I've been hesitating to jump into this space for a while for two reasons I can think of.
Every time I stare at this blank page I turn the broken record of where to begin, even though I realize I shouldn't be lamenting the fact that I'm able to share anything I want with those who care to read this—my friends and family. But I face this strange urgency; every time I come to it I begin spouting out a long list of happenings only to become disappointed. Much has happened, yes, and that's usually the case if I'm writing anything at all, but just reiterating those things makes me feel strange, or a little empty, like they're not getting the attention they deserve. It seems to diminish the effect if all I can care to remember is what was said or done, and granted you need that to some extent, but I want it to be full of something else (besides shit). In short, I think the struggle is that I want to reflect on things that have since passed and are now convoluted with many new events.
The other reason is that writing is a bit of a painstaking process for me. Like running, it feels good once I get going, but starting after stopping is difficult. And right now it is very difficult to find an extended period of time to myself when I'm not exhausted from a day of meeting people at the school and entertaining visitors at my home (which I've barely settled into; at least I have a bed and two plastic chairs). I guess the moment would be now, but even as I write this children are sitting on my porch, tapping out a rhythm on a very large drum otherwise known as my house. It's not bad, this bustle, but it's taking some adjustment. The children are fascinated by my strange ways, and there is almost always somebody sitting on my porch, wanting to observe me. We exchange some words, and I'll attempt to learn more Nyanja, but mostly they just watch and giggle. This undeserved celebrity status doesn't suit me, but also some of it comes from the novelty of having a foreigner live in their village. The shine will wear off soon enough, and maybe I'll be starved for attention.
(But there's another way of looking at it: these distractions are actually why I'm here, right? I mean to say that instead of all of these things preventing me from sitting down with myself, maybe withdrawing to my house to write is actually robbing me of experiences I would otherwise miss out on. Even the ordinary things are important. Hanging out with kids on the stoop, walking to the next town just for some bananas, cycling to visit my nearest volunteer neighbor. All of these things are optional in some sense, and while I'm sad I don't have the time to write when the memory is fresh, it's much better than missing out on the little moments that unfold as a result of such choices. And those moments all revolve around connecting with people, making new friends, which isn't much different from the essence of why we share our writing anyway. Like any conversation I have with a friend, I have no idea where it will go, or where this journal will take me, but that is also the exciting part. The possibilities are exhilarating if you can manage not to confine them with expectations.)
It's incredible and peculiar that I can call this thing that I am immersed in an 'experience': to be injected into the lives of others for a set period, something so fixed in duration but completely open to possibility within it. Some days leave me worn, but others are refreshing.
But it all has its moments, especially when I have the energy to put into the moment. But before I talk about my home in Nkungu village, I want to go back just about a month to something I wrote in my journal. In this very brief piece, which I believe I started as a placeholder to refer back to, I'm talking about the 12 year old boy who lived down the hill from me in Chipembi. Joseph's father is an alcoholic and his mother is deceased. He goes to school sometimes, which is more than many kids, and we would often walk together as I came home from training in the evening.
"I felt a welling of remorse, or of grief, looking at Joseph's house as my time in the village comes to an end.
I felt compelled to dismount my bicycle, to walk slowly past the small brick house, to appraise the large crack spreading up the middle of the wall. Joseph walked beside me, herding his cow back to its pen. To see a small, dust-covered boy coax along such a massive, hulking creature filled me with a mixture of awe and pity. Part of me admires how much responsibility he has, to be in charge of the cow, to fetch water with his sister, to do ordinary things to support his family. But there is also pity, the creeping thought that this is it for him, a bright young kid, who will probably live a life of cow herding, making charcoal, and perhaps farming, not by choice, but simply because that's all there is. Nothing is wrong or pitiable about the work, and many rightfully take great pride in working off and with the land, but I suppose what I lament most is how I can do so little to offer a choice. It's difficult to witness the lives of others without projecting some of your own desires.
