And They Call the Thing Rodeo

There hasn't been a ton of Africa blogging lately because, well, I haven't been in Africa.  I'm going back, of course.  But right now I'm in the US taking care of some business.

Also, attending a Mexican rodeo*.

I grew up in Central and Southern California, so to me things like tortillas and tamales are as American as apple pie.  In fact, tortillas are the number one thing I miss in Africa.  I have to make Texas tortillas (myself instead of asking the lady who sells tamales door to door to bring some with her next time), which are kind of puffy and more like na'an bread.  But I miss the silky smoothness of a real tortilla made with shortening.   Not to mention enchiladas, which I can't make with Texas tortillas.

I did find shortening in the Melissa market, but it cost the equivalent of US $20.  The shock and horror of seeing Crisco more expensive than a gallon of gas nearly caused a cardiac arrest - which is the height of irony when you think about it.  I mean, yes, shortening is supposed to cause heart issues.  But not that way.    

Anyway, being raised in any Latino-heavy area makes you very comfortable with the culture.  It's not just a food thing, either.  I long ago stopped having to translate in my head when someone speaks to me in Spanglish.  When you hear George Lopez's routine about a generation of white kids raised with brown hearts, he was talking about me and my siblings.

 I have so missed the Latino culture.  I miss the food, for sure.  I miss the music - the awesome velvet jackets (in 80 degree heat) with extensive embroidery and the upbeat always perk me up.  I miss the parties, too.  Wow - those get loud.  And fun.  And loud.

We got to the rodeo as the cowboys were being introduced, and I immediately knew I had come home.   The bull riders filed into the ring and a slew of rapid Spanish came through the speakers, with hatted and chapped cowboys stepping forward to applause at the end of each phrase.  My favorite is always when the bilingual announcer fires off the introduction in Spanish and then switches to a perfect California-American accent for the name, "Colby Jones!"  or whatever it happens to be.  

To further add to my delight, the announced proved to be one of those fully engaged speakers who used his hands in huge gestures and would go from baritone to falsetto in his storytelling as voices were required.  

A quick glance around and we saw a sign warning of the dangers of being a cowboy.  You could sustain serious injury and even loss of life, this sign informed everyone (but only in English).  There were quite a few injuries on display attesting to the truth the sign was expounding.

In fact, we also saw a bull rider get stomped on when he was thrown from his bull, so the danger is never far away. 

We hadn't originally planned to attend a rodeo - in fact, we were at a Barnes and Noble getting travel books for Spain and France when the call came about the rodeo being held that day.  Without time to go home and change, I ended up attending the dusty, poopy, muddy event at an outdoor venue dressed in a black skirt, polka dot top, and polka dot Kate Spade bag.  

Had it been any other rodeo, I would have missed it rather than show up in anything but my jeans and boots with a huge belt buckle.  

But this was a Mexican rodeo*, and let me tell you, I fit right in.   In fact, compared to some of the ladies (not the ones in the booty shorts), I was completely underdressed.

Have I mentioned the clowns?  Always a highlight.  Especially when the pain-in-the-ass bull wanted to be petted after the event.  The clown obliged.  Of course.  

Being a rodeo clown is a dangerous job.  They're good at making us laugh while they distract the bulls from the thrown riders, but every so often when you see one getting chased you are reminded that there is a reason that they pay exponentially higher insurance rates than the rest of us.

 Did I mention the guy who had hay bale twine instead of a belt?  I didn't catch a picture.  But it took me back.  Totally took me back.

I haven't seen or heard anything about rodeos in Africa, although I've seen polo events, marathons, and other sporting competitions.  I do have to wonder how a thing such as bull riding would go over.  I couldn't figure out if it would be greeted with a head-shaking but somewhat fascinated, "Crazy Americans!" or something more akin to, "What the hell is wrong with these people?"

With something approaching regularity, we come across people at the mall while we are in Africa who have never ridden an escalator and regard it almost as something that is just waiting to bite off feet and hands (and far be it for me to deny this, as a person who barely escaped with half a shoelace on a JC Penney escalator once as a teenager).  It is the reaction of those people to rodeo I'd most like to see.

