Walking Past Lunch

I'm headed out back to our kitchen to put my plate away from breakfast.  Our kitchen is in an outbuilding about 20 feet behind the main house.  On the short walk, I pass a water spigot that doubles as our dishwasher (when combined with soap and elbow grease), and a new feature.

This morning, there's a live chicken hanging out there.  I stop because it's unusual.  Not unusual because there's a live chicken.  Unusual because the cook hasn't started work yet and the chicken is here already, which means she spent the night here.  Also, her legs are free, and usually our meals are trussed up to keep them within cooking range.  Maybe she has unfortunately wandered into our kitchen area, but probably she's a late purchase from the day before, ready and waiting for lunch.

I shall call her... 'Delicious.'

The New Normal

I'm living and working in culture very, very different from the one that I grew up in.  I'm a child of white middle-class America, and I'm working in a village in the malaria belt of Africa.  The nearest paved road is a 2-hour drive by 4x4 land cruiser to the north.  Running water is created by pouring out a plastic teapot for your neighbor.  A kitchen is three bricks on a ground that can balance a pot above a fire constructed from sticks.  Children spend hours finding ways to harvest mangos off the huge trees all around us, then eat them and throw the pit on the ground.  Cows amble down the street on their free time, when they're not hitched to oxcarts to haul bricks.

Everyday activity for everyone around me is so far from my ordinary, so far from the normal that I grew up with, that I constantly go with the flow.  Everything around me is the new normal.  Nothing really surprises me any more, because every situation that presents itself is immediately normal for me.  It's a bizarre state of flux that I find myself in.

Children play in the dirt.  Trash is thrown on the ground.  People have between one and three sets of clothes.  There is no standard practice of hand washing.  Latrines are not available for everyone.  Women die in childbirth.  People die from malaria.

When everything that goes on here is normal, where is the line of what's acceptable and what's not?  We're here to fight against the high mortality rate of malaria.  Malaria isn't a death sentence; we, in the world, have the drugs and means to fight it.  We even have the technology and resources to prevent it.  We, as a world, just haven't implemented it yet.  We're in the process, I suppose you could argue.  We're changing it.  In decades, there will be a new normal.  People won't die as easily as they do now.

But where's the line of what's acceptable, and what needs to change?  What's the line between cultural difference and unacceptable lack of development?  Children shouldn't die of malaria, but they can poop in their neighbor's field.  A woman will survive childbirth, but that child will only have one item of clothing at a time until she's 10.

Two older girls get in a fist fight over a mango when they can't decide who procured it from the tree.  A crowd of boys and girls gather to watch.  The girls break apart, arguing, then resume fighting 30 meters down the street.  A man wades into the crowd with a switch he pinched off a nearby tree.  He slashes at everyone around him to disperse the crowd, and whips at the two fighting girls.  They spring apart and run off, the mango forgotten.  Another child darts in and snatches it while the man is facing the other way.  In seconds, the street is deserted.

I don't move or say anything from the doorway of our compound.  I'm shocked by the violence I just saw.

This is the new normal.

What do we change?  What is culture, that accounts for our diversity as human beings, and what is unacceptable?  Who's judging?

Calling the Kettle

Walking back to our house from the market, I was passed on the street by a bobbing, singing pot with legs.  A small girl was carrying a pot almost as big as she was.  The easiest way to carry things here seems to be on one's head, but this girl had her own version of the head-carry.

I was quite amused by her outfit, and snuck up on her to take this picture.  She never knew I was there, but rather continued to stroll along, singing loudly to herself inside her pot.

One of these things is not like the other

I'm not in Kansas anymore.

This is made especially obvious to me this morning as I walk to work.  It's a flat, dusty stroll of approximately two city blocks, but the measure of a 'city block' is about as foreign to this place as I am.  In the semi-coolness of a rising sun, people are wedging in tasks, visits, and accomplishments before the oppressive heat drives everyone into the shade.

A disturbance breaks the calm routine of my morning stroll, with a hooting, hollering cacophony coming my way.  I glance around to make sure I'm not going to be caught in a riot (how many people are shouting and making a fuss?), and see three teenage boys inciting their oxen to an ambling trot.

