We arrived in early September to live on a farm while our
main place was being renovated…we have just now moved in and frankly our new
house is far more than we could ever have hoped for, great for us, for visitors
and ideal for hosting our embryonic social enterprise about which you will read
more later... we just need to get rid of a few…existing residents first.
Our Director (David) was sick when we arrived. It is
customary here for your host to come and visit you first before you may go to
see them, indeed others would have viewed David as very rude if we had gone to
his house before he had first visited us. This is to do with the hospitality
culture in Zambia and would have implied to anyone who found out that we
weren’t being adequately welcomed, and would have shamed David (the first of
many cultural differences we have learned). Hospitality is a seen as a serious
issue in Zambia. So with David ill and unable to
travel to see us, we had a few days of settling in, meeting people, registering
with clinics, sorting visa paperwork and so forth. We spent time generally
working out which way was up – it was
actually really nice and we soon began to feel comfortable. When we finally met
up with David and his wife Lydia it was lovely and natural, a great start.
Walking through Ndola you are unlikely to see another white
person unless you go to the new and fairly posh out of town shopping area
(where you can get amazing ice-cream for a special treat). I [Claire] was asked
whether this was intimidating – the answer is an emphatic no. With the kids we
get stared at, especially as Reuben tends to walk rather than being carried,
and we will be told off by a passer-by if one of the children has a runny nose,
and naturally we get touted for business on the street more than the average
black guy (you are white and therefore automatically wealthy), but that is as
far as it goes. People seem to be genuinely friendly, warm and welcoming,
especially if you greet them in the local language. There’s not much to ‘do’ here,
and the town centre is run down, but there is real investment going on and even
rumours of a cinema opening in the next couple of years.
We have heard that Zambians are among friendliest people on
Earth, and our experience certainly supports that. Last week we were in the
next large town North of Ndola without a map and trying to find a shop which
was mentioned on a web page that was ten years without update. After wandering
round in circles for a while we asked someone if they knew where it was, and
not only did they know, they left what they were doing and walked with us to
find it – about a kilometre away. Now you could suggest that was one random
friendly person who fancied a walk with a couple of white folk on a Tuesday morning,
but then it happened again while looking for a second hidden shop – after
asking someone where to find it they left their own shop to take us over there.
So, ok, that’s two people out of a population of 14 million, but from our small
and statistically insignificant sample I say we agree that Zambians are
friendly.
Aside from the friendliness of people we meet, what strikes us
most is the utter beauty of the trees. Yes, everyone knows Claire is an
environmentalist and therefore constitutionally required to find trees pleasant
and heart-warming, but they really do have to be seen to be appreciated - while
the ground is often dry and dusty, the vibrancy in the colour of the Jacaranda
and Flame trees is spectacular. The simple beauty of these trees
never fails to lift our spirits… I hope that is always the case and I am so
thankful for it.
Whilst we were in the very early stages of settling in Jason
received a call you don’t want to have to take: 8 members of David’s wife’s family, including 4
brothers and a sister, had been killed in a tragic car accident. 12 people were
killed in all and the accident was national (and international) news. A state funeral for all 12 people was held at
the Ndola stadium; about a thousand people attended the funeral, including many
dignitaries – it was a very sad occasion. The grief felt by David and Lydia is
very big and very real and it will take the family a long, long time to come to
terms with. We hope we can be a real support in this process.
So with David being understandably out-of-action, we have
been filling our time with other things while waiting for the J-Life work to be
envisioned and clarified. Claire was asked by one of the ladies on the farm if
she would go and speak at her ladies group – which she readily accepted and
totally loved. It was such an honour to be invited into their home, a very
small tin roofed house where the ladies met to chat, pray and sing. Many of
them didn’t speak good English, but one lady translated and they had a great
time. Here is a photo of some of
the ladies outside the house.
All through our time with J-Life we have both been committed
to exploring the idea of setting up a small number of micro enterprises to
providing sustainable employment at above average wages and good working
conditions. This has many positives…we provide employment opportunities for
local people and we raise much needed funds for J-Life Zambia. Claire’s
emergent enjoyment of sewing, cultivated whilst in South Africa, seemed the
perfect way to start… but getting things up and running with one sewing machine
in time for the Christmas market was going to prove tricky. Our neighbour dropped
into conversation that her friend in Uganda made Christmas cards, at which
point a huge light went on in Claire’s head and she went immediately
(literally) to action. She cut up the African chitenge sling we bought to carry
Reuben (in the vain hope that people would stop stopping us in the street to
complain about him being made to walk) and played with banana leaf from the farm.
