It’s official – I’m a Lusaka city girl now. The adjustment from my cozy cottage life, where I could spend full days reading and struggled to go through a dollar a week, to my new urban one was interesting to say the least. I now have an 8 to 5 job that I adore, a three-bedroom flat that I share with my best friend, a commute and monthly expenses, a much more frequently accessed wallet and a rapidly expanding closet.
Zambia remains a source of both great joy and frustration for me, and this contradictory nature does nothing to dim my love for it. Four months into my third year and I know I could have made no other decision besides this.
My work at a non-profit committed to behavior change around HIV/AIDS is challenging and my position often sends me on the road to one of our ten field sites throughout the country. I’ve been given responsibilities that I wouldn’t get near within a few years of work at a comparable US organization and am glad to finally be working concretely on the epidemic in this country.
But to truly give you a picture of my new life, I’m recruiting the help of someone who has an intimate view of it. Yes, that’s right, my orange tom cat, Dorcus.
As a last aside before I switch narrators and officially tick off the “crazy cat lady” box on my census form, let me note that Dorcus (in puppet form) has made two previous appearances as a Brittany-life ethnographer. This is his first venture into the blogosphere...
It’s 5:30 in the morning and I sit about a foot from a sleeping Brittany’s face, focusing on making my green eyes wide for when her green ones open. For while, when we first moved here and I was going through my difficult transition phase as she likes to say, I would simply bite her hair until she woke up and fed me. I quickly realized that that method yielded more aerial journeys across the room than feedings though and stopped.
Lusaka is chilly now and Brittany isn’t quite visible under the colorful spread of her duvet. She had hand-stitched the patchwork pieces of chitenge during lazy village afternoons and long school meetings and the hours spent waiting for transport on many a Zambian road. It is a relic of a once unpredictable existence and that too contributed much to keeping her warm.
By 5:45, the force of my glare has woken her up. It’s a gift. I run figure 8’s around her ankles, crying and nipping if the situation seems urgent. Town life has rounded out my already healthy village tummy, and if I want to maintain my new physique, it’s crucial that I am fed promptly. Brittany, of course, doesn’t share in my prioritizing and will dawdle in the bathroom or by heating the kettle for tea.
Within the hour, I’m comfortably full of kibble and have returned to napping on a freshly made-up bed, and she’s out the door to work. From what I gather, she spends her days writing training guides and personal stories of change, meeting with various other peoples and buying us groceries at the mall a few minutes from her office. It seems to require a lot of energy.
Meanwhile, back at the flat, I live the lap of luxury lifestyle I prefer. I test all the beds, couches and patches of sunlight for optimal napping quality. I roll around in the little backyard garden. I add to my repertoire of things guaranteed to annoy Jen, Brittany’s roommate. I occasionally deign to show myself to the little gang of children living next door, who think I am quite handsome and narrate my every movement like ESPN announcers. I take frequent snack breaks. All this is quite exhausting and I wouldn’t want my blood sugar to drop.
By 18 hours, Brittany is back. Despite all my feline training to remain nonchalant, I rush to the door, making sure my white booties and chest are especially glowing. After all, this is the person who feeds and houses me, who brought me from the village to my rightful place in the big city, and it pays to show some gratitude. Besides, I need to work it if I am to secure that ticket to America – the land of Petco and Whiskas.
The girls chatter as they cook, making spicy, vegetable-filled meals that hold no interest for me. I still use the opportunity to practice my begging techniques. The roommate is a baker and occasionally I go into a full force charm and aggravate offensive to net some pumpkin bread, ginger cookie or walnut-chocolate biscotti.
When it’s clear that there will be no table scraps for me, I sulk off on my nightly patrols. I take my job of protecting these females very seriously. No rats, snakes or other intruders on my watch. Before dawn, I’ll return to the sleepy house, ready to begin again. Ready for another day in the LSK..
