Merry upcoming Christmas and Happy New Year!!!

It’s getting to be more of rainy season now, but still not rainy all day every day. Maybe every couple days. What’s weird though is that the thunder here sounds different than it does back home! I didn’t know it was possible, but it sounds more clear. Or muffled, I can’t tell. It sounds like it’s right over head. Or you can hear it move across the sky. It lasts longer, more rumbly and sometimes it crackles and snaps like an electrical explosion is going on right over our heads! Doug claims he saw lighting hit our yard during one of the snapcracklepops. One time it even HAILED! Can you believe it?!

It’s also beginning to be mango season. Not very many super ripe ones yet, but you’ve got to eat them as fast as you can or the neighborkids will snatch them all up unripe. It’s a frustrating race to try to eat mangos off our own trees. The neighbors have also been driving me up the wall lately asking for things. Fallingdownpantsboy now sits on our porch for hours and asks for 20+ things each day. It’s just ridiculous. Two times in one week, they woke us up Odeing (what you say when you want to enter someone’s yard or get their attention) early early in the morning wanting to borrow my bike. Knock knock knock ode ode ode knock knock ode ode ode ode ode Carrie? Carrie? Pavlik? Douglas? Ode ode ode knock knock Pavlik? Carrie? Carrie? Carrie? Carrie? ode ode Douglas? RIDICULOUS! If we’re not going to answer the first eighty times, why would we answer the eightyfirst?! Actually, I guess it did work cause finally I jumped out of bed, unlocked the door and gave him my damn bike. Soooooo frustrating. How can they possibly not see that as rude? I just don’t understand.

One day, Doug and I were sharing the one ripe mango we found and Peg saw us. “Kiss Love!” she said and everyone started laughing. She accused us of Kiss Love another time when we shared a piece of cassava. It’s hard enough not being able to show any affection, not even hold hands, in the public arena that is our yard. But sharing a mango? Geesh.

In other fruit news, watermelons are for sale in Serenje now, so we had a couple of those. I even tried to cook with the rinds. Not the skin, but the part of the rind that tastes kinda like cucumber. Squash, sweet potato, watermelon, rice. It was ok. The watermelon didn’t really add anything besides bulk which is good when you don’t have any veggies to begin with. Peter also brought us some lychees from his farm and they’re DELICOUS!!

Doug and I managed to celebrate Thanksgiving at the hut! We cooked all day like real people do, but mainly just because we had one set of coals to cook over. We had soya pieces for turkey, mashed potatoes, corn that was so bad we gave it to the chickens, squash, stuffing, cranberry sauce, sweet potato pie, and wine. Delicious!! Doug had gone to Lusaka the week or so before, so that’s how we got everything. A couple things from Serenje. The only things from Mpelembe were the oil, sugar, and buns for stuffing. Another day, we experimented making banana cream pie and it was quite delicious. Didn’t hold together at all, but delicious.

So after getting back from Serenje last time, in one day, a million tragedies happened. It hadn’t rained like we had expected while we were gone, so what was left of the garden died. Then we found that a rat had dug up and ate most the seeds we planted in our field. Then we found that a grasshopper lopped off the head of the one fruit tree seedling that grew. Then we found out that the chickens are pro-choice and had pushed the two fertilized eggs out of the nest, letting them smash onto the ground. A couple days later, we heard a crash bang boom and found that the chicken house had fallen down because termites had chewed through the support stands. Silly little chickens weren’t phased at all though. Just slid over to the corner as it fell and sat there piled in the corner. Since these tragedies have happened, we’ve been able to plant a new nursery for the garden which is doing ok, replant seeds for the field which is growing fast, found that another fruit seedling is growing (but just one out of twenty or so), gotten more eggs to eat because two of the chickens are unbroody now, and rebuilt a cuter and better chickenhouse. (I don’t know if I’ve talked about “natural fiber” before or not, but it’s strips of special tree bark used to tie things together. Fences, chicken houses, etc.)

New Chicken is still broody and living in the old fallendown chicken house. Fireball and Pochohantas decided to start laying in our house up on top of the bag of charcoal! So silly. It’s fun watching them though. The one waits patiently for the other to finish, then jumps up to do her business. Or sometimes they’ll both squeeze on there together. Traditional Egg Attendants, I guess. After they lay, they do a special squawk for several minutes to celebrate. If the rooster hears it, he does the squawk with her too.

We have wild Amaranth growing by our house. We were waiting for the seeds for “kinwa” (??) and to plant more, but Peg came by and pulled off the leaves to cook. We were devastated, but decided to eat some leaves too since it was already a lost cause. They’re actually quite delicious! More flavorful than spinach even! I’m hoping more will grow that we can save seed from because they grow like weeds! I mean FAST! Two weeks and you’ve got a meal. I want a whole field of them.

We got new bars made for the beehive by a village carpenter, but he didn’t make them the right size either! Better than the others, but still. The bees won’t like it. I just don’t understand why these carpenters won’t follow the directions we give them. Do they think we don’t care or won’t notice? So frustrating. We paid him and took the bars anyhow. No bees have come yet. I miss honey.

Doug and I finally ventured to Kasanka National Park. (I’m the closest volunteer to it, but it’s still 60 some kilometers away.) We wanted to see the fruit bat migration. It was pretty impressive. Millions of bats. Flying overhead and just moving in a sheet across the horizon. Unfortunately, before seeing the bats ourselves, we saw some photos in the lodge that were taken with some superduper camera, so what we saw was less impressive than what we were expecting. I really wish I hadn’t seen those pictures. We biked through the park, so I think we got to see more things that if we were in a car, cause the animals weren’t scared away as fast. We saw three different types of monkeys. One was really small and up close. It was sooooooo cute. I could have snatched it right up. Saw lots of “puku” deer type things, which weren’t too exciting, but they pranced across the fields in slow motion quite eloquently. One young one got prancing too fast and almost knocked itself over. A couple neat birds – bright green one, one with a really long tail, and one that flew around in little circles whenever it twittled. We camped out there near a stream and early in the morning, we heard the graceful grunting/snorting of a hippo! It was my goal to see a hippo, so I was really excited. We got up early to search for it. The plain our camp overlooked was just magical looking with fog and dew. We went down to the stream, but could not find that darn hippo. A neat thing we did find though was an area filled with invisible frogs/birds/bugs that made this amazing pulsating chorus of croaking/chirping sounds. I can’t even describe it. The stream was very small and they could have easily built a bridge over it, but for some reason instead they have a “pontoon” you put your car on and pull it across with ropes. We didn’t have a car, of course, but it was fun to play with. Another cool thing was this little platform they built way up in this huge tree that overlooked the Park. It was kinda scary climbing up, but had a good view. We also walked through a thick rainforest area which was so cool (temperature) and beautiful. It’s amazing that this area is so close to Mpelembe, but looks totally different. Makes me jealous. On the way back, one of the employees I had met with before gave us a ride partway to the road. She was taking the boss’s two little sons to preschool. It’s AMAZING how different Zambian and white children are. Just night and day. These kids were little brats! Fighting with each other, messing with the car gears, throwing tantrums because they didn’t want to share a seat. They’ve spent most their little lives in Zambia, so is it a cultural or biological thing?

Speaking of wildlife, one day Wizzy told us he was going into the bush to hunt tigers. “TIGERS?S?” we asked. He fumbled around a bit then admitted