Phil Curtis update

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Jon Manss
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Phil Curtis update

Post by Jon Manss »

These are fantastic stories and even though they,re not about knee boarding it is a fascinating read.

Imbabula Challenged

Bemba proverb: Mukutu ali eka, taikulula*

…..never thought I’d be scoping out the backs of pit toilets for broken off pieces of “bad air” exit pipe. They’re perfect, though, if you can find one that’s about a foot long. Very handy. Their diameter and ceramic construction make them ideal for the job.
I thought I’d had this lighting-of-the-imbabula thing all worked out. I’d watched my homestay family fire it up two/three times a day for eight weeks. True, even for them it worked better some days than others……seems that some types of charcoal light more easily than others. But there was always hot water for coffee or tea in the mornings, always cooked nshima, vegees and meat for lunch and dinner. We even had a training session specifically directed at lighting them. We learned about firestarter blocks and paraffin (kerosene) bottles that you can buy in the local shops. There’s even a pine (kamwefu) with wood so resinous that small pieces of it will easily light. Or you can use short pieces of candle. They all produce a flame under the charcoal right away. We learned about swinging the imbabula to get air in to feed the flame. The idea is to get a hot flame that burns long enough to get a few pieces of charcoal glowing red. These will then heat other pieces so that they do the same, and soon you’ve got a pitful of cooking embers. Makes sense, right? Easy peasy, right?
Not if you’re this cowpoke. I got posted to my site the other day. Bought an imbabula at the local boma (town big enough to be a sort of center) on the way. There was a small bag of charcoal sitting in a corner of my house, with some pieces of kamwefu in it. Cool. It was dark by the time I had set up my bed with a mosquito net, had a tub bath in the ulusasa and a cup or two of wine (basic settling-in survival strategy), so I thought I’d fire up my new imbabula. The candle lit easily…..I piled charcoal on top of it and waited. After a short while, I could see a glow in there, so I swung the imbabula. Hmmmm…..the glow disappeared. I started over, with the same eventual result. Oh well, try again tomorrow…..must be bad charcoal. Or it could have been the wine. I ate a bread roll and an apple.
I awoke the next morning with the same thought I have every morning…..MUST HAVE COFFEE. So I approached the imbabula this time with a bit more fire-power. I lit the candle, piled charcoal mixed with pine shavings over it and waited. Got a great flame this time, and a wide-spread glow beneath the black chunks of charcoal. But the glow faded once the candle and pine pieces had burnt out, and no amount of swinging would bring it back. Desperate now, I lit another candle, piled a ton of shaved pine pieces on top, rearranged the charcoal. The flame burned longer this time, but after that…..again nothing. No nicely spreading glow throughout the pit, no heat. I was determined to heat water, no matter what, so I lit some larger chunks of pine (screw the charcoal) and used the flame to heat a small amount of water, enough to have a cup of semi-warm coffee…..not what I’d hoped for, but it would have to do.
My guides that day were Ba Chimfwembe, a teacher at the local school, and Ba Erick, the medical assistant at the clinic. They took me to the marketplace and introduced me to the shopowners. We sat on a wall amongst the stalls and drank Lusaka Beer (them) and coke (me), while everyone stared at the musungu (white person…..me). I casually mentioned my problem with the imbabula. They laughed and directed me to Mr. Piri, who sold me a bottle of paraffin…..said it should be enough for at least a week of imbabulas. Problem solved.
……or not. That night, I fired up the imbabula with the paraffin (got a huge flame), and went inside to soak soya pieces and slice vegees. After a few minutes, I went out to check. There were small patches of glowing embers in there, so I swung the thing until I could hear the crackling of heated charcoal and see the glow spreading. Then I went back inside. The next trip out lead to consternation…..no glow, no heat.
Right…..time to get serious. I dumped a good amount of the paraffin from the bottle, and a pile of pine shavings, onto the charcoal this time and threw in a match. Whoa…..flames almost to the roof of the insaka (gazebo). When I next checked, a few minutes later, there were still flames shooting up. This had to work.
