Death is all around
Last Friday the bus I take to my village swerved off the road. I was in the back of the bus so all I knew was that it felt like we almost flipped over. Once we had stopped and dust cleared I could see a mangled bike and then a mangled body laying in the road behind us. Apparently we had just hit someone. Apparently the man on the bike had swerved infront of the bus.
This is not the first accident I've seen here. A few months ago I passed a flipped semi truck on the notoriously dangerous mountains of Eastern Province. A man was trapped under the wreckage. A bus, another truck, and several cars had stopped to help, or stand around and watch. When we passed they were trying to pull the wreckage off the man with the other semi-truck, using a rope and a cargo strap. Both of which snapped immediately. The nearest ambulance was probably 3 hours away in either direction. I don't know even know what kind of equipment would be available in Zambia to lift a semi.
Similarly, the young man who had been hit by the bus, run over I would guess from the look of his crushed bike, was completely reliant on what by-standers could think to do. Which was to pick him up like a sack of maize, shuffle everyone and their luggage to make room on the already crowded bus, strap the mangled bike to the roof and drive the rest of the way to the Lwimba clinic. There are no doctors at the Lwimba clinic, only a few poorly trained nurses with limited resources. The clinic's borehole has recently broken so someone went to fetch water from the nearest well. I heard later that the nurse refused to treat him because it was "a police case" and there needed to be a report first...
So he was put on a saline drip, the men watching the futbol match were called over to identify him, then he was carried back to the now empty bus like a sack of maize, and driven 40k on a dirt road to the Chongwe clinic, and eventually to Lusaka, where he died.
I stood watching this trying to think of what to do, but what was happening was what could be done. I certainly have no medical expertise, not really even first aid. My mother, Uncle Scott, Sara, Brad, Aemelia - their medical skills could have been usual in this situation, as in many, many, others. Instead I stood around and observed and analyzed like a good sociologist, being absolutely no help whatsoever. Instead I started thinking about the causes and consequences of powerlessness. Both real powerlessness and an ingrained mentality and resignation to powerlessness.
People were saying the young man was drunk, which is why he swerved in front of the bus. Then I heard that the driver was also drunk and I got so angry I marched straight home and cried for several hours. About a lot of things. About people believing that nothing more can be done or expected, that people die of things here that they shouldn't die of- and you don't die of it you have money, that with all the ways to die here people make even more. And I suppose also about my own powerlessness, in the overwhelming circumstances of rural Africa.
I think the driver being drunk was idle speculation. The police cleared the driver of blame. But drunk driving is by no means uncommon. Pretty much anything done here has a high incidence of being done drunk. A symptom of powerlessness. Ages and ages of powerlessness. Perhaps I should encourage my Zambian friends to try hiding in their huts and crying for hours at a time as a reaction to powerlessness. Less destructive, less expensive, but equally unproductive.
I went to the funeral today of a grade 4 pupil who died of malaria. This was the 6th funeral I have attended. The girl who was buried was the granddaughter of the local carpenter, a man I know and like very much. The other funerals I have attended I didn't know the deceased or the family even. But it doesn't matter because EVERYONE goes to funerals. On more than one occasion I have arrived for some program at some school and found all the teachers gone because most of them are at a funeral. Something in my schedule is cancelled about once every two weeks because of a funeral.
A Zambian funeral often lasts three days. There is no preserving of the body so burial is a pressing issue, but there must also be time for family to be notified and travel, and time to cry. I was once at my neighbors and Mrs. Zulu quieted everyone to listen to distant wailing, trying to pinpoint which village it was coming from and think about who had been sick. The women of the family stay up and wail all night, sitting with the body until burial. The wailing is like crying as a song. Also the church choir usually comes and sits in the funeral house and sings. The other day I asked the woman I had come to the funeral with about the singing and why they did it continuously. She said it was just to help people from crying too much. "How is a better way to say that?" Then we discussed the world console. She taught be the equivalent in Soli but I don't remember it.
Sometimes the family tries to wait for a wooden coffin to be made or brought from town, but if there is no money the body is simply wrapped in a blanket and rolled in a reed mat. There is something very fitting about being buried in a red mat. So little separation. People die everywhere obviously, but the way Zambians enshroud death is significantly different than Americans.
