Seedless Gripes

I have a great job. I get to work with fascinating people, in a fascinating place, doing work, that if successful, will leave a lasting positive impact on a community as well as myself. I make my own hours, decide what projects I’ll work on and learn something new every day—not to mention I make hundreds and hundreds of Kwacha an hour. It’s hard to complain, yet I’ve found myself this past week reflecting on some of the challenges that come along with this gig.
The vast majority of the challenges stem from the fact that I’m living thousands of miles away from everyone I’ve ever cared about. I’ve missed the death of my Granddad, something I had come to terms with as a probable reality before I left, but nonetheless hard to be the only grandkid not there to say goodbye to a man I loved and respected. Both my two brothers are growing and changing in ways that will shape their lives and it’s a bit hard to swallow that I’m missing out on my chance to help nudge them in what I see as appropriate directions. I know they are doing great on their own, yet as an older brother I like to at least pretend my “wise” advice is given some credence. Friends are forging lives for themselves in which I currently play a minor to nonexistent role and a girl I love is attempting the same. I guess the hard part is the realization that life is dynamic and back home will never be the way I remember it. This isn’t a horrible thing, but enough to cause some melancholy musing once in a while.
The job itself also comes with its own set of hurdles. I don’t speak the language. Sometimes I think I’m getting better but almost as often I feel I’ve taken a step backwards—especially having just come back to the village after a month’s hiatus. I have a lot of ideas I want to get people here excited about, but it’s difficult to get them jazzed to follow somebody who stands up in a meeting and says “I like trees. We can like trees together by having bees.” People are friendly about it, but I can tell a lot of the time we just miss each other.
While like I said, it’s nice to set my own hours, the fact is that I’m supposedly on duty 24/7 while in the village. Sometimes I’m busy, and sometimes I’m not. I know the nature of work here requires quite a bit of waiting around and that it’s important to give myself time to do nothing, but it’s hard to shake the feeling that I could/should be doing something instead of sitting on the porch finishing my third book of the week. There is so much to do here that sometimes I get frustrated working at the village level. The system in which my farmers operate limits their set of options. Part of me wants to go straight to the top and address these issues rather than teaching one at a time to make compost and burn their fields… less often. At the same time, especially when I’m feeling tired; I think it would be nice to have a place where I go to work. A place where someone has decided what it is that I need to do that day and when I finish, I’ve finished.
Anyway I hope this hasn’t come off too gloomy. I just thought it would be good to write about some of the issues that keep life here interesting and challenging so that y’all don’t think I’m spending my days frolicking with monkeys and zebras through some lion kingesque safari advendutre. Zambia is a beautiful and mysterious (to me) place. It challenges me every day and I wouldn’t have it any other way.