We talked to lots of people and asked Claire’s new bible study friends to be
our focus group and help whittle down our prototypes to a final selection. We
were encouraged by the response, Jason got to work on the website, and we
agreed with David our desired name ‘Jireh Crafts’ which links back to one of
the Biblical names given for God – Jehovah Jireh – God the Provider.
We now employ two ladies who are doing well. We are hoping
to diversify in the New Year and work on the sewing idea (helped as one of our
ladies is a trained dress maker) and we are currently looking at ideas to keep
them employed whilst we are in the UK for 5 weeks over Christmas. But for now,
whilst there are still lots of questions to be answered, we think this could
work and we are giving it our best shot. As this blog goes to press we have had
orders for almost 1,200 cards and have made just over 1,000. We want to make
this business sustainable so we can keep our ladies employed and earning so
here is the blatant and unashamed plug…if you haven’t yet bought your Christmas
cards and want something a little different that could make a little
difference, check out our Jireh Crafts website at www.jireh-crafts.org. We love
the designs and hope that you like them too. If you do, then please fill in an
order form.
So back to our house. It’s an old colonial building which
you would immediately recognise from any film set in 1940s Africa. The area of
Ndola in which we live is Kansenshi, which is fairly affluent and has a
higher-than-average proportion of mzungus (as those of us with a genetic
melanin deficiency are called around these parts). It’s a nice place – the roads
are in very poor repair, and every house is gated, but it is friendly and
pretty and quiet. We have friends who live round the corner, and the garden is
massive – easily big enough for the vegetable patch, chicken run, and banana
tree that we are planning, and the bike track , sand pit, and reptile arena that
Daniel and Reuben want. It’s going to take a lot of work, but one of the things
about living here is that there’s a social expectation that you employ at least
a gardener, and given the wage for a gardener is pitifully small, it’s not a
tough choice. We hope to give someone slightly higher than average wages for
lower than average hours in an attempt to be honourable without creating
division.
(Incidentally the word Mzungu comes from the Swahili word
mzunguzungu, which means “a terribly dizzy person” because, evidently, that’s
what the first white folk looked like when they stumbled blindly into Kenya wafting
at the flies with silk handkerchiefs and asking the peaceable natives for
directions to the nearest mint julep.)
On the first day we moved in, Reuben and Daniel were playing
and we heard Reuben saying “There’s mice, there’s mice!”, which we put down to
part of their game not thinking that a) he could have been telling the truth
and, b) his limited vocabulary might conceivably lump mice and rats into the
same furry bracket. It was only when one of the things ran across the lounge
during Grey’s Anatomy, causing Claire
to squeal and Jason to have to pretend to be manly, that we realised we should
pay more attention to our two-year-old. Four days and a whole bowl of rat poison
later, and we think the situation is settling down. Shame, really, as Daniel
was on board with a plan to get a snake to keep them under control. A few more
days and Claire would have cracked.
On the subject of reptiles, we do have some other house
guests that are way cooler than the rats: we have a big colony of gheckos
living in the walls. We often see them climbing around inside chasing flies,
making them attractive and useful pets. And the kids love them. Here’s a
picture of a baby one making friends.
Apart from that, we’ve been doing some J-Life promotion with
pastors with a view to pulling an Ndola-based group of trainees together in the
new year, and Jason is going to DRC in a few days to help with some training in
Kinshasa. And we’re trying hard to learn Bemba so that we can communicate more
effectively with people in the rural areas.
So things are settling down for us here in Zambia. The house
is great and big enough to hold training events and socials, and the community
is awesome. Just in the two months we’ve been here, we’ve made friends we’ll
stay in contact with for life, we’ve got friends we share child care with, we’ve
got friends we share curry with. The only thing we’re waiting on is for the J-Life
work to really kick into gear, which will hopefully take off when we come back
to Zambia after Christmas.
Things are moving along. Not as fast as we’d like, but
getting there, as they say in Bemba, panono
panono. Little by little.
