Zambia Update

Independence Day October 24th
Today I had the best day ever! Everyone was off from work in Zambia and I attended a Women’s conference at the Miracle Life church. There were some amazing speakers there from around Africa and they were all women. I met some really nice people there and was able to eat a traditional African meal alongside many of them halfway through the conference. The message I really liked from one of the speakers was to dream big, because God STARTS at our wildest dreams. We have no perception of what God is capable of; many times we try to plan these things in our lives and limit what we may be able to experience if we only relied and trusted more in God.
After the conference I walked to the other intern house and on my way saw men juggling fire and lots of Zambian spirit in music and dancing! Something else that sticks out to me is I saw the biggest dragon fly of my life and it was bright blue and bright green. Nikki and I baked cookies together and then walked to a fashion show! It was also fashion week this week and we saw our friend Petita model Zambian fashion!


Halloween
Halloween was definitely a different experience here in Zambia than in the U.S. As it is Halloween tradition, people dress up for Halloween because the story is at 3am on Halloween night, evil spirits have a greater tendency to transcend the human world. While I don’t think we think about this too much in the U.S., people seem to take this a lot more seriously here. I think it translates to thinking more in terms of satanistic activities as opposed to gleaning as much candy as possible. When I asked people at the lab if they were dressing up for Halloween, they all said no, and I got a few odd looks. I was planning on dressing up that day, but instead I just wore some festive colors. The other interns and I went to a Halloween party, which was mainly with Americans and everyone dressed up there and it was a good time. I dressed up as a Zambian pumpkin, otherwise known as a “zamkin”; I chose this because it had all the colors of the Zambian flag in it: orange, green, red, and black! Nikki was a pirate (and got pieces of her costume for only 8000 kwacha = 2 dollars), Laura was a kitchen party invitation (Here, everyone is invited to kitchen parties, which are like bridal showers, even if you don’t know the person), Jamie went as Hermoine, and Mark as a foosball player (very funny/creative costume).

November 3 – Matebato
Today Grace, a CIDRZ housekeeper, was nice enough to take us to a Matebato! This is a tradition in Zambian culture where the soon-to-be married bride cooks for her soon-to-be husband and then deliver the food to him! All of the women on the bride’s side of the family cook the entire morning and afternoon and the men and women on the groom’s side of the family gather at his place and wait for the food to be delivered. As usual in this culture, everyone was extremely welcoming to my roommates and I even though we did not know the bride prior to today. We arrived at the bride’s house in early afternoon and helped with the food. I got to stir this huge pot of nshima, with a 3.5 foot spoon! Nikki helped with the tomatos and Laura did a little bit of everything. Also, I started dancing to the drumming and the hostess of the matebato started running circles around me and dancing in front of me, it was really cool. After cooking for hours, the food was finally done and all of the pots of food are taken into the bride’s house for singing and prayers. Eat pot must be opened and shown to everyone and then the bride and hostess must get down on their hands and knees and tie the pots together with clothe. There were about 30-40 pots of food and so everyone helped to carry them out to the trucks to transport them over to the grooms house. When we got to the groom’s house, everyone had to get a pot, carry it on their head, and dance backwards into the groom’s house with it! Laura and Nikki got veggies in their pots and as I opened mine to look, I saw that I had caterpillars in mine – kind of ironic since I’m the most squeamish of everyone with bugs. But I made myself go on, haha, so we danced and sung into the groom’s house, lay the food down, and then watched as the hostess carried on with her traditional rituals. Now all of the food had to be presented, pot by pot, to the goom. The hostess washed his hands carefully and then she lies on the ground and he must pick her up. We got home pretty late from the Matebato, and we were all pretty tired and hungry. It’s also tradition for the women not to eat until after they arrive back to the house from the groom’s place, so although they had been cooking all day, they had not been eating! It was really, really cool to be a part of something like this.



November 7 – Rainy season has officially begun! Today the rains came in, and it poured and poured. Finally the storm clouds broke; for a long time it’s been getting hotter and it will look very overcast but it never rains. Now it downpours for about 20-30 minutes, and then may rain lightly for a while. There are still breaks in this, though. It gets really hot and sunny, the storm clouds build up again, and then it rains. The nice part about this is, 1) it’s a nice change of pace and it kind of feels cozy inside 2) it cools down the temperature (in the lab, when fans don’t work it gets up to 36 C, which is like almost 100 F). However…with the rain also comes the bugs! There are tons more mosquitos now and other kinds of bugs around our house that I didn’t really notice before. On this particular day, Mark and I went to the market to buy apples to make apple crisp for a dinner. It started raining pretty hard on our walk back, but the real thing that was different was there were all of these flying termites everywhere. It’s like they had surfaced from somewhere for the first time! Waves and waves of flying termites all around you, and I had to keep my mouth closed so I wouldn’t eat them. They were in our faces, in my hair, in our clothes, just everywhere. The bodies are about an inch long and the wings are about 2 inches and they just keep slamming into you. We got back to my place and there were tons in the house, they creep through the cracks in the windows and like many bugs are drawn to light, so it’s like we’re sharing our house with tons of termites who are just helping themselves to free reign of all of the nooks and crannies in our house!
Another interesting and kind of negative point is, in the rainy season, there are more thieves out, especially at night. The rain is so loud that people can’t hear someone coming from behind you or someone breaking into your house. The men at work were telling me about how things get stolen very easily during this time of year.
The next morning there were hundreds of dead termites outside our door and in our laundry room. I went to work and told the housekeeper about it and she says INSOUA!! KRISTEN INSOUA!! WHY did you not bring me? Apparently people gather, cook, and eat these here so I said I would definitely collect them for her the next rain. Moral of the story, maybe I should have kept my mouth open when walking back from market in the rain?

