Nshima

I wrote this two evenings ago, but had to wait until now to post it. Much is new since I have written it, but I have left it intact. -- V

Riding on a luxury coach, six hours for what amounts to fifteen dollars, past fifteen foot ant hills and mud huts and open fires and forest that has the surreal property of being thick but letting you see for miles, flat russet save for the occasional mountain, and suddenly I am in Africa.  Butterflies that look like swallowtails, but they are electric blue; trees that look like locusts, but their flowers are red; birds the likes of which I have never seen; I recognize no species save for the cattails (which may, indeed, not be a species at all, but a genus or family; I have no idea).

We took the coach to Kitwe, stopping about half way for a snack (in my case, a Hunter’s cider.  The patron, however, did not take the lid off for me, so I had to jury-rig a bottle opener using one suitcase lock cantilevered off of another suitcase lock; I haven’t had beer on a bus since teachers’ college).  At Kitwe, Roger, an affable South African ex-pat, picked us up at the station, and brought us to the Mona Lisa.  He and his colleague, another South African named Leon, ate a last “city” dinner with us, which we tried to make involve meat and cheese.  Roger works for a successful company that supplies mines and oil operations with machinery; we stayed at his home which was luxurious, even by Canadian standards.

The next morning we purchased a few groceries — I had my first Zambian banana — and I tried to purchase a coffee at a café.

“Our coffee machine is broken,” the keeper offered a non-apology, “All we have is filtered coffee”.

Café filtre.  Right.  That’s not normal most places, I remind myself, even in Québec.  “Perfect.  Can I get that to take out please?”

“We are out of take-out cups”.

Something about this land makes sense to me; that a coffee shop could have neither its main product nor the vessels in which to put it, and no one is panicking.  No one is frantically calling this place or that place; no one is having a bad day at work.  The experience was worth the withdrawal headache.

Anton, a friend of Roger’s, dropped us at the West exit of town, on the road towards Chingola.  There I hitched my first ride (on my first attempt, and after Candace and Marissa had no luck... beginner’s luck, as they say).  Two business men in a pickup truck took us as far as Chingola, at the road that heads west towards Solwezi.  There, a husband-wife-child sedan gathered us and took us, quite crowded, the rest of the way.  Along the way there were sporadic vendors selling deep brown eggs, potatoes, and mushrooms the size of umbrellas.

The drop-off for the house is actually “Kibombomene 2”; the main village is another kilometre down the road.  We stopped off at a suburb of Kibo, about a dozen mud huts right on the highway.  From there, Sean and Keith, two local volunteers, helped us carry luggage for about a mile into the thick subtropical bush, towering trees on all sides, ant hills ranging in size from two to twenty feet, conical snails the size of your fist on the muddy path; I immediately noticed the lack of mosquitoes — apparently they only come out at night.

In the evening, I had my first truly Zambian meal: nshima, with two "relishes" (relish is anything that is not nshima or rice, basically).  The first relish was made with a cabbage that we grow here, eggplant, onions and garlic; the second was made with tofu, tomato, onion and salt.  Tomatoes and onions are two quintessential Zambian foods; they go in everything.  Nshima is a corn flour that is boiled until so thick that it forms a dough in your hands.  It is served in lumps the size of your fist, or, I suppose, the size of a Zambian snail.  One washes one’s hands in a bowl of water first.  Nshima is eaten by forming a small piece into your palm and concaving it, then using the thumb to scoop up relish into it; it is dipped in a sprinkle of salt on the plate and put into the mouth all at once.

Nshima is delicious and filling.  It seems to expand in the stomach; one does not need much of it.  I had two lumps two hours ago, and am full.

I am feeling deeply at peace.  To grow a garden and build a small house here is very cheap; it is possible to be completely self-sufficient.  I have seen the garden, and everything grows lush and green and very big.  I am also, conversely, feeling very anxious.  My internet is not working here (I am writing this on Word to transfer later); all indications are that internet will work soon, but it doesn’t work now.  I want to tell everyone that I’m OK.  I want to share this story.

But I am incomplete right now and feeling very lost.  In the future I will share all that is meant by that.  For now, suffice to say that there is a greater adventure that awaits me than coming to the wilds of Africa and beginning a new life.

Meantime, I have met one of the local teachers, who has already tried to teach me some Kaonde.  It hasn’t exactly taken; I look forward to everything about the challenge that is my very existence in this extraordinary land.

