Kareen's Yoga by Kareen Zebroff

Seven bumpy hours after leaving my yoga retreat near Victoria Falls, we were at last driving home along Lusaka’s shady Independence Boulevard. Our British/Canadian son-in-law, who grew up in South Africa, pointed out the splendid government offices of the presidential state house and the vice-president’s big chateau with its various ministries. Few native Zambians were to be seen in this privileged neighbourhood; only the statuesque figure of a young man, carrying all he possessed on his head, as he walked with dignity in soiled and torn pants that revealed most of his buttocks.

A roundabout led to several residential compounds for foreigners that contain larger and more beautiful houses than the average family has in Canada. Often, these are rented by the various foreign agencies from wealthy black Zambians (oh, yes, they do exist), at a high US dollar rate. Although one does not see weapons everywhere, as is apparently the case in Uganda, armed robbery is of great concern for foreigners.

The houses all sport tall wooden gates before which one has to honk for the hired guards to open up; high plastered brick walls with electric wire on top, and bedroom-wings with their own locking floor-to-ceiling metal-gates. Most people also have maids and gardeners, an arrangement that serves both employer and employee well in this country without jobs.

The inherited gardener, husband to the maid Mavis, was diagnosed with TB within five days of our daughter’s arrival in Lusaka. It was recommended that our daughter let the man go, because of a doctor’s strong suspicion that the TB was caused by HIV, which, together with AIDS, is rampant in Zambia because of the notorious promiscuity of the men and because of superstition. Witch doctors routinely prescribe the unspeakable “cure” for this pandemic as consisting of having sex with virgins or babies.

The young couple insisted on giving the gardener a year’s wages, so that he could get an excellent housing start in a government-subsidized compound. Unfortunately, he and Mavis did the very human thing of squandering the money on several smaller things instead, just as we rich Westerners often manage to do with our handy credit cards. In one case, employers had generously paid out their guard when they left the country, but the man spent it on a much-desired TV although he had no electricity.

After much agonizing by the new parents, Mavis was kept on for higher wages than most, but the doctor first taught her the strict hygiene practices so necessary around TB, with explicit orders for never feeding, holding, touching, or kissing the baby. As the usual salaries of servants consists of about $80 a month, empathetic young people such as ours give their staff a bit more salary and supplement it with lots of perks such as a big sack of corn-flour every month, 30 fresh oranges weekly, bags of whatever produce happens to be in season, clothes sewn for them, extra paid work and a regular supply of condoms.

The maid and the baby’s wonderful nanny, Honoraria, had welcomed us on the day of our arrival with shrieks of delight, a little dance and a huge heart-felt hug. Such enthusiastic behaviour is culturally conditioned because we are especially revered as parents. Nanny loves to cook and was so impressed by my having written a cookbook, that she was keen on devising new recipes with me every day, as our daughter had been helping her with the writing of a Zambian cookbook. A course in first aid will also assist Honoraria in getting a well-paid job later. Truly a treasure, she is loving and intelligent and uses instinctive child psychology as though she had studied for years under Jung.

The day of our arrival, Honoraria’s younger sister’s husband died of meningitis at age 36, after only a few days of terrible headaches, leaving the widow with an 18-month-old child. Honoraria went to the wailing that evening, after first cooking the funeral foods. A devout Jehovah’s Witness she has already become, at age 43, a sort of wise woman who never proselytizes, although the church is obviously important to her. The next day, we sat very close together on the grass - this open and affectionate culture not having any sense of personal space - and did what every African loves to do for comfort and an instant meditative state: repetitive chanting. (Continued in May)

Kareen Zebroff’s classic, revised book, The ABC of Yoga (Foulsham title: A Gentle Introduction to Yoga), as well as her Yoga-Over-40 video, may be ordered from her website www.kareenzebroff.com