Something else I have noticed here is mannerisms surrounding food is a bit different. I was sitting in the break room dipping a piece of bread in my tea and the men at the table looked at me and said “Oh nooo Kristen, oh noooo” and I look up confused and kind of ask what is going on and they say it is only for little children to do. Older people are not supposed to dip anything in their drink. I told them about how in the U.S., lots of people dip cookies in milk and we even have commercials for cookies showing it on t.v., and they couldn’t believe it! Another thing was I was using my left hand, which is something you’re not supposed to do when eating or when greeting people. Also, the giving and accepting of food is a little bit different. I brought Eugene a banana one day and he said he would eat it for lunch. The next morning I noticed it was still on the shelf and I said, Oh Eugene I noticed you saved your banana for today. And he looked down and he said “I didn’t want you to find it like that”. I was confused and I asked why and he said, “I want to be close with you, if you see I have not eaten what you have given, you might just not want to see me anymore.” Another day Thabiso informed me that he was buying me an apple, banana, and orange. I laughed and said I have a lot of food with me today I couldn’t possibly eat all of that and he doesn’t have to do that. He told me it’s rude to not accept food in this culture, so I quickly was like, oh, well then I would love those fruits, and then he said it’s worse to then accept because the person knows you don’t REALLY want it. Thabiso and Eugene understand that I am unfamiliar with this idea and they don’t get upset with me, but it does lead to interesting conversation!
Sometimes Ngambo and I have a hard time expressing exactly what we mean to the other person so we have taken to using food items to do so... For example saying someone looks like cake is infinitely better than saying they look like bubblegum. However when I wear my white lab coat, she says “Mmm you look like bubblegum, sugar, chocolate, candy, sweet sweet, yum, sugar, bubblegum” Apparently she likes people wearing white she says. Ngambo continues to be one of my very favorite people I have met here! I not only learn things from her about the process of PCR with HIV testing, but there are just always unexpected things that come up that we talk and laugh about because even things like how you express yourself is so different in the cultures.

Somewhat scary experience
On the way back from a night out, as we were walking just a few blocks away from our house, we were pulled over by 4 men saying they were police and trying to get us to get into their car, saying we were breaking curfew and causing a disturbance in Lusaka. When they wouldn't accept money and only wanted us to get into the car, we became very worried and panicked. Also, two of them carried rifles. Luckily Erik was with katie, laura, and myself and he did a great job stalling until Brian, a friend from CIDRZ came with his car. Still, it was definitely one of, or the most scary experience I've had. Upon telling others the story, people have had all different speculations, and some have told us that there have been an increase is kidnappings, etc lately. Now I never walk at night anymore, even if I am in a group. I consider us very lucky, and it was a good warning and wake up call that walking in any city late at night, even if it is just a few blocks, is not a good idea.


Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving here was definitely different from home! Since people don’t get off from work and don’t cook and eat all day, I kind of missed this relaxed atmosphere at home. Something nice about thanksgiving to me is, there is no pressure to go out and buy presents for one another and no real expectations, except the amazing food you know you will be stuffing yourself with. Also, I missed relaxing with the family. And then there is my mom’s spanikopita and cranberry bread, my favorite foods for the holiday… but for festivity sake I woke up and baked squash muffins – I’ll be honest, this was purely for the activity of making something with the thanksgiving colors of brown and orange. It was my own recipe and lets just say it wasn’t my best. But, I still had fun! I went to work and talked about thanksgiving all day with my fellow workers- everyone wanted to hear about it. I also brought some cornbread for everyone to try. Then when I got home my family called me, which was really really nice and I got to talk to my grandmother who was visiting! I was really excited to talk to my middle brother David, who I haven’t talked on the phone with since he went to college in the summer! Since the interns didn’t have a ton of time to cook for Thursday, we planned on having a big thanksgiving dinner on the Saturday of the week. Conor organized it and it was a blast!

