Mel hopped to the window, her attention seemingly sparked by something going on outside. It grabbed my attention even though I really didn’t want to pay attention since I had suddenly finally getting working internet after 2 hours of twiddling my thumbs. I turned toward her, my head turned slightly to the side like a curious Labrador, eyes and brows slightly squinted, nonverbally asking what was going on. “There’s a lot of commotion going on outside. Everybody’s running to the parking lot.”
I walked to the window and hollered to Fridah, our office admin who was bopping back to the office, her long braids swinging back & forth behind her. I opened the window and called out to her, asking what was going on. We’ve had some minor turmoil go on with fights between the staff and management (since they don’t always pay the staff the measly equivalent of $50 a month, make sudden decisions not to feed the staff lunch anymore, etc) or another experience such as a small group of foolish, angry petitioners crowding around our front gate because a man staying at the guest house had just taken over as the new President of a political party. (As you can imagine, that was highly unsettling to learn, though thankfully not too many blank stares and/or lost and drunken looks. Their disturbance only went so far as crowding around the gate and yelling for the man when the gate opened to let us in or out—more like barking dogs that don’t bite.) Anyway, this commotion was strange for 11am on a Tuesday.
“This boy has fallen off the ladder. The gardener boy,” Fridah called. “He has cut his toe. He is not so fine.” In Zambia, you’re either fine—the world is revolving normally—or not so fine, when something fairly substantial is not ok, like getting malaria, breaking a bones, not getting paid by your bosses and your family going without, or perhaps losing a family member.
Shit. Olecio has only been with us just a couple months, maybe not even. A sweet, innocent-ish boy (who I’d later find out in the ER that he’s 24, though he seems more like 17) who has taken over since our last young man gardener, who also took on the duty of daytime gate when the normal guard stopped showing up, left for school. The guest house overuses everybody, paying them in one capacity while using them in two, like a brothel house Madame mistreating and dominating her girls because she can. Olecio, like all the good gate guards here in Zambia, always greets us with the greatest smiling, “Hello madame, how are you today?” with an energy of appreciation, as if we’re giving him the gift just by greeting them during our daily coming and going.
For some reason there was a quick kinship for me with Olecio, which is interesting because I did everything I could to stay away from our last guard. Absolutely no idea why but the kid really seemed to take to me and, though I’m highly wary of these I also to him. (As ugly as I know it is, by ‘these situations’ I mean building a relationship with a person who’s on impossibly different economic grounds (and all the implications of poverty), especially since he works for our landlord, thus essentially for us…perhaps only something you can understand if you live over here.)
Early last week I drove through the gate in the morning and he wasn’t smiling. His ‘not so fine’ response was followed by telling me he had ‘a lot of pain in his tooth’ and that his bosses wouldn’t give him money until the following week, at the end of the month, so he’d have to wait until then to have it removed. His suffering was as clear as day. My reaction? I unconsciously put on my sterile doctor’s jacket we’ve all developed over here in Africa, numbing ourselves to others’ pain. We see so much of it, it just hurts too much to experience with everybody. The irony is that there really is no way to hide—that thinking is as foolish as thinking you can live a full life without seeing the sun; but we try to trick ourselves into thinking we don’t feel it.
As I got out of my car, my humanity broke and I gave him some money and sent him off to have his tooth removed. However, knowing the dependence that giving often creates here in Africa—primarily in relationships between natives & Westerners, I asked him to pay me back half the money when he got his next salary payment. I really didn’t care if he never did; I just wanted to ask him in principle.
Five nights later I had entirely forgotten about it until after hosting a small yoga class at our residence I was told by my roommates that Olencio was looking around for me all day and night. Being the first Monday of the month, I realized he had been paid the previous day. Since unfortunately excuses abound in formidable numbers here in Zambia when it comes to paying back one’s debt (one of those Africa-experiences—it sucks and is frustrating but can you really blame a person who makes less than $2 a day?), my heart lifted knowing that he was sticking to our deal A good friend recently helped me learn that the greatest—and perhaps only—power we have in life is our word. I’m so happy for Olencio that he wanted to keep his word.
