The Packet of Seeds
On Gardening and Hope in the Nangweshi Refugee Camp in Western Zambia
by Jim Reardon
The sun was beating down in the late afternoon like it did day after day in the dry winter season in Western Zambia. Not a cloud in the sky, nor would there be for the next several months, until the rainy season began again, the endless cycle of extremes that seems so prevalent in Africa in so many ways. Though it was winter, the temperature hovered near 90 and a haze of fine dust hung in the air, stirred up from the sandy surface of the camp by the ever-present children, playing as children do all across the globe with makeshift soccer balls made from rags, held together by string. We were walking out into the new arrivals area at the Nangweshi Refugee Camp near the border of Zambia and Angola, home to 25,000 displaced Angolan refugees. Those in the new arrivals area had been in the camp from anywhere between a few days and several months. All of the people in the camp had started this way, making a home underneath a blue tarp supplied by the UNHCR (United Nations High Commission on Refugees) until hopefully, they would be able to construct walls first of thatch, then perhaps a sturdier wall of sticks and mud. Unfortunately for these newest arrivals, the camp, originally designed for 15,000 had swelled to more than 25,000. The building materials, grass, mud, sticks, and tree branches that made up a house in the camp had been taken from the surrounding areas, and it was now a 2 to 4 mile walk to find the materials they would need. Additionally most of the new arrivals were widows, children, and those elderly men and women who were able to make the walk of hundreds of kilometers through the bush to the camp, in search of peace that had eluded them in their homeland of Angola, engulfed in Africa's longest running civil war for the last 27 years.
I was there with a group called the African Refugee Committee [later to become RISE International, a group from around the Chicago area dedicated to assisting the most vulnerable in the camp with blankets, food, medical assistance, clothing collected from students back home, educational supplies, and perhaps most importantly, a sense that they had not been forgotten. Dr. Andrew Cole, the leader of the group, had been born in Angola to missionary parents and had lived and been schooled in Angola for his first 13 years, later returning to the states to attend high school. In 1997, during a brief peace in the seemingly endless Angolan struggle, Andrew and his wife Lynn, returned to Angola, only to be forced out as fighting resumed. They began to realize that many of the people that Andrew had known during his youth were now living in refugee camps in Namibia and Zambia, forced to flee their homes, most having lost many of their family members to the almost three decade old conflict. The Coles and their children had come back to the camps many times over the last five years to begin to try to improve the conditions of people they had come to both love and have immense respect for, providing material assistance and helping to rebuild community. It was on a trip this last August that I found myself, the Coles, their daughter, Stephanie, and eight others in the Nangweshi Camp, sharing what we could bring to people in great need.
It was late in the afternoon that three of us, along with an interpreter, were coming upon the farthest reaches of the new arrival section. There is an air of desolation in this area, devoid of any permanent or semi-permanent dwellings, stripped of many of its tress, and seemingly on the edge, in a variety of ways, physically, but also psychologically. It was at the last tarp of one of the last rows that we visited that day that I met one of the most grateful and joyous people I have ever had the privilege of coming in contact with in my last 53 years. A woman, who looked to me to be in her 60's, was beginning the process of starting a garden. Though there were gardens in the heart of the camp, there were few among the new arrivals. Dirt had to be hauled from far away to mix with the sandy soil if anything was to grow; this usually being done with a bucket carried on the head, an arduous process. Upon seeing us, this grandmother greeted us in the traditionally warm way that most people in the camp greet each other, a greeting that I grew to both love and respect for its genuineness and warmth. "Bo tarde, Bo tarde," she said with great affection and a wonderful smile, accompanied with a light clapping motion of the hands, a gesture that conveys an appreciation for this unique coming together of people. With our limited Umbundu language skills we shared, "How are you? We are fine," and perhaps my favorite Umbundu word, the word for thank you, "twapandula". She seemed very grateful for our visit there, even though we were out of things to give out, and after we reached the end of our very limited vocabulary, we shared laughter, smiles, and we moved on. A few paces away though, I remembered that I had a single packet of tomato seeds left in my daypack, and walked back to give these to her, almost ashamed and slightly embarrassed that I could give her so little. Her response was one I could never have anticipated, for she reacted as if I had just given her the winning lottery ticket to a million dollar prize. She dropped her hoe and began to dance a jig, twirling around, radiating a smile like I had never experienced, blowing kisses, and repeatedly saying "twapandula ciwa, twapandula ciwa" (thank you very much). Her joy at this gift that cost me just a few pennies was something I had never expected to experience during my stay at a refugee camp, a place I had expected to find so little joy. Never had I given a gift in my life that had cost me so little, and never, ever, in my life had I given a gift that was so appreciated. She was still glowing, now singing, and continuing to thank us, as we retreated into the setting sun.
As I sit back now in my comfortable setting at home, I cannot forget, no, I vow to never forget this woman and the impact she had upon me. Part of my reason for going on this mission to work in a refugee camp was to try to understand the role that suffering plays in our vulnerable human existence. My son had died only 6 months before and I needed to reach out from my own sorrow to others suffering, trying to gain some meaning again in life through giving. But as has been the case so many times in my life, I received much more than I ever could have given. The scene of genuine thankfulness that we saw in my friend, the gardener, was repeated many, many times in the camp. The looks on the faces of school children as they got new pens and spiral notebooks, the appreciation of receiving clothing donated from the Senior class at New Trier High School, the dolls that were made from scraps to be given out to the most vulnerable children in the camp; on and on the genuine appreciation, and most importantly the hope, yes, the hope for a better future in the eyes of people who have had nearly everything they own taken from them, who have so little of the material gifts I take so much for granted. Yet I came away from my experience at the Nangweshi Camp feeling a sense of envy for the warmth and sense of community and appreciation that was so evident, so often in the camp. In the face of what would seem to be overwhelming odds, I found people who had not forgotten how to laugh and how to sing in the midst of their tears, and how to share both their sorrow and their joy with each other and with us.
I came to wonder, as I returned to my life back in the states, how many times I missed the gifts that were being presented to me daily; gifts of another day of life, a beautiful sunrise, the smile of my daughter, the laughter of a friend. How many times have I missed the joy of receiving my own packet of seeds, the seeds of communion with others? Could I too feel the joy that the woman gardener had experienced, she who had walked a thousand kilometers to get to this camp, she who had lost her family, she who knew not what the future would hold for her, whether she would ever again live to see her native homeland of Angola. There is not a day that goes by that I don't find myself thinking of her, sowing the seeds in her garden, in itself a hopeful act, never knowing so many thousands of miles away the seeds of hope she planted in me that day. My heart cries out to her from worlds away, "twapandula, twapandula," thank you, thank you, for the gift you gave me that day, my own packet of seeds labeled, HOPE.