The last few days of the In-Country Induction went pretty smoothly. I felt like I was back at uni when we were taken through the political history of Zambia – it’s unbelievable that a country playing host to over 70 different tribes has managed to avoid descending into civil war especially since at least five out of its eight neighbouring countries have experienced violent conflict in the last 30 years. And the Zambian people have done little during our short stay to undermine their slogan ‘One nation One people’ , Henry and I are being stared at wherever we go but we haven’t once been harassed. Morocco, Mum you’ll be pleased to hear, Zambia is not.
Friday night VSO staged a Zambian cultural night for us volunteers and our employers who had arrived from all corners of the country to take us back to our placements. In the dinner queue I bumped into my three employers. I spotted Honester first wearing a blue peer educator’s t-shirt with ‘together we win’ emblazoned on the back, she squealed delightedly when I mentioned who I was and gave me the biggest hug.
Meeting Rebecca and Josephine followed a similar pattern. In a crowd full of male employers it was great to have three obviously committed women to meet me. In fact, it became a bit of a joke when the employers were introducing themselves during Saturday’s partners workshop that every new arrival was coming to meet me – although I’m not entirely sure whether having three employers makes me lucky or not we’ll just have to wait and see. I’m not sure if I made a good first impression, especially after attempting to shake my hips like a true African woman!The Journey to Chipata
Sunday morning our party of nine (Me, Henry, my three employers, Henry’s employer, Denis another VSO based in Chipata, Tom a VSO based near Chipata and Richard, an extremely helpful volunteer who also works for my employers) - set off early for Chipata.
Our first stop out of Lusaka was at a hot spring, almost boiling hot water spouting from the ground. Women and children were bathing and doing laundry in the stream although I wonder how far they’d walked as there didn’t seem to be a village or town anywhere nearby. An hour or so down the road one of the women shouted stop and out of nowhere a family appeared. They turned out to be related to one of my employers and we loaded up a basket or two onto the roof to take on to Chipata. Next stop – bag of chips and ketchup from a roadside market stall, strange but true. Descending into the Luwangwa river valley we narrowly missed a few baboons, goats and cows and stocked up on bananas, oranges, ready to eat maize corn and fresh ground nuts (monkey nuts to you, Dad!)
Every now and again along the road there were clusters of small round mud huts with straw roofs like the ones on the picture. You see the large cocoon looking seed in the same photo – apparently young boys are allocated one each and are told to cut them down when they have grown to the size they would like their penises to be. You can imagine there are some old stories about boys who forgot to chop theirs down!Chipata!
We arrived in Chipata, our home town for the next year or so, early Sunday evening. Workmen are still putting the final touches to our house and furniture (or should I say mansion – it’s ridiculously huge!) so we’re staying with Richard ‘til Thursday. I think Henry described Chipata best when he said it looks like the Wild West. Only the main road through the city is tarmac, the rest are dusty red African soil tracks. It seems you can get basically anything here – including George Forman grills! There are two mosques to cater for the large Indian population and churches on every corner. It doesn’t feel much smaller than Oxford and is surrounded by small mountains. We went out to a small dam this afternoon and we could have been in Scotland if it wasn’t for the 30 degree heat!
Dancing at 8:30am
Monday morning, 8:30am, the peer educators at Chisomo Home Based Care (employer #1) put on a welcome performance of dance and drama. And during the ‘sugar sugar’ dance – a local euphemism for sex – Henry and I were dragged to the floor to shake our booties – if only Monday mornings were always this much fun. Chisomo is based in one of the poorer areas of town. They occupy a house where they have an agreement with the landlord that they can use the premises rent free if they renovate it. Only last week they put in concrete floors. There is no permanent roof, just beams and tin. It may sound ridiculous but I think I’m going to get along just fine, smart offices and air conditioning was never my cup of tea!
I briefly visited the other two organisations I’ll be working with: Tikondane Home Based Care and Kwacha Ku’mawa although their office spaces are slightly better they have hardly any funds.
The peer educators I’ve met so far seem lovely and really committed and enthusiastic. I still don’t really know what my exact job is but my basic brief is to inject some creativity and renewed energy into the peer education programmes, it’s going to be challenging but lots of fun and hopefully really rewarding. I should start work properly next Monday if all goes well with moving into the house this week.
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