Leaving the Village After 2 Years

After two years of living in Makiya Village as a United States Peace Corps Volunteer, it was time to leave.

It couldn’t last forever, and even though I was given the option of staying for a third year, I decided that two years — more than 700 days — was enough. I had done my share.

I started preparing for my village exit a week before I was to hit the road by going through all of my things and deciding what to keep and what to lose. It was at this time that all sorts of strange and never-before-seen people start­ed showing up.

The only village photo we ever took.  I tried for 6 months to get this photo taken, but it wasn't until my goodbye meal that everyone was around long enough to take it. 

Like a dearly departed fam­ily member’s sudden death sparks distant cousins to climb out of the woodwork, I started having people I had never seen show up at my hut’s door ask­ing for a “remembrance” — a little something for them to remember me by.

They kept saying how much I meant to them, acting like for the past two years we were the best of friends. I gave them nothing, and instead asked, “How many other Americans have lived in this village? None — you’ll remember me; I’m sure of it.”

Most of my things went to my nearest neighbors, the people I did know well and had helped me the most. My ax was the only item I had trouble parting with. I considered lugging it around with me to keep as a souvenir, but decided to give it to someone in the village that may get actual use out of it.

Mrs. Fubisha and some of the other women from the village preparing my goodbye meal in the village. 

In the end, I left the village with a duffel bag and perhaps half the items worth keeping. Two years and all I had worth keeping were some old, rag­gedy clothes; a couple of jour­nals full of my poor handwrit­ing and semi-insightful thoughts; and about 50 newly acquired best friends within the last week.

I naively thought my actual leaving the village wouldn’t be difficult. I thought I would say my goodbyes, have a final meal with everyone and early in the morning I would catch the first bus that drove by. I was wrong.

This is a picture of me enjoying one of my last meals in the village: grilled goat, nshima, sweet potato leaves, and lepu.

It’s a strange feeling to leave a place that for two years was nearly everything to me. I slept there. I worked there. But I also laughed there. I even occasionally cried there. To be honest, there wasn’t really anything else in my life but my Peace Corps Service and even that revolved al­most completely around this one village: Makiya.

And for nearly two years of my villagers’ lives, I was a main com­ponent of their daily gossip. It was hard to explain to them, as I was leaving, what they meant to me and that I was proud to have stayed there and honored that they so openly took me in, as most of them don’t speak English.

Not a day goes by when I don’t think about Makiya Village and all of the people who live there. I can honestly say that I miss it. I loved my time in Makiya and was even given that chance to stay a third year.

The final choice as to whether I stay or leave wasn’t made until four days before I was going to leave. I wrestled with the idea for weeks of staying one more year, but ultimately decided it was time to go and try something else.

Many of my village's kids are in this photo.  After two years I can only name about half of them, but they were an entertaining bunch - even if I didn't know their names.

I came in not knowing what to expect during the two years of my Peace Corps service and I left feeling a sense of satisfaction knowing that I learned some things along the way — like eating exclusively with my hands, where to find the best mangoes and even eradicating rats without chemicals.

More importantly, I learned the importance of community and actu­ally knowing your neigh­bor, not just where your neighbor lives: knowing about their family, their struggles and joys, their beliefs.

Years down the road I’m sure I’ll look back on my time as a volunteer not in the context of the projects that I worked on, but rather on the people I worked on those projects with.

As for my projects, there were a couple of solid successes but far more failures, But I was 100 percent successful at creating some great rela­tionships and memories.

I took this picture at 5 AM on my last morning in the village.  For all of Africa's issues, which we so often see in the news, the sunsets and sunrises are second to nothing I've ever seen before.

I couldn’t be more thankful to the villagers of Makiya for that oppor­tunity.

Makiya Village, My Village

Makiya Village, my village and home, is a tiny place made up of eleven huts in the shape of a Q. And since my compound is set just outside the main village, my hut acts like the Q’s tail.

It isn’t likely to be on any map except Google Maps where I finally found, after 10 minutes of searching, what I’m almost certain is my hut and the huts of Makiya Village.

It isn’t much to see in person — just a few grass thatched huts — but it’s home just the same and those who live here are about as close to a Zambian family as I will ever get.

About 65 men, women and children — all of them related in some manner as cousins, aunts, uncles, brothers, etc. — live in my village’s 11 huts. In this one village there are four generations of the Baboon clan.