The following morning I drove in and he tried to pay me back. I explained to him that my family and friends in the US are helping me be here as a volunteer and that I know they’d all want to help him, so to please accept it as a gift from all of us. He tried to fight me on it until he ceded to the gift we both knew he could really use.
Then hours later Melissa at the window and Fridah’s reply to what happened. Bet you’re thinking I went out to help, right? No. I went back to my work. It wasn’t until about fifteen minutes later when Lucas and his girlfriend came in and talked about how sad it was that Olencio’s toe was bleeding pretty bad and he’s sitting there with tears streaming down his face. Laughably I piped in, “My boy Olencio?” as if there was another gardener-gate guard named Olencio.
I found him in the little cement hut beside the gates, hunched over, rocking back and forth to grasp his lower leg, tears staining his face. I tried not to dive right in (I can’t save everybody!Ok, got it. But then some of the greatest pain and suffering I’ve ever seen came out as his whole body sobbed as he held up two fingers, through his choking saying, “two pin.” A pin is the slang word for 1000 kwacha; 4000 kwacha (4 pin) is about a dollar, thus 2 pin comes to about fifty cents. It didn’t make sense—what does two pin have to do with it? I thought. my loudest reigning internal voice tried to protect me) and calmly asked him what happened. He had fallen off the ladder, it landing on his foot.
The other gardener, Laurence, a tiny, quiet spoken, frail man of probably around sixty (very old for Zambia) who likes my roommate Jacob to call him uncle in ChiNyanja somehow got the message through to me with his limited English that comes out of his tiny toothless mouth and face permanently turned to the ground. Since the guest house had paid them yesterday, they only owed him outstanding wages of 2000 kwacha for today’s half day of work.
I really don’t think there’s a way to explain my absolute abhorrence for the inhumanity of their act, treating this young man like litter, no longer of use to them. Fortunately and unfortunately for me and my upbringing, it was a hundred percent unfathomable to not help this kid with a swollen, bleeding toe, tears streaking down his face, who had just been treated with an utter absence of compassion or empathy—not even like a human being. And this is hardly the tip of the iceberg of Zambia; this is every moment of every day.
I called my friend who’s a great (not practicing) ER doc from Texas to get advice as I drove Olencio to the nicest hospital I know of in Lusaka. As we hobbled in he nearly begged me not to take him there since it was so expensive, and brought it up again as we walked into the treatment room. With his selflessness mine expanded; or perhaps it was just my simple desire to get rid of his pain…to get rid of the pain we were both feeling.
I paid fee after fee (you have to pay the fees for things before they’ll do them—first consult, then back to the cashier for xrays, then sutures, etc) and thankfully had a very good doctor. His big toe and second toe were both badly broken and the cut needed some sutures (but not too many due to the high risk of infection due to all the swelling combined with an open wound and fractures). Huge needles full of a numbing agent (“We’re going to freeze your toes,” she said) were painfully inserted into his toes. Olencio writhed and cried as I sat on the doctor’s stool in the corner of the room covering my eyes and ears each time she had to go back in with more meds, just like I do when my chest starts closing during the scary movies I can no longer handle.
Afterwards, I drove Olencio home, back to his compound of Ngombe where he lives in a small compound shack with his sister, her husband, and their two children. During our time waiting in the treatment room we shared our stories of family and life. I learned that he is a young man of the Shona tribe of Zimbabwe where he was born, the second of four children to a Zimbabwean father and Zambian mother. He spent part of his life growing up in Malawi and came to ZambiaLusaka, to find some kind of work like most Zambians from the suburbs. He did one year of ‘chefing school,’ which I finally figured out to be culinary college. He proudly asked me if I know how to cook prawns and squid, telling me of a couple of the sauces he can make for them. He tried to get a job at a local higher-end restaurant but “this country is so corrupt,” he said. I’m not sure what he was alluding to in this case, but I can say that the entire economic system of developing nations is disgustingly imbalanced with structure that fosters distortion from top to bottom. “This job (at the guest house) is only to survive, nothing else…only to survive. There is no other work.” The painful truth of that statement seemed to come from the lowest part of his belly, pushing its energy through his vocal chords. with his mother and siblings a few years ago. He hasn’t seen or heard from his father in eight years. “I don’t even know if he is alive or if he is dead,” he said to me almost smiling; whether he was masking sadness or simply smiling a puzzle that’s nothing but a fantasy in his life I’m not sure. His mother and two younger siblings live a few hours outside the city where his mother is a teacher and brothers are finishing school. Olencio came to the city,
Driving, we wound through the narrow, bumpy dirt roads of the compound to his place, Olencio saying, “I hope you will find your way out,” every time we took another turn through the dusty maze that is every compound. He thanked me for probably the fifth time, telling me that if he had gone to the clinic near his compound, they would have just told him to come back the next day—and who knows if or when they’d actually do anything. I thought of all the things that could have happened in that case—an infection leading to losing his toe or his foot; an infection that could spread into his blood and kill him…It’s insane to think about how in Africa, a minor illness or injury so often leads to such further human costs due to lack of care. Bad drinking water that gives a person diarrhea that kills them because their body can’t fight the bacterias, virus, or parasites. I remember that feeling and fear all too well when a virus sent me in the hospital in South Africa--thank God we were on that leg of our holiday and not in the bush in Botswana where I wouldn’t have gotten any care.
