I would really dearly love to write you all a blog post about the past 6 days, which I spent climbing up (and down) Mt. Kilimanjaro, but it is now 7pm, 8 hours after I finally exited Marangu Gate, and I have to face the reality that it isn't going to happen tonight. The problem is that my hands are shaking from either exhaustion or cold and my eyes are drooping. The problem is that it hurts to lean over, stand up, walk, or generally move. The problem is that the keyboard at this hotel-internet-cafe-computer has several stuck letters including the shift key and also the letter I, which would probably show up several times in a blog post about me and Kilimanjaro and give me carpel tunnel. The problem is I think that mountain gave me a cold.
The climbing of that mountain is currently feuding with 2 years in a mud-hut in Africa for the enviable position of Most Difficult Thing I Have Ever Done (that took 60 seconds to type, damn shift key), and in some ways the two experiences are remarkably similar: both take guts, both have the entrance requirement of being crazy and willing to become moreso, both involve crash-courses in local African languages (well...my guide and I needed something to talk about during those 6 days of walking...), both require a combination of endurance, patience, determination, and flexibility, and both are accomplished not in the way the hare takes on the racetrack but in the way the tortoise wins the race: panono panono, pole pole, slowly slowly, one aching impossible step at a time. The terrain may be slippery, may be rocky, may be coated in ice-frozen snow or so much sand you think you could fall straight through to the bottom of the mountain; you may have to wrap your toes in tissue under your socks to prevent blisters, may have to pop advil to get your legs to move, may have to wear all your clothes to bed, and you may at some point desperately have to pee when there are no outhouses or trees or even large enough rocks in sight; but you take another step, say hakuna matata, hakuna shida, tapali bwafya, no problem until you start to mean it, accept the world and move forward within it.
And there's one more thing that climbing Kilimanjaro and living in a mud-hut for 2 years have in common: both breeze through you, quicker and harder than expected, and leave you changed and a bit confused at the end, trying to process that something big has come, happened, and ended. The morning after life's best and worst experiences is not something you can really write about; it is something that has to be lived.
So I won't be writing about my adventures on Kilimanjaro today. Maybe someday soon I will-- I certainly hope so. For now I'm going to relax, repack (leaving for Nairobi in the morning), eat food drink water read a book, and attempt to process this sledgehammer hit my life has taken. When I have, I'll let you know.
For now, I'll leave you with the following quotes, inspiring words of my fellow climbers, graffitied on the walls of dorm room 5 at Kibo Hut, elevation 4700 meters:
"We made it to the summit. If we can you can too"
"We did not make it to the summit, but we sure had a fun time trying"
"Once more into the breach, my friends, once more..."
"I am smelly sweaty gross, but now I know the way...{words blocked off}"
"...Has anyone smelled the bathrooms?"
Thursday, June 13, 2013
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
And so on...
My village still smells of grass and flowing water and burning charcoal. The roads are still brown and the paths are still white with sand, though some paths have been abandoned and new ones worn nearby to replace them, bridges have been rebuilt stronger, trees have been cut down. As I biked along the red dirt road and up around the hills I looked down into the valley and saw huge strips of white sand, large patches of savannah brush that had once been green and dark with growth, the hills across the way now sparsely planted, white sand showing through where once the slopes had been thick with green. I have left a legacy of a few farmers who know the danger of such reckless use of resources, and with luck these few will spread ideas to many before it is too late. In my week-long visit to my village I was told repeatedly how much work I had done, how many people were grateful for what I had taught them; I can only hope as I walked away that I have served not only my friends and family here but the people they will meet tomorrow.
After a week of biking, cat-sitting, eating nshima, starting fires, sitting and reading (I finished 4 books in 7 days), I left the village rested and whole, something heavy trying to burst it's way out of my chest, like I was coming out the other side of a massive catharsis, a week of meditation and reflection. I found my village mostly unchanged, my family blooming-- my aunt is on her 8th baby now, 8 kids!-- one friend sick with a mysterious headache, another preparing a chicken farm, all of them still there, still striving, still trying. It hurts to think that I don't know when or if I will ever see them again. I learned a new word in Bemba that week: ukufuluka, to miss. I have missed you. We missed you. I will miss you when you're gone. I will be missing you again. Also mukushale bwino: remain well, but in the future tense instead of the present tense, as if to say: remain well permanently, remain well in the future, remain well for a very long time.
