Hello! I have been in Zambia now for three weeks and so far so good. As I imagined internet access is very limited, but I do have a phone here with internet, but the coverage areas are spotty.
We are 2 weeks into training (out of a total of 11) in Chipembi, a small town in Central Province. I have been learning to speak Mambwe (a Bantu language), which is a language spoken by the Mambwe people who live in the northernmost part of Northern Province (NoPro) near Lake Tanganika, and close to the Tanzanian border. From what I have heard NoPro is beautiful and lush, which is hard to imagine since now we are in the end of winter and everything is dusty and dormant. The rains will come in a few month, just after a few months of hot weather. I can't wait until the rainy season. Apparently things are so different that its easy to get lost on the bush paths because things look so different that time of year.
We have already had a small taste of what village life will be like. We (when I say we I mean my training group of 36 RAP Trainees - Rappers) were split up into groups and sent off to visit current Rappers in their villages. I went to Eastern Province and we swept off to experience village life right away. We were sitting around in our host Jonathan's insaka (outdoor kitchen pavilion) as all of the villagers were coming to meet the flock of muzungus (accurately translated as Europeans, but really just means foreigners or white people), and were invited to be initiated by a group of women. Just a side note about greetings in Zambia: all people are greeted separately, which can make for very long hello's and goodbyes. The three women in my group were totally up for it, not really knowing what we were in for. Nicole, who is a volunteer who lives in a village near Jonathan was with us, so translated for us and explained a bit about what was going down.
We followed the woman to a small hut nearby. As we were walking they were all calling out "ayai-yai-yai-yai" which is an expression of happiness or excitement. About twenty to twenty five women were in the hut, each with 2 chitenges (a piece of fabric used for everything from a skirt, to a towel, to a baby sling), one used as a skirt, and the other folded up and tied around the waist to accentuate the hips while dancing.The drumming began, and we were taken into the circle one by one and taught the dance - little did we know that this was just practice for the real thing. We ended up being in that hot hut for over two and a half hours. The dance, we were told, was 'taught' to women entering puberty and then preformed again before a woman is married. The ritual dance is taught not only for woman to know what to do as a wife, but also how to please herself. Woman empowerment, Zambian style...
As we left the hut, our legs all feeling like jello, Nicole told us all that it took her at least 5 months to be invited into a ceremony like that one. We had truly experienced something really special.
Our time visiting Jonathan was wonderful. He was fluent in Nyanja, another local Bantu language, and had made really good connections with his counterparts and villagers. The women in the village would have probably never invited us into their inner-sanctum had it not been for Jonathan.
That's all for now, hope everyone is doing well.
