Re-entry

Friday morning, 3:20 a.m., U.K. arrivals lounge, Heathrow

I’ve been fighting congestion for a couple of days now, and a rotten stomach for almost as long. I think there may have been some bottle sharing on the road back from Kafue in Sunday’s race, as ever since then I’ve been struggling to keep nutrients in my body. Tonight I’ve been able to score the only three-pad open seat in all of Terminal 1, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to give it up … but dinner isn’t sitting well, with horrible reflux adding to the pain, and after nearly 5 hours of off-and-on sleep, trying to ignore the battle raging in my gut, I don’t have a choice. I get up and head to the toilet.

When I come back, my space has been taken. That’s that, so I cram myself into the two-pad seat next to the snoring woman in white sweatpants and crack open my book. Since leaving Lusaka, I’ve been on a tear, working my way through When A Crocodile Eats the Sun: A Memoir of Africa. It the story of a son finding his father, juxtaposed over the dramatic destruction of Zimbabwe in the last decade. I carried this book with me across the Atlantic, but it remained shut: I know now that I was meant not to read it until I had traveled to Zambia, and had seen first-hand the refugees from Zim struggling to survive in the “compounds” (slum neighborhoods) of Lusaka.

It was in just such a compound that I spent my last day in Africa, leaving as I arrived, with sport. It was Wednesday, and so we visited Chikumbuso, the school in Ngombe Compound founded by Linda, the wife of RAPIDS head Bruce Wilkinson. “Mama Linda” purchased this land a year ago, deep inside Ngombe, and has since built classrooms for grades 1 through 5, for the children of the widows who congregate here on Wednesdays to weave baskets out of plastic grocery bags, to sell. “Chikumbuso” means to remember what others have done for you and to give back in return; by any measure, the work of Mama Linda will impact generations to come in Lusaka.

Dave and I swing by the house to pick up Maureen, his housekeeper, who lives on the grounds behind the house. As we pull through the gate, I see her running back to her home, to collect her things for the short trip to the school. She is a recent addition to the Chikumbuso family, improving rapidly on her craft. Like the other women of Chikumbuso, Maureen is a widow looking after several children, and like many of them, Maureen is HIV positive.

We pull up to the gates of the school, and children are tripping over themselves to open the gate for us. They smile and wave at “Mr. Dave,” asking again and again in their clipped English, “How are you? How are you?” We roll over the dirt, rocky path, the truck tilting from side to side as we work our way in.

Once there, a muzungu volunteer named Kelly shows me around quickly – it can only be quickly, as there is but two buildings, with a total of 5 rooms, in an L shape around a courtyard. The ground slopes steeply toward the main building, meaning that the 4th and 5th grade classroom is somewhat shorter than those of the 2nd graders and the rest. Renovations are under way, so that each class will have its own room, but for now many of the classes are doubling up. Which means that each classroom is hot, especially the 4th and 5th graders, in their shortened classroom.

I greet the teachers, and the children, who are eager for the distraction. Lunch was late today, because the rainy season has not yet fully begun, and so all the compounds of Lusaka are short of water. That is, they have none: as we drive through town, we see children of all ages with water jugs double their size, walking along the road to find it wherever they can. Bathing and washing has been halted to preserve water for drinking only, and even then Mama Linda had to implement the emergency plan of trucking in water from elsewhere for the school. Even with that, when we arrive at the end of lunch, the hand-washing stations are empty.

Maureen has made her way into the main hall, and sits cross-legged with the other widows. There are other muzungu there, volunteers from churches in the States who have come to see Africa. And although there is one other guy there, I can sense that my testosterone is not welcome – when Kelly says she needs to drive a teacher up to Chomba Valley, I hop in the back of the truck and we head out.

It is only a 20-minute drive, but it may as well have been hours. The tarmack ends to the south of a large hill, and although we are still in Lusaka, we make our way ‘round the hill and turn left on an ever-degenerating series of dirt roads. A mile or so later, we are behind the hill, and Kelly makes a sharp left, through a drainage ditch, and begins a half-mile descent to the base, where a small squatters village has sprung up. Chikumbuso is affiliated with the school recently built here, two small, low-slung structures with barely enough room for me to stand properly. Kelly and the teacher head off to look for the headmaster, and I wander away to the soccer pitch.