This is about 2/3s of the people I lived with during the past two years.  The villagers of Makiya Village were wonderful to me.  I wanted to take a picture like this for about 6 months but could never get everyone together... until my last week in the village.  Please notice Grandma on the left-side throwing up the double hand wave and Nshimbi in the blue shirt.  Makes me smile every time.

Of the 65 people in the village, the majority are children. They say it takes a village to raise a child, and with so many kids scurrying around, over, and under everything, it’s good they’re all related because no one mother could keep an eye on them all. I once saw a woman give a pretty serious spanking to her niece after she had pushed down a cousin that belonged to another sister.

In the village hierarchy there is Mr. Fred Fubisha, the village headman. Formerly one of the best bush hunters in the area, his body is now wracked by rheumatoid arthritis and his mobility has been greatly reduced. But his mind remains as sharp as ever.

The headman, Mr. Fubisha (on the right side of the photo) in his arm-powered wheel chair. 

This is a much better picture of Mr. F (he's not in the middle of eating at least).  Back in his prime he was a very well known hunter in the area.  His specialty... elephants.  The man has some amazing stories.

He’s not the oldest person in Makiya Village, though. That designation belongs to his mother, Nelo, who seems to play the role of stern, respected, wizened matriarch to perfection at 80-plus years of age. She’s no pushover.

Grandma Nelo with the newest addition to our village, baby Jordan.  She's a tough old lady: stern but fair.

After the headman comes the head of each household, and for my village, those are mainly the mothers. For whatever reason there are only four huts with men always present. Sometimes due to employment opportunities elsewhere, death, divorce or other issues, the women largely dominate the social landscape in this village.

And that’s a good thing for me because it means that I basically have nine mothers and one stern, but fair, grandmother keeping an eye out for me.

My brightly painted home.  To be honest it was a dumpy hut, but that's mainly my fault.  I didn't take much initiative to keep it in tip-top condition.  Nonetheless it was home.

For example, last year I got really sick from an especially bad case of food poisoning. Throughout the day, all of them would stop by to check on me and see if I needed anything, even going so far as to empty my bedside bucket.

They think that I’m something more than just a helpless volunteer that’s been implanted into their community.

Recently, one woman claimed that she considered me to be her first-born child (an honor in Zambia) in front of her actual first born and a gathering of villagers. Kind of awkward, I know, but he later told me he took no offense to her comment.

Smiles everyday... that's what Makiya Village offered.

For all the female involvement, there is absolutely preferential treatment among the children. Due to typically large families (six children on average) and limited funding, boys are sent to school before girls and there is a discrepancy between how long they’re sent (the older children go for much longer).

There’s one man in Makiya who can speak English incredibly well because of a decent education, while a younger brother speaks only the local languages due to less educational opportunities.

This overall scenario of my village’s makeup is similar throughout rural Zambia where the Zambian nuclear family greatly outnumbers the American version by at least 2 to 1.

Even the proximity of family members to one another is like this throughout the country. There may be a cousin, sibling or child who acts as the outlier and has moved away to a better job somewhere else, but mostly they live in large familial clusters.

Some villages may have huts numbering more than 100, but I’m thankful for my small village. I know everyone, they know me, and we get along perfectly.

It’s an ideal setting that allows me to have a safe community, local friends and experience firsthand the happenings of an African village and its nuclear family.

Technology and Zambia: They're Evolving Together

Technology is crazy. It’s constantly improving, changing, shifting and doing things for us that we wouldn’t have imagined 10 or 20 years ago — maybe even five years ago.

I’m constantly at a loss when trying to understand why things are getting smaller, what a hash tag is doing in front of a person’s name or how people manage to keep up with any of this. It took me a week just to understand what a “selfie” was.

Teaching Nshimbi how to use a computer.  He was so excited and incredibly nervous to even touch the keyboard.  He picked up typing surprisingly fast.  He know has an email... although no computer with which to check his inbox.

It doesn’t matter what I can’t keep up with, especially when I’m trying to keep up with it while living in a Zambian village, because even my village is changing.

With more than one billion people, Africa represents a large portion of the market available to technology manufacturers and companies like Samsung and General Electric.

It’s in this area of cell phones that I notice the largest growth in technology adoption. Nearly every person has a cell phone and nearly every street corner is staffed with peddlers trying to sell a newer, better model.

These phones often provide villagers with Internet access, and although the uptake of this crazy notion called the World Wide Web is slow, it is gaining. It’s only a matter of time until my villagers start asking for my email address and we’ll be able to stay in touch long after I’ve left for the U.S.

Though the phones here aren’t as nice as those back home, some aid groups are trying to use phones to improve people’s lives.

