ATATA YETU WEKALA MWINULU TUNAYISAKILILI HAKUTWINKA CHAKUDA CHANTETEMENA MWAANA, MELELA. TUNALOMBI MUCHIKISWILI MWIJINA DAMWANTA WETU YESU KRISTU AMENA.
General Observations on Food in Zambia
Food culture is interesting here in Zambia. First of all, it is hard to get recipes for food. Much like distance and time, food is measured in vague terms like "oh just this much corn" or "cook it for a while". And yet, I do think that is more than enough to cook good food. Cooking involves something of the soul just as much as the mind. With that aside, anyone living in Zambia can see certain trends in cooking. Women do most, if not all, of the cooking. Favored spices include salt, sugar, and vegetable oil. The amounts of these three food products are absolutely staggering and take time to get used to, and generally it is a sign of wealth and\or respect to be using such products in vast quantities. Let's hope you enjoy sugary coffee and grits.
One thing that was curious was the lack of caffeine-tolerance in many Zambians. Apparently they are heavily affected by caffeine, both in carbonated forms and in higher quality coffee.
What are the staple foods of Zambia? Rape and Nshima come to mind. Rape is a type of cabbage that is shredded with onions\scallions, and then steamed or pan-seared. Nshima is a thick porridge made from a mealie-meal of corn, sorghum, finger millet, or even cassava. The word “porridge” is misleading though, since it has the consistency of play-dough and is eaten with the hands. You break off a piece of the nshima, roll it into a ball, and use it like a spoon to eat rape or whatever relish is around. Kapenta is popular too, unfortunately. It is a small, heavily salted and dried fish eaten whole. It is by far the worst food I’ve had here.
Traditionally, eating is only performed with the right hand.
Posting in Ikeleng'e
I was posted at my site in Ikeleng’e at the end of October. It was…somewhat annoying. Here are my experiences with that.
First I got stuck in Solwezi for some ridiculous amount of time because of the large number of people being posted at once. My remedy for this, of course, was to take some Zambian Viagra and drink irresponsibly. I went to Mutanda Falls the next day and swam my hangover off. Shortly after that I had to borrow 1,500,000 ZK from my Peace Corps Volunteer Leader because Peace Corps decided not to pay me (for fun, I’m assuming) and I needed to buy things (like food) for my house.
I was finally at site by the 28th of October. The night before was amusing because I got stuck at a local restaurant for about eight hours after one of the drivers decided that he didn’t get paid enough and drove himself back to Lusaka. I was a bit annoyed at the time but I actually applaud the effort, since Peace Corps might actually do their jobs if enough people protest. I passed the time there, of course, by cursing to myself and chain-smoking my Dunhill Reds. The day after getting stuck at the restaurant the other Ikeleng’e volunteer and I crammed into the back of an absolutely stuffed Land Cruiser, along with the cranky cat called Jeffery Dahmer (he’ll cut you). After crossing the bridge near my house, I knew then that I was at the Heart of Darkness…Ikeleng’e.
The first day actually at site was productive enough. I started the grueling task of unpacking the only few but messy possessions to my name. I put up nails, cables, and lumber well into the night. I later had dinner with my Zambian Family which consisted of nshima, rape, and kapenta. This kapenta and I go way back in Zambia, true enemies for life. Kapenta, you rat bastard; you are the Viet-Cong waiting for me around every rock and tree. After this deadly encounter I decided to hit the rack and call it a night.
The next day I noticed odd bubbles coming up from the stream where I get my drinking water from and I asked my host father, and he says they call it “boiling water” due to its bubbling appearance. It seems Ikeleng’e has gotten a lot of attention from geologists and perhaps this is related to geomorphic happenings in the region. I stopped for a quick lunch of kapenta (which kills a small part of me) with nshima and rape. I continued my task of Macgyvering my bookshelf out of random materials on hand. I used brackets, nails, #550 paracord, and a few saplings. I now know that anything can be accomplished with the right motivation, sweat, and paracord. I rewarded myself with pipe tobacco, chili, and rest. Life here can be very fulfilling compared to life in the United States. For once I own my own house and have absolute freedom in my life, and people treat me like a rock star.
General Impressions from November
Found the spot where I get good cell-phone reception. It is a certain termite mound with a burrowing frog hole and a bent tree. Very easy to remember, right? Once again I pulled the classic new volunteer move where I had to ask someone “Excuse me, where do I live? Thanks.” I hung out with a blacksmith and I wanted to help him pound some metal into a hoe-blade, but I needed long pants so I didn’t get burned. I got long pants and went back, and helped him cut and shape the blades and it was amazing. He said he will teach me how to do smithing if I can help him make a fish pond, which I certainly intend on doing.
I was thoroughly depressed after missing Halloween by being in the village but my spirits improved as I did my job more. I now teach a variety of subjects at the local primary school. I do English, HIV\AIDS, and I assist with Civics and Religious Education. I will soon make a boxing club and a fish farming club at the school as well. I met a man named John and he is one of the local witch-doctors, and he seems like a cool guy. I hope to get some information about his trade soon.