But no…..minutes after, the inside of the imbabula was barely glowing again, and no amount of swinging would bring it to life. The soya pieces were ready, the vegees sliced…..I was going to have a hot meal, dammit!
I did too…….eventually and sort of. More like a warm meal. I ended up firing round after round of paraffin/pine flakes in the imbabula, balancing the skillet above, until I got a semi-cooked concoction…..used up 4/5 of the bottle of paraffin and all but a few of the pine flakes in the process. Through it all, the charcoal pieces never even threatened to be a part of the cooking action.
I was hoping, as I ate, that my intestines could handle the half-cooked food. My text to the others of my group, who had also been recently posted to their sites:
“Friggin imbabula…..still can’t make it go. Everything else is good though. Hope you’re the same.”
At least I didn’t have the runs the next morning. After another cup of paraffin/pine semi-heated coffee, I was seriously questioning my survival skills in this place. Most of my day was spent at the clinic, getting an introduction to the flow of operations there. All along though, I was wondering about dinner. On my way home, having decided to present myself as a starving, imbabula-challenged volunteer to my neighbors (and hoping to be invited in for a meal), I ran into Ba Chimfwembe, Ba Mapili, and Ba Chansa, all more-than-semi-inebriated and very happy to see me. I explained my problem.
“Haha……Mr. Filipo. You must become a Zambian man. We will show you how to start the imbabula, then in two years I (Mrs. Mapili, retired headmistress of the local school) will come back to America with you as your wife.” To a youngster standing nearby: “Imwe, leteniko paipi ifyakukosha imbabula.”
The boy ran off and returned a few minutes later with a blackened foot-long section of six-inch diameter ceramic pipe. From Ba Chimfwembe: “This will start your imbabula for you, Filipo.”
Doubtful, I asked where they had got the pipe. They laughed and pointed to a line of pit latrines behind the school building. Each had a long pipe rising vertically behind the rear wall. They explained that a pipe was placed into each pit and was used to vent the pit odors out the back of the latrine. One of the latrines had fallen over and was no longer used, so they had grabbed sections of the pipe for imbabula-starters.
Had I not been convinced that imbabula lighting was a skill beyond my grasp, the scientist in me might have had a Eureka moment. We walked toward my hut, them laughing at me the whole way, myself anticipating the moment when I could say, “I told you so.”
“Filipo, where’s your imbabula? Fill it with charcoal.”
“OK, but it’s not going to work. I’ve tried everything……must be bad charcoal.”
They laughed again when they saw how little paraffin I had left in the bottle. It had been full the day before. Ba Chansa sprinkled a miniscule amount over the charcoal, then lit it and set the pipe on top, vertically placed over the flame. Immediately all the flames rose into the pipe.
“See, Mr. Filipo. It’s science. Wait till the flames are finished, then look into the pipe. You will see glowing charcoal at the bottom.
Convection…….of course!!! Heated air rising in the pipe was drawing in more air from around the imbabula, swooshing it past the heating charcoal better than any amount of swinging could have done.
Still, I was dubious…..just needed to wait and see though. Proof’s in the pudding, as they say. The flames died back. Sure enough, brightly glowing embers were down there. Ba Chimfwembe kicked the pipe off, into the dirt, shook the imbabula to get rid of ashes, and rearranged a few chunks of charcoal over the glowing bits.
“Now we just wait. Soon you can cook your dinner.”
…..more laughing about retirement, marriage, visits to America while we waited. At one point, things seemed to be slowing down again in the imbabula, so they placed the pipe back on. Within minutes, the glow was spreading amongst the chunks and a solid cooking heat was rising. They kicked off the pipe.
“Filipo, put some more charcoal in.”
This time, the glow stayed, the heat continued, and soon I was cooking dinner. The others left for the village laughing…..they still had friends to visit, drinking to do. I enjoyed a well-cooked, HOT, soyapiece/vegee stir fry and boiled water in a pot over the coals while I ate, saving it in a thermos overnight for hot coffee in the morning.
Early the next day, as I drank my coffee, it struck me…….they’re experts here. But of course they are. How else could they be living where they live, doing what they do ? I’d be malnourished soon if I didn’t know about that pipe. So…..what else am I going to have to learn to make it here? I’m sure I’ll find out.

