I like Doug's way of putting the personal notes at the end, so I'm gonna start doing that now.

So I'm in Kabwe again for a library training thing. This time I was helping to facilitate the training. The whole thing was pretty frustrating, because somehow Bwana Zambians (like the MOE people) can't fathom that there are still villages in Zambia. Even though I explain to them over and over that I don't have phone reception or email, they just don't understand, or pay attention. So basically I arrived here having no idea what was going on - even WHERE the meeting was. Turns out they got a guy from Zambia Library Services to facilitate almost the whole thing, so there wasn't really much point in me being there anyhow. I only did two sections of it. It sucks cause I had NO idea what the program was going to be, so I literally spent ALL day before I came reading about libraries and writing out every possible presentation I could think of. It took forever, then didn't really matter in the end. I feel like I care about the library thing more than the others and my whole program would have been better. Or at least it made sense to ME. Maybe how Zambians do it makes sense to them too, but it just seems unproductive to me. I guess it was good that they got the expert from ZLS to speak and I should be glad they planned the thing on their own without me having to get on them about it cause it's more "sustainable" if they're able to do these things themselves, but I'm here to bring new ideas and such too and would have liked to have been more involved. Oh well.

Doug says I didn't adequately describe the absurdity of a bunch of Ministry of Education people in suits doing "the rain clap." Oh well. There's others besides the rain clap, such as "the mosquito clap" when you clap/hit yourself all over your body.

After this meeting, I think I'll probably be able to settle down for awhile. Unless I go to the Freedom Day celebration at one of the PCVs sites (but I already have plans to have a local brew celebration with villager Justin) or go to Northwest Province for their Halloween party. We shall see. The worst thing about transport is having to put your body through such misery. You can't drink anything all day, because you know you're gonna be stuck on some vehicle or on the side of the road waiting for 8 hours, so you don't want to have to desperately "wash your feet" as the Zambians say (anything having to do with going to the bathroom is taboo.) For a muzungu in this heat, that's just not healthy! Zambians don't seem to drink or pee, so it's not a problem for them. The other terrible thing about transport is minibusses. Most of them are named some religious thing like "God's Gift" or "Forgive them Father," but these things are straight from hell!! Everytime I have to take one, I say to myself, "This is the LAST time I trust a minibus driver!!" but I always end up doing it again cause they're just so convincing and I'm just too trusting. My latest experience was like this: I decided to take a minibus to the next big town where I was then going to try to hitch. Along the way, the minibus sidekick convinced me to go all the way to my final destination with them. I asked if they were stopping at all along the way and he swore that no, they were going straight to Serenje. I asked if everyone on the bus was going to Serenje and he said yes. The price was pretty good, so I gave in. I told him if he was lying, he had to give me twice my money back. Once we got to the place I originally wanted to drop, he dropped off most of the passengers, who were only going that far afterall and NOT to Serenje as he said, and put me on a different minibus, which spent about 45 minutes puttering around trying to scam more customers. He was NOT going straight to Serenje and he knew it from the beginning! (Funny that he had been harrassing me about not going to church when HE is the one that's a liar!) I asked the new minibus driver for my money back because I had been lied to and wanted to hitch instead. He wouldn't give it back and also convinced me that he was not making ANY stops until Mkushi. I stupidly believed him and off we went, stopping about 20 times along the way. I just wanted to cry. This happens every time I take a minibus. They're just crooks. Why do people have to be so awful? This is the LAST time I trust a minibus driver....

Anyhow, I FINALLY was able to open the old Ipod blog!!! Turns out it most of the stuff I've already redone, so I'll try to delete all that, but there may be some repeats.

So besides being one of the most polluted cities (I guess from the lead mines), Kabwe also the home of “Broken Hill Man,” the oldest human skeleton, as well as the infamous “Mukuyu Tree,” this awesome huuuuge tree that used to be used for a community meeting spot. It has huuuuge branches, long and thick enough to be trees themselves, running parallel to the ground against all laws of gravity. It was really cool. That was the longest sentence ever. Parts of Kabwe are actually very pretty – lots of brightly colored flowering trees and shrubs. There’s lots of these awesome trees that have no leaves – just purple flowers! Neat.

