The Lab! (Oh how I have missed thee!)

*Sorry for the lateness of this post- the internet was slow here yesterday, it's hard to say why. Either it was national call your mother day in Zambia (so the lines were busy) or there was a misplaced cloud when I was trying to post.

 

We’ve spent almost two weeks at the Macha Research Trust campus, and today we finally got to see the lab! I love the lab! Sungano Mharaaurwa is the scientific director for the labs, and he talked with us about both the history of the research and what they are doing currently to study malaria (they are also studying HIV/AIDS and TB, but Sungano didn’t have 4 days to spend explaining all of that research to us, so we had to be content with hearing about the malaria lab). There are a number of interesting questions that they are working to address in the lab here. Questions of resistance to drugs, how the mosquitoes survive the dry season and they are trying to track some of the mosquitoes. I am sure you have all seen birds with tags on their legs, or know that they often will tag whales or sharks to track their migration. Imagine trying to tag or track a mosquito! There are so many of them and they are so tiny! They suspect that if they find one of their dye marked mosquitos that it represents many hundreds to thousands of mosquitoes! What a daunting task! 

I mentioned before that the buildings are decorated with various things- Here is Keane very excited to see the research labs studying (from left to right) DNA, the malaria parasite (in two forms, the little braclette thing is another form of malaria) and mosquitoes!

Sungano and Limonty gave us a tour of the lab.

 We have been talking about malaria in class as well. The cases of malaria and the disease prevalence in this area has been very significantly reduced over the last 15 years, due of course to a number of factors- many of them being Dr. Thuma’s idea. Malaria is one of those diseases that you don’t confront with just one weapon, but towards which you throw every possible solution. This has worked in this area, but it makes it very hard to piece out which of the tools of battle had the biggest impact on reducing malaria in this area. It is interesting to look at how the focus on malaria has changed over the years. Outside of the Macha area (for example the rest of Africa, South East Asia etc), fighting or eliminating malaria locally has had much less success. It wasn’t until a couple of years ago (in 2004 and again more recently) that Bill Gates has said that he will fund efforts to eradicate (they call it the ‘E’ word here) malaria worldwide. This is a VERY ambitious goal, and one that many people don’t think we (as the world) will ever achieve, but there is certainly a significant place for eliminating the disease in certain places, and for lowering the overall worldwide prevalence of the disease.  For this reason, even though malaria is nearly gone from this area, it is important to continue to study the disease here at Macha.

You might not get excited by seeing a full row of pipettemen, but aren't they beautiful?

In fact, one of the students on the trip, Keane, is staying here in Macha after the rest of us leave to go back to the US, and will be working in the lab with Sungano for the rest of the summer. I would love to stay as well, but didn’t have the foresight to make it a reality! Keane has already had some good lab experience at Messiah College, and will be well prepared to jump in and work on either a malaria or HIV/AIDS research project during his summer in Africa.  

Keane will be working with Sungano for the rest of the summer.

Football!

We’ve gotten to the ~ 1 week left part of the trip, and are feeling ½ like we can’t wait to get home and see everyone, and ½ like our time here has gone WAY too quickly! So we’ve been going around doing all the things we want to do before we have to leave. This requires a good amount of walking. Not long after my first walk here in Macha, I gained a new appreciation for the foot washing stories in the bible! I will spare you the up close picture of our red dust covered feet…

Walking down the wide road from the ABFA airport and MICS school

Walking back along the smaller road from the football match

 Today after class in the morning we went out to the Macha Innovative (or International) Christian School (MICS). MICS was started 8 (or so) years ago and Gill and Rhonda Krause have been leading the school since. What struck me about the school, besides it’s newness, cleanliness, and well-stocked-ness, was the library and computer lab. They aren’t huge, but they HAVE a library and computer lab! I realized that I have seen no computers (or a library) in the primary school, and few at the secondary school we visited. At MICS, there is a computer lab available for the students where they learn basic computer skills as well as more advanced skills like graphing and word processing. These are really valuable skills for all kids of this generation, and are only available to the 138 students from Macha who attend MICS. If you are interested in sponsoring vulnerable or orphaned children at MICS check out this link http://zambiatomorrow.org/.

