McKenzie Boekholder admitted she joined the Peace Corps for selfish reasons. "Something is fulfilled in me when I'm helping someone else," she said, "and I felt the Peace Corps was the right place because I got to travel and live the life for two years. Any shorter period of time doesn't allow for real cultural integration."
A 3-mile walk for water
By Carol Feingold/ Amesbury@Cnc.Com
Friday, July 16, 2004
Amesbury resident McKenzie Boekholder admitted she joined the Peace Corps for selfish reasons.
"Something is fulfilled in me when I'm helping someone else," she said, "and I felt the Peace Corps was the right place because I got to travel and live the life for two years. Any shorter period of time doesn't allow for real cultural integration."
Currently home from Zambia on a two-week vacation, Boekholder is the daughter of Barbara and Jack Boekholder of Lafayette Street Extension. A 1996 graduate of Amesbury High School and a 2000 graduate of Brandeis University, she applied to join the Peace Corps during her senior year at Brandeis.
She was supposed to go into the Peace Corps in 2001, and was coaching soccer at Brandeis and working at Land's Sake organic farm in Weston in the interim. A month before her departure she ruptured the anterior crucial ligament in her knee. While she recuperated over the next two years, she ran an organic farm during the growing season and wrote grants during the winter. She finally left for Zambia in August 2003.
"I was assigned to rural aqua-culture promotion in Zambia, which is in southern Africa, 18 degrees south of the equator," Boekholder said. "We did our training in Kitwe, Zambia, and it was 12 grueling weeks. I got cerebral malaria and my host family died. The father died right before I got there and then my host mother died. She was 34 and had malaria and HIV. When you have HIV, the malaria drugs aren't as effective.
"That was my first experience with how Zambians deal with death. It was awful. I woke up to blood curdling wailing. Hordes of women entered the house at midnight wailing."
Following the death of her host family, Boekholder was moved to a hostel and spent the remainder of her training living there. The training included six hours of language study daily, technical training, cross-cultural training, and the responsibility for a fish pond.
"In order to be sworn in, we had to pass three technical exams, language proficiency, technical panel interviews, write a thesis, do independent research, and pass in a technical journal on our ponds," she said. "The training was unbelievable. There were 27 people and two didn't swear in because they didn't pass. One person dropped out during training and two more people dropped out after training."
In November, 2003, Boekholder was posted to Luamvundu village in the Solwezi district in the northwestern province of Zambia. Zambia has only been a Peace Corps country since 1994 and currently is celebrating its 10th anniversary.
"I love where I am," Boekholder said. "I live in a mud brick house with a thatched roof. I have a bathing shelter made out of thatch and an outdoor cooking shelter with a little iron stove. I use charcoal, which is fired wood, not the charcoal we put in grills here. I live next to pineapple fields and eat fresh pineapple every day of the week."
Nshima, the staple food of Zambia, is made of dry pounded casaba.
"It's like a gray Play-Do and you eat with your hands using the nshima as a utensil to eat vegetables," she said," such as pumpkin leaves, potato leaves and casaba leaves. It's absolutely wonderful. I'm a vegetarian, but everyone in the village, whether they like it or not, is a vegetarian. The only meat in the village is walking."
Beans are sold for income, not eaten, and some powdered milk is available. Eggs are very expensive.
"There are so many chickens running around the village," she said, "but they don't eat them. They're like a bank account to sell in times of crisis."
There is no electricity or telephone in the village and Boekholder draws her water from the water hole. The climate is temperate and there are distinct seasons.
"Right now it's winter and it's cold," she said. "I have to sleep in my sleeping bag under two blankets at night. We get frost in the low-lying areas. Even during the hot season, as soon as the sun goes down it's cool."
Boekholder's job is to teach farmers how to manage a fish pond. Her typical day goes from sunrise to sunset.
"I wake up with the sunrise and will go for a run before anyone else is up," she said. "I come back, start a fire and draw water. The water hole is two kilometers (3.2 miles) away. I draw 40 liters a day for drinking, cooking and bathing. I only wash my hair twice a week because that takes an extra 20 liters of water."
When she comes back, she bathes and has her morning tea. If she knows she has to cycle a long distance that day, she will have sweet potatoes with her morning tea. Otherwise she doesn't eat until suppertime.
"This food is the food of power," she said. "When you sit down to eat, you eat a lot of it. In Zambia, no one is wasting away. They are strong."
The villager, who is her Peace Corps counterpart, comes over after tea and the two will cycle 32 to 40 miles to each way to one of the villages in which they work.
"I have programs in different stages, so when I go to these villages, I could be teaching these guys in a classroom about aqua-culture, surveying land, or demarcating furrows, dams and fishponds," Boekholder said. "We then cycle home and it's basically about 6 p.m. I make dinner and go to bed."
The fish ponds provide food protein for the villagers and are income-generating. They are stocked with Nile bream and each harvest produces 3,000 to 5,000 fingerlings (seed fish), which can be transported from village to village. After six years, which is three cycles of two-year Peace Corps volunteers, the communities are supposed to be independent.
"Due to budget cuts in the Peace Corps, the rural aqua-culture program training was cut completely," Boekholder said, "so now we don't have any new volunteers coming in this cycle. There are communities that were expecting a replacement volunteer. Now, midway through the program, the volunteers are pulled. It's difficult. I'm glad I know this now. My guys are going to be independent by the time I leave or I will extend my stay in the village another year until they're independent."
As in everything else, there are good things and bad things about being in the Peace Corps.
"It's difficult being sick all the time," Boekholder said. "Inevitably you're going to be sick in the African bush and there's not much you can do about it. I also don't like being stared at all the time and being called 'muzungu,' which is 'white person.' It's not derogatory because they're never seen white people before."
On the other hand, she said, "I like so much of it. I love feeling productive and being challenged and I love that it's hard as hell for me. I'm so happy that I'm doing this. I love being in the village, and I love these people. They're amazing. I've realized I have much more patience than I thought I had."
There is a trade-off, she said, for not having transportation, health care and knowing you're going to have food to eat whether the weather is good or bad. You trade those things for a sense of community.
"The village people take care of each other," Boekholder said. "You become part of the whole and what you do affects everybody else. You realize your place among living things there and life becomes full on, undoubtedly. You trade those things to live life in the raw.
"Now I really understand when they say, 'It takes a village to raise a child.' It's so true. Somebody's child is everybody's child."