Sunday, August 7, 2011
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Crumbs from Your Table.
Last night, ants invaded my house. When I say invaded, I mean massive ground-level infantry movements. Think Napoleon, think Normandy, think Bombs Over Baghdad. This crawling black carpet woke me from sleep and I flip on a flashlight to see their thousands of singly-driven crumb-seeking eyes.
The impetus for this attack was a slight adjustment to my box of tea. This shift in land mass allowed them access to my previously unreachable hanging basket of dirty dishes.
Somehow the master commander of the six-legged army received news of this development. And the invasion began. A futile effort at deterring and squashing left me with bitten ankles and a few too many unwelcome visitors in my PJ bottoms. Thus conquered, I pulled a Chamberlain, tucked my mosquito net tight, and returned to bed. My appeasement wasn’t total though – I did move the tea box. As I tried to sleep through the marching, the little invaders did give me some interesting thoughts.
How is it that ants know exactly where to swarm to find sustenance? To them, my two-room hut must seem as vast as this great big world seems to me and yet, they did not dally, they do not wander lost in corners, embark on fruitless quests up chair legs and into cupboards. To watch them on their trek across the savanna of my cemented, pock-marked floor is to witness a purposeful migration.
Why is it then that we must move so aimlessly across the earth? Seeking and so seldom finding the nourishment that makes our journey worth the while? To just be plopped down and know instinctively where to go to find that crumb that will save you, now that would be an awesome gift.
Or so I used to think. I wrote these opening lines months ago, the bones of a blog entry never completed, pushed aside by the vacations and novels and chitenge projects that kept me from delving into this little ol’ notebook at site. At the time, the ants seemed enviable, in their purposeful marching towards food. I was torn between committing to another year in Zambia working who-knows-where doing who-knows-what, or moving back to the States, and facing similarly vague employment choices. I had been intensely happy in my two years in the village. My cottage had nourished me, fed me the foods I had not known I was hungry for. My electric-less, plumbing-less existence, the long lazy days had been my teacher and I had learned. As Ntozake Shange wrote, “I have found God in myself and I have loved her, I have loved her fiercely.”
But that life had to end, is now ending. And the world, at that moment, seemed too vast. I was an ant in two-room hut. Facing choices – grad school, job search, more volunteering, or as one friend suggested, a move to some ashram where I could do yoga and write – without any inkling of which way I should go.
I write this now wrapped in the cozy comfort of a decision made. Candles flicker and groundnuts roast on the brazier. Through the open window float moths and the voices of my neighbors over evening meals, the full moon adding tones of festivity to their rapid KiKaonde cadences. I have eight such nights left. By the time I type these words, Kamayembe will be gone to me.
I have a new job here – and a good one. I’ll still be a Peace Corps Volunteer but I’ll be working 9-to-5 as an extension agent at an Zambian health NGO. I’ll be helping HIV-positive people to tell their stories, documenting their lives in articles and pictures, and assisting with community radio awareness programs. Though I’ll live in Lusaka – with a real apartment and nearby grocery stores (!) – my job will send me on the road, into the field, one to two weeks a month. Which is what I want. With my new life will come constant internet access and conveniences, so hopefully I will seem more connected to all of you across the ocean.
It was not an easy decision to remain in Africa another year and I did not make it lightly. I miss all you loved ones immensely. I crave my friends’ laughter over good coffee and confessions over good red wine; the warmth of family gatherings and the anonymity of walking an American street, not always being reduced to a race and a gender.
But I also know that this is right. I love Zambia. I love Peace Corps. And I am not yet ready to give them up. They still have much to teach to me. As part of my new contract, I have one month’s paid leave to New York. Right now, I’m thinking October unless anyone has any strong pulls for a different time.
I no longer envy ants.
I still don’t know, instinctively, where in this fascinating world I should scurry at any moment. But I no longer would want to. I have come to value the wandering, as clichéd and trite as that may be. I know that the nourishment we seek stays in no one place, that each day lived with a commitment to love, each breath drawn in happiness, feeds us.
