The lives of women (for the most part)

Daily life in Zambia, and specifically in the villages in Zambia involves a lot of work, especially for the women. Although there are significant deviations from the norm, by and large women work really hard in the villages. Many of us were privileged enough to be able to experience that this weekend during our home stays. In our home, the day began with cleaning the house (although in many places the first thing is collecting firewood for the cooking, our host used charred wood charcoal for her stove). Cleaning involves sweeping the ground outside the house (everything is red dusty dirt) with a short twig broom and dumping any waste into the waste pit (which is usually just a big hole in the ground where the waste is dumped). This means that each morning the first thing you feel is a mouth full of dust… good motivation to brush your teeth. After sweeping the ground clean, it was time to sweep the house, and then to polish the cement floor on your hands and knees with what looks like a shoe shining brush, and then to polish it further with a rag (and yes, this is how they clean the house every day). The floors here can be quite slippery and the students enjoy sliding around the hallways in the hostel.

Jess and Andrea walked a kilometer with the water on their heads!

Heating water for breakfast involves more than flipping the switch on the coffee maker!

While we were cleaning the house our host (from the home stay) sent her brothers to the well for water, although most women must also walk to the well to get the water themselves. In Macha area, there has been an effort to put in bore hole wells that go deep into the ground to get good clean water instead of using dug wells or open source water that is more easily contaminated. Once the water was brought back to the house, we cleaned the dishes from the night before (since it was very dark when dinner was finished) and water was heated for washing ourselves for the morning. When I say ‘dishes were done’ don’t picture for yourselves loading a dishwasher… or using the sink and running water… or having a nice sponge… or Dawn spotless dish soap… The dirty pots were scoured with ash or dirt rubbed into the pan with a corner of a plastic woven sack (which was quite effective, and is a good example of using all of the resources available) and then washed with a soap paste in buckets of water, and rinsed with water from another bucket. I was really impressed with how clean things were with tools very unfamiliar to me.  After all of that, we would have our breakfast, which for some was porridge (a runny version of nshima (corn mush) that you have to cook before you can eat, but for us was bread with peanut butter.

Stephne cooking nshima with her family

 Then it was back to cleaning the dishes again, and then pounding corn or peanuts or what-have-you for lunch! The mortar and pestles that they use a great, but are also physically demanding, I could only pound for a couple minutes before my arm would need a rest, but the women here are very strong and can pound for a long time before needing a break. The late morning may also involve working in the fields, planting or harvesting the ground nuts (peanuts), corn and other vegetables – and constantly caring for the children. As I’ve said before, there are a LOT of children here, and they don’t start primary school until age 7, so there are a LOT of children running around, not to mention that many of the women are pregnant or have infants.

Emily pounding ground nuts for the relish.

The whole family is waiting for dinner around the stove. Note the wash/water buckets for dish washing.

Lunch involves making nshima and often ‘relish’ (a cooked vegetable mix). nshima is a very thick corn mush, but you have to stir it during most of the preparation time. Especially near the end of the cooking time, it is nearly impossible to move the spoon through the mush- so again- I had to give up and let our host finish stirring because I simply wasn’t able to move the spoon though the pot.  After lunch (and cleaning up) on Saturday we took a walk, and enjoyed the beautiful African bush, but we saw many women harvesting in the fields or processing the corn or groundnuts (peanuts) they had collected for storage. After our walk we bathed (again with water heated on the stove) in the ‘bathing room’ (which was the un-holed side of the pit latrine) to get rid of the masses of red dust that sticks to your clothes and skin. After dinner, which again involves nshima and relish or (if you’re able to afford it) eggs, chicken, pork, beef or guinea fowl, it was late and dark and I was exhausted, so it was time for bed. Although one night we did watch a movie (TV operated by solar-recharged car battery!) before bed.

Older women shelling peanuts at the market

Morning cleaning water is heating (and you can see the solar panel in the background charging the battery).

Being here for a course on Healthcare, it now becomes especially clear to us that in such a physically demanding environment, even slight illnesses can have a significant effect on the welfare of a whole family. And now we begin to understand a little better why one man fought so desperately to keep his leg, even though it was clearly beyond medical repair, and one women asked to be discharged even though she had painful infected wounds. When the life and livelihood of your whole family depends on your wellbeing, your priorities look quite different than they do in our western culture.

A young mother is walking home with her newborn from the hospital. Women walk very far (100 + km) to deliver near the hospital.

This afternoon our class focused on Women and Healthcare, and we discussed the additional health burden women bear for a number of physical and social reasons. As a woman all of this makes me very grateful to live in a developed and more equitable society, and also raises questions of how best to promote women and women's health issues on a broad scale. It is a daunting task, but there is hope for a brighter future for the young girls in Zambia.

Two little girls walking together.