They must have been given a bit extra to get their delivery done quickly, because they're the only one within eyesight (a far-see?) who is hurrying.  Their two oxen are hitched haphazardly to the cart, which is loaded with locally fired bricks.  The three teenagers scream, shout, and wave switches at the disinterested oxen, occasionally working them up to a jerking jog.  All of this expending of energy makes quite a bit of noise, and some of their oral goading of the oxen is quite disturbing.  I normally equate those noises with large birds in distress, but these boys have it down pat.

As the ox cart and its wailing attendants pass me, I am reminded of how foreign I am to this culture, this town, and these people.  A screeching juggernaut of oxen, bricks and teenager ambles by not one meter from the walkway where a dozen schoolchildren make their way to school, and every eye is on me.

Everyone is staring at me.

I'm the center of attention, as always, despite a disturbance--that would have my entire city talking--passing an arm's length away.

Bonjour.  Lalee.  Bonjour.  Salut.

I make my way past the schoolchildren, not even stopping as I shake the hands of every small child in the town of Moissala.  I've gotten good at greeting people on the fly, and I have places to be.  I hope I'm being friendly, but the thought crosses my mind that I'll never know if I'm well-received or not.  

Everyone is staring, no matter what I do.  No matter how many oxcarts pass by.

Into the Wild

I have set a schedule for myself as I start to establish a weekly routine.  Wednesdays are my day out.  I head out on the "axes" to check out the surrounding countryside.  I accompany the external activity supervisors, but my goals are threefold.

I'm supervising the drivers and keeping tabs on the fleet.  We have 5 big, white Toyota landcruisers (like every other NGO in the world) right now, and will soon go back to our usual 8 once the rain hits.  For 4 weeks, we'll rent a few more and increase our fleet to somewhere around 12.  That's a lot of cars to keep track of.  I'm checking how the drivers handle the cars, especially on these tiny tracks through the bush.  There's mud (and it's only the dry season), river crossings, deep sand, herds of cattle, and villages with small children running after the cars.  Plenty to keep the drivers busy.  Add onto that manual transmission, optional 4-wheel-drive mode, and two frequency-ranges of radio to also monitor, and it's quite a job.  The drivers do a pretty good job of it, including having the big boss in the front seat next to them.

I'm learning the layout of the health centers, meeting the manager, and surveying the needs of each health center.  We're going to do some major rehab in each center, standardizing their facilities (latrines, shade structures, the basics), so I'm getting a jump start on the surveying (most of the surveying has already been done, but try to read 100+ pages of reports [in French] about centers with extremely similar names in places you've never heard of--I'm a visual learner).

I'm checking on security of the routes.  We pass a UNHCR convoy that is doing a distribution for the 529 refugees relocated from across the border in CAR.  There's a lot going on here.  On one trip, we stop to see the sous-prefect of the southern part of the district.  He discusses rebel movement, refugee placement, nomad schedules, and vaccination campaigns.

It's a long day out, but much is accomplished.  There are 24 health centers, and I have only been to 9 of them.  It'll come.

International Women's Day

March 8th, 2014 was International Women's Day.  In the US, I had never paid attention to this.  On ships, I'm pretty certain I didn't know it existed.  Here in Africa, apparently, it's a huge deal.

The expatriates from our team were invited to be guests of honor on the pavilion for the parade/presentation of International Women's Day.  The turnout was huge, and the day was very educational.  It was sweltering, but at least we were out of the sun.

Fishing for Mangos

Everywhere I look, there are huge mango trees casting much-needed shade.  The mango trees are much bigger, more stately than the mango trees in Malawi.  Here, they loom like giant oak trees, except with a much tastier seed pod.

With the hot weather comes mango season, and with mango season comes mango-gathering season.  Everyone seems to pick up a part-time (or full-time) job at procuring mangos.  The low-hanging fruit and deliciously ripe fruits are all gone, but more fruit ripens every day.  There's an intricate game theory of calculation going on as people weight accessibility, ripeness, availability, time of day, and other factors, to decide if they're going to harvest a mango or not.

There are various methods of mango-procuring, including sling-shots, climbing, boosting a friend up, and throwing rocks (watch out when you walk anywhere near a mango tree!).  The preferred method, however, seems to be the long stick.  There are different genres and types of long sticks, but some are enough bamboo lashed together to reach 10 meters in the air.  Some have bags on them to reduce the loss to scavengers (or to pick fruit hanging on the other side of a property-line-wall).  But mango sticks are common and ubiquitous.  In mango season, everyone becomes a mango fisher.