| Andrew in Zambia |
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| EMAIL: APRIL 2003 It has been 8 months and 28 days since my last Tim Horton's coffee, onemonth and one week since my last shower, two weeks since I've sent the toilet frog to the toilet bad lands, three days since Poosh has been too afraid of Greg to enter the yard and just over three hours and fifteen minutes since I've been informed that I'm eating for two. I've gotten over the lack of Tim Horton coffee in my life long ago and toilet frogs come and go but the lack of a shower is really beginning to piss me, and anyone down wind of me, off. With regards to the eating for two, I just got some cream from the doctor and that should clear that right up. As far as these developments go in my life, the toilet frog in inconsequential. With the end of the rainy season, it seems that all the frogs are seeking shelter in my house. The good thing is that I sleep under a mosquito net so there is no food for them in my bed. Call me a bad host but I've made a firm rule with regards to not sleeping with things that disappear into the toilet for days. I'm not sure I was always so picky. It is strange how one's values change over time. The one concern I do have is that the migration of the frogs from the dry tall grass to the recesses of the house may attract the snakes into the house as well. This is in direct violation to the rationale as to why Greg and I decided not to kill indoor frogs on site. It goes back to the whole canary in the coalmine utility, however, canaries do not attract gas leaks the same way frogs attract snakes. We killed a python of substantial girth with Gerdie (Landcruiser). This is a very practical way to kill a python. Very hands off. I was doing a good 70km and hour at the time. By the time we stopped the vehicle and built up the courage to reverse and investigate, the refugees had gutted the snake and started the fire. Selflessly, I gave my share of the badly mutilated corpse to a very grateful lady who was happened to arrive late because she was carrying a tree on her head. The rainy season made all the grass grow very tall so snakes now have lots of places to hide. This is why I have had all grass within ten meters of the hard slashed down to the ground. I've still yet to see a live snake, or a snake that has been alive for more than one second before I run over it. I would like to believe that if I can't see them, they can't eat me, which brings me on to the topic of worms. It turns out I'm porting around my very own worm. I have no idea what kind of a worm is but it is causing some nastiness on my right forearm. One clinic officer said it was a ringworm. I checked through the tropical books I have but to make sure it isn't one of the worms you get from walking barefoot through someone else's feces or drinking unboiled cow urine or something. To the best of my knowledge I have not marched barefoot in any dodgy areas and I go to amazing lengths to not drink non-milky cow liquids. My books do not cover the topic of ringworm. In my mind I associate it with dogs and I do not drink any dog liquids whatsoever. I wonder if it is a Poosh-related parasite? The little jerk. Poosh treats Greg and I as if we were imaginary people that only he can see. We are the only white people he knows. Poosh is both sexist and racist and I'm at the wrong end of both hatreds. Poosh barks, but only at men and he only likes white meat. The one exception is Catholics. He hates all Catholics, especially nuns. Why couldn't he have a thing for the Pentecostals or the Jehovah Witnesses? They just want to drag me to six hour church lectures; the nuns just bring me cool stuff. The poor chickens have been bearing most of the brunt of Poosh's wrath. We are gone in the camp most of the day so we only have to lock him outside the house when he is too much. The chickens have started spending the majority of the day in the neighbour's mango tree. The Red Cross has stopped dropping by messages for us because the good natured former military Commander that runs the Mporokoso office doesn't trust the quality of the rabies injections we got Poosh. He is the one that supplied it. Poosh is a super suck-up when supper time comes around but the rest of the day he is a big jerk. Sadly, he gets fed better than most of the people in the villages in the area. He gets protein, which is a luxury by village standards. We named Poosh for the Bemba word for 'cat' so we should have expected a jerk. It is like naming a baby Britney, Bubba or Doug. You have more or less condemned each of them to be a princess, town drunk or a plumber from birth, respectively. I decided I had to break Poosh of his feline-tendencies before he became any more bitchy. I started by giving the 'dominancy test' where I get down on my hands and knees and stare the dog in the eye. If the dog accepts my role as fearless leader, he will advert his eyes and turn away. If