The Infidelity Case

“Are you coming to the adultery trial tomorrow?” The old woman who lives next door asked me one evening like she was asking about my attendance at a community pot-luck. Because she was the third person that day who had inquired about the trial, I figured it was probably a good idea to check it out. Having multiple concurrent partners and cheating is much more common in Zambia than in the states. Men are mostly given the privilege of sleeping around without consequence, while women are punished for it. The common term that men jokingly use to call a mistress is a “side plate”. This has not only caused problems in relationships in Zambia but has also fueled the HIV epidemic here. Due to this, and many other factors, the HIV rate is 16% in Zambia. This was a trial for a woman who had cheated on her husband. I was curious to see how the village was going to react.

The next morning I woke up, made my breakfast, and sat on my porch to catch up on my reading before the day’s business. I noticed that people I had never seen were walking around my house, many of them seemed to have been drinking. By the time the trial was set to start, the village had swelled to almost twice its size and people were all around the headman’s hut waiting for the trial to begin. I walked over from my hut and was astonished. The atmosphere was that of a high school football game. There were women selling fritters and many of the men had taken on the serious task of day drinking. If someone had a truck in the village, you might have even called it a tailgating session.  I brought my chair and took my place in the men’s section just as the headman from my village, Isaac, was calling the case to order.

The whole village was surrounding the couple, their two infants, and the man with whom the wife had cheated. All were seated on a reed mat that Isaac had borrowed from me for this occasion.  It was no surprise that their mood was not as jovial as those around them.  Directly in front of the couple were headmen from the two local villages, Makambwe (my village) and Ephriam (the neighboring village). When the majority of the gathering had settled down, Isaac asked for silence, and requested for the plaintiff to tell his story. The husband begins to tell how he found his wife sleeping with another man. He speaks softly and with a lowered gaze to hide his humiliation. Suddenly, from back in the nosebleeds, a voice shouts in slurred speech “Speak up! We can’t here you back here!” The crowd chuckles at this comment and the plaintiff continues on as before until the story is finished. The head man then turns to the accused woman to ask if this story is true.  She merely nods her head and looks solemnly at the dirt in front of her.

Isaac then asks for a recess for each side to discuss their demands. The amazing thing about this trial is that everyone from both families has come to give their support. That is largely the reason that there are so many more people in the village. The family unit is very strong in Zambia and all serious issues are decided by a family discussion. Each side goes off to a huddle for 10 minutes while the half time entertainment begins.

“He needs to apologize!” A tall man shouts as he stumbles over to another member in the drunken male section of the assembly, picks him up a foot off the ground, drops him, and slaps him in the face. Satisfied with the work he has just done, he straightens himself up, and then slowly walks back to his seat on a root under a large tree. Meanwhile his victim begins to cry. The first emotion I fell is sadness for this fellow until I realize he is just as drunk as his attacker. I lose even more sympathy when later on that day he comes by my house asking for money. The crowd is eating this up. What was supposed to be a single feature has just become a double header. What is the fine going to be? How will the headmen settle this? Is the victim going to keep crying? The last question was answered shortly as the crying man stands up and staggers off shouting something about castrating any man who tries to follow him. As the halftime entertainment finishes itself up, the attacker is called in front of the headmen and forced to pay a two chicken fine to the crying man (who has returned from his walk to get his nerve back). He has stopped crying and cracks a smile at the thought of himself being two chickens richer because of the ordeal.

Almost any problem in Zambia can be settled with some combination of livestock or corn. If a young man makes a young woman pregnant before she is married then he has to pay a fine of one cow. This is typically called “damages” here in the village. If someone’s animals eat another person’s crops from their garden, they are forced to pay a basket of corn. If a grown man makes another grown man cry by dropping him and slapping him; he has to pay two chickens. There is little cash in the village, so people just make exchanges with their animal or food “bank accounts.”

When the two sides have come to their terms, the headmen call the plaintiff’s family representative forward to ask for their request: “We, the family of the plaintiff, request 200 hundred goats from each party involved in the adultery.” The crowd gasps in unison. My friend who was helping to translate leans over and says “this is outrageous! Not even in the supreme court of the United States would they demand 400 goats as payment for adultery!” To which I smile and reply “No you’re right, they wouldn’t.”

The accused family denounces this fine as being ridiculous and the case will have to be taken to the courts in town. The village court serves as a kind of civil court for Zambia. It is a way to solve problems without having to deal with the hassle of going to the Zambian courts in the closest town. It is an efficient solution to the problem of having villages strewn around the country, with people who don’t have the means to go to a central location for judgment.

Much of this trial is about keeping the family united and saving face in front of the community. Because families rely on each other for support, both monetarily and emotionally, it is important for them to discuss events like this together.  It also better that they price the infidelity of this relationship very high so that it seems like the husband has more value. Even if the fine is rejected, at least the village knows how this family values itself. Either way, whether it is a fine for making another man cry or for adultery, 400 goats is an outrageous price to pay. 