I'm sure it is with the same amusement that they watch me try to drive on the left (wrong) side of the road.  After all, that is the *correct* way to drive.  Right?  Or with the amusement of one born into a culture of bargaining watching the American Mzungu get fleeced by the guy who carves the mini Noah's Arks.

* This was the term used, by Latinos no less.  And I'm not about to argue with however they've chosen to designate their own sporting event.

In Which I Have Had Enough

I can deal with a lot of unpleasant things; lack of cheese, lack of Splenda, mosquitos that carry the plague.  I can even deal with snakes.

The biggest crocodile I've ever seen at Kalimba Reptile Park.

I hate reptiles in general.  But I can deal with them.

But there is one place where I draw a line in the sand and make my stand:  regional coding on DVDs.

Maybe they aren't interested in hearing it, but movie studios - you are jerks.  Total jerks.  I am American, and have lived most of my life in one place or another in the US.  Thus I have built up quite a DVD collection.  I *own* these movies.

And yet, I find myself unable to watch them now.  Because of your stupid coding.

Even more unfathomable, you have coded South Africa differently from the rest of the continent.  Just WHERE do you think movies ship here from?  I realize that the ROW (rest of world) probably ranks somewhere around the price of broccoli in winter on your importance list, but since I live here it's pretty darn important to me.

The most stupid idea ever.  Other than The Smurfs movie.

Movie studios, you are deliberately trying to cheat me out of my Harry Potter collection, and keep me from watching the season of Fringe that my husband picked up while he was back home.  I am most certainly *NOT* going to pay the ridiculous mark-up for DVDs I already own so that they are region-coded for here.

In fact, I'll venture to say that your execs who have to travel frequently probably get special unlocked DVDs to watch wherever they happen to be.

Well, I spent good money on your, often substandard  (The Smurfs?  REALLY?  Even my 9-year-old couldn't sit through that!), product, and I expect to be able to use it.

And unless you can get with the 21st Century program and understand that there is a very good chance that the people buying your product don't spend their entire lives in a 50 mile radius of where they were born, I am going to put on my black eyepatch and cheer for the pirates to win.

Okay, I've already broken out the pompoms.

Not that I would break the law myself, mind you.  And I believe that people should be paid fairly for what they produce.  But your actions make the pirates seem rather... Robin Hood, don't they?  Let me answer that for you, since you seem too shortsighted to do so on your own:  YES, they seem like Robin Hood.

And for every frustrated moment where I can't watch something I paid money I worked hard to earn, I wish upon you tears of frustration and anger.  I wish upon you Montezuma's Revenge and all those wonderful gastrointestinal delights that go along with visiting Africa.  I wish upon you warts and painful bloating.  I wish you fleas and roaches and bedbugs in your personal bedroom.  

Also, I hope you discover that you are lactose intolerant while taking a week long gourmet vacation to a cheese maker and winery after ingesting two pounds of goat cheese with chives.

Does that sound harsh?  Too bad.  Let justice be done though the heavens fall!

And Sic Semper Tyrannis.   Assholes.

On the Road, Which is Sometimes Off the Road

We have one of these:

 We were told, "You can't simply use this as a town car!" by a horrified Zambian.

The thing is like driving a bus, no joke.  It's enormous, and quite often larger than the actual street lanes.  The turn radius is ridiculous, which leads to a fairly frequent comedy of errors that looks like that scene from the Austin Powers movie where he's got to back up a little, turn forward a little, back up a little, turn forward a little, ad infinitum.

Of course, problems aside, these are all over the place here.  I think they are probably second in population to Toyota Corollas (I have seen corollas bottomed out and stuck on the unregulated speed bumps here.  It's funny because it isn't my car).  So as ridiculous as I feel driving this, I'm usually on the road with several others at the same time.

Other issues that have arisen with my husband's vehicle choice (I requested a Hilux, just to make that clear) include shifting difficulty on par with the old tractor I used to drive while at my grandfather's farm.  Did I mention that my husband bought a manual transmission?  Right.  He did.

