A Slice of Life in Zambia
Today began with a walk around the grounds of the
lodge. Last night Paula had said that she wanted to see a vulture so as we set
off from the veranda hooded vultures, later joined by marabou storks, circled
overhead. There are also many species of fabulous smaller birds around, my
favourites of which are the bee eaters. Also we saw a pied kingfisher and a
giant kingfisher, trebling my all time kingfisher sightings. We are frequently
seeing exotic large birds too: for instance last night we had an eagle owl
perched on top of one of the trees in the gloaming. We also saw some
fascinating trees, but I can guess that you probably have to be here... One
that I would mention, though, is the toothbrush tree, named because you can -
and people do - easily fashion a serviceable toothbrush from its
twigs.
Alan also took us to two houses where some of the staff who work here currently live. This one has six inhabitants:
This is a fairly typical house around here and many like this can be seen strung amongst the bushes and trees around Livingstone. Alan is in the process of building a new house for the people that live in this one and we saw the guys working on it. They are making their own blocks from cement and sand, and re-using some door and window frames that they have already. The new house will have a bathroom/shower, a toilet, a couple of bedrooms and a living space. Hopefully they will be able to top it off with a straw roof, which keeps cooler than the corrugated iron sheets used on the existing houses, and they are also hoping to have a standpipe at the house for drinking water. These houses cost about £3,000 to erect, which is about a decade's salary for most of the local people, if they are lucky enough to be in work. (Although the people who will be living in this one earn somewhat more than this.) Alan is hoping to replace the second house with a newer block house when this one is finished, funds permitting.
Later, we visited one of the local Sinde villages, which are a constellation of traditional villages strung throughout the bush. To drive there requires an off-road vehicle to negotiate the potted dirt track, which was fully blocked at one point by a fallen tree, compelling us to drive through the rough grass to skirt it. Mutumba, one of the guys who works here, lives in another of the Sinde villages and was able to guide us in. The village we visited was chosen because it has the local school for children of Zoe's and Heidi's age. We were met by the head of the village, Mr Stumbeki, and a few members of the PTA. Like all of the buildings in these villages, the schoolroom was constructed of mud in a frame of branches with a straw roof. We met the children and their teacher, who was nursing a baby as she taught and then spoke to us. She told us that the children were learning maths and integrated science; when I asked what they were learning when we arrived she told me that they were learning counting.
Mr Stumbeki took us for a tour of the village, showing us where their goats and chickens were kept, their crops and fruit trees and some of the houses.
Everyone we met was very welcoming and before we left the schoolchildren sang us a song (in English).
While everyone does seem simply happy to smile and say Hello, our true credentials probably arose from the fact that Alan is co-ordinating the building of a new school. Money for the construction (again from blockwork) is coming from a school in Ongar, Essex, who are sending out a party of their own kids when it's finished to help with planting the gardens and painting the walls. Running costs are another matter. The teacher we met has apparently not been paid for the past couple of months, and this is quite common in the region. Alan is also involved in fund raising from his clients to cover these costs.
On the way back we were flagged down by eight school girls aged 9 to 13 who wanted a lift to their school, which was in a different village. This has been closed sporadically as a result of strikes by the teachers who are fed up with not being paid. The girls also helped to nail another misconception that I had: I have been quite reserved about taking photographs with people in them for fear of causing offense, but the girls overcame their (admittedly slight) shyness to ask me to photo them. This has been my consistent experience over the past couple of days with young and old alike.
I'm finding it hard after only a couple of days here to make sense of what's going on here economically-culturally. On the one hand there is something romantically very appealing about the traditional villages such as the one we saw. Until I'd come here I didn't have the sense of how these places seem to be part of the natural environment, unlike the towns and villages that we live in all the time that are imposed on a landscape that is obliterated, or transformed out of recognition by agriculture. And they are very quaint. There is a part of me that wants to press the pause button before we modernise them all, because this philanthropy, to the extent that it is successful, will tend to set the community on a trajectory where villlages such the one we saw today will disappear. On the other hand, if you are living in a small mud hut and one of your friends got a job and a house with a shower then that's what you want too, I guess. After all, most of the villagers walk into Livingstone every week where they can see the stark contrast between their lives and those of their compatriots. As well as their lack of participation in consumer culture, the villagers' harmony with nature has the flip side that they are at the mercy of what nature can do to them. One common occurrence is a devastating loss of crops, particularly maize, when elephants trample through it. On this subject, Mr Stumbeki told me that his favourite food is shima, which is the local word for mealy meal. This is a maize-based dish that's made thin in the morning for breakfast, when it is taken with lots of sugar and resembles porridge, and is made with the consistency of mashed potato as a main meal, when it is served with relish made from locally available plants. Although Alan grimaces every time I ask him about it, Mr Stumbeki claims to prefer shima to chicken: he explained that eating is shima is something that Zambians believe in. Incidentally, I have no idea how Mr Stumbeki came to be head of the village, but, like the position of tribal chief, it appears to be a position from which the locals can depose him if he is unsatisfactory.