*A lion which is alone does not drag itself (It pays to consult).
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Jon Manss
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2nd of five

Post by Jon Manss »

there is more:

Insoka
(Can They Climb Walls?)
Bemba proverbs: Ilyashi iya nsaka, musenda cipuba*
Munshebwa, aile nama shinshi kubuko**
“He was just coming to greet you” This said by Ba Mumba, with a huge smile and a laugh, to explain why I had come face to face with a 4-5 foot long spitting cobra inside my hut the evening before.
I had decided to skip a hot dinner because it was getting dark, and I couldn’t be bothered going through the lengthy process of heating the charcoal (amalasha) for cooking. Besides, tomato and onion sandwiches sounded pretty good. Some say that things happen for a reason.
I was buttering the bread when I heard a rustle behind the bags of amalasha in the corner. Headlanp turned on, I quietly moved over to take a peak. As the beam rounded the last bag, to illuminate the corner, a snake’s head rose up to meet it. It rose about two feet off the ground, cocked its head back and flared its hood. This was happening……oh, three feet from my face. First thought…..I-don’t-believe-I’m-seeing-what-I’m-seeing. Next thought…..how’d a snake in here? And…..now what?
It collapsed its hood, lowered itself to the ground and backed into the corner. Behind the head, I could see a lot of snake, pushed like a tangle of 1 ½-inch diameter black rope against the wall.
For the moment, this was a respectable distance. We stared at one another. I’ve since been told that its instinctual response would be to escape. On the one hand, I was fascinated. I’d only seen the classic head-lift and flare or a cobra in film. Yes, it actually happens. But I’d just seen it inside my hut. Once was enough. If they flare and are pressed further, they spit their venom at your eyes. Their bite is a poisonous one. What to do about Mr. Cobra?
The information regarding snakes I’d gained from the locals in this country had up to this point been conflicting and confusing. At first, what I’d heard was, “Yes, there are snakes here, but nobody really sees them and hardly anyone ever gets bitten. Just stay out of the tall grass and be careful at night.” What was I supposed to make out of all that? Then, during training, a number of members of our group cane to the sessions with reports of snakes at their home compounds. Their homestay families had said, ”Oh, they won’t bother you. Just stay away from them. Try not to go to the icimbusu (pit toilet) at night and use a mat to block the gap below the door to your room.” Then they killed the snake.
Toward the end of training we heard about a potential homestay location which had to be dropped from the list because the Peace Corps staff member visiting it had a huge cobra rise at him from the grass next to the small trail leading to the house. One of our trainers told us about an eight-foot long, four inch diameter black momba her husband had met outside their hut shortly after they’d moved in. The neighbors had said, “Oh, don’t worry,” then poisoned the snake and its smaller offspring.
We never heard of a volunteer being bitten by a snake. And if the locals had, they weren’t talking about it. In the States, we’ve all heard the stories about the snakes of Africa…..how they’ll chase you, how a bite from one will kill you in seconds. Here, though, people just seem to accept them as a fact of life and are comfortable in knowing how to avoid them. They do, however, without exception it seems, kill them whenever they see them.
So……what to do about Mr. Cobra? I couldn’t think of anything in the hut to that I could use to kill it, and wasn’t sure I wanted to try anyway. What if it came at me? Apparently black mombas will chase an attacker. I didn’t know if a spitting cobra would do the same.
I decided to get the neighbors. To do that, though, I had to get out the door, and that meant moving closer to the snake. So I grabbed a small broom and held it between us as I slowly moved to the door, opened it, and stepped out. Mr. Cobra still hadn’t moved from the corner.
The homes of my immediate neighbors were dark, so I had to walk out to the soccer field and along it to the Sunga’s home, three houses over from my own. This felt like a very long, dark trek…..suddenly I was taking those cautions I’d heard about snakes and the dark seriously.
“Njeleleniko. Mwaba insoka.”
“There’s a snake? Where?”
“Inside my house.”
“Did you kill it?”
“No, I didn’t have anything to kill it with. Can you help?”
(Laughs) “OK Mr. Filipo……boys, bring the hoes.”
Back at the hut, I opened the door and peeked in…..no snake it the corner. Damn!! I gingerly stepped across the threshold, headlamp beam sweeping the floor. The others, all of them…..Mr. Sunga, two large teenage boys with hoes, a little brother carrying another hoe bigger than he was, little sister, and Mrs. Sunga….. followed me in. Now, my hut is plenty big enough for me, but with that crowd in there…..if we’d seen the snake, we’d have been hitting ourselves with the hoes trying to kill it. There was, however, no snake to be seen.
