Mayen'u

I sit here in a dimly lit room, the rain tapping lightly on the window panes, candles flickering, Gaither's playing softly in the background, my kittens nestled on my lap purring away and the moment is perfect.
I am home

But bright and precious memories flit through my mind, dimming with the realities of home and work and life. I try desperately to snatch at them but they dart away like tunzanza, butterflies.

Contact-I am dropped off in the village of Sarah and Patrick Chiwaya, I'm to stay with them for the week and visit some of the other ladies around the village of Mayen'u and learn about the language and the culture of the Lunda. I am so excited and so terrified. But the excitement wins out. I am here!

We go to the villages of the other ladies, Mama Betty and Gladys, Mama Pauline, Mama Hilda and Shalom and we greet them. I am introduced and told what day I will be going to visit with them. I still can't believe I'm here. Houses rise out of the dirt like small brick hills, The trees provide a canopy protecting the houses from the intense heat of the sun. Kabaka fields (maize) encircle the villages providing a ready source of food. The smells of nshima and dirt and the beautiful great out doors is all around me. Wow!

The sun shines beautifully the first morning. I spend time in the field behind the Muyombo's house kudima nyoli- cultivating sweet potatoes. Gladys takes me to another part of the field to kufuka nyimu,- dig ground nuts, the maize reaches high above us as she digs them up and I remove them from the plants. Later we work around the house- pounding cassava and corn in the iyanda (mortar).  I try my hand at sifting cassava and maize flour first in a sift and then in a lwalu - a flat basket. It looks easy but it certainly is not. Getting caught in the chota during a massive storm while cooking wakaka - pumpkin leaves and trying to stay dry as the wind drives the rain almost horizontally.  We find out later in the day, the wind and the rain knocked a wall down in the house of Sarah's sister in law.

Another day, Gladys and Mama Betty take me to chop nchawa for their fire (big logs that burn slowly). After a few tries (and misses) Gladys laughingly takes the axe away from me "I don't want to be here all day" she says.

She helps me then settle the smaller of the two logs on my head. Mama Betty carries a load of several big sticks that are used to feed the fire, while Gladys takes the bigger log (about 5 feet long and about 6 inches in diameter) on their heads. I manage two baby steps without the log slipping and decide I better keep a tight hold. Mama Betty's load is a bit unbalanced with so many sticks but she manages quite well fixing it only a handful of times during the 10 minute walk,. But Gladys follows up the rear walking easily, the log on her head and the axe on her shoulder, no hesitations at all from her end. They chat and laugh easily but it takes all my concentration not to drop this log!

Resting in the shade on kastools (bit of Zambish- a small stool), chatting and getting to know each other. Our lives have been so different....  The love of God that has brought us together- Blessed!

Bright blue skies, brilliant orange and yellow flowers, delicate pink fluff of fern like plants, warm red dirt under my feet. Light embracing, enveloping, penetrating, life giving. Greens of so many different shades. The yellow brown of the dying kabaka (corn), the soft green of the still living kabaka,the grass growing up, up, up taller than I. The acacia tree with its bright yellow flowers.

Blessed

Mama Pauline. We met as equals, as friends. Our cultures are different not better. "I thank God for His love. It is His love that has brought us together." And I am blessed. We are blessed to learn from each other. We spend the day working around the house. She tells me about her last baby, her eighth child who died at 8 months, wadin'i nakutachika kwenda. My understanding of the language is still sketchy but I get her full meaning instantly and my heart breaks for her- her baby girl was just beginning to walk. I cannot begin to grasp the love of a parent for their child, nor can I understand the deep sorrow of sitting at the child's bedside watching him slowly slip away. Than she tells me about her son - The doctor named him she says. Emmanuel. They told me he had died and if the body was born by 930 they would force labour. At 21 baby Emmanuel was born healthy and beautiful. Namesake of God.

She tells me how glad she is for the girls' dorm that is almost complete. It means her girl can stay there instead of walking an hour to get to school. When she finds out later in the day that the cost of the dorm is outside her ability to pay, her face falls, and I hear her whisper "oh mwan'ami" (my child). How is it that I have been so blessed with so much, that I have been glutted on the goods of the world. School was free, transport was provided freely, textbooks and so many other things free or manageable... Open my heart and my hands as I have been given so let me freely give.

So blessed to sit on the chisalu (grass mat) with Mama Pauline and Gladys and chat and learn and laugh. Emmanuel is taking their goats from their pen at the back of the house to the grassy bit between their village and the road. The baby goat is crying 'maaa! maaa!" being left behind when mom and dad were taken. We share a laugh, Mama Pauline and I and she tells me "the baby is crying "Mama! Mama!" and the mama goat is replying "Twaya! Twaya!" (come, come). Her mban'ala (guinea fowl) in their pen of wooden stakes in the shade under the banana tree. Wrapped in this woman's love: love for God, love for life, and now love for me her new friend.

Loved



 

The house is by far the most sparse I have been in yet. 3 rooms. One for Mama Hildah, one for her mother: Nkaka Phoebe, a tiny woman about as big as a small stick; and one in the middle that stores some food, buckets of water, flour, the yisalu (grass mats) and other items they might have. Most of the time they sit out in the chinsambu (outside kitchen) or on the grass mats outside under the shade of the big mango tree.

