Images of Lusaka

So 2.5 months left in Zambia but it feels like 2 weeks. I think because my focus has been pointed toward the US and all the jobs I haven't applied to yet. But I refuse to let next year take over the rest of this year. And one of my solutions is to try and document and capture all the magic moments of Zambian life. Which is entirely retrospective and a blissfully passive attempt to hold on to the present. But at least maybe these pictures will help others glimpse the pinhole sized image of Lusaka that I've experienced this year.

Early morning at a VCT event, kids posing in front of a dusty charcoal market

Walking to get there

A boy pauses with a bag of charcoal (the real wood charcoal is used to cook with and for warmth at night)

A business man walking home with his goods

Building blocks for sale, hand made and stacked here on the side of the road

Infinite entertainment, a boy rolling a tyre

Best friends at a VCT event

A government school

A Zambian flag laying in a field behind a local government school

Following the leader, and a boy in the gutter carrying vegetables on his head

Walking, Crawling, Sliding, and Getting Down

"SUPRIERS OF BLOCKS"

Local market

A cozy hang out after school

A prized possession


Ride home from work


Young responsibilities

Sunday Evening Drive

When 16:00 rolled around last Sunday, all the interns felt lazy and cooped up because we had slept in and sat around all day, with computers on our laps and food in our bellies. So we thought we would get some exercise by going for a drive. Lusaka is flat, dirty and can get monotonous. But a 20 minute drive outside the city and you're surrounded my endless expanses of green bush and big skies. The trip was cliche from the beginning. We needed to sooth our souls with natures beauty, and we achieved it by driving our big, gas guzzling 4-wheel drive truck as far as we could. An hour into our adventure, as the sun started setting in our rear-view mirror, we decided to turn around and head back home while the potholes were still visible. On our way back the sun fell over the horizon and left this for us:

Max and Jamie (friend) deep in thought upon our car

The Madre In Zambia

My mom flew in to Lusaka a little over a week ago. We drove around to see what Grassroot Soccer does on the ground. We watched an intervention being delivered to kids at a school, attended a weekly development sessions where coaches practice delivering interventions and get feedback, and signed 600 graduation certificates. Then we took off to a nice lodge on the side of the Zambezi River near the Lower Zambezi National Park. Here are pictures from our relaxing adventure:

Find the goofy lady in green

The view from the lodge

African fish eagle that flew across our path and landed on this tree

Sand of an island we stopped on

Our guide Tobias (TOW-bee-us) pointing out some elephants

The same scene but with the camera tilted and the elephants hidden behind our heads

Refreshments

A croc

A hippo

Cool green birds that nest in the clay cliff walls along the river

Ants on our boat

Rain clouds in the distance

Sun setting over our wake. We cruised around slowly without a wake most of the afternoon, but we occasionally had to speed up so that hippos wouldn't attack our boat as we passed them. Our boat was a 24 foot metal fishing boat.

Sunset view from our dinner table

And the Weeks Start Rollin

Life has consisted of many genuine and some routine "happy new year"s, an insatiably affectionate puppy, waiting outside principal's offices as we begin to plan our next interventions, a 12 hour fever, and mangoes. Lots of mangoes.

Mangoes are a wonderful new fruit in my life. The tree in our yard breaks up the bleak, boring 4 meter walk from our house to our office. The tree is sick on one side, with a black film having overtaken most of the leaves. The one good side hangs much lower to the ground, weighed down by all the giant, softball-sized, fresh, green mangoes with a skin-like firmness and a shape seemingly designed to ergonomically cuddle your thumb. Just a delectable fruit in every sense.

When you pull one off its branch, juice starts bubbling out of the broken stem over the whole Mango, just letting you know that you've committed to a 20 minute eating experience that will end with a smile, a bath and a dozen toothpicks.

Next to ripen are the lemons, guava and then AVOCADOS.

P.S. There has been a devastating shortage of cheese in Lusaka since we have all been back. I may be sending out letters asking for sharp cheddar soon, instead of asking for money.

A Fresh Start in 2011

First 24 hours back in Zambia.

And I've already gone for a run, showered in ice water twice (water heater is working i just turned on the wrong nozzle), brushed my teeth three times, eaten two bananas, put clean sheets on my bed, logged a full day of work, taken my malaria pill, slept 12 hours, consumed the daily requirement of water, done 30 push ups, scooped up a massive pile of Kamba poop and read 10% of a book on my Kindle.

2011 here we go!

Home Killed Dinner

Two weeks ago Max (below) came back from her trip to a refugee camp with a live chicken. Village chicken is how they refer to them here, the ones that run around freely. As you can see it was pretty big, and had beautiful feathers. We wanted to eat it before Kamba did, so Max let me kill it. Gift instructed me on how to ceremoniously defeat the chicken.

Dig a little hole. Grab the chicken by its wings. Then lay it on its side. Stand, one foot, on its feet and the other on its wings. With one hand hold the head back, just under the jaw bone. Then with the other hand, grasping the sharpest knife you can find, saw into its neck. And let the blood run into the hole.

There was no instruction about prayer or thanks for the chicken before its death. But my thoughts immediately brought me to a scene where Native Americans were about to kill some animal, so I took a moment to appreciate its life and the food that it would give us later that evening. Then I pinned its surprisingly submissive body under my weight. And began to saw into its neck. I was really concerned that I wouldn't be firm enough, and do some tortuous damage to the bird without killing it. So I concentrated on making sure I cut hard into its neck. Well it took a few motions for the knife to catch, and then it went right through to the neck bone, and one more motion to cut through the bone. The head popped right off. And sprayed blood all over my leg and foot. I have a feeling this sounds a lot more grotesque than the actual experience. The chicken was so ignorant of its surroundings and so submissive that it made no attempt not to give its life up to keep us fed.






After the chicken bled for a minute, and twitched violently without its head for 3 minutes, we put it in boiling water and began to remove its feathers. Within minutes we were holding what looked exactly like the full chickens you find in grocery stores. White. Meaty. Clean. Hairless. Ready to be marinated and thrown on the grill. That was an odd experience. Even after gutting out the insides, the process had only taken 45 minutes. What was so clearly dinner, something I associate entirely with BBQs, marinade, protein and KFC was running around our yard 45 minutes earlier. Part of my desire to kill the chicken was to bridge this gap. The gap between our knowledge of a live chicken, and our conception of the food chicken. It was comforting in a raw, animalistic kind of way to eat meat that you kill with your hands. And it was delicious, thanks to Max's marinade.

Educate. Inspire. Mobilize. Stop the spread of HIV.

On a much more inspiring and optimistic note than my last two posts, here are some statistics from my last few months at Grassroot Soccer. Although I love the quote "there are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies and statistics," the non-profit, HIV prevention world is unfortunately supported almost entirely by organizations and companies that want output numbers to reflect the numbers of dollars they input. But that is a long discussion for later. Now, the stats (these numbers only reflect the grant program that I coordinate, so overall the numbers are a lot bigger for Grassroot Soccer Zambia as a whole):

September - November, 2010:
- 2100 Grassroot Soccer graduates (kids that finished our 10 session HIV prevention and life skills curriculum)
- 3000 kids and adults tested at events we organized
- 60 coaches and 30 trained counselors were mobilized at 9 different schools and numerous community groups (teams, social groups...etc) in 4 communities across Lusaka
- 10,000+ people were indirectly influenced by Grassroot Soccer efforts (indirectly influenced individuals are those who our graduates talk to about HIV, stigma, gender violence...etc.)
- 12% increase in HIV and healthy living knowledge in graduates (based on pre and post tests).

P.S. The blog post title is the GRS mission, if you couldn't figure it out.