In January 2009, I took a business trip to Nyimba, Zambia. Home at the time was Lusaka, Zambia, a 4 hour bus ride away. Lusaka is a metropolitan city with tall buildings, shopping malls and modern conveniences. Nyimba however, is so rural, it can hardly be called a "town." Nyimba is known for its delicious small bananas. (My husband says the bananas are called "tukonde twa kazizi" in Nsenga, spoken in that area. If anyone knows Nyanja word for them, please leave a comment!) The guesthouse I was staying in didn't have running water, but as is customary in Zambia, the staff would bring you a bucket of piping hot water for your morning bathing needs, and let me tell you, it really does the job! On one of my days there, after long hours of monitoring surveys about malaria, I had two options for evening activities: hang out in my room at the guesthouse, which didn't have a TV, phone, or Internet (what? read a book?!); or I could hang out in the guesthouse bar with a group of Zambian men getting progressively more kolewa, or tipsy, as we say in polite English, and watch Obama's inaugural address on a tiny TV. Well, there was only one option for me!
Obama's inspirational words moved me. Yes we did! Change was here! There I sat, eyes glued to the screen, sober, 3 months pregnant (and starting to show), while the men around me drank Mosi, the favorite beer of Zambia and talked jovially, happy about Obama, but otherwise having a normal night at the bar. I was so hopeful, about Obama and America, about Africa and fighting malaria, about my half-African/half-American unborn baby. Maybe he or she would grow up to be a President!
As far as governments go, Zambians had been wanting change for a while, too. It seemed that most of the people I talked to supported the opposition parties, but the ruling party just kept winning the presidential elections. Whether they won them fair and square is largely up for debate. Government officials and their families seemed to be doing pretty well, but the vast majority of Zambians were still living in poverty and were wondering where the roads, schools, and hospitals were that the government kept promising.
Here we are, 3 years later, and, well, to put it lightly, Obama has suffered criticism from both his opponents and supporters. The fight against malaria goes on in Zambia, but I must say, I think it is going well! (www.path.org/projects/malaria_control_partnership.php) And I have a 2-year-old daughter who is amazingly beautiful, intelligent and sweet! (Future presidential material? Maybe, but we'll let her decide her career path.)
And finally, this brings us to .... the Nyanja Word of the Week: pabwato*.
Obama's inspirational words moved me. Yes we did! Change was here! There I sat, eyes glued to the screen, sober, 3 months pregnant (and starting to show), while the men around me drank Mosi, the favorite beer of Zambia and talked jovially, happy about Obama, but otherwise having a normal night at the bar. I was so hopeful, about Obama and America, about Africa and fighting malaria, about my half-African/half-American unborn baby. Maybe he or she would grow up to be a President!
As far as governments go, Zambians had been wanting change for a while, too. It seemed that most of the people I talked to supported the opposition parties, but the ruling party just kept winning the presidential elections. Whether they won them fair and square is largely up for debate. Government officials and their families seemed to be doing pretty well, but the vast majority of Zambians were still living in poverty and were wondering where the roads, schools, and hospitals were that the government kept promising.
Here we are, 3 years later, and, well, to put it lightly, Obama has suffered criticism from both his opponents and supporters. The fight against malaria goes on in Zambia, but I must say, I think it is going well! (www.path.org/projects/malaria_control_partnership.php) And I have a 2-year-old daughter who is amazingly beautiful, intelligent and sweet! (Future presidential material? Maybe, but we'll let her decide her career path.)
And finally, this brings us to .... the Nyanja Word of the Week: pabwato*.
Pabwato literally means "on a boat" and it has been the campaign slogan of the Patriotic Front, one of the main opposition parties in Zambia. The Movement for Multiparty Democracy, or MMD, has held power for the past 20 years. The slogan pabwato, or "on a boat," symbolizes a crossing over, perhaps from a place of poverty and corrupton, to a more inviting place. (The boat analogy hits home for Zambians, whose most publicized tribal ritual, the Kuomboka Ceremony involves a mass ceremonial migration on boats.)
Michael Sata, the leader of the PF party, is a charismatic speaker with proven track record of "getting things done" as he worked his way up from the lower levels of Zambian government. Sata, however, has no higher education and has been frequently known to resort to rough language and insults, points that his critics often use against him. He has run for president in the past 3 elections, losing 2 by small and disputed margins, but finally...
on the 20th of September...
over a million Zambians voted for Sata, pushing him ahead of the incumbent, Rupiah Banda, and making him the 5th president of Zambia!
The Zambian people got what they wanted and weren't afraid to show it! My attention this time was not fixed upon a TV screen in a dark, crowded bar, among friendly strangers, but glued to Facebook, in the quiet of our new apartment in DeKalb, Illinois, a quite rural town in the USA. After 2 days of waiting for the unofficial results come in, one constituency at a time, and hours of waiting after the scheduled time for the Electoral Commission to announce the results, my friends in Zambia had a lot of interesting things to post:
The Zambian people got what they wanted and weren't afraid to show it! My attention this time was not fixed upon a TV screen in a dark, crowded bar, among friendly strangers, but glued to Facebook, in the quiet of our new apartment in DeKalb, Illinois, a quite rural town in the USA. After 2 days of waiting for the unofficial results come in, one constituency at a time, and hours of waiting after the scheduled time for the Electoral Commission to announce the results, my friends in Zambia had a lot of interesting things to post:
"The people have spoken!"
"People are singing and dancing in the streets."
"I hear vuvuzelas."
"I wouldn't go out there..."
"I just saw a bunch of guys dancing in their underwear."
"Someone is crowd-surfing in a bathtub!"
"I have never heard this much noise in the streets, and its 3am!"
"Pabwato!"
"Pabwato!"
Well, after all of this excitement, I hope that Michael Sata can give the people the change they want to see. Maybe he'll go the way of most world leaders and just behave in largely the same manner as the leaders before him. Or maybe he will be the "Man of Action" he has been known as and whip the government into shape.
Pabwato!
Nyanja words to practice:
tukonde twa kazizi (Nsenga): (literally, "little owl's banana's") "small bananas"
kolewa: "drunk"
pa: "on"
bwato: "boat"
pabwato (Nyanja and Bemba): "on a boat"
*Note: "Pabwato" is also a word in the Bemba language. Though there is a slight variation in pronunciation, the spelling and meaning are the same. I'm stealing from the Bembas a little bit here, because the slogan was first and foremost popularized by speakers of their language. Thanks, Bembas!
