contradiction.

A capital city with no sidewalks, in a country where the majority of the people walk everywhere they go; Buses and cars in a hot rush, in a place where time holds no meaning and nothing happens quickly; A country powered on the backs of the hard work of women, who hold no financial or legal power in their own households; A people obsessed with money and social status, living in a socialist society where individuals are not meant to stand out above others; A focus on what something looks like to outsiders, with no attention paid to the inner quality; An established national language, which the majority of citizens fail to speak or comprehend.

The more time I spend in Zambia, the more contradictions I notice. I’ve been stuck in Lusaka dealing with medical issues since Thursday, and have been feeling more and more frustrated with what I see and experience here. As a disclaimer, I’ll mention that of course contradictions exist everywhere in the world; I highlight those in Zambia because in order to understand them I need to put them out there, address them head-on. For my personal sanity I feel a need to comprehend them. Why are things they way they are? Why do people behave the way they behave? My life here is a futile yet hopeful attempt to put the pieces together, although I have the feeling they won’t complete any sort of logical puzzle. I’m destined to leave Zambia with far more questions than with which I came.

Lately even I feel like a walking contradiction. I’m living in one of the poorest countries in the world, in a rural village not found on a map, trying to work with local people to change their behavior. But what if the situation were reversed? If a purple-colored person moved to suburban Minnesota and tried to get me to change my behavior, I would most definitely think they were crazy. Oh, and did I mention that person isn’t fluent in English? Lately I find myself losing passion for grassroots development work. Grass can’t grow if it doesn’t receive nourishment from the sky. People cannot thrive with a government that consistently fails to protect their rights and best interests. If my neighbors in the village were somehow able to afford to travel to Lusaka, they might just die of shock upon seeing the wealth that resides in their capital city. The class disparities in Zambia are black and white, with very little grey in between; it might as well be two separate countries.

Foreigners come here to ‘help’ the people, while the government continues take a lot off the top, breeding both corruption and greed. As cynical as it sounds, power and money come hand-in-hand, and what chance does the majority have if they are poor, lack access to quality education, and are powerless to keep themselves healthy and thus alive? In a perfect world they’d have a fighting chance, but the haunting reality remains that they don’t.

I am almost to the point of feeling hopeless after living here for two years; I can’t imagine the hopelessness one must feel raised in a country that doesn’t even pretend to care about their future. Correction: they do pretend to care, which may be even worse, as it creates the illusion of a potential that can easily be fulfilled. It takes not only a strong sense of self and a willful character to succeed as a Zambian raised outside Lusaka, but help from institutions put in place for the specific purpose of helping. I believe that certain institution is not Peace Corps. It isn’t NGO’s. It isn’t anyone that is not Zambian. It is institutions created by Zambians, made up of Zambians, run by Zambians that have the responsibility to help their fellow citizens.

As a volunteer in Zambia, I am lying to myself if I say that I am doing more for Zambia than it is doing for me. The ultimate truth is that I have gained more from this experience than any Zambian who has known me. And I will return to the United States a more informed citizen because of the opportunities my own country has afforded me. I attended public schools funded by my government. I burrowed money from my government to attend college. I say my government because it is a government with which I have a relationship; Although I’ll admit not always a perfect one, a relationship nonetheless. I would venture to say that tragically few rural Zambians feel any semblance of a connection to their government, and thus lies the contradiction in the Zambian government; It is a government that doesn’t govern its people. A government is a branch or service of the supreme authority of a state or nation, taken as representing the whole. If one is representing themselves and the interests of a select few, they are not a true government. Until the Zambian government decides to govern its people, those same people will continue to die of HIV, be unemployed, turn to the bottle, and experience no quality education and thus ability to better their own situation in life. That is true hopelessness, and it stems from contradiction.

I will be home in a little over two months, and it will be good for me to reflect on my time in Zambia from a different perspective. Although hindsight tends to blind itself to the ‘bad’ and illuminate the ‘good’, I don’t want to forget what has been negative in my experiences here; the frustrations and criticisms are just as important as the positive and praised. It’s human nature to find the silver lining, but we can’t ignore the dark clouds. Until we weather the storm, we can’t experience the sunshine.

katie