Normally this would not be an issue at all.  Thanks to aforementioned grandfather and my own father's dislike of automatic vehicles for most of my years of existence, I'm quite adept at a manual.

ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE ROAD.  Which means with me driving in the left hand side of the car, which feels like the right side of the car to me, unlike the right side of the car which feels wrong.

Nevertheless, I have figured it out and today was my baptism by fire - the run to school all by myself.  Well, myself and the kids.  So it wasn't really by myself, but it was by myself because there wasn't another certified driver present.  Ahem.

We left about five minutes early, as I wanted to leave time for accidental stall outs when mistaking fourth for second (which happens embarrassingly often to me when turning a corner).  Luckily, although the traffic here is ridiculous, it is also slow.  If you get out of third gear, you're asking for trouble.  The propensity of the Airtel and MTN cell-minutes sellers to jump in front of cars with complete disregard for their own safety can not be underestimated!  Navigating the pedestrians is more fraught with risk than worrying about other cars, really.

This picture was taken while we were moving.  A moving vehicle does not stop pedestrians. 

In any case, I made it down the road toward the school without much incident and dropped the kids off.  They were fifteen minutes early, but I shooed them out of the car with admonitions to study their flashcards (another aside - no index cards available here, so I have to cut my own.  As a dedicated believer in all things flashcard, I consider it a small price to pay to drill the kids in French and chemistry terms) and set off on my merry way, feeling quite proud and accomplished that it had all gone so well.

I should have paid more attention in CCD growing up, because I forgot my Proverbs and my pride and haughtiness was just begging for destruction (note to catechismal scribes - can we have that made into a responsorial for mass?  I know it's not from Psalms, but I need frequent reminders).

About halfway back home I encountered the bane of my developing world driving experience... the minibus.  I love watching these guys when I'm not on the road - they are very colorful, as is the teeming horde of humanity crammed within.  But when I am driving, the ridiculous risks they take as a matter of course incite a bubbling cauldron of rage within me.

Waiting for victims

And so it was this morning when a minibus came barreling down the road in the wrong lane, at the the ridiculous equivalent speed of about 30 miles per hour.  THIRTY miles per hour?  PSHAW!  That is unheard of here!  Just yesterday I thought I was hauling butt down Independence Ave at a whopping 40 KPH - in US terms, about 25 MPH.

It felt like I was flying, no joke.

After a few crucial seconds where my mind played this trick on me, "Is he on the wrong side of the road or am I?", I realized I was about to die and steered the truck toward the shoulder of the road.  Which, of course, was teeming with people walking to work.

Those that walk in Africa are well acquainted with such problems, and for the most part they effortlessly moved themselves aside and out of the way.  One poor man was a little too close, and he resorted to diving, a la Tom Daley.

After removing himself from the area of concern, he jumped up, straightened his trousers, and joined me in shaking a fist and shouting at the retreating minibus driver.   That is the accepted behavior here, by the way.  I haven't noticed road rage like what I encounter (okay, what I perpetuate) driving in Los Angeles, but it is encouraged that you inform people when they are acting like idiots and endangering others.  If it is truly an accident or something a person can't figure out (like when I mistake fourth and second), people are very understanding and calm about it.  And this is the ONE place I've ever been where you just can't travel too slow - no one bats an eye at slow vehicles, even if they go around them when they have the chance.

But people here will not stint to tell you, in a very parental way, when you are screwing up.  I have to say it is one of the most culturally endearing characteristics of living here.  Anyone older than I am is parental toward me and grandparently toward my children.  Anyone younger assumes I am going to boss them around.

And if you know someone, they are your family and are entitled to such familial privileges as telling you off when necessary.  This privilege is also reversed, and I can point out idiocy as well.

Anyway, the diving Zambian and I shared a moment of synchronous rage and then went our separate ways; I being thrilled that he understood I was not the problem in this instance.