A week in the village was followed by a jarringly different week in Lusaka, which kicked off with Iron Man 3 in 3-D followed by a 24-hour headache. Why do we do these things to ourselves? It was an odd juxtaposition to my week of books and breeze and quiet. I spent the week eating good things like hummus and pizza, saying good-bye to friends, and running around the office getting random people to sign and sometimes re-sign papers and forms to allow me to leave the country. My ring-out date was Friday, May 24, and consisted of me and the 7 people still left from my intake dressing up and banging an old tire rim with a piece of piping. It was very symbolic and meaningful and stuff. I honestly was more moved, felt more complete and satisfied with the conclusion of my service, after a half-hour conversation with the director of Peace Corps Zambia, where we discussed my service and work as PCVL. I walked away from that conversation feeling lighter, like the weight of being a Peace Corps Volunteer (and Leader) had been gently put aside, like I could finally say "Ok, I've done my part, I've done the best that I can, I'm ready now for whatever comes next."
And what comes next is a trip through East Africa and Eastern Europe. I will be spending the month of June in Tanzania and Kenya and will of course attempt to keep this blog updated with my travels. My first stop is Zanzibar-- I am taking the train today and will spend the long weekend there before proceeding to Arusha to hike Kilimanjaro. Wish me luck!
After a week of biking, cat-sitting, eating nshima, starting fires, sitting and reading (I finished 4 books in 7 days), I left the village rested and whole, something heavy trying to burst it's way out of my chest, like I was coming out the other side of a massive catharsis, a week of meditation and reflection. I found my village mostly unchanged, my family blooming-- my aunt is on her 8th baby now, 8 kids!-- one friend sick with a mysterious headache, another preparing a chicken farm, all of them still there, still striving, still trying. It hurts to think that I don't know when or if I will ever see them again. I learned a new word in Bemba that week: ukufuluka, to miss. I have missed you. We missed you. I will miss you when you're gone. I will be missing you again. Also mukushale bwino: remain well, but in the future tense instead of the present tense, as if to say: remain well permanently, remain well in the future, remain well for a very long time.
A week in the village was followed by a jarringly different week in Lusaka, which kicked off with Iron Man 3 in 3-D followed by a 24-hour headache. Why do we do these things to ourselves? It was an odd juxtaposition to my week of books and breeze and quiet. I spent the week eating good things like hummus and pizza, saying good-bye to friends, and running around the office getting random people to sign and sometimes re-sign papers and forms to allow me to leave the country. My ring-out date was Friday, May 24, and consisted of me and the 7 people still left from my intake dressing up and banging an old tire rim with a piece of piping. It was very symbolic and meaningful and stuff. I honestly was more moved, felt more complete and satisfied with the conclusion of my service, after a half-hour conversation with the director of Peace Corps Zambia, where we discussed my service and work as PCVL. I walked away from that conversation feeling lighter, like the weight of being a Peace Corps Volunteer (and Leader) had been gently put aside, like I could finally say "Ok, I've done my part, I've done the best that I can, I'm ready now for whatever comes next."
And what comes next is a trip through East Africa and Eastern Europe. I will be spending the month of June in Tanzania and Kenya and will of course attempt to keep this blog updated with my travels. My first stop is Zanzibar-- I am taking the train today and will spend the long weekend there before proceeding to Arusha to hike Kilimanjaro. Wish me luck!
Saturday, April 27, 2013
World Malaria Day
A child dies of malaria every 60 seconds, which adds up to 1,400 children a day, and yet it only costs $1 to treat a child for malaria.
This seems, on the surface, like a simple, cheap, and easy problem to solve-- only an additional $1,400 a day to the global aid budget-- and yet people have been dying of malaria since King Tut died at the tender age of 10 from a mosquito bite and the disease still infects over 200 million people every year. This is a disease we have been fighting for centuries, from quinine to coartem, from mefloquine to malarone, with mosquito nets and bug spray and chemical wall sprays and daily and weekly prophylaxis, and yet still 6 children die every hour.