Backing up, we had a training for community school teachers awhile ago. There were a few hiccups in the planning, but it ended up going ok. I did sessions on tippytaps (contraptions to wash hands) and how to make innovative teaching/learning aides.

Then I went to the big city, Lusaka, for IST (In Service Training) which was ok. On the bus on the way down, they played this TERRIBLE six hour Nigerian film about a man who falls in love with a blind lady and all his evil ex-girlfriends who come back in the picture. Then in the end, she suddenly finds Jesus and is cured of her blindness. Not only do they have to show terrible movies on the bus, but they have to BLAST them until the metal on the bus rattles. It just grated in my skull.

After IST, I picked up Doug from the airport, which was really exciting. I wanted to go visit my homestay family in Chongwe, but by the time we got our act together, we thought it’d be too late to get there and make it back my dark, so we didn’t go. We ended up on a minibus that took us all around Lusaka, going in loopdydoops, stopping and making us switch busses, backtracking, dropping us off in random locations, etc. It was kinda frustrating, but mostly it was neat to see other parts of Lusaka. Getting back to Serenje was a big ordeal. We got up at 4:30 in the morning because our taxi was supposed to pick us up at 5:15. 5:15 came and went and the guy never showed, so we had to call someone else and by the time we got to the bus station, the early bus had already left. We got on another bus that was leaving “now.” I should have had him specify whether he meant “now” or “now now,” because we ended up sitting on the bus for four hours before it ever left. That only took us halfway and we had to catch a minibus that spent about an hour in Mkushi, simply driving back and forth from the main road to the market so they could pick up as many people as possible. Then they decided that they weren’t going to Serenje anymore and put us on a different minibus which then proceeded to also drive back and forth from the road. We didn’t end up arriving in Serenje until well after dark. The next day, we tried to buy a bicycle for Doug, which was also an ordeal. He bought a Zambike in the market, which ended up not really working at all. Finally he convinced the person he bought it from to take it back and we then went BACK to Mkushi in search of a better bike. We weren’t able to make it back home, so stayed in the infamous ATB Lodge, this pretty lodge up on the hill. The staff was sooooo friendly and we even got to pick out which room we wanted!

FINALLY we arrived back home to Mpelembe. I was really glad to be back, but was instantly put in a bad mood when I found that all my firewood that I had gathered was gone, as well as my orange-picking-stick and the string that holds my tippytap. I asked the neighbor, and she said something about the chief coming and it looking dirty, but someone else told me the neighbors just took it. This neighbor always asks me to give her things too, which really makes me angry, especially because she has asked for specific things in my house that no one would know about unless they were snooping. I bet it was them who stole my oats too.

Another nice surprise upon returning: I kept smelling a dead rat smell, but couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. Then we realized that the cap to the saladi (cooking oil) bottle was gone. We looked closer at the bottle, and there were at least three dead koswe (rats) floating in the bottle. DISGUSTING. I don’t know why they kept going in one after the other after they saw their friends’ fate. Looks like I’ve figured out how to kill a koswe – just put out a saladi bottle… What’s weird though, is since I’ve returned from Lusaka, the koswe problem is practically non-existent! I might hear just one scittering around once during the night, but that’s it. Not the huge all-night koswe parties that used to go on all the time. Doug must think I’m crazy for how much I complained about the rats, and now there’s nothing. It really WAS terrible though! I couldn’t even sleep!

In other things workwise, I had been in contact with Global Links, the organization in Pittsburgh I volunteered with a little bit, about donating medical supplies to my clinic. Doug was able to get the supplies and bring them when he came. They seemed very excited and grateful to get the supplies, so that was good.

Some Scottish students from Kasanka National Park came to visit my school to set it up with a “twin school” in Scotland, so the students can be penpals. I had kinda wanted to start up something like this with a school back home, and now they came and stole my idea!