Intro to Blog and Zambian Humor

Hello Friends and Family

The following is my attempt to stay in touch with you and to share a little of what is going on in my life here in Makambwe village. There will be graphs, visual aids, rants, and details of what the heck I am doing in Africa. Please email me about life in America or anything you found interesting.  I miss you all and feel free to come and visit!

What I have been doing in country since February:

February 9^th –May 6^th- Live in Chipembi, Zambia and study Zambian language, culture, and technical skills

May 6^th- August 22nd^- Stay within the province of my village of Makambwe for community entry

Highs

                Giving a speech in Chinyanja at the US Ambassador’s house

                Presenting a live chicken to Chief Chamuka

                Watching Zambia win the Arica cup on a 12in TV in a village

                Watching the sunset in my outdoor shower

                Not watching the sunset from my indoor shower that I constructed

   Getting the Sport Illustrated Swimsuit Edition (with a special section on Zambia) in the mail                    (Gabe Chess, you have done your country a great service).

                Watching Nyeow dancers (kind of like African cloggers with masks and drums) tight rope walk, carried over a fire, and scare the crap out of children.

Lows

                Living in a house with four kittens

                Crapping my pants

                Finding a black Mamba in my hut

                No microbrews for 6 months                                                                             

                Missing my friends and family on their birthdays, weddings, and other events

               

First post

I soon figured out that Diarrhea is not funny in Zambia. I theoretically understood this as, diarrhea is a huge problem in the developing world, but I only fully comprehended how unfunny it was when I crapped my own pants. Poop is only funny when it is someone else’s pants. Americans think it’s funny when someone hurts themselves or is kind of sick (like diarrhea) because we have access to medical care and can get most things taken care of. The situation is different in Zambia and something that might be routine in America could be serious here.

If I can’t rely on poop jokes here then I knew I needed to figure out some other routine. Humor is an important part of my life and helps smooth out awkwardness in social interactions, which I imagine I will have a lot of. After lots of questioning and prodding from locals I found some jokes that were funny, some frustrating, but they all had something to say about Zambians find funny.

Just to warn you, Zambians don’t follow what we have generally excepted as the classic joke structure: setup and then punch line. Most of their jokes are only setup. For example, my language teacher told me the following joke:

A man is biking to go to see his girlfriend’s parents. He really has to go to the bathroom and sees that a storm is coming. He decided that he will just pee on himself and when the rain makes him wet, no one will be the wiser. The storm doesn’t end up coming and he goes to his girlfriend’s house with pee on his pants…..

You may have been waiting for a punch line, I was too, but there will be none of that business here.  I think part of the problem is that a joke translates into something funny in their minds and not a joke, complete with setup and punch line all in a simple format. However, there was one joke I found that actually did fit the normal mode:

A man is leaving a bar and really has to go to the bathroom, so he stops next to a building and starts to pee. A cop sees him and says “hey you can’t pee there, that will be a 10 pin fine” The man doesn’t put up a fight. He finishes peeing and gives the policeman his last 20 pin bill. He is waiting for his change and the police man doesn’t give it to him. Finally, he says “so what about my change?” and the policeman says “pee again!”

Zambians think this is funny for a couple of reasons. They think peeing in public is funny (I think everyone would agree that it is funny, though not if you have to go to court for it). The whole situation is funny because of the absurdity of it: how can the man pee again if he just got done peeing? Where is the pee going to come from? I think this is the heart of Zambian humor: absurdity. The third joke told to me also fits the absurdity model.

A man and a woman are driving to town and all of a sudden they get into a car wreck. Somehow, the man ends up naked, on top of the woman and doing nothing!

There are two layers here, how did the man accidentaly end up on top of the woman naked? And how can a man be on top of a woman while naked without doing anything? Zambians find the idea of opposite sexes interacting as friends to be peculiar. Men and women sit separately and do not seek each other’s company after dark, unless it is romantic. This joke can be a hit or a miss with Zambians, but it still proves the point.

Another big difference is the lack of reference humor. We have a knowledge of popular culture that is constantly referenced with much hilarity. You know exactly what I mean when I say “the bums lost, the bums will always lose! My advice to you is to do as you father did and get a job sir” However, few people here have seen many movies, so they have no popular reference points that they can agree upon. You can’t just mention a line from last night’s South Park or one of your favorite movies and get a laugh out of people.

There is also more reluctance to tell a dirty joke or say something inappropriate. I asked a man I was driving with to tell me what were some dirty words in Nyanja and the only one the he would tell me was “adultery”. Needless to say, I decided to stay away from my Aristrocrats routine.

The Zambian people have a great sense of humor and love to laugh at themselves and especially  at foreigners. I look forward to more research in this category and will hopefully learn a dirtier word than adultery.