 

Mama Hildah and the daughter of her brother, Shalom tell me they have fields in Katembo but they won't take me out there because we will have to wade thru the river and they know we can't do that [because of bilharzia]. "Kukala kwos" (not a problem) but I don't convince them. They take me instead to their near fields about 20 minutes walk away. We gather cassava leaves for nshima, then go to the corn fields only to discover that ants have crawled into the husks. Just the nzeneni, the small black ones but still they crawl all over and my skin creeps with the thought of them climbing up on me.. I do my best tho to peal the husk back quickly and pull the cob free before they ants are very disturbed and creep up my arms, half laughing and half dying. I am relieved when Shalom complains to her tata amumbanda (father that's a woman: aunt) "Kutwesha wanyi (not able) I am feeling fear. O! Me too!

 

We gather the fresh produce to take back to the village for our lunch nshima. Mama Hildah takes the big bucket of corn, still crawling with ants. Shalom takes the pumpkin (more like a huge squash). They give me the bag of cassava leaves because they aren't heavy. I laugh, they must think we are so weak! But I'm not complaining. Since I'm here learning about the Lunda culture, I heft the bag and settle it with some struggle on my head. While I did have to steady it many times, I made it back all the way to the village without holding onto it or dropping it. Even past the nsalafu- the big red fire ants that crawl up your legs and then all bite together; how they can bite! I'm not sure what they think- probably that I'm ridiculous- but I am so impressed that I was able to successfully do this!

 

Back in the village, they laugh as I show them how I've learned to pound cassava but that I make a mess and don't have the strength to do it as quickly as they can. I am so thankful for their patience and the advice that they give- I may get this after all.

After nshima and between bouts of rain showers they show me how to make their local bread. It looks quite straight forward. Equal parts pounded roast cassava and pounded ground nuts, a bit of salt, a bit of water and pounded together until it sticks together. I'll let you know how it goes when I try to make it :) . It tastes kinda like peanut butter but a bit dryer. So fabulous!

The houses look like they have just grown up out of the ground, red brown brick most with thatched roofs. I didn't realize, but some of the tushinakaji (old folks) still live in grass thatched houses. But the houses are merely a place to sleep and maybe store things. The sitting rooms are out around the fire in the chinsambu or on the chisalu in the great, beautiful outdoors, out in the presence of God, out at His feet- "in the rustling grass I hear Him pass": in the blue of the sky, the glint of the sun through fluffy white clouds, the golden green grass and the flitting tunzanza (butterflies) they all seem to shout "He is here! He is all around you!" I am nothing but this so great God so loved me, so loved us, poured out Himself, poured out His love, poured out His blood, poured out His life just to show me how great and how wild and how unchanging His love is toward me.  ... Blessed ....

We went the last evening, Mama Sarah and I and her three oldest grandkids: Groria (Gloria), Ireen, and Wana, in the ox cart to her fields in Katembo about 30 minutes and through that mucky river. Her youngest son Kapi drove the cart, while Tata Patrick followed on his bike. Wonderful to be so included, and a little bit scary to be so close to oxen with their large horns :S . I learned to look for cracks in the dirt under the leaves of the ntamba (sweet potatoes) that's how they know the ntamba is ready to be picked. We gather ntamba and machimpa (like a small squash), and pumpkin and nyimu (ground nuts like peanuts). I saw parrots, from a distance; beautiful birds but rather a nuisance to the fields. On the way back, Sarah and Patrick and Kapi all disappeared off at one point into the maize fields leaving me alone with the three small children (6 and 8) and the ox cart. Wana (6) was instructed to keep the oxen away from the maize. But he's so small and he only had a corn stalk to hit the oxen with; I tried to help by hitting at them but then I was scared to anger them and be gored so I kept jumping back away from them. I was so glad to see those other three show up not more than 5 minutes and two corn stalks later!

The kids for me were one of the best parts.Antanisha ami asatu- my three teachers. I learned so much from them and they were always so patient and helpful. As soon as I had a knew word they'd whisper knowingly to each other "mukanda" and I'd reach for my little note book and begin to sound out the word I had just learned their heads peering over the page repeating it to me over and over sound by sound until I had it recorded. They also loved trying to write (or draw) in my notebook, so my paper is littered with their darling scribbles. Fascinated with my hair Groria would run her fingers through it any time it was down pronouncing it jinawahi - it is nice, or taking my hair ties out just to tie it back again into a 'puf' (not quite the same pronunciation as puff). I forgot sunscreen one day and both girls had to rub their fingers over my skin chattering to themselves about ikowa dachinana (red skin).

There are few things in the world as perfect as cradling a sleeping child in your lap, knowing this child has trusted you and come to rest in your arms, and coming home from the fields that last night with a good friend beside me to chat with, God's beauty all around us and three darling children one of whom had curled up in my lap to sleep my week was complete. I have learned so much and been part of so much. I have been so blessed! My Father has brought me to this place, the greatest lesson  I have learned: although I thought I was coming to share His love really His love is being shared with me.