We searched everywhere…..under the table and bed, the charcoal bags, under buckets. I looked at the walls, at the uneven surfaces provided by the stacked bricks and mortar, at the pockets formed where the mortar, too quickly dried, had fallen. I could probably scale those walls if I had to.
“Mr. Sunga, can spitting cobras climb walls?”
“They can and do.”
The walls rise to form the three rooms of my hut. Over them a thatched roof has been somewhat loosely connected. The inside of the roofing thatch is lined with plastic sheeting, as per Peace Corps regulations (it has something to do keeping dust and water to a minimum inside the house). So now we were poking around the tops of the walls and at the plastic sheeting to find Mr. Cobra. No luck. As we poked and prodded, Mr. Sunga told us stories.
“We’ve had a few big cobras at our house. One we killed was 2 ½ metres long and as thick as my arm. Another time, my wife was bathing in the ulusasa and a big one rose from a corner behind her. They live in the big anthill just outside.”
“You mean the anthill that all the kids play on?”
“Yes, that one. If you have eggs, the snakes will come.”
“They like frogs too, right? And what about rats? I’m pretty sure I’ve got rats. I can hear them at night, running between the thatching and the plastic sheets. Something has been eating my eggplants lately.”
“For sure that’s rats. Yes, the snakes will come for the rats and the frogs outside too. The snake you saw must have gone back out.”
“Is there any chance he’s up there, between the thatch and the plastic?”
“Haha. Don’t worry, Mr. Filipo. He’s not up there. He went back out. You can sleep with us if you are worried.”
“No…..that’s OK, I guess. I’ll sleep here.”
That night the air was dead calm. It wasn’t the wind causing the rustling and pitter-patter I heard up there in the plastic sheeting, over my head in the dark. A lot of sounds were familiar…..the rats were far more active than I’d heard before. But what was that other sound…..that sliding, slithering sound? I didn’t sleep much.
I usually get up pretty early. The next morning I turned on my headlamp and scanned the parts of the floor I could see before getting out of bed. I checked the floors, corners, and walls of the other rooms. All clear. Then I got to work. The bags cluttering the corner, after being kicked a few times to make sure there was nothing but charcoal in them, were tied shut and set out on the front porch. All loose stuff piled into the “storage” room was gathered into a large thick plastic shopping bag which was then zippered shut.
I went off to school, to talk with Ba Chabala, the Head Teacher, about the situation and to get him to contact the PTA. The night before, Ba Sunga had nailed some boards along the sides of my door to block the gaps that were big enough to let a snake in. But there was still a big space between the bottom of the door and the cement floor, and others between the doorframe and the brick walls. I needed to get Ba Rodrick, the PTA chairman who had supervised the construction of my house, to cover these.
Of course, that wouldn’t really help, if snakes can climb walls. They’d always be able to get in between the top bricks and the thatching if they can climb walls.
Ba Chabala shrugged the whole thing off…..”Yes, there was a big snake in my house once, but the boy killed it before I returned.” (I’m thinking, “This is supposed to make me feel more at ease?”) As if by magic, Ba Rodrick showed up. We discussed sealing my door. Then Ba Chimfwembe and Ba Mumba appeared, each with his own story about snakes. Ba Chimfwembe had once followed a line of broken egg shells from his house to a nearby anthill. Ba Mumba (laughing)……”Mr. Filipo, don’t worry. They aren’t very poisonous. And you wear glasses. If they spit at you, you won’t be harmed.”
I was thinking, “Wait a minute, these guys fought hard to get a Peace Corps Volunteer here. They have a vested interest in all this.” So, to test the waters, I asked:
“Can these snakes climb walls?”
“Hahaha, Mr. Filipo, you are very funny. A snake climbing walls…..hahaha. Of course not. How could a snake climb a wall?”
Ba Rodrick came over that day, with a bag of cement, and sealed the bottom and sides of my door. Ba Mumba gave me tubers of a plant that he assured me would keep snakes away. The immediate area around the hut has been cleared to keep frogs and their predators away. I’m considering a cat…..not a cat person really, but I hear they keep rats away. No way I’m buying eggs.
OK, part of all this is just me, being basically scared s……less of snakes, especially the poisonous ones, and responding. But what about the others? All these suggestions…..all this help. Are they doing these things just to set my mind at ease, or is it because they feel I need real protection? Beats me. Can snakes climb walls? Are they extremely poisonous? Are they aggressive? Beats me.
I can tell you one thing, though. I hope I don’t have any more first-hand experiences to find out, either way.