My neighbor Willie setting up his Facebook account with his cell phone.   

For instance, there’s a texting service that rural, small-scale farmers can use to find the price of certain commodity crops like soybeans, corn and beans on the world market. The service will even identify companies that are buying these crops and provide the company’s contact information.

The Peace Corps in Zambia is also getting into the technology game through its partnership with a local technology hub called the Bongo Hive.

Last year this partnership created a cell phone application called Bantu Babel, which helps translate many of the local languages into English.

Twice a year, volunteers team up with local tech enthusiasts during a “hackathon” to brainstorm and create new development-focused applications and programs. Next up from the Bongo Hive group is a transportation-inspired application.

Some of the Bongo Hive attendees.  I took this photo off of Google Images.  Don't be made... I'm promoting you all.

There has also been startling growth in the use of solar panels throughout my community’s villages. Where there were no lights nearly two years ago, and only the occasional candle, there are now families using solar panels to charge not only their cell phones but to power light bulbs in their huts.

As an American abroad, the growth of technology in Africa has been great. I have a cell phone that let’s me text and call the United States — for a small fortune — check my email and Facebook accounts daily and I’ve even started a Twitter account from my hut based on all the things my favorite villager, Mr. Nshimbi, has said to me throughout my service. These newspaper articles are products of Zambia’s growing connectivity.

A fellow volunteer, Caleb Rudow, has greatly surpassed my own use of technology to stay connected by creating something that I affectionately call the “war room” in his hut.

Caleb's "war room" where throughout his two years of service he was more connected than any individual in a village had ever been connected before.

He has an entire solar system for his computer to use and through that he can Skype with his family in the United States — right from his hut. I always know when Caleb is in the war room because I’ll get email after email from him in regard to projects I’m connected to, projects that may interest me or just friendly emails to check in.

In the future I see technology’s use only growing throughout rural communities, especially in the area of public health.

Mobile health clinics are becoming more popular in the rural areas because technology has allowed these clinics to feature smaller, more easily transportable machines for checking a person’s vital health (HIV status, blood tests, respiratory, etc.) in the less accessible areas of Zambia

Text messaging services will play a greater role, for example a mother could receive a text reminder for when her child is due for a vaccination or what dietary needs the mother should meet while cooking dinner.

Ultimately, the spread of technology to villagers will only increase their connectivity and access to news, knowledge and information.

What slowed them before, inability to access information, is slowly being chipped away at, allowing those wanting the information to have access to the world’s databases — essentially connecting us all and making life a little easier.

Pregnancies In Zambia More Difficult Than Most

My nearest neighbor Anna had a baby recently. Like the majority of preg­nancies, this baby wanted to come in the middle of the night, so she was rushed to the local clinic — via the back of a bicycle —sometime around midnight.

  

The clinic tries to meet the demands of those in the sur­rounding areas but often fails due to a lack of resources. This time was no different: there was a shortage of blood. Luckily, the district hospital is nearby (just 10 miles) and she was sent there to deliver her baby, again on the back of a bicycle.



Anna with her new baby... this is just 10 hours after delivery and she's back in the village.

But not all women are lucky enough to live near a govern­ment hospital.

  Sometimes, the clinic must do, and the labor room in a clinic is spartan at best.

  The only way to describe it is as being bare.  A clinic’s capacity is usually limited to giving anti­biotics and occasional injec­tions. There’s a blood pressure cuff available but no machines to help a woman if she goes into shock or has other, more seri­ous, complications.

  Even electricity is a luxury, which most go without. And the most important resource — ac­tual medical personnel — is of­ten unavailable.



Combating this issue is the job of the traditional birth atten­dant. TBAs have been around in Zambia for ages, but recently the Ministry of Health outlawed their use because they wanted women to give birth in clinics where hygiene and safety were thought to be better.



TBAs like this one, Finnesse Magenda, do a lot in the local communities to ensure safe births.

Yet, the issue of the lack of proper medical personnel didn’t disappear so many TBAs are now going through formal train­ing where they’re becoming trained birth attendants and thus allowed to deliver babies at the clinic.



The training involves mother and child nutrition, recognizing danger signs in pregnancy and labor, emergency response to those situations, and preventing mother to child transmission of HIV.

  When a woman goes into la­bor, a TBA is called in to help and there she’ll stay through the en­tire process. 

Although many of the clinics have the bare mini­mum in terms of equipment, they’re still better than a home birth where absolutely nothing is available.



However, many births still occur in a village setting due to distance from a government clinic, pride and even mistrust of the clinics. 

