Deep In The Heart Of Chisamba Jungle, You Can Hear Banani Rumble! Who Haa! Who Haa!

I feel the need to tell people about the transportation here, which happens to include the absolute radiance of the people here.

Fact: The mini buses are always packed. By packed, I mean you are most likely not in an upright position and you are definitely tweaking some part of your body. Body parts may even go numb. No else can fit, unless you shove them under the seat (this has not happened).

Fact: Almost anything can be brought onto the bus. Huge bags of rice or grain, cement, live chickens, boxes of fruit. There is somehow always space for it.

Fact: You may wait five seconds to flag down a bus, or, on many occasions, an hour. There isn’t really a time system.

Fact: You will always meet interesting people on the buses.

Now, my love for these buses has not wavered. In fact, it has only increased.

Last week, the youth were heading to Kabwe for a teaching trip. As we were heading there, the bus stopped to pick up a woman and her two children. There wasn’t much room, so she was going to have both of them sit on her lap plus the three bags she was carrying. However, as she was getting in and situated, a man in front grabbed one of her bags and just held it on his lap. This is second nature here. No one thinks twice about it. If someone has too much, others will take it and hold it for them until they got off. I feel like if that happened in America, the person who took it to be helpful would just get beat or something. Shame.

Then, another wonderful thing happened. The conductor wouldn’t let her have her two kids on her lap cuz there just wasn’t room, so he took one of the girls and put her on his lap. What? My God, a woman would freak the EF out if a man took her child and put her on his lap.

Not here.

Then, a man got off and the little girl sat in his seat until other people got on and she would just sit on them. I think she sat on three different laps, and it wasn’t a big deal. Just people helping people. What a concept.

I love how this place is very much a family and everyone helps each other out. It’s incredible.

On this same trip, we were told by guards at Banani to pay 40 pin total to Kabwe. The conductor even said 10 pin each for the four of us. That is, until we got on the bus and started moving. I gave him a 50 and asked for 10 pin back, but then he raised it to 20 pin.

SAY WHAT?! Psh. He be a fool if he think we gonna pay that much.

He tried lowering it to 15. Please. We were sticking with 10 pin each and I wasn’t leaving without my change.

When we arrived at the Kabwe bus station, I asked the conductor for my change and he told me I owed him 10. So then I went to the driver and spoke with him. Long story short, after some marriage proposals and refusals, asking if they were ripping us off cuz we’re white, and some good ol’ bantering, I got my 10 pin back.

However, when we called the family we were staying with, they told us it actually is 15 pin from Banani to Kabwe. Oops. I felt like a terrible person, BUT the conductor did say 10 pin at first.

Well, now we know and it won’t happen again.

Also, it is 15 pin to Lusaka…and we have only paid twelve. I never would have guessed that WE were ripping THEM off. Bah!

So anyway, Kabwe was awesome and we went to a devotional the morning we arrived, volunteered to tutor Ruhi Book 2 that week, and then went to visit the parent’s of some of the junior youth. The families are wonderful, and we explained more about the junior youth program and how it provides moral, spiritual, intellectual, and social education and how its aim is to empower them. Some families only spoke Bemba, so Yvonne would translate for us. She introduced us to some of the kids in her JY group.

We also met a man named Gilbert who is one of Yvonne’s friends. We chatted with him for a bit and then some drunken guys came up to us and tried to talk, so Yvonne and Gilbert put us in a car and we headed home. It was rather amusing, and Gilbert seems soooo awesome! I think he is about 60 or 70 and he is quite the character.

The next morning, on Monday, we came back to Banani. Nura, Sharghi and I were going to go back to Kabwe on Wednesday to do a Book 2 intensive. SAWEEET!!!

We had three days to do Book 2…and we freaking did it! My dear sweet awesomeness, we finished it! It was loads of fun. The group was amazing and I really hope the intensive was effective. They all seem so willing to fill the needs of their community, so hopefully us tutors didn’t destroy their capacity. We learned so much from them and things that we thought were universal were, in fact, not. For example, naturally/easily introducing Baha’i concepts into conversations about poverty or literacy. Back home, I would say that that is easy and can definitely be done, but here it is almost taboo to talk about and can be extremely offensive. In this culture it isn’t easy or natural to bring up and people may expect you to help them financially. Not to say that it shouldn’t be brought up, but just that there are appropriate ways to go about it. You need to be sensitive to the norms of the culture. What may seem doable in one part of the world isn’t always doable in another part of the world.

Duh. But this helped solidify that idea.

Oh Ruhi. Job well done.

As well as doing Ruhi, we sat in on a PSA class. I think that stands for Preparation for Social Action. Anyway, it’s an educational system formed in small group tutorials that aims to provide spiritual and intellectual education to help people contribute to social transformation. The session we sat in on was about energy. Oh that brought back memories of Miller’s physics class. It was really interesting to listen and participate in. We didn’t get too far before we had to leave, but it was great to finally see that in action.

We also visited Gilbert and my earlier assumption of how great he seemed was proved correct. He shared so many stories and his thoughts and views on many issues. He talked a lot about education, religion, and poverty. He brought up really interesting points and we could not get a word in edge wise. For real. We just sat there with our glasses of juice and enjoyed the conversation. He was quite passionate about the importance of education and was saying that people think Zambia is a peaceful country when it really isn’t because people are fighting against poverty every day. How could a country be peaceful when people are starving and don’t have a place to sleep? Peace is not JUST the absence of war, but the absence of strife.

Mah! I just loved this man. He invited us to stay with him and his wife if we ever need to. He showed us around his house and showed us the “refrigerator domestic” and said he had a working toilet like “European.” Haha! He’s a gem.

OH OH!!! And the first trip to Kabwe we stayed with Muhammed and Isabelle who was very very pregnant. Almost to the point of not being pregnant anymore. So when we came the second time, we stayed with Chibwe and his family. While we were there, Isabelle had her baby and we went to go see him! He is sooooo cute! And they are great with him. They don’t speak to him in that baby language. They speak to him like he is an actual human life form with intelligence. I liked that.

AND! Chibwe’s wife can play the guitar and one night she started playing “We are One” from flippen LION KING 2!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Oh joy of joys! And they also have a really cute daughter. I love the families here!

Oh, right. Christmas was nice. We baked cookies all day and have eaten them all. Scrumptious! My first hot Christmas too! Ha! That was amusing. It never felt like Christmas, even with seeing all the X-mas decorations and hearing X-mas music. When we went to Shoprite, it was sooo insanely crowded! We had no idea why, and then Nura remembered it was X-mas eve. What? When did that happen?

This week we’ve just been relaxing, watching a lot of tv shows and movies on Krista’s laptop, meeting Colleen’s friends, hanging with the Moore’s, and saying goodbye to Madame Mwika. She was the French teacher, but she is going back to Congo. I’m going to miss her so much. She was such a sweet person.

Also, this place reminds me a lot of Badasht, a camp I go to in the summer. It’s a little creepy sometimes and I expect youth to start singing. It’s nice to feel like I’m at Badasht.  Sometimes it makes me miss all the people back home, except for the Head’s and Hal and Anne cuz they’re leaving (just kidding, I miss you guys) and all the singing, but I love it nonetheless.

Oh, and playing in the rain instead of swimming…such a good idea.

LYLT