I can't communicate well enough to ask if that is something Joseph wants to do; I'm not sure children are even taught to fantasize about professions like we were in grade school. Many of us have an abundance of choice, and even so I imagine most of us are doing things we never pictured doing, career or otherwise. Joseph surely gets exposed to a lot of foreigners, other Peace Corps trainees, so I wonder what he thinks of the things they share with him, most likely in the form of photos. Does it kindle his imagination? Does it inspire him in some way? I certainly hope it does, but I wish the odds weren't so stacked against him, or anyone. I wish he could have the freedom to dabble in this or that, to feel something out, to choose.
But there we are, walking together, me with my bicycle, and Joseph with his massive bull. The cow eyed me suspiciously, wondering perhaps if I was there to coerce it in a different direction. It's pendulous horns swung in my direction as Joseph shouted a few more encouragements while striking its hind quarters with a switch. It lumbered on."
So that's where it ends, and in fact I went back through it and padded some of my half baked thoughts which I left unfinished. But ultimately I remember fixating on that cow and the house. They seemed like anchors to keep him there forever, and I felt like I was only there to watch as he remained in his confinement. I've been lucky to live a life in which I can do things like get in a car and disappear for a weekend, or travel around the world. If I don't like something about my life I usually have a way to change it, and what I can't change I accept. But there was Joseph, in his broken home, with his sister and brother, and their father, and I just fade from his life as quickly as I came. He is my friend despite only sharing a few phrases of each other's language, but I will probably never see him again. And if I did see him, what would I possibly do to get closure? And what is that closure I seek? For him to rise above his station and choose something that makes him happy? Maybe I'm projecting too much aspiration. Maybe it's me who needs to accept that some things can't be changed. Maybe I should be more concerned about whether or not he's happy, and not just what he's doing to earn money. I've met countless people in similar circumstances, not just in third world countries either. We all have our tethers, some self inflicted, some imposed. But on the other hand, why am I even here if not to elicit some sort of change? It will never surface in the form of helping people escape the village life, but maybe something less visible. So my final thoughts of Chipembi were of this boy, perhaps to remind me of the slow struggle of progress, and how it tends to leave many behind. And as foolish as it is, it feels like I'm leaving them behind, too.
Fuuuuuu. Rage quit. Let's carry on.
More time travel. Very distorted time travel. It should feel like it's progressing at 60 minutes per hour, but I think I got sucked into a black hole somewhere along the way. Suddenly everything is totally inverted. The dozens of white people I saw every day are gone; now it is only Zambians and language barriers. Training ended, we said words to each other, and we celebrated without really knowing what was coming next. I haven't had time to even feel sad about our departure, about not seeing any of my new friends for a few months. I think I was sad, or at least feeling an undercurrent of sentimentality, but I was too caught up in other things to really acknowledge it. We were going too fast. When the moment came to say goodbye, I was still wrapping my head around the last one.
Even now, I still feel like my brake lines have been cut. But this, the whole writing thing, helps slow me down and peel back the layers. (Did you say peel? No? Well, have I mentioned how much I love bananas? Evidently my neighbors have detected this as well. I've got about four dozen of them in my house right now, and they're all ripening at the same time. Challenge accepted. I hope my students won't think less of me when I barf bananas all over them. Man, those weirdo Americans can't hold their bananas! But for real, I'm going to put a severe dent in the banana and peanut butter supply while I'm here. The Zambian Peanut Butter and Banana Crisis will last from now until August of 2017. I should also mention that our provincial house for Eastern Province is located within walking distance of a peanut butter factory. Commence fatness. (Also, Fatness is a name of one of the 7th graders at school.))
Wait, I'm trying to talk about the past, not the present. Although if I truly had to live in the present, and the present were bananas, I'd be set for life (or for the foreseeable present). No need to dwell on the past or future. It's just bananas for me. Yeah, you really shouldn't have started with that whole 'peeling' bit.
Incidentally, I've been listening to a lot of radio shows while I cook and clean and bathe. I just started This American Life, and this excerpt is from the first episode back in 1995 when it was called Your Radio Playhouse, titled New Beginnings.
