I’m writing this about a week out of context but I feel that enough of this space has been dedicated to my introspection so far and I should tell you all what I have learned about the place I actually am based on that most dubious source; an eyewitness’s account of a culture I am barely touching the surface of for a very limited amount of time. As such please expect to be reading more about the western world than a developing rural Southern African nation.

The first time I noticed my perspective was changing was on my 3rd full day here when I was reorganizing my room for better utility

before reorg…

after reorg

and I found I had misplaced a small sum of Kwacha, the local currency. In the lead-up to this trip and the first few days of it I had been counseled by everyone who cares for me of the dangers of theft and the importance of personal security etc. My immediate response was to try to think of who had been in my room and how they had found the safe, and did I leave it unopened… I was quite worried. After about an hour of sifting through my things I ‘knew’ the money had been stolen and that I couldn’t trust any of the locals.

Then I found the cash of course.

It was in the bottom of the drawer beside my safe. Quite visible and accessible to anyone who would have wanted to steal it. No one had though. It was my first impression (read prejudice) that had been formed form the constant refrain of good intentioned people (Love you Mom!) and media sources convincing me of the inherent risk of places like this rather than allowing my impressions to be formed by the subject itself.

Zambia wants earnestly to be your friend. For the same reason that anyone wants to be your friend. They like you and see in you an opportunity for self improvement. I think the people I’ve met have all wanted to speak English to me because they want to practice English and find out more about my life. I feel that I came here with an essential misunderstanding; I thought people here would be different.

That is a somewhat shameful admission because I feel it speaks to a bigger issue. I believe that all people are equal and I think I am at least intellectually aware that all people are basically the same. Somehow through all my education and pride of egalitarian thought, I came here nevertheless hampered with the thought that because of the conditions here and the life they lead that they would be different from me.

Different, is a funny word. It simultaneously describes everything and nothing about this place. I tell you it is different here but that is a great way to not tell you anything. By using that word I haven’t altered your state of ignorance or helped elucidate my experience to you. I’ve only admitted that I can’t describe what I’m talking about. The people here are different. The Sky here is different. I assure you that it is the same as the sky I see back home, and the people are the same but born under a their own stars.

There’s so much Sky!

Everyday I take photos like this

The moon and Saturn. I wish I had a better Camera. So beautiful!

So, what are those stars? Well for one thing, it is absolutely, gloriously humbling to look up at night. I don’t have the right equipment to capture it but the night sky is better even than the dark sky preserves I’ve been to in Canada. It might be the altitude (~3700 ft ASL) and the winter sky but mostly I think it’s the fact the light pollution is non-existent here. Apart from the florescent glow from MICS, there aren’t any lights to be seen anywhere at night. People live on a diurnal schedule matched to the sun-rising and setting. I’ve become accustomed to it as well, it was a natural transition to make.

The stratification of the human experience is on wide display here. Like the black and white night sky there are pockets of light among vast stretches of under resourced and under-represented lands. I haven’t been here long but already I have a taste of the resentment that colonialism left and that current political struggle is forming. There are corrupt politicians and officials who basically operate out of necessity to get anything done because lack of capital is the principal limiting factor to all activity here. If you are friends with the right people and have enough to grease the palms of the people that they know then there are very few governmental barriers to you but if you try to do things on the up and up then you will start to run into a bureaucratic nightmare because people in government are often not paid and are busy dealing with the same type of nightmare you might be.

I started writing this topic because I was attending a team building teacher’s intake day.

Teacher intake day was a fun get to know you for me.

The day was fun and I met too many people to be really useful for anything other than absorbing what a typical day at MICS would be like. The group of about 15 teachers were being introduced to the themes that the school really wanted to focus on for this term. It happened to be rhyming so the activities were all well withing the abilities of the adults there even though English being their second language made for some interesting rhymes. What stuck with me was the realization that this was all coming off as awkwardly as every office team building exercise I have ever been involved in.   This was a surprise to me. I had thought that community based events would be done with greater ease here, I thought it would be different.

It wasn’t. There were little cliques forming and people were reluctant to be the center of attention. Behind it all was the same fear I have seen in the little dictatorship workplaces I have been unfortunate enough to work in before.

Here it wasn’t focused on the bosses like it was at the workplaces I’m thinking of because the bosses show the same unease. Here it seems there is a general sense that everyone is trying to say the right thing at all times as though the wrong person might hear them and tattle to ‘the teacher’. I saw it in the way we prayed and the way we sang and the way we interacted; as though everyone here is constantly trying to see what the other people are thinking about them as though it is the most important element of social interaction. Which I guess it can be, but I’m used to that impression being more malleable given time.

But that is why different is such a useful, funny word. It describes some aspect of way people interact here that is just beyond the identifiable. I think it has to to with the relationship to time here, but I don’t know.  I have heard the same person described the same way based on a temporary or one time negative or positive anecdote as though that anecdote was the only relevant aspect of their personality. I have seen a man dress up as a biblical character for a sermon and heard the story told repeated that that biblical character was in fact  present at church because that was what was being presented regardless of the context and the time that had passed.

Presentation is the only thing that seems to matter so people try to appear as exactly what they are, or what they want to be. Just like night is night, and day is only day, if something appears to be true than for the people here, it is true, except when it isn’t. I guess that is what is so different here. In the west the truth and who we trust to tell it changes with an ever shifting context. Rarely do we trust by default those we meet. Here I felt as though there is an automatic trust that only solidifies with time but never goes away. It might be the company I’m keeping but I’ve only been told not to trust one person so far. I have yet to find any evidence for that advice but I feel in someways as though the person about whom the advice was given is making every effort to alter that impression of him.

I wanted to talk about Zambia so I did. It has made quite an impression on me so far. It is just a first impression and will change over time but I know like it’s people do, first impressions never leave you, they just turn into something different.