I’m in Serenje now for the “PCVL switchover meeting” and a going away party for the old PCVL and another volunteers whose two years are up. Michelle, another education volunteer who I work with the most, is going to be the new PCVL, so that’s cool. We have internet in Serenje now! Wow! Now it’s only a two hour trip instead of a four hour trip to use the computer. I wasn’t even expecting to be in Serenje. I just found out about this meeting the night before because one of the Peace Corps Medical people came to visit and passed on the message. (They have to come to check once a year to make sure we’re not sick and our icimbusu is clean and such.) Now I get to use the internet before Doug and I’m so glad because he had copied down my list of things to write in my journal/blog since he can never remember and was going to claim them for his own when he uses the computer next time he goes to Lusaka. Now I beat him to it and can rightfully claim my topics! Ha.

Just to let everyone know, the coordinates of my insaka are S 12*20’42.0” E30*09’40.7” and the altitude is 1200 m. (I know this cause farmer Peter came to visit and brought his little GSO (is that what it’s called?) contraption. Try to get on that Googleearth thing and see if you can find it!

It’s rained once now, but I can’t wait for the rains to really start, so I can finally stop watering the garden. Mr. Chisenga told me I’m really a farmer now because I’m hoping for rain all the time. It’s interesting because if I wasn’t gardening, I would probably be dreading the rainy season because it’ll be really inconvenient and difficult, but now I really anticipate and appreciate it. Justin and I have been gathering grass to thatch the roof once we see where the holes are.

So the biggest news is that we got a third chicken. For awhile we just called it “New Chicken” and we’re still not sure of what to name it for sure. We tried “Clucky” and “Plucky,” but neither sounds right and we just keep calling it “New Chicken” by accident. She’s black and white and actually really cute. She’s very personable. We’ll just be working on some project somewhere and turn around only to see New Chicken standing there staring at us. She just kinda follows us around and watches what we’re doing. She also loves to sit in the insaka and come into the house. She laid her first egg on the couch! I hope the chickens all live a long time and don’t get stolen or eaten by the chicken hawk, because I’m getting rather attached to them. (Whenever the chicken hawk flies overhead, the chickens all try to hide and the neighbor kids do their chicken hawk call to try to scare it away.) Fireball is still crazy, thinking she’s sitting on eggs, but hopefully it’ll pass soon. She’s pretty goofy when she puffs up or charges across the yard at nothing at all. Crazy. The neighbors got another rooster, who is terribly annoying. He crows really loud and really early, but worst of all, he’s just terribly ugly. He’s one of the “headless chickens” as I call them, with no feathers on his head or neck. We want to hatch baby chicks in a month or so, but unfortunately, this new rooster has top “pecking order” over the other two and therefore mates the most with our chickens. We don’t want headless chicks. We’ve thought of maybe kidnapping it and biking it out into the bush in the night, or offering to buy the neighbors a new rooster if they eat this one.

The second-best thing to happen since citemene also has to do with fire. I guess people just like fire too much. One evening, we decided to throw some burning grass down the pit latrine to clean it out better. The fire exploded more than we expected and flared up all the way to the hole. It was this awesome underground fire that glowed and shone out the top like a beacon of light. It just looked like the fires of hell shooting up or a volcanic rupture or something. Really exciting. A little gross too, I guess.