One of the main roadblocks, perhaps-- and this is a roadblock to many aid projects all ovr the world-- is that a project involving human lives is never as simple as numbers and cash. There is implementation-- who will deliver the mosquito nets? Where and when will they distribute them? Which clinics need how much coartem how often?-- and distribution-- what if the truck delivering coartem breaks down? Which roads will cause the least delays? How often must deliveries be made? How much does each clinic or community need? Should people be charged and how much should nets and medicine cost?-- and availabilty-- What happens if the clinic runs out of coartem or nets? Where and how soon can they get more? What if a sick patient walks 10km to a clinic for medicine and the clinic doesn't have any, can they survive another long walk to the next clinic?-- and education-- how can we be sure those mosquito nets we handed out won't be used for fishing or a wedding veil?-- and diagnosis-- does the clinic have malaria tests? Are they expired? How does a patient know if they need to go to the clinic or not?-- and treatment-- what if the woman with malaria is pregnant?-- and the list goes on and on.
Diagnosis can be particularly difficult because malaria symptoms can resemble a very bad flu-- chills, vomiting, feever, muscle aches, etc.-- and if the clinic is 10km away and you are sick in bed with the flu, what are the chances you are going to walk to the clinic just to make sure the flu isn't actually malaria? This is especially a problem in rural areas where people don't always understand how serious malaria is-- I've known counterparts to say I have malaria if I sneeze or have food poisoning, and my host grandmother once got malaria and asked me to run to the nearest tuck shop to buy her painkiller. Even if someone knows for sure they have malaria (because when you really have it, you feel the pain of it deep in your bones) and that it is something too serious for advil to handle, there is no guarantee the clinic will be well-stocked when they get there. Malaria is spread by a certain type of mosquito that is most active at night, so it is crucial that people sleep under a mosquito net, and yet many people do not do so, either because a net is not available or because they do not know to ask for one or they are given one but are not told or do not understand what to do with it and why. While a child is cured by $1 medicine, a disease is cured by education and prevention.
So the moral of the story, I suppose, is that it might cost $1 to treat a child, but it actually takes a lot more work than that. It takes education and awareness and committment to preventing and curing the disease. It takes supplies and skilled doctors and organized governments and aid groups prepared to provide those supplies efficiently. It takes well-stocked and well-staffed clinics and accessible community health workers-- Zambia is required to have a functioning and well-stocked health post every 10km, but this is not always the case in practice-- and roads that sick patients can easily navigate. And yes, it takes medicine for when you are sick, and prophylaxis and mosquito nets and bugsprays for when you are well. Stopping malaria is a constant struggle, and it is not something we can just throw a dollar at and walk away. It is something that takes committment from everyone from world leaders to doctors to clinic workers to the patients themselves to you and me.
April 25th was World Malaria Day, and this month Peace Corps worldwide is spreading the word about the importance of STOMPing out malaria. To learn more about the malaria prevention and treatment effort, visit stompoutmalaria.org.
This seems, on the surface, like a simple, cheap, and easy problem to solve-- only an additional $1,400 a day to the global aid budget-- and yet people have been dying of malaria since King Tut died at the tender age of 10 from a mosquito bite and the disease still infects over 200 million people every year. This is a disease we have been fighting for centuries, from quinine to coartem, from mefloquine to malarone, with mosquito nets and bug spray and chemical wall sprays and daily and weekly prophylaxis, and yet still 6 children die every hour.
One of the main roadblocks, perhaps-- and this is a roadblock to many aid projects all ovr the world-- is that a project involving human lives is never as simple as numbers and cash. There is implementation-- who will deliver the mosquito nets? Where and when will they distribute them? Which clinics need how much coartem how often?-- and distribution-- what if the truck delivering coartem breaks down? Which roads will cause the least delays? How often must deliveries be made? How much does each clinic or community need? Should people be charged and how much should nets and medicine cost?-- and availabilty-- What happens if the clinic runs out of coartem or nets? Where and how soon can they get more? What if a sick patient walks 10km to a clinic for medicine and the clinic doesn't have any, can they survive another long walk to the next clinic?-- and education-- how can we be sure those mosquito nets we handed out won't be used for fishing or a wedding veil?-- and diagnosis-- does the clinic have malaria tests? Are they expired? How does a patient know if they need to go to the clinic or not?-- and treatment-- what if the woman with malaria is pregnant?-- and the list goes on and on.
