A Walk in the Dark

The wind and rain roar together like the ocean. It is raining in Macha. The sewage has risen up from the ground and joined the red brown mud outside my door. Spiders and mosquitoes have taken shelter in my room for the night and I am tucked into my net hoping they will leave me in peace tonight. What a night it was. I don’t think I can ever describe it. It was like going back in time, or to another planet or playing a make believe game with grown ups. Invited to dinner at the pastor’s house, we headed across the village to pick up Karen and begin the long walk. It started raining as we left for her house, but there was still a blue patch in the sky. It rained lightly on the way over and upon arrival we found ourselves in a dark house where you could not see the faces of those across from you. There was no electricity or running water, but it was still a nice house for Macha, with concrete floors and a tin roof. It was still under construction and had no bathroom. It’s amazing to me that my body has just accepted that I get to decide when we go to the bathroom, and that usually means just once a day. I sometimes pee every 20 minutes at home! Some days I think I could probably wait the whole day. I think this must partly be due to the afternoon heat and the dryness and my body just took a day or two to get programed that we don’t waste water here, so no fair peeing any of it out! Anyway after a few minutes I met the two women preparing the food. They were from other parts of Zambia, but they were here working with the school and the church. They were preparing a traditional Zambian meal for us! I’ve included a picture, but try and picture it without it. One woman squatting and dicing tomatoes and green onion in her hand without a cutting board and the other woman is on the floor, stirring a pot N’shima, the national dish of corn meal that I think tastes similar to instant mash potatoes. They prepare it by boiling water and adding handfuls of meal while stirring it until it is thick. The cat is at her feet just inches from the food which is propped up on two buckets of burning coals. A boy enters the dark kitchen, lit by only a single candle and the occasional jolt of lightening in the sky, with a chicken in a bucket. They comment in Bemba, their native tongue on his tardiness. He’s pulling the feathers out while one is boiling water and the other is washing dishes with her fingers in a plastic bucket with cold water and no soap. Within minutes we discover there are ants invading the kitchen and biting at our legs. We reposition, and every time I think I’m in the way, they say, "No Lauren, sweet Lauren, sit down and talk to us." After watching them pulling the last of the feathers off the chicken, cutting the limbs away from the liver and the intestines and tossing everything including the chicken feet into the pot, they asked, "Is this the first time you’ve prepared a chicken?" I must have been staring without blinking or talking, making it pretty obvious I was new at this, so I responded with a yes. But I was also thinking. "That’s not so bad. I could do that". The whole scenario was completely unreal. When she poured oil in the skillet she realized there were ants in it and she stood up to pour it out. But there was a lot of oil in the pan and she couldn’t waste it so she said, "Well, you know they say eating ants is good for digestion" I did not know that, but I’ll take their word for it. That was probably the weirdest part for me. That and the fact that they were touching pretty much everything in the kitchen with the hands that had just touched the raw chicken. Maybe we’re overly cautious in the States. Well I helped with some chopping, and with the N’Shima after that, and let me tell you, broke a sweat after 4 minutes of stirring over the fire. They were all impressed with my N’Shima. I asked one of the women if she liked cooking and she said a quick no. She has cooked every day since she was a young girl. They don’t have leftovers here. Dinner was served soon after to 10 of us, including two boys that live at the pastors house and work for him. I had one bite of the ant dish, but couldn’t continue. I watched her fry those ants, and I just couldn’t do it. But the N’Shima and the diced rape and the chicken and sauce were delicious, and it felt wonderful to eat with my hands by candlelight. Afterwards we had tea and bread and made our way into the pitch black pouring rain. Karen was the only one with a small light and we used it to walk through the road filled with rocks and ponds. I laughed deliriously and couldn’t believe the situation. It was simply pouring. Try to imagine a darkness so dark it looks like a black curtain and you don’t know left from right, up from down. There was some light from the streetlamps in the medical complex, but the electricity went out while we were walking before that could be much help. The lightning was cracking over us and ahead of us, and at one point it lit up the sky for several seconds like it was daytime. Kevin and I were wearing flip flops, and I had a poncho and a tight grip on Kevin’s arm, but it wasn’t enough to keep me from tripping over a rock and running into a tree. We’ll see what it looks like in the morning, but it feels like I have a scar the size of the Zambezi river down my face, and once again, I wonder if maybe I should of gotten married before I headed off to be scarred and deformed by the African countryside. Well I’m in bed now. Covered head to toe in bug repellant, and I made extra care to tuck in and check three times over that my net is tucked in so the bugs stay out. Goodnight!