Blog Post #1

           One experience that sticks out for me is my first time at the Kulima Tower bus stop; those were an overwhelming few moments to say the least. What first hit me was the sheer amount of people surrounding me, each going there own way, each with there own plan and destination. It was 8 in the morning on a Monday, and Lusaka rush hour was in full swing. I think initially what surprised me about the amount of movement and activity surrounding Kulima Tower was that rush hour was apparently a universal phenomenon. Even though we were on the other side of the world, people still woke up in the morning and needed to get to work; students still had to get to class; and while the way they were doing might have looked different, the underlying principle was the same. This general idea, that while it may look different, life here is not all that different, is one of the biggest take aways I have had so far.

            While I started to realize some of the similarities between my life thus far and life in Lusaka, my first moments at Kulima Tower also served as a reminder of just how different I am perceived here. It was probably my first time in a packed public area here, and I immediately began to feel the stares coming in from all sides. Everywhere I looked, it seemed people were intently interested in me; which is not something that had ever happened to me. Whether they were curious, or surprised, or just plain amused, it seemed everyone was taking a good look at me. I tried to keep my head down and go about my business, hoping to give off the appearance of comfort, but every corner I turned brought a host of new staring eyes and interested faces. I began to realize just how out of the ordinary I appeared. Where I come from, for my entire life, diversity has been a given. I can’t imagine any time in my life where seeing some race of people would have been a surprise to me. In the places I have been, you have to be doing something seriously weird to draw the type of attention that I was drawing at Kulima Tower (which, I’m sure, is partly what made me so uncomfortable). However, as I had already begun to learn in Zambia, and as this experience reinforced, the diversity that I am familiar with is not something you find everywhere, and in fact may be quite rare. This was the type of realization that I have grown accustomed to having here. Realizations that, while seemingly obvious in hindsight, only can come from these type of disruptive experiences.

            Finally, after navigating the winding shops and stands, the jostling crowds, and the ordered chaos of buses moving in and out, we were on our way, and I was hit finally (and maybe ironically) with a feeling of fitting in. While I looked, talked, and acted different, I was simply on my commute to work, alongside all the other working Zambians. I was glad that I was figuring out my own way, and was showing the local people that while I may look like an outsider, I was not all that different from then, and that while I may come from a developed country, I did not think myself above taking a minibus to work.