Azungu!

Mzungu (plural Azungu) is the southern, central and eastern African term for a person of foreign descent. Literally translated it means "someone who roams around aimlessly" or "aimless wanderer". 

As soon as a Malawian kid catches sight of my light skin, it immediately sounds a warning cry: "Azungu!" Within seconds there's a whole bunch of children surrounding us. They will then make use of their communication skills in English: "How are you? What's my name?" (mistaken for "what's your name?"). Or they will straight away proceed to their most popular plea: "Give me picture!"

Vijay pulls out his camera and the children pose for a photo. Watching them when they have a look at the picture is the best part of it! Everyone tries to be as close as possible to the camera. The small ones - at the back - jump up and down in order to catch a glimpse of the photo. And they all erupt in laughter.

Enjoying Lake Malawi

The village of Chona (no electricity, no running water) PRESENTS: A special lecture on Aeronautics

The village of Chona, Zambia is not really a village at all but more of a focal point, a place of infrastructure where the wider community gathers.  It has a health clinic, a school, a small market and a well meaning everyday the community for miles around descend to Chona before heading back to their small plots of land and huts in the evening.  It is here at the local school, with so many pupils that the school starts at 7am to 5pm working in two shifts, where I offered to give a lecture on Aeronautics to the eldest math and physics class.

The small classroom, packed with fifty Grade 9 pupils wait patiently as I am presented.  As with the impeccable politeness of all Zambians they stand when I enter the class room, greeting me formally yet warmly.  I forgot to ask them to sit and they continued standing until the head teacher intervened and gave the instruction.

As with schools in the UK, all the pupils wore a school uniform, shirt and tie for boys and skirt, blouse and jumper (?) for the girls.  At this age in school, their shirts were not torn or over used and almost all had a note book to write in.

I started at the beginning.  The most that any of these children had ever gotten to an aircraft is seeing the large airliners silently cruising through the blue skies kilometers above them.  Had they ever asked themselves about how it could fly?  Or even how big these aircraft were?  From their astonishment I would say no.  Their initial shyness, coupled with ignorance soon gave way to intrigue and fascination.  Aircraft, aeroplanes, helicopters are understandable to small villagers like themselves who may have never even been in a car before.

They started answering the questions I posed them.  One boy, even answered correctly as to why the aircraft needed a tail using his knowledge of the large African birds around them.  Another correctly answered to what would happen if the aircraft started to go too slowly.  Their questions too became more sophisticated, 'Sir, how do you get oxygen into the aircraft?', 'Why can't you open the windows?'

The greatest part of the lesson was taken up by practical maths.  They were to work out in relation to other modes of transport how fast an aircraft travels at.  Speed is not something they are accustomed to.  The question 'How fast can you travel by bike?'  Was met with shrugs until they could think about how far their house was and how long it took to get to school.  30 minutes to travel 7km equals 14km/h.  The car, which most had never travelled on, was worked out to be at 120km/h.  But how do you work out the speed of an airliner?

I gave them a few clues: 1) Airliners cruise at roughly Mach 0.9, 2) Speed of sound is roughly 300m/s.  A few brave children, came to the black board to work it out.  Having no calculators all calculation must be done long hand or mentally.  When they worked out the speed at 972km/h they were astonished!  Shouts of surprise and murmurs of disbelief filled the classroom and exploded to a raucous when they found out that fighter jets can travel at 2-3 times that speed.

Hands were shooting up now and the questions flowed one after another non-stop.  But time was now over and I left them in a state of wonder.

As Mr. Moses, the senior teacher, said as we left, "Thank you.  It is inspiring to the young village children to realise where they can emerge with studying and the usefulness of it."

What has happened to Travellers?

One of the many joys I used to have was to meet other travellers.  Each meeting used to be an explosion. Two sets of experiences clashing and fusing into a helix of conversation, telling stories and sharing ideas about about the ills and woes of our host country and with wild and crazy and sometimes intelligent ways to solve them. These conversations starting at midday would stretch into the early hours of the morning and even the occasional incoherent ending fueled by local beer would give nuggets of gold.

My conversations now seem to revolve around where we've been, where we're going before falling back on life in Europe.

What happened to the politically wired travellers with an axe to grind? And the ones with several axes? Where are the socialists, the communists, the capitalists, the anti-capitalists and the anti-capitalists capitalists? Where are the environmentalists and the anarchists?

I call all these people to come find me and let's toast to Africa's successes and woes. Let's solve the continents' issues with useless rhetoric and see where our ideas lead us.

A special day

How many of your birthdays do you remember? I will definitely keep lively memories of this one…

When I wake up the sun is already out.  It’s 6am and it’s already getting too warm inside our tent in Chona, a small village west of Zambia's capital Lusaka. We’re having (English!) breakfast together with our host Momo, a Japanese nurse who’s volunteering at the local clinic, and her friend Tamaki. They just helped to deliver two babies, one of them named after Tamaki.