I dropped him at the tiny alleyway to his home and gave him all the money I was carrying to get a cab back to the hospital every day to change the dressing on his bleeding toes and eventually put a splint on the big toe once the swelling goes down enough for it to be out of the risk for infection. I again reminded him to keep his foot elevated and clean, had him promise to take good care of it and take all the medicines we got, and told him that I’ll be in touch with him soon to make sure it’s all going ok.
Though most Zambians don’t make phone calls because topping up your talktime is so expensive Olencio called me that evening, thanking me, telling me, “I don’t know how I will ever repay you, you have done so much for me.” I don’t think there is a way to thank him enough, to tell him that he is doing so much for me—teaching, showing, and giving me so much. I know that as my heart breaks, it’s breaking open, creating new space for more love. How can I thank him for this?
I didn’t think it would be enough money for cabs every day (other option being walking a long way to get a minibus, from which he’d have another mile walk to get to the hospital once dropped off by the minibus), which was confirmed by the eight phone calls I missed the following morning to report to me that he had just been to the hospital. The taxi had been too expensive so he’d have to walk for the other days, he said. I asked if that was manageable and was told that the toe is still gushing blood. I told him I’d be in contact with him later that day.
I set up a car to pick him up to go to the hospital and take him back home every day for the next four days as recommended by the doctor , texting him to tell him and give him the driver’s information. He replied by text:
“hi sister, i hop u re fine, i don’t know how I can thank u for de care u hav shown 2 me. u such kind person, may god bless u and reward u for your kindness. take care”
His gratitude kills me.
His situation tortures me.
After dropping him off, I went back to my home/office and told Uncle Lawrence that his brother, as he called him, would be ok. In Africa, we’re all brothers and sisters.
As I drove through the gate, Ida, the manager of the guest house and sister of our landlady, walked in behind me. Quickly deciding what to say as I parked the car, I got out of my car to confront her: I would be firm and inquisitive—not hostile—with my questions, also creating an entirely open space for her to respond in order to reveal the incident from her perspective, something I’m learning about in a fantastic book on empathy…
“What’s the deal with not taking care of the boy? I just took him to the hospital.” A blank stare my response. I really don’t like using the word ‘boy,’ with its connotations that send me back to stories of the colonial southern plantations of America’s past, but my experience of moving around the world a bit has shown me that being human lends conforming to your surroundings. Thankfully, though, we can also use our human awareness to take a step back, outside ourselves, to analyze our situation and change it as we wish.
“Why only two pin?” I quietly asked, hiding my anger and broken heart.
“He was paid just yesterday, he has money,” she asserted quickly.
“But he’s not carrying it not on him, how was he meant to get to a hospital?” I replied.
Quickly she responded, “Ahh, we are broke, we have no money in this place,” pointing to the guest house, rushing through her excuses of the guest house not having enough business, the car being broken down…
“And your sister, how many properties does she own? She doesn’t have any money to take care of the boy? He was injured working for you,” I exclaimed. The crazy, greedy woman who complains that we ask too much of her when we ask to have the hot water fixed every time it breaks down, moments after bragging to me about all the properties she owns and rents out in Lusaka. I wonder about her grasp with sanity, never mind humanity.