Nov 29-Aleen’s Christmas bookclub!
Aleen hosted the most amazing bookclub meeting today. She has her house decorated so beautifully for Christmas and made mince pies, sweet popcorn, tortillas in the shape of and decorated like Christmas trees, Christmas chocolates, and hot drinks. I was so happy to be invited to it because it really made me feel like home, with my mom’s Christmas decorations. The atmosphere was beautiful and warm and she lit Christmas candles everywhere as well! We also did a present exchange and I got nice hand lotion, which I haven’t had in so long. (i think ill save it for when i get home so my brothers can enjoy the sweet lotiony arome next time we're driving in the car together muahahaha!)

World AIDS Day – November 30-Dec 1
Today a bunch of CIDRZ people joined the rest of the community in going on an AIDS march from a filling station to the showgrounds on great east road. I met up with Ngambo and we both took pictures in our World AIDS Day shirts! The walk started a few hours late and it was really hot, so once we got to the showgrounds, instead of staying for the speeches, we went to the market to get something cold and went back to my house. She had never baked a cake before so that’s what we did in the afternoon, which was so fun! We also made cookies. She has some mad stirring and pounding skills, which cut the baking time down by at least 25%. Then we went to go see the piano up the street from me. I was so incredible to go because we’ve been talking about it for a while now and I am teaching her to read music. I showed her what she could play and when I was playing she grabbed my arm and said “Kristen I can’t believe it, it’s too nice.” We had this plan that she would be able to play a Christmas song by Christmas time. So this week one of my goals is just to arrange a simple version of Away in a Manger for her to learn. That’s the song she loves for Christmas. I really cannot wait until we have more time and she can be playing, because I know how happy I get when I play the piano. So we spent the whole day together and it was so much fun!
Later, Katie, Erik, and I made homemade pizzas with Andy, Joe, Mark, and Erik’s roommate Christina. It was such a fun night and we all sat around playing this game called “Jungle Speed”, which is like a combination of UNO and Spoons. It was a pretty funny game and Katie was incredible at it; actually it was each of the girls who won the first 3 rounds!
Oh also, I bought an advent calendar here and when predicting what the first chocolate would be Mark guessed a leaf and I guessed a candle. I was laughing at his idea of a leaf, I mean he didn’t even say holly or something, until we opened the first door and it turned out to be a regular leaf alongside a candle. Yea, we split that chocolate.

Wedding Reception
Laura and I went to a wedding reception with Christina, Joyce, and Cheba, our CIDRZ co-workers. It was so much fun because there was so much dancing through the entire event. The bridesmaids and groomsmen dance there way down the isle multiple times. Even the flower girl and ring bearer have a dance they do down the isle! Everyone as usual was incredibly welcoming and I loved the music! There was even a woman to cut the cake who started dancing out with a knife. This was one of my favorite parts because I was thinking who is this person waving a knife around. After the presentation of the bride and groom and a lot of tasty food, we all got up to dance. As I was dancing in the big circle, I realized I knew one of the groomsmen and he gave me his hat to wear as we were dancing so none of the other guys there danced with me. I had such a great time. Now I've been to the kitchen party (like the bridal shower), the matebato (where the bride-to-be cooks for the groom) and the reception, so all that's left is to see an actual Zambian wedding! Not that I'm thinking of getting married soon or anything, but when I do, I want to have a wedding that includes some Zambian culture for sure, and definitely, definitely, a dancing cake cutting woman.

Zambian Christmas!
Merry Christmas!!! So being in Zambia for Christmas was a wonderful experience. I knew I would miss my family and home around this time, because aside from being away for about 5 months at this point, my mom creates such a warm and magical household at Christmas time. But I knew before I came in August I wanted to spend the entire year here. Some of the interns were away, but there were a bunch that still remained! We made lots of good food and went to a christmas carols service. It was so cute because there were all of these little kids dressed up who had been practicing for months and months. When they started singing little drummer boy I instantly teared up, as I always do when I hear christmas songs here because it's so familiar. So then everyone stayed over our house christmas eve. We also had a secret santa gift exchange where each of the interns had to get eachother something 20pin(about 5 US dollars) or less. Among the gifts, Laura received a trucker hat, Barbara a "how to cure a snake bite" book(Nate tells us it was 1pin), Erik a Zambian chetenge shirt, me a squash. It was a wonderful day and I felt like the true spirit of Christmas found me in Zambia because I was so happy all day long.

New Years
Happy 2008!! I had a wonderful time at New years! I hung out with Vikki and my new friend Seya, who also goes to my church. We went to see the movie Enchanted, which I loved and then just hung out all night together, talking, eating chocolates, and playing funny games. Then we tried to go and see fireworks in town but it was so crowded we were stuck for about an hour trying to get away. Still, as we were stuck, we enjoyed a Zambian New Year as we could still see the fireworks from afar! I'm so excited for what this new year will bring :)