Worldview Magazine - Winter 2007 - (Page 34)

Letter from Mununga SOUNDING ZAMBIA Finding a place where being deaf didn’t matter by Josh Swiller D espite his decision, strictly enforced, to extend the previous chief ’s tax on homebrewed wine, I did not give up my dream that the new chief and I would unite into a powerful force for wells and wellness. And so, a month or so after he arrived, I put on my nicest shirt, a pink Izod I’d bought for 50 cents at the market, and paid him an unannounced visit. e palace by then had a brand-new eight-foot-high thatch fence around it and a line of supplicants waiting outside. e kapasos, the chief ’s private police, led me right to the front of the line and ushered me through the palace gate. e chief sat on his throne in his insaka, wearing his usual brown suit and brass Burger King crown. He greeted me warmly and listened attentively as I spoke of community development principles. When I ﬁnished, he inquired in his decent English if, for my ﬁrst project, I could install piped water in the palace. “Piped water?” I responded. “Where would the water be coming from?” “Underground,” he said. “No, Chief, I mean, where would the pipes connect to? What would be the water source?” “ e water would come from the pipes, Mr. Joshua. You white men can build anything.” Inwardly I sighed. A dozen men ﬁlled the insaka, along with a couple of chickens and a mean-eyed guard cradling a riﬂe. Not understanding English, they stared ﬁxedly at me like I was juggling burning things. I gathered that it wouldn’t be a good idea to decline the chief ’s request in front of everyone. “I’ll look into it,” I said. “Wonderful,” the chief said. “Do you want a drink?” Accepting a drink meant drinking until I couldn’t any rnore and that meant nothing further would be accomplished that day other than drunkenly riding my motorcycle home and passing out on the couch. “Sure.” “Good.” e chief motioned a kapaso to bring me a glass. “Together, Mr. Joshua, our work will give my people hope,” he said. “When they see the piped water in my palace they will know the change has come.” He drained a whole glass of banana wine in one long swallow and reﬁlled it from a jug at his feet. He pointed at a majestic mango tree about 50 feet away. “You see that tree?” he asked. “Yes.” “ at’s where I hung my brother-inlaw last night.” “What? You killed your brother-inlaw?” e chief laughed deeply and patted my arm in a soothing gesture as if I were a child. He translated what I had said to the audience–they guﬀawed as well. “No, Mr. Joshua, I didn’t kill him. I hung him by his arm. I had to do it, as chief. He tried to punch me.” A woman and a young girl came out of his house and walked toward us, carrying steaming pots of food. ey uncovered their platters revealing boiled Mweru ﬁsh and ubwali, maize porridge, the village staple. It smelled delicious. “I am glad you are in my village,” the chief said. And it struck me then, smelling that food, exchanging warm greetings with the other hungry men in the insaka, and looking at the mango tree and trying to picture hanging there from an arm all night, that I was glad, too. So, I wasn’t that busy save for my work at the clinic, but I was welcomed here, celebrated even, plied with food and drink. But it was more than F that–I realized all of a sudden that I had found a place where my deafness didn’t matter–I hadn’t thought about it in ages. It didn’t get in the way of anything. It didn’t bother the chief. It didn’t hamper cultural exchange. At gatherings large and small, everyone directed their words to me because they all wanted the umusungu to hear what they had to say, so I could read their lips easily, and if I had trouble understanding them even then, they blamed themselves, their poor English, and repeated themselves, louder and slower, and again still. No one talked over each other, no one spoke out of the side of their mouths, nor did anyone comment on my slight deaf accent, because how could they know I spoke English strangely? And always in the ﬂat open village spaces there was a bare minimum of background noise, which for me has always been the hardest hurdle toward understanding speech. or the ﬁrst time in my life, deafness was gone. Or not gone–I still couldn’t tell whether that noise was a man calling or a dog barking, or if this one was a child crying or a bird song and I still, of course, missed all conversation that wasn’t said directly at me–I mean that for the ﬁrst time deafness did not close oﬀ a single possibility. at was a lovely feeling. I ate lunch with the chief. I didn’t have to talk on the phone. e wine was free. People were glad to see me. Yes, there was rawness and brokenness, the daily parade of the wounded and the ill at the clinic, but I was doing what I could and felt in small ways useful. “So what did the chief say?” Jere asked me the next morning. 34 Winter 2007

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Worldview Magazine - Winter 2007

Worldview Magazine - Winter 2007 Contents President's Note Lafayette Park Note to Readers Commentary Letter from India Commentary Letter from Botswana Letter from Ha Teboho Letter from Jumbi Valley Letter from Mununga Letter from Medellin Giving Back Community News

Worldview Magazine - Winter 2007

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