Rainy season is here again!

If you remember – my shed burnt down, incinerating my bike into piles of melted aluminum along with a reed mat, a bucket, a basket full of pumpkins, my hammock, and a bag of charcoal. The remnants of coal were still burning in the morning were used to cook breakfast – with a when life gives you lemons kind of mentality. I have been making arrangements to have the shed rebuilt but after months of talking and reminding the school about the work to be done it was still a burnt down shed. I finally enlisted the help of the women’s group to re-mud the shed before roofing. They came the following Monday. They decided they could not mold new bricks for the shed that day without a mold so instead they started working on my Nsakas and clearing the surroundings. In three hours they made short work of all the little tasks I have noted but felt overwhelmed by or ill-equipped to handle (and when you feel overwhelmed or ill-equipped obviously the best thing to do is leave things…)

We shook off termite dust, swept, hoed the dry grass, and re-muded both nsakas. I love mudding walls. While one lady and I hoed the path to the toilet she lectured me on keeping my surroundings clean because, she said, “If there is a snake there, you can even say ‘there is a snake.’” Strange bit of foreshadowing. The entire process was a confirmation to all that I am not skilled at keeping house. But then we ate shima together under my mango tree and it was pretty much the perfect day. One woman came the following day to paint decorations on the now nicely gray walls. She boiled powdered charcoal and mealie meal to make a thick black paint which is supposedly impervious to rains and accented with a deep red clay. The following Monday even more women came to re-mud the shed.

Zambian women are so effective and efficient with the things they know about and feel comfortable with. The problem is that there is just an awful lot that they feel is outside their world. Otherwise they would revolutionize the world.

The roof is now on the shed too. AND my house is re-roofed. The part that was leaking had rotten poles. Go figure.

Everything would be looking so nice if cows had not knocked down my drying rack. Twice. After the second time I marched over to the Zulus to find out whose cows they were. I plan to have a conversation about responsible ownership with that person. I am pretty sure this conversation will be pointless.

Mrs. Zulu came over last week to burn the piles of grass left over from roofing. Re-roofing means a lot of dirt and grass to clean up. I cleaned it up partly but feel there is only so much yard work I can do with only a stick and grass broom. And it is freaking hot right now so any motivation I try and muster just melts as soon as it tries to exert itself. Heaps of grass on the perimeter of your yard is not only unseemly however, it is also dangerous as snakes like to make cozy little homes beneath them.

I don’t generally burn my own grass because I don’t really know how to control after the burning starts. And what if I set the village on fire?!

After the women came I went into the pit latrine at night and found a big black snake inside. I think I did anyway. My light was dim and I didn’t stick around that tiny space to get a good look but instead quickly ran next door saying, “Njoka! Njoka mu chimbusi!” – “There’s a snake in my toilet” in a voice of restrained hysteria, per-usual. I continued to babble “If I leave it till morning will it go away? I don’t want anyone to get bit. It is really big. Like this, maybe” while Mrs. Zulu calmly got up from cooking and went to get a big stick. Mrs. Zulu just checked around the chimbusi and then asked for matches to set the brush on fire. Effectively and efficiently setting a semi circle of tall grass on fire around my toilet. I stood uselessly on the nicely cleared path, in the heat and glow of the fire saying. “but it’s inside.” Mrs. Zulu said it would go out. “But how?” I said. She wiggled her hand up through the air like a snake slithering into the sky. “It can’t. Snakes can’t climb brick walls.” To which I think she said: “It will grow legs. Just don’t go in.” Maybe she was just being funny. Or just telling me not to worry about it. It probably went out the same way it got in – through the door like any other civilized creature. Or maybe it grew legs.

Mrs. Zulu left to finish cooking shima, leaving me to pee behind my house and watch my neglected surroundings calmly burn.

The snake was gone in the morning. Though I am still convinced it is there somewhere. Maybe hiding in the thatch. Or living in that hole in the latrine shaft. Or maybe it became invisible. Did you think of that…? If my memory serves me right it was about a meter long and thick and black. People say could have been a cobra. When I described it to one of the women she said: that ones head gets big.
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Whenever I see Di Zulu carry water and am astounded at how beautiful she is. The perfect female figure. Like a statue. At 17. And then I get glum because I feel only a bit like a real woman. If Di lived in the states I think she would be made to feel very insecure about her body. Once when I was meeting the women’s group they all started telling me that I was growing hips and getting shorter not taller. I said thank you and then told them if they said that to a woman in America she would start crying. They laughed.

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I burn things that I shouldn’t sometimes. I know this because sometimes my yard smells like things-that-should-not-be-burned. A specific example: I thought too late about checking the empty can of easy cheese for flammable risks. But after the unwise decision to light the fire with the can in the pit I made the wise decision to not try and fish it out again. Instead just stood back adn waited for whatever was going to happen. It exploded. With a small pop.