Work, continued and Zambian languages

For the first few weeks I have been here, I've been trying to determine the exact scope of the work Care wants me to do, to make sure it really creates value.  I pretty much have it figured out now.  I will be designing and conducting a research study, via a survey, to estimate the impact to local village economies of Village Savings and Loan Associations (micro credit really).  I will also be surveying Social Cash Transfer recipients and doing the same sort of calculation.  We have now narrowed the target zone down to the village of Kamwi, in the district of Kazungula, which is right near Livingstone, which is where Victoria Falls is located.  So, I'll be spending at least another couple of weeks in that are.  Livingstone is a bustling town and while it's "the tourist capital of Zambia", there are far fewer during the dry season (now).  Here are the folks in the village we'll  be surveying.

The four main local languages in Zambia (there are over 70 altogether) are Nyanja, Bemba, Lozi and Tonga.  In Kazungula, (area 12 in the map below) they speak Tonga, whereas in Lusaka , most people speak Nyanja, not because it's the native tribe of the area, but because most people originate from Eastern Province, near the border of Malawi.  The intern I am working side by side with (Andrew) 

is from the Copperbelt province (where African Barrick has a mine) so he speaks Bemba.  Confused yet?  I am.

But, Zambia has only one official language and it's English!  The newspapers, radio and tv, billboards, street signs etc are all in English.  The founding president, Kenneth Kaunda, decided that it would be too divisive to choose one of the 70 (or one of the 4) so he chose English.  But what I didn't realize before coming here was that it is everyone's second language (except mine) and of course it has nothing to do with their first.  So, the whole country gets by operating in a second language for official stuff, but uses their own at home and among themselves.  On the street, in the markets etc, you rarely hear English, though everyone speaks it to a certain degree.  But in the villages where I will be working, very little English is spoken.