Saturday 9 November 2013

17. Panono panono

And so we arrived… apparently 8 weeks ago. In some respects it feels like forever, and in others, so many others, we are still babies learning how to walk in a new environment.

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.