Who will dig your hole for you?

Well I am long overdue in my next blog post but I’ve been away from the internet for quite awhile. Zambia is lovely right now. We are in the midst of rainy season and the land is bright green and healthy. It’s hard to describe what rainy season is like here in Zambia but it is a hugely important part of the year and as a result greatly impacts my life and work here. (And vice versa my Zambian friends find it hard to believe that we don’t have a solid rainy time period in America, that depending on where you are in the U.S. it might rain on any given day).

It’s like the land just woke up after a desiccating 6 month nap. In January all growing things that bloom broke into flowers, blossoms, pods, and seeds that grow by the hour. Sometimes I will accompany my neighbors into their fields and mark the visible changes that happen to the maize plans or to the pumpkins literally overnight. Seeing things grow in such an intimate way is something that I never really experienced nor was involved in so personally before coming to Zambia. The rainy season is all about cultivating and farming. If the rains are unfavorable or the labor interrupted then people’s entire food security for the rest of the year can be dangerously jeopardized. It is an important time for Zambia, affecting everything from the nation’s economy to the family household’s wellbeing.

During rainy season grass grows everywhere that there is a spare space of dirt and it can grow HIGH. Once the rains are over and the grass has dried a bit people will cut it and bundle it, saving it for the future thatching of a building. But in the midst of rainy season when the grass still waives green and tall the landscape looks drastically different than it did 6 months ago. Another volunteer recently came to visit me in my village and as we turned a corner down the 2k dirt path that leads to my village she was incredulous as to what exact path we were planning on taking. At this point in the rainy season, everything is so overgrown with grasses that many foot paths, including the one that I travel most, is hidden or obscured by the tall plants. Not only are tall grasses a favorite hideout for the mosquitos that carry malaria but they are also considered ugly and unsightly if they are allowed to grow on the dirt yard compounds surrounding houses in the village….And Zambian women in the village are not afraid to tell you if you are slacking off in keeping up village aesthetics . I am yet to perfect the masterful art of cutting grass with a hoe. Ideally you just scrape the surface of the dirt so that you bring up the grass from the roots but not much of the dirt surrounding it. Despite my new hoe skills I’ve gained in country I always seems to dig too deep when cutting grass (must be my big muscles). As soon as I start to cut my grass my yard soon looks like I’ve gone digging for buried treasure in hundreds of little messy holes around my house. Needles to say my neighbors love it when I decide to cut my grass and it always tends to draw a crowd of laughing and well entertained villagers. Turns out making people laugh (….at me…) is a pretty big part of my work here.( And I’m good at it.) Usually I give the kids in the village “sweeties” which are actually kids vitamins that I have tricked them into thinking are candy to help me clean up the embarrassing grass cutting (hole digging) mess that I make in my yard during the rains.

Another challenge of rainy season is mold. My roof was removed and rebuilt/thatched after last year’s rainy season and it takes at least a year for the grass to settle into a condensed sealant from the rain. So this year my house is a lot leakier than it was this time last year. Most PCVs stretch black plastic under the grass thatch inside the house inorder to catch falling dust or dirt from the grass and help with any stray leaks. With the assistance of some American garbage bags and ductape I’ve managed to control the leaks in the plastic cieling but everything that originally got soaked in December hasn’t quite managed to dry in the humid wet air of January and February. I am constantly surprised by the items that have managed to grow mold here. I’ve now battled mold on my nalgene, notebook paper, bed sheets, and shoes. With the aid of a lot of strategically placed plastic I’ve managed to keep my mosquito net- encased bed dry, which is important as it is my sanctuary from bugs and critters.( PCVs learn to protect their beds early: tuck in the mosquito net at all times so nothing can crawl in and ALWAYS keep your mattress dry.)

There are few things that I love more than traveling through Zambia right now while the fields and plants are so vibrant. I love it especially when I hitch a ride in the back of a pick up trick and I can lay back with the wind blowing as we travel through the green gently rolling hills with Celine Dion blaring from the stereo (Celine Dion is hugely popular here as is a lot of 90s pop in general). Maize grows tall, reaching far above my head and they’re interspersed with fields of sunflowers that nod gently, 4 feet tall and blooming brilliantly. The groundnut (peanut) plants are bright green and bushy right now. Although food is still scarce (indeed this time of year is still called “starvation season”) we are beginning to have some fresh foods available such as dhove. My absolute favorite food in Zambia, dhove is fresh maize that is plucked from the fields early and put right next to the fire to grill for a few minutes. My other favorite food in Zambia, fresh pumpkins, are also starting to be harvested right now. People break the pumpkin into large pieces and put them in a pot with a bit of water and steam them lightly for a few minutes. You eat the whole piece, skin and seeds in all. (Pumpkin seeds actually help fight intestinal worms in kids). Although food is still scarce and many families are down to one meal a day, the return of dhove and pumpkins to the fire means the hardest days of the year have passed and the harvest season is just around the corner.

Work is going well in the village. I am partnering with a local NGO and together we are organizing 30 villages to construct protected wells and access safe water. These villages will be digging the wells, molding the bricks, and forming safe water committees in order to create invested ownership in the wells’ creation and maintenance. I’m also organizing a community based distributor program where 40 people are being trained on how to disseminate family planning and health materials such as birth control, condoms, and chlorine. These community based distributors will get to charge a little money for the items they are selling and use their profit to continue buying the supplies on a discounted basis from a mass distributor of health materials. The result (hopefully) is that these items will end up in geographically diverse and isolated areas and the Community Based Distributors will end up making a little income for their families as well.

With only a few months left in my service I am really trying to put my experience into some kind of manageable perspective. One of my friends here summed it up well when he said, “Who will dig your hole for you in America?” I pondered his statement for awhile before I asked, “what hole?”. He explained that it is a Tumbuka tribe expression that basically means, what will you do with your lessons learned? During the past 22 months I’ve experienced so much, learned so much, and been extensively challenged physically, mentally, and emotionally. I’ve been given really spectacular tools and insights and my last few months in Zambia are not necessarily the end of something great but more so the beginning of something enduringly important. I need not only appreciate everything that has happened, but DO something with it and based on it. It’s a good perspective to keep in mind as I approach my last few months in Zambia.