Runaways, Stacks of Butter and a Frightening Statistic

It’s been a busy few weeks here recently so I haven’t been able to sit down to write. My apologies for the delay. Here’s what’s new at Namumu:


We had our first runaway Namumu-an last week, which was an interesting experience. Gift, an eight year old boy (and Kailyn Jones’ BFF), ran away from the boys’ dormitory and was nowhere to be found for an entire night. Apparently he had gotten caught by one of the older boys stealing money off of Kebby’s table in his bedroom (Kebby, being the boys’ caretaker, has an open room in the middle of the dormitory). Fearing punishment from Kebby, Gift skidaddled out of there, fleeing the scene of the crime.


So, I joined in the search party and we went around the entire Namumu Complex, looking high and low, trying to find where Gift might be (it felt a little like in the Dennis the Menace movie when Dennis ran away and teamed up with a skeezy Christopher Lloyd and the entire neighborhood went out to find him). It’s winter time now and it’s actually pretty chilly at night, so we were worried about the little guy.


He wasn’t found until the next morning, but at least we found him. I’m not sure where he slept but he was found around one of the villages close by to Namumu. I haven’t heard about his punishment, but I’m told that he got straightened out and that everything is ok now.


What a rascal.


My diet has been interesting recently. After spending an entire evening huddled in the fetal position clutching my stomach and moaning, all because I ate some expired nsima, I’ve lost my taste for the Zambian staple food completely (for blog new-comers, nsima is like grits, just corn meal and water). So, for now I’ve switched my staple food to bread and butter. The amount of butter I’ve consumed during my stay so far is absolutely disgusting. I’m really ashamed of myself. I’ve already gone through 7 kgs of butter by myself, and I have the leftover tubs stacked up in my kitchen to prove it.


Speaking of food, we’ve been harvesting beans, peas, Chinese cabbage and rape pretty much every day lately. There isn’t too much in this world that’s more satisfying than picking beans and peas that you’ve planted and tended and immediately taking them home, cooking and eating them. Everything out of our gardens will either go to the Namumu kitchen or will be sold. So far we’ve sold to a number of customers, mostly Namumu staff and to members of the surrounding community. Cha-Ching! (Actually we haven’t made much money and probably won’t make much in the future but the kids are learning a lot and enjoying the gardening).


Innocent cried when I left him to go to work again the other day…my man.


Rafyc, our carpenter, had a very productive month of May. He’s a hard worker and produces some amazing stuff. I wish I could find a way to post a picture of some of his creations. He just finished a set of lounge chairs that were so good we had a number of orders for similar ones placed by people that happened to pass by his stand and see them, which is pretty remarkable because not many people pass by his stand at all. If you’d like to order a set, shoot me an email. We’re only charging K 500,000, which is around US$100. A steal of a deal, if you ask me. Unfortunately, we don’t deliver, so you’ll have to swing by Siavonga to pick it up.


I’ve avoided writing about this for some time now but I just can’t hold out any longer. Holy crap, Zambian women breast feed ALL THE TIME and they are not so shy about it. It is ridiculous. I’ve tried averting my eyes, but it doesn’t work very well because whenever I avert my eyes there’s always another Zambian woman breast feeding wherever I avert them. I even did a little experiment yesterday…throughout the day I decided to look out of my kitchen window 10 times and count how many times my neighbors were breastfeeding. 6 out of 10. No joke. So, if we assume that they’re breastfeeding for 60% of their waking hours and that they sleep for 8 hours a night, that means they’re breastfeeding for approximately 9 hours and 36 minutes every day. Yikes.