*Stories told at a gazebo are taken by a fool (Don’t take everything you hear in public as gospel truth).
**”I know it all” went with smears of faeces on his buttocks to his in law’s place (Listen to what people say).
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Jon Manss
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Post by Jon Manss »

again;

Samfya Road
I rode alongside the Zambian equivalent of Lance Armstrong the other day. There I was, going along at some speed with my spiffy multi-geared, shock-absorbed mountain bike, when I came up behind a young guy pedaling along on his single-speed with a huge bag of cornmeal and a young girl on the back rack. I greeted them as I passed and moved on. Soon I heard someone behind me and looked back to see the trio (boy, girl, sack) drafting me. Then they crossed to the other side of the road, passed me, and left me in their dust for quite a few kilometers……until the first hill.
It’s best to start early, even before the sun has peeked over the horizon. Not too early, though, or the unseen corrugations and potholes will be rough on butt and bike. The loose piles of dirt over the hard pack of the road could cause a spill. You need to be able to see all that well before reaching it, to pick out your route.
It’s cooler then, in the early morning…..makes for a comfortable, even exhilarating, ride. The return trip will most likely be hot and sweaty, so it’s good to take advantage of the lower temp while you can. . Besides, the lighting is best then. When the first rays of light appear, when they slant through the bush and fields and villages as the world is waking up…..well, it’s the best part of the day. And to be travelling through it…..feeling the road, feeling the air, the sights and smells…..especially here, where everything is still so new…..it’s all pretty darn cool.
It’s a thirty-five kilometer trip, one way, into the boma at Samfya. If I start at, say, six thirty, I’ll be there by eight or eight thirty. That way, I can do my shopping, eat a bit, rest a bit, then make the return trip in the mid-to-late afternoon. I go there about once a week.
Around my hut, from the small markets and roadside stands, I could probably get what I need to survive here. Bread is available…..actually they’re more like buns and sold everywhere. So far, enough vegees are available to make a balanced diet possible. That means cabbage, and hopefully tomatoes and avocadoes, at least at this time of year. People are always selling fish too. The ones I mostly see are small…..takes 3 or 4 to make a meal. They’re quite bony too…..I’m not really a fan.
But I can’t get school supplies here. Have not seen eggplant or green peppers or peanut butter or jam…..or wine. You can get Lusaka Beer, which is white and smells like rotting yoghurt and comes in half- gallon cartons, but I’m not tempted. Even if I was, I probably wouldn’t buy it locally. People here, in a place where alcohol is not always wisely used, don’t need to see their Peace Corps Volunteer joining in.
So off I go, in the growing light. The road has far more bicycle traffic than cars. I can snake my way around potholes and avoid the corrugations by simply following the tracks that hundreds of others have made in the dirt. I’ll sometimes have to move over the rough parts if I want to pass another cyclist. I’ll be travelling light, bags empty for shopping, so I can move right along. Most of the others are carrying something heavy…..another person, a load of wood, bags of charcoal, baskets of fish for sale in Samfya. The other day, I watched a man open one of those baskets in the boma to start bargaining with customers. He had hundreds of bream and catfish in there, many of them weighing a pound or more each…..that basket weighed at least 150 pounds, and he’d pedaled it into the boma from his boat, which had been hauled onto the beach about 40 km away. The fish were still quite fresh.
Some days, I won’t be going all the way to Samfya but travelling on the road to our small local market or to one of the schools in our zone. Those are the times to be on constant lookout for treats, like avocados, tomatoes, guavas, sweet potatoes, along the way. People set little tables along the road, in front of their huts, to sell whatever it is they have to sell. Lately, I’ve been seeing floor mats, bags of peanuts, sweet potatoes, and the occasional avocado or tomato or guava. If you want it, you have to buy it then and there……it mostly likely won’t be there if you return even just a half-hour later. You just stop by the table, call out to the nearest hut and, more likely than not, a little kid will come running to make the transaction. Most food items range from 500-1000 kwacha (U.S.10-20 cents), so it pays to have small bills on hand…..a 10 pin (10,000 kwacha) or even a 5 pin note may not be able to be changed by a family. It pays to carry a plastic bag too, to put the produce in. The other day I rode a few kilometers holding two avocados in my left hand as I negotiated the uneven road and braked with my right……got lots of laughs from the people I met and avoided disaster, but it wasn’t fun.
Everyone on the road seems to know that I’m coming…..that means a lot of people. For the thirty-five km trip into Samfya in the morning, there wouldn’t be a single 200 meter stretch without someone on it, often in groups of five or more. The folks coming in the opposite direction…..well, they can see me approaching. But the ones going my way, with their backs to me as I approach…..they must have a heightened sense of hearing or something, because they’ll glance around well before I’m alongside them and then move to the side. Exceptions to this are little kids. I’ve had to hit the brakes pretty hard to avoid hitting a few of those, when they wandered, oblivious, into my path. Whenever that happens, an adult yanks them out of the way and scolds them. And the drunks…..usually I can tell, from the way they’re walking, what the story is and greet them before I get there or ding-a-ling my bicycle bell, then swerve to give them a wide birth.
Well, there are the chickens too. They’re the least predictable of all. They’ll be pecking away in the road or alongside it and scatter when you go by. The problem is, they could scatter in any direction, including right under my front wheel. I haven’t killed a chicken yet, but there have been some close calls. One time I braked to avoid hitting one and caused a two-bike pile-up. A couple of vendors going to market had pulled up right behind me to draft…..I didn’t realize they were so close
