I’ve always been skeptical of family. In my younger years, bursting with teenage angst and all its misunderstood splendor, pledging unyielding fealty to a group of people I had no choice in choosing — a group of people decided through mere circumstance — felt a bit contrived.

On a dusty road in the rural outskirts of Zambia’s Western Province lies a small village by the name of Yuka. While tempting for the casual observer to define Yuka by its absences — running water, electricity, and reliable internet access — doing so is a lazy oversight; a gross materialistic over-simplification lacking nuance and sensitivity to complexity.