During the three days of funeral people mostly just sit. But they also eat, and chat, and pass on news, sing a bit, cry a bit, and also laugh. I was at one funeral where they made community announcements while everyone was gathered around the burial plot. There is certainly mourning too, people wail openly and loudly, and entire community comes to recognize and share in the death, but this is all woven together as part of life. Not like a contrary force to life. Because it is so present. And because often there is so little a poor Zambian farmer can do to control, or postpone death. So there is a sense of inevitability and resignation. Powerlessness against the things you can not stop. I think this American could certainly learn a lesson from that, how to sit quietly and calmly with the things that are outside my control.
I think what Zambia and I have to learn from each other is when to sit calmly and when in fact to be indignant, and how to turn that indignation into something productive. How to teach and learn when something can in fact be done to change the outcome.
Plus a fair increase in infrastructure and public services certainly wouldn't hurt anyone.
___________
The other day my neighbors came over to tell me they had seen a snake go in my new storage shed. They poked around a bit and indeed there was a snake inside my storage shed. So we went to get Mrs. Zulu, who went in and killed it while the rest of us stood around outside holding sticks but also screaming a bit. Or laughing a little hysterically in my case and repeating "this one can kill you!" It was a puff adder. After it was very dead I checked for fangs. A puff adder is like a rattle snake only without the convenient warning.
That night I ate dinner at the Zulus but forgot to take my torch. Mrs. Zulu knew I was afraid of snakes (clarification Mrs. Zulu: Scared of snakes with poisonous fangs) so she walked me back home to light a match at my door to check for snakes. On the way I was telling her I wanted to tell my family about the snake but if they knew that I had fears, they would have fears. Especially my sister, she will say "Keli come home!" And Mrs. Zulu said "Don't tell them! You can't go home. After two years, then you can go."
No worries sissy, if I get bitten by a snake I will be flown to South Africa on the wings of American tax dollars. You would think that a country with as many poisonous snakes as Zambia would have just a bit of anti-venom. Apparently people don't really get bitten that often though. Which seems strange considering Mr. Zulu's advice to me, if I were to run across a puff adder again, was to not try and jump over it but just stomp on it. Pretty sure if I see another puff adder, I am just going to run and get Mrs. Zulu to destroy it. If Mrs. Zulu gets bitten by a snake then I will fly her to South Africa on the wings of whatever is available. But I am not entirely convinced Mrs. Zulu isn't a snake charmer...
This is not the first accident I've seen here. A few months ago I passed a flipped semi truck on the notoriously dangerous mountains of Eastern Province. A man was trapped under the wreckage. A bus, another truck, and several cars had stopped to help, or stand around and watch. When we passed they were trying to pull the wreckage off the man with the other semi-truck, using a rope and a cargo strap. Both of which snapped immediately. The nearest ambulance was probably 3 hours away in either direction. I don't know even know what kind of equipment would be available in Zambia to lift a semi.
Similarly, the young man who had been hit by the bus, run over I would guess from the look of his crushed bike, was completely reliant on what by-standers could think to do. Which was to pick him up like a sack of maize, shuffle everyone and their luggage to make room on the already crowded bus, strap the mangled bike to the roof and drive the rest of the way to the Lwimba clinic. There are no doctors at the Lwimba clinic, only a few poorly trained nurses with limited resources. The clinic's borehole has recently broken so someone went to fetch water from the nearest well. I heard later that the nurse refused to treat him because it was "a police case" and there needed to be a report first...
So he was put on a saline drip, the men watching the futbol match were called over to identify him, then he was carried back to the now empty bus like a sack of maize, and driven 40k on a dirt road to the Chongwe clinic, and eventually to Lusaka, where he died.
I stood watching this trying to think of what to do, but what was happening was what could be done. I certainly have no medical expertise, not really even first aid. My mother, Uncle Scott, Sara, Brad, Aemelia - their medical skills could have been usual in this situation, as in many, many, others. Instead I stood around and observed and analyzed like a good sociologist, being absolutely no help whatsoever. Instead I started thinking about the causes and consequences of powerlessness. Both real powerlessness and an ingrained mentality and resignation to powerlessness.
People were saying the young man was drunk, which is why he swerved in front of the bus. Then I heard that the driver was also drunk and I got so angry I marched straight home and cried for several hours. About a lot of things. About people believing that nothing more can be done or expected, that people die of things here that they shouldn't die of- and you don't die of it you have money, that with all the ways to die here people make even more. And I suppose also about my own powerlessness, in the overwhelming circumstances of rural Africa.
