May 12th

I spent the beginning of the day in the Boma attending a celebration for International Nurses Day! Yeah go nurses! True to Zambian form the celebration started 4 hours after it was supposed to. It is a good thing I have learned the art of waiting and of never expecting something to start or someone to show up when it/they are supposed to.  When things finally got underway there was a parade with nurses from all the different clinics and hospitals in the area. They were carrying banners, shouting, and singing. The ceremony commenced with a very lengthy introduction of everyone on stage; there were 30 people. And then each person who got up to speak had to thank everyone on stage for coming. I am not too sure what was said but there was a lot hand shaking and back patting amongst the higher ups. There was a short reprieve when what I thought was a man dressed like a roster began to gyrate and shake to the beat of drums. The whole scene was quite captivating; the drums and the shaking hips. Soon the lawn was filled with nurses and children dancing and singing! Best Nurses Day ever.

I feel as though I have to take a moment to mention the children. Watching them assemble is like the scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s the Birds. You look over and there are just a handful of children watching you. Five minutes later their numbers have doubled. The number of children keeps increasing each time you look over and each child is staring intently at you. It is really quite impressive the attention you get just because you are white. By the end of the ceremony there was a line of children with their backs to the stage sitting watching me. I felt like a zoo creature. It also made it really hard to do anything discretely like pick your wedge or your nose. Any move you made there were 30 sets of eyes watching you. At first I thought that it was just a different culture and I would have to get used to the stares; but unfortunately it is not. In Zambian culture it is considered very rude to stare, but apparently all bets are off when there is a mazungo. I reason why to view this as unfortunate is that I could overlook the staring if I thought it was a cultural thing but knowing that they are disregarding their own cultural rules to stare at me can get extremely irritating after 4 hours. Also you start to feel really self-conscious.