The speaker here is describing his thoughts on a part of his life when he was 27 years old. Years have passed since then, but he remembers with the emotional journey he embarked on, a decision to live the next six months of his life as though he were going to die on November 1st of that year. It was triggered while he was traveling around the world, photographing religious ceremonies in different countries. This thought experiment occurred to him while in Jerusalem, triggered in part by the religious significance of his surroundings. To his recollection, which is vivid and compelling, he carried it out with conviction. He spent several of those months with his parents, saying that he had a desire to do ordinary things. Then he embarked on a long distance cycling journey to see his siblings scattered across the United States. He gave away thousands of dollars, and subsisted on what little he needed. Anyway, this is the excerpt that came to mind:
"Having a future is part of what being human is about, and that when you take away the future for humans you take away a lot of their humanness, and that it's not actually a very a good thing to live entirely in the present, that one needs to have a past, and one needs to have a future to be fully human."
I thought it was a nice way to frame a life philosophy. There seems to be a lot of rhetoric about the present moment being all we have, all that truly exists, eschewing the significance of our past and future, personal or collective. While it's a true statement, I don't think it hurts to acknowledge what *did* exist and what might be. The past is fixed and done, and our future isn't guaranteed, but their mystery should be just as captivating as the present moment. It blows my mind that we can measure our lives in so many ways, to reshape our concept of time, but sometimes all I think to do is try to find my tiny dot on a line.
So where was I? As in, where was I on the night? Here's some stuff I can recall:
I catch myself having strange thoughts about ties. I mean strange in the sense that I want to wear one to look nice, not do strange things with them which they weren't intended for, like auto-erotic asphyxiation. That's choking yourself while masturbating, for the uninitiated. Oh man, my parents read this, don't they? Haha, not anymore!
But really, where did this sudden onset of fashion affinity come from? I was flipping through a magazine the other day and paused to admire an advertisement featuring some very shiny ties. That's weird, I thought, when I snapped back to reality. Was I just imagining what it would be like to have those ties in my possession? That's peculiar, indeed. Thinking more on the subject, I did recently ask my father to send some ties from home, and my favorite lavender colored button d—Ah, crap! I've become an adult! Damn it all. And I just read The Little Prince again—I thought that was supposed to protect me! What next?! Filing taxes, or voting?! Eating an entire bag of candy?! My god, it's the beginning of the end. Soon I'll have things like a tuxedo or a vest, and my desire for swagger will never be sated. (Do you remember the vest Leonardo DiCaprio wears in 12 Years a Slave? I want that vest. Hmm, on second thought, plantation owner may not be in right now.)
I seem to have a knack for this derailing thing, so the question arises: how deep do I want to dig this hole before I throw myself in? Maybe I can backpedal just a bit to get some memories going. Super linear timeline style, ACTIVATE!! We'll get to that third dimension later.
Monday, August 24th. Get a high fever and a bad case of the runs. Rain down hellfire on the bats who live in the chimbudzi. Live off of oral hydration salts and bananas for two days. Suffer the shame as your host mother attributes it to alcohol consumption any time she talks, which she may not be wrong about.
Tuesday. ??? Bananas ???
Wednesday. Today is Cultural Day. On this day, the volunteers prepare a large feast of American dishes to give to the members of our community, to the parents who hosted us in their families. A handful of volunteers were chosen to read speeches in local languages, to show gratitude to the the people who took care of us, the spokes that make the wheels of Pre-Service Training possible. Training wheels.
Thursday. I remember that we had more training in Lusaka, but I was so worn out that it didn't really stick. Somehow the prospect of drinking and dancing all night with friends seemed less exhausting than these remainder sessions. Shawn and I watched a movie while waiting for transport back to the hotel, and when the battery on my laptop died he decided it was time to initiate his own party. This guy has always professed himself to be an introvert, but here he is taking center stage to perform some of the best dance moves I've ever seen. We make it back to the hotel and I crash like a computer running Windows ME. (Here is where a few friends will correct me as to what the least stable operating system is. Fix my joke, you guys.)
