Don't worry, this is not a post about the joys of readjustment. It's a celebration of Peace Corps Week!
The first hand narration of my service, in all it's rawness and honesty, splashed across the pages of my journals night after night from my hut, were unfortunately swept out from underneath me in my journey from Zambia back to America. And to be honest, it has been difficult to put pen to paper ever since. Those pages were the most important thing to me.
Admittedly, I do not express as much grace and and articulation orally as I like to think I do on paper, so I have truly been worried that this new combination of not talking about Zambia and not writing about Zambia may leave these stories buried and forgotten somewhere deep in my heart.
Be it Peace Corps Week, the nostalgic time of year, or a conversation I had a work with a Congolese woman that reminded me of Prisca... I feel a sudden urgency to write again.
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There is a place in Northern Zambia, just a reasonable bike ride North of Kasama, that you can actually locate easily on GoogleEarth. Seriously. Just follow the Kasama/Mbala Road from Kasama and before you reach Nseluka, look for the series of gigantic crop circles and evenly divided greenery on the left.
What you can't see on GoogleEarth, is the modest village that has mushroomed beyond the crop circles and the towering Eucalyptus trees which guard the largest coffee company in the Republic of Zambia. It's called Kampinda village. It has just a handful of bush paths and clusters of huts that are sheltered by maize fields and rolling mounds of Earth that protect a humble and brotherly community.
It's a community that you cannot even see from the Tarmac. It is a four-kilometer, gentle downhill slope from any motor vehicle route. It is a community that you cannot even research at your fingertips. It is a community that that you cannot even contact through cell phone most times because there is no reception. And a community that even if you could defeat the airwaves- would not be able to communicate with unless you happen to speak ciBemba.
Yep... it is that far away, that foreign to us, that contrasting to our environment that we live in right now. But for 24 months, it was my home.
In our environemnt that we are living in right now, in "our world" that we live in here, you can chose to get your degree online or even decide to become self-educated in a specialized topic through the vast modalities of technology that we have access to.
However, I assure you that you will never learn about Kampinda village in a text or on a screen. The third goal of Peace Corps "aims to help Americans understand the people and cultures of other countries. It is one of the three goals that support the mission of the Peace Corps to promote world peace and friendship." So, being the faithful RPCV that I guess I am... allow me.
If you ever find yourself in Kampinda village, keep your ears alert for this phrase: "Kalibu." You may hear "kalibu!" shouted at you from a child who dashes out to the edge of his dirt yard when he sees you riding your bike to the market. You may hear it mentioned cautiously from a curious Ambuya who is skeptical about your passing by, yet offers the phrase to assure you that she runs a welcoming household. Or you may hear it coming from a teenage girl giggling on her stoop at your awkward precense. All of them saying, "kalibu"-- come in, you are welcome--- like outstretched hands. Then a smile will erupt to the surface of your face, and you'll pull up the jerry cans that you've been dragging along, have a seat, and exchange greetings over a handful of groundnuts before proceeding to fetch water. Know that no matter how lost you feel, you are always welcome. And you should always accept Ubwali, no matter how full you are.
And that's where it starts. That is how you will learn about Kampinda. By sitting, listening, nodding, eating, sharing, watching, and accepting. Accepting the beauty and flaws of a community that blend together like a bottle of shaken-up Monkoyo.
You may learn that Kampinda isn't perfect. It struggles as an offshoot village of Northern Coffee Company Limited, and has fallen into a pattern of dependency propped against the giant company. There is pain. I have seen children lose to Malaria, grown men be defeated by HIV, teachers using their education as a weapon against others, families torn apart because of witchcraft.
But if you sit there, really still and you listen--even if you cannot understand the language--to the cadence of verbal exchanges, to the rhythm of the Ibende pounding cassava, you may learn a few things about the wonder and unfaltering vigor that this community holds strongly.
Holds strongly on their heads as they balance trees steadily from the forest to the cooking fire every morning.
Holds strongly on their backs as they sling children as big as four years old firmly over their shoulders from clinic to the market.
And strongly in their arms as they cook 10 pounds of nshima twice a day for their family.
It is BanaMwansa, BanaGi, Matilldah, and Sylvia that thump the earth with the calloused soles of their feet, with the strength and courage that define a Zambian village.
And you may learn that in fact, you have never seen something that you are so positively certain is pure happiness until you've seen a band of brothers flying across a dirt field with a tight bundle of plastic bags zig-zagging between their feet. Or grade one pupils on their first day of school, with their new green and white checks, and their polished shoes. Or a handful of choir members embracing each others' faith, and erecting the spirituality of you the listener that you never even knew you had, voices bellowing in a wooden church, heads angled to God.
You may learn about Banachimbusa-- a traditional celebration of womanhood, you may learn how to gut caterpillars for dinner. You may learn how to balance yourself, your kid neighbor, and your mobile classroom on your bicycle as you ride uphill each morning to the community Insaka. You may learn how to play Chiyenga, but never master the sport of netball. You may learn how to outsmart a hut rat... but probably not.
You will learn to appreciate the progress of the baby next door, as he goes from being terrified of you, to poking you, to laughing with you, to crawling, to walking, to speaking his first English word: your name.
You may learn how to effectively trample corn stalks twice your height, and how to harvest 3 hectors of it alongside a team of church members on behalf of the family of a friend who died last week of AIDS. You might learn how to sit next to her dead body overnight in traditional mourning, but you might never get used to the wailing cries of the other women in the room.
Come rainy season, you will learn a whole new set of skills. You might learn how to bike through a downpour, laugh at yourself and the 15 kilometers left to go, and how to invite yourself into a villagers house on the side of the road until the Infula passes. You might learn how to build a preschool, and how to rebuild it once it collapses for the first time. You might learn to walk a little faster than usual through the tall grass, or perfect your finger-pricking abilities when you've got those "flu-like symptoms that come in waves..."
You might learn that Gracie will always be the first one to scout out the trash pit after you've dumped a bagfull, or that even though Esther is the youngest of four sisters, is the sassiest 4 year old in the entire village.
And suddenly, you will learn, the you are part of it all. You no longer wake up at the sound of a bat in your hut, you are satisfied if a meeting starts only an hour late, and you cannot remember what clean feet look like. Can you imagine that being a gauge of how much you've learned? How much you've lived? How much you've changed?
There are over 200,000 RPCVs that have served in 139 countries in the past 53 years. That's over 200,000 stories of over 200,000 place that you may never have ever heard of. Peace Corps is about exchanging skills and knowledge, forging relationships across cultures, developing family with the Gracies and Esthers of the world.
But at the end of the two years, when all is said and done, the stories that we bring back home are what is really going to matter on this end. I may never be able to measure how much of an impact I had on Kampinda, I know it that it wasn't enough. But for now, for the people and community that changed me, I will continue to tell their story as I know they would want me to do