not, he will try to stare me down. I got down on my hands and knees as Poosh entered into the kitchen. He was taken aback to find me in his space. He was thoroughly not pleased about it. The teeth came out. This was expected. I held my ground. Poosh stalked closer, turning his head sideways in case I couldn't see all his teeth well enough. I had foresaw this likely reaction so I was mentally prepared for a scrap. I showed my incisors as best as I could. Greg went to gather Derick and Chanda because they would enjoy the festivities. My growls were having no effect on Poosh so I decided to change tactics. From all fours I switched to a squat and started banging my chest like and screaming like an agitated ape. While I don't have the pointy teeth to intimidate, I do have over two hundred pounds on Poosh. Working to my strengths, I figured I would fare better in the battle for dominancy. It may have worked if Poosh had ever seen a baboon before, but he hadn't, so all in all, it just aggravated him more. He started pacing back and forth building up the momentum for some sort of rebuttal. Derick had arrived and took the scene in stride. "In Zambia, we just swat a bad dog on the nose" he offered. "Though my second-younger brother did it this way once with his dog and his cat." He jumped up on top of the freezer and pulled up his feet to stay clear of the fray. "It worked for the dog." Poosh's rebuttal to my monkey-ing around was to jump forward and gingerly put his teeth around my ankle. He glared up at me with eyes that were saying "I'll bite you. I will." That is what he would have liked me to believe but what I saw was weakness. AT that moment he knew that if he bit me, it was over for him. He understood. His eyes were not saying "make me", they were saying "please don't make me". I had the upper hand and had to make my move to drive home the message that there was one dominant mammal in the house and it was me. My right hand ever so slowly reached out for the sack of charcoal. Poosh's eyes followed my hand. His eyes got very large when my fingers wrapped around the sack. He understood. He knew that he could bite me but he also knew what happened to the chickens I whacked with the charcoal sack. It was a moment of clarity. "Is Andrew going to eat Poosh?" Inquired a late-arriving Chanda. "It is not out of the question," insisted Greg. What happened next is a testament to humanits's superior capacity for foresight, at least as it compares to a dog's. The dog stepped down. Poosh gathered his pride together, turned very deliberately, marched towards the door, pissed on Greg's hiking books and hauled ass out the door. I believe with all my heart that a human would have the smarts enough to pee in the right person's boots. All Poosh did was pull another enemy into the fray. "Wow, I'm glad those weren't my boots" I thought, but smartly didn't say out loud. Greg stood there in disbelief. Chanda, Derick and I, in my ape squat with the charcoal sack still held out in a threatening position, all avoided looking directly at Greg. None of us would have been willing to do the dominancy test with him at this moment. Not at this crucial moment while he was processing what had just happened. Humans are unpredictable, though usually lean towards cranky, when their boots have been peed in. To break the silent tension I contributed my two cents. "If you were to now drink out of your boots, you could get leprosy" "Give me the sack," Greg said, calmly reaching out with his right hand, taking off his socks with his left and not taking his eyes off his boots. I paused to make sure I wasn't going to be the one on the business end of the sack. It could possibly be conscrewed that I was somehow responsible for the pee in his boots. Accessory to boot-peeing. Satisfied that I was now an outsider to events to follow, I submissively, I gave him the sack. Derick, Chanda and I set up chairs and watched from the front porch, and the neighbours from theirs, as Greg chased Poosh around the neighbourhood. It was an event worthy of getting the drums out, so we did. It was pressing on my mind so I turned to Derick and asked, "Did your brother really try to stare down a cat?" "It didn't work" he replied, watching Greg hurdle the charcoal in a misaimed carbon bomb at Poosh. "Can't imagine how-not," I supposed, "Cats are so easily made to be subservient" "I don't know what 'subservient' means. My brother ended up giving the cat away." Derick smiled, "The cat kept shitting in the maize meal." Greg never did catch Poosh and Poosh has not returned to the yard yet. He sticks his nose through the fence to check to see is we are around. I think he is sleeping at the World Food Programme office for now. Chanda sneaks him food and thinks we don't know it. The chickens are happy with the arrangement. So, taking inventory, I still have no Tim Horton's, no competent plumber, no Maurice the toilet frog and no fire-roasted python. I do have one somewhat submissive dog, a plethora of general household frogs, and one mystery worm making a living in my forearm. But at least I don't own a fricken cat. Andrew Closing Thought: the Swahili word for "Stranger" is the same as for the word "Guest". Discuss. |
