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A message with an apology and “I didn’t know how else to reach you,” is never one with good news. Especially not when it comes from someone so far in your past you honestly probably wouldn’t have remembered them if someone had asked you to name everyone that was part of your life that particular year. You might have remembered them with respect to their role in your life---oh yes, and there was the new volunteer who replaced me at my site---but not by name.
Yet, when that name popped up on my Google Chat, I knew exactly who it was. I knew the name lingering inside the chat window’s large block of text even more: Ba Joyce.
Ba Joyce.
Ba Joyce.
One of my bamaamas, my Zambian moms. Bamaamas are like kids I think; you’re not supposed to have a favorite. Maybe there’s an exception for the one that bore you; that one can be your favorite. But the ones that are your other bamaamas, the ones that help raise you (even when you’re already grown), and feed you and teach you how to cook and wash and speak Tonga, and live. The ones you wish you’d asked to teach you how to pee standing up.---I understand the concept; I was just never gutsy enough to try it.---Those bamaamas, I don’t think you’re supposed to have favorites. But I did. I had two, and Ba Joyce was one of them.
“I was in Zambia…”
Zed! Oh, Zed! Just the day before I had been describing Zambia to someone, “Zambia itself will crawl in your heart and never leave. It will burrow like a panya in the grass of your roof, with a scratching that forbids you forget it’s there no matter how infrequently you actually see it.” At the sight of “I was in Zambia,” every bit of burrowed Zambia burst forth.
And then it exploded.
“Ba Joyce recently passed away during childbirth.”
Ba Joyce.
Ba Joyce.
Ba Joyce bore her second son the week I moved into the village. Her passing through my life bookended by childbirth. One of those many things we take for granted here. One of those common, everyday, planned things that used to truly be a miracle.
Ba Joyce.
“Ba Joyce recently passed away during childbirth.”
“The family is still clearly mourning her loss.”
Ba Joyce.
Ba Joyce.
The family.
The family without Ba Joyce.
Ba Joyce.
My eyes welled up as my body filled with ambivalence. Not the American ambivalence of not caring; the British ambivalence of feeling two conflicting emotions at once that I learned from Kryten. A strange taffy pull that brought even more tears. Devastation that Ba Joyce was dead. Elation that others were not.
Ba Timmy was out in the village, visiting us. We were nearing close-of-service (COS in Peace Corps parlance), pack-up-your-bags-and-say-goodbye time. “When are you coming back to visit?” Ba Lenix had asked. “Oh, probably in about five years,” Ba Timmy had answered. Ba Lenix let out a sort of snorty chuckle, a chortle if you will, “We will all be dead.”
I feared he was right. At 36, he was already past what was then the Zambian average life expectancy. At that time, the HIV rate in the country was hovering at about 20%. Simply statistically speaking, a family with one husband and four wives was not an optimistic proposition. It had only been a few months since I had sat in the shade shelling beans with my favorite bamaamas asking about why one of their others wives had gone to the mission hospital some 20+ km away, since deep and serious eyes had looked at me as a voice tried to laugh a laugh that caught in a throat, since I had heard “tuyakufwa.”
There was something else, too. I knew my situation was not like Ba Timmy’s. Funding a trip to a quasi-remote African village would not be in my near future. Not in five years, probably not in ten. When my mother and grandmother came out to visit the year before, it truly had been a once-in-a-lifetime trip. Even if I were to move back to Africa, I doubt Mommy would visit again. But then, going to see your twenty-four-year old daughter in a small community she’s made home is very different from visiting your nearly middle-aged child in a block of flats in some bustling metropolis.
I used to write to them, my family, my Zam-fam. I used to write letters and Christmas cards and little notes to say hello. I’d send along pre-paid postage vouchers from USPS so they could write back. “Ndamueya!” I’d write, “ndamueya maningi!” I was not lying; I think about them everyday.
To get mail to the village, I would send it to the post box in Monze, the nearest town, for the government school in Chona, about 10km from our village of Cheelo. There was a wonderful family who lived in Chona. The parents taught at the school and the older sons ran the family transport business, carrying things and people and goats to and from Monze. They would collect the mail and send it over to Cheelo with a passenger who might be going that way. Perhaps another Cheelo resident or someone passing through on their way to somewhere like Namateba. But the mail started coming back, unopened, months later, having gone across the Atlantic, through Lusaka, to Livingstone, to Monze and back. The school had closed its P.O. box.
Occasionally, I’d meet a Zambian or someone who was traveling to Zambia. “Can you take a letter for me?” And I’d hope the magic informal mail system of people who know people going that way would work. I don’t know if my letters ever made it.
We lost touch.
“Ba Joyce recently passed away.”
Years. But still, ndabaeya maningi, everyday. Sometimes, I see them in my dreams. I see them running towards me as I run towards them, coming up the path past the cattle stall and Ba Lenix’s special cisyu field. I see them around the fire as we munch on roasted mapopwe. I hear them yelling “Ba Nchimunya, Ba Nchimunya!” and laughing while my face aches from the stretched smile I simply cannot contract back into fitting on my face.
Even when I am not asleep, I talk to them. Imaginary conversations in the shower and on bike rides and in the car and walking down the street. “Ndaunka ku mbeleka kwa ciinga.” I’m sure my Tonga is worse than ever, but my thoughts are always in it. There is no one here to know if I am accidently yelling “prostitutes!” into the air or asking if someone’s menstruated. I imagine introducing them to Mr. Trizzle, standing sort of scared and unsure on the packed dirt, afraid of what allergens might jump out and bite him. “Ah-ah, where is Ba Mr. Mindala?” I try to punt the question. “ezyi Ba Trizzle, bali benzuma. Ndabayanda. Bali kabotu maningi.” “Ba Nchimunya, muntu isiya?” Ba Fare would laugh, not really asking a question. And they would make him feel so welcome and stuff him full of nsima. The good nsima made from mbusu ground in the village, not that tasteless store-bought mealie meal from town. And Bay Joyce would hang back a little bit, a huge smile on her face, “Banina Daddy Bunny. Mwabola?” before coming in for a hug. “Inzya, ndabola” I have come. Finally. At last.
But I have not.
And there is no Ba Joyce to smile and greet the mother of stuffed rabbit.
No Ba Joyce.
Ba Joyce.
“Ba Joyce recently passed away.”
Ba Joyce.
No Ba Joyce.
Mazoka, bamaama benu babolide. Ino, mwakalona lyoonse, antomwe. Amudokamane. Pesi, mebo,ndaousa. Ndamueya, bonse.
