Guest blog

I am not sure how one goes about this whole blog thing. I understand that there is a ‘blogosphere’ and that some people spend a lot of time and energy posting and reading other bloggers stuff. It is a medium of communication that I just don’t totally get. Yet, here I am giving it a shot. I suppose I understand it more like a journal of sorts, recording some of my reflections and then broadcasting them for wider consideration instead of putting them under lock and key.

Warning. the following was written at least a week ago and may be a stale. Second warning. My style of blogging will not be nearly as entertaining as Cheryl’s. She is a natural story-teller. I am not. I may be able to tell a story now and then, but usually I fumble the punchline or give too many superfluous details or lose the main thread in a flurry of rabbit trails and tangential commentary. But, some may find my musings and observations interesting or entertaining, so I offer them here to the forewarned.

Some things I have noticed in Kitwe. The absence of aircraft. I never see planes flying overhead. No helicopters either. No vapour trails high in the stratosphere. I understand Kitwe has a small airport but I don’t know where it is or how much traffic it gets. The closest ‘major’ airport is Ndola, about 80 km away. Maybe it is living in the LA Basin for a good number of years where helicopters (police, news, forest rangers, etc) are a near constant. Maybe living in a megalopolis serviced by 4-5 significant airports had me seeing planes all the time. It’s different here.

Dirt and dust. In many ways, these things ought not to be such a novelty. They are, after all, ubiquitous across the face of the earth. Not to mention comprising the stuff of which we are made. But in Kitwe, the dirt and dust are more apparent because we are in constant contact with it. (Of course, some of this is seasonal and I will likely change my dusty tune when the rainy season comes in a month or two.) I realized that life in the upper-middle class US strata that I have frequented most, is a rather sanitized life. The roads are pretty much paved, keeping down the dust. Concrete covers sidewalks and bike paths. Watered lawns are more the norm than the exception. I would get in my protective pod and motor down the paved roads, arriving at my destination with little thought of the grime that had accumulated on me during transit. Here, I find myself wiping my face after a 10 minute walk to catch a minibus, and a layer of dirt comes off in my hand. Getting into the minibus is not too much protection either. Deodorant is a luxury item, I quickly recall, and we are packed in like sardines. We don’t depart until every seat is taken. ‘Get a little closer…now don’t be shy….’ The windows are wide open, bringing in air, dust, fumes from the belching exhaust pipes all around us. After the ride, I wipe my face/neck again. Another layer in my hand. Wow.

While many of my peers in the US are moving closer to a cashless society, in Kitwe we are immersed in a plasticless society. Plastic cards are useful for the ATM, but credit card transactions appear to be nonexistent. Debit cards? Are you kidding? It feels quite strange to walk around with a bulging wallet. I don’t like not having enough money on hand to pay at the checkout counter. It has happened already once. Part of the bulge in my wallet has to do with the exchange rate. At 4000 Kwacha to 1 US dollar, I frequently carry around several hundred thousand, especially in these early weeks of setting up house when larger purchases are more frequent.

However, my wad of cash and the pursuit of household necessities puts me in awkward positions in the town centre. Today, especially, I was confronted with the number of beggars, mostly children who wanted something from me. Loading a cart full of groceries into the taxi trunk while saying, “I don’t have anything for you now” sure rings hollow. Might I just as well have said Jamesily, “Go, be warm and be filled.”? I recall many times in the US, when at the gas station filling up, that a man would ask me for money and I could ‘honestly’ say, “I don’t have any cash to give you today. All I have is my credit card.” (Of course ethical quandaries abound in this scenario, but I could at least take self-righteous solace in my ‘honest’ answer.) But in Kitwe, where I always have cash on me, I cannot so easily look that other person in the eye and tell them I have no money on me. There are several signs up around the city that direct people not to give handouts to beggars, particularly street children, because it perpetuates their occupation. Rather, they are to be encouraged to go to social service centres/shelters where they can get holistic care. I see the signs, but I have not investigated the shelters. Are they still there or are the signs leftover from some initiative or donor-funded project that lapsed years ago? And what will they offer the little boy (7 or 8) who guided his blind grandfather around the centre asking for money? Would the social workers split them up and send the boy to school while the grandfather is put in an institution? Is that better? Maybe. On the other hand, what will my few hundred or thousand Kwacha help? The same questions plagued me in the States, but they are hitting me fresh again here. What does it mean in this here and now to do justice and to love mercy? For without these, the claim that I want to walk humbly with God seems pretty empty.

