Ruminations in Lusaka.

February 6, 2014

I’ve been here in Zambia for a few days now.  I am going to share with you some of the observations I am making as I learn more about the world and also about the African continent.

It is fairly clear to me that most people do not know what goes on in the world beyond their daily bubble.  It is also fairly clear that this is because most people are absorbed in the goings on in their daily bubbles.  I am not sure where this absorption comes from.  Why are there some people who want to know what is going on in the bigger world?  Why are there some people who seek out knowledge by reading or watching television or by finding other people to talk with, dialogue with, learn with and learn from?  I have noticed from my childhood that there are people who want their bubbles to remain closed and tight and others who almost seem to be called by God to strip the bubbles away and seek out a larger world that stretches and transforms them.

In seminary I learned about the local, the national and the global.  There are at least three different contexts that affect each person in the world.  In some places in the world, such as currently in South Sudan, the daily and the local require constant attention in order to just survive.  In more developed and peaceful places in the world, such as Zambia, the same could perhaps be true except that it has to do with making sure that the bubble isn’t threatened.  People who live in a peaceful world must keep it that way by paying attention and making sure that threats don’t enter into the prosperity.

(I just found out that there is no recycling here in Lusaka.  What a pity.)

If we look at the life of Jesus we can see our model for bursting the bubble and living a life outside of our comfort zone.  We can also see the results, after all, he ended up dead on a cross.  Even before Jesus in the Old Testament (the Hebrew Testament) we see people who burst the bubble and lived outside their comfort zone, after all we have the witness of the Prophets.  Scary, scary to be a prophet.  Most of them ended up dead too.  Granted we will all end up dead in the end, but isn’t the fantasy to die peacefully in one’s sleep?  Not at the end of a gun or a missile?

My first day here someone told me that southern Africa (this includes Zambia, Lesotho, Zimbabwe, South Africa, etc.) is in a different world from East Central Africa.  I take this to mean that they are in a prosperous bubble, although someone else told me that within the capital of Zambia, Lusaka, where I am currently residing as a resident alien, the poverty rate is 20%.  Outside of Lusaka, in the rest of Zambia, the poverty rate is 80%.  Maybe the bubble isn’t quite as thick where the prosperity isn’t shared quite as much.

So I have now figured out that East Central Africa is probably where South Sudan is located.  While south Africa has benefitted from the progressive West,  East Central Africa has adopted things like wearing men’s suits in 110 degree weather, but does not have the marks of prosperity like huge modern sterile shopping centers. 

East Central Africa must include as well countries like Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, Chad, etc.  I say this based on the fact that I continue to read that the countries surrounding South Sudan are concerned not only for the people of South Sudan but also about the possibility of regional unrest.  I take this to mean that the domino affect could come into play.  One country’s government falls, perhaps the next country’s government falls, etc.  So that the African Union becomes involved to shore up the falling/failing/frailing infrastructure that is barely holding South Sudan together in order that the entire region does not fall into disarray.

I am not a politician so I am sorting this out from my own perspective as someone whose bubble has been burst many years ago and tries to understand the world from the perspective of the wounded people on the ground. 

The term the West is another interesting phenomena.  The West somewhat implies looking to the West on a world map.  However, Europe is also “progressive” and Europe is really to the North of Africa.  Pretty much right above it on the world maps that I look at.  There is another term for the upper part of the globe that I cannot think of at this moment, and that term takes into account both the global North and the global West.  Why is it that the global South has been so gypped?  And are they really gypped or is that just by European and American standards that we see those areas of the globe in that way?

Back to the beginning of today’s ruminating.  I am experiencing a bubble here in south Africa, in Zambia.  I am not comfortable with this bubble.  While I used to think that I was more comfortable with the prosperity of the Western world, and the places where colonization has brought that prosperity, I don’t think this is the case any longer.  I am beginning to think that perhaps I am not comfortable anywhere anymore.

I have liked Nairobi because the marks of colonization are very evident there.  It is HUGE, GIGANTIC, the outskirts of the mega city seem to go on for miles.  The shopping centers are western meccas of wealth and the enormous variety of products that makes me almost nauseus after so long away from them.  I find myself being overwhelmed and thinking that perhaps the little country stores in the United States that are attached to gas stations are more manageable for me now.

I have not so much liked Addis Ababa in Ethiopia because it has seemed too foreign to me.  Ethiopia is the only country that was not colonized.  This is said of Liberia as well but it isn’t true.  Former African slaves from the United States colonized Liberia and made the indigenous Africans who lived there into their slaves. 

Ethiopia has seemed too foreign to me and I have not been totally comfortable there.  But now I am beginning to think that it is more comfortable than south Africa. 

South Sudan is another story altogether.  Juba, the capital of South Sudan, is not huge and gigantic (yet) like Addis Ababa or Nairobi or Lusaka.  It is however huge and gigantic compared to Malakal, or at least what Malakal was like when I last saw it on December 7^th, 2013.  I think it has changed since having a war played out over its streets the last two months. 

Malakal is the capital of the Upper Nile States.  This is one of the oil producing states and Malakal is very close to the border with Sudan.  I had heard from people that Malakal was of strategic importance because it was a major garrison town during the civil war when South Sudan was part of Sudan and the north and south were at war.  Now I understand more what this really meant.  Malakal is on the Nile River and Malakal also has a paved airstrip at its airport.  These two things make it accessible and desirable for warring parties to possess.

Malakal also has been neglected.  Life there is very difficult which may be why one daydreams about the other cities in Africa.  But the reality of real life is not the same as daydreams.  I don’t like bubbles.  I don’t do well with people who don’t want to see beyond the safe walls that they have built around their prosperity and their little tiny local worlds. 

So where do I belong?  I suspect that the answer is back in Malakal, South Sudan.  Because I can actually make a difference there.  And without making a difference, what point is there in living?

I must add a caveat here.  These thoughts are about me, myself and I and do not reflect on other people who ARE making a difference here in Lusaka.  I am just realizing that I have a different calling, that is all.

Blessings,

Debbie