So October 24th was Freedom Day for Zambia. We went to the school in the morning to watch a little of the student assembly. An old man told the history of Zambia’s independence in Bemba. Later, Mr. Chisenga told me that the he had it totally mixed up, so he’s going to try to find a different old man for next year. There were also some sketches and dances. I still don’t understand how Zambians can move their hips the way they do. It doesn’t look possible. It’s not too terribly interesting to watch though, however, because Zambians do EVERYTHING one way and only one way, so it’s just the same move the whole time. They also celebrate all of their holidays exactly the same. New Years, Freedom Day, and Christmas all consist of drinking home brew, eating nshima, and maybe a little of one-move dancing. That’s it. We went to villager Justin’s house for the celebration. The homemade beer (made of amale grain, sugar, yeast, and water) and wine (made of sugar, yeast, and water) were better than I thought, but still needed sugar added to be able to drink it enjoyably. Justin’s mom made me wrap a chitenga around my waist (the ONLY proper way to dance) and dance with her. It was pretty funny swiveling my hips with this old toothless drunk bamaayo. Justin was kinda drunk and was funny, showing us his “small battery” club that he can use to take a criminal “straight to Serenje” if needed. Apparently he has some kind of community police position or something, although I’m sure he’s never had to use it. I asked if he had handcuffs and he said yes and that he kept them in the bedroom. Doug and I just cracked up because he had no idea how funny that sounded. He also explained that he could kiss his wife Brenda whenever he wanted – “No mistake!” The day was ok, kinda boring at times, and kinda fun at times. We went home at 5:00 and fell asleep. Then I was sick all night from the homebrew.

Another exciting thing was visiting farmer Peter. He’s working with (or owns?) this company that’s trying to make biofuel. He’s been experimenting with cassava, sweet potato, and this Chatrofya tree. So he’s distributing tree seeds to villagers to plant, then he’s going to buy them back once they grow to make the fuel. So he invited Doug and I to come when he was teaching villagers about it one day. It took so long to get there, that we missed the whole presentation. Oops. I want to get my village involved too, because it seems like a good thing for everyone – income for villagers and making biofuel. It was really fun to see his farm though. He lives in this lush beautiful area – just amazing. It’s so beautiful and peaceful with big trees. His orchard was wonderful and very inspiring. We stuffed ourselves on strawberries (the sweetest, most delicious I’ve ever had), macadamia nuts, and fresh squeezed ice cold milk. The South Africans cracked me up so much when they started talking about "waffles" but said the "a" like in "cat." After one of them said it, for some reason, they all felt the need to say a sentance with "waffle" in it and I could barely contain myself. We went down to the river and jumped in which felt wonderful. There were twenty yellow baboons on the other side of the river, who jumped around barking and swinging in the trees and staring at us. They were so cute and fascinating. I was so glad to finally see some wildlife up close! He also kept pure white turkeys and guinea fowl, which looked and sounded ridiculous. We camped out there and could barely sleep because the bugs/birds/frogs/critters/etc were so loud. It was amazing how different it was than the village where there’s no wildlife left. There were three other South African men there too who were friends/family involved in this biofuel thing too. They were pretty funny and incredibly hospitable, but a little elitist and racist. It was like a little mini-vacation. I wish I had a river in my backyard. We biked the 54 kilometers back to Mpelembe. Twas hot.

For awhile, there was a tree in our yard that was shedding its pods all day every day, but they don’t just drop off like a normal pod – they EXPLODE off the tree with this loud “bwoing!!” It’s a quite wonderful sound and I because an expert at impersonating (?) it.

Even though I decided to give up my running career, I decided to start running again, so I’m doing that. It’s starting off pretty slow and frustratingly, but it feels good to get some endorphins again. Now I have to bathe more though, which is a huge ordeal. I decided to take part of the roof off the bathing shelter because it was just too COLD in there to bath in the shade. It’s better now, but now that the rains are starting, I need to try to cover it back up again because I didn’t realize the rain would wear away the mud mortar so much. Oops.

