A Woman's Place is Building the Home
During this journey we attempted to fully respect and participate in all Zambian cultural customs, but we all weren't "equally yoked" in that effort because of differing expectations there, which were delineated by gender. This burden was much heavier on the women in our group, since Zambian women are typically restricted to certain roles and types of dress, while the men are seen as the ones in control and can essentially do whatever they want.
To give a few examples, the women in our group were required to purchase and wear chitenges (traditional wraps), since even a pair of shorts can be considered too revealing in rural areas. Needless to say, these are not so easy to do construction work in. Additionally, on multiple occasions, the senior man in the group was considered the one in charge and treated as such, to the exclusion of all women involved. Despite the fact that the 7 female students had done all the planning, all the preparation and all the hard work to make this trip possible, the two professors, Zach and I were often assumed to be speaking for them. Frequently, Zambian men would purportedly speak to our entire group but only make eye contact with the man they assumed was in charge. Frustrating, uncomfortable and wrong in many ways, it's hard to think about how to change that on a scale big enough to see women as equals across Zambia.
With that said, this trip offered two wonderful examples of how we get there. First of all, the women in our group did a fantastic job of just leading by example and showing Kawama how much work they could get done. Never hesitant to dig in with a shovel, stack a load of bricks or hop down into a deep pit and get dirty digging out a latrine, they proved that they could do just as much work as any of the men in our group. Secondly, one of our Habitat group leaders, Charity, left Kawama a few days early so she could organize the final details for Habitat Zambia's Women's Build, which took place in Lusaka (Zambia's capital) during the latter portion of the trip. A group of prominent women (ambassadors, wives of prominent Zambian leaders, the new director of Habitat Zambia and many more) built a house in a matter of hours and got tons of great local news coverage in the process.
It was so exciting to see that, more than just building homes, Habitat Zambia is taking steps to empower women. On top of that, I was proud to work alongside a group of women who made sure that our trip there did the same, through the way they silently challenged those perceptions and with determination and hard work helped continue to chip away at that cultural hierarchy.