areas in Chipata – the number of young, single mothers-to-be there just helps to prove my point.

It’s not all so bad though, the peer educators seem really open to new ideas, in fact one group in particular seem to think I have all the answers to their problems – they even said I’m here to show them the way forward! I’ve had to repeat a few times that I’m a volunteer and not a funder.

So to sum up it seems that I’ll be wearing a few different hats over the next year, fundraiser, drama coach, peer educator, project development officer, facilitator, boat shaker, trouble maker!….