John Q. Zambia: 1, Bribery & Corruption:0

After only 5 text/email alerts to US citizens about elections riots, the Zambian Presidential election has been decided in very peaceful terms compared to history and the potential for violence.  Much to the utter joy and sheer surprise of Zambian citizens, this election sees the political party MMD (Movement for Multi-party Democracy) lose power for the first time in Zambian history since independence in the 1970s.  And they didn’t go down without a fight.

Four years ago the same election battle was fought between MMD’s Rupiah Banda and PF’s (Patriotic Front) Michael Sata.  If there were pre election polls (there aren’t here) than Michael Sata would have been a pre-election lock to win.  And with about 50% of the vote counted it was looking like he was going to win, carrying about 70% of the vote.  Then the live counting stopped for a day and the results were announced; the incumbent Rupiah Banda was the winner.  The nation was shocked.  Everyone knew Banda rigged the elections but couldn’t really say it because he now had unchecked power.

This year, Sata would have carried 90% of the entire nation if they all voted but because the memory of four years ago still haunted voters, many of them were discouraged from voting because they believed no matter how they voted, Rupiah would rig the elections and win.  So with only 1.2 Million votes casted out of a total of 12 million registered voters, the vote was counted again live on television.  At about 60% of all districts counted, showing Sata in the lead by 80,000 votes, the counting stopped yet again.  Riots broke out in the streets in the middle of town and near a public mall as a feeling of corruption deja vu overcame the country.  The riots died down at around 1 am when the results were announced.  Sata wins by a landslide.  And the crowd goes wild.

Since it’s against Zambian (maybe all of Sub-Saharan African) campaign procedure to discuss a platform while campaigning (I have heard this is out of fear that the opponent will then use your ideas while in office if they win?) no one is really sure what Sata is going to do while in office but the thought of most Zambians is that any change from the corrupt Rupiah is good.  Lets hope its good change.  There’s a lot of room for improvement.

Addendum:  So new news has emerged that Rupiah didn’t lose as peacefully as everyone originally thought.  Apparently after a failed attempt to rig the elections the same way as he did in previous years, he was reported to have been begging a vote counting official to do anything to help him win.  This official didn’t and is now talking about his pitiful conversations with Rupiah just before the vote was about to be announced….Also, I listened to Sata’s speech to parliament as they recently opened for Sata’s tenure and with equal parts determination to change Zambia and cutting humor aimed at the missteps of his predecessors he has won over the people of Zambia.  He is very anti-corruption and his main goal is to put more money in the pockets of Zambians.  I’d say both of these things could do wonders here.

Village Vacation

Last weekend Tommy, Mike Z, and I were invited to go to our housekeeper, Sharon’s, village for the day.  Sharon is like our Zambian mother.  She is hired by Grassroot Soccer to clean the house and office and cook Nshima (I could do a whole other post about Nshima because of its importance in Zambian culture, but in short it is a corn-meal dough that is the staple meal in sub-saharan Africa because it is very cheap and filling.  Its usually combined with a vegetable relish and a liquid tomato soup/sauce type thing and meat if you can afford it.  Its delicious.) for lunch in the office every day.  She was born in a village about an hour drive outside of Lusaka and moved into the city for work when she was older.  She and her sister now live near us in Lusaka with their husbands and kids.  We gladly accepted an invitation to see the village and decided to meet Saturday morning at 10 in the parking lot of the gas station to pick them up.  Expecting just Sharon and her kids, we were very surprised to see that Sharon, her sister, their kids, and their cousins all had come to the parking lot of the gas station to visit their grandparents/parents and cousins in the village.  We piled them all in the car and headed off for the hour journey.  I was the driver of the kids car and was entertained by the 10 year old children in the back yelling for me to drive faster because every time I accelerated was the fastest they had ever gone in their lives. 

 

Many of them had never been in a car let alone a plane.  When I realized that many hadn’t been in a car before I asked a question that I had originally though I had known the answer to, “Have any of you ever seen the village or your grandparents?”  Only Maggie, Sharon’s 14 year old daughter had been to the village (but didn’t remember seeing it) and none of the other kids had ever been.  No one in the family has a car so this was the first time most of the kids were ever getting the opportunity to visit their grandparents.  And they lived only one hour away.  Wow, no wonder all the Lusaka family members showed up to ride along.  This was the only opportunity they were going to have to see the village ‘til god knows when.  And this is when I realized that not only was this an incredible experience for me but an even bigger day for the family.

We arrived at the village that consisted of 2 four walled buildings and 2 huts and housed 12 of Sharon’s family members.  The next closest village was a 20-minute walk away but asking the family if they ever go there yields a confused look and a response of “why would we ever go there? We have everything we want here.”  They grow their own corn (which they harvest and keep for themselves for the year), ground nuts (peanuts), mangos, and they make their own charcoal which they use to grill their corn, cook their ground nuts, and occasionally to cook one of their chickens that roam the village.  That’s it, that’s all.  That’s their life.  We brought a Frisbee and a soccer ball with us and although it provided temporary entertainment, they refused when we offered for them to keep the items.

They only wanted what they had and they were completely happy with their minimalist lifestyle.  This also became apparent when I pulled out my camera and started snapping pictures of the village kids who seemed very uninterested.  Then when I started taking pictures of one of the cousins who we had taken from the city, Joshua , he was mesmerized by the camera.  

When I gave it to him he walked around the rest of the day with the camera pressed against his face and kept making the sound of a camera flash with his mouth.  When we finally showed him how to actually use the camera, he played with the settings and took this picture all on his own. 

 He might have a future in photography.

After a day of hiking, sitting around, talking, and eating groundnuts, we were getting ready to leave when I heard a loud whistle.  As quickly as I turned, the dog and two other village children were already sprinting towards the whistling kid.  And off went one of the chickens running for its life as the ringleader of the chicken hunt whistled signals and hand motions to the dog and the other two boys in a very well executed hunt that corralled the chicken into one of their huts with calculated commanding from the leader and acute listening from the dog and two other children.  As the kid emerged from the hut holding the chicken upside down by his legs he walked directly to me and handed me their catch and told me it was a gift for coming to the village.  After trying to refuse because they rarely got to eat chicken, they insisted we take home one of their 5 chickens and have it for ourselves.  Incredible.  

Zambia: Soccer Tournament Raises Awareness About HIV Testing

This awesome article was just written about our most recent VCT (voluntary counseling and treatment) tournament in a compound near where we live called Bauleni.  It's a really cool short article about the physical and emotional complexities of holding a VCT tournament.  The dance competition picture in this article is great too.

http://pulitzercenter.org/reporting/zambia-lusaka-hiv-testing-campaign-grassroot-soccer

(Addendum: Although the testing numbers at this particular tournament in Bauleni were fairly low because this area had been saturated with HIV NGOs, we recently (Oct 15) held a tournament in an untouched area and tested nearly 1000 people with particularly high positive numbers.  Although that's really sad news, its great that this community now has the information and access to treatment it didn’t have previously.)