Diagnosis can be particularly difficult because malaria symptoms can resemble a very bad flu-- chills, vomiting, feever, muscle aches, etc.-- and if the clinic is 10km away and you are sick in bed with the flu, what are the chances you are going to walk to the clinic just to make sure the flu isn't actually malaria? This is especially a problem in rural areas where people don't always understand how serious malaria is-- I've known counterparts to say I have malaria if I sneeze or have food poisoning, and my host grandmother once got malaria and asked me to run to the nearest tuck shop to buy her painkiller. Even if someone knows for sure they have malaria (because when you really have it, you feel the pain of it deep in your bones) and that it is something too serious for advil to handle, there is no guarantee the clinic will be well-stocked when they get there. Malaria is spread by a certain type of mosquito that is most active at night, so it is crucial that people sleep under a mosquito net, and yet many people do not do so, either because a net is not available or because they do not know to ask for one or they are given one but are not told or do not understand what to do with it and why. While a child is cured by $1 medicine, a disease is cured by education and prevention.
So the moral of the story, I suppose, is that it might cost $1 to treat a child, but it actually takes a lot more work than that. It takes education and awareness and committment to preventing and curing the disease. It takes supplies and skilled doctors and organized governments and aid groups prepared to provide those supplies efficiently. It takes well-stocked and well-staffed clinics and accessible community health workers-- Zambia is required to have a functioning and well-stocked health post every 10km, but this is not always the case in practice-- and roads that sick patients can easily navigate. And yes, it takes medicine for when you are sick, and prophylaxis and mosquito nets and bugsprays for when you are well. Stopping malaria is a constant struggle, and it is not something we can just throw a dollar at and walk away. It is something that takes committment from everyone from world leaders to doctors to clinic workers to the patients themselves to you and me.
April 25th was World Malaria Day, and this month Peace Corps worldwide is spreading the word about the importance of STOMPing out malaria. To learn more about the malaria prevention and treatment effort, visit stompoutmalaria.org.
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
x-mas cards
OMG MAKING CHRISTMAS CARDS IS SO MUCH FUN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
That is all.
PS- if you don't get one before the end of December than that means I live in nowheresville, Africa and have been unable to keep track of your current address. Or it means my card for you was so awesome the postmaster in Kasama decided to keep it. Sorry 'bout that!
That is all.
PS- if you don't get one before the end of December than that means I live in nowheresville, Africa and have been unable to keep track of your current address. Or it means my card for you was so awesome the postmaster in Kasama decided to keep it. Sorry 'bout that!
Thursday, November 8, 2012
November Ramblings
Today is November 8th and in 4 days I will be 26 years old. It is an odd thought since in many ways time has stopped for me since coming to Zambia-- when you can wait 4 hours for a meeting to start or a whole day for the rains to stop so you can leave your house, you start to give up on paying attention to the clock as avidly as you would in the states. These days when someone asks my age I have to think about it before realizing I'm not a 23-year-old college graduate anymore.
November is actually a big month in my family-- a large number of my relatives were born in this month. My grandmother celebrates a landmark year in a couple of weeks, and my grandfather reached the impressive age of 92 just a few days ago. It is in honor of him and his birthday that I am writing this post-- when your 90+ grandfather starts asking you to update your blog, you know you've been offline too long.
Kasama is a very different place from Serenje, a larger and older town with darker soil and more streets. We have a traffic light and street trees and more than one paved road and a roundabout with a sculpture of a crocodile on it-- crocodiles have special significance in Bemba culture. The soil is reddish brown and the jacaranda trees blossom purple in September and the rain clouds roll in as early as October (we even had one storm back in August) and thunder darkly above us. This is an area of high rainfall and humidity, much closer to the heavy rainforest regions of Tanzania and the Congo. It is also a place of high altitudes and colder winds-- tree-starved Mpika two hours south of here is arguably the windiest place in the whole country. When I moved up here I was warned to bring my wool scarf and hat and gloves and legwarmers-- leftovers of the colder life I left behind in Philadelphia one February morning. I have not yet brought out the legwarmers, but hot season is melting in the early rains and I suppose it's only a matter of time.
