One thing I have consistently noticed about Zambia is the friendliness of the people. As we walked towards Chikumbuso this morning, we were greeted by local children as well as being welcomed at Chikumbuso by students who sang beautifully. Chikumbuso is a primary school in the Ngombe compound however, our focus was to work with older gap year students, who are spending the year at the school to learn computer and technical skills. We discussed issues around sexual education and healthy relationships. In the afternoon, we did similar activities with the peer mentors at Grassroots Soccer, an organization that uses soccer to promote health education. Despite originally thinking that I would see little parallels between Zambian and American attitudes during the conversations, I came to realize that there were almost as many similarities as there were differences.
We first paired up with the students to break the ice and get to know individual students a bit better. I talked to Joseph and John who both wanted to be engineers and we laughed about their love for Chris Brown. We then split into three groups of girls and three groups of boys to answer a set of questions. My group discussed unhealthy and abusive relationships. When discussing who is most at risk to be in an unhealthy relationship, the unanimous answer was girls. When we did this exercise back in DC, this was the same answer, however, the reasons for why were quite different. The Zambian women spoke of societal and financial pressure to stay in an abusive relationship. Their reasons included family disapproval, community criticism and the cultural taboo of divorce as well as the need for men to provide for themselves and possibly, their children. While abusive relationships are not uncommon in the US, I understood that Zambian women do not receive the same encouragement and support that is seen in the US to leave an unhealthy relationship.
Yet when we all gathered together after our breakout groups, I picked up a lot more similarities between what I experience and hear in America. When speaking of cheating, most of the boys in the room passionately spoke about how Zambian women cheat frequently on their partners. However, when speaking about male cheaters, many of the boys argued that cheating was “in a man’s nature.” The idea that men should be excused more easily than women when they cheat is one that I often feel is implied in American culture. Double standards that often disadvantage women seem to be more global and similar to each other than I had previously thought. Additionally, when discussing the “ideal man,” most of the Zambian women and men seemed to want a man who did not show emotions such as sadness or fear. This is an ideology that I see almost everywhere in the United States ranging from characters in movies to the way boys act in my school. I think oftentimes when Americans think of “African culture,” we unfortunately tend to think of something other, something more traditional or backwards. Yet the many similarities between Zambian and American views not only demonstrated that these stereotypes are wrong but also allowed me to reflect on the problems within my own community and society back home.
The day ended with a visit to Grassroots Soccer, an organization that trains youth peer leaders to provide health and sex educators to children in communities through the sport of soccer. After another round of ice-breakers, we did an activity in which the Zambian peer educators and Americans arranged different steps of intimacy ranging from texting to oral sex on a scale of least intimate to most intimate. While the Zambian men and women had a difference in their arrangements, the American v. Zambian arrangement had an even more drastic difference. However, I noticed that since this group had more health training and education, they were more open and comfortable talking about many of the issues around intimacy than the group at Chikumbuso. Overall, we had a great time getting to know and debating the peer educators, ending the afternoon with selfies and exchanges of contact information.
On the walk home from Chikumbuso, I realized that I had an expectation that I would not be able to relate to any of the things the Zambian students experienced or felt. While Zambian women seem to have a higher disadvantage in society than American women, the conversations at Chikumbuso prompted me to look into the problems surrounding gender roles and relationships in America. I reached our guesthouse having learned many new things and excited to deepen the connection with Chikumbuso students the next day.
Bilena D., National Cathedral School