The Empty Shed

Our faithful trustee, Mr. Kabika, passed away just before dawn on Sunday morning. It wasn't a big surprise; I had returned from Mozambique (of which I'll blog later or never) to Senanga on Tuesday evening, and on Friday afternoon, the five staff members of S.D.A.C.S.S. (our cooperative) went in to see him.

It often shocks outsiders when I describe some clinics / hospitals as okay, but again, they are without context. I worked for two years at a clinic that had been built in 1945 and looked as if it had been built in 1845, bombed in 1895, and painted in 1965. By that standard, Senanga's Hospital (1985) is relatively well-off.

However, if you are a person with a pathological fear of medical facilities, Senanga could be home to Walter Reed, Mt. Sinai, and the Mayo Clinic rolled into one and I would somehow find every reason not to enter. I don't know what it is, but I just don't care for hospitals. Maybe it's the dough I hemorrhaged when I was applying for my volunteer position (no health insurance); maybe it was the two years in the Kelongwa Clinic; maybe it's the fact that Zambian hospitals don't have private wards and you get to see 20 or 30 people who are in bad shape surrounded by two or three family members / friends in what looks slightly less organized than a Korean Army M*A*S*H unit. 

But when someone's sick in Zambia and you know them, you usually go see them. I've broken that rule and sent money, food, etc. instead (see above), but when someone's dying, I go. And I knew somehow that Kabika was on his way out; he wasn't young (62), had not had an easy life, and he had developed an ominous cough these past few months. Unfortunately, my gut was right ... his skin was drawn tight to his face, his palsied hands had gone into overdrive, and he had difficulty seeing us. Still, he managed his small smile, pulling his upper lip back over the corner of his upper teeth, clasping our hands, and murmuring "Eni sha, eni sha" [yes, sir] to each of us.

His odd little smile was still on his face when we took him from mortuary refrigerator on Tuesday afternoon and dressed him in his best clothes, a tattered old sport coat and dress pants that he wore each and every Sunday to church (Kabika was a Jehovah's Witness). We then gently placed him in the nondescript coffin that Mr. Munalula had purchased, in which we wrapped Kabika in a blanket; Munalula then nailed the lid shut. The hearse and a number of pickups carried the corpse, the bereaved, and the respectful to a beautiful spot near the Harrington's place that had a breathtaking view of the Barotse Floodplains, and we buried him.

Ever wonder over the name of this blog? Yes, it was a play on the Good Intents blog post "Whites in Shining Armor". Now, I think it means more:

1. White ... well that's a no-brainer. [I hope]
2. Tarnished ... that's easy to understand if you know me personally; I can sometimes be grumpy, irascible, tough, overly-focused on work, etc. I wish I wasn't, but as Popeye says "I yam what I yam."
3. Armor ... a symptom of the years; you shut off or internalize certain emotions as a result of insulating yourself from some of the hard things you see too often. The parade of kids who are underdressed and undernourished. The drunken man whose speech to you is punctuated by spittle. Hollow-cheeked men lying in a third world hospitals who grasp your hand in deep gratitude. The coffins that are three or four feet long outside the mortuary, waiting to be filled. 

Part of it is cultural; men rarely show grief, so I don't. Also, you worry once they start, they might not stop. So the result is tautological: you become armored. The armor ain't shiny, but it serves the purpose.

But now, who do I greet before work every morning? Who do I jokingly ask, "How'd you sleep?" in my bad siLozi, eliciting a response of "How'd you work?" I suppose that grief, like everything else here, happens bit-by-bit over a long period of time.

Jack Frost Nipping at Your Memories

Returning from the east this past Tuesday, I noticed all the cassava (manioc to we Americans) around Kaoma had withered and dried. I asked the man sitting next to me about it, and he said it had been very cold the previous night and day (about the 27th). Few Zambians are familiar with the word, but from what he said, it sounded like they had a frost. The next day, upon returning to the office, we had farmers in from the Lui Valley who said they were hit with the cold snap as well; most of their vegetables, excluding the cabbage, were dead. They looked at me for answers, which I took as an acknowledgement that I was from a colder climate and might have some solutions. Rather unhelpfully, I shrugged and suggested they replant. Maybe they were looking for some sort of recompense, but we just don't have the capacity to refund everyone or pay for they could have made.

What shocks people from outside Zambia (or Africa as a whole) is the cold. Most Westerners figure on Africa countries being hot; justifiably so, it's tropical and some days, the sun feels like it's about ten feet from the top of your skull. However, a big portion of the continent sits on a series of massive, irregular plateaux ... for example, most of Zambia, with the exception of the lower Zambezi and the Luano-Luangwa valleys, sits at or above 1,000 m.a.s.l., or 3,300 feet; some parts, such as Chama, Serenje, and Mpika District are more like 1,400 m.a.s.l., which is almost a mile above see level. The weather, which is dry and clear, lends itself to cold evenings as well; heat that accumulates during the daytime dissipates soon after sunset. I recall mornings in Serenje and Mkushi Districts when I would awake to ice covering the still waters of high dambos where I liked to camp out.

Speaking of the cold, and the past ... I was up in Serenje last weekend buying [Irish] potatoes; we've had trouble getting potatoes to grow here in the past, and much of it I chalk up to heat and lack of localized seed sources (potatoes are often procured from South Africa and planted in the summer months). I used to be the provincial coordinator for Central Province about five years ago, and I knew some of the farmers in the escarpment dominating Serenje District grow decent potatoes in the soft, fertile soils that cover the valley floors. I was successful, at least at that end ... I'm still waiting for the potatoes to arrive here so we can sort them again and distribute them to three or four trusted farmers.

It was good to go to Serenje on another level; I got a bit of closure, for lack of a better word. I saw some old friends, got quite a few hugs, and any number of Rasta salutes (Serenje, for whatever reason, has a large population of Rastafarians). During my time there (2006-07), I was all over the place, made lots of friends, etc. It was a tough job, running all over Serenje, Mpika, Mkushi, Masaiti, and Mpongwe Districts on what we half-jokingly referred to as the "Highway to Hell" (i.e., the Great North Road of Zambia, which is part of the famous Cape-to-Cairo route). It was half-joking because I drove on it 5-6 days a week, racking up something like 46,000 miles of travel in a 1HZJ six-cylinder, diesel-powered beast of a Land-Cruiser, dodging half-mad Tanzanian truck-drivers. Statistically, it was a miracle that I only killed two chickens and slightly dented the ladder to the roof rack; I was almost killed on a daily basis. Maybe that sheer excitement, combined with the nature of the work in which I prepped sites for new Peace Corps volunteers, counseled  (albeit poorly) volunteers, ran the provincial office, ferried trainees, Senate aids, PC officials, etc. Frankly, I haven't really felt that alive for such an extended period of time before or since. Coming back sort of put a coda on the experience ... I lived through it, made good friends, and it's over. You take the best from it, learn from the worst, and move on.