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| I will never forget this day. |
The return to Zambia has been so surreal. I remember the
last time I was here I was 17, blonde hair, real chatty, big long limbs, goofy,
and wildly insecure. Its funny how so much changes and still nothing changes at
all. I remember being here and noticing differences everywhere. Red earth,
shoddy roads, headscarves, dancing and singing that brings tears to your eyes, huge
aloe plants, babies strapped on backs, sticky white porridge for every meal, roadside
stands. Africa from a safe distance. I remember thatched huts and children in
bare feet chasing after our car as we’d drive by. I remember big smiles and
throngs of affectionate kids tackling me and braiding my “slippery” muzungu
(white person) hair that was so surprising to them. I remember doing
presentations about Aids prevention in high schools but not quite getting it
myself. I still don’t “get” Aids but I now know many more people who’ve
experienced its crippling blow. Now I’ve stayed in places that it’s actually
affected. I walked through communities that have been crippled by it. Drank
their water, ate their food. Prayed with them, laughed with them, danced with
them. Also “them” has become names of actual people. Lives that have now meshed
with mine. Stories I hold in the safest places in my heart, as if I could put them
in a place of reverence and safety that would somehow right all the wrongs in
the world. Stories that would change your life if you were open to it. I implore
you, for your own sake if for nothing else, open your heart to moments like these.
Let it cut deep into your life, bleeding empathy and distain for injustice into
every area of your consciousness. There is pain here. So if you choose read on,
please try to feel that pain.
This is the story of my return to Zambia. I thought I knew
something about this place, about Africa as a whole. But also I was excited to
experience it as an adult, knowing that I’ve grown and that things are probably
not just as I remember. I know now that I hadn’t really seen Zambia at all
until this time around. This is because I didn’t get to know the people last
time.
Last week I went to a place called Maposa. It just worked
out for me to tag along this particular bluebird day, so I happily hopped in
the car with a sandwich and a coffee. And a coke zero. And a bag of cashews.
And off we went into the crystal clear sunshine of the Zambian morning.
We drove down highways past a long line of women on the
roadside selling gigantic watermelons. I have since eaten at least two of these
watermelons. It’s like an African drive through. You pull up, 2o kwacha out the
window and a lady gives you a melon and you zoom off. I’ve never questioned
McDonalds until now.
There are much more significant parts of my culture that
I’ve started to question though, which actually says more than you may know. Because
I really REALLY like McDonalds.
1)
I’ve started to question the way we live. Living
to work. Productivity and work ethic, now I look at commerce and I think “So
what? I’m going to the park”.
2)
I see the way we interact with each other at
arms length until finally we are able to wade through the many masks and faces
we all wear to actually get to the core of a person. It may seem strange but
that’s not what its like in other parts of the world.
3)
I’m sick of practical problem solving. Since
when are people REALLY able to solve problems anyways? Look at foreign aid in
Africa from the last ten years. Good job practical problem solving. Bad gets
worse and we can’t understand why. It's because our culture is obsessed with
efficiency and tact and all of it has nothing to do with the way things work
around here. Transforming a life takes much more than money and meals could
possibly provide, and the transforming of lives is exactly what suffering people
need, in addition to practical things.
4)
In western culture we think we know everything.
We think we have things figured out because our quality of life is better. We’ve
been “educated” so we walk into a situation and go “blah blah blah” until
everyone is sick of us. We’ve got systems that hum along without us. The world
hums along without us as we work ourselves silly, and then stressed out and
wealthy, we wither away in sterilized senior homes with overworked nurses who
can’t remember our names. We build systems not friendships. And the systems all
fail us in the end. It’s ironic. And it’s inhumane.
5)
Giving for us is only out of surplus. We
sequester off a portion of our storehouses and think that makes us generous. We
think it’s our ticket into heaven. On the African continent, good people give
everything they have. I’ve witnessed it and received it. It’s an altogether
different type of giving that I want to fully adopt. However I’m not sure I can
fit a camel through the eye of a needle. Fingers crossed though.
So we drove to Maposa. The return to Zambia continues. And
we went to visit a family of orphans that is being cared for and fed by a group
of local women. Hands at Work then support this community based feeding point,
which is what I’m a part of. Anyways, we walked to this little house and found
this cute grandpa named Gideon. The kids were away but we stayed and visited
with Gideon anyways. This family has been hit by tragedy but has been able to
overcome it to an extent. They have no hospital anywhere close by, which Gideon
says is a huge problem for the local people. He spoke excellent English because
he worked for a manufacturing company when he was younger. Now he just farms
his land and looks after his grandkids that lost their parents in 2009. We
don’t know how they died. Although there’s obviously a great deal of hardship
in this story I left Gideon’s house feeling encouraged. He and the children’s
grandma have a home and a garden and a field of maize to sell. It seems as though
these children will be alright for the time being. Thank God.