As I’m photographing the village, a small, mangy dog makes its way across the dirt field. Then, as I’m snapping away, I hear the excited shouts of children, and before I know it, I am surrounded by several kids, all talking over each other in Bemba. They point excitedly at my camera, and chatter away – I try to tell them I can’t understand, but they don’t seem to care. They are happy to see a muzungu, and the littlest one takes my large finger in her hand, staring up at me expectantly. I smile and keep talking, although we don’t know what the other is saying, and eventually I point to myself: “Chris.” A little boy takes my other hand, and they begin walking me toward the school, still chatting away. I have become the pied piper, but my heart is breaking – beneath the veneer of happiness, these children are filthy, faces and bodies covered in grime, clothes torn, sores open. It is all I can do to choke back tears through the smile I show them.

We head back, and I get filled in on the situation: squatters started this “village,” and so it was chosen for a school. They’re supposed to get a well, but there are land issues – because, technically, they’re not even supposed to be there, there is no proper place to drill a bore-hole. And so the cycle of rape, incest, disease and poverty perpetuates itself. I wonder just how long those children will survive.

Back at Chikumbuso, we find the widows dancing in a circle, singing loudly and ululating wildly. They are happy for the congregation, happy to learn a skill that will help them. And most of all, happy for Mama Linda, who has made this all possible.

Another reminder of why we're here: a muzungu visitor shares her story of being abused as a child. As she speaks, the women around her can identify: each time the volunteer mentions another crime, another hurt against her, the collective group shows its agreement in a near-moan, coming from the back of the throat. It's not quite the "uh-huh" you hear in the States, but the meaning is clear: each of these women, from the youngest to the oldest, has endured abuse, and pain, on a scale I cannot even imagine.

I duck out, and go next door to speak to the 2nd-grade teacher, a pretty young Zambian who has been with the school 2 years. The last of her kids are cleaning the classroom around us as we talk, and she tells me her story: she managed to finish her schooling and earn a spot in teacher’s college, but no schools will hire teachers without experience, and you cannot get experience unless you are hired. “So I am a widow,” she says, matter-of-factly, and she took to selling shikende (traditional wrap-around dresses) at the side of the Great North Road. One day, Mama Linda was driving by and happened to stop there – she needed a ride, so Linda took her into town, and they began to talk. At that point, Chikumbuso was just a dream, but it was a dream Linda shared with her – and when it opened, Linda hired her on. “Now,” she says, “I am a teacher and also have learned to make baskets, so I am no longer a burden to my family.” Wow.

She is trying to finish her day, so she cheerfully suggests I take the boys out to the courtyard to kick the ball around. I still can’t get over that Zambians call it soccer despite their English heritage, but football is football, and we soon have a spirited game of muzungu-baiting going on. Thankfully they’re much younger than I, so I’m able to keep up – they do their best to kick the ball to my head-height, to watch me head it this way and that across the courtyard. All the while, they are chattering away in Bemba, except for the odd English expression that makes its way in. As with everything here, though, it isn’t entirely what it seems: the courtyard is rocky and dusty, I am the only one wearing shoes, and there is a large piece of rebar sticking out of the ground, right in the middle of our play area. I keep a careful eye on it as we dance around, and we are all having fun.

Too soon, it is time to go, and we enjoy a quiet dinner that evening with World Vision folks who happen to be on the same flight as me – we arrived together, not knowing, and now leave together, as there are only 3 flights per week to London from Lusaka. Airport security the next morning is not exactly an issue – they seem more concerned that I’ve paid my exit tax of US$25 than they do about the full water bottle and laptop in my carry-on backpack.

I spent the flight reading of Zimbabwe’s collapse, lucky enough to have scored an exit aisle facing the flight attendant jump seat. As we taxi into Heathrow, he tells us how beautiful Harare used to be, and how now BA must pack food for their crews, as it is impossible to buy anything in-country. It is a confirmation of everything that I just read, a sad reality that I was hoping was a fiction.

Re-entry was brutal. I took the Express to Paddington, and spent the next 3 hours wandering London in a daze. Everything that had seemed to fun and new a week ago, suddenly seemed crowded, unimportant. I made my way down to Marble Arch, looking for a place to eat, and it was damn near impossible to recalibrate. On the one hand, I hated that I had become a cliché, affected so by Africa; on the other hand, our friend Kristin had said, “I don’t want to meet the person who is not affected by Africa.”

And so here I sit, finishing a book that I understand so much better now, tears streaming down my face. Later I will depart for Manchester, where – without the demarcation of Thanksgiving – Christmas carols are already playing in the terminal, and where I will spend a few minutes gathering my thoughts and searching desperately through the W.H. Smith bookstore for something else of Africa. By the time I land in Chicago, Lusaka will be two continents away, but will occupy a permanent place in my heart.