Returning to the unfortunate dependence on the fickle forces of nature, another threat is drought: in the past two years (before this one) rainfall was poor and the villagers had to come and collect food aid supplied by the UN to stay alive.
Another burdensome feature of nature's panoply is termites. After we had (I think) persuaded Mr Stumbeki that our house at home really did have a straw roof I mentioned that it was 500 years old. He replied that their houses needed to be re-built every year because of the ants and termites.
Education itself - or, more accurately, schooling - is at risk from the vicissitudes of village existence: while the PTA members were adamant that the children enjoyed going to school (these kids start at 7:40 and have a 4 hour day), many have to leave earlier than they would like to help earn a living. At least I think that this is part of what Mr Stumbeki meant when he alluded to "problems with their parents".
The girls and I caught another slice of Zambian life this afternoon at Maramba market in Livingstone, where, again, we were the only white faces. Again, everyone we encountered was friendly (only one guy asked for money) with no apparent camera-shyness (though I was again probably too diffident). All manner of goods were on sale. There were butcher's stall where meat hanged and men were sawing through flesh and bone. There was a big fresh fish stall, though I have no idea how the fish are kept fresh through the afternoon when the heat is overwhelming and the place is full of flies. Next to this was a large outdoor dried fish stall. The two main types seemed to be small fish, Kapenta, that are cooked on oil and served whole like whitebait, and a larger fish, possibly bream, that is served split apart like kippers. There were also stalls serving food, which reminded me of those in the large square in Marrakech, although on nothing like the scale (I can't recall the name but many people will know the one I mean - feel free to comment it in). At one of the stalls a couple of men were preparing pigs trotters (I think) and cooking them up to serve. At another three ladies sat in front of a basket of fat cakes which are like fried doughnuts in the shape of tennis balls. I'm afraid that I didn't have any of this (I'd had a nice lunch). On the way out we saw two teenagers playing draughts (checkers) on a makeshift board, with upturned bottle-tops v. bottle-tops aright. The very last guy we passed before we met Alan in the Defender was the only one to ask for money.
Well that's it for today. The next few days entries may be more compressed as I'm guessing it's harder to blog in a tent. Ian
Alan also took us to two houses where some of the staff who work here currently live. This one has six inhabitants:
This is a fairly typical house around here and many like this can be seen strung amongst the bushes and trees around Livingstone. Alan is in the process of building a new house for the people that live in this one and we saw the guys working on it. They are making their own blocks from cement and sand, and re-using some door and window frames that they have already. The new house will have a bathroom/shower, a toilet, a couple of bedrooms and a living space. Hopefully they will be able to top it off with a straw roof, which keeps cooler than the corrugated iron sheets used on the existing houses, and they are also hoping to have a standpipe at the house for drinking water. These houses cost about £3,000 to erect, which is about a decade's salary for most of the local people, if they are lucky enough to be in work. (Although the people who will be living in this one earn somewhat more than this.) Alan is hoping to replace the second house with a newer block house when this one is finished, funds permitting.
Later, we visited one of the local Sinde villages, which are a constellation of traditional villages strung throughout the bush. To drive there requires an off-road vehicle to negotiate the potted dirt track, which was fully blocked at one point by a fallen tree, compelling us to drive through the rough grass to skirt it. Mutumba, one of the guys who works here, lives in another of the Sinde villages and was able to guide us in. The village we visited was chosen because it has the local school for children of Zoe's and Heidi's age. We were met by the head of the village, Mr Stumbeki, and a few members of the PTA. Like all of the buildings in these villages, the schoolroom was constructed of mud in a frame of branches with a straw roof. We met the children and their teacher, who was nursing a baby as she taught and then spoke to us. She told us that the children were learning maths and integrated science; when I asked what they were learning when we arrived she told me that they were learning counting.
Mr Stumbeki took us for a tour of the village, showing us where their goats and chickens were kept, their crops and fruit trees and some of the houses.
Everyone we met was very welcoming and before we left the schoolchildren sang us a song (in English).
