The Burning Bush

Every dry season -- after the maize harvest -- Zambians set the bush ablaze. Their reasons for burning differ, but just about everyone does it to some degree. In urban areas, they burn grassy areas along the tarmac to keep roadways and walkways clear. Villagers burn just about everything. They burn the areas around their huts to deter snakes from coming too close. They burn the undergrowth in the forests for no real reason. They burn the dambo (wetland) grasses to keep them from growing too thick. And, when the maize has been harvested, they bundle the residues and set fire to their fields.

The burning, in its many forms – but especially in the fields – is very much a cultural thing. Zambians have been doing it forever. Many years ago the practices were more justified. They would burn the forest areas to chase game out to hunters waiting for them on the other side. They would burn the dambos so that they could see where the lions were bedded down. And they would burn their fields to remove pests and neutralize the soil’s acidity. But these days most of the game is gone and there’s not much hunting. The lions are mostly confined to the game parks – although a farmer in a village near ours had 7 goats eaten by lions earlier this month. And the practice of burning the fields exposes the soil to erosion and the harsh sun which diminish the fertility requiring farmers to shift fields every 7 years or so.

Yet in the evenings when the wind is low and the low light makes flames clearly visible, villagers depart for the bush with fire in their braziers. The dry grass catches easily and burns quickly. In the morning, parts of our once familiar surroundings look like a post-apocalyptic wasteland – the ground charred and black, all vegetation dead and gone and down trees covered with white ash, still smoldering. The burning bush leaves a thick coat of smog in the sky.

Watching the sunset these days is bittersweet. The smoke filled sky is set on fire every evening at dusk. The sun turns a deep red as it retreats, but then disappears behind the smog well before it reaches the horizon. Its departure is quickly followed by a few plumes of black smoke rising above the tree canopy. It’s easy for us to see how this antiquated practice has high environmental costs and provides very minor benefits. But living here has provided a better understanding of why they still do it. Rural Zambians live almost entirely outside – in nature with no real escape or departure from it. Burning the bush is just their way of controlling their environment. It’s easy to do – it takes 2 children about an hour to control burn an entire hectare. And if it provides even a miniscule amount of increased security or comfort in their lives and in their environment, then it makes sense to do it. It’s part of our job here to ask questions about the bush burning – I suggest to farmers that they not burn their fields and retain their residues – but when our questions and suggestions get ignored we can't get upset.

VACATION!!!

Joy’s brother, Lincoln, came for an incredible visit to Zambia and we crammed so many awesome Zambian activities into a week and a half that I don’t even know how to begin chronicling them. Lincoln’s plane arrived late in the afternoon, and Joy and I were there to receive him. We didn’t give him much time to get acclimated to the new time zone after his 20+ hours of travelling to reach us; the next morning we were on our way to South Luangwa National Park by 5:00am. An 8 hour bus ride, an overnight in Chipata and a 3 hour bush taxi later, we reached our destination. Mushroom Lodge was spectacular: large and beautiful chalets, great food and a nice swimming pool and dinning area that overlook a river basin – now mostly dry. We dropped our bags in our rooms and tried to go back to the dining area for lunch, but the path was blocked…by a herd of elephants! Seriously, there were 6 elephants munching on the trees no more than 5 meters outside the door to our chalet!!! No big deal. Joy and I took pictures and patiently waited as they moved past. We spent the next four nights at the lodge going on 2 four hour game drives a day, swimming in the pool and eating way too much delicious food. The whole thing was surreal. On the game drives we just about everything the park had to offer. An extensive (although incomplete) list of the animals we saw follows:








Each safari was new and different. We saw lions everyday (the last full day we were there we saw 14). The lions are the top of the food chain and they know it. Our guide let us get uncomfortably close to them and they don’t care much about people in the park. Joy’s favorite was the warthog, Lincoln’s was the elephant, and mine was the leopard. But we all enjoyed the giraffes, hippos, baboons and zebras more than we thought we would. The stripes on the zebras are so vivid and distinct it’s unbelievable. After the first 2 drives we had seen about everything, so for the rest of our time we really took in the smells, sounds and sights.

At the lodge, we were definitely guests in the homes of these great animals. We saw giraffes, warthogs, elephants, hippos, zebras, puku, impala, baboons and storks all from the lodge’s common areas (many from 10-20 meters away). One evening a pride of lions came by the lodge, but we were out on a game drive so we didn’t see them. We did, however, hear them outside our chalet late that night. Any description of the feelings I had while experiencing these animals in their natural homes would not do it justice.

Our last morning at the lodge we went on a game drive in the morning, came back to the lodge for lunch, hopped two planes, and by 5:00pm we were awestruck by some of the biggest and most beautiful waterfalls in the world: Victoria Falls. What a day!

Victoria Falls is gorgeous. The National Park that gives the view of the falls puts you at eyelevel with the top of the falls a stones throw away – literally, I threw a stone from one side to the other – across the gorge that the water falls into. Over our short stay in Livingstone, we spent several hours at the falls taking pictures and twice we watched the sunset behind the cloud of spray from the falls.