In these areas, the TBAs go about their job of bringing babies into this world in the same manner as they have for years. 

Weighing babies beneath a mango tree.  It's not the most ideal place, but it does work in the villages.  Funny side note - that scale in the middle of the photo is also the same one we used to weigh fish during our fish harvests.



For the actual birth, it’s a cultural taboo for men to be in the room.  Only female members of the father’s side are allowed in.  

Because of this, the mother will go through the entire childbirth without making a noise or the use of pain medication. Let me repeat that – without a single sound. Complete silence. This is because the mother doesn’t want to appear weak in front of the father’s family. 

And this doesn’t just happen for the first child, it happens for all the mother’s births, which average about six babies in a woman’s lifetime. 

 Some mothers are as young as 14 when they give birth to their first child. The national average hovers around 18. Anna is 17. 



After the birth, the clinic or hospital will make the mother wait for six hours to make sure both her and the newborn baby are healthy and safe. Once they’ve been checked out, they return to their village and back to their lives — often on foot. 

Due to the high child mortality rate in rural Zambia, the mother usually won’t give her baby a name for a few days until it is clear that the newborn is likely to live.  I’ve seen women back in their fields just days after giving birth.  It’s incredible. 



Six days after the birth, the TBA will make a follow- up visit to be sure of the general health of mother and child.  She’ll do a second follow-up six weeks later.  TBAs in my area have delivered so many babies (at least one of the eleven local TBAs will deliver a baby per day), that at some point they lose count.  But they always know the mothers and which babies they delivered, which creates a sense of pride for the TBA. 

Rhoda, a local TBA, filling out paperwork at a local Under five clinic.  Under five clinics are held once a week and all women with children below the age of five are supposed to bring their children in to be weighed and measured as a way of tracking the baby's health.

I’m continually astounded at the resiliency and toughness of women in Zambia and the entire ordeal of childbirth is no different.  In fact, it only helps solidify my amazement: no sound is made, a woman with no formal training provides much of the technical knowledge to bring a child into this world and at the end of the day there is a mother, a child and a TBA that have all connected through the miracle of life. 

It’s crazy and wonderful. 



My namesake - Baby Jordan

Oh, and before I forget — the name of Anna’s baby? Jordan.

* Special thanks to Charlie Brink for some of these photos.  

I'm Talk 'Bout Zam-cation (Education)

Kellogg Community College’s main campus displays a quote by W.K. Kellogg that reads, “Education is the only way to really improve one generation over another.”

It’s a great quote and an absolute truth.

I think about that quote from time to time here as I consider what life in my village will be like 5, 10, 20 years from now.

Two of my the neighbor kids stopping by my hut on their way home from school.   Pretty dope uniforms, eh?

As a volunteer I’m supposed to educate, but I work mainly with adults, people out of school. Some volunteers work primarily with children through different clubs and even by teaching in classrooms, but that’s not for me. Kids are too high-energy, I’d rather play games with them than teach, and I’m deathly afraid of saying something that they’ll listen too closely to and it’ll mess them up for the rest of their lives; like saying “What’s up?” instead of “How are you?” Last year a couple of boys nearly failed their English exams for writing that as an answer. These are the same reasons I switched midway through college from an education major to an environmental sciences focus — because you can’t give a tree a complex for years to come.

Zam-students love maps, but they're not often available.  So, I try to let them borrow mine whenever they ask.  I can say with confidence that after my two years all the older kids can at least point out Zambia and the United States on a map.

I didn't have any other photos related to education, so I decided to post more pictures of children.  This is my headman's youngest daughter, Priscilla.

For all my lackluster involvement in the education of Zambia’s children, the government has the Department of Education to teach these kids, or “pupils” as they’re usually called. Providing education from first grade to twelfth grade, children can study a wide array of subjects: biology, religious education, social studies, English, math, cultural studies, and chemistry among others.

But things weren’t always so bureaucratic and regulated. The grandmother in my village said that when she was a little girl there were no schools for any of the children. You learned only what your friends and family taught you.

It began to improve for her son, my village’s headman, when schools were offered. However, to go to school you had to register due to the local chief’s decree. But because it was new, on the day that the education men came around to register the boys, his aunt hid him in the forest fearing that he was going to be taken away and forced to fight in a war. Eventually he went to school and made it as far as 7th grade.

This is the middle son of my headman, Nathan.  I also call him the "Body Guard."  He tends to hang around my house and chase all of the snot-nosed or crying children away.  He's a real public service.