“She was not home,” then hunches her shoulders, lifting her cellphone, “No talktime and the landline is not working. There is no money in this place, Jessika.”
Still calm I asked, “You didn’t think to ask one of us? You didn’t think we would help?” My voice trailed with the last question, knowing I wouldn’t get a response. If helping the injured boy was out of her reality, that thought process was like asking her for directions to Pluto. I continued, “He has two badly broken toes,” I told her.
“Two toes? They are broken?” honestly seeming a little surprised, though I can’t understand how after seeing how much pain he was obviously in.
“Yes, two broken toes, pretty bad too. And stitches as well. I’ve spent a lot of money helping him, taking him to the hospital.” I paused looking at her, seeing her posture start sinking forward. Maybe it wasn’t kind to try to make her feel bad, to hold myself and that power of the ‘good’ I had done over her. I think I was just hoping that she’d show me that she’s human.
Deliberately speaking my words, pausing at the end of each sentence, I continued, “I hope you will take care of him. I hope that he will be paid for this time while he can’t work since he was hurt because he was working for you. He can’t even walk for a week and he has to go back to the hospital every day. Maybe a week after that he can come back, but only to work at the gate, not gardening, too.” Watching her response, I knew she had heard me but certainly wasn’t listening, standing there only with a sense that she was obliged to. “I spent a lot of money helping take care of him. I hope you will continue to take care of him since you didn’t.”
She quietly mumbled out a thank-you to me for spending my money to help him; it seemed part sincere, part indignantly obliging. I acknowledged her thanks and we both turned from each other to move on with the rest of our day. I returned to the office and was told by my smiling, ever-cheery coworkers I had come back in perfect time since the power had just come back on. I felt like I had been in twilight zone, that the past few hours hadn’t even existed as I re-entered this other reality beside my wonderful Zambian coworkers.
I continued with my day, somehow more productive with my work than I’ve been able to be in weeks. After work I hurried to yoga class, then met a Croatian (by heritage) French-Canadian (by nationality) girlfriend for a movie that turned out to be no longer showing. We hopped into a different movie, one of the worst I’ve ever watched in full (starring Janet Jackson if that gives you a clue to the pain it was to sit through). The movie was about the struggles of four married couples. Even most of the acting was pitiful, but the building of emotions—fighting, jealousy, lying, cheating, manipulating--was like a belt around my breast being fastened tighter and tighter, impossibly squeezing into the next loophole.
Driving home from the movie, all I could think about was getting to a place where I could sit quietly and try to squeeze a full breath into my body.
Bee-lining to my bed, I sat cross-legged and set my alarm for ten minutes. Though a very short time to meditate, I had no idea if I’d even be able to get any air in and out of straw-sized passage in my chest for that amount of time without falling over out of exhaustion for the amount of effort that such breathing seemed it’d take. Just imagining trying to breathe made me want to crawl under the covers like a kid escaping the boogieman.
It probably wasn’t two minutes until my tears started. Within moments it became sobs. I curled forward into a downward fetal position, arms outstretched in front of me, bawling. Ten minutes in, choking and heaving, I ran to the bathroom to wail like a little child, thinking that the only worse feeling would be losing my family and hoping I could just throw up all of my insides to release all the emotions of sadness, pain, inhumanity, and suffering that I’ve seen and learned about here in Zambia over the past six months. I knew the day’s events were the last twist to open the fire hydrant of all the emotions I’m constantly trying not to feel here in Africa.
***
I called my father. As I cried he talked to me about the exposure to the world that I’ve received, being so much more than most of the people back home…yet while painful to be amongst this suffering, I’m still sheltered to immensely more that has and still does exist in other places in the world, even in Zambia’s neighboring nations like Zimbabwe, DRC, Uganda, Rwanda…We continued talking and eventually he came up with something silly and made me laugh. Sometimes I feel like that’s my key: to have somebody be there to listen, to get a little perspective, then to laugh together. The recipe works for me.
