Zambia -- our visit to a small village

Zambia

We arrived in the dark a mile or so from our final destination, a small village in the northeast corner of Zambia, near the Angola an Congo borders.

This came after 54 hours

on a rickety train from Dar es Salaam, the capitol of Tanzania.

The

train bucked fore and aft and swayed severely along the way.

The

engine broke down and was replaced.

The toilet long ago stopped flushing, instead a large drum of water was there with a scoop.

On the other hand, the food was quite good,

and we slept as soundly as one might hope given the

motion.

During the day at stops people came to sell food, water

and various goods as well.

It was quite the colorful scene.

Crossing the border, we disembarked at night in Kapiri Mposhi, 6 hours behind schedule, then found someone to drive us to Ndola.

The hotel was lovely and they

were ready for us.

We enjoyed the great

shower after the dusty two-day journey.

We had a good pizza for dinner and a great breakfast the next morning in the seating area outside our rooms, cooked to order just for us by the hotel’s chef.

We

left in the morning to meet up with our nephew Travis, who would take us to the tiny village where he lived and worked during his Peace Corps stint.

The modern

bus was accompanied by a preacher who stood next to me for the first hour, sermonizing in very good English in a voice loud enough to be heard by the people in the back.

My ears were much

relieved to see him get off, not to mention my annoyance with the

subject matter.

After many hours in the slow bus we found Travis

in Solwezi, the regional capital by texting back and forth with him.

He took us to a comfortable guest house and a good restaurant, a place few of the locals could afford, although inexpensive for us.

The next morning, we visited the large local street market.

Unlike

the trash-littered local area, it is spic and span despite the dirt floors and the old sheet metal roofs.

Peanut flower, dried

grasshoppers, tomatoes, a wide variety of greens. vendors offered their wares.

Later we visited Peace Corps local

headquarters, a neat old house. where

Friendly

It’s a place for meetings and

volunteers get a break and hang around with the people

they trained with.

Someone made us dinner and we drank a beer.

The next day we waited quite a while for a bus, then it was another slow going all day journey to his village.

We were warmly

met by several men from the village, who came to help carry our luggage during the mile-long walk from the tarmac.

One piled several

suitcases on a bicycle.

The other hoisted a

suitcase onto his head.

We were

glad for the help, for the path turned out to be long, and in the dark we faced as we jumped off the bus, the only color came from the moon and the stars as we set along the dirt path leading into the bush.

The well-worn path, flat at first, wandered into low rolling hills.

After close to an hour we saw a glow on the horizon.

As I stood on the hill looking, Danny crossed the stream stepping gingerly on the logs.

With

his wife, Shirley, he’d joined Peg and I for the journey starting in Dar Es Salaam.

Atop the hill

a group from a village greeted us so warmly that even now, some years later, the glow remains with me.

The young women bounced

with glee, a welcome to people of a race who’d enslaved millions of theirs, for which a certain degree of consternation would be entirely understandable. history.

Perhaps they did not know the

After all it did not happen here but in west Africa.

But

the exploitation of the copper resources did happen here, by Europeans.

But it was all set aside.

It turned out that this was not our village but a nearby one, with many shared relatives.

On we went with the

young and their parents for the remaining few minutes.

There the

warmth of the welcome was repeated.

Our nephew had done a good job developing relations with the locals, the fruits of which we witnessed, as they sang beautifully in chorus, and then danced around the fire.

We were transfixed by the

rhythms, the singing, the naturalness of their movements, as if

they’d been trained to be on stage, not here in the middle of the African bush, but on the world stage.

In the morning we viewed our surroundings in the sunshine.

We

stayed in Travis’ hut, made of red clay with a thatched roof. villagers built it for him. A condition of Peace Corps sending a volunteer is that the locals provide housing.

The

They also made him a latrine and a shower.

They

carry water from the stream.

There were about a dozen huts in the village, all made of the same brick.

We had a small bed and a chair.

Overall it was comfortable.

Danny

and Shirley slept in a tent on the porch, visited at night by the local dogs and a goat.

There was coffee in the morning!

The friendly villagers showed us around the area, made us several meals, including some mighty fine beans for dinner.

They gave Peg a chicken, which later became dinner.

There are no eating utensils.

They make a paste

from cassava, which they grow in the fields nearby.

This paste is then formed into a spoon

they use to scoop beans, for example.

They much appreciated the shirts, blouses, jump ropes and other kid things we brought.

The people live into their late 40’s. mid-teens.

They suffer from malaria and AIDS.

few cases of elephantiasis. relievers.

They have children in their I even saw a

They frequently asked us for pain

The women now can go to a clinic to give birth,

although it is several kilometers away. ample supply.

Food and clean water are in

They grow corn, sweet potatoes and beans.

have a fish farm.

They

Travis was there to help them build a dam so

they could have additional ponds.

The project neared completion

before he left.

We were three days with these charming and welcoming people, perhaps the friendliest people I have ever met.

To see others from Zambia go to Zambia paintings