The End of Zambia

Greetings all!

Audrey insists I need to send out a final e-mail, and I think she's probably right. Truth is, though, I've been really enjoying the immediate and almost imperceptible slide back into life in New York - playing with my new computer, going on long walks around my neighborhood with friends, eating cupcakes, enjoying delay-free phone calls to my mom, catching up with Eugene.

Yet I've noticed Zambia stories creeping into my conversation a lot. Like when I'm putting sugar in my coffee, for instance. How can I not mention that Zambians add about three heaping tablespoonfuls of sugar to an average-sized cup of coffee or tea. A month or two in I was introduced to "zigoro", Zambians' favorite "energy drink", which is actually just sugar water! (ick!) Continuing the sugar theme, I introduced Deborah to wine while I was there and she asked, "is it sweet?" and I said, "not really," and she innocently asked, "can you add sugar to it?" And the finale to the sugar saga happened just before I left. Some Western friends and I tried this Zambian home-brew called "Shake shake" that comes in cardboard liter containers, like milk. I expected it to be like beer, but instead it was thick like a smoothie and tasted like sour milk. I talked about how gross it was with Deborah and she asked, you guessed it, "didn't you add sugar?" Ah, an answer that is so obvious to a Zambian and yet would never occur to me.

Ah. FYI, the corresponding cultural point in Western society is the fetish that white women have for chocolate. In Zambia it's not nearly so pronounced (yet.)

Also about plumbing and electricity. I'll be honest - given other peoples' experiences, I was pretty grateful not to have electricity. For one thing, it goes off all the time on a very variable basis, so it's not good to be too dependent. For another thing, stripped wires are ubiquitous, and the majority of electical appliances are "plugged in" to sockets using stripped wires rather than a plug - not very safe. Hot plates used for cooking routinely shock the cook. (The solution is to wear flip-flops when cooking. Of course.) And sometimes, to heat a bucket of water for bathing, those with electricity would - get this - just put their electric range - you know, that spiral thing - into the bucket of water when it was on!!

Plumbing too. Flush toilets are not all they're cracked up to be in Zambia. The problem is, rarely is the incoming water hooked up properly. So the toilets don't flush unless you manually pour a basin of water into the tank. Which, let's be honest, you usually wouldn't do unless ... well, there was a reason ... making what should be a rather private process into a hopelessly public one as you go fetch water in a basin from some faraway place. So all things considered it was just as well not to be bothered by flush toilets in my placement.

Given that I'm perfectly willing to give up electricity and plumbing, (considering the alternative, that is) you would expect that I would have come back with a radically altered view of material possessions. And yet I haven't. I still think the same things are wasteful as before - things you buy because they're advertised or ubiquitous but that don't actually afford you any pleasure. The main thing that puts me on my soapbox, then and now, is unused dining and living rooms. People use the kitchen and family room for everyday use, and when they have parties these rooms are too small to fit a crowd, and people naturally flock to the informal spaces anyway. How builders have managed to convince almost everyone except shoebox New Yorkers that they need these superfluous formal spaces is a mystery to me. It's probably more of a waste that even SUV's - think of all those walls, furniture, and utility bills, for really almost no enjoyment once the house is bought with starry-eyed visions of dinner parties! It's so important to really think about and understand yourself, and then go about buying things that make *you* happy, rather than things that are just well-advertised and/or ubiquitous.

Then again, there are a lot of things money can and should buy that Zambians can't get cause they don't have much. Good healthcare - fewer babies dying - is a really important one. Travel to satisfy wanderlust and see friends is another. And so is talk time - in Zambia calls are billed by the second and rarely last more than 20-30 seconds or so. Being able to really have a conversation with someone on the phone is a luxury that noticeably improves quality of life. So is being able to go out with a group of friends knowing you'll be able to split the bill without trouble - and having friends that are willing to go out in the first place - rather than, say, arriving by bike to your house with only a washcloth and no cash, so you have to feed them and give them some money when their bike (inevitably) breaks down. For example.

But money can't buy good weather, and I can't stress enough how blessed Zambia is in that department. When I left every day was bone-dry (it hasn't rained a drop since April, which is expected) and low 80's every day, with the occasional drifting cloud providing a spot of shade. In comparison New York is unbearably hot and muggy.

Anyways, I went to Zambia to really understand the whole poverty issue, and now I think I do. One of my friends said, "experience is knowledge; everything else is information" and that definitely applies to my understanding of the complex issue of having money versus not having it.

By the way, I think I also went to Zambia to figure out why the AIDS problem is so pronounced there and not here. I still don't know. I realized with a shock about two weeks before I left that my solid understanding of adolescent sexuality in Zambia does not, in fact, offer many clues as to why AIDS is so prevalent. You need to know something about adult sexuality, and there I have conjectures but many fewer (I think five) private interviews on which to base my conclusions. The problem may be a lot more cheating and use of prostitutes, occasioned not a little by the fact that zero foreplay leads to women not being that interested in sex, so men stray and women are sometimes even grateful. Or it could be a lot of untreated syphilis and gonorrhea, which up the transmission rates a lot. (I think if you have unprotected sex with someone infected with HIV there's still only about a 1% chance of transmission - any doctors out there with better information please e-mail me back.) Or it may be that very few women are comfortable saying "no condom, no sex" or insisting on seeing printed test results before having sex. Of course, I'm sure all of these are factors - but I tell you, the 1% transmission rate combined with a 50% infection rate in Nampundwe still seems like a really big mystery to me.

So that's it. I had an AMAZING time. I made great friends, enjoyed fantastic weather, soaked up lots of cool little cultural quirks, and didn't even get homesick until the end. When I think about the fact that it was just seven months - well, it's hard to see how I could possibly have used the time any better. I can't say enough good things about the SPW program (http://www.spw.org/) in particular for putting in place the framework that made it possible.

Oh yeah, and about pictures - I'll post some on my blog - but unlike Matt, all my pictures are of me and my Zambian friends! I truly had so much fun getting to know all my fellow volunteers and, especially, gossiping about them with Deborah - about which volunteer relationships were most likely to get married, the partnership that got kicked out for both proposing marriage to the same ninth-grader, who treated their partner like Cinderella, who had a bad reputation but was unexpectedly wonderful with a class of fifth-graders, whose hugs/style/smile/hands/sense of humor/dancing we most adored. Best of all, someone who shall remain unidentified had a totally illegal but highly-encouraged (by those in the know) affair with a student - named Lovemore!!! Yeah!!!

So, Harvard has a lot to live up to. And without further ado, my new contact information:

[removed]

This will be the last post (except for maybe some pictures) on http://summerinzambia.blogspot.com ...

Cheers!
~Summer