I also met with Mpelembe’s Neighborhood Health Committee, which is applying for a grant to do a nutrition training. They wanted some help filling out the application and working on the budget. They have put a lot of work into the proposal already, but I’m afraid they won’t get it because it is very competitive. I’m hoping we can maybe find a way to do the training without money if possible.

Just a note: Zambians are not very good at giving directions. Everything is just "uku" - "just there" with the wave of the hand. Very frustrating.

The neighbors have puppies now. They’re the filthiest droopiest little Zamdogs you’ll ever see, but they’re pretty cute. Doug whistled at them one day, and they all came trotting over all happy. Zambians don’t really treat dogs or cats as pets (they even have the same word for “animal” and “meat”) and beat them pretty regularly, so I think the little dogs were really happy to get some attention.

I’ve learned two interesting cultural things lately. 1) If you pass someone in the same spot twice, whoever says a certain Bemba phrase first must receive a gift from the other if they meet at the same spot for a third time. 2) Zambians get their last names from the first name of their father. For example, Ken Andrew married Diana Winton, who then became Diana Andrew. They had Laura Ken and Carrie Ken. Laura Ken married Doug Gary, becoming Laura Gary. They would then have Elizabeth Doug and Max Doug.

Another thing – Zambian traffic cones are a series of tree branches put in the middle of the lane.

I mentioned in a previous blog that I had written to some companies asking for free stuff. Here’s what I’ve gotten so far: 1) A reject letter that they can’t send stuff because of customs 2) A “Return to Sender” that actually made it all the way back to Serenje, which I found quite amazing 3) A package with two free aluminum free deodorants and three natural chapsticks!

On a negative note, we came to Serenje so Doug could visit immigration. They said that his papers were inadequate, which was information completely opposite to what they told me when I specifically asked them about it long before he came. The immigration officer was very mean and acting completely ridiculous (I think because he knew he was wrong), and made me cry right there in the office. Last time I updated I wrote from Lusaka as we were trying to get the right letter from them.

We (me and two other RED PCVs) had a meeting in Kabwe with some “bwana” Ministry of Education officials to address some issues we were concerned about, mainly with community schools. We had to plan and facilitate the whole thing. I think maybe we made some progress. There was a lot of discussion and we made plans to try to fix a few of the points. Who knows if anything will get done, but we tried.

Oh, I forgot to write about the great tute (cassava) adventure. We went over to the headman’s field to help harvest some tute. We were snacking on a little of it that Peg gave us. Then she yelled at us when we started eating the “wrong” type. I guess the light one is ok to eat raw because the cyanide level is too low, but you’re not supposed to eat the dark one. Later that day, Doug and I both got headaches and were so exhausted, all we could do was sleep the rest of the day. Oops.

Ok, so now back to the present-ish.

So I forgot to mention that I got my lovely bedbug rash thing again when staying in the hotel in Chipata. Yay!

I realized one good thing about going to Lusaka. As I mentioned in the last blog, I like how I feel set apart from the other muzungus since I know the language. In the village, it’s not that big a deal because people maybe don’t even think that you WOULDN’T know language – doesn’t EVERYBODY speak Bemba!? But when you go to the big city, none of the other foreigners (from various government things, companies, organizations, NGOs, tourists, etc) know the local language. So when you greet someone in Bemba, they’re just so shocked and tickled. All of the workers are Zambian, even in the fancy muzungu-owned places, which bothers me, but I at least feel a little better about it when I can chitchat with them in Bemba. Like at the guesthouse place I was staying. I had a nice long conversation with the cook in Bemba, and then when he came out to give people their food, he knew what I had ordered and knew me by name. It was nice. Not even the muzungu lady that ran the place spoke to him in Bemba when she was ordering him around.

I've been trying to get the Girls Club started. It's extremely frustrating. I've showed up twice now and waited around an hour for no one to show up - not even the two girls who are supposed to be helping to lead it. I'm going to give them one more chance I think. I really wish this would happen because I really want to brainwash all these village girls with feminist ideas.