Friday. This is the day we sit under a big tent and cuss each other out, saying things like, "I solemnly vow to uphold the values of the United States government," and "I shall never ride my bicycle without a helmet," and so on. Yes, it is the 'swearing in' of trainees. The pin feathers of adolescence have molted and we now ceremoniously take flight as full fledged volunteers. The only thing standing in our way is the ceremony itself, full of speeches and even singing and dancing. It ran the spectrum of 'Well, this is pretty cool' to 'Are we there yet?' But nonetheless, it was a good excuse to get dressed up in our spiffy clothes. I think this whole thing might have incited my bloodlust for nice clothing.
Then it was time to party. Parting ways can wait. We started the evening by ordering 17 pizzas. They arrived by motorbike, and when I asked the driver if he really fit 17 pizzas in the hot box he told me that the second bike was just behind. Awesome. Our accountants sorted out hundreds of Kwacha into neat little piles by headlight and then we set up the dining hall for our own sort of banquet, the Paper Plate Awards. The previous evening, we wrote and illustrated a superlative trophy for another volunteer with our limited resources: paper plates. Tonight, we presented them to each other in style (aka in the vicinity of cheese). For instance, some volunteers received awards for most likely to become village headman, or to become a safety and security issue. They all had that little personal element, touching on some joke we might have shared or a summation of that individual's personality. I received "most likely to resurrect a dead bicycle" on account of my feigned mechanical prowess, and perhaps my affinity for witchcraft. I am the Mechromancer. It was a really nice moment, people delivering impromptu speeches, drinking cheap whisky or 'purple-drank', and cementing the bonds we formed in such a short yet intense time together.
The following day after the ceremony we loaded our luggage (mine somehow doubled in the last three months) on top of our respective vehicles and began our trek. We won't see each other until we return to Lusaka in December. People hugged, waved, cried, and went. It caught me off guard, and I think I'm still slowly reacting to it even as the weeks go by.
We spent a few days at our provincial house to gather supplies for our new homes: plastic wash basins, kerosene stoves, cutlery, pots and pans, food storage containers, beds, water containers, chairs, wire for drying clothes, nails, rags, mops, and brooms. It was a lot of stuff, but still a lot less than I would have back in America. Starting a household from scratch is tiresome work, but we were pretty efficient with our time. This left us free to enjoy each other's company, the Eastern Province intake of June 2015. We exchanged our stories, went on hikes up the hill to the cell phone towers, talked about books, exchanged books, acquired new books (I almost had a bookgasm), trader whatever media we had on our digital storage devices, and then just basked in that anticipation, a mixture of letting loose and heightened emotional state.
One evening, after the fruits of our shopping excursions were strewn across the courtyard in 11 heaping piles, we invented a sort of slip and slide using the mattresses that were delivered that afternoon. The course was arranged as such: four mattresses lined the ground, one after the other, lengthwise, pointing downhill slightly and away from the elevated porch of the house. At the foot of the 'slide', we stacked another four mattresses on top of each other to act as a sled. The slipping part happens when a volunteer (yes, no longer trainees, for we have completed our safety and security courses and are now qualified to engage in shenanigans) launches his or her self from the top of the porch with a running start through the house, wearing an American flag as a cape. The momentum of the person carries them down our cushioned runway of sorts, the plastic bags which seal the mattresses diminishing the friction in between. Fortunately the mattresses are quite spacious, and we were even able to send three people at a time. It was batshit crazy, and it was awesome. We did this over and over for hours, until the plastic finally started to disintegrate, and eventually let ourselves lay to rest in a pile of people on top of a holocaust of dusty mattresses amidst a chaosphere of belongings.
Play is so essential to my mental health, and I'm heartened to know I still find an environment for it even as I get older. I suppose that's another compelling reason to work with children for a living. You're not really working, you're just playing and teaching at the same time. Wait, what were the other compelling reasons, again? I'll have to remember them when I want to punt the students across the yard.