Lusaka

They say that you cannot judge Zambia by Lusaka; they are not the same thing at all.  And I suppose that this is true in many places, for neither can you judge Newfoundland by St. John’s, nor Ontario by Toronto, nor the United States by New York, nor Scotland by Edinburgh.

But go to St. John’s, or Toronto, or new York, or Edinburgh, and I defy you to deny that these places are situated in precisely the part of the world in which they ought to be.  The spirits of those cities may not be identical to the land that bore them, but they are clearly emergent from them.

So on the eve of my long and, I am certain, arduous foray north for Kibombomene, I hope that you might forgive me for forming my first impressions of Zambia by moving through her capital.

Colour is the first revelation.  Think about a television set, after someone has pressed the “reset” button on the picture menu, and everything looks a little grey.  I did not realize that I had spent most of my life in that grey, with a few moments of extraordinary colour.  Here, the colour is brilliant all the time, like someone has readjusted the television to maximum colour and contrast.  I don’t know how else to describe it, rather than to say perhaps that here it is like the paint has not yet dried, much less faded.

The heat is somehow not oppressive.  The tree frogs, however, are as noisy as a busy city highway, and their song pulsates, cresting like whitecaps periodically before retreating to the still-deep drone.  The crickets are ubiquitous and anxious.  Lizards scamper to and fro like mice, with that same periodicity as you might find on a walk on a country road.

Lusaka is perhaps, if not a world-class city, more culturally diverse than many of our own.  The Indian food is comparable to the food in India (with the coriander seeds not-quite powder-fine), the Thai food is nicely balanced, and there is even fast food (but no American chains, except for Subway).  But I have already endeavoured to go after local cuisine, and this morning had a dish made of salted, dehydrated fish about an inch long (eyes, bones and everything intact), fried with tomato and onion in butter and served over rice.  It was exactly how you might imagine it which, from my perspective, was wonderful.

I have spent the past couple of days catching up on work, reading and discussing ideas, and staying in touch with loved ones at home.

Here is a riddle for you: If you have the choice between all things being possible, albeit so slowly that you may never see them, or to have large dreams curtailed but smaller ones granted with great haste, which would you choose?  Or, if you had to work five times as hard for five times less money for the privilege of not needing money, would you take it?  If you could stand on the shoulders of giants, or start at the beginning for folks centuries hence to grow just as tall but in a different shape, what would you do?

I have made my choices.  I am not afraid of them being wrong, or right, or misguided.

Tomorrow, I embark on the bus for many long hours north, to Kibombomene, my final destination.

Terra Incognita

Unknown land.  Internal arrangement undetermined.  Here there be dragons.

The Dark Continent.

What is it about one enormous mass of land, supporting countless hundreds of legacies and ethnicities and cultures, that has created such singular grotesque intrigue in the imaginations of those progenitors of the modern West?

Eden.  Land of Lucy.  Where it all began.

There is another side of the same coin, equally obscured by mystery, but this time the obfuscation is accomplished by elevation rather than fog.  Somewhere deep in our collective unconscious, we all seem to have a sense that we have a genealogical home on Earth.

Football and rugby.  Rand and kwatcha.  God and zebras and endless music.

The day to day of a billion souls under solid ground and a blue sky.

Eighty hours prior to my departure, I sit in this coolish room damp from Huron and pre-winter winds, wondering if it is possible or desirable to tease apart the stereotype, and the archetype, and the reality that is Africa.  Like the awkward man in the Toto song, I have these images and legends and they're all from books, because the folks who have been there all seem to have the same look in their eyes; none of them can quite tell me what it is that I will come to know.

And I'm acutely aware that it doesn't really matter, because in a week, God willing, I will be on African soil.  As I am going to a village that is home to fifty-thousand, I cannot discover anything but shrouded shadows of myself; and yet, somewhere in the depths of the spirit of that land, I suspect that there could be discovery in a fashion that I cannot presently imagine.  All my life I have suspected that there may be answers for which there are no questions, and right now I have a naive feeling that some of those answers might well be in the rains of Africa.

I'll find out next week, and I'll try to let you know.

Prophecy

Occasionally if you're lucky as I have been, time coalesces, eddies and through the eye of the vortex that forms as if off a canoe paddle, you can see a little flash of eternity.  Even more rare is when a languageless voice describes to you in that instant what must be on the other side.  For me, this happened most recently at the Candian Festival of Spoken Word.  Kirsten and I attended the final poetry slam at the Metropolitan United Church there on Queen Street, and much of that evening was transcendent.  Slam teams from Ottawa and Kingston and Toronto and elsewhere laid down phrases that reverberate now.  But the voice from beyond was d'bi young.