“Kwaciba inkoko mu umusebo. Njeleleniko saana.”
After my explanation and apology, and helping to straighten some handlebars, we all continued on our way.
The bamaayo’s are the most amazing. Typically, they’ll have a baby wrapped onto their backs with a citenge and be carrying a load…..a pile of wood, a bucket filed with water, a basket of fish or sweet potatoes or mealy meal…..balanced on their heads, no hands involved (we’ve been warned not to try this, for fear of being sent home early due to neck injury). All this, and they will still turn their heads to greet me as I cycle by. Their posture, their grace, their womanliness…..can’t be described in words, really. It’s one of those things you probably have to witness to appreciate.
Greet you they will. Everyone will. This is a fundamental part of living here. Greeting is important. People will definitely feel slighted if they are not greeted. That’s one thing if I’m walking around the village and meeting people every few minutes or so. It’s another thing completely if I’m on a bike on a road with people all over it all the time.
With the kids, it’s frantic. They’ll be playing helping an adult or otherwise occupied, by the first hut in a village as I cycle by. One of them will look up and shout “musungu!”. Then they’ll all run out to the road to greet me with “how are you?” (asked parrot-fashion…..for most, it’s the only English they know) or its Bemba equivalent, “muli shani?”. It doesn’t seem to matter if I respond or not…..they’ll keep shooting these greetings until I’m out of sight. But the next group of kids, playing at the next hut, will by then know that I’m coming and run out as well, all smiles, to repeat the greetings. It will go on like this for the length of the village. Often, as I pass the last hut, I’ll hear from some hidden spot in a cassava or maize field an excited, “how are you, how are you, how are you……?”, increasing in pitch and intensity to the point of sounding hysterical, from some young soul who never even saw me but didn’t want to be left out of the general uprising.
The adults at their huts and on the road are by comparison more subdued, but equally insistent on greeting and being greeted. If I had a quarter for every mwacibukeni mukwai (good morning), cungulo mukwai (good afternoon), mwabombeni mukwai (thanks for working), or mwapoleni mukwai (general “how are you”), not to mention the endless muli shani’s to the kids, that have passed these lips on a typical trip to and from Samfya, I’d be able to pay off the U.S. national debt. Don’t get me wrong…..it’s part of the fun in being here. Besides, a lot of my greetings are in response to someone greeting me, and that seems to happen to me a lot more often than to other travellers on the road……probably has to do with the fact that they hardly ever see musungus around here. It’ll be interesting to see if I continue to return to my hut exhausted vocally, once the novelty of seeing a musungu on the road has worn off.
The first two=thirds of the road into Samfya, as it follows the shores of Lake Bangweulu, are pretty flat. Then the road turns northward and traverses a series of low-lying hills. For me, on my high-tech mountain bike, these aren’t much of an obstacle…..I just gear down and continue on. But the local bikes are single-speed and often heavily laden. Their owners usually have to walk them up the steep bits. If they try to stand on the pedals to force their way up a slope, their chains might pop off the sprockets…..this part of the road seems to be where the most breakdowns occur. They’ll all make it to the boma though. I’ll see them later in the day as I wander around the shops.
The market in Samfya must be experienced to be appreciated. One turns off the road into a space between stores that looks like it dead-ends just a bit further on. As you move into this space, the shops on either side get smaller, closer together, and more brightly colored with their wares neatly displayed…..clothespins, shovel heads, bars of soap, radios, soya pieces…..you name it, it just might be there somewhere.
At the end of this (relatively) open space, a small alley leads off to the right, into the center of the market. Now the shops are crammed next to each other, their wares still orderly presented in front. The path is just wide enough to allow pedestrians walking in opposite directions to pass one another…..one steps into the line of humanity and moves along with it, stepping out of line to enter a shop. There are very few musungus like myself in the market. When I first went there, I expected an aggressive hard-sell approach to be coming from all sides And yes, many of the vendors will call out to get my attention, but they’ll take a polite “no” for an answer as well.
The deepest center of the market is where fresh produce is sold……lately that’s been tomatoes, onions, eggplant, sweet potatoes and the like. Off to the side is a section for dried fish……table after table of dried fish One time or another, I’ve entered the market looking for, and finding, cooking braziers, dustpans, nails, notebooks, twine, bowls, bicycle rack tie-downs, wire, and washcloths. Every time I go there, I’ll head for the produce section, hoping that the fresh stuff will make it on my back over the dirty, by now hot, bumpy thirty-five kilometers of road back to my hut.
So, mid-afternoon, the return trip looms before me. It’ll be a long, sweaty ride, but I just have to plow through it. I’ll repeat over and over the mantra of greetings and hope that I sound sincere. I’ll dodge the potholes and chickens and keep away from the loose dirt. I’ll stand on the pedals now and then, to keep my butt from welding to the seat. There will in all likelihood by entertainment along the way…….choirs practicing for weekend services, little kids flying their plastic-bag kites or pushing old bicycle rims along the road with a stick.
I’ll have my goodies, my prizes from the market…..things to make the hut more comfortable, my meals more tasty. It’ll be sweet for the next few days. Then I’ll think of more necessities for the hut, run out of vegees, and plan my next trip to the boma.
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Jon Manss
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Post by Jon Manss »