We walked to the next home feeling happy and hopeful because
it seemed like this community was doing a great job gathering around orphans
and looking after them. After many disheartening visits to suffering orphan
families this was like a breath of fresh air. We meandered through thick bushes
and tall grass, and I heard in the distance sounds of children laughing and
playing. I expected another family getting ready to eat lunch, so it caught me
off guard to find a yard littered with trash, and a group of kids running
around and yelling at each other between two door-less and decrepit shacks. It
was like walking into “Lord of the Flies”. Potato sacks were strung together to
cover gaping holes in the crumbling bricks in an attempt to keep out the dust
and wind. Three children came forward from the rest, covered in dirt and
wearing especially tattered clothes. I noticed the youngest boy hiding behind
his older brother. This little boy hadn’t had a haircut in some time, which is
a good indicator that he doesn’t have a mother looking after him. He looked
confused, his eyes darting around from stranger to stranger. His head wobbled
from sensory overload and our eyes caught. “He’s autistic”, I thought
immediately, and he quickly averted his stare, unsure what to do with a foreign
face. “This is Benny”, said the local care worker who had led us to the house.
She pulled him closer and explained that she’s the only person who bothers much
to look after these three. Benny’s hands fidgeted as he bit his lip and stared
at the ground. Their parents have abandoned them and gone to Kitwe. The father
returns from time to time with a bag of maize meal, but they hadn’t seen him in
a couple months. The oldest boy was 16, a really handsome kid named Jacob. His
shirt had one button left. Embarrassed he tried hiding his one shoeless foot as
he explained how he’s had the same shoes for a long time and the right one
burst because his foot has gotten too big. Now he has no shoes for school so he
doesn’t know what to do. He hopes he can fix them or the teacher won’t notice
because he’ll get thrown out. School is free in Zambia but you have to be clean
and presentable to attend. I have a hard time understanding that children may
not be able to go to school because they can’t afford a bar of soap. I liked
Jacob right away and could tell he’s a bright kid with good social skills. We
started talking about school and I asked him what his favorite subject was. He
said math, but we found out later he hadn’t yet learned multiplication. Also I
noticed Jacob was really small for his age, a good indicator that he hasn’t
been getting enough food during his first growth spurt. This may impair his
stature for life. He’s got a good face though, amazing smile and big dimples
that brought his whole face to life when he laughed as I sputtered out broken
Bemba like a clown.
The middle child is a girl named Constance, she and Benny
are both 13 and they are fraternal twins, though Benny has an obvious mental disability
impairing him and an underdeveloped foot that prevents him from walking to the
feeding point. Constance is beautiful and their shack has no door, which makes
her particularly susceptible to sexual predators if Jacob can’t protect her.
It’s possible she’s been abused already because children in such vulnerable
circumstances are often an easy target for opportunistic evil. Should they
miraculously receive food packages or housing supplies, these things might be
taken by neighbors. Basically nothing is easy for kids like this, without
parents and without any semblance of security they are left prone to suffer.
I’ve talked to a couple people from Hands at Work here in
Zambia, truly amazing people who have come out of all kinds of difficult
backgrounds, not unlike the horrors I’ve just described, and together we’ve
made a plan to get Jacob school shoes and to make sure that a meal goes home to
Benny who can’t walk to the feeding point. These local people have stood up to
fight for a different future for children like Jacob and Constance and Benny.
But still. I can’t help feeling that whatever they are able to do for this
family, it won’t be near enough. The needs of these three kids are so far
beyond any human help that can be offered. They need these practical things
too, obviously. They need a house that’s safe and waterproof for starters, a
reliable food source, water (for heaven’s sake), and some sort of income for
clothes and just to keep their little family afloat. And mostly they need
parents, people that actually care they exist. The fact that their parents are
alive and willingly abandoned them makes it more difficult for social services
to intervene, though that service is functioning poorly at best. But these
kid’s problems are so much deeper than that. It’s a whole different level of
atrocious. On every plane of existence they face obstacles far too big to
overcome without some sort of divine intervention. So please, for these three
people that have cracked deep into my heart, pray. Pray hard.