| EMAIL: JUNE 2, 2003 Warning: the following writing may produce some mental images that are disturbing. Subject: Pythons 0: Andrew/Gerdie 2 Ring worm turns out to only be a fungus. Yeah! Poosh has returned home and is somewhat less of a jerk. The guava tree is bearing fruit beyond what any two mazungos, three security guards and a recently very plump driver can eat. The neighbourhood kids sneak into it and eat many of them, usually in their best Sunday clothes. There are still a couple hundred rotting ones on the ground so I introduced the concept of a rotten guava fight. I easily won the guava fight. Young Zambians have very poor motor skills, especially when it comes to hand-eye coordination. There have been a few studies done on the subject. The first reason is that kids are lugged around on their mother's or sister's back for many years after most babies around the world have been left to walk on their own. As a result, the babies do not develop their motor-skills until significantly later. However, once they start using their legs they become very good with their foot-eye coordination. This is due to the immense amount of football (soccer) they play. However, as football is the only, only, only sport they know, they cannot catch a Frisbee or throw a ball. If a kids sees a Frisbee coming towards them, they will try to kick it out of the air. If they try to use their hands, they will almost always miss it. Since I've been here there have been more Frisbees to the head than Frisbees caught. In short, I didn't just win the rotten guava fight, I destroyed them. But it was for a good cause: child development. In other news, the cycle of the Zambian season has now gone full circle. When I first arrived in September the kids were thin, Zambia was hot and the land looked scorched. Actually the land was scorched. All the grass was dry and the villagers set it on fire for a variety of reasons. Some do it so that the nutrients go back to the soil. Some do it to make it easer to catch caterpillars. Some do it to keep the snakes away. Some forest fires were set in circles to trap the animals. When they panic and bolt through the fire they are easy to shoot. Others burn the grass because they like to light things on fire. Now is the proper roof-burning season. As the cycle of the Zambian weather dampens in November, the vegetation grows with miraculous speed. This is everyone's favourite season. There is lots of food and the kids get fat. However, the wet season caused much problems for my mobility. First of all, it rained so hard that I really didn't want to go outside during many days. Secondly, the grass got so tall that all the landmarks that I had used to find my way around (ie. Overturned tree with moss, or cracked rock with fungus) are concealed by the six foot tall grass and fields of maize. Not only did I get stuck out in the rain, I got lost out in the rain. However, now that the rainy season is over and the land has started being burned, I recognize it as the same place as when I arrived. Having gone the Zambian seasons' full circle, I wonder what new experiences Mporokoso has to offer? ** "WANG! WANG!" A siren went off somewhere in the vicinity of the house.It was loud. So loud that it echoed off the walls making the source of the sound impossible to trace. "WANG!" This would have been startling at the best of times had it not been at midnight, which is like 3am at home. I came flying out of my mosquito net, "What the hell is that?!" I was running around to each of the walls in the house like someone had picked up the house and started shaking it around. I felt up all the support walls times each by the time that Greg got out of his room. I had determined that the intermittent siren was loudest in the living room. Then it was over. Greg and I stood there in our underwear looking baffled. Chanda shortly arrived to investigate. "Sir, what witchcraft was that?" "I think it was an air raid siren," I guessed poorly. I said this because at that particular instant my instincts were telling me that I should be hiding under the table. "Air raid siren? We do not have in Zambia sir," Chanda informed. "Only mazungos." Chanda thought for a second. "What does siren mean?" I was tired and spending most my focus on scouting out the source that had made the noise. I answered Chanda without paying much attention, "It is a loud noise that lets you know planes are coming to drop bombs on you." Greg was even less functional than I was so he stumbled back to bed. My eyes were burning and my mind was screwed up by the adrenalin to find anything, besides my shins were taking a pounding form crashing into furniture. There seemed to be