Mongu, Zambia
My Mongu Neighborhood. Where people live, work, dance and play night and day, on the Baroste Plain of Zambia. Since August’s beginning I have enjoyed watching and engaging with my neighbors on the Old Harbour Road (a sand road) in Mongu, Zambia.
Here I have found people who have nightly cookouts, carry all sorts of things in all sorts of ways, manufacture furniture, repair automobiles, have a temporary tent church (until such time as funds are raised until a permanent structure can be built), make-shift shops I call Shop-lefts (as opposed the proper store in town called Shoprite), a public swimming and bathing hole, with a mixture of traditionally grass homes, and modern homes like the guest house I have resided, Capital View.
People here have been very kind and welcoming to me, helping to make for an enjoyable stay.
Kindergarten is organized by the children themselves from ages (walking on up) with the older one’s teaching the younger ones. Self-made toys, songs, dance, food preparation, child care, are all part of the curriculum. When not in school you will see them learning to use their heads, to help carry a load, or others carrying their lighter siblings upon their backs, as their mother carries weight on her head, and a young one on her back. Unlike other cultures where, children begin to work in their teens or later, here once they can walk, they can work, and learn to talk on their way, while balancing life’s challenges upon their heads and backs.
As the sun sets and the night falls, carpenters continue to work, children play and the stars amaze.