And what crumb could be sweeter than that?
The impetus for this attack was a slight adjustment to my box of tea. This shift in land mass allowed them access to my previously unreachable hanging basket of dirty dishes.
Somehow the master commander of the six-legged army received news of this development. And the invasion began. A futile effort at deterring and squashing left me with bitten ankles and a few too many unwelcome visitors in my PJ bottoms. Thus conquered, I pulled a Chamberlain, tucked my mosquito net tight, and returned to bed. My appeasement wasn’t total though – I did move the tea box. As I tried to sleep through the marching, the little invaders did give me some interesting thoughts.
How is it that ants know exactly where to swarm to find sustenance? To them, my two-room hut must seem as vast as this great big world seems to me and yet, they did not dally, they do not wander lost in corners, embark on fruitless quests up chair legs and into cupboards. To watch them on their trek across the savanna of my cemented, pock-marked floor is to witness a purposeful migration.
Why is it then that we must move so aimlessly across the earth? Seeking and so seldom finding the nourishment that makes our journey worth the while? To just be plopped down and know instinctively where to go to find that crumb that will save you, now that would be an awesome gift.
Or so I used to think. I wrote these opening lines months ago, the bones of a blog entry never completed, pushed aside by the vacations and novels and chitenge projects that kept me from delving into this little ol’ notebook at site. At the time, the ants seemed enviable, in their purposeful marching towards food. I was torn between committing to another year in Zambia working who-knows-where doing who-knows-what, or moving back to the States, and facing similarly vague employment choices. I had been intensely happy in my two years in the village. My cottage had nourished me, fed me the foods I had not known I was hungry for. My electric-less, plumbing-less existence, the long lazy days had been my teacher and I had learned. As Ntozake Shange wrote, “I have found God in myself and I have loved her, I have loved her fiercely.”
But that life had to end, is now ending. And the world, at that moment, seemed too vast. I was an ant in two-room hut. Facing choices – grad school, job search, more volunteering, or as one friend suggested, a move to some ashram where I could do yoga and write – without any inkling of which way I should go.
I write this now wrapped in the cozy comfort of a decision made. Candles flicker and groundnuts roast on the brazier. Through the open window float moths and the voices of my neighbors over evening meals, the full moon adding tones of festivity to their rapid KiKaonde cadences. I have eight such nights left. By the time I type these words, Kamayembe will be gone to me.
I have a new job here – and a good one. I’ll still be a Peace Corps Volunteer but I’ll be working 9-to-5 as an extension agent at an Zambian health NGO. I’ll be helping HIV-positive people to tell their stories, documenting their lives in articles and pictures, and assisting with community radio awareness programs. Though I’ll live in Lusaka – with a real apartment and nearby grocery stores (!) – my job will send me on the road, into the field, one to two weeks a month. Which is what I want. With my new life will come constant internet access and conveniences, so hopefully I will seem more connected to all of you across the ocean.
It was not an easy decision to remain in Africa another year and I did not make it lightly. I miss all you loved ones immensely. I crave my friends’ laughter over good coffee and confessions over good red wine; the warmth of family gatherings and the anonymity of walking an American street, not always being reduced to a race and a gender.
But I also know that this is right. I love Zambia. I love Peace Corps. And I am not yet ready to give them up. They still have much to teach to me. As part of my new contract, I have one month’s paid leave to New York. Right now, I’m thinking October unless anyone has any strong pulls for a different time.
I no longer envy ants.
I still don’t know, instinctively, where in this fascinating world I should scurry at any moment. But I no longer would want to. I have come to value the wandering, as clichéd and trite as that may be. I know that the nourishment we seek stays in no one place, that each day lived with a commitment to love, each breath drawn in happiness, feeds us.
And what crumb could be sweeter than that?
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