Gill gave us a tour of the MICS school

Computer room at MICS, the chalk board says 'what is a computer' and then 'list two differences between a human and a computer' I hope the kids were able to think of some fun answers.

The kids were just finishing the school day. Note both the nice buildings, and that the boy in the center is wearing a winter coat. This (June) is their coldest month, although I bet you can't tell that from the pictures of our students.

After MICS, we walked home past the craft shop again, while the men ran (literally) off to play a soccer match against the Francis Davidson high school team. Gift, who works in the outpatient department at the hospital has befriended several of the guys and convinced them to help him defeat the high school team… at least that was the plan. It was a rough game, hot with lots of dust, the high school students kept up a fast (and sometimes terrifying) pace, but over all it was quite fun (and thanks Preston for the descriptors). After a valiant effort, the high school team slipped in one point just at the end of the match. So, Gift has scheduled a match with the semi-professional team for Saturday… The guys will be practicing (and wearing their Zambia team shirts) until then to prepare.

Lining up for the collegial hand shake after the game.

Team PumpyNut (although that name may be officially taken, in which case they'll have to come up with a new moniker.

There are only a few days left to do our best at capturing the amazing sunsets! Thanks Larry for this shot.

Francis Davidson School

In addition to all of the class sessions we've had with Dr. Thuma, the hospital rounds, and visiting with people at the fires, Dr. Mylin has been making arrangements for visits to the local schools. Today we visited the Francis Davidson school, started by the first missionary women to settle in Macha area and plant the mission. We were able to sit in on two grade 10 biology classes. It was quite fun to see what the students were learning, and to see two different teaching styles. One interesting thing is that neither of the teachers are from this area of Zambia, and so they didn't know the local chitonga dialect. This made for a fun classroom interaction where the teacher would say the English word- 'maggot' and would ask for the tonga word to help the class understand. Education is vitally important for the future success of these students, it was fun to be able to observe where this happens.

A grade 10 classroom at Francis Davidson

 

Dr. Larry Mylin by one of the many termite mounds

Dr. Mylin also found a local store that will sell us locally made woven baskets and other crafts. We walked there for a look-see after our morning at the school- we walked out with stuffs! 

Jackie and I were practicing the Zambian way of bringing our baskets home.

Jackie Jess and Dan waiting for the craft shop to open.

The lives of Men

After my post yesterday about the lives of women, I thought it would be interesting to talk about the lives of men. Many men work outside of the home. Many of the technicians at the hospital, the doctors, the mechanics, the store clerks, and gardeners are men (to be fair, nearly all of the nurses are women, and many of the doctors and technicians are also women) (*Check previous posts for pictures of men working in the medical labs etc.). And there are men who have large farms and work on harvesting the crops from the big fields, and processing the materials when they return to the house. Men are also primarily responsible for building the houses and tending the cattle. 

Driving an Ox cart (the view of Dan and Caleb from the cart)

Caleb (headless) harvesting corn from the field.

 (*Side note on Cattle) Cattle can be viewed as a sort of long-term investment in Zambia. They are worth quite a bit, and are the currency usually paid for the bride price or loboola. Asking someone in Zambia how many cattle they have is like asking your neighbor how much they have invested in the stock market- it’s just not a thing you do. This is complicated by the tight family structure here where collectively a family will tend to their cattle, and exactly how many cattle you individually own isn’t something they consider. It is men (and small boys because they think it is fun) who tend to the cattle for the family, but usually just a small handful of men will watch the cattle for the extended family. 

Little boy chasing the cattle through the market

In comparison to women however, men do very little (if any) of the daily work of the household here. There are cultural taboos about men doing certain kinds of chores or jobs, not unlike the stigma against men doing housecleaning and childcare in the 50s in the US. Dr. Thuma likes to remind us that most cultural practices began for a reason, and this is true. Not too long ago (when Dr. Thuma was a boy living here) there were lions in this area, and so it would have been common to see the man of the family walking in front of the rest of the family, carrying nothing but a spear while the women and children walked behind carrying all of the supplies. This made some sort of practical sense; the man’s role was to protect the family.  But, even after the lions left, the tradition remained: you will never see a man walking with something balanced on his head, and rarely will you see them carrying much at all- unless they are using an ox cart or a bike to move stuff. In a society where water is still carried from the well, or where corn, peanuts, sticks etc. are carried by hand from the field to you house, most men here don’t contribute to the daily work of the house – which is substantial.