Time. Something I thought I'd have more of. It's a busy job and it keeps me busy, and the less-busy days provide television and computers and grocery stores and shopping sprees in town to keep me distracted, and before I know it it's November and it's been 6 months that I've been at this job. I've barely given thought to the next steps in my life-- some, but not enough. The blessing and curse of a job and a place you love is that you become engrossed in the moment of it, and forget that the moment will end. And while I don't love this job the way I loved waking up each morning to chortling turkeys and women sweeping outside my quiet little hut in the woods, I do love being in this town and living in this house with this ever-revolving cast of characters. There is nothing more entertaining than a room full of Peace Corps Volunteers-- whether they are drunk and dancing or crass and laughing or seriously brilliant and full of ideas or flowing with stories and thoughts and plans, they are a variety of moods and thoughts and different American cultures that one can easily get lost in. I have only 6 months left in this place with these people, and some days I think it just isn't enough.
So in order to appreciate the time I spend more fully, I am going to make a greater attempt to update this blog more often. I still have a lot of ground to cover-- a trip to America, a walk with a cheetah, and an unpleasant encounter with a baboon, to name a few-- and plenty of events up ahead to write about. I can't make any promises, but I can make an attempt. I used to write in my journal every day-- I used to do yoga every morning, I used to ride my bike at least 30 km a week, I used to play the guitar, I used to read, I used to sew-- but these days the pace of life leaves little time for that, so I will try for an occasional blog post instead. Better than nothing.
PS-- anyone have any ideas what I should do for Christmas holiday? Looking for suggestions...
November is actually a big month in my family-- a large number of my relatives were born in this month. My grandmother celebrates a landmark year in a couple of weeks, and my grandfather reached the impressive age of 92 just a few days ago. It is in honor of him and his birthday that I am writing this post-- when your 90+ grandfather starts asking you to update your blog, you know you've been offline too long.
Kasama is a very different place from Serenje, a larger and older town with darker soil and more streets. We have a traffic light and street trees and more than one paved road and a roundabout with a sculpture of a crocodile on it-- crocodiles have special significance in Bemba culture. The soil is reddish brown and the jacaranda trees blossom purple in September and the rain clouds roll in as early as October (we even had one storm back in August) and thunder darkly above us. This is an area of high rainfall and humidity, much closer to the heavy rainforest regions of Tanzania and the Congo. It is also a place of high altitudes and colder winds-- tree-starved Mpika two hours south of here is arguably the windiest place in the whole country. When I moved up here I was warned to bring my wool scarf and hat and gloves and legwarmers-- leftovers of the colder life I left behind in Philadelphia one February morning. I have not yet brought out the legwarmers, but hot season is melting in the early rains and I suppose it's only a matter of time.
Time. Something I thought I'd have more of. It's a busy job and it keeps me busy, and the less-busy days provide television and computers and grocery stores and shopping sprees in town to keep me distracted, and before I know it it's November and it's been 6 months that I've been at this job. I've barely given thought to the next steps in my life-- some, but not enough. The blessing and curse of a job and a place you love is that you become engrossed in the moment of it, and forget that the moment will end. And while I don't love this job the way I loved waking up each morning to chortling turkeys and women sweeping outside my quiet little hut in the woods, I do love being in this town and living in this house with this ever-revolving cast of characters. There is nothing more entertaining than a room full of Peace Corps Volunteers-- whether they are drunk and dancing or crass and laughing or seriously brilliant and full of ideas or flowing with stories and thoughts and plans, they are a variety of moods and thoughts and different American cultures that one can easily get lost in. I have only 6 months left in this place with these people, and some days I think it just isn't enough.
So in order to appreciate the time I spend more fully, I am going to make a greater attempt to update this blog more often. I still have a lot of ground to cover-- a trip to America, a walk with a cheetah, and an unpleasant encounter with a baboon, to name a few-- and plenty of events up ahead to write about. I can't make any promises, but I can make an attempt. I used to write in my journal every day-- I used to do yoga every morning, I used to ride my bike at least 30 km a week, I used to play the guitar, I used to read, I used to sew-- but these days the pace of life leaves little time for that, so I will try for an occasional blog post instead. Better than nothing.
PS-- anyone have any ideas what I should do for Christmas holiday? Looking for suggestions...