The falls were beautiful and everything, but the highlight of Livingstone (and maybe the whole vacation) for me was Livingstone Island and swimming in Devil’s Pool – a small pool of water on the edge of Vic Falls no more than 2 feet from the plunge to the bottom. We had seen pictures of Devil’s Pool on Google and it looked awesome, but fairly harmless. In reality, the pool is a bit overwhelming and a bit dangerous, but way more awesome than almost anything I’ve ever done in my life. I had imagined that it was more like a hot tub on the edge than an actual pool. It turns out that Devil’s Pool is about 150 meters away from anything that could be considered solid ground, so we had to swim to it. Swimming through currents in the Zambezi River about 10 meters upstream from a 110 meter drop? Sure, no big deal. Our guide, Collins, showed us where to swim and where there were rocks to rest on and one by one we followed him through the water to Devil’s Pool. And oh yeah, we had to jump into Devil’s Pool once we got there, as if the swim to get there wasn’t exhilarating enough. Collins stood on the edge of the falls to guard us from going over and we jumped in and posed for pictures. I lifted myself up for about a 2.4 second glance at the edge, but that was all I could take. The swim back felt like a cake walk compared to the swim there, probably because we had already been right up against the edge. When we reached the island again we dried off and ate eggs benedict (breakfast was part of the package) and I drank probably the best cup of coffee that I have ever had. We talked to the guides a bit about how we were surprised at the strength of the current and we eventually found out that it was only the third day of the season that they were allowing swimming. But no need to worry everyone, we were all safe and sound.

We spent another day or so in Livingstone around the falls shopping and during touristy stuff, but for me there was nothing like Devil’s Pool. We boarded another 6:00am bus and 10 hours later we got off in Kapiri Mposhi. A packed mini-bus – I mean PACKED, I counted 16 adults, 2 babies, a sack of potatoes, and our luggage inside a minivan – got us to our turn off the tarmac before sunset and a 2 hour ride in an old pickup got us home. What a day!

The vacation for Joy and me technically ended there as we had meetings and some work to do once we got home, but for the most part we enjoyed having Lincoln in our home and showed him around to most of the sights in and around our village. It felt totally natural having Lincoln with us, which is a testament to his ability to adjust to the different lifestyle here. We all shared once in a lifetime experiences and made several memories that we won’t soon forget. We thank Lincoln for his courage and flexibility in coming here to visit us. It was truly a fantastic vacation.

And now that we are back home with charged batteries, we have more work to do.

Seagel in the City

As part of our recently completed In-Service Training program we were required to bring a counterpart (someone from the village that a PCV would like to establish a strong working relationship with) to Lusaka for a 3-day workshop on development and gardening. So, almost by default I invited my most consistent and reliable village friend, Seagel, to come to the workshop. He is only 19 years old (much younger than any other PCV counterpart) and he had never been to Lusaka before. I thought the trip would give him a better understanding of where Joy and I come from and also show him what life outside the village is like. I was right about those things, but I didn’t give much thought to how mind-blowing the whole experience would be.

It is hard to really understand what village life here is like without seeing/experiencing it, but Seagel has lived in a rural Zambian village with thatch-roofed houses, well water he has to carry himself and with the nearest market or town a short 65km away his whole life. He had experienced things and ideas from more developed countries in very small doses – airplanes flying over our village, 2nd hand clothes from America and Europe in small market shops, pictures of home from Joy and me, etc – but never so many new and foreign things at the same time. Seagel had never seen a streetlight or roundabout let alone so many cars as they flew through them. We travelled together to Arcades (a popular, upscale shopping center) because he had heard of it before and he wanted to see what it was like. We walked slowly through his first parking lot and past electronic stores, clothing shops, internet cafes and restaurants. We stopped in at a fast food chicken place to check it out and I offered to buy Seagel dinner. But after looking at the menu, he concluded that it was so expensive (about $8 for a meal) that he couldn’t even let me buy him food there. So we walked to the nearest filling (gas) station and I bought him a meat pie – something he had seen in our local market but had never tried. I took him to a grocery store next and he confidently and calmly walked past shelves full of unfamiliar foods as I pointed out things that I liked and things he would know. We had our picture taken in front of the grocery store and in the parking lot full of cars and in true Zambian style he kept a stone cold face. On our way back to training we walked by the movie theatre and as badly as I wanted to see “Predators” – no sarcasm, I really wanted to see it – I decided that Seagel would have to wait for his first movie which was probably for the better because it’s all downhill from there.

It’s impossible to say what Seagel was feeling during those two hours (for the most part he was silently taking in the whole experience), but he told me how much he enjoyed it the next day at training. We feel that we can slightly relate to Seagel’s overwhelming experience of being thrown into a world that you had only heard of or read about, but I think, at least initially, that it’s easier to take a few steps back than it is take a few jumps forward. Seagel is grateful to have seen a bit of our lives, and I am grateful to have been openly welcomed into his.