Iwe!

Gregg Hayward is a Peace Corps Volunteer in the African country of Zambia. He has been living in a village working on environmental issues since August of last year, and will be doing so until July 2007. He is a resident of Dover, New Hampshire, and is 24 years old. Periodically he has been writing us from his post in Mwanasasa Village, 30km outside of Mansa, Zambia. This is his fourth article since arriving in country.

    I thought I would never say this. I miss an iwe. Let me explain.
    Iwe (pronounced eeee-way) is one of the firsts words that you learn when you come to Zambia. Old women shout it. Young men laugh it, small ones giggle it. It rings through the air with a pierce. The sound cuts through dusty space like a blade, and it is echoed with the beating pads of a thousand scampering feet.
    Iwe is the word used to refer to someone that is younger than you. It could be an old weathered man referring to his younger friend. It could be a teen referring to his age mate warmly. But most commonly, it is shouted through the air to call children. In Bemba, the language spoken in this part of Zambia, it means child.
    “Iwe!! Isa!” (Child, come here!), a mother shouts. A wandering pack of shadow black children with glowing whites of their eyes change direction a the dusty path. The imaginative cities in the dust are laid to rest and poof from their torn shorts as they run. There is laughter and excitement in their faces. Some trip and fall in the dash. They get up and do their best to catch the rest. Short legs whip at a furious pace, but they cover the ground slowly, like an under-geared bicycle. It’s a mildly hilarious scene the first time you see it. But then you see it everyday. The iwes, they are everywhere.
    When I first arrived in Mwanasasa village a little over a year ago, I was nervous wreck. … As the truck I was in bounced along the road to my site, four hundred moths emerged from the cocoons hung on my insides. A few flew out of my mouth every time I shot up in the air off a bump. We got there. I saw my house. “This is it. It begins.” I mumbled to myself. As I pulled my leg up over the rail and down onto the soil, the chain reaction began… the iwes, they just began appearing. At first it was one, then two… they whispered and stared up at the tall lanky musungu (white person). They shouted out in their high voices, iwe isa!! Their friends scampered over, small, with big bobble heads… gigantic eyes. spshspsh musungu sphsshpshh they whispered into each others ears. It was as if a phoenix had just risen from the ground. A few older people in the area came over and shook my hand, as the growing throngs of iwes hid behind the smalls of their knees. We moved my stuff in, and so I began my service as a Peace Corps volunteer.
    Like a scared dog, I hid in my house for the first few days, venturing out only on occasion to get water from the hole in the ground about a quarter of a mile from my house. Quickly, the chain reaction would begin again as pedaled down the road on my shiny green bike. They ran out to the road and shouted “Muli shani Ba Musungu?” (How are you Englishman?), their hands extended out as if my recognizing their palms would lend eternal salvation. When I replied Ndfye bwino (I am well), minor eruptions of dancing and shouting would go off behind my back tire. You had to start laughing with them. They were so excited. Their hands rose in the air in hilarious formations of greetings ranging from friendly waves, to hands stretched out so far to catch your eye they resembled hail Hitler salutes. To be noticed was to win the lottery.
    The iwes would throng for the first few weeks. They resembled a brown sea, undistinguishable, but moving always. Incredibly, and thankfully, even the crazy colored lanky musungu became run of the mill. Cities in the dust were destroyed less often, and I settled into Mwanasasa like a warm blanketed bed. Just the kids that lived in the houses around me kept tabs on what I was up to, and these were the kids that unexpectedly, and in a strange manner I grew into a funny social relationship with.
    I would be working on something in my house… maybe preparing some flipcharts for a presentation, journaling, reading or who knows what. I’d here a skitter outside my open door... “Ba Gleddgg, haaalo”, a small voice whispered outside. Oh man, iwes I thought… it sounds bad, but once you acknowledge their presence, it’s at least an hour-long commitment, and the number of iwes usually grows exponentially, making it even more difficult to say “Cabiyene” (go home).
    Fearing the inevitable, I did my best to ignore the voice outside my door. He didn’t say anything else, but I heard his feet swish along the ground. Soon his used cotton clothes from America that said things his parents couldn’t understand, ruffled as he sat down on my stoop. I felt the heat of eyes on me and looked up from my work. He was lying in the doorway, his legs pressed against the dusty concrete of my porch, his big brown eyes barely making it around the doorframe, and they were fixed on me.
    Shani?” (How are you?) I mumbled in a mix of annoyance and humor to the dusty bobble-headed kid hanging in through my door, pretending he couldn’t be seen. His eyes bulged and he drew his head back. I looked back down at whatever I was doing. A minute or two later, his magnetic eyes were locked on me through the crack between the door and the hinge. I set down my stuff and looked back. A big pressed lip smile embarrassingly bounced back at me. It was over, I had been defeated in our battle of curiosity vs. withdrawal, and sat down on the stoop next to him.
    “Ishina lyenu nimwe bannani?” (What is your name?). He pressed his shoulders together and bent his head. I asked again. “Ceeeeeela” he said in a gurgle of spit excitement and fear.
    The iwe alarm instantly went off, possibly through telepathy, and the neighborhood was over before I knew it.
    We sat on the porch and made funny faces at each other for a while. I spoke my broken Bemba mixed with expressions and movements, trying to talk more in some horrid signed code than language. But for the kids it seemed quite easy to understand. We made motions of my failed attempt to get water in the first days there (my jerry can fell off my bike in front of a big group of people and broke, much to my embarrassment). I tried to get their names… it was impossible, but Ceela seemed eager to be my pint-sized interpreter, and the names started coming through, Mwela, Mapalo, Chanda, Michael, Aguy… traditional Bemba names mixed with English, and hilarious misinterpretations of both. Getting the iwes to laugh was as easy as saying anything… I certainly sounded, looked and acted different. When iwes get laughing, its contagious, and soon we would all be giggling under the grass of my roof, perched on best three vertical inches in the world, my porch.
    From then on, my pint sized interpreter and I began hanging out on pretty much a daily basis. I’d be sitting on my stoop washing dishes in my wash bucket, and Ceela would soon walk over. “Muli Shhhhhani?” (How are you) he would say in his most manly 7 year old tone, looking straight at me for a reply. It was strange, most of the time that familiar feeling of annoyance would run through me for an instant. In a land where eyes are always on you, you sort of treasure the bits of alone time, stretching them out when you can. When those stretches break unexpectedly, it brings a flash of annoyance. I’d reply Bwino (good), and he’s sit down and watch me work, hoping I’d give up a tin for him to fashion into some creation that was mostly in his mind.
    I think we both sat there hoping for something. He for conversation and random bits of things that could become toys, and I for silence. But we’d both crack and find the middle. We’d talk about what we could. He never got in the way, and just sort of eyed what I was doing. Occasionally I’d look over, and he would be flashing a look that he was the coolest kid in the world, but the next, it was just calm interest on whatever I was doing. Picking up a plate, he’d say the word in Bemba, and I’d say it, and he’d nod his gigantic head, flashing his baby teeth. He’d often ask me questions, most of which I didn’t understand, but he’d slow it down and repeat it, pointing at things. When I finally understood what he was getting at and replied, he’d clap his hands together and nod. It was impossible not to laugh, which only made him the happier.
    Slowly we grew comfortable around each other. We figured out how each of us worked. He’d come and stay for a while, then he’d leave and go chase after some friends on some adventure around the neighborhood. He’d bring me things that he had made or found, a tin can lid, a “motorcar” made from tins, sticks and bush fruits for wheels. Other times it would be some strange plant from the bush, full of caterpillars, which are a traditional treat here.
    One day he came over with this hat made completely out of woven grass. It was something his ten-year-old brother had made. I was struck by how simple, and yet intricate it was… different grasses twisted and wrapped together with still more grasses, they all flowed together into this beautiful natural cap. They seemed to complement each other, the cap intensifying the beauty of youth in Ceela, and Ceela making the freshly pulled grass come alive in a different form. Against the clay soil of my yard, it was a walking photograph.
    We spoke few words, didn’t go anywhere, and didn’t really exchange anything. We just spent time together, stooped upon the step of my porch.
    Then he was gone.