Wild Fruit updates: 1) Mupundu - Tastes like a sweet potato and makes my tongue go numb (just like bananas and walnuts!) 2) Suku - Sweet gooey stuff that can be sucked off the seed 3) ?? - The FIRST good fruit I've had are these little things (all the fruits are exactly the same size - tiny) that look kinda like plums and are bright orange inside. They're sweet/tangy. Most the fruit sticks to the seed (like a mango only worse), so you could really spend an hour working on one fruit. 4) Mangos - They're starting to form on the trees now, but all the little iwes (kids) are eating them unripe! I had to know what the fascination with unripe mangos was, but when I tried one, it was just TERRIBLE! So gross! Why can't they just wait til they get ripe? Do they actually know what a ripe mango tastes like or has one never come to maturity in Zambia before an iwe can eat it?

More wildlife/pets updates: 1) I was in the bathing shelter brushing my teeth one morning and this THING came in. It was a the puddliest little puddle frog I have EVER seen!!!! So ridiculous looking! It couldn't even begin to hop - it kinda just walked. It'd never be able to pick up it's fat little body with it's stubby little legs. So funny. 2) All of a sudden, these HUGE spiders have been appearing at night. Like as big as a tarantula!!! I'm not normally afraid of spiders, but these things are creepy and they hover across the floor at the speed of light. 3) Speaking of bugs, I don't remember if I've mentioned the nocturnal biting ants or not. They're these yellowish ants that come out in the evening and STING when they bite. Then it stings on and off for an hour or so, then alternates between stinging and itching, then itches for a week, usually causing a HUGE leathery welt. I usually get bit on my butt too, cause they get me when I'm sitting down. The last one was a couple weeks ago and I actually still have a black and blue spot from it! 4) I've seen two biggish lizards with bright blue heads. Very pretty. 5) Mulenga (Clinic guy) has finally revealed to me the secret to catch garden moles. "They think they're SO tricky!!" he said. What you do is put a dead fish in a can then wait for the impashi (flesh eating ants) to fill the can. Then you put the can in the mole hole. He claims it is impashi instinct to go down the hole until they find the mole. 6) I don't know if Doug admitted this on his blog, so I'm going to. He keeps an egg chart. When the chickens lay, how big the eggs are (yes, he actually measures them!), etc. 7) Still no bees in the bee box, but a swarm of tiny stingless bees has made a home in one of the posts of the garden fence. They look like flying ants, but they can make honey. We can't really decide what to do - whether to try to get the honey or try to put them in the bee box. I would hate to hack down the hive of the poor little defenseless stingless bee. It seems so wrong! I guess they're good for pollinating the garden, so I think I'll just leave them alone. I am curious to taste their honey though.... 8) Someone from Kasanka National Park called a community meeting in Mpelembe a couple weeks ago about overfishing the river. They said that fisherman are not allowed to catch small fish anymore, only big ones (guess they'll have to find something besides mosquito bednets to use for nets). I can see this causing problems cause it's a good source of food in the area and some people also make their living that way. When the headman came back from the meeting, he told me in his best English, "The Zambian Government doesn't want to kill the baby fish." 9) Fireball has gone crazy. She thinks that she's hatching chicks, but we take the eggs, so she just sits on the empty nest and sqwawks.

Besides the eggchart, I have to tell on Doug for another thing. When he got here, he SWORE he would NEVER speak Zamlish (the weird slow monosyllabic way you to speak English to Zambians), but now he speaks a fluent Zamlish, complete with all the Zamtermonology.