no sign of the siren coming back so I left a worried looking Chanda and went back to sleep. The next morning Greg and I each had independently decided that the siren episode last night had been a Larium-induced dream. The Larium Film festival we call it. Usually, we sit over breakfast and verify any strange occurrences in the night were in fact dreams and not reality. The conversation usually goes along the line of, "Did someone come but the house in the middle of the night and try to sell us a donkey?" "It was the Larium." "How about a man selling goat bones?" "Yeah, that was real." We hadn't gotten this far this morning when Chanda came in. He usually doesn't come into the house unless there is something significant happening so we were somewhat concerned. "Good morning sirs," he started, "Do you know that you have seven roosters and no hens? You won't get eggs with no hens. Sir, hens lay the eggs. Oh, and Sir, if someone wants to drops bombs on the house, how do I stop them?" It took Greg and I both a few seconds to realize that last night's siren episode was real and not a drug-induced dream. Like a bar has a bouncer that does not let you leave the location with alcohol, the brain has a safety mechanism that does not let you leave your sleep with your dreams. In some people however, Larium sneaks the dreams past the brain's bouncer. With Larium-dreams you do not need a few seconds to remember the entirely of the dream. What you need is a few seconds to fully comprehend the real-life ramifications of the dream being reality. Okay, there was a loud siren originating from our house last night. What does this mean? "Chanda. What was that loud sound last night?" I asked. "I have never heard it before, Sir. But I didn't see any planes in the sky." "Don't worry, no one is going to drop bombs on the house. But if they do, please run away. What could that sound have been?" No ideas. Three hours later I was lounging in my bed. Greg was out with the guards so I had the house to myself. "WANG!" The siren scared the living beegeebies out of me. Again only partly dressed I scrambled out to the livingroom. "WANG!" There isn't a hell of a lot of stuff in this room so it should be easy to spot. In the centre of the room I spun trying to locate the source. Then I saw it. It had been sitting idle in the centre of the unused fireplace since January. We had bought it and left it there so many months ago that Greg and I had forgotten the telephone existed. The phone was making that deafening "WANG!" So many emotions ran through my body that I was confused about what I was supposed to do. "Wang isn't a telephone sound" I said to myself. As the realization that the telephone was in fact trying to communicate with me sank in, I felt like I should run out and sacrifice a chicken to the telephone gods. I was having a very hard time not breaking down into tears. I got myself together in time to pick up the receiver. I felt like a cave man with a magic stick that I didn't know how it worked, but it was magic anyhow. "Hello?" I spoke into the magic stick tentatively. I didn't was trying to avoid any jerky motions so as to not lose the telephone magic. "Hello!" It was Jessica. I recognize her mostly-Mexican accent anywhere. She started talking. I could hear Jessica but I was in Mporokoso. It was all very confusing. After a few seconds I started contributing to the conversation. I was really too baffled by the sudden access to the outside world to fully participate in the conversation for a while. She was calling on a pre-paid card so we could be cut off at any time. Key note, it wasn't too expensive. HINT! During the half hour phone call Greg walked into the house. He looked at me laying with my head in the fireplace listening to the phone. "Wholly Crap!" I nodded, "Its for me". Greg investigated the wiring attached to the telephone as if seeing it for the first time. "All this crap actually works?" So if you want to call me (when the phones in all of Mporokoso are working) my number is 26 04 680 003. (26 = country code for Zambia, 04 = code for northern province, 480 = Mporokoso, 003 = my number) You ccall in but I can't call out. ** Who reading this is the youngest son in their family? I want you guys to test something out. I have encountered an image that I will remember until I die. Some things are so beautiful that they leave an imprint on your brain that burns in so thoroughly that it will visit you with every good dream. This image is not of that category. I've taken to running along the Mporokoso airport at dusk. The airport is a field ideal for running because it is wide open so I can't get lost. Moreover, the ground is visible from a distance meaning I won't turn a corner and be confronted with something disturbing, like a snake or a lion. Okay a lion is really unlikely, but the snake is alegitimate fear. On this particular day the airport was busy with people playing football so I turned off