I made it the rest of the way home easily (knock on wood for the future), and will repeat the whole thing (hopefully minus the idiot minibus driver) this afternoon when I pick the kids up and stop at the store to see if they have garlic in today, as yesterday they were out.

I Don't Want To Know!

I grew up on an island, and I truly thought I was ready for the adjustment that drives so many who come to Africa downright bonkers.  I mean, on an island the pace of life is slow, things are very laid back.  Things get done at a more leisurely pace.

I thought I could handle it.  I thought so wrong.  And since my boxing equipment has not yet been delivered (it was supposed to be here a month ago and will not be here for another 5 weeks - but probably even longer), I have nothing to hit to make myself feel better.

Let's use another example - say, for instance, our internet installation.  It was supposed to be done one day, but they couldn't get to it that day so it was scheduled for the next day at 9 am.  At around 3:30 the installers showed up.  They could not finish that same day, so they were to come back the next day at 9 am.  I think 9 am is code for 3:30 pm, because that's about when they got here again.  Yet again they could not finish, and yet again they were to get here at 9 am.  They actually got here at noon the next day.  But it was time for lunch.

You see where I'm going here, right?  Maddening.  I am learning to adjust to this different sort of thinking in regards to time.  I just think of everything as a surprise.  The water delivery guy is here before 2 pm on an 8 am appointment?  What a wonderful surprise!  Oh happy day!  

But I do have internet now, so I can post again, and I can post pictures!  I had been burning through my 3G data plan on my iPad like crystal meth in a trailer park, so it's nice to be able to post without worrying about that.

I spoke to our doctor friend again last night.  It's always such a mixed bag to hear him talk about his work.  On the one hand, you cannot help but have such pride in someone like that - he works without days off and figures out how to fix problems in situations that would have many Western doctors, who rely so heavily on machines and technology, throwing up their hands in frustration and despair.  Here, doctors are innovators out of necessity - they absolutely have to be.

I read this article earlier about the plight of doctors here, and the choices they make (whether to go or stay).  I think the title is stupid, but that's the copy editor's fault.  The information in the article is illuminating.

I wanted to tell Desai what it would be like to practice in his old hospital, so I observed Makasa and a colleague fix a man’s broken leg. In the operating theater, there was a dirty-looking scalpel blade on the floor. The assisting staff ambled in late, causing the operation to start 30 minutes behind schedule. The air-conditioner was broken. A nurse took two personal cellphone calls in the operating room. When it came time for the surgeon to drill holes in the patient’s bones, a nurse produced a case containing a Bosch power drill. By way of sterilization, she wrapped it in a green cloth, binding it tight with a strip of muslin.

The cell phone calls during surgery was what got me.

I can understand the frustration of doctors here, as well.  Last night we heard a story about a pregnant woman who presented with a bleeding issue.  It is now standard to HIV test anyone who comes in, and when it came time to give her the results of her test she refused to hear.  "I don't want to know!" she said over and over again, very insistent that no one tell her.

She was HIV positive.  

Being a doctor here is not a safe job - not with the HIV infection rate here.  And it's not a mentally safe job, either.  So often, instead of healing you are watching people die.  That is not what doctors train for - to watch people die.  It is the antithesis of what they do.  

And to stay here, to continue to practice here, they must have a calling to make a difference.  A doctor here will not get rich.  As the NYT article states - $24,000 a year is not rolling in dough.  The doctor stays out of a sense of obligation to the greater good.   

 I'm thinking the greater good would be better served if nurses didn't take cell phone calls during surgery, however.  I'm just not sure how you convince people of that.   

The Local Furniture Store

When we started planning our move to Africa, one thing we looked at was the price of furniture vs. the price of importing OUR furniture.  It was no question - even if we were to stick to the big box stores with the mass produced furniture (cheap in the US, ridiculously overpriced here), we would spend less money buying everything new - and get it sooner!- than if we shipped our own items over.   The cherry on top of the whole equation is the chance to put money into the local economy.  We crunched the numbers and decided that other than an air shipment of necessities (cough - Splenda - cough), we would get what we needed here.