But I still couldn’t sleep, didn’t even want to try. Already haunted by the tears and pain on Olencio’s face, something made me think that it would get worse if I turned out the lights and closed my eyes. I called another friend back home, a yoga friend. He too let me tell the story, somehow feeling a bit better because he has visited here and might understand it beyond the conceptual. Probably to ease my pain, he kept bringing me back to the good that I had done for Olencio, highlighting ways in which I could have changed this kid’s life. It doesn’t cease to amaze me how doing something so ‘good’ can actually hurt so damn much. But I reminded myself of my favorite quote, “Success,” by Ralph Waldo Emerson: “To know that one life has breathed easier because you have lived, that is to have succeeded.” We talked about suffering—the suffering that exists everywhere, and how we all close our eyes to it all around the world, right next to us, and within us, sometimes not even knowing we’re doing so. Ever think about what happens to put the $29.99 DVD player or newest cell phone from China onto our shelves?
I went to sleep finally at 3am, sleeping through Olencio’s eight calls the following morning. Though wanting to take a mental health day, I knew I only have just over a month left here in Zambia—a lot of work to complete, to leave behind me, and also only such a short amount of time to continue experience the gifts of Zambia. I opened another book I’m reading, entering a new chapter that talked about karma, about how all of our journeys are shared, learning from one another, some souls sacrificing themselves for the development of others, sharing our lessons with one another. I’m not certain I ascribe to it fully, but it appeased me enough to go get dressed and on with my day.
I certainly wasn’t a ball of fun during the day and knew I couldn’t get myself to socialize and go to a group lunch that had been planned—the tears were still too close to the surface. But I did manage to get a few things done, and even lit a fire under my ass to go play Wednseday night football with my buddies, an Iranian-Canadian-Zambian (by birth, by nationality, by who-knows-what) and an Irishman, by thinking about growing up and how no matter what was happening in my life around me—any turmoil or sadness—everything disappeared when I stepped onto the pitch. Granted, it waited for me like my gym bag on the sideline, but for the time I was on the field, all that existed was artistic technical floating movement around the grass, working with my team, shouting, communicating, celebrating, fighting it out for a ball, instinctual touches, knowing without knowing, doing things I’m not aware I’m doing, don’t really know how to do, nor probably be able to do again or explain why I’ve done it. Most time and thinking as we know it cease when I’m on the pitch. But I do eventually have to step off the pitch, back to Zambia, back to the reality of sadness and suffering.
In the end, I think about the whole situation and get a little perspective on it. In some ways, it was really a small thing that happened; but its symbolism to the situations here in Zambia and in life is what breaks me down, brings up all of my emotion. I can honor my desire to shun suffering and by doing so can learn to live with it.
Knowing you may have made a real a difference in one person’s life may be the zenith of existence—both the most amazing and also the most crushing feeling one can ever know. It breaks your heart into pieces to be a part of another person’s experience of suffering, combining you with their being, somehow still leaving you wishing you could have given more and called your friends to pull from their pockets and drawers.
My chest is still tight, emotions intermittently welling in my throat, and every once in a while I wonder when the next flight back to the US leaves. I’m riding an intense wave of joy and suffering, learning how to charge through a wave to get outside of the breaks, learning to enjoy the thrill of being in the tube and learning to surrender to being tossed and turned by the wave far more powerful than me. It’s challenging to experience another person’s suffering, but I can’t save every single person—nor can I try. Sets of waves will come and go and I’ll know which waves to paddle toward to catch, when to get the hell out of its way, when to get out the crap of the water, and when it’s time to get back in. Like everything, I’ll certainly keep falling as I continue to learn. Sometimes there will be people to help lift me back up, sometimes I’ll be the one lending a hand. Together we’ll all help each other breathe easier.
The picture above was taken last Friday after bringing Olencio to for a checkup with my ER doc friend and taking him to buy more meds & supplies for soaking, wrapping, and caring for his toe. I really can't express how incredibly grateful he is, sending me texts every day to update me after going to the clinic and getting the care/shots that my friend recommended (I had a driver taking him every day to the hospital, but now that he has the supplies, he's doing his care at home with all the stuff we bought), or even just showing his appreciation by letting me know he's doing what he should as care for his injury. Earlier this week, I woke to a text message: "hi sis, how is ya morning? I am okay, taking my medication, washing my wound wit warm water, put savlon* in it. its going well, take care god bless u." (*savlon is like betadine...and fyi, it's text messaging english ;-)) He's so incredibly thankful...and so am I.