The rain comes fast and strong in Ikeleng’e. It is distinct and hits like clockwork, usually around 15:30-17:30. It seems the area shares a weather system with Congo, since I am so close to the border. When the rain comes you first hear the thunderheads in the distance, like a hail of bombs or a Maxim machine-gun of thunder. You look off to the distance and see homogenous dark clouds coming fast and soon a gust of wind hits from the direction of the oncoming rain. With the wind you get hit by the rain like a right hook and you curse the Bush Gods because you didn’t get under a hut in time when you first got hit by the wind.
I was able to break out both my Dutch oven and grill in one day, which led to a very pleasurable day. It seems to consistently surprise my villagers that I cook for myself and cook good food at that! I cooked up some fry bread in my Dutch oven and ate it with some raw bush honey, comb and all. A neighbor gave me about two kilos of free pork and I feasted in a manner hardly witnessed by people in a rainforest. I made a rub of spices and sauces, especially garlic and pepper, and grilled that piggy right up. I made a side of beef and bean stew with greens on the side, with a bit of mashed corn for good measure. It was glorious! The food here in Zambia often amazes me, at least in the village. The honey, raw and still with combs and bee parts, is amazing tasting and without much equal. The fruits and vegetables are often massive (especially avocados) and burst with flavor. The meat, domestic and bush alike, has a taste not found in store-bought meats. They have a flavor that I guess we must have bred out of our animals and this is especially evident in pork, which takes on a truly decadent taste. I now absolutely do not regret spending the extra money on my various cooking utensils and gear. Cooking has consistently been one of my only true pleasures in life and that pleasure has only swelled up here in the bush. It makes me want to start seriously learning how to cook back in the states. Have kitchen knife, will travel.
The Bush
It’s becoming something of a ritual of mine to go out into the bush after breakfast. I slurp down three or four cups of stout, burning coffee or black tea with my grits or oats and then away myself over some bush path. Navigation in the bush (and in Zambia as a whole) is highly eidetic and unusual for the city-dwelling American. One finds the cardinal directions by the stars and sun primarily. One travels bush paths using the minutest of signs: bent branches, charred tree stumps, termite mounds, and specifically sized trees. But sure enough the mind, being the patterning-seeking thing it is, always locks onto these tails without much failure. The bush itself consistently seems alive and pulsating with vitality, as if you were standing inside of some great and brutal heart within a totally alien life-form. And yet sometimes it is so quest that you can hear the smallest insects and gentlest streams without issue. Other times, however, it sounds like you are wading through a fierce ocean of green, with ferns and mossy-stones replacing the sea-foam. It’s not hard to imagine the rainforest being some manifestation, some objective crystallization of the essence of a nearly-forgotten Bush God that still breathes and sings of awe-inspiring tales out there for those who still listen. Its trees and lava-rocks being this God’s altar, and the natural cycles of life and death are its weird blessings. I continue to come across patterns of old stones in the bush, and I say odd because of how linear they appear. They remind me of the remnants, the corpse, of a great and cyclopean fortress built by hands long forgotten.
I often sit on a log and think of life out in the bush. People like me have always been around, I reckon. I tire of being told that I was born in the wrong time-period. My type, perhaps rare and restricted in production, surely has had many differing worldly manifestations: berserkers, warrior-priests, antinomian seamen and blackguards, outcast shamans, and other destabilizing forms. The type of person I am is neither new nor old, but rather timeless. The type of volcanic, stormy person who just barely balances the wolf-heart and the human-heart within.
Notable Quotes
“Another part [of himself] yearned to wear the big pistol openly on his hip and to travel by day under a black flag, respecting all who let him be, fight all who would seek to fight him, letting rage be his guide against anything that ran counter to his will.” Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier
“He had become too proud of walking singular, of his oneness, his loneness.” Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier
“Justice is held to be equality, and it is, but for equals and not for all.” The Politics, Aristotle
“A city is the partnership of families and villages in a complete and self-sufficient life. This, we assert, is living happily and finely. The political partnership must be regarded, therefore, as being for the sake of noble actions, not for the sake of living together. Hence those who contribute most to a partnership of this sort have a greater part in the city than those who are equal or greater in freedom and family but unequal in political virtue, or those who outdo them in wealth but are outdone in virtues.” The Politics, Aristotle
“’Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.’ Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.” Self-Reliance, Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Every true man is a cause, a country, and an age; requires infinite spaces and numbers and time fully to accomplish his design; –and posterity seem to follow his steps as a train of clients. A man Caesar is born, and for ages after we have a Roman Empire. Christ is born, and millions of minds so grow and cleave to his genius, that he is confounded with virtue and the possible of man. An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man; as, Monachism, of the Hermit Antony; the Reformation, of Luther; Quakerism, of Fox; Methodism, of Wesley; Abolition, of Clarkson. Scipio, Milton called the ‘height of Rome’; and all history resolves itself very easily into the biography of a few stout and earnest persons.” Self-Reliance, Ralph Waldo Emerson
PS:
Uploaded some new photos up too. See them here!