So since I've been in Mpelembe, Charles the headman's son, has been promising to take me to the Livingstone Monument. He kept cancelling and I finally gave up on it. Well, a week or so ago, his sister Peg offered to show us since she wanted to go out that way to visit a friend. We agreed, but when she showed up in the morning, she expected US to bike her! Doug biked her a couple of kilometers, then his tire blew out and he had to walk home. I decided to continue on because I felt guilty that her friend was expecting her. So I biked Peg the rest of the way - 30 kilometers through the bush. Very tiring. The monument was nothing to speak of. It used to be a tree with an engraving near where his heart was buried, but the tree got a blight, so now it's just a small monument. I was there about 2 minutes before we spent the whoooooole rest of the day sitting with her friend. I was exhausted and hadn't brought enough water because I didn't know we'd be spending alllll day there. It's the hot season now and just too hot to bike 30 k and not have enough water. Zambians don't drink water or liquids of any sort besides beer, so they wouldn't even understand. It was terrible. Then I had to bike her all the way back. On a bright note, the bushpath we took was COMPLETELY deserted. Really, no villages between Mpelembe and Chipundu where the monument was. It was neat to think that I'm the first muzungu to ever be there (unless that's the path Livingstone took too). I guess even most parts of Mpelembe have never been touched by a white person.

Apparently there was a small earthquake in Mpelembe! Mr. Chisenga, the headmaster at the school told me about it. It was while I was gone, but Doug didn't feel it. Maybe it was only by the school.

So I decided to chop off my hair for hot season. Well, had Doug do it. It's very short. At first it looked really bad, but now it looks good after I cut some bangs into it. It looks REALLY good right after I wash it and REALLY bad if my bike helmet pushes it funny. Doug says it makes me look like an anthropologist. I'm not sure what that means.

It's very frustrating when Zambians think everyone in the US is rich. They think that I have a house, car, and job waiting for me when I get back. I think I already wrote about this before, but I try to explain to them that it costs so much MORE to live in the US, so it's much harder. For example, my neighbors are richer than Doug. They may have an income of 50 pin a year or something, but they have no expenses - even food, because they grow it or work directly for it or beg it or steal it. So they're 50 pin to the good and Doug's $50,000 in the hole. Maybe we should start begging THEM for food. I don't know what to do when they beg. I hate it because I feel like they are only nice to me beacuse they want me to give them something. And I never know who to trust cause I don't know who it is that steals from me (nothing major - just oats, rope, soap, lighters, scissors, firewood, natural fibers, etc.) I usually end up giving them something 1/3 or 1/4 of the time. I can't possibly every time, because then I wouldn't have enough to eat! It's not like I have food laying around. My garden is in shambles and I can only buy what I can carry in vegetables once a month. They plan to start a garden once the rains start, so I really don't see why I should be obligated to give them MY food when I've been laboring alllllll dry season watering my garden. They could have done the same thing and then they would have food. It's just such a weird situation because I feel that the redistribution of wealth is a good thing, and since I (along with the school and clinic workers) am the most "wealthy" in the village, it seems that I should be giving to others with less or not get so upset when they steal from me. It's so hard to know where to draw the line though. I don't feel like I'm "rich" or able to provide for others, but they probably think so. Just like super-rich people in the US wouldn't want to give away their things to me, even though I feel like they'd be able to. Just a matter or perspective I guess.

I've been thinking about Jamaica sometimes and wishing I had gotten to see more of the country, especially the rural areas. I feel like the only image I got of Jamaica was Kingston and even though I came back feeling like I was a Jamiaca expert (maybe rightfully a Rasta expert), I realize now it was a pretty shallow experience. If I had come to Zambia, and ONLY experienced Lusaka or Kabwe, my image of Zambia would be TOTALLY different than what it is!

It’s still probably confussing to everyone (even myself) what exactly my “job” is or what I’m doing, so here’s what I’ve been working on:

~ Monitoring community schools (small community-run mud hut schools in the bush that usually only go up to grade 2 or 3 and are taught by untrained teachers, some only with a grade 7 education themselves) to see how the teaching is going and if there’s any problems I can help with. We bike to 1-2 schools a week, 6-30 kilometers away.

~ Teaching a “Life Skills” class to 8th and 9th graders at my school once a week. HIV, goals, gender, etc.