I think the driver being drunk was idle speculation. The police cleared the driver of blame. But drunk driving is by no means uncommon. Pretty much anything done here has a high incidence of being done drunk. A symptom of powerlessness. Ages and ages of powerlessness. Perhaps I should encourage my Zambian friends to try hiding in their huts and crying for hours at a time as a reaction to powerlessness. Less destructive, less expensive, but equally unproductive.
I went to the funeral today of a grade 4 pupil who died of malaria. This was the 6th funeral I have attended. The girl who was buried was the granddaughter of the local carpenter, a man I know and like very much. The other funerals I have attended I didn't know the deceased or the family even. But it doesn't matter because EVERYONE goes to funerals. On more than one occasion I have arrived for some program at some school and found all the teachers gone because most of them are at a funeral. Something in my schedule is cancelled about once every two weeks because of a funeral.
A Zambian funeral often lasts three days. There is no preserving of the body so burial is a pressing issue, but there must also be time for family to be notified and travel, and time to cry. I was once at my neighbors and Mrs. Zulu quieted everyone to listen to distant wailing, trying to pinpoint which village it was coming from and think about who had been sick. The women of the family stay up and wail all night, sitting with the body until burial. The wailing is like crying as a song. Also the church choir usually comes and sits in the funeral house and sings. The other day I asked the woman I had come to the funeral with about the singing and why they did it continuously. She said it was just to help people from crying too much. "How is a better way to say that?" Then we discussed the world console. She taught be the equivalent in Soli but I don't remember it.
Sometimes the family tries to wait for a wooden coffin to be made or brought from town, but if there is no money the body is simply wrapped in a blanket and rolled in a reed mat. There is something very fitting about being buried in a red mat. So little separation. People die everywhere obviously, but the way Zambians enshroud death is significantly different than Americans.
During the three days of funeral people mostly just sit. But they also eat, and chat, and pass on news, sing a bit, cry a bit, and also laugh. I was at one funeral where they made community announcements while everyone was gathered around the burial plot. There is certainly mourning too, people wail openly and loudly, and entire community comes to recognize and share in the death, but this is all woven together as part of life. Not like a contrary force to life. Because it is so present. And because often there is so little a poor Zambian farmer can do to control, or postpone death. So there is a sense of inevitability and resignation. Powerlessness against the things you can not stop. I think this American could certainly learn a lesson from that, how to sit quietly and calmly with the things that are outside my control.
I think what Zambia and I have to learn from each other is when to sit calmly and when in fact to be indignant, and how to turn that indignation into something productive. How to teach and learn when something can in fact be done to change the outcome.
Plus a fair increase in infrastructure and public services certainly wouldn't hurt anyone.
___________
The other day my neighbors came over to tell me they had seen a snake go in my new storage shed. They poked around a bit and indeed there was a snake inside my storage shed. So we went to get Mrs. Zulu, who went in and killed it while the rest of us stood around outside holding sticks but also screaming a bit. Or laughing a little hysterically in my case and repeating "this one can kill you!" It was a puff adder. After it was very dead I checked for fangs. A puff adder is like a rattle snake only without the convenient warning.
That night I ate dinner at the Zulus but forgot to take my torch. Mrs. Zulu knew I was afraid of snakes (clarification Mrs. Zulu: Scared of snakes with poisonous fangs) so she walked me back home to light a match at my door to check for snakes. On the way I was telling her I wanted to tell my family about the snake but if they knew that I had fears, they would have fears. Especially my sister, she will say "Keli come home!" And Mrs. Zulu said "Don't tell them! You can't go home. After two years, then you can go."
No worries sissy, if I get bitten by a snake I will be flown to South Africa on the wings of American tax dollars. You would think that a country with as many poisonous snakes as Zambia would have just a bit of anti-venom. Apparently people don't really get bitten that often though. Which seems strange considering Mr. Zulu's advice to me, if I were to run across a puff adder again, was to not try and jump over it but just stomp on it. Pretty sure if I see another puff adder, I am just going to run and get Mrs. Zulu to destroy it. If Mrs. Zulu gets bitten by a snake then I will fly her to South Africa on the wings of whatever is available. But I am not entirely convinced Mrs. Zulu isn't a snake charmer...
posted by Keli at 1:56 AM
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