While everyone does seem simply happy to smile and say Hello, our true credentials probably arose from the fact that Alan is co-ordinating the building of a new school. Money for the construction (again from blockwork) is coming from a school in Ongar, Essex, who are sending out a party of their own kids when it's finished to help with planting the gardens and painting the walls. Running costs are another matter. The teacher we met has apparently not been paid for the past couple of months, and this is quite common in the region. Alan is also involved in fund raising from his clients to cover these costs.
On the way back we were flagged down by eight school girls aged 9 to 13 who wanted a lift to their school, which was in a different village. This has been closed sporadically as a result of strikes by the teachers who are fed up with not being paid. The girls also helped to nail another misconception that I had: I have been quite reserved about taking photographs with people in them for fear of causing offense, but the girls overcame their (admittedly slight) shyness to ask me to photo them. This has been my consistent experience over the past couple of days with young and old alike.
I'm finding it hard after only a couple of days here to make sense of what's going on here economically-culturally. On the one hand there is something romantically very appealing about the traditional villages such as the one we saw. Until I'd come here I didn't have the sense of how these places seem to be part of the natural environment, unlike the towns and villages that we live in all the time that are imposed on a landscape that is obliterated, or transformed out of recognition by agriculture. And they are very quaint. There is a part of me that wants to press the pause button before we modernise them all, because this philanthropy, to the extent that it is successful, will tend to set the community on a trajectory where villlages such the one we saw today will disappear. On the other hand, if you are living in a small mud hut and one of your friends got a job and a house with a shower then that's what you want too, I guess. After all, most of the villagers walk into Livingstone every week where they can see the stark contrast between their lives and those of their compatriots. As well as their lack of participation in consumer culture, the villagers' harmony with nature has the flip side that they are at the mercy of what nature can do to them. One common occurrence is a devastating loss of crops, particularly maize, when elephants trample through it. On this subject, Mr Stumbeki told me that his favourite food is shima, which is the local word for mealy meal. This is a maize-based dish that's made thin in the morning for breakfast, when it is taken with lots of sugar and resembles porridge, and is made with the consistency of mashed potato as a main meal, when it is served with relish made from locally available plants. Although Alan grimaces every time I ask him about it, Mr Stumbeki claims to prefer shima to chicken: he explained that eating is shima is something that Zambians believe in. Incidentally, I have no idea how Mr Stumbeki came to be head of the village, but, like the position of tribal chief, it appears to be a position from which the locals can depose him if he is unsatisfactory.
Returning to the unfortunate dependence on the fickle forces of nature, another threat is drought: in the past two years (before this one) rainfall was poor and the villagers had to come and collect food aid supplied by the UN to stay alive.
Another burdensome feature of nature's panoply is termites. After we had (I think) persuaded Mr Stumbeki that our house at home really did have a straw roof I mentioned that it was 500 years old. He replied that their houses needed to be re-built every year because of the ants and termites.
Education itself - or, more accurately, schooling - is at risk from the vicissitudes of village existence: while the PTA members were adamant that the children enjoyed going to school (these kids start at 7:40 and have a 4 hour day), many have to leave earlier than they would like to help earn a living. At least I think that this is part of what Mr Stumbeki meant when he alluded to "problems with their parents".
The girls and I caught another slice of Zambian life this afternoon at Maramba market in Livingstone, where, again, we were the only white faces. Again, everyone we encountered was friendly (only one guy asked for money) with no apparent camera-shyness (though I was again probably too diffident). All manner of goods were on sale. There were butcher's stall where meat hanged and men were sawing through flesh and bone. There was a big fresh fish stall, though I have no idea how the fish are kept fresh through the afternoon when the heat is overwhelming and the place is full of flies. Next to this was a large outdoor dried fish stall. The two main types seemed to be small fish, Kapenta, that are cooked on oil and served whole like whitebait, and a larger fish, possibly bream, that is served split apart like kippers. There were also stalls serving food, which reminded me of those in the large square in Marrakech, although on nothing like the scale (I can't recall the name but many people will know the one I mean - feel free to comment it in). At one of the stalls a couple of men were preparing pigs trotters (I think) and cooking them up to serve. At another three ladies sat in front of a basket of fat cakes which are like fried doughnuts in the shape of tennis balls. I'm afraid that I didn't have any of this (I'd had a nice lunch). On the way out we saw two teenagers playing draughts (checkers) on a makeshift board, with upturned bottle-tops v. bottle-tops aright. The very last guy we passed before we met Alan in the Defender was the only one to ask for money.
Well that's it for today. The next few days entries may be more compressed as I'm guessing it's harder to blog in a tent. Ian
Posted: Thu - April 7, 2005 at 11:23 PM
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Published On: Feb 08, 2006 06:20 PM
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Published On: Feb 08, 2006 06:20 PM