~ Starting up a “GLOW Club” (Girls Leading Our World) at my school.

~ Next year, I will be helping to run Camp GLOW, so work on that will begin in a few months.

~ Trying to get a library started at my school.

~ Training MOE about how to start libraries.

~ Eventually helping my school have an organized system to keep track of community schools.

~ Trying to get a computer donated to my school (they just got solar panels) and if successful, teach computer classes.

~ Making a map of my zone and taking photos of all the community and government schools.

~ Helping plan and facilitate community school teacher trainings at my school every term.

~ I’m going to try to get some paint donated to my school.

~ Helping my school apply for grants, etc.

~ Attending school and community meetings.

~ Helping one of my community schools with fish farming and gardening (compost and natural pesticides).

~ Possibly teaching some people 30 some kilometers away about gardening.

~ Hopefully helping my neighbors to make a garden so they stop begging me for food.

~ Maybe teaching about beekeeping if I’m successful myself.

~ Probably giving away chickies if we have them and maybe teaching people that you can actually EAT the eggs every day instead of waiting a year to eat the chicken.

~ I would like to teach about the benefits of using soya beans, but Doug is trying to unconvince me because of the whole hormone impersonator problem or whatever.

~ Volunteering at the “Under 5” (where mothers can bring their babies to get weighed) at the clinic every so often.

~ Got some medical supplies donated to my clinic through Global Links.

~ Helping the Neighborhood Health Committee fill out a grant.

~ Hopefully working with the NHC more, doing trainings of Community Health Workers.

~ Trying to get bikes donated to Community Health Workers and Traditional Birth Attendants. Followed by a bike maintenance training. – My main project now.

~ Trying to figure out ways to deal with sexual abuse of young girls.

~ Trying to get other school supplies, teaching aides, etc, donated to the school.

~ Random things like the Kabwe workshop and helping out with the mobile HIV testing.

~ That’s all I can think of off the top of my head!


PS - Check out the funny quote on the side bar thing.


bo-bo – Bushbabies are not runts!!! They’re monkeys!!! They’re supposed to resemble the earliest primates. Their eyes can’t move, but their heads can spin 180 degrees. They’re nocturnal and eat tree sap and spiders, but don’t drink any water. They sound so silly!

Mom - The USB thing is not like the normal zip drives that are the memory stick things. You’re able to put a memory card right into it and use it like that. The one I have is called “hp usb digital drive.” Part # 338796-001; Spare # 338824-001; Other # N279; Other # E-D900-03-4232(B). And the phone charger thing I need is the voltage converter. I THINK the phone is ok. I might be able to buy a Zamphone from one of the volunteers who will be leaving soon, though, which might just be easier.

Dad - I got the letter about the drunk driver crashing through the rose garden! That's crazy! Did you ever find out any more about who it was?

foo - I tried to get on those websites and didn't have much luck. :( The Howard Hughes one requires a written request for any foreign shipments, which I can do. The Arbor Day and Women in Science one only have online forms to fill in which don't give any options for anything out of the states. The Environmental Protection website was overwhelming and most the links were dead, so I gave up, but might come back to it next time I use a computer. And I could only find links, not physical resources, on the Dept of Edu one. Ahhhh. Help!?

Other Carrie - I thought of a few things that we can't get here. 1) decent pens 2) any less-chemically more-natural toothpaste, shampoo, conditioner, deodorant, soap, etc 3) powdered garlic

Anybody - I came to Zambia with my wonderful scrapbook full of pictures and the pages people made me. BUT, everything's all tucked into the book, so I can't put any of the pictures up. I have a picture wall with things people have mailed me, but not there is an unequal distribution of faces. (For example, it's 90% Elizabeth). So, people that ARE on my wall are: Britt, Stacy, Renee, Jamie, Julie, Pookie, Elizabeth, Max, Vince. If anyone else wants on the wall, you'll have to mail me your photo. Also, the only photo poor Doug has is one of Spots, so Doug's family should send him some photos too.