Cultural Studies
// June 17th, 2009 // No Comments » // The Project, WaterStories
“You have not talked to me all day,” Evans Chiyenge says to me in his beautiful lilting accent.
It’s true. I hadn’t. This morning when arrived at CAWST, I’d tried to get away with the style of North American coldness that is so commonplace here, it’s no longer rude. The kind where you arrive, nod once as a vague catch-all greeting to everyone in the room, sit down and stare at your pen.
That stuff doesn’t wash with Evans.
“You Westerners are very time-conscious and money-conscious,” he said later in the group discussion. “Where I come from, people value relationships. You must show concern for the people’s family. Ask after their health. You must talk about things totally unrelated to your business, then they will cooperate.”
At lunch, I decided to drop all my afternoon plans and share a meal with my soon-to-be-host in Zambia.
“In Zambia, every conversation begins with family and ends with family,” Tal, CAWST’s technical advisor for Africa, told me later. So, my cheeks hot with the realization that I’d already been terribly rude, I asked about Evans’ family.
I learned he has four biological children and four adopted children, all of them AIDS orphans from cousins or siblings. “Everyone in Zambia is affected by the AIDS. Even if you are not infected, you are affected.”
He tells me with pride about his daughters, all of whom he says are breel-yant. He thanks God for that – he wouldn’t have been able to afford their school fees if they hadn’t been awarded the scholarships that have since allowed them to study medicine, accounting and evironmental engineering in the US.
“We haven’t been as lucky with the boys,” he says, crinkling up his nose.
One is many years behind in his schooling. “Because he is lazy. All he wants to do is watch soccer. I got rid of the TV. If I didn’t, he would be watching soccer right now.”
The eldest son is in jail, serving fifteen years for drug-related charges. Evans’ wife, a lawyer, will try to get him out next year. I was shocked at the length of the jail term, but Evans says it’s been good for him. “He was always so rebellious. When his parents died, he wouldn’t listen to us. ‘You are not my parents,’ he would say. Now he has changed.”
Evans has a serious face that turns boyish when he smiles. He is over 50 but looks barely a day over 30 – too young for his ‘last-born’ son to be seventeen years old. He lives in Lusaka, but says he’ll make sure to be in Ndola when we are there. This is no small feat for Evans – he’s traveled nine out of the past twelve months getting the new Manzi (Water) Centre up and running, and training people in six other African countries. He is tired, but proud of what they’d already accomplished.
I stand to leave as the afternoon’s group shuffles in and sits down. I offer Evans my hand, thanking him for speaking with me. He lets go of my hand, reaches around me and pulls me into a hug.
