preacher boy

religion is a very important aspect of many zambian's lives. around 98% are christian, and most are very devoted. any day of the week you can walk by churches and hear singing going on, especially on the weekends. schools and community centers are also taken over on the weekends to hold services. some examples of religion taking place in everyday life here...

i was talking with sharon, our "zambian mom"' who helps around the house/office, last week, and she was telling me how she was going to an all night prayer service at her church friday night. she explained how one friday a month people from her congregation meet on friday evening and stay up praying and worshiping all night long til 6am saturday.

a lot of the zambian staff here like to listen to either the bible being recited or christian music and sing along during work. for a couple week period i was working on organizing a bunch of receipts, and i was in the finance office with our bookkeeper, whitcah. his music preference was the bible. in a monotone voice. for hours on end. in an office that is like a sauna. looking at thousands of receipts. for two weeks. i almost went crazy.

i recently took a holiday to livingstone, zambia, where victoria falls is. both the bus there and the bus back, we were on 6am buses. and on both buses, we got preached to for the first 30 minutes of the ride by a preacher. normally i wouldn't mind, but at 6am all i was wanting to do was go back to sleep. both the preachers had their bible out in hand, pacing up and down the aisle of the bus, passing out pamphlets, and preaching the good word. not much escape on a bus (smart on their part), so i listened.

this past saturday we hosted another event for work. this was a vct challenge (voluntary counseling and testing where there is free hiv testing on site for people in the local community). mike spiak (another intern aka spike) and i were put on the very important duty of watching all the food and drinks to make sure they didn't get stolen. seems a bit ridiculous, but it is actually a legit job because otherwise everything would get stolen. throughout the day, kids constantly come up to the window of the room and ask for drinks or food. i always feel bad saying no when i have a whole room of drinks and food, but it's for all the testing partners, staff, etc. only. a lot of kids also just stuck around talking with us. one kid in particular, chipo, kept coming back to talk with us throughout the day. he's a little 10 year old boy with his torn shirt and bare feet, but so smart. he was asking us questions about obama, how america and zambia were different, and then moved onto the religious talk.
spike had left the room at this point, so i left by my lonesome to answer the religious questions. he started asking me if i believed in god, what i thought would happen to me after i died, if i had ever preached the word of god to anyone, and then the why's and why not's that followed each question. i kinda felt like i was being judged a bit by my answers because there was a group of probably 10 kids gathered around listening to the conversation we were having.
our conversation got cut short because i had to go help with some stuff going on with the event. as i was walking out to the main part of the event, bonyolo, a famous actor in zambia, was on the mic doing a performance with the kids all gathered around him. as i was still walking up to the event, i hear bonyolo on the mic say a few words in nyanga then say "mzungu!" i immediately knew i was being called out when all the kids turned and looked at me. surprise, surprise. i knew i should have stayed in my little food cave so i wouldn't get called out. bonyolo calls me into the middle of the circle and says all the kids want to see us dance. so of course, i have to attempt to dance and get laughed at by the hundreds of little kids gathered around. it's always a real confidence booster haha.
once i was threw with the dancing embarrassment, i sat down at the dj area to watch the rest of the performance. i was looking around at the kids in the crowd and made eye contact with chipo. he motioned for me to come over to him, so i went to see what he wanted. "can we finish our conversation?" he asked. "about religion?" i asked back. i hadn't realized it was an ongoing conversation he was wanting to continue, but he said yes. so we walked over to a quiet area, sat down, and he just started paraphrasing the bible to me. he started with creation, moved onto noah, cain and able, and so on. he was able to recite the stories with extreme detail and quote verses upon verses as he narrated the stories. i was immediately captivated by his passion and just listened without saying anything. eventually, others began to gather around to listen to him. at one point, it must have been 30 kids gathered around listening to this little 10 year old boy talk about the bible, and he was completely unphased. he continued looking me in the eye the entire time and never broke his story telling. he spoke non stop for about 30 minutes gaining everyone's attention who walked by. after 30 minutes, he stopped talking, said, "alright, that's all i wanted to talk to you about," got up, and walked away. i was still kinda in a daze from what had just happened, but i thanked him, shook his hand, and told him i was very impressed before he wandered off.



the whole experience was so crazy and inspiring to me. i'm not a particularly devout christian, but the passion he had, his ability to speak so confidently in front of a large group, his knowledge of the bible, and the strengths of his beliefs really amazed me.

