Hey Everyone,

This post is going to be all about how a good family situation can make life look so much better. Before as you all know I was living in a church, but what I might not have made very clear was that The family was always polite but never friendly to me. I was looked at as kind of a bothersome guest they put up with because I was paying. I don't like to be really negative towards them because they were never mean to me but I was pretty stressed out while I was there.

However now I have moved in with a new family in Avandale compound. It is more expensive to get to University because I have to take the minibus, but I am so much more happy it is worth it. ON Saturday night, in true Apoorva style, I named the spider in my room. His name is Frank Chiquito, and he is the coolest spider I have seen. He sits so flat he could be paint on the wall. I have a suspicion that Frank is actually a few spiders as he seems quite large sometimes. While this would seem to have nothing to do with the family, it actually shows that I am relaxing and feeling at home after only a week and a half in the new house.

I live with Martin and Patricia Mangenda who have three children but only two live with them. The beauty of it all is that they named the two living with them after themselves so I simply can't forget their names. Then there Martins brother Christian and his friend Moses living with us as well.

Big Martin is a talker. If you are foolish enough to get him started you will sit listening for at least 20 minutes. But he is entertaining and he has travelled to many places and knows a lot about Zambia and Africa.

Big Patricia is a sweetheart. The first day I was there, I asked if I could help with supper. After being barred from the kitchen in the first house, lest I ruin the nshima, I was surpised when she said yes. So up till now I have cooked nshima at least 5 times. I grant you it is not as good as Patricia's but it is still edible and they all manage to strangle it down so it is ok. I sit and chat with Patricia after work every day while we make supper and I think it gives me some insight into Zambian lifestyle.

Little Martin is 6 and he is shy. it takes some prompting for him to talk to me, but he will. He loves spiderman and will do the craziest things when I turn the camera on. He is always biking on his little bike and I tell him he will have to train so he can win the tour de France someday.

Little Patricia is a talker as well. She is 4 and is way smarter than I was at that age I am sure. She can quote most of the ads on TV verbatim, which isn't because she watches too much tv (although maybe that too) but more because there are only about 4 or 5 ads on Zambian tv. Nevermind, she started to dance one day to the music on TV and very seriously outdanced me by about a million times. I was properly shamed and have decided I apparently need to brush up on my dancing skills before displaying them in front of her.

Christian is a really great uncle to the kids. He is watching out for them all the times, checking if they have done their homework, walking them to school, making sure they eat their vegetables. He is a really nice man. He is staying with the family only because he was sick for awhile and needed to be in Lusaka. Now he says he is getting better and will soon go back to Kitwe. I hope rather than know that his sickness is not what you are all thinking it might be. Moses, man is he ever shy. I can hardly get him to talk at all, but he smiles shyly when I talk to him, and I think it is really cute.

So that is all for now, hope you have enjoyed this post. Next post will be about the Kitchen party I went to this weekend.

SJ

So this post is in tribute to Mr Lang Imasiku, who just passed away here in Zambia.

In an earlier post I explored the concept of poverty and how to define and see it. In this post I want to talk a bit about the concept of livelihoods and vulnerability to shocks and stresses. Anyone who wants to look a bit more into livelihoods, I encourage you to look at ......

On the 23rd of August I travelled up to Ndola in the copper belt province. Ndola is the capital of the copper belt province and up until lately was a bustling city. Now, because the mines have started to move farther away and President Chiluba and the SAPS forced Privatisation of almost all government companies, most of the large industry that filled the industrial area have moved out, leaving huge areas of inactivity and many many people without jobs.

In Ndola, I stayed with my officemates brother, Mr Lang Imasiku, and his family. He owned a small civil engineering company and kept the family in upper middle class standing. Josephine Lang is a Payroll Officer at a company in Ndola. Of their many kids, only 2 were there when I was there, and 1 neice. This family was so nice to me, they took me around to see the sights, they fed me a ton of food, and they could just not do enough. I left Ndola on Friday the 30th of June to go to Siavonga for an EWB Retreat. What I didn’t know until later was that on Saturday Mr. Lang Imasiku was taken to hospital because he had a heart attack. On the next Wednesday they were optimistic about his health but by Thursday he had taken a turn for the worst and early on Friday morning he passed away.

What I think is important to discuss is not that he died, people die everywhere, but rather that the repercussions of his death on his family are significant. They have now lost the major money earner in the family setting them back in areas of finance. As far as I know there is no insurance plan set up for the family (if there is even such a thing in Zambia) and so they have to take the brunt of the loss. What this means is that the 2 children who are in university now, and the 2 that are in school still are in danger of losing their chance for education if someone else in their extended family doesn’t step up.

When you dig a bit deeper, the facts come out that actually Lang came from a family of 11 and his passing leaves 3 now. I don’t think I need to point out that some of these deaths were probably due to AIDS. So what does that leave? It leaves 3 families responsible for the children of 11. While it is possible to survive, and they probably will, the entire family is at an incredible risk to shocks in the future.

This brings me to the important question of chicken and egg significance, that which has to come first, available jobs and job security, or the infrastructure to lessen the shocks hitting families. Of course, this is the challenging question faced by NGO’s and governments in underdeveloped countries every day. When it comes down to the bare hard facts, a person who has a job, even a good one, and is educated well, cannot go forward if he/she has 17 dependants. However, even a great system cannot hold up if people can’t get jobs and therefore can’t raise any money. And either side of this debate is complicated by the fact that AIDS is putting stresses on every family in Zambia in some way or another.

What I think is ironic is that I thought coming to Zambia, I would be able to answer some of those hard development questions. Instead, all I can come up with are more questions, and I have serious doubts about there being answers or at least right answers.

Confusedly yours,

SJ