The road leading from the capital city of Lusaka to the
district of Samfya takes about nine hours of steady driving. It is a clean highway, a much smoother
blacktop than most of the streets we are used to traversing in Chicago. Built decades ago to carry copper from the mining
towns of Zambia, and straight through Tanzania to the trading ports on the coast
of the Indian Ocean, the Great North Road is well used and well kept. All along this stretch of highway are
thousands of grass and mud brick huts, some clustered together in busy villages
and some standing quite alone in the bush.
Considered in context, this shouldn’t be surprising. These homes are built by and for their owners
with the materials they find around them – no different than a log cabin in the
States. And, after all, to build your
home at no cost save your own time and sweat seems wise. But still – and this may reveal more about my
own assumptions and prejudices than about our new surroundings – it seems an
unfair contradiction to have a sign of such industry cutting through a land of
such basic living conditions.
The district of Samfya, while rural and poor, is
metropolitan compared to the grass huts I describe. Right now, Rachel and I are sitting on our
hosts’ veranda, which sits on a hill overlooking the expansive Lake
Bangweulu. Children are laughing and swimming
at a small sandy beach; men in their wooden canoes are paddling through the
reeds to the south. Two small brown
hawks circle over the water. Like the
men, they are searching for fish, an essential local resource that has been dwindling
in recent years.
It seems an active and thriving town, yet the signs of
poverty are present. Thinking about the
paved highway cutting through the interminable kilometers of bush, I am struck
by our own position. A year is not a
long time. I hope that we are not just
cars passing through, no more than a glance out the window. I wonder what we can do to help the people of
Samfya. I wonder how much our help,
uninformed and unsolicited as it is, will be accepted or needed. Despite these uncertainties, I am convinced
that this is where we are supposed to be.
I am excited to learn what the year has in store for us.
