Observations from Zambia

**I apologize for any comment that might seem insensitive. Not saying anything is wrong or bad, just different.**
• Even though we sleep more here and the pace is generally slower, we end most days exhausted and attribute it to the emotional toil of language/cultural barriers.
• People can wail on demand here. We drove a young woman to the cemetery for her brother’s funeral, and it was amazing how she could go back and forth from wailing as she exited the mortuary to immediate laughing and talking calmly when she got in the car with some of the other ladies.
• When a taxi driver dies, ALL the taxis join the procession from the mortuary to the graveyard – and all rules and laws and niceties of driving go out the window – along with the upper bodies of the drivers and their passengers sitting in the windows of their car, driving all over the road, honking. Basically, if you hear that a taxi driver has died, STAY OFF THE ROADS (we hear the same applies to minibuses).
• Minibus = roller coaster without tracks, especially from Kimasala where there is a giant downhill followed by a giant uphill as the road crosses the river.
• Minibuses typically will shut off their engines on said hill to save gas.
• You can usually arrive faster (and safer) walking than by riding a minibus.
• If you’re a young American who learns the local language and walks most everywhere, you’re in the Peace Corp unless: (see next point)
• If you are not in the Peace Corp and speak the local language and walk most everywhere, you clearly don’t stay in Solwezi. You are from Kasempa, where all the missionaries stay.
• Summarizing the two above points, no one believes that we’re missionaries who stay in town, and I am regularly proposed to even if Luke is with me because the assumption is that we’re two Peace Corp volunteers, not a missionary couple.
• When you blow your nose during the dry season, do not be alarmed by the dirt that comes out (same applies to use of Q-tips).
• If you see something new in Shoprite that you’re really excited about, buy in bulk. It may never appear again.
• Typically, people are progressively nicer, more appreciative, and more likely to be Christian the more ruralized and/or traditional they are. Seems the wealthy, Westernized, educated group has become post-Christian in many ways.
• Most Zambian women of child-bearing age are either pregnant or have recently had a child – or both. No joke.
• When you become a mother, you are referred to “Baina ____” or “mother of ______”
• When you are married, you are rarely referred to by your first name – you are a Mrs. until you are a Baina.
• “Tiffany” and “Wessler” are both very difficult to say. “Luka” is not a problem though. Therefore, I am Ba Muka Luka (wife of Luke). This is my identity.
• We put our trash in a giant hole in the ground, and occasionally set it on fire to “compress it.” Most trash, though, is typically thrown on the street.
• Periodically, trucks will come through certain streets that are known for copious amounts of trash and men will shovel said trash into the trucks.
• Most people are paid at the end of the month.
• The line at the ATM at the end of the month is ridiculously long (for several days).
• If you have cash that you are not using at that very moment, it is expected that you would give it to someone else who has an immediate need or want.
• Therefore, Shoprite and other shops are also incredibly busy at the end of the month, because it is better to spend all your money immediately so it is not available for someone else to request. (A lot of that is found in the book African Friends and Money Matters as well)
• Children are often the breadwinners. Whereas in the states a kid selling fruit or manning a lemonade stand is cute and teaching them about economics, here, a kid selling fruit is supporting an entire family and often unable to attend school because of the demands of their “work.”

More observations to come in future blogs….