Mayukwayukwaaaaaa!

Hellooooo!

I know it's been a while since I've last written. Please forgive my lapse in blogging, I was busy preparing for my trip to the refugee settlement (Mayukwayukwa, or as Ali called it, Mayukwawawjsrkeuwonfsoiethdfnspw%^#$), in the actual settlement from the 4th until the 9th, and then busy with birthday festivities! I don't even know where to begin organizing my thoughts so I think the best way is just to pull snippets from my journal. They'll be choppy, but hopefully they'll help to paint a picture, or at least draw a rudimentary sketch, of what my time there was like.

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Driving to Mayukwayukwa. Finally making the trek. With anticipation it has been built up in my mind and I don't know what to expect apart from countryside and space. We're stopped right now in Kaoma, the last frontier before two hours of dirt roads take over, and I elicit relentless stares as I sit and write perched in the shade on a stoop. Smiling at unbelieving kids, sometimes they seem enthralled, other times terrified. Adults too, look at me communicating with their eyes either fascination or a guarded, "What the hell are you doing here?" Sounds are similar - "Closer" blaring from a tavern, the incessant repetition of a loudspeaker saying the same short sentence in Nyanja, it begins to blend with the musicality of the cars, the idling trucks, the songs, the voices shouting, humming, singing along. Sand covers the shoulders of the road hinting at beaches far, far fro here, and it surprises me that while I'm not 100% comfortable or TOTALLY at ease, I'm much more accustomed to this world, this lifestyle, that I was 9 weeks ago. It's hard to push South-East Asia and Vietnam out of my mind with its lush and plentiful excess, gorgeous in its diversity, yet Zambia presents a new sort of beauty – an excess in color and spirit, in energy and space. Different, but no more or less astonishing.

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My mother always said that I came home from my first day (or week, or month) of kindergarten and when asked what I had learned, I answered, “I learned how to be mean.” Pretty powerful words for a 5-year-old. I think what I meant to say, and would have said if I had had adequate grasp of the English language, is, “I learned how to say no, and for the first time in my life people said no to me, denyed me something without an excuse. And I learned to do the same.” Being in Mayukwayukwa at times feels like kindergarten again at times – I have to be “mean” or say no, be anally strict, when I have what they're asking for. Mineral water at lunch yesterday? I had 40 bottles in my room. But not enough for all the coaches. And none would be remaining for us if we gave them away. Extra pens? Three sitting in my bag, right next to the 9 million kwacha ($1800) granted to GRS by UNHCR. I could buy 9000 pens with that. But I can't give these away because that sets an unsustainable precedent. So instead I lend out one sole pen, insist that our LPC (Local Program Coordinator) Justine, give it back at the end of the day, and threaten to hunt him down and follow him hope if he doesn't return it. I have to say no without excuses, or with excuses and explanations that don't seem fair in my mind, but I can't do otherwise.

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I think you can only fully understand the demands, requests, and long-winded answers everyone speaks about in the refugee settlements after witnessing it firsthand. Even going into a meeting with our LPCs in the headspace of being patient and expecting the meeting to last longer than necessary, it still blows my mind that it took us 3 ½ hours to talk about these issues. From what would seem to be major (the suggestion of opening a GRS office in the camp, our upcoming VCT tournament) to what appears to be minor (how you will choose who is invited to the tournament as a “supporter” – and supporters get food incentives), everything is a big deal, everything has the potential to offend someone, and everyone wants to throw their two cents in. I can't say that I blame them – in a place where resources are even more scarce than they are in Lusaka, people want things they can get their hands on. Pair that with a small-town atmosphere where everyone knows your business and rumors spread like fire in the dry African Bush, and something as small as giving away a few remaining biscuits from an already-opened package waterfalls into giving away whole boxes of biscuits freely to people, without regard for who they are or their connection to GRS. The issue of incentives comes in too: since we don't pay our coaches we sometimes give them salt or mealiemeal or washing paste. But then parents say, “You're benefitting from our kids when they're not getting anything in return,” (ummm, education on how to protect yourself from getting HIV? Or ways of taking care of yourself if you are HIV+?). Or coaches complain about the incentives they receive...it's a delicate balance and I feel like no matter what people will always find something to complain about. It can be trying and tiring...

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Little things here make my day: conversations with our coaches under the tree budding baby mangoes; an exchange with a hazy-eyed old woman, skin hanging off her body in drapes, rusty safety pin through her earlobe long with age; children staring unabashedly until I lift up a hand to wave and shatter the division.

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There's a netball coach here with BSA (Breakthrough Sports Academy, our partner in this project) who blows my mind. I think he's from either Angola or the Congo and both his arms are amputated several inches below both elbows. Every time I see him, he greets me with such warmth and effervescent energy. When I was first introduced to him he extended the shortened stump of his arm and I had a momentary sense of, “What do I do with this? Give him a pound with my fist? Brush my hand against it?” I was thankful I had witnessed someone greet him beforehand and so I just followed suit: held the soft, tapered end of his arm and shook it despite its missing hand and forearm. What has this man gone through? What do people do to other people? What are we capable of? And how are people able to survive whatever he has survived and still be jocular, still have spirit?

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Driving deeper into the settlement, seeing schools and homes and stalls on the edge of tiny sandy roads barely wide enough for the UNHCR truck we rode in. It was nice to get a bit outside the compound or area where we were conducting our training. It really was stereotypical African villages, mud huts with straw thatched roofs, circled together around a common area, kids scattered ourside, women working or cooking of handing out nearby. Whether you think it sounds overly idealistic or peacefully simple, it's not an easy life. Person after person after person expressed the desire to go to school, to find work, to make money, to get out of there. As beautiful and serene as it is out in the countryside, in the bush, there is still this desire to get to the big city.

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The best names I came across while writing certificates for graduations in the camps:

Last name:

• Wankie (use your imagination...yes, I'm very mature)

First names:

• Besana (“besar” means “kiss” in Portuguese and there are a bunch of Portuguese-speaking Angolan refugees in Mayukwayukwa)

• Loveness

• Freeborn

Freeborn. That's the most moving for me, particularly in a refugee settlement. Their child was born free, when under other circumstances they may not have been.

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I head back there from October 26^th until the 31^st for a big VCT Tournament with multiple football (soccer) and netball teams competing, prizes, testing, entertainment, etc. etc. Until then, a bunch of us are heading out to Malawi from Thursday until Tuesday for a big music festival which should prove to be epic. I'll let you know...