Initial Impressions

Phew! It's been far too long since my last post and a lot has happened since then. Although this blog is entitled 'initial impressions,' I wrote these blog thoughts long ago so many of my initial impressions have changed and now seem silly. But I'll share a few of them anyway, then do my best at re-capping what has happened from Lusaka to Chipata to my host family to my work.

Landing...

7 hrs across the Atlantic + 12 gruelling hrs over the African continent + much sleepless transit time and pre-departure training recovery = 9 Canadian volunteers landing safely in Lusaka, Zambia.

After we landed, we began in-country orientation - a crash course in language, Zambian politics and culture. Within a week, we met our partner organizations and got a feel for the work ahead, then were dispatched to various corners of the country to work with government, privately funded aid programs, or smaller scale NGOs, some of us in water and sanitation, others in agriculture and agro-processing, irrigation...

Ka-Hay, Long Term Overseas Volunteer, runs Zambian Jeopardy. I'll take pre-independece Zambia, then Levi Mwanawasa for 200!

Lusaka

Standing here, if you were to tell me that 3/4 of this nation is impoverished, I would not believe you. Lusaka is a city of high rise buildings, paved roads, millionaires, big business - the Celtels (biggest cell phone service provider in Southern Africa), Dunavunts, and Coco-Cola. People flock the streets from 8 to 17 hrs for work and school, cell phones are in abundance, street vendors hawk Fanta and the daily Post (a more popular newspaper not owned by the government).

This is actually in Chipata, but I think it makes for a good dichotomy

While at the same time, there are also the street children without shoes (who may or may not have a somewhere safe to sleep), where mass rural-urban migration has brought people to the city outskirts (putting pressure on the government to provide for basic infrastructure),* compounds without running water and electricity where disease and crime have a strong presence ... Zambia is actually one of the most urbanized countries in Southern Africa (at about 40% urban).

Owen commented that if you put someone from Lusaka in Toronto and vice versa, he or she would experience little culture shock. I would disagree, but he makes a sound point. On the whole and indeed on the surface, it seems that people run their own lives to make ends meet and continue their day just as we would back home.

Chipata

Not so. As I settled into this border town, I would sit down with Zambians, with my host family, co-workers, bank managers, street vendors, students, car mechanics, aid workers, neighbours. I would hear their story and dig a little deeper into these impressions to learn about a nation, a people and an economy, that is actually running to stand still.

Communities settle along the road from Lusaka to Chipata (6 hours on The Great East Road). Note that there are no power lines along the road

To start, I want to waste no time in introducing you to my family or "Banja Yanga" as they have been the most influential part of my experience here so far...

*I would later learn that as men migrate to towns or cities in search of jobs, cultivation of traditional land is left to elder men and women. This has resulted in lower productivity in subsistence agriculture and lower food reserves for rural communities in times of drought. Zambia is one of the most urbanized countries in South Africa (about 40% of population).