As we arrive at the clinic there are already many people waiting outside of the registration office. The “registration office” is a small room where thousands of booklets are piled up.  It’s probably the messiest and dustiest room I’ve ever seen.  Every patient gets a number when he first visits the clinic. He has to bring his own booklet - a small exercise book. If he doesn’t have money to buy one, they cost 10 cents in the local market, he is turned away. While Vijay is enquiring the patients name, age and headman (which indicates the village they’re leaving in) and writing them down on the booklets, I try to find the booklets that have already been personalized. Sometimes the booklet is on the shelf where it should be, but most of the time I have to go through several piles of unsorted booklets. Some booklets just can’t be found. Then the clinic provides them with a “new” booklet – another patients booklet from 2009 where we tear out the indicates the doctor has written down.  As soon as they are registered – we have their booklet on a pile and bring it into the doctors office – the people queue again.   After they’ve seen the doctor they queue again in front of the pharmacy where they show their booklet, with newly indicated prescriptions, and get their medicine. It’s impressive how patient they PATIENTs here are. Many come from far away. They walk for several hours to get here, queue hours in the sun – all being ill.
 

After helping out at the registration, I can see the new born babies and their mothers. An 18 years-old HIV-positive woman hasn’t decided yet what name her boy is going to get. She looks tired, but smiles when I tell her that she has done well and has a beautiful baby boy.

Later,  I give a hand at the HIV-testing.  It’s Wednesday, so all pregnant women from the area come to get checked. One part of it is the HIV-test. Most of the women already have many kids, one of them – aged 29 – is awaiting her 6^th…

It’s good to see that most of the womens test results are negative today. Two husbands are tested positive though. Other tests have to be done.

Around 1pm the clinic closes and we prepare lunch: Zambian-Japanese fusion cooked on charcoals. It's very hot now and we try not to move too much. But the buckets need to be filled with water. The tap water is only running between 11am and 4pm when the sun is strong enough to make the solar pump work. Momo's house is one of the few with taps, so people come here to fill their buckets as well as for recharging the batteries of their mobile phones . There are only two houses with electricity (thanks to solar panels) in the village. Not even the clinic has electricity!

After lunch we go to the local school. We've already spoken to the headmaster and the senior teacher Mr Moses the day before. We take a seat in their small, dark office between two classrooms and soon end up in a Math lesson of grade 9. There are more than 50 pupils in this class. Some of them with notebooks others only with their torn school uniform. While I am more focused on the teacher-pupil interaction and the teaching skills, Vijay is paying more attention to the calculations. As he politely points out the teachers errors on the blackboard, the classroom fills with laughter. Fortunately the teacher has got a good sense of humour!

Later in the afternoon we climb a rock near the village, where we get a beautiful view of the surroundings and enjoy the sunset.

After dinner Vijay and our host Momo, surprise me with wine and lots of snacks which Momo brought from the city. When Ms Kaboscha, Momos neighbour who is also working at the clinic, joins us, the birthday party is perfect!

Lungobe Health Clinic

the registration office

patient patients!

as there is no doctor in the clinic, the nurse attends the patients

Ms Kabosha gives out the medicine at the pharmacy

mothers and babies are getting checked

Is this a classic AIDS story?

Zachery is 25 years old.  He finished school at the age of 22, three years ago, but has never had a job.  With a high unemployment it is difficult for young people to get a job anyway but coupled with his inability to fund any high education he was particularly disadvantaged.  Both his parents have died, his brother is ill and lost his job and his family home is about to be repossessed.

We met Zachery as we left the hostel this morning to take a stroll around Lusaka, the capital of Zambia.  It was 10am and he stopped us on the road a few minutes from the hostel.  He asked for a moment of our time because he had 'a problem which he was sure we could help with'.  We agreed to listen to him but with very sceptical ears.  We listened as this polite young man described how two days ago he received a letter for repossession of his home.  The story became more tragic as he continued to describe how not long before that his father passed away, the last member of his family with a job.  He showed us an official letter and he was in arrears of over one million kwachas, about $200 US.  He was asking for any help we could give him.

Still with an air of scepticism we suggested that we needed a tour guide for the city and we offered 50,000 kwachas, $10 US for a few hours - an amount that someone not really in need would've turned down but would make a real difference if his story was honest.

He agreed and took us on a walking tour of the city for three hours.  During this time his story came out about how he lost his mother and then recently his father.  He told us about how he is the youngest of seven children and the only one that can work now after his brother lost his job after he fell ill.  He has a few nephews and nieces that he has to look after too.

He is devoutly Christian, but he doesn't understand God's purpose for him.  He mentions that he asks God what is his purpose here on Earth, as he is suffering and has done for a long time.  He looks at us in earnest as if we can answer this question for him.  But there were some inconsistencies too, he had a nice shirt and jeans on and after mentioning a few times that he hasn't eaten in two days didn't seem ravaged by hunger when we stopped in a cafe for a cake - although that could've just been to keep up appearances.

Indeed a sad story if all is true.  Never were the words HIV or AIDS mentioned, it is not something that people readily admit to, but is rife and devastating in this part of Africa.  In many countries in Southern Africa the AIDS crisis is becoming a pandemic with generations of parents and breadwinners literary wiped out.  In the best of cases children must become parents to their siblings, grandparents in their old age care for their orphaned grandchildren, in the worst, a generation of street children emerges.

Zachery was very pleased when we parted with him holding his 50,000kwacha note.  We hope it would provide him with some food for his family and a little hope too.  He certainly earned it.