May 25, 2007

Muli shani bonsi? Well, May was quite a month. The cold season is officially here... As soon as the sun goes down it gets a little chilly- Just enough to get all warm and snuggly under the covers at night. I love it! I recently spent 5 straight weeks in my village without travelling to town. That's a good chunk of time to go without American conversation or new groceries! Somewhere around week #4, I punctured 1 of my tire tubes beyond repair. This meant walking to all of my meetings, which I really didn't mind all that much- except for the day that included a 15-mile roundtrip to another village. I don't want to do that again anytime soon!

Well, tomorrow is a day I have been counting down to for almost all of 2007... My family will arrive in Lusaka for a 10-day visit with me! I can't wait to tell you guys about our vacation together... Most of all, I can't even start to imagine what it will be like to see my family after being a world apart for 16 months!

Here's a few stories from my recent life here... Soya beans, snails, rats. If you'd told me 1 1/2 years ago that I'd be writing about this stuff, I'd have never believed you. Enjoy!

Cooking With Soya beans (Part 1)

I think I've mentioned before that 1 of the secondary projects that I've picked up is teaching communities about the health benefits of soya and trying to help them implement soya into their everyday diets. Now that the rains have stopped and the beans have all been harvested, I've started leading cooking demonstrations.

At my 1st cooking demo I was a little nervous because I myself had never actually cooked with soya beans- I'd only read about it. I pictured it being a total disaster, but it actually turned out to be a wonderful session... There were about a dozen women present, and my goal for the day was to teach them how to make soya flour, then incorporate that flour into the porridge they feed to their kids.

I took out a small jar of soya beans that I had cooked and dried in advance for this meeting. While 1 woman poceeded to pound those beans with her mortar and pestle, all of the other women were ooh-ing and aah-ing over the empty mayo jar that I had kept the beans in. They passed it around, twisting and untwisting the plastic blue lid. I tried to seize the opportunity by showing how the jar can keep the flour air-tight and that's important for storing the soya flour over time, but they were simply interested in holding the jar and wishing they had 1 like it.

Once the flour was ready, we made porridge- mixing 2 big handfuls of maize flour, about 6 spoonfuls of soya flour, a little salt, a lot of sugar (Zambians love putting a ridiculous amount of sugar in everything... That's when they have sugar, of course), and then adding water to make a paste. We then added the paste to boiling water and after about 20 minutes, there was porridge. It was divided up between 12 bowls and pots, and the women began feeding it to their babies. Most of them would alternate spoonfuls between the mouths of their babies and their own mouths. Also, there weren't enough spoons to go around, so several of the women had to use big leaves to dip into the bowl and scoop porridge into their babies' mouths. The mothers were very impressed with the porridge and told me they were excited to learn more recipes.

When the bowls were scraped clean and the session was all wrapped up, Ba Chishala- my Zambian counterpart hosting the meeting- donated 2 bowls of soya beans to each woman there.... since the women didn't have anything to carry the beans in, he went inside his house and brought out his "AIDs Challenge" board game (which every school seems to have and NOBODY ever plays. They're donated from an international NGO.) Anyway, he poured out the contents of the box and then began ripping the box up into multiple pieces that were then rolled into cones and used to hold beans. Each woman left with a nifty little bright yellow cardboard cone full of soya (...at least that game was finally used for something!)

Cooking with Soya Beans (Part 2)

I returned to that community the following week to experiment with making soya pancakes. I arrived at 10:00, but we didn't get started until 12:30. No one had brought any saladi (cooking oil), an egg, or a frying pan, so it naturally took 2 1/2 hours to get all of that organized and worked out.

I was already in a bit of a cranky mood because my bike was out of commission (busted tube) and I had walked for 3 hours to get there. (I walked approximately 25K -15 miles- that day. I was so achey and sore...) Anyway, once we finally had all of the ingredients together we got started on the pancakes. We boiled and mashed some beans, added an egg, some sugar, salt, and a little cassava flour. We shaped the dough into little circular shapes and fried them until golden brown on both sides. They looked like little chicken nuggets... They tasted incredible! I could have eaten the whole batch of them! The women were sold on the goodness of soya pancakes. Everyone was given 1 cake to try and leftover cakes were broken into pieces and passed out among the children who were there. Several kids started crying because they wanted more... I thought this was perfect at 1st. I wanted to say: "See? Soya's good for kids and they love it!" (Just like a soya commercial or something). But, after awhile the kids continued to cry and none of the mothers did anything about it. I got cranky again and called them all brats in my head.

Before beginning my 3 hour walk home, Ba Chishala insisted that I eat some sweet potatoes. I went into the house, where his little grandson Joseph was sitting on the floor wailing- Tears pouring down his face. I asked Ba Chishala what he was so upset about. "He wants more soya pancakes," he said... Our next meeting is scheduled for June and we'll be making soya biscuits and soya snacks.