The main things I’ve been doing with the school lately are the Girls Club and my Life Skills class. I guess I should say “TRYING to do.” It’s extremely frustrating. We’ve had four supposed first meetings of the Girls Club and no one has shown up, even the girls who are supposed to be in charge of it. It’s extremely frustrating for me to prepare the meeting, go to the school, sit around for an hour waiting, then go home. Life Skills has been frustrating too. It’s been hard enough even HAVING the class because there’s either no classes that day for whatever reason or I’m away. Then when I do, it’s totally confussing because the time keeps changing and the students are just being particularly frustrating. I gave them a simple group assignment and gave them half the class to prepare it. Then when I came back the next week and asked them to present, only one group had finished and they had done it wrong anyhow. The others wouldn’t answer me, lied to me, and just chitchatted amongst themselves. After much probing and frustration, I finally told them that the class that day was to be their presentations and since they didn’t do their assignment (which they already had time in class to do), there was nothing to do, so class was over. I told them I was not happy with them and I left early. Maybe a little dramatic, but I was sooo angry. I don’t have to be teaching this class. Teaching is not part of my Peace Corps assignment at all. These Life Skills classes are easy and supposed to be “fun.” They’re not graded or anything, and the students can’t even do one simple little thing. So frustrating. The 8th grade class fared a little better. Three groups did the assignment, two of which did it wrong.

Way back when during training, I sketched down how to build a solar dryer from a LIFE volunteer. Now that rainy season is about to start, Doug and I decided to build it, in case Mulenga’s description of the Mpelembe mango surplus is true. It was pretty fun to build (except for Doug almost cutting off his pinky with his pocket knife saw trying to cut down small trees) and the frame turned out really well, actually. The covering is not so great. It’s patched together with medical tape and bandaids, but we ran out, so the wind is tearing it apart right now. We tried it out though, and it sundried some tomatoes! Hooray! Doug and I are going to teach about organic gardening in two weeks to some villagers, so we’re going to include this too.

I gave the empty medical tape role to falling down pants boy because I figured he’d want to use it for wheels for the little pully cars they make out of garbage – quite impressive actually. He was absolutely elated and has been carrying it around in his pocket ever since.

Another funny kid is Wizzy, one of the headman’s sons. He’s in 8th grade and only knows a little English. His English is so simple that everything he says sounds soooo dramatic. Like when he wanted us to help with the citemene, he said to Doug, “Help me save my home!” and whenever he comes to borrow something he always uses commands. “Help me your bicycle!” “Put this away!” He’s so convincing, I usually just do what he says. Then when he pointed to the fuzzy caterpillar, he told me “Carrie! DANGER! Very poison!” I probably shouldn’t be laughing too much, because I’m sure this is how my Bemba sounds too.

Speaking of Bemba, it’s a very inarticulate language. They have the same words for today and tomorrow, for morning and night, for meat and animal, for to need and to want. It’s very hard to express subtle differences that I want to differentiate, such as saying that I HAVE to go to a meeting in Serenje, not that I WANT to. It’s very strange.

We bought a hoe head and Justin taught Doug how to make the handle. He’s extremely proud of it and wants to make an ax handle now too.

At least making things ourselves, we know what the quality or unquality is. It’s sooo frustrating buying these crappy things made in China that just fall apart. Garden spades that last a month, bookbags that last one hour, bikes that last a few months. And it’s not like these things are cheap, especially for a villager. A bike is a HUGE expense and it just falls apart immediately. It makes me so angry. I honestly don’t know how a company can consciously make and sell these things knowing what they’re doing. It’s just ridiculous.

More animal updates: 1) It’s fuzzy caterpillar season now. The one’s that cause a terribly itchy rash. One day, I literally killed over 50 of them. It was terrible and disgusting. 2) It’s also green edible caterpillar season now too. One day, we heard some ruckus in the woods near our hut and found the neighbor kids CUTTING DOWN the biggest tree in the area just so they could get the caterpillars out of it. It just made me feel sick. Zambians have no regard for non-human life at all. Whether it’s animals or nature, they just don’t see a problem with burning a forest or breaking a bird’s legs hours before killing it to eat it. 3) The neighbor kids also showed us a turtle they found for dinner. It had the most beautiful shell! Move over painted turtle, this one really looked like it was painted! 4) There’s a bug that lives in my medical folder. It’s so funny. Whenever I get it out, which is maybe once a month, I just know that bug is going to be there, and he always is. So strange.

You wouldn’t believe the problem we’ve had cutting onions lately. Unrefridgerated, they usually make your eyes water anyhow, but this last batch is just ridiculous! I can’t even get through one onion without having to leave the room and take a break. It just burns terribly!!!