2 more The Borehole

Bemba proverb: Ameenshi, emweo*

The first few times I tried this, I overloaded the bike…..thought it might break. With two five-gallon jerrycans filled with water and strapped to either side of the rear tire like saddlebags, the tire flattened nearly to its rim and the rack across which they were strung sagged. I could almost feel the terrible crushing force of axle on bearings. Bouncing this heavy load over the exposed pine roots of the assemble ground in front of the school and the potholes of the soccer field…..it felt like the bike could collapse at any moment.
I probably shouldn’t have worried. After all, the locals pile unbelievable amounts of “stuffs” onto the backs of their single-speed Zambikes. You’ll see them bouncing and swerving their way along the rutted dirt roads with everything from cubic-meter crates loaded with cartons of Lusaka Beer to a second bike to a full-grown adult planted on the back. You’ll also see a lot of breakdowns on the road though. Each marketplace features stalls that sell bicycle parts and advertise bicycle repair. In a country where bikes are a major form of local transport, their maintenance is an ongoing endeavor. My bike will be my only form of transport in the village. I’d just as soon not tempt fate.
So for the last few days I’ve gone to the borehole with just one jerrycan. It’s worked out better that way…..I can strap the full can directly on top of the rack and actually ride the bike the half-kilometer back to my hut, instead of having to walk alongside it, arms pushing/centering on handlebars and rack to prevent tipping sideways or flipping over backwards.
The borehole is the closest safe source of drinking water. Not that I would drink directly from it. We musungus, with our different populations of intestinal flora and fauna, need to pass it through ceramic water filters or boil it first. The locals drink from it though. There are other boreholes closer to my hut, but I’ve been warned to use them only for bathing or washing. Besides, very few people go to them. The one I use is by the clinic…..it’s a better place for people-watching and conversation.
There are always little kids there, the red/yellow dirt of this place lightening their black black skin, getting water for their families or just hanging out. Most are used to the musungu showing up…..some not. The ones that haven’t, well, they scatter from my path. Some of the littler ones hide behind their mom or older brother/sister and scream. Some just stare mutely at me. But the others…..they pop out grins from ear to ear. Maybe they’ll try their English: “Good morning, Mr. Filipo, how are you?” Or they’ll repeat back to me something I said to them when I first came here: “Muli shani bonse (meant by me, at the time, to mean “how are you all?”, but obviously incomprehensible, yet hilarious, to them). I get the impression that they’re being quite brave to communicate with me at all. Hopefully, once I settle in here and they’re used to seeing me at school and around the village, it won’t be so much of a bold thing to do for them…….hopefully it’ll be more of a you’re-different-but-you’re-part-of-our-village sort of comfortable acknowledgement.
The kids will often help me pump water from the borehole (or maybe they see it the other way around), much to the amusement of anyone else watching. As often as not, when I position my jerrycan under the pump spout, a little one will be at the other end, at the pump handle, hanging onto it to pull it down and start the flow of water. As soon as I join them to pump, two things happen….the crowd watching erupts in laughter and another little one moves to my jerrycan to make sure its hole is catching all the water coming out of the spout. The combination of the tykes shyness, their willingness to help, their sense of respect to their elders/foreigners…..what can I say?.....it all makes me want to do something here that will help them.
Do they need help? Well, yeah, many do. Some are orphans, taken in by families who, through a sense of what-you-just-do, step in to provide for them. Here in Katanshya, I’m told that the needs of all kids are attempted to be met, and somewhat successfully. One little kid made sure to tell me, in English, that he had lost his mother…..couldn’t figure out, at the time, if he meant this as informational or as a plea…….
Why are they orphans, or otherwise vulnerable to living a limited life? Well, I’m starting to get a feeling for that. Pumping water at the borehole, one looks across a small patch of ground to the clinic. There, on a raised step, are the patients, and behind them are rooms where the clinic staff assess/consult/prescribe.
The main health complaints that people bring to the clinic are related to malnutrition, malaria, or HIV/AIDS, by far the most common being malaria. For that, the staff give their patients coartem, which knocks back the blood parasites active in their blood. ARV’s (anti retroviral drugs) are available for the HIV positive patients. The staff counsels parents about how to get their malnourished kids back onto the healthy growth line of the age/weight charts. If everyone used mosquito nets, condoms, and their fertile earth to grow vegetables, the clinic personnel might be so busy.
They are busy, though……there are usually quite a few folks watching me pump water as they wait to be seen. I suppose that the dog-and-pony show that the kids and I provide when we’re pumping is good for some entertainment value at least.
There are almost always a few bamaayo’s at the borehole, with washtubs full of clothes. It just makes more sense for them to do their soaking/sudsing/scrubbing/rinsing at the water source, rather than having to lug sloshing buckets back to their huts…..clothes weigh less than the water it takes to clean them. And this way, the neighbors get a chance to talk.
At first they, along with the patients waiting on the steps of the clinic, all laughed when I showed up with my washtubs full of clothes. By now, though, they’re used to seeing the local musungu taking on what is considered to be a traditional female role. My approach to washing is a little different from theirs. I always make sure to have at least one of my jerrycans full of water on Friday night, so that I can soak/sudse/scrub the clothes on Saturday at my hut, take them and the empty jerrycan to the borehole to rinse the clothes and fill up. That way I come back with everything ready to hang out on the line and water for the rest of the day as well.
I go to the borehole to fill up at least once a day, and I’ve never been there alone. There are always people getting water. I wondered, early on, if there was ever a problem with water shortage. All I had to do was turn away from the clinic and look north to answer that question. Less than half a kilometer away, and a few meters lower than the pump at the borehole, Lake Bangweulu stretches farther than the eye can see. Lake Bangweulu, with its stands of reeds, its islands, its crocodiles, its tigerfish……and its roughly 2100 square kilometers of freshwater. The well at the borehole doesn’t have to be very deep at all to access a pretty much unlimited supply of water. Besides, the water all gets dumped onto the ground after we use it, to eventually make its way back to the lake.
At the hut, though, it’s a different story. My total home water supply is in those two jerrycans. About half of one of those goes for a bucket bath. Another 1/3 to ½ goes into the top of my water filter devise for drinking and cooking water. Half a can is for hand/face washing and the dishes. That leaves a good part of a can for whatever else might come up. It’s a tight water budget at the hut, but doable. And it usually works out that I have to fill only one jerrycan a day at the pump, thus avoiding the crushing of my bicycle/mule or having to make two trips across the schoolyard to the clinic.
It’s a peaceful scene at the borehole…..a natural gathering place. The comparison to a waterhole in the bush, animals coming to it from all around, is hard to avoid. There aren’t many wild animals around this village…..they’ve long ago been driven away or eaten by us humans. Our gathering at the borehole will continue, though, of necessity…..there won’t be piped water to homes around here any time soon. And if there was, the people near the borehole might see each other less. I wonder how they’d feel about that.

*Water is life
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Jon Manss
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Post by Jon Manss »

final one and my favorite:

Rocking Under the Mutaba Tree

Bemba proverb: umunwe umo tausala nda*

As I walked onto the grounds, I noticed that the young man in front of me carried a pint-sized version of a car battery, and I wondered. Very few people were around for the service…..I figured that (a) there weren’t too many Catholics around here, of (b) I’d got the time wrong.
The walls of the new church were coming along nicely. I’d been following their rise over the last two weeks, always greeting the community builders with a loud “mwabombeni mukwai” as I pedaled by. They, in turn, had always responded with a mixture of surprise, laughter, waves, and “tulifye bwino.” They aren’t used to seeing a musungu around here, especially not one that’s attempting to speak their language.
A man came out of a side-building to introduce himself as Joseph Kabonga; he explained that the service started at 9:30. I had some time on my hands. So I moved over to the new walls and passed through a doorway, the rows of bricks reaching well over my head, to check out the floor plan of the new church. A youngish man was back there, concentrating on written notes in his hand…..preparing a sermon? I retreated through the door, to give him his space.
Ba Kabonga had conscripted some youngsters…..they were carrying pews from the side-building to the old church, which lay to the side of the new walls and under the canopy of a huge tree. This older church building wasn’t a building at all…..it was simply a bamboo framework. It may have had a roof at some point in the past, but it didn’t now. It would have had to be a very light roof, though…..the thin bamboo beams didn’t look like they’d support much weight.
After helping move a few pews, the pulpit, a table into the structure , I sat with Ba Kabonga and looked through the bamboo beams to the canopy above us, then at the trunk supporting all those branches and leaves That was some tree…..a trunk maybe ten feet in diameter, its circumference having the appearance of a multitude of five-inch cylinders tipped on end and stacked together, that rose to disappear into a huge dome of branches and leaves. It reminded me of the banyan trees of the Pacific Islands.
The battery sat on a pew in front of us. A device appeared, looking like some piece of radiometry left over from the Second World War. Its top must have been removed long ago…..I looked down onto a rusting panel of transistors and diodes, with some dials on the side. By now, the women of the choir had joined us. They tried to explain the device…..amidst the incomprehensible Bemba bombarding my ears, the word “amplifier” separated out. So this was an amplifier…..an amplifier for what? Soon it was being attached by wire to the terminals of the battery. Then more wires were attached, some to a small well-used disc-shaped microphone and others to a boom-box speaker. OK, I thought…..the prayer leader (who, it turned out, was the young man with the notepad I’d seen earlier and who informed me that he was not a priest, but a “Prayer leader”) would use this to address his congregation.
As we sat there, two men came up with guitars (ifilimba). The instruments were definitely home-made…..bodies carved by hand from large pieces of wood (imagine flat-based guitar-shaped salad bowls with wood fitted across the tops), wooden arms also hand-shaped and inlaid with metal frets, tuning pegs of wood jammed into the ends. Each one had four strings…..I later found out that these were the only parts that were store-bought. On the lead icilimba the strings ended on a metal plate that was attached to the body of the instrument. They both looked lie…..well, like something you might see in a small village in the bush of south/central Africa. They were beautiful.
Next came the base guitar (bandi). It was basically a two-foot diameter wooden drum…..skins had been stretched tightly over both sides. Then a long arm had been added…..no frets. The arm ended with three pegs for strings. These were, as I later discovered, made by braiding fibers from cornmeal sacks. One was thick enough to look more like a chord than a string, the others were thinner and more tightly woven. This was a big instrument…..it stood over head-high.
Now the percussion crew arrived, with a plastic jerrycan and an icisekeseke. This last was most of an old bicycle rim, nailed to wood at the bottom and open at the top, across which a loop of clothesline wire had been attached. The bottom of the loop had bottle caps strung loosely along it.
The band for the Kabende Mushi Choir Group was here. I looked on, fascinated, as they carefully placed the beat-up microphone snugly between the metal plate and body of the lead icilimba, turned on the amplifier and tuned…..an electric lead guitar!! It sounded great too, especially when the other (rhythm) icilimba came in softly under the melody being picked out…..even more so when the bandi and icisekeseke kicked in. Mind you, they were all just tuning. I was mesmerized…..couldn’t wait to hear what was going to happen during the service.
I was seated next to Ba Kabonga, who was on jerrycan, and behind the ladies of the choir. By now, the pews had filled, and the ground outside the bamboo frame was crammed with people. We all rose as the prayer leader and his acolytes entered, Bible held high, and made their way to the pulpit. The service started out pretty much the way I remember Catholic services starting out when I was a kid, except that it was all in Bemba. Soon the rhythm icilemba spoke up, followed by the lead, then the bandi and icisekeseke and jerrycan. I didn’t recognize the piece, but it had a halleluya quality to it…..and a heck of a beat. This band knew how to put those instruments together, sometimes blending, sometimes one or the other going solo. They’d obviously done this before. I was blown away.
It all got better when the choir stepped in, sometimes side-to-side, sometimes forward-and-back, their arms rising, falling, swaying, their hands praying, clapping, pumping, all in perfect synchrony to each other and to the music. Even better when they sang out, voices matching the instruments and dance. Now I was sure it was a halleluya song.
I looked out over the choir to the congregation. They were moving too, especially the women. With their brightly-colored ifitenge and ifitambala and their dancing…..it was a very human-powered light show that completed the sensuality of the moment.
My brother claims that we Curtisses even cry at commercials. He’s right. I think it has something to do with being overcome, just for a little while, by the beauty of something that is real and human and true. Anyway, my eyes were brimming with tears. I was in total awe.
This was fantastic. As the music ended, I looked around to see what the response would be…..I was tempted to hoot and clap. But no, this was church after all. We settled quietly into our seats as the service continued. It was punctuated, throughout the next two hours, with more electrified ear/eye/body/mind-boggling performances. The space under that mutaba tree was beyond being filled by music…..it was resonating with it.
I have since heard that the Kabende Mushi Choir Group has tried to record its music but ran into problems regarding money and finding a recording studio. Perhaps I’ll find out more. And, though I haven’t been a practicing Catholic for decades, I’ll be going to church regularly here.
*one finger does not pick lice (you can’t do everything alone)
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stevea
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Phil Curtis Update

Post by stevea »

Thanks Jon and Phil these stories are fantastic ,i,m so glad you have taken the time to share them and look forward to more
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