Just a Day in the Peace Corps

The following is part of my journal entry for May 5...

Yesterday I was in Menga village for my 1st meeting there since January- The rains flooded the Lukulu River and they deemed it too dangerous for me to travel across... It's still a challenge to get to. There are about 200 meters that become shallow riverbed in the wet season and are open grassland in the dry season. Usually I can cross it easily on my bike, right up to the spot where I get in the canoe. However, that 200 meter area is now in this in-between stage and is more of a swamp than anything else. I tried to manuever my way around the water, but about halfway across I found myself completely surrounded by swamp, with no option but to just walk through it. For about 20-30 meters I was just shy of knee-deep in the muddy water. I considered lifting my bike above my head and carrying it, but decided I didn't care enough to do that. Then I thought, "If I don't have Schistosomiasis already, I surely have it now." That's about the same time that I started noticing all of the snails in the grassy water around me. Stagnant, slow moving water + snails = Schisto. Great, lucky me. I guess the good news is that if I do indeed have Schisto now, then I'll only have it in my body for 1 year and not 2 full years of Peace Corps service.

(Note: Here is what the Peace Corps Medical Handbook has to say about Schistosomiasis, also known as Bilharzia. The disease is caused by worms living in the human host over a span of many years. Infection is usually acquired while bathing or wading in fresh water. Schistosome eggs in human feces and urine enter fresh surface water, where they hatch and then penetrate snails. After several weeks, new larval forms emerge from the snail host into the water and penetrate human skin. They travel through the bloodstream to the lungs, migrate to the liver, develop to maturity, and then migrate to the veins in the abdominal cavity. Infections take years to develop and produce urinary or intestinal symptoms, depending on parasite species, due to the clogging of blood vessels by large numbers of schistosome eggs. Infected persons may spread the infections by discharging eggs in urine for approx. 5 years and in stool for up to 20 years.)

After braving the swamp, I crossed on the dugout canoe... I had to rearrange my bike because the boy trying to load it had no idea what he was doing and dipped my helmet and handlebars in the mud! Then I walked to Ba Chomba's house (my local counterpart) and together we walked over to the school to see if any of the community had gathered there for our meeting. It was already 11:00, and I had a feeling that nobody would be there... Nope. No one there. I doubt Ba Chomba even told people I was coming- Sometimes I think he tries to just keep me all to himself. As we were turning to go back to the house, we came across a group of about a dozen women who wanted to greet me. They were gathering to mould bricks that day for their church, which had recently fallen down from the rains. Somehow my age was brought up in the conversation. "So she was born in what year?" Ba Chomba asked then, "2007 take away 26 is... 19--?" After a nice long pause for them to calculate, someone said, "80...81?" "Yes. 1981." I said. "AH! Umunandi!!" 1 lady exclaimed, "1981! Na ine!" Apparently I am "her friend" because we're both born in '81. The rest of the women were equally impressed and happy for my 26 year old friend.

When we got back to Ba Chomba's house, we set up a small table and sat in the shade of a tree to discuss a schedule of future dates and program topics. I took off my wet shoes that I'd been sloshing around in, placed them in the sun to dry out, and put my socks on his clothes line. I explained how I had to walk through all of the mucky water on my way there, and 1 of the community members that had joined us said, "You should have walked around the water to avoid getting wet." Thanks, Mr. Obvious. "I tried, but there was too much water everywhere," I said. Everyone laughed at me. I laughed too, but I felt thoroughly stupid also.

When it was time for lunch, Ba Chomba went inside the house with me and sat at the table (which we'd moved inside from its place under the tree). We prayed, then I lifted the bown from atop the nshima and another bowl from a dish that contained 3 boiled eggs. "Eggs for you," he said. "You're not going to eat with me? Not even 1 egg?" I asked. "No, no. I had breakfast today." He responded. So, he sat and watched me eat the eggs/nshima. When I still had about 1 egg to go, he went outside and came back with about 1/3 of a small cooked pumpkin. (I guess breakfast hadn't quite tided him over...)

He ate the pumpkin by scraping and scooping it out of the shell with his fingers, then slopping his fingers in his mouth and sort of sucking them clean... It was so gross! There was pumpkin in his beard, under his fingernails, on the table... and he was so loud as he slurped and smacked on everything. I couldn't look at him. I could hardly sit there! So disgusting. I tried to distract myself by looking at the magazine pages strung about the top of the room... like clothes pinned to a line, each page was individually strung onto a piece of string that zig-zagged back and forth across the top of the room. It was like a big mobile that hangs over a baby's crib, only this 1 had about 50 "Reader's Digest" sized pages from what seemed to be a European catalog printed in the '70's, selling baby products (toys, bibs, playpens, diapers, etc.). All of the pictures were of little blonde hair, blue eyed babies in bell-bottomed outfits. It's all quite comical when you zoom out and look at the big picture: Here I am in the middle of Nowhere, Africa (which required walking through a swamp to get to), and I'm sitting in a mud hut listening to an old man chow down on a pumpkin- which is probably all he's had to eat all day- and dangling above my head are little photos of Swedish babies selling car seats!