So I’ve realized several threats to my former beliefs/desires since being in Zambia. I guess it’s easier to wish for these things than actually do them in practice. I still have hope though. Sarah, what do you think?

~ I used to think that a sense of community and less boundaries would be a good thing, but now I long for privacy from constant visitors and almost which I had a fence.

~ I used to think that less cars, more public transportation and bikes should be the way, and I still feel this way, but I get incredibly frustrated waiting hours for an uncomfortable an expensive ride.

~ I used to think that less consumerism/possessions/media/etc was a good thing, and again, I still feel this way, but I am appreciating it more because it drives the creativity and diversity that is so lacking here.

~ I used to believe in no government, but now I get frustrated when funding for the school and clinic isn’t coming through.

~ I used to think there was no excuse for not farming organically, but even though I’m still not going to do it, I see the benefits of getting rid of pests so you can eat the vegetables before they do.

~ I used to think that killing animals was always wrong, but now I’m trapping rats, squishing caterpillars, and throwing sticks at the headless rooster.

~ I used to hardly ever eat junk food, but now it’s such a treat, I find myself buying semi-good biscuits I never would have bought before and even a cold coke when I go to the city.

~ As in my last blog, I used to think that giving to the less fortunate and sharing was a good thing, but I hate it when neighborlady asks me to give her food all the time.

~ I used to despise super rich people, but now we kind of ARE the rich people and I certainly have no problem eating my rare chocolate bar or peanut butter and jelly without sharing.

~ I used to think that people should help themselves, not just be given things, but most of my projects revolve around getting things donated – books, bikes, computers, paint, etc.

~ One reason I wanted to live in another country was to always challenge my sense of reality, but now village life has become my life and I get stressed out when I have to go to Lusaka and it messes with my reality.

It’s funny cause after I updated my last blog, I thought, “Oh NO! I forgot to write about the new bucket!” then realized how ridiculous it was because something that’s such a huge deal in my daily life is not interesting blog-material at all and something no one back home would find interesting. Basically, we keep losing buckets down the well or they would break, so the latest one was really small. It took probably 15 draws to fill up the bucket I use to water the garden, where the one before only took 6 draws. It was extremely frustrating, so when I was in Kabwe, I bought a new bucket that now only takes 4 draws! The problem is that it’s super heavy and the rope hurts your hands as you draw. I’m afraid the rope will break soon and we’ll lose it anyways. There, that’s it. See? That’s not even interesting at all, but it’s a very big deal. So in light of this, I decided to start a “Handy Hut How To” section where I can explain in very boring detail all of the everyday village things. My first one:

Handy Hut How To – How to open up shop for the day

Wake up from the rooster, chickens, or school bell. Put on something that covers my knees. Start a fire and cook breakfast. Brush teeth outside. Dump out the compost and empty the trash. Pour ash from the brazier down the pit latrine. Draw water and do the dishes. Take the solar charging devices outside. Draw water and water the garden. Possibly sweep.



Mom – Thanks for the Indian dinners (very exciting!), tomato seeds, book, etc. I JUST now got the package even though you mailed it in August. Actually, I got ALL these packages the same day, so it was very exciting. Also, don’t worry about sending a new converter or battery charger. I’m just gonna try to get the stuff here. The only thing I REALLY need is the zip drive thing to put my camera card in.

Bonnibelle – Thanks for the granola bars (I honestly forgot there was a such a thing), tea, etc. It’s nice to have a different tea once in a while because we always buy a big package of the same thing.

Pookie – Thank you for the dish scrubbies and pot holders. I had a potholder I bought in the market but I caught it on fire (Doug claims I shouldn’t have tried to pick up hot coals with it), so I needed a new one anyways.

Grandma – Thanks for the necklace. The chicken tried to eat it.

Doug’s Nonna – Thanks for the seeds, nutella (it was hard to ration it), chocolate, etc.