Birthdays

Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday,
Pain and sorrow in the air,
People dying everywhere,
Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday...

(to the tune of The Song of the Volga Boatmen )

This was one of the many birthday songs I heard as I celebrated my 28th birthday in Zambia (on 19th Feb). I was actually introduced to this song by our new friends, the Lund family. They are a family with four children from the UK/Australia, sent by the Church of Scotland to work at the UCZ Theological College. They actually learned this song from another expat friend whom they met while living and working in Malawi. Go figure! (The first picture here is me at the Ellingtons' house, with their youngest son, Christopher).

The Lunds' eldest daughter, Kathleen, celebrated her 12th birthday just a few days after mine, and it was while enjoying tea and cake in the Lunds' living room that we heard a whole slew of birthday songs.

Youngest son, 10 yr-old Taliesen prefers the kid's classic version of the "original":

Happy Birthday to you,
You live in a zoo,
You look like a monkey,
and you smell like one too!

Mum Wendy shared the evangelical version to the same tune:

Happy birthday to you
One birthday won't do
Take Christ as your savior
and then you'll have two!

Zambians sing the "original" version that we sing in the US, but always add a second verse:

How old are you now?
How old are you now?
How old are you now?
Happy Birthday to you!

Zambians also have a tradition of "spilling water" on the birthday-person. Edina Mbewe, in the TEEZ office, said had it been my actual birthday she definitely would have got me. But I would have gotten her back, because 20 Feb, the day after mine, is her birthday. Fortunately or unfortunately, I missed out on such a water fight, because I wasn't around Kitwe on the actual day of my birthday. Though I would have liked to sing "how old are you now?" to Edina, as she looks quite young but I know she is a grandmother.

We traveled to Lusaka, the capital, for my birthday weekend, and stayed with the Ellington family, our PCUSA Mission Co-worker friends. We saw a movie in the theater (Lusaka has the only cinema in Zambia) and also enjoyed grilling out, playing games, jumping on the trampoline, and even got to tag along to Clayton's science fair. It was really nice to get away, to celebrate, and to see our friends for the first time since October.

It also seemed that for about 2 weeks, every time I turned around, we were eating more cake! Ryan made a cake for me the Thursday before my birthday that we took to the office to share with our co-workers (photo at right: Esther, Molly, Henry & Phyllis). They really liked it and it was completely devoured by the end of the day. Then two days later I blew out some candles on my actual birthday in Lusaka on cake #2 which Sherri Ellington baked for me--from one of her few cake mixes brought from the US. Not long after that, we were celebrating Kathleen's 12th birthday with another cake baked by Ann and decorated by the Lund kids. Then the following Sunday, we invited our muzungu friends over to our house for tea and cake after church. This was Ryan's second cake for me--from scratch! Also, we had 17 people in our small apartment! (including us). It was crazy. We thought since everyone was attending different church services, that they'd end at different times and therefore people would trickle in and out during the late morning and early afternoon. But everyone practically came at the same time!

At this final celebration, Ann offered the following song that she learned from an Australian:

Why was she born so beautiful?
Why was she born so tall?
Why was she born so beautiful?
Why was she born at all?

That song's questions I can’t quite answer. I can say I'm happy to be alive, happy to be in Africa, happy to have good friends and family, and to have something to celebrate. Now, back to the first song with its juxtaposition of the happy with the tragic, which begs the question, how can you celebrate and be happy when there is so much struggle and sorrow all around? If there's one thing I've learned from my friends and colleagues here in Zambia, it's that we indeed must celebrate life and the blessings it brings, otherwise we wouldn't be able to endure the hardship.

What Have We Done?

On Wednesday night, the chaplaincy department at MEF holds a little hymn-sing in the chapel to which all members of the community are invited.  Molly and I have gone to a few of them now, and we really enjoy the beautiful voices of the participants and the opportunity to worship God midweek through song.

This past Wednesday (right after tearing all the army ants from my body) something beautiful happened.  Since the MEF hymnbooks don't have music in them but only lyrics, we have to figure out the tunes ourselves.  Someone called out a hymn number, and we found that it was the classic Good Friday hymn, "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross."  The muzungus started singing one tune and the Zambians another--obviously we knew different versions of the hymn.  We asked the Zambians to go on, and they continued singing the tune they knew, a mournful dirge in a minor key:

When I survey the wondrous cross
On which the Prince of glory died,
My richest gain I count but loss,
And pour contempt on all my pride.

The tune sounded strangely familiar to me, but I couldn't place it.  The Zambians began singing to the same tune, as they do after each verse,

Alleluia, Alleluia,
Alleluia, Alleluia,
Alleluia, Alleluia
Alleluia, Alleluia,

and all of the sudden in hit me.  The tune was "Senzeni Na?" a struggle song from the South African anti-apartheid struggle, that I had learned during my time in Johannesburg.  It means, "What have we done?" and was often sung at funerals of activists who had fallen in the struggle.  After the hymn was done, I asked anyone if they had heard of "Senzeni Na?" but apparently no one had.  The pairing of that tune with those lyrics struck me as absolutely perfect (whether the tune of "Senzeni Na?" was originally taken from a hymn, as many tunes of struggle songs were, I don't know).  Singing the tune that had been sung at the funerals of so many fallen freedom fighters to the lyrics of a song about the death of the ultimate nonviolent Warrior for the freedom of his people nearly brought me to tears.  And there was yet another layer of meaning: as we come face-to-face with the gruesome act of the crucifixion, when humanity put to death the only Son of the living God, it is perhaps the only fitting response to ask, in horror, "Senzeni na?"--"What have we done?"

Ants in the pants!

The phrase, "ants in the pants" used to be just a funny expression to me, a classic toddler tabletop game from Hasbro, or a hilarious dance move in the energizer to Dave Matthew's song "Ants Marching." Now, it has a whole new meaning...

Over the past two days, Ryan and I have been initiated into those who have been bitten by army ants. Ryan two evenings in a row! As we were walking to the other side of the compound in the evening (and it's been very dark with no moon the past few days), we have wandered into a group of army ants on the move. On the hunt, really, I discovered after reading about them on wikipedia.

If you see them, marching in a column, you simply step over, or step around them. But when an unsuspecting human accidentally steps on them or disrupts the column, they climb up your legs, inside your trousers, and start biting. Often the first bite doesn't come until there are many inside your clothes, even up to your hairline! Our friend Ann thinks they have some sort of signal--that they all wait until they have infiltrated every part of your clothing and then all bite at once. I don't know about that. I do know it is painful. Ryan even had a few that drew blood! If this happens, you just have to hope you are close enough to a bathroom or some place where you can quickly strip down and rid yourself of the nasty buggers!

I did learn that army ants can be helpful to people, as they act as a natural pest-control for farmers, since they hunt and eat all the other insects in an area. They are also used as emergency sutures in the bush. Their pinchers are so strong, that if you get a cut in the bush, you can get the ant to bite on either side of the cut, then break off it's body, leaving it's head and pinchers as a little stitch to bind your wound.

In any case, I am certainly "once bitten, twice shy." Ann says they shouldn't last long--I hope she's right. I will be extra careful from now on to avoid them. No more short-cuts through the grass--only the road for me, with a torch (flashlight) to search them out!