A Day in the Life

One of the things that I always found to be a bit of a mystery before coming overseas is what exactly a day in the life of a JF is like. I understand that it is a difficult question to answer, every day is different in some way, but I want to try to give a bit of a picture of what a typical day looks like for me.

Between 6 and 7, life in the village starts to get moving. It gets light, the children are getting ready for school and Rachel gets up to start the day's chores. I relax in the last few minutes of the morning, listening to the roosters, guinea fowl and, yes, the prisoners. My alarm goes off just before 7 and its time to start getting ready for work. After a quick trip to the latrine (essentially a hole in the ground with grass walls around it), I get my things together to bathe. The water is nice and hot, a welcome relief from the coolness of the mornings (I haven't seen frost yet, but it can be pretty darn chilly and I've been told that it can happen between June and August).

(The bathing room)

After bathing I eat breakfast with Joseph. Breakfast usually consists of tea or hot chocolate and bread/buns/boiled sweet potato and sometimes with peanut butter or jam if I have picked some up in town recently. After breakfast I get my things together, strap my backpack on the back of my bike and head off to work. The ride to work is a little slow with the combination of a constant head wind and a slight uphill. Nonetheless it is one of my favourite parts of the day. Not only does it give the opportunity for exercise, but I also love to see all the people on the way. Now that the locals are a bit more accustomed to seeing me biking past there is less laughing and many people to wave to and greet on my way in. Once I reach town I leave my bike with the super friendly security guys downstairs. They have been awesome in helping me out whenever my bike has issues. Recently I have been having challenges with the chain, it broke one weekend when Frank had borrowed it to pick up the TV battery and then two days later it broke on my way home from work. Thankfully, I was able to leave it at the hospital nearby and catch the last bus home. The next morning I picked it up and one of the security guys went and had it all fixed up by the time I left work that day (which has since broken again.... hopefully the new chain I just bought will help).

The days at work can consist of many things including planning for future activities, talking to the farmers who come into the office, working on reports, or jumping onto the back of Buumba's bike and heading into the field. After the day is done at around 5, I hop back on my bike for the ride home. Going home is a little faster and is just as enjoyable; towards the end of the ride the sun is setting beautifully directly in front of me. Another great part of the ride home is the company, people will bike alongside me and chat when we are going in the same direction and I have been able to meet all kinds of different people that way. Things start to get interesting when they ask whether I am married and what my phone number is...!

When I arrive home, I'm greeted by a chorus of "Welcome back, Cisyria" (Sierra is apparently difficult to say so my name is now some combination of Sierra, Sheera and Syria) and all the greetings are exchanged between me and the various family members. Greetings are super important here and there are a multitude of different ones to use at different times of the day (How was your day, your sleep, the work, your family......). I'm still trying to get all of them straightened out along with the appropriate responses.

A little bit of time remains before dinner so I will sit and talk with Rachael, Frank and the children. Sometimes they will let me help with cooking or they will add a few more phrases to my repertoire of bemba phrases (most of which exist in my journal, but not so much in my memory). For supper, I eat nshima with Mr. Nkhuwa and his wife and the nshima is accompanied with a couple different relishes, my favourites being beans, egg, cabbage and chicken (yeah, the vegetarian thing is kind of on hold for the summer).

After supper, we will continue to talk about various different subjects relating to Zambia, Canada, agriculture and politics. If the TV's battery is charged, we can watch the news at 7 and maybe even a soccer game, if not we'll listen to the news on the radio at 8 and then it's time to head for bed and maybe read for a little while before sleeping. With the absence of electricity and the sun setting around 6, there isn't a whole lot to do after it gets dark.

Weekends are usually pretty relaxed with church, laundry, maybe a trip to the garden and lots of sitting around eating sugar cane and drinking mukoyo, a very weak beer made from maize. This past weekend was busy with finishing shelling the maize, a chore that involved most of the family for a solid three days and produced around 50 bags of maize (~2500kg), some of which will be kept for household consumption and the rest will be sold.

(Sharing a drink of mukoyo)

We've just had a long weekend here in Zambia (July 6th was Hero's Day and July 7th was Unity Day). I decided that to celebrate both those holidays plus Canada day, I would make pancakes for my family. So I picked up some milk, flour, baking powder and jam in town and made plans to make pancakes on Sunday. Initially there was a bit of confusion because the family thought that I wanted to do baking and would be needing an oven. Once I made it clear that a frying pan on top of the charcoal blazer would be fine, I got to work. I had a good audience for most of the process and the pancakes ended up being a hit. Nola, my host mom has said that she wants me to stay for another four months to make pancakes for them!!

(Me and Rachel, making pancakes)

(My audience)

I also made an interesting discovery this weekend that I wanted to share. There are so many family members always around the farm and it can be challenging to keep the relations straight, especially when they don't always call people by what relation they actually are. Let me attempt to explain... When referring to an aunt or uncle, you have to be careful about who you do this with. It is disrespectful to call your father's brothers "uncle" and your mother's sisters "aunt." Instead they should be called "father" and "mother" and likewise with their spouses. So they only people you should be calling "aunt" and "uncle" are your father's sisters and your mother's brothers and their spouses.

I'm continually impressed with the amount of people that Joseph cares for. Right now there are about 15 of us at the farm (though even when I asked Joseph, he wasn't able to give me a confident answer), visitors are frequent and many more have been supported by him in the past. This isn't the case for every family, but I would say that Zambia in general has a pretty high level of social capital. People are prepared to care for each other and expect the same of others. I think that a lot of Canadians have a certain independent streak that makes us less likely to give that kind of support or seek it out as freely. Maybe to a certain extent this is good, but then when times get rough, that support network is a bit harder to track down. So it makes me wonder if our social capital is different or if we have lost a bit of it in the search for financial capital?

Alright, I'll leave you with that question and a huge bundle of Zambian love!

:)