Village in the bush

A few weeks ago Corey and I were invited by Giveness, a Zambian woman that works at one of the missionary's houses, to come and have lunch at her home. It took us a while to work out our schedules, but we finally made it out there last Tuesday. One of her sons came to our house in the morning and led us to the village, about a 45 minute scenic walk from the mission. When we arrived at her house Giveness was already starting our lunch, so, after being introduced to another of her sons, we sat down and learned how to prepare sweet potato and cassava leaves. After that she walked us through her family's village, identifying different things in English and Kaonde, and introducing us to relatives along the way.


[Giveness, our lovely hostess]

Giveness has been a part of the missionary community for quite some time, but she only knows a little English, so it requires extra effort on both our parts to be able to communitcate. She will be talking about something in English, stop mid-sentence, mutter to herself in Kaonde as she tries to figure out what she wants to say, and then continue on in English. It's a long process, but we appreciate her efforts. After our tour we came back to the house to make lunch. We washed and pounded some kind of grain, I think she said it is sorghum, you can never be sure with Giveness, but we'll call it that anyway.


[Sorghum, being poured into the bucket for more pounding...]

After we finished pounding the sorghum we sifted the maize meal and started cooking the nshima....


[Corey, the nshima cooking boy, got a few good laughs out of the relatives that were hanging around.]

Cooking over the open fire was quite an experience. I did the stirring at the beginning, but the smoke made my eyes water so badly I couldn't see anything, that's when Corey took over. They thought that was pretty funny too :)

After we finished our nshima, beans, casava and sweet potato leaves (absolutely delicious) we sat down on her couch to wait out the midday sun, and she showed us her photo album and shared her life story with us. It was a bit of a challenge to understand her, but we got most of it. We sat outside for a bit with Giveness and her mother, finished sifting the sorghum, and then hoed the garden for them.


[Giveness' mother sifting the Sorghum. Somewhat of an art form that we couldn't really get the hang of...]

Then we gathered our things and got ready to say goodye, but Giveness and her mother insisted on carrying our bags and walking part of the way with us, a cultural tradition, apparently. We walked together for a while and then got our backpacks and learned how to give a proper farewell. The entire day was an incredible experience. Thank you Giveness!!!

-Jamie