We were warned.

The inevitable consequence of that warning was the elimination of any second thought about Africa.  We have to go and participate in the dialogue.  Any hesitation is tantamount to plugging back into the hegemon and contributing what little half-dead triple-A battery power we can to it.  We are not going to save anyone but ourselves, but in doing so we will, God willing, take back our small personal powers and cast them towards the cause of emancipation.

It has been nearly a month since my last post.  I am nervous about logistics.  There is paperwork that has not cleared, there are phone calls unreturned, and while these would be minor abberations on the ground, the fact of the matter is that planes take off and leave with Western linear precision.  Unexpected expenses are limiting some elements of control that I would otherwise have.

Fewer than three weeks remain.  I will need to apologize in advance to all of you whom I will not get to see before I go; you know how much I love you.

Praxis

"This is one of those readings," I said to Kirsten the other day as she sat under the very maple that I described in an earlier post, "that plays with your mind.  It's thick — it's good but it's thick — it's changing everything for me".

Kirsten knew exactly what I was talking about.  It was delightful, but no great surprise, that the rich journey I was undertaking through great mental effort in my graduate school readings had been an inspiring text to her as well.  She had, of course, read the same text for leisure back in undergrad, had known about it all along and had integrated it into her own professional practice.  I will resist the temptation to try to describe being in love with a person that I admire so deeply, partly because I don't suspect that I could.

But that was the moment that we began the dialogue of the dialogue, the discussion of the implications of the work of Paulo Freire and his seminal Pedagogy of the Oppressed.

Pedagogy of the Oppressed is thick and challenging for a reason, and as such it defies straight-forward explanation.  Instead, here's a little re-tooling of my thinking with an eye on Freire's ideas.

I have always felt that it would be a mistake to try to promote a Western curriculum in Zambia — indeed, the people of Kibombomene don't want that — the education must be Zambian and run by Zambians if it is to be effective.

But one of our challenges is that the Zambian system itself is mired in Western inspiration (heavy English usage, content with little local context) which does not always translate into easy implementation into rural areas, like Kibo.

But to encourage the people, or the government, to de-Westernize their own work and develop their own truly Zambian curriculum is still tantamount to the Westerner stepping in and declaring "I Know The Right Way!" — the very idea has at its root an implicit hegemony.

So what, then, is my role?

Freire's work suggests that all of these ideas are the wrong focus.  All of these ideas are rooted in the notion that I could stroll into town with some model or another that is going to be the "solution", if only it's implemented.  And that will never work.  Neither will doing nothing.

The solution lies in dialogue.  Yes, I understand Western education systems well and yes, I believe based upon my research that the more Zambians direct their own education, the better off the school experience will be, and I know how to implement technology in education to great effect.  Those are my experiences and my biases.  And the people of Kibo have their own experiences and biases, and it will be of no service to guess or prejudge what these are until I can dialogue with them directly (Freire also insists, helpfully, that no person can truly speak on behalf of another).  Together we will dialogue, not making an argument or promoting a world-view or striving for a "goal" or "solution", but rather for the sake of the human fulfillment that comes from dialogue.  And if Freire is right, and we share true words rooted in both reflection and action, we will create; the school will come of it.

This isn't about dialectic.  This isn't about a resolution of tensions.  Intersection of differing world-views need not be tense, and there is no expectation of static resolution.  But a dynamic school and curriculum and community can grow out of the dialogue.

It is important to understand that Freire wasn't just a theorist; his ideas were put into practice effectively in Brazil in the 1970s.  I need to know more.  Kirsten, my graduate program and my own research are facilitating this.

So after all, I don't need to have the "right" model or the right idea — that should never be my role.  All I can do is know my ideas and models the best that I can, and bring them to the dialogue, and others will bring their ideas and models, and development will occur as it will.  This essential idea of capacity development drives fundraisers and sponsors nuts because it defies all possibilities of establishing clear goals, timelines and methods of assessment; but even that tension doesn't need to be either-or if those values are also respected in the dialogue.

This project never was about me; but reading Freire shows me how the self-importance of saying "it's not about me" as an inflexible self-righteous philosophy still focusses the attention back to me; he shows me how to make sure that it's not about me.  It's about the people of SWSC and the people of Kibombomene exploring "school" in a reflection/action based dialogue that is mediated by the world and realities that touch us.