Today was D-Day for major furniture purchases.  We're getting ready to move into our forever-for-a-while home, and we need something to sleep on!  Early on, we decided to buy our furniture from local craftsmen if we could.  What they make is of very good quality, even though it seems somewhat strange to a person from the United States to buy furniture off the side of the road.  In fact, the table I bought today is better quality than the one we bought in the United States.

But I'm getting ahead of myself...

The main place I usually drive by that has roadside crafstmen is called Kalingalinga.

Okay, that isn't such an illustrative picture.  But you get the idea.  You don't see people hanging out the minibus windows just anywhere!

Kalingalinga borders two pretty good neighborhoods where expats live, so while things are definitely cheap compared to what we would pay for handmade items in the US, they are priced accordingly for location.

Malinga thought we should try a compound further out, so we drove to through Garden and Emmasdale until we reached someone he had heard of.  He didn't tell them we were coming ahead of time, so they were quite surprised to see us drive up.  Malinga told me that they don't get very many white people buying things out there.  He said that this way we would catch them off guard and get better prices.

Malinga knows all these tricks!

And one more aside before I continue on - I feel safer in a Zambian compound (which is like a township) than I do in many poor areas of the US.  We were told this is one of the safest places in Africa, and it is true.

So - we decided on this furniture store.  I mean, Manda Hill mall has a furniture store that is merely OK furniture.  This is Supa furniture!  SUPA!  Way better.

That is Malinga in the picture laughing with two of the managers.

And speaking of managers - have you ever seen the movie Coming to America?  Remember the barbershop?  Right, my favorite scenes take place in that barbershop.  "A man has the right to change his name to vatever he vants to change it to.  And if a man vants to be called Muhammed Ali,   gdamit this is a free country, you should respect his vishes and call the man Muhammed Ali!"

Okay, well this furniture store was filled with "managers" that sat around having those kinds of discussions in Nyanja.  Truly.  And as we were bargaining, they were all a part of the bargaining.  It was certainly an interesting experience.  And, dare I say it?  It was fun.  Probably because I don't have to do it every day.  But it was fun.

So, we went to look at what was available, since we have a time deadline and we have some critical items we need right away.  To get to the bunk beds, we had to walk through the skeletons of chairs they hadn't yet finished.

Here's another view (we walked through more than once, because they wanted me to demonstrate EXACTLY what colors, etc, we wanted).

Then we had to walk through some very precariously balanced stock to look at the table.

The table, by the way, is absolutely marvelous crafstmanship.  Truly.  World Market would do very well to visit Lusaka compounds for some of their furniture orders.

We ended up spending much less (about 1/4 of the cost) than we would have for the table alone at one of the box stores in the malls and got furniture of amazing quality that we will be very proud to have in our house forever.  

I love that idea, too, that we will always have Zambia with us - even when we go back to the United States.  

Being sick in Africa is a far different proposition for me, a prosperous American, than it is for the majority of Africans.  Still, getting sick here, even when I stay home, is different from being sick in the US.

I had a horrendous migraine yesterday - the kind that knocks you off your feet and has you throwing up and begging for mercy.  Which I did.  Both.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure that this is a result of the Mefloquine I have been taking, and which I will no longer take.  But because the medicine is metabolized in the kidneys, I hesitated to take Tylenol to help with the pain.  There wasn't much else to find by the time I realized I needed something - 24 hour pharmacies do not exist here.  I found myself weighing whether I could take the incapacitating migraine (my kids claimed that I was endangering them with the possibility of rickets by demanding all the curtains be shut tight) or whether kidney failure would be the better option.

Since I didn't have a ride to the hospital, I chose to play it safe, but it was a close decision.

The headache caused another issue - what to feed the kids.  Frozen food here, a staple in most American freezers in case of just such an emergency, is frighteningly expensive.  We don't have any.  Nor is there delivery - no Dominos here!  The kids were on their own with only ingredients in the house.  It was touch and go for awhile, but they managed with the pancake recipe I tucked into our "While in Africa" binder.

I can add this issue to the "Things I Didn't Anticipate" file.

