“When we listen carefully we begin to hear other sounds above the racket and roar of poverty. Poverty screeches and screams, but something behind it is singing.”
-Raymond Downing, medical missionary

It’s been strange and wonderful to have four sets of American eyes viewing my Zambia with me the past two weeks (a.k.a. Mom, Dad, bro Eric, friend Stacey). We of course got the touristy Vic Falls out of the way, but the most wonderful-—and psychologically challenging—-part of their trip for me was introducing them to Mumbwa, my home. In the course of two days they met so many people that my mom’s hand muscles became sore from all the handshakes.

And as expected, the social ills pushed their way into our conversations. Like a selfish child, Poverty and AIDS and Alcoholism demanded that my family address them, discuss them, and deal with them, as they’ve demanded of so many before who both live in and visit this place.

As we conversed both with each other and with thoughtful Zambians over these issues, I found myself in a mind-splitting “Yeah . . . BUT” dichotomy. Let me explain:

“So the life expectancy is 36, right? The second shortest in the world?”
“Yeah, BUT did you meet my Home Based Caregivers? They volunteer hours and hours each week caring for their neighbors with HIV/AIDS and TB.”

“So most of these kids are AIDS orphans, right?”
“Yeah, BUT did you notice Violet’s smile as she keeps peeking back at us in class? And with a mind like hers, she has so much potential.”

To be fair, my family members are all considerate and well-educated, perhaps able to perceive both the nuances and the big picture with more depth than I was in the first few months here. But as they gave me a refresher course on the American perspective on Africa, I realized how much I used to view this place through the lens of Numbers (36 years) and Labels (AIDS orphan) and Sad Stories and how little I do that now. Zambia is no longer statistics to me but instead friends and coworkers and role models.

So when I had my fam sit down to hear the Grace’s story, I hesitated to even disclose to them the sad parts.

“Ooo! Let me cook for them!” Grace said as soon as she learned my family was visiting. So over her delicious peanut vegetable dish, Grace told us who she is. She is the chairperson of CHD’s women entrepreneurship program, in charge of giving micro-enterprise loans to women to start businesses. Grace is also a businesswoman herself, owning both a food store and selling jewelry she makes from materials she buys in Lusaka. She loves her husband, visits hospitalized people every week, and, like most Zambians, raises orphans. She also sings louder than I do and tries to teach me Zambian dances.

“What doesn’t Grace do?!” Stacey asked me. Like me, Stace fell in love with Grace. Perhaps it’s her loud laugh that exposes her teeth like stars twinkling against her night-skin as she holds your hand, pulling you into the laugh with her. Perhaps it’s the passion and dedication she has for the community work she does, most of it volunteer. Whatever it is, it’s hard to not fall in love with this woman.

So it wasn’t until later that I told Stacey Grace’s status. She’s positive (she’s open about it and doesn’t mind that I’m writing this). But as everyone who knows Grace knows, that’s a side note in her life story, barely worth mentioning. To define her using a label like HIV would be like defining Handel’s Messiah by the breath marks or a sleek Ferrari by the exhaust it emits. It’s there, it’s a reality, but it has nothing to do with the essence of Grace. It has nothing to do with her love of life and others.

And so it is with other Zambians, especially those Mumbwa-ites who fill their community with agencies and organizations and hospitals and schools they then use to serve each other. As I’ve spent this year observing them and being loved by them, I always learn much more from them than I expect. I cringe now when I think of how I was so determined to “help” them, as if I knew how they should live their lives. I call it my latent maternalism. I wasn’t racist, but I condescendingly used to think (usually subconsciously) that my American methods were more efficient, and therefore more valuable and better. An “I’ll come and show you how it’s done around here” attitude.

Now, however, I’ve learned to listen more, and I think we must come here with an attitude of symbiotic exchange. For every workshop an American gives in Africa explaining how to run a business more efficiently or how to prevent the spread of AIDS, there should be a workshop run by Zambians for Americans on how to live in community or how to care for the environment or how to deal with death or how to build a culture where ideas like “anorexia” and “stress” are unknown concepts. Would that be so strange to take seriously the life lessons of the “least of these”?

Zambians are a patient people, a welcoming people, and above all, a strong people. And as for us in the States, Zambians like Grace could use our compassion, but not our pity. To define these people by their problems not only steals their humanity from them—-it also deafens us to the secrets they hold about life and love and death. Powerful secrets that at times put me and my American arrogance to shame.

Perhaps I’m idealizing this culture, and there are still days when I dislike living here, but perhaps some praise is overdue after all the time I’ve spent viewing Zambians as embodied social ills rather than equals and beautiful children of the same Father.

“We Africans are living in hard times,” a few Zambians told my family last week. They may be hard times, but these people have a lot to teach us about how to sing and laugh through the difficulties. There’s a lot we have to learn about how to live out tragedy with grace.