My friends and I that I live with started what seems to be a campfire tradition a few weeks ago at our place. We’ve been having a campfire pretty frequently lately. It’s sort of what just happens when there isn’t a television and when you don’t want to go straight to bed after dinner. We’re sort of an odd bunch (my friends and I), but I love that we are together. Living in the house most days is; me, an 11 year old (daughter of SWSC Managing Director), my Canadian Nurse friend, my friend from Kitwe (who happens to be my Canadian friend’s fiancé), his friend from Kitwe, three puppies and my dog. This changes weekly, as people come and go from all over the place, staying a night or two or longer. We have Peace Corps friends stay and friends from Canada stay and friends from Kitwe stay; and we are continually shuffling beds around to accommodate everyone; but it is wonderful.
When I first came to Zambia, the campfires I used to sit around lost their alluring glow almost immediately. It’s because most people in rural Zambia are cooking two or three meals a day on a fire and there is always a fire going. What I used to love about sitting around a fire in Canada burned out and quickly became something I dreaded. It’s because when I first came to Zambia, people would sit around the fire, waiting to for the food to cook and they would tell stories and laugh and joke and I had no idea what was going on. They would be speaking in Luvale or Kaonde or Bemba and I was left out. It made me feel so lonely. It made me so bitter and I ended up hating their laughter. I hated their happiness around those fires because I blamed them in a way for not involving me. It wasn’t their fault though. This experience was new for everyone. I was a young English speaking woman thrown into unknown territory. They couldn’t communicate jokes to me in the little English they knew. The positive side to those lonely nights for me was that it forced an urgency to learn the language. I wanted to laugh too. I remember when my brother came to visit me 6 months after Kim had left me in Zambia. By then, I hadn’t really laughed in so long. I remember him telling a joke, and I remember this unfamiliar noise coming from within me. I remember it feeling so strange because I had forgotten how to laugh. I had literally lost my humour. I was half alive!
A lot has changed since then. Now we have these campfires at my house, and my friends and I, we tell stories and we laugh around them. We started telling stories one night and now it’s become our thing. It’s usually not long before someone asks, “Who’s first”? We start out by jokingly introducing ourselves, like we have never met before. We really know how to set a proper stage.
I’m writing this now, because I have a moment on this quiet Saturday morning to realize how important story telling is. My friends and I like to tell stories about love. Two friends that I live with are getting married in a few weeks here in Zambia. The other night, one of them re-told us their love story. I hadn’t heard it in a while. It sort of made me upset that I hadn’t asked to hear it in a while. How could life be so busy that I forgot to hear stories about love? Didn’t I know that there aren’t any better stories to hear about? I was there, when she fell in love with her fiancé and I was there when he fell in love with her; but I hadn’t heard the story in so long. I liked the way she told it. I liked the way that we remembered to tell each other about love and just how beautiful it is. I liked the way that it reminded me that I am in a very different place from those campfires three and a half years ago. Instead of my heart growing harshly, as it was then, it is growing in a way that begs for more stories about love.
Anyhow, the point of this little blog is that, we are always looking for more stories about love around our campfires. If you need directions of where to find us in quiet little Kibombomene, let me know!
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