Food coma

BaMaayo

BaMaayo. Our mother.

If there ever was a perfect image of Africa as humankinds’ mother,

Our place of birth, fiercely nurtured and fiercely weaned,

Bamaayos are those pieces of that broken mirror.

What Peace Corps training in Zambia looks like

Cooking

Darkness

Audiences

Gardening

Corn and Guava

Huts and Cooking

Huts and Kids

Rain

It is the rainy season in Zambia, but when we arrived a 3 week drought was dragging on. Our first night in our homestay village the rains finally came. Lying in bed hearing the rain is like being in the belly of a whale. It is so dark you can’t see your hand in front of your face. You can’t hear anything but water rushing, roaring, dripping. Everything sheltering me except for my mosquito net comes from the earth itself: clay walls and a grass thatch roof over a wooden frame. I have never felt so surrounded and so affected by the flux in intensity. Everytime a drop of water made it through into my mosquito net to land on my face was a shock- just the idea that the only place left to go was under my covers. Like when you were a little kid.

Zambia feels like the rain. It is an element of Earth. It is powerful, life giving and taking. It is tangible whether you want to feel it or not.