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
World Malaria Day
Today is World Malaria Day, and Peace Corps Africa has been busy all month in preparation, with volunteers holding workshops, doing surveys, giving lessons on how to use a mosquito net (here's a hint: it's not for catching fish), and doing everything they can to educate both Zambians and Americans on the importance of fighting malaria in Africa. On top of working in our communities to promote malaria awaremess (which I can't do, since I no longer really have a local community), we are also encouraged to write blog posts (or facebook posts or tweets or texts or whatever) to spread the word about this issue to people back home (one of the lesser-known but major goals of Peace Corps is to teach Americans about the world outside its borders). It's certainly a noble goal and nothing to be scoffed at-- malaria is one of the top reasons so few African children reach their 5th birthdays, and for a disease that is so easily (and cheaply) treated and prevented the death toll is shockingly high-- but I'll be honest, I wasn't originally planning to do anything to acknowledge World Malaria Day. It's not that I don't care-- nothing could be further from the truth-- but this month I've been a little busy leaving my home of two years and moving 6 hours away and packing and unpacking and repacking my stuff and learning the ropes of a brand new job and planning my first trip home in 2 years, and I just didn't think I could find the time, not to mention the energy or clearheadedness, to make a blog post. But in Kasama the World Malaria Day packet had been cleverly pasted to every bathroom wall, and as I sat reading the information on the wall I realized malaria is not something to be overlooked for any reason-- it's been overlooked long enough.
Malaria has an interesting distinction in rural Zambia: there may be no other disease in the world that is taken less seriously in the local population in proportion to its actual seriousness and the number of deaths it causes within that population. I have often heard Zambians in my village say they are suffering from a "touch of malaria" in the way an American might say they were catching a cold. Often, the sickness in question is not malaria at all-- the person merely has a headache, a stomachache, even a hangover. This may seem lucky-- at least the person isn't seriously ill-- but the mindset itself is troublesome. For every sickness called "malaria" that isn't, there are several cases of actual malaria that are casually dismissed and left untreated-- after all, the thinking goes, that cold I called malaria went away on its own, so surely this will too.
And even when the patient knows (s)he has malaria, that does not guarantee that the patient gets proper treatment. About a year into my service, my own host grandmother was overtaken by the parasite-- at first I thought she may just be tired and overstating the issue, a habit I had become used to encountering amongst my fellow villagers, but after a day or two it was clear she was not getting better, and I insisted that she get some coartem. So she asked me to run down to the tuck shop and buy her a pill called "panado," which I found out later that evening was merely a type of aspirin. There ensued a very, very long conversation (in Bemba, hence its arduous length) in which I explained to her the difference between a painkiller and actual medicine-- and with malaria, you always need real, actual medicine.
What is truly troubling about the ongoing malaria epidemic is that the problem-- in Zambia at least-- is not about the treatability/preventability of the disease, or even about the availability of coartem and mosquito nets. It is about education. Many Zambians don't know that they can get free mosquito nets from the government health facilities (assuming they are stocked), don't know that coartem costs only $2 (not cheap in Zambia, but much cheaper than seeds, fertilizer, or bags of maize meal), and most likely don't know how to use either one. This issue is emblematic of the idea that you can't solve a problem by throwing money at it-- more mosquito nets and drugs are not enough, what we need is education.
And that's where Peace Corps comes in. Rich or resourceful we certainly are not, but when it comes to teaching people new things, sharing ideas and encouraging education and growth, no one does it better than a Peace Corps Volunteer. So this month (and hopefully every month), volunteers are working to teach Zambians in the village about malaria-- about putting mosquito nets over every sleeping man, woman, and child, about making sure everyone who needs to take coartem takes it in a timely manner, about avoiding mosquitoes and not leaving still, open water near the house where mosquitoes can breed. And when we come in from the rain, drenched and shivering, or wake up with a backache or a headache or a cold, and our Zambian counterparts say "ahh, you are catching the malaria," we say "no. You can not catch cold, malaria, or anything else from getting caught out in the rain. And malaria comes from mosquitoes." Happy World Malaria Day, everybody. And if you're in an infected country, sleep under a mosquito net, and don't forget to take your meds.