And I'll tell you what that looks like when I get there.  That is, in the final analysis, the only fair and true thing that I can do.

Comments are most welcome on this.  I could use every idea and feeling that I can get my hands on right now.

Suppose...

Suppose that, being in love with the sun, you lost the light.  The world in all its splendour is still accessible, and you can perceive its beauty in spite of the ubiquitous shadow.  Perhaps you would rededicate your life to exploring that beauty more deeply than you had ever considered possible; perhaps you would use every sense you never knew you had or that you had taken for granted since your first days beyond infancy to re-engage and re-define your universe.  In doing so, suppose that you found yourself upon a path that was to lead you on a great quest.  Not a quest for fire or light, but rather a quest whose nature was based upon the communication of beauty in a dark world.

Now, suppose that, barely embarked upon that path, the Sun returned, except brighter and more splendid than you had ever known, a Sun that cast no shadows, that lit from all directions and yet radiated even the most distant and most obscure items into perfect relief and clarity.  Suppose it warmed you and nourished you and eliminated every need.

There are two possible responses to the ascension of the light.  One would be, I suppose, to sit down cross-legged on the path, or perhaps to begin to wander aimlessly in the brightness of the world.

The other action would be to consider that the quest has gained not only value, but also potential and clarity by the return of the light.  It would be to follow the path with greater enthusiasm and confidence, excited by the possibility of being able to finally see, and to see in ways that you never imagined before.

Now, suppose that the light is not some soul-less artifact of the universe, but a spirit akin to your own.  Suppose that all of this is just an impoverished metaphor to try to describe the feeling of falling deeply in love in the very weeks preceding your departure for the other side of the planet.  Does this change your reaction to the path or the quest that lies in wait for you upon it?

And now let me stop being coy and answer directly; to be in love is to cherish all of the paths and quests on which a lover embarks, confident of convergence.  I have written before that it is not about sacrifice, but rather the deep and perennial desire to make every moment of another's life perfect.  And I will add one more thing: it is also about the profound, unrestrained, unapologetic and unequivocal desire to see your love succeed in every quest, and walk every path, all the while waiting with great anticipation for the frequent mutual returns to Home.

There is a traditional Scottish song wherein the chorus is a bellicose "tha tighin fodham", which means, depending on the translation, "The wish was mine" or "It comes upon me".  Two disparate concepts in English parlance are, in fact, unified as a single phrase, and a single idea: that moment, or mission, or quest, or path that at once smacks of destiny and desire.  Love understands and celebrates this sacred idea.

And having been enlightened to the truth and possibility of this, I feel infinitely, divinely fortunate.

Implications

My brother hosts what is (and I don't wish to be told otherwise even in the face of evidence) the biggest and best private Robbie Burns Day party in the City of Windsor.  He has done this for the better part of a decade.  Without elaborating on details that should stay snobbishly exclusive to those of us fortunate enough to be invited, the plan involves preparing a haggis from scratch, watching Scottish film, playing Scottish trivia, singing Scottish folk songs, and drinking just an extraordinary amount and variety of fine single malt.

I mention it because I will not be there for Robbie Burns Day this year.

There is an expectation, I think, that I will lament not being near my family for Christmas, being in Zambia instead, where there is not even a remote chance for a white Christmas.  That expectation has allowed me to focus on Christmas as a sort-of gold standard: if I can get my head around not being here for Christmas, then anything else should be easy.

But the thing is, I don't particularly enjoy Christmas in the same way as others do.  I suspect that I will again in the future, but western notions of Christmas (if this is news) are singularly antithetical (or at least taunting) to umarried independent adult childless men.  It may be an arguable point, but that doesn't change the fact that the Christmas experience for me is no grave loss.
Burns Day is something different.  It is an important tradition, and I will miss it deeply.

Such revelations in no way diminish my anticipation of boarding the plane, my anticipation of meeting the people of Kibombomene, my anticipation of helping the good work of Same World Same Chance to progress, my anticipation of mango time, my anticipation of all that I cannot possibly anticipate at this point.  It is a simple and pure acknowledgement of something that is true about me, that I will miss Robbie Burns Day this year.

And perhaps the greater truth in this statement is that it is important for me to talk about whatever feelings and apprehensions I have, even when there is absolutely no reason to change them or fix them or alter circumstances surrounding them.

And I wonder if that's something that can be generalized.