Published in Fjerritslev Weekly 16. June 2009

Nina Bak Nielsen - three months in Zambia

Nina Bak Nielsen from Fjerritslev in Denmark has lived her life in ”African style” the past three months. It is not an experience for the faint of heart.

By Lena Vind-Andersen, Information Officer, MS Zambia

29. June 2009

Nina Bak Nielsen was born on a farm in Thorupholme, where she lived till she was eight years old. Since then she has lived in Thorupholme, Klim, Fjerritslev and Slettestrand. She played football and handball in the Thorup-Klim Sports club and has also been swimming for the ”Talent team” in Fjerritslev. She is educated as a butcher in Thisted.

"I had a huge cultural shock, when I first got down here,” Nina Bak Nielsen confesses with a smile. And perhaps that was to be expected, because a small village in Northern Zambia is a pretty long way from Fjerritslev in Denmark – in all kinds of ways. 21-year-old Nina did actually try to prepare for the worst:

”I was expecting the toilet to be just a hole in the ground and I was pretty sure I'd have to take my baths in a bucket with cold water. I also tried to pack practically the whole of Fjerritslev Pharmacy into my bags and was expecting to succumb to the worst kinds of diarrhoea – but I haven't actually had a use for any of the medicines I brought along at all,” she explains.

And even if the thing with the toilet turned out to be accurate, it wasn't actually the standard of living which prompted the cultural shock. It was all the other – much more intangible – things, you run into, when you suddenly find yourself in an unknown cultural context and have to live in close quarters with a local family.

Almost three months ago Nina left for Zambia with the MS volunteer travel programme Global Contact. Since then, she has lived with a Zambian family together with another Danish volunteer – very far away from any usual tourist hang-outs. In fact, you can hardly get any further away from the capital, Lusaka, than the small town of Mansa, 800 kilometers to the north. You can't even buy a post card here.

Since there are hardly any other white people living in Mansa, it doesn't take long before everyone knows who you are. But that was exactly what Nina wanted in the first place. “I've dreamed of going to Africa ever since I was first here with my parents, back when I was 10-11 years old. This way is the perfect way to go. When you are living and working with local people, you get to see more than the surface of things. You get under the skin of the culture.” And Nina has certainly done that, even though it took a few weeks for the cultural shock to subside. “In my host family the children had to kneel every time the spoke to their parents. It was the children who did most of the household chores, so they hardly ever had time to just play and be children.”

Nina found that a bit difficult to get used to – particularly because she really wanted to help out with the chores but was hardly ever allowed to do so. Sometimes, she succeeded though:

“One night we were miraculously allowed to do the dishes. When one of the children, John age 15, joined us to watch how we were doing he exclaimed: ”My god, you are fast at that!” And big brother Charles, 21 years old, was astounded: I can't believe how fast you are doing the dishes!”

“They thought we were crazy, doing it so fast!” Nina laughs.

The thing with being fast or slow was one of the other matters, it was quite hard to get used to. Because in Zambia, things just don't move as fast as in Denmark. If you plan a meeting for 14:00 in Zambia, you can be certain that no one will even show up till half an hour later.

“I didn't realize that everything takes such a long time down here and that matters move so slowly sometimes. I've had my patience sorely tested occasionally,” Nina confesses.

It has also been a surprise to Nina that poverty isn't as widespread as you can be lead to believe through western media. There are quite a lot of people who can easily afford nice clothes and a car, even though the majority can't. Still, Nina has met quite a few belonging to the last category through her work for a local organisation who supports orphans by covering the children's expenses for school uniforms and books.

“One day two women came to the office to ask for help. They both had 4-5 children along and both they themselves and all the children were HIV positive. One of the women had a two-year old on her back, who more looked like a 12-months-old baby. The child was starved and it's eyes looked all empty. That was very hard to witness. And we couldn't really help them much, except send them on to the church to ask for some food, because that isn't the kind of support our organisation supplies.”

Nina has also met a lot of young Zambians, particularly through a job she's been doing the past few weeks of her stay, teaching at a local school. Meeting the younger generation has also brought out some major differences to Denmark.

“All the young people down here have so many dreams of what they want to do in life and where they want to travel to. But very few ever get to realize their dreams. Even if they get a job, the wages are so low that they won't be able to raise the money to go through with it. In comparison, we have so many opportunities to realize our dreams in Denmark, we have the freedom to do whatever we want and we own so many things. It makes me feel almost greedy. Sometimes I have desperately wished that it was possible to stuff everybody into my backpack and take them back home with me.”

But it isn't really the misery of poverty, Nina will remember the most. On the contrary, her best memories will be that it has altogether been an extremely positive experience.

“Everybody has been so nice and friendly. People are really happy that I'm here. I've made a bunch of new friends, who I will miss a lot,” Nina points out. She definitely wants to recommend the experience to other young people from Denmark.”As long as you're not too squeamish or afraid to dig in and get involved, you'll be fine,” she says with a smile. Nina returns to Denmark in June.