You actually see very few old people in the village, especially old men, life can be very hard in the African bush. This man was very proud of his gray beard.

 So men are often bread winners (or nshima winners as the case may be), but many women also work outside of the home, while men do very little IN the home. There are of course exceptions to this, in the family that I stayed with for the weekend, the brothers went out to get the water, toting the buckets on their bikes, and even helped with making nshima. But, significantly, even if a man is temporarily unemployed and has not work out of the house, most men do none of the cleaning, cooking or small-child care. [And yes, I think that they ought to be helping, especially since there is no danger from lions, there is no need for them to walk unencumbered down the road ahead of their wives and families, and the wives in the household are also working (in or outside of the house) all day long. To be very fair, I also think that men should be contributing equally in the home in other societies as well.]

Men biking with water jugs full from the well.

 Traditionally, the men are also fed their meals first, which – during drought – means that there is less left for the women and children (contributing to malnutrition for them). Male children are also more likely to be sent to better schools and for more education. A family will often sacrifice the education of the female children (who will help raise younger children, clean the house and cook) to send the male children to school. Men are also less susceptible to a number of health problems (see post from yesterday on women). All of this is great for the males, but is not always the best or most equitable good for the family. I am not writing all of this to try to shame or degrade any one person or even the cultural practices of a society, but to bring awareness to the vast differences in the social and physical stature of men and women in a society. After living and working closely with a woman in the village this weekend, it makes me wonder who is at home working when I see men gathered at the pool tables playing games, or sitting outside of a shop playing checkers (or better yet, at the bar drinking). 

One of the many pool halls that you can find in the area.

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.

Our Experiment Worked! We have Ice Cream!

Tonight after dinner (which was mac and cheese! CHEESE!!!) we had a time for discussion about our home stays in the villages, and to exchange pictures. One thing that many of the students commented on is that there was a LOT of inshima (the corn mush staple of the diet). Some students mostly just ate inshma over the weekend... So, just before the picture sharing time, Dr. Thuma announced that our blog experiment had worked- you all ate Ice Cream*, and then he brought out ice cream for us! IT WAS SO EXCITING! Thanks for all of your hard work eating ice cream! We appreciate it (AND Thanks Drs Thuma and Mylin for picking up the ice cream for us in Choma!). 

ICE CREAM! It's so exciting!

Thanks Dr. Thuma!

* For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, read the post from a couple days ago.

We’re back!

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We are all back from the home stays from the weekend, safe and sound. We all learned some new things, or got practice at things we don’t do often – like eating with our hands, using the latrine, and taking bucket baths. Many of us also learned new skills like pounding corn to remove the husk to make samp (a local favorite) or pounding peanuts to make peanut butter or peanut powder for cooking. We got to clean, to take care of the kids, visit neighbors (and be visited), attended the local churches, and were awakened by the roosters in the fields! We also spent most of the day outside in the warm African sun, and many of us are now quite tired from the fun times spent with new families!

Sarah with Tizzy and Akim (from next door)

What I really enjoyed about staying in the village is that it was totally different than our experience elsewhere, and yet very much the same as well. This was especially easy for me to see in the interactions with Tizzy, the 4 year old son of our host Conceptor. Tizzy is the prototypical 4 year old, he wants to be the center of everything, tries to do much more than he can actually manage, and trips over everything- and then shows his mom the tiny scratch on his arm.  We also spent a good amount of our time preparing food or cleaning up food, which - for women everywhere – is what you do most of the time if you have a large family. It will be interesting to hear stories from each of the groups coming back from their homestays, I am sure there are a lot of good stories to be told.

Sarah and Conceptor grinding corn for samp.

We had a great weekend in Mizinga Village