driving mishaps

mishap #1:
the other week i was cruising along to the airport to pick up a grassroot soccer cape town employee. windows were down, nice weather, music playing, all was good. then all of a sudden a man jumps into the road and starts flailing his arms in the air and points for me to pull over. at first, i'm a bit confused, but i obviously have to pull over because he is blocking the entire road with his body. then, i realize he's in a uniform and this is zambia's way of pulling me over. the uniformed man walks over and says i was speeding and would have to pay a fine. big bummer. i ask him nicely if he can let me off with a warning because i have no money on me and just arrived to zambia recently (a little white lie). he then sends over his boss, a lady police, so i do my best to sweet talk her and give her the same story. she's a bit more forgiving luckily and lets me off with a warning, as long as i promise not to do it again. phew! dodged that one.
the whole process of the way they pull people over, though, was ridiculous. there was no one in a car to chase after cars that didn't stop. and i don't believe they had any device to catch people's license plate numbers fast enough before speeding by. so i wonder if people just drive past ever and just don't stop.

mishap #2:
yesterday i was driving and backing up out of a shopping area, when all of a sudden i heard a crunch. a bit of panic set in. apparently another car had started backing up as well (after me, i might add), and we accidentally backed up into each other. bad news. we get out of the car to look at the damage. luckily, there is no damage to our car, but there is a small dent on the trunk of the other car. it is me and tommy (one of the americans i work with) in my car, and it is a car full of zambians in the other. they saw we were white and assumed they could get some money out of us from this accident. they wanted us to pay for the full damage, which made no sense at all since we were both at fault. he wanted to take it to the police (cause we don't speak nyanga, he figured he would be able to negotiate with the police and we wouldn't be able to understand). so reluctantly, we decide to go to the police station with them. first though, we stopped back at the office to pick up one of our zambian co-workers, izek, to take with us to help translate for us if needed. we then head off to the police station. when we are almost there, the other car randomly puts his hazards on and pulls off to the side of the road. a bit confused, i follow his lead. he got out of his car and came back to my window to talk. "i thought about it again, and i changed my mind." awesome! no police. i slipped the guy 40,000 zmk, which is like $10 usd, to help with the damage, we shook hands, and called it even. we all got out of the car then and started chatting and realized tommy plays soccer if one of the guys who was in the car, and the guy who had been driving is cousins with izek. small world for a city of over 2 million people hah.
i was talking with the lady who was in the car, and she said everyone else in the car had been telling the driver the whole time not to deal with going to the police and to just settle it between us. the police take so much time, are usually a bit corrupt, and wouldn't have any real say/reasoning in the matter since it was our word against theirs. it also would have been a long, drawn out process. soo very glad he came to his senses and just settled things. izek said that is how things are normally dealt with in zambia when it comes to little fender bender accidents. most of the cars here are in pretty horrible shape anyways, so an extra little dent here and there doesn't really make a difference.

alright, there are my driving mishaps. hopefully there won't be any more anytime soon

wheelbarrows

zambia is in the process of conducting a census. however, instead of mailing out the census to people to fill out, people are hired to go around to each house individually and ask the residents a series of questions. the other day they came around to our house and most of the questions were pretty straight forward....where are you from, how long have you lived here, how many people live in this house. then out of no where, one of the important questions they decided to throw into the census was "do you own a wheerlbarrow?" haha. really?! not, do you own a car or something normal like that, but do you own a wheerlbarrow? we all found that pretty entertaining.

but i guess thinking about it, people here use wheelbarrows to transport everything. it's amazing to amount of stuff zambians are able to stack on top of a wheelbarrow and push it down the streets. it's very impressive. i would definitely lose control and it would topple over. the same goes for bicycles. people stack charcoal, wood, etc no joke 6 feet tall off the back of their bikes and ride around town. i can barely manage to ride a bicycle by myself without falling over, let alone with an extra 100+ pounds stacked on the back.

im in the process of buying a bike for the intern house, so maybe i'll be able to work on and perfect my bike stacking/riding abilities.

rain rain rain

the rains have come! months sans rain and now they are finally here. and now that they're here, they are here in full force. it doesn't necessarily rain for long periods of time when it rains, but it rains hard. and there isn't a great drainage system here, so the rain stays. it makes it a bit difficult driving through some of the compounds because many of the roads are not passable with the rains covering the entire road and even flooding the houses. it's no good.

but so far the rains have been good. it has helped cool things off here. and it is starting to make everything much greener and less dusty which is always nice as well. great thunder and lightning with the storms, too, which i love. hopefully the smell from the wet garbage throughout town doesn't get too much to bare. fingers crossed.

plastic bag soccer balls

soccer balls are a prized possession amongst kids in lusaka. if they are lucky enough to own one, they are usually pretty battered and most likely very flat. but they don't complain and are more than happy to play with a torn apart, flat ball, because that is more than most kids have.

as a substitute, kids gather plastic bags (like from the grocery store), pack them together, and tie them together with string to make a ball to play with. they are always about 1/3 the size of a normal ball and obviously tricky to play with since they squish under your foot. but again, kids guard these homemade soccer balls with their lives and spend hours each day entertaining themselves by passing the ball amongst friends or dribbling it through their compound.

it's crazy how soccer really is a universal language everyone understands and appreciates over here. as you drive through town or any of the compounds, you can't not see soccer being played or advertised one way or another.