Malaria has an interesting distinction in rural Zambia: there may be no other disease in the world that is taken less seriously in the local population in proportion to its actual seriousness and the number of deaths it causes within that population. I have often heard Zambians in my village say they are suffering from a "touch of malaria" in the way an American might say they were catching a cold. Often, the sickness in question is not malaria at all-- the person merely has a headache, a stomachache, even a hangover. This may seem lucky-- at least the person isn't seriously ill-- but the mindset itself is troublesome. For every sickness called "malaria" that isn't, there are several cases of actual malaria that are casually dismissed and left untreated-- after all, the thinking goes, that cold I called malaria went away on its own, so surely this will too.
And even when the patient knows (s)he has malaria, that does not guarantee that the patient gets proper treatment. About a year into my service, my own host grandmother was overtaken by the parasite-- at first I thought she may just be tired and overstating the issue, a habit I had become used to encountering amongst my fellow villagers, but after a day or two it was clear she was not getting better, and I insisted that she get some coartem. So she asked me to run down to the tuck shop and buy her a pill called "panado," which I found out later that evening was merely a type of aspirin. There ensued a very, very long conversation (in Bemba, hence its arduous length) in which I explained to her the difference between a painkiller and actual medicine-- and with malaria, you always need real, actual medicine.
What is truly troubling about the ongoing malaria epidemic is that the problem-- in Zambia at least-- is not about the treatability/preventability of the disease, or even about the availability of coartem and mosquito nets. It is about education. Many Zambians don't know that they can get free mosquito nets from the government health facilities (assuming they are stocked), don't know that coartem costs only $2 (not cheap in Zambia, but much cheaper than seeds, fertilizer, or bags of maize meal), and most likely don't know how to use either one. This issue is emblematic of the idea that you can't solve a problem by throwing money at it-- more mosquito nets and drugs are not enough, what we need is education.
And that's where Peace Corps comes in. Rich or resourceful we certainly are not, but when it comes to teaching people new things, sharing ideas and encouraging education and growth, no one does it better than a Peace Corps Volunteer. So this month (and hopefully every month), volunteers are working to teach Zambians in the village about malaria-- about putting mosquito nets over every sleeping man, woman, and child, about making sure everyone who needs to take coartem takes it in a timely manner, about avoiding mosquitoes and not leaving still, open water near the house where mosquitoes can breed. And when we come in from the rain, drenched and shivering, or wake up with a backache or a headache or a cold, and our Zambian counterparts say "ahh, you are catching the malaria," we say "no. You can not catch cold, malaria, or anything else from getting caught out in the rain. And malaria comes from mosquitoes." Happy World Malaria Day, everybody. And if you're in an infected country, sleep under a mosquito net, and don't forget to take your meds.
Friday, April 6, 2012
Well, I'm back
Turns out, 27 months goes by fast. It looks like a good long time from the front, but before you know it you're looking back on those 27 months and wondering what happened to them. Only 3.5 years ago I sat in front of my computer, alone in my enormous senior college dorm room, staring at the Peace Corps application button and wondering if I had the courage to press it. Turns out, pressing that button was the beginning of an enormous and life-changing adventure.
As I sat in my mudhut in the African bush last week sorting objects and packing bags, I flashed back to my senior year at Smith, nearly 3 years ago now, sitting in my dorm room and crying in frustration because I couldn't get all my stuff (and God I had SO much STUFF!) to fit in my bags and boxes and bins-- sure, there was more going on than the pure stress of packing, I was sad to be leaving and nervous about the giant next step in my life (and the uncertainty of it-- I hadn't been given a Peace Corps assignment yet and wouldn't be for another 10 months) and absolutely terrified of change, but even without all that baggage (haha) packing is by itself a stressful experience. You never know what to pack and what to toss and what to give away, and what to put in which bag and what you'll need again before you leave and shouldn't pack at the bottom on a bag just yet. And it was 20x worse the following February as I stuffed obscure objects like clothes I didn't like and a tent that was hard to set up and a bag of white rice (turns out they sell rice in Zambia, who knew?) into my bags and then out and back in again, having never lived in a mudhut in Africa and having no idea what to pack. 2 years later I knew exactly what to pack, and my stress and neurotic anxiety stemmed not from nerves or fear or uncertainty or confusion, but from pure and unadulterated sadness. Because this ramshackle hut made of lime-coated mudbricks and thatching grass was my first "apartment," my first adult home, and it is hard to leave. 2 years ago I would have stressed neurotically about the hows of packing; this time around, all I could think about was the "why." Every object I packed, every item of worn clothing or small gift I gave away, every piece of cookware I put aside for my replacement, left a big lime-white hole in my hut, another reminder that this experience, improbably, is finally ending. 2 years ago I sat in this hut and thought "man, I've got 24 months here, that's all the time in the world!" Now I know better. No time is enough time, and I am always going to miss this place.