down a seldom trodden path. It was small and winding and not well travelled. The locals hadn't gotten around to burning down the grass so I could not see far ahead of me. Above me I could see that some thunderous clouds were approaching from the west. This must be the small rains that I had been warned are coming. They didn't look like they were going to be very small to me. The small rains are welcomed to keep the dust down but aren't useful for planting crops so the locals don't care so much about them. In fact, having burned down their roofs, many of the locals actually go as far as to have an aversion to the small rains. This distain for the small rains was the first half of an explanation, an explanation that I was about to need if I was ever to sleep again. Something ten times more disturbing than a snake was waiting for me around that corner. The second half of the explanation turned out to be white magic. I didn't understand this at first. I actually had to go back and ask Greg, though I didn't expect him to know anything. I asked Anania but he can't really speak English so he was of no use. Besides, he is the son of a Mporokoso counsellor and somewhat more urbanized than the real villagers. He probably doesn't know the first thing about witchcraft. I did not sleep that night and was waiting outside the Mporokoso library before it opened. I had seen a book there that might put my mind to rest: Zambian witchcraft explained The book itself is not very interesting. Written by a university-educated man, it simple goes through the various rituals of Zambian witchcraft and either explains the western science behind the beliefs or says that the 'magic' doesn't work. I scanned through the pages for the section on changing the weather. More importantly, how do you stop the rain from falling? The fact that I was able to deduce that this was the intention of the witchcraft I encountered is quite disturbing. How to stop an oncoming rainstorm: This particular bit of white magic can only be performed by a person with a special gift or the youngest son of the family. I am fairly certain that the use of the youngest son is probably attached to the tendency for the youngest son to be the most gullible and easily persuaded to do stupid things. As the youngest son, I am speaking with experience on this matter. In the case of an oncoming rainstorm the youngest son, or any other specially gifted individual, leaves the house and finds a nice secluded place where they will not be interrupted. The privacy is essential. The rain-stopper then gets naked, directs his moon cheeks at the clouds and yells abusive curses through their legs at the sky. Mercifully, they do not use their hands to make talking movements with their bum-cheeks. The wrinkled old man I saw looked to be pushing 70 years old, though I am not really an expert at guessing the age of Zambians, even when using their faces to do so. He was either the youngest brother in his very old family, thus having amassed much experience at rain stopping, or he was just gifted. Either way I was in for a real treat because he knew what he was doing. My Bemba is not very advanced but one does not need to understand a language to tell when someone is letting go a line of curses that would put a coal miner to shame. This man was really unloading on the rain gods. The rain gods were being told. He had climbed up on a fallen tree so that the rain gods could see his goods over the grass. This put the business end of the rain-stopper at my eye level. Turning the corner I had been focusing my eyes on the ground searching for any sign of snakes. Had I not been listening to my Walkman I would have heard him before I arrived. Had I not been so focussed on the ground looking for snakes, I would have stopped before I got the unnecessary close up. My first thought, besides the obvious 'what the #$@%', was 'maybe he needs help'. Before that thought was finished I had already decided that whatever help this man may need, he was not getting it from me. I don't speak Bemba. Yeah, that was the reason. I don't speak Bemba. Oh, and I don't talk to naked men. He was quite possibly as surprised to see me as I was to see him. My presence startled him and the cursing stopped. Whether he understood exactly how much his presence confused me is uncertain. He made no move to either stand up or get off the tree. It had clearly taken him some time to get into position and he wasn't going to lose it. The old man did not look embarrassed but just confused. Had he got the magic mixed up: instead of stopping the rain he called a Mazungo. While grasping for any words in any language that could kill the awkwardness, I managed to avoided eye contact with anything facing me. "Muli shani" (How are things?) He didn't answer. He just looked at me. Why was I there? I looked up at the sky "Gonna rain, gotta go". I turned 180 and ran. It rained all night. (another email further down) |