By Andrew Jo
“You. How is Hong Kong?’
In many ways this question, posed to me at Lusaka’s Inner City Bus Terminal, followed by my reaction, illustrates my cultural experiences as an Asian American in Zambia.
For some, such a racial assumption might provoke anger. I look at it as a chance to educate those with limited exposure to Asian faces. I laugh and explain: I am Korean by blood and American everything else.
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For the past 30 months, I have served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Zambia, a landlocked country in southern Africa, bordered by eight countries: the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the north; Tanzania to the northeast; Malawi to the east; Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia to the south; and Angola to the west. As with the majority of sub-Saharan Africa, the HIV and AIDS epidemic is widespread here; its 15 to 34 percent adult prevalence has contributed greatly to child mortality rates and the decimation of the working class. Once the product of a booming copper industry, Zambia today stands as one of the world’s poorest countries.
But for me, Zambia is not properly captured in its statistics or geography. Zambia is simply home.
My experiences living and working in Kazungula Village in the Southern Province of Zambia have made it so. Lying beneath the country’s Central and Lusaka Provinces, the Southern Province illustrates every nature enthusiast’s quintessential Africa, with its Baobab trees, fields of long brown grass, seemingly endless flatlands and grazing cows. It is against this backdrop that I worked on an education project that aimed to teach rural students — most of whom could not physically get to schools — English, math, science, and life skills through nationally broadcasted lessons. For two years my job was to help make sure those who wanted access to this service knew how to get it and to provide training and support for their teachers.
I knew as far back as high school that community service was rewarding, but never imagined that this mindset would lead me to live and work in Africa. That began to shift in 2002 when my mother took me to Kenya as part of a two-week mission trip with her church. By the end of 2005, one semester away from obtaining a journalism degree, I was confused and uncertain about my life’s intended path. Then I began reading about the Peace Corps. On my mind were its benefits, possible countries of service, access to health care, as well as how this organization would prepare me, physically and professionally, not only in the developing world, but for life post-service.
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I only researched these surface-level issues, never delving as deeply into how racial components would factor into the experience. When the time came to interview with a recruiter, I told him that I wanted to be as much of a minority as possible, that I didn’t want to serve in Asia.
Before arriving in Zambia, I was a 25-year-old baseball fanatic from South Pasadena, Calif., and all I had to prepare myself were the few courses in African/Black Studies I took at San Francisco State University and the Welcome to Zambia booklet sent to me by the Peace Corps. But, in a sense, I’m not sure what kind of training could have prepared me for an experience that has altered my perceptions of race and redefined the meanings of the words accomplishment, home and comfort.
In a way, it is the challenges of everyday living that I have come to love the most about life here: getting water from a pump, eating rice and soy every day, scrubbing my dirty laundry by hand, relieving myself in a grass-thatched pit latrine. And then there are those intangible things that I will always have with me, even after I resume a life of convenience in the United States: the courteous nature of the Zambian people, and their deep respect of and care for the elders in their community.
Obviously, as an Asian American, I tend to stand out here. But surprisingly, being such a noticeable minority has not made me focus so much on how people treat my culture, but more on how I treat others. My experience has reversed the cultural microscope: I now find myself looking up at the eye rather than down at the specimen.
In distinguishing these vantage points, I have recognized my most significant growth. As a 16-year-old, I remember laughing at jokes about an African transfer student who joined our high school class. His dark skin and distinct facial features were foreign to a student body comprised primarily of Caucasian, Asian and Latino backgrounds. Comments like “the water hole is that way,” or the clicking of our tongues in mocking fashion permeated the group of friends I associated with.
What did I know about Africa? My exposure to the continent hadn’t gone further than a bushman and his Coke bottle — an image from the movie The Gods Must Be Crazy. It is only now that I understand what this student had gone through. His journey and isolation. His response … nothing.
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Perhaps that is why I choose not to respond with anger toward villagers who assume being Asian equals Chinese and having a vast knowledge of the martial arts. Instead, I explain that China is not the only country in Asia, just as Zambia is not the only country in Africa. That the United States is made up of people and cultures from all over the world, even from Zambia.
Sensitizing people in my village is rewarding, but I notice that I have failed to take the same approach in town, where I am more likely to encounter Zambians with greater exposure to foreigners. Instead, I am more likely to respond as my African classmate did: with pacificism, or passivity.
For some reason, I had unjustly determined that cultural insensitivity was something that came more commonly from black Zambians and not from other mizungus, as most non-black Zambians are commonly referred to. I was reminded of just how false this belief was as I was waiting for a woman to finish her transaction at an ATM machine in Livingstone, one of Zambia’s more heavily populated urban areas and its tourist capital.
After I had finished, this woman, who was white, approached me and asked if I had copied her pin number. I didn’t know whether she was serious, so I laughed a bit and told her that that was not the case. She looked relieved and told me she was worried about a recent identity theft scam, adding that she knew “people from your country are really good with electronics.”
I didn’t completely absorb what had been said to me until the woman had walked away. I was too rehearsed in brushing comments aside that by the time I put it all together, she was out of sight. It was one of those days that made me wonder what I was doing here.
This encounter made me realize that cultural ignorance does not have racial or color barriers. I thought about my friends and I clicking our tongues while talking to that African student.
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Today, everything about life in Zambia seems natural to me, like home. I am used to meetings being scheduled and rescheduled due to a lack of communication; the long, bumpy transportation; the baby crying at the sight of me, an exotic Asian face. Zambian pop music sounds great to me, and nothing brings me more joy than seeing a Zambian athlete succeed.
Still, I know my time here is temporary and that reaching everybody with a message is impossible. That idealism, after all, is not why I came to Zambia. Reaching those I have spent my time with — those are the lives I have enlightened, and theirs have enlightened mine. That was the goal. That I can take back with me as an accomplishment.
I can also take back what stands out as my most memorable day here. Because HIV and AIDS have taken such a significant hold on the country, every Peace Corps volunteer in Zambia, regardless of his or her project, is trained to work on these issues in some capacity. As a volunteer of the education project, I decided to try to get as many Zambian teachers tested for the virus as possible. Many teachers said they would get tested, but in the end, I sensed most were too scared to go through with it.
I, however, did accompany one teacher, my closest friend in Kazungula Village, to get tested. As a Peace Corps volunteer in projects that preach sustainability, I was taught not to focus on the visible impact I was making, but more on the transfer of skills throughout a community. But this day showed me something visible: someone’s life had changed before my eyes. This teacher greets each day knowing now he is HIV negative.
As my time in Zambia comes to an end, I find myself in the same position I was in when I departed for this country. Questions of what I will miss about the U.S. are replaced with what I will miss about Zambia.
Many Peace Corps volunteers say that returning home is much harder than leaving. The incoming transition much tougher than the out. I will not come to realize this sensation until I have actually parted ways with Zambia.
All I know now is that leaving home was hard in 2006. As with any place you call home, leaving, again, will be the hardest part.
