When Zambia Became Home: Seed Reflections Year 1

By Tabea Zimmermann

Having grown up in Mozambique, Nicaragua, Georgia, and Virginia, I considered myself pretty good at making transitions into new communities and navigating cross-cultural differences. During university, I continued traveling and living in communities in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Oregon (discovering some of the diversity of cultures within the United States), and Cameroon. I spent my first year after college working in Costa Rica, with side trips to Panama and Nicaragua. So when I signed up to work with the MCC Seed-Southern Africa program in Zambia, I thought ‘How hard could it be?’ I’ve traveled lots, speak a few languages, am familiar with a couple African cultures, am easy going, friendly, and not scared to take risks and push my comfort zone. With my record, moving to Zambia should be a piece of cake…

It wasn’t.

I didn’t even get a taste of the notorious “honeymoon period”, when all the new sights and sounds, people and food and customs feel like such an exciting, dreamlike adventure.

Nope.

Zambia was hard from Day 1. I was alone. In a small rural village. 40 km’s from the nearest town that had electricity, running water, and strong enough signal to send a message to my family. No level of French, Spanish, and Portuguese helped get my tongue around the alliteration and repetition I found while learning Chitonga. I had no privacy and little say over when, where, or what I ate. I couldn’t go anywhere alone. Every moment of my day was directed and supervised by my loving, well-meaning host parents and community. Unlike in Cameroon, I didn’t have 9 other American students by my side to support me. Unlike in Costa Rica, I wasn’t fluent in the language and familiar with the local culture. Unlike in Mozambique and Nicaragua, I wasn’t living with my family with the option to make our home a little haven of respite from the unfamiliar culture around us. And I was no longer an oblivious, care-free child running around climbing trees and eating mangos all day long.

In Zambia

I felt loneliness, even when surrounded by laughing, chattering people.

I felt suffocated by hospitality, respect, and honor, which I interpreted as overbearing, incapacitating, and invading.

I have been acutely aware of my powerlessness and powerfulness.

I have had the responsibility of caring for myself, from providing daily food and water to preparing baths and the freedom to move around alone, stripped away and then slowly returned to me.

My hard-earned independence and stubborn desire for self-sufficiency has slowly lost the fight against interconnectedness and mutual dependency, accepting that I cannot do everything alone and allowing others the joy of serving me, just as I find joy in serving them.

Throughout the above long and continuing battle, I have swallowed at least 5.7 tons of humility. Such as the time I insisted on going into the bush alone to find thorny branches for protecting my newly planted fruit trees, and after having shielded the seedlings and covered my hands with bloody scratches, eight-year-old Obert informed me that the goats actually love to eat this kind of branch, and I should instead use another kind of thorn (which he had already collected for me). Or the time I harshly refused my host father’s offer to send the boys to help me spread mulch on my demonstration plots. After two hours in the hot midday sun working alone, and an afternoon meeting fast approaching, I had to walk back home and sheepishly ask Castro and Eric to please come help me finish up. Or the time…

I have felt utterly unqualified to teach Conservation Agriculture or to provide extension services to people who have farmed for over 20 years in a region they have known their whole lives, and into which I have just recently stepped (with insufficient agriculture background of my own).

I have questioned the purpose and impact of my presence in my new community, wondering what I’m doing, if I’m making any positive impact, and struggling to see the wider vision of my slow, daily life in Halumba.

Now, exactly one year and three days after entering this country, through many ups and downs, twists and turns, one rainy and one dry season, many goodbyes and hellos, and a motorcycle fall and serious knee infection later, I can also say that in Zambia

I have planted and tended my first fields of maize and cowpeas using Conservation Agriculture principles, and read more CA handbooks than I can count.

I am not always pretending when I laugh along to stories or jokes my siblings share in Chitonga.

I know how to correctly greet children and adults depending on their roles in the community and relationship to my host family.

I enjoy maize and groundnuts as staple crops in my diet – ground, boiled, roasted, cooked, for food, and as drinks.

I leave my house with a 20L bucket to fetch drinking water and no one offers to help or accompany me anymore. I am no longer a Visitor in my community.

I’ve learned how to ride a motorcycle and spent enough time at Choma’s Road Transport and Safety Agency office that the workers know me by name and ask how I’m doing in the village.

I no longer have to force myself to spend evenings around the kitchen fire after dinner telling stories and playing card games with my family and neighborhood kids. It’s my favorite time of day.