Then there’s my good friend Mr. Nshimbi who said he remembers a time when they were trying to decide which grade older children should enroll into by having the children reach over their heads and touch their opposite ear. If they could touch their ear than they were placed into a higher grade. This was done because no one knew their age; no one knew their birthday.

Unfortunately, most children in my community don’t finish school. Due to a lack of funding or no pressure from parents at home to continue their education, the children don’t finish. Of my headman’s nine children only one has finished all of the way through grade 12 — his daughter Virginia.

For two years I lived near this girl and her sister and in that time I never learned their names fully.  I believe her name is Jennifer.  That pretty much shows why I shouldn't work with children... I can't even remember their names.

At times, it seems like getting an education can be a testament to one’s endurance as some children walk well over two miles one way to get to school, and once there the classrooms are packed with children — sometimes as high as 90 students to one teacher. The gender makeup is often male-heavy because girls tend to drop out sooner to help with chores at home.

Should a child finish school and have the financial means to continue through to college Zambia offers a lot of options in the forms of technical colleges, private universities, and public universities: the largest two being the University of Zambia and Cobberbelt University. Online universities (mostly based in Europe and the United States) are becoming very popular with those wanting to pursue a graduate degree. But, as mentioned, most don’t make it to the university level, or finish through the 12th grade for that matter.

Zambia’s education system has come a long way since independence in 1964 and having children reach over their heads to try and touch the opposite ear, but it’s still slowed due to large class sizes, a lack of resources, overworked teachers, and, most importantly, a lack of emphasis from parents at home to instill the importance of education in a child’s life.

My Favorite Lady, Mrs. F

My favorite woman in all of Zambia is my next-door neighbor, the headman's wife -- Mrs. Fubisha. Her real name is Saliki Mumba, but she uses her husband's surname as a sign of respect. She's a wonderful woman.

At first, Mrs. Fubisha and I got off to a rocky start, although I doubt she knew it. I felt she was a little overbearing with me, and all I wanted when I was new to the village was to be left alone and have time to ease into this new world. She wouldn't budge.

Mrs. F, on the far left, with some of the other women from the local women's club in their fish pond.

Every day she would come by at 6 a.m. on her way to the field and make sure that I was awake. She would always find me fast asleep. It drove me crazy.

But my breaking point was one day when she noticed the paint on my new plates was chipping off. She asked for my spare house paint and I stupidly gave it without question. When I looked next she had painted every plate with my orange house paint.

I was furious. But, after cooling down I realized something very important and unique -- she didn't think of me as just someone else, she thought of me as her son. She only wanted me to be taken care of and to feel a part of her family.

I started being more accepting and, over time, things changed 180 degrees to the point where I would gladly welcome her to paint more of my plates or forks, or even my shirts if she wanted.

Mrs. F, seated to the right, in her corn and peanut field.  Everyday she could be found in the field working until midday, then she was found in the village working away until bedtime.

Since that first day when the Peace Corps dropped me off in this village until now, she's taken me in as one of her own, and I've been better for it.

The most fulfilling aspect of Peace Corps, to me, isn't seeing how people live -- that's what an observer does. No, it's living with them and seeing the world through their eyes. Few have shown me more or taught me better than Mrs. Fubisha.

I've seen joy, sadness, hardship, surprise, and the ins and outs of everyday life in a small African village.

Many of my favorite days in Peace Corps have been the days when I've gone to the field with her and harvested peanuts or corn. A kind of contentedness comes over me on those days. We just sit there and joke or we quietly work away. The time flies.

Mrs. F during one of my tree demonstrations.  She looks completely unimpressed.  I love this photo.

But it's also those days when I'm nearly too tired to walk home and look over to see her carrying some of the day's harvest home that I see her true strength: the heart of a lioness.

Because even when she gets home, the work doesn't stop. She'll have to cook, wash clothes and look after the children. Her day goes from sunup to sundown.

During my last week she was helping me to promote a fried pastry called fritters.   However, these weren't normal fritters - no, these had moringa (a kind of super plant) in them.  When fried they first looked like green baby poop, then they "browned" up.  The entire village ate them and they were amazing.  Without help from Mrs. F in instances like this my Peace Corps service would've been much different, probably less enjoyable.

I've often thought how different her life would be if she had the opportunities that I have had. What would she have done?

Many times I've heard men in the village talk about how hard she works and how strong she is, both physically and psychologically.

It's their way of saying they have respect for her, which isn't often done in this male-dominated society. Respect isn't easily gained but it is easily lost and she's managed to keep it while building upon it for years. That's impressive.