    It happened a few days ago. A group of guys in my village helped me to build a new roof on my house. The dust from the old grass roof stuck to our sweaty bodies and choked our throats. Through the day we worked in the hot sun, but as we sat down under the shade of my cooking shelter that afternoon, I got this sense that something was missing. I couldn’t figure it out… there was this strange sense of space…all this room to move around.
    Ceela wasn’t there. Huh. I looked around, across the street. Ripping the roof off my house definitely should have brought the neighborhood, but where was everyone? I didn’t get it. “Where are all of the kids? Have you seen Ceela?” I asked my friend Dixon. Ahh, his family shifted this morning. What? Yes, they shifted to the other side of Mansa, where Ceela’s father comes from.” They are gone? Instantly a thousand frames shot through my head… my neighbors singing as they worked, Ceela hanging through the door, his brother Aguy, his mother’s nagging voice. I looked across the dusty road, and their house sat quiet in the wind.
    “They had lived here for some time. His father had prepared many limas of fields for the family of his wife. He has finally won their approval and can take his family where he wishes.” Nine plus years in the hut next door, and they up and left as I was asleep in bed. Damn. No shake of the hand, no moving van, no elaborate Bemba-charade messages from Ceela. Probably just a bicycle with their belongings strapped to it, and a family on the move. Damn. I sat in my chair for a while. I suddenly missed that shadow beneath my feet. That pint sized interpreter, village gold miner, and eyes in the doorway were gone. I sat in the shade of my cooking shelter for the first time alone in some way.

    Ceela’s small feet petered on along the dusty road towards town. The child that I avoided and then subconsciously grew to love tottered on behind his mothers bright citenge wrap skirt somewhere far from my porch stoop.
    I wonder if he looked back.
    I sort of hope he did. I miss the iwe.

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy established the Peace Corps to promote world peace and friendship. And since its founding the organization and its volunteers have been has been guided by the goals of the Peace Corps' mission: To help the people of interested countries meet their needs for trained men and women. To help promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served. And to help promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of all Americans.

Gregg Hayward can be reached by mail at: Gregg Hayward Peace Corps Volunteer PO Box 710150, Mansa, Zambia, Africa. He will be living in Zambia through July, 2007.