Something that makes me smile every time we're out and about is the abundance of Zambian pride.  We buy bread based on the store we happen to be visiting at the time (we go through a lot of bread), and it comes in all sorts of names, like:

and

Then there is the milk we drink:

The biggest meat distributer here is Zambeef, there is a fast food place called Zamchicken, and one of the billboard advertisements I see around town tells people to be Zambitious!

I love it.   

Death in Africa

One of the things we had to be "counseled" on when we came here was employee relations.  The relationship is nothing like what we're used to in the US, where you hire someone for a set amount for set duties for a set amount of time and negotiate the extras like vacation time, sick leave, etc.

It is sort of like that, but also very much not.  For instance, that employer/employee relationship we're used to?  It's more like adopting an extended family.  You don't employ someone as much as you invite them into your life.  This means that in addition to the agreed upon wage, we also provide money for certain medical necessities, paid time off for funerals, even contribute to the cost of family funerals!  We help with school fees, school clothing, and other items as needed as well.

The relationship is certainly not one sided - we are given ambassadors to a culture of which we are completely ignorant.  Our family/employees keep us from danger and keep us from being cheated (by anyone else,  it is taken as a matter of course that they get "extras" for being family.  This is not cheating, it is considered the same as a brother who comes to the house and drinks your beer).

The funeral issue rears its ugly head very often, and as uncomfortable as it is to speak about, we have to lay ground rules for that, as well.  Paid time off is only for the death of parents, children, siblings, and a spouse.  Although there are those who try to cheat the system - as there are in every culture - the fact of the matter is that death here is far more prevalent than what we have ever experienced at home.

There is one main cemetery, Malinga told us, and business is hopping.  I did not have the chance to take pictures the last time we drove by, but we went by again recently, and this time he slowed down so I could take some pictures from the road.  It would not have been good for me to actually get out and take pictures - it would have been disrespectful.

There were not so many funerals while we were there, which was a good thing.  I was less likely to be offensive with my voyeuristic snapping.

The hills of dirt after the graves of the cemetery surprised me.  I think most of them are left over from recent burials, but there were a few lower ones on which I saw flowers and other indications that they were fresh graves.   Perhaps not, perhaps they were just way-points for things to be stored.  But the idea is bothering me and I'm planning to ask the Zambian doctor we know when I see him again.

There was one funeral at the time we were there, and it was in the far back of the cemetery.

You can see that people show up in mini-busses and whatever other form of conveyance they can manage.  

 I was so struck by the differences in the graves.  There are large, fancy headstones, and even some monuments right next to simple wooden crosses.  In this last picture, you can see the label on one of the outlying hills of earth that made me wonder.

This is Africa.  I can't imagine one of our staid and manicured graveyards here.

On the same side trip I managed to catch a picture of one of our furniture stores:

Evil Blond Child informed me she preferred wicker furniture to solid wood, and so we will be getting several items from here, or a stand just like it.  These are handmade, by craftsmen from the compounds (which is what townships are called here).  You can look at them before buying, and many of them are of exceptional quality at very good prices.  In fact, what you can get at big box furniture stores here is ridiculously flimsy and overpriced, and so very not worth buying that it is a wonder people shop at them at all.

Best of all, buying furniture this way supports Zambians who are trying to earn their living independently.

We do have to bargain, though, but even with the Mzungu mark up I'll pay, it will still be less than what I would pay at Cost Plus stateside.

And finally, a shantytown:

Or, rather, a shantytown market.  Malinga said the people at these are desperately poor.  When I asked where they worked, he said, "Mostly they don't.  They live their entire lives right here."

He also told me that those train tracks are indeed still used for actual trains, but that the people at the market around them can feel the trains before they come and they pick up and move.  He did say that sometimes drunks fall asleep on the tracks and are killed when they don't rouse in time for the express - or whichever train it is that runs through.   He said it in a very matter-of-fact tone, and was quite judgmental of the stupidity of doing such a thing and the just desserts of one killed in such a manner.

It is so very different here...