She's even become a bit of a local celebrity as of late when the Zambian National Broadcasting Corp. came to our village to interview her and myself about some of our different projects.

She gave a wonderful description of our work and explained why it was important for the rest of the nation to try and replicate her efforts. I kept thinking that I would like to replicate her efforts and to have the strength she does.

This photo was taken on my last day in the village.  Along with my good friend Mr. Nshimbi, Mrs. F waited for hours with me by the roadside until the bus came.  On this morning she also came to my house at 5AM to boil water so that I would have tea before I left.

When I leave this village for good it'll be hard because of people like Mrs. Fubisha, but especially because of Mrs. Fubisha.

Not many people have impacted my experience in such a way. She told me that when I do go she'll lock herself to the front of the bus, so I can't leave. I kind of hope she does, so I don't have to.

My Pal Nshimbi

Laban Nshimbi was the first person that I ever met from my community when we attended a Peace Corps training event called “The Host Workshop” in April 2012.

It was just days before I would head to my village and I remember he was bursting with energy and smiles. He was so excited to meet me. I instantly liked him.

Look at this guy... how could you not like that smile instantly.

From that first day, some 700-plus days in this village, we’ve been the closest of friends.

I probably can’t go three minutes talking about my Peace Corps service here in Zambia without mentioning the name of Nshimbi.

We’ve had ups and downs — like when we were lost in a swamp miles from home — and sometimes with each other as true friends occasionally will.

But through it all I’ve come out of it with a great friend. As he says, “We work hand in hand together.” We also laugh together, get frustrated together, wonder what the crazy woman down the trail is babbling about together and continuously learn from one another.

Nshimbi does most of his work on his own.  He was the only other bachelor in the village aside from myself.   Throughout my two years he kept up his work ethic and it paid impressive dividends, as seen here with his corn and bean fields.

He’s been the focus of many of my articles in the past, as well as a source of information for many more. I’ve relied on him far more than I ever could have imagined and probably more than I should have.

But through these two years he’s been happy to help. For all the articles involving him I give him a laminated copy and, inside his hut, hang his Battle Creek Enquirer clippings — about six in all.

He asked me once when I was looking at them, “Am I famous now in your country? At least well known?” I had to tell him he wasn’t famous like a movie star, but he was, in fact, important because without him, my time here would’ve been vastly different, vastly less rewarding.

This photo is from the first day that we ever tested our bicycle plow.  He really helped me in my work to promote this tool throughout my two years.  Without his interest it would've been a much more uphill battle to demonstrate it among local farmers.

Together, Nshimbi and I have worked on a lot. We’ve dug fish ponds together; tried revolutionizing African agriculture though our bike plows; and planted enough trees to have national forests.

But, to me, the fish ponds were the most fulfilling. They were tangible. We could touch them. And while people said fish farming was impossible in our area, Nshimbi proved them all wrong with not one, but two ponds.

Done in five weeks each and with a design of his own, they’re all producing fish now, which translates to food and money for him. The man constantly amazes me.

One day he came to me and said he was starting a company. I laughed thinking it was a joke. Turns out it wasn’t. He had officially registered a company with the Zambian government: Kamabuta Designing and Recycling Enterprises.

His company takes discarded trash from other people and makes doormats and electrical strips for charging solar panels so they can plug multiple items in at once.

It’s been amazing to see all this happen, but maybe the most important service that Nshimbi provides me is seeing the world through another person’s eyes.

This photo was taken on my last day in the village.  Nshimbi was one of two people that waited hours and hours with me until a bus came to pick me up.  Classic Nshimbi - doing more to help me than most would.

I’ve been lucky to have someone so near that can converse openly and frankly, in English, about life here. I see village life from my perspective as an American and also from his — someone who has lived it his whole life.

I don’t have much longer here in Makiya Village with my good friend Nshimbi — or “Shim” for short — but I’ve had a lifetime’s worth of laughs and learning already.

Like most of the people I’ve come to know here, Nshimbi has given me far more than I’ll ever possibly give him. Long after I leave here I know I’ll think of him and wonder how he’s doing, where he is, if he’s lost in that swamp again.

It’s unfortunate that the experience has to come to an end. I did make him one promise: “If I ever make money from writing about my time living here I’ll use some of the money to fly you to the United States and show you my home, my country.”

I’d like to show him the Great Lakes, the Grand Canyon, the redwoods, the cities and so much more. Maybe then I can start giving back to a friend who has given me so much.