I have seen the execution and ending of a community project, learning about the complexities that accompany development work and implementing effective projects in partnership with others.

The people with whom I used to feel most alone are now the ones I miss most when I’m away.

New friends and adopted family listen to, support, and make me laugh when the WiFi is too weak to call home or I need a warm hug across my back.

I still sometimes wonder if I’m doing more harm than good in my new community and I would like some sense of that by the time I leave Zambia, but it’s more complex and nuanced than I used to believe and I must admit that not everything with value is measurable.

Zambia took me by surprise and threw me more challenges than I was anticipating, but what would be the fun of that? How am I to learn and grow if I am not challenged? And although my first months had their share of frustrations, miscommunications, loneliness, and confusion, I am glad to have stuck it out. After having lived in so many other countries and communities, I thought my heart was too full to accommodate the love for yet another family, another community, new hills and trees and birds, another Home. I’m happy to discover I was wrong.

Harvesting groundnuts with my Bamama and Sisi Eva.

My siblings and I love playing card games, especially Uno!

Making Music, Cultivating Maize, and Crossing the Comfort Zone- Reflections on Year 1 of Seed

By Busiku Mazuba- Seeder from Zambia serving in Mozambique

I am Busiku Mazuba, a Zambian serving in Tete, Mozambique as an agricultural extensionist in partnership with the Christian Council of Mozambique (CCM).

When I first got to Mozambique I stayed in Beira, the second biggest city in Mozambique, which is located in Sofala province. My time there was good but challenging. Let me highlight some of the challenges I faced during my first year as a Seed Program Participant, and what I learned from those challenges.

The first one was language; language was a serious challenge which at times caused stress. The common language in Mozambique is Portuguese. It was not easy to express myself to my host sister and family because they only spoke a little bit of English and I was just starting to learn Portuguese. Because of language, shopping and other activities like getting my hair cut weren’t easy for me because it use to take time for me to explain what I wanted and sometimes I couldn’t manage to fully explain what I needed. Language was also a limiting factor to socialization, especially when I wanted to hang out and chat with people. It was also factor when I was trying to work with others to produce music because the producers could not understand me well when I tried to explain something technical about the music. Finally, I use not to feel comfortable preaching in some churches; even though churches that invited me would always provide an interpreter, sometimes I did not have confidence that the message was being received the way I meant it.

After three months I moved to Tete where I lived with a new host family and continued my language studies. In Tete I started accompanying the CCM extensionists to promote Conservation Agriculture in rural communities. While there I noticed some other things that I learned. I noticed that Tete province is extremely hot and it is not very easy to grow some crops like maize especially if planting time is slightly missed by a farmer. Sorghum does better than maize and I observed that late maturing varieties don’t yield well. I also noticed that the rain pattern in Tete is irregular making it hard for farmers to predict and understand when they should plant so they end up relaxing and eventually find themselves behind time. I see Conservation Agriculture as the best remedy to food security problems, though it is not adopted as quickly as it could be. However, I am optimistic that with time conservation agriculture will be appreciated by the farmers. I also appreciate the technology of sand dams which I first learned about in Mozambique Tete province. Sand Dams are really helpful for many communities in that they provide water for households, animals and agricultural works in communities.

During this first year I realized that the definition of life was highlighted during my service as a seeder because for me life is living while learning how to live. I realized that life, time, and some circumstances are beyond our wishes and beyond our comfort zone, but hope is always necessary. I now see that life for each person is only in the present and our decisions also lie in the present, so if life lies in present decisions I realized that my life can be fulfilling or boring depending on what I decide in present. Note that life in the past exists only in memories which we share as history, and life in the future lays in plans, and plans are made and implemented in present same as memories they are made and shared in present, so life is present learning, deciding, and acting. From this point of view, I have decided to live the positive life as I continue my work.

Finally, I am still continuing to learn other things about MCC such as being responsible for reporting finances, and the structure and leadership of MCC. The last and most interesting thing I have learned about MCC is that MCC is very good at connecting people and determined to implement their objective with great hope and patience.

Busiku Mazuba (seeder, in centre) with two lead farmers in Wiriamo B, Tete, Mozambique. The tomatoes in this field were grown using water from a sand dam build by the community to save water for irrigation purposes during the dry season.

Ministering to others through music has been an important outreach for Busiku during his Seed term, and a way to connect with other youth in the church. Here he is recording a song titled “Mighty Jesus” in Classic Beats Studio in Beira.