I had hoped to make my last month in the village an awesome month: I was going to bike all over, take pictures of my beautiful mountains, visit all the farms I could, say good-bye to farmers, sit out in the sun with a good book, spend time with my host family, visit and sit with my counterparts, and just generally make the most of what little time I had left. But 2 years in Africa has taught me that things rarely if ever go as planned. First I was sick with a different fluke illness each week. Then in the last 2 weeks the rains-- the ones we were waiting for back during the drought in December-- arrived with avengeance. They wore holes in the road. They flooded roads and bridges. They washed away bridges. Bike paths became rivers, and rivers became floods. One day I biked an hour in the rain and then walked (with my bike) across a bridge 8" underwater. Another day I had to climb over a bridge that was really a series of tree branches draped carelessly over a river that was surging up over the dark, wet logs, and then I lost my shoe in the mud and had to chase it down the river. Every day I was splattered with mud and water, wet and cold and frizzy-haired. I joked with my host family that between the illnesses and the rain, Kashitu must be punishing me for having the gall to try to leave.
On my last day it drizzled all day long, and though I started the day with a nice long bucket bath I was soon shivering cold and frizzy-haired. I alternated between shoving things into bags (and out of bags and back into bags-- old packing habits die hard) and sitting with my host family around their fire, shivering (the night before I had to walk home in the dark cold of an evening rain storm, through an ex-path-turned-river with a bike that kept stalling and sandals that kept falling off-- even with the hot bucket bath and nshima my grandmother prepared for me, I was still feeling sensitive to the cold). I wanted to go for a walk, harvest the last of my garden (lettuce! Big healthy leaves of lettuce, all wasted by the rain!), sit outside with my book, but none of these things were an option, because there was too much rain. Instead I smiled with my host family, helped them shell yellow maize and bake a chocolate cake (this was my "leaving cake," and it didn't turn out half bad), and occasionally hid in my dark, empty hut and watched it grow progressively emptier.
But finally overnight the storm broke, and on my last morning (Tuesday) the sky was cloudy and grey, but there wasn't any rain. I packed the last few things (sleeping bag, mosquito net, etc.) as the sun was rising, ate a power bar from America (all my dishes were packed), took down the last items (a poster of an elephant in a game park I'd left on my wall to keep it from looking too barren; a pair of sandals I didn't want to bother taking with me; a pair of capris that had been attempting to dry on the line in my house since Sunday) and went out to sit with my host family and the counterparts who came to see me off. I brought out my guitar to keep my hands busy, and spent the next 2 hours watching my host family and dodging smoke from their fire. The cruiser came at 8:30 and loaded my stuff (there wasn't much, and it was over fast), I hugged everyone good-bye (hugging is a bit of a no-no in Zambian culture, they're more into handshakes, but on special occasions they will do a hug/cheek kiss that makes me think of Europe), got in the back of the cruiser and watched my house and family fade away. The cruiser brought me to Serenje and dropped me and my stuff at the house, I brought my bags in and unpacked (I have stuff to leave at the house and stuff to take from the house, like clothes and electronics and food, so now I'll have to pack all over again), and that was that. Now I can no longer say "I live in a mudhut in Africa with no electricity or running water." The end of my first hard-core African adventure, and the beginning of a new one.
So now I'm in limbo: at the PC house in Serenje for Easter and waiting to head up to Kasama and begin the next stage of my PC experience. In case you're interested, my new mailing address will be:
Elise Simons
PO Box 410374
Kasama, Zambia
And since I'll be living in town, I'll have pretty reliable cell phone/internet reception, so keeping in touch will be much easier for me than it was before. And of course, I will soon be coming home on my month of homeleave. So stay tuned!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
