This past week I completed my final trip to Meheba. The settlement camp that has been more of a home to me in the month of November than Lusaka; competing a series of three weeks away from Lusaka we darted outta here early on Wednesday morning in my second home, the bus.
The ride was smooth. Pretty typical, began with a toast at 7:00am to our final trip for 2010, and potentially forever since the politics of the Zambian government and UNHCR still have us on the “No fund” list for next year. “Wasu” (emphasis on the ‘s’) is what we toasted to, as it has undoubtedly become the anthem that reverberates throughout and after ever action done at the camps. “Wasu,” which I am sure I am spelling incorrectly, doesn’t translate well into English. It is something along the lines of “ours” but it is more than just meaning “ours” it means that it is part of something bigger, part of us, part of some un-tangible sentiment, it’s “ours,” whatever we want that to be.
Mike and Marissa (2 other interns) came along on this trip and it was nice to share the experience with a few other folks coming from a similar upbringing, although this was by far the most luxurious trip to the camps that I have had. We lodged in the UNHCR guest house that not only had a TV with cable, but running water, a toilet, and a Congolese cook named Clementine. Clementine spent the week speaking to me in French and teaching me words I didn’t know. She even taught me how to stir the pot of nshima, a feat which I do not take lightly. For whatever reason her and I had a bond, a bond of understanding that surpassed the little bit of language that we shared. She was/is a crusader and I guess I admire that spark in her.
Speaking of sparks…Meheba is about 2 hours from the Angolan boarder and perhaps about 3 and a half hours from the Congo’s boarder, meaning that all of the moisture from the low lying rainforests that they have gathers into extreme cloud formations saturated with a down pour. Each day, except for Saturday, we would look up and see ominous black clouds rolling in and rush for cover. The first day Marissa and I ambitiously took a jog, and somehow timed it perfectly to set foot on our porch just as the rains came down. Water flooded everything in sight and afterwards, drifted off somewhere. The second day, Friday, after hours of reading and signing graduation certificates, another down pour; more monstrous than the first thunder rang throughout the grey sky. Again, sitting on the porch stirring nshima, lightning hit a tree not 20 feet from where we were sitting. I jumped about 5 feet up in the air, darted into the house, all of my hair standing on end, and once I realized what I had done I dashed back outside to see the tree- pine needles were falling from the branch that it struck and you could see a mark where the lightning has hit. Poor tree.
Thanksgiving was rather uneventful. Kapenta, cabbage, and nshima were our feast but the strangest thing occurred on that evening. Mike, Marissa, and I managed to find the Patriots-Lions game. Funny how in a refugee camp with no resources (literally until Saturday when Laz went to Solwezi, an hour away, we couldn’t find a chicken to buy) you can find a television hooked up to such sophisticated cable that you can get American Football. Food for thought. It was an evening that teleported us to the States for a few hours.
Saturday we had an awards ceremony paired with the graduation of all of the GRS youth. It was chaotic and touching. Giving kids trophies and medals is something that will never get old to me. We had a final evaluation meeting that was eye-opening and hard to sit through, simply because I knew at the end that we had to tell them that we weren’t coming back. I am still struggling with saying good-bye and just the entire situation.
Post meeting we fed about 900+ people out of a sauna of a room with women who stirred pots of nshima that were bigger than our kitchen stove. I tried to stir the pot and could only last about 2 strokes. Feeding people here in Zambia is always something that tries my nerves. Lines never exist and no matter how many times you tell people that there is enough to feed everyone, they insist that they should be first. It is a raw occurrence of humanity struggling for something. It is one of the few times that I find myself frustrated and a hint of pure anger begins to surface. Language barrier never helps. But we fed everyone and got everyone, including ourselves, home on a positive note.
I will miss the open spaces, mud huts, bathing out of a bucket, being followed as I run, and the waves of all our coaches- the one pure sign of commrodery.
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