I am quite astonished at the assumed and proclaimed Christianity of this country. Zambia has declared itself officially a Christian nation. (It is common to see minibuses with slogans painted on the top of the windshield or back windows that say things like: Jehovah Jireh, Jesus is King, What a Saviour and the like. Shops in the market are titled, for example, “Maranatha”, “Glory Enterprises”, and “Jesus Wept”.) Dwelling theologically in a tradition suspicious of Christianity entangled with the powers that be, I find myself wondering how non-Christians feel here in Zambia. Though the vast majority of Zambians appear to identify with a church, what of those who don’t? What of Muslims or secularists? What sorts of threat do they live under? And given that Zambians are often prone to xenophobia with regard to Chinese, Indians, and other Africans living in their country as refugees and immigrants, how does hostility to foreigners mesh with the compassion and justice of Christ?

Beyond these musings, observations, and torturous questions, I suppose I could also use this bully-pulpit, er I mean guest blog, to reflect on some of the activities I have been involved in so far. As Cheryl has alluded in earlier posts, I have been in the office a fair bit already, even though the transition into my workload was supposed to be gradual. I found that the coordinator of the Peace Centre, where I work, has been carrying quite a load for some time and is eager to share his burdens with me.

The week we arrived, there was an all-day seminar planned for that Saturday having to do with advocacy work on behalf of churches in Zimbabwe. This was an MCC-sponsored event coming through our Regional Peace Network (MCC has 3 such regions in Africa). I got involved with some of the detail work needed to make the whole thing happen.

Two weeks after the Zimbabwe seminar, the annual Dag Hammarskjöld Memorial Seminar needed doing. (I work in MEF’s Dag Hammarskjöld Centre for Peace, Good Governance and Human Rights. This annual event is one of the biggest things that Mindolo Ecumenical Foundation does during the year in terms of having VIP’s present and trying to impress everyone.) The Dag Seminar is basically a two day event preceding the anniversary of his plane crash near Ndola in September 1961 while on a UN peace mission relating to Congo. So, there were many things to attend to and I managed to let myself become embroiled in many of them. Thus, my work time so far has been entirely administrative.

The Centre’s coordinator is travelling for two weeks to Sudan, setting up a curriculum for Reconcile International that would allow people who complete a certificate program in Sudan to feed into MEF’s diploma program. Administration continues in the coordinator’s absence. I almost became acting coordinator but my colleague, Ignatius, adjusted his vacation schedule to stay on as acting coordinator. Crisis averted. Our list of things to do includes revising and submitting major and minor grant proposals, preparing for two intensive seminars that will happen later in October, and writing the report to the funder for the Dag Seminar. I’m trying to manage the sense of urgency surrounding most of these things, my sanity in trying to work efficiently/effectively in a technologically-hampered environment, and the need to be available to Cheryl and the boys. After all, we are only one month in and now is the time when some of the stronger bouts of homesickness can kick in.

MEF is coming up on 50 years, but its roots go back into the 1920’s. One can tell that much of its hey-days are behind it—there was a time when money was pouring in from the west—but it still has some very good things going for it. Its reputation is strong and the peace program is one of the stronger elements, attracting people from all over Africa. The MEF academic year is winding down with graduation on the 26th of October. In the remaining weeks, I want to sit in on some class sessions to see how/what they are teaching so that when classes get divvied up in November, I will have some sense of how to prepare courses for delivery starting in February.

So ends this guest blog. Unfortunately, pretty slim in terms of gripping human interest stories. But stay tuned. Maybe I will get the hang of this yet.