...It wasn't long after lunch that I decided to get a move on. My socks were still pretty wet and so were my shoes when I put them back on. Ba Chomba escorted me up to the river, and after crossing, I walked with 2 other men for awhile (1 was the teacher who made the "avoid the water" comment from earlier). As we approached the swampy region, the teacher leading the way stopped to roll up his trousers and remove his shoes. We then walked right through the same area I had passed through earlier in the day. "I thought you said to go AROUND the water and avoid getting wet?" I asked him. He just sort of laughed... I called him a not-so-nice name under my breath for making me feel so stupid earlier. Then I started counting snails.

The Stupid Rat

For the past few weeks there's been a rat sneaking into my house at night and rummaging through and trying to eat just about anything he can get into. I started hanging my veggies in a basket that is suspended from my roof, but he would still find a way into them. He nibbled on almost all of the tomatoes I've bought in the last 3 weeks and I've had to throw them all out. I then started hanging my veggies in a mesh bag from a beam at the very center of my house (not near the wall, like my basket), but he somehow managed to get into the mesh bag and scavenge through my onions. I then moved all of my food/cooking products into plastic containers and buckets with lids. I would even sweep my house every night just before bed to make sure there weren't any sort of crumbs on the floor. Thinking I'd finally outsmarted the little guy, I didn't expect him to return... He did. The next night he ripped apart a bag of trash containing nothing but papers! Now I even keep my trash in a sealed plastic bucket.

Well, a few nights ago around 18:00 (not even dark outside yet), I heard something moving around in my kitchen area. "This guy's getting brave if he won't even wait around until dark anymore," I thought. I pulled my cat into the house and tried to force him to pay attention to the sound, but he just sat down and looked at me, confused. Useless cat. The rat was being really loud, which surprised me because I figured he'd at least sense the presence of the cat and run away. I moved some things around- My coffee cans, instant milk, canister of sugar- and as I was reaching for my bottle of cooking oil, it moved! I swear my heart must have stopped. It scared the hell out of me. I grabbed a flashlight and shined it around... Inside the bottle of cooking oil was the rat, struggling to climb his way out. Next to the bottle was the chewed up lid, so apparently the rat must have stuck the top 1/2 of his body inside the plastic bottle, trying to reach the oil (There was only about 1/2 cup at the very botton.) when he slid right in! Now he was totally trapped. I picked up the bottle and held it up in front of my face: "That's what you get you filthy, greasy rat." I said to him.

I stuck the lid back on top of the bottle and walked over to my neighbor's, Ba Patrick's, house. The sun was totally down by this point, and his whole familyl was sitting around the fire. I explained my ordeal with the rat, and the whole family gathered around as I handed the bottle over to Patrick. He took the lid off and tipped the bottle sideways just enough so he could try to touch it with his finger. I was very jumpy and I just knew he was going to accidentally let it get away... Moments later, his son Junior ran up to us with my cat in his arms. Patrick dumped the oily rat on the ground. The stupid cat just looked at it. The rodent started to make a run for it- and he got about 3 feet away- when Patrick stomped on him with his flip flop. The rat wasn't quite dead, and the cat started to growl and play with him a bit. He tried to make a 2nd get-away, but this time Patrick stepped on his head and gave him a good squishing and twisting into the dirt. DEAD RAT. We kicked him to the side and my cat started to eat him like this was a kill he should be proud of... stupid cat.

Here's the best part of the story: When the whole thing was over, Patrick's wife poured the remaining cooking oil back into the bottle (we had drained it into a cup before dumping the rat), and she handed me the bottle! Like I would use the cooking oil that the rat had been swimming in!! "No, no. I don't want that," I said in Bemba. Everyone kind of laughed, and a few moments later she returned with the rinsed out bottle for me... "No, no, no. I don't even want the empty bottle. You can have it! You keep it!" They all thought it was hilarious that I didn't wany my stuff back. Since this is the family that I eat with every night, I now have this fear in the back of my mind that they're going to serve me supper 1 day made with rat-soaked cooking oil, and I'll never know the difference... Ugh.

Thanks for keeping up with my website. I hope you are all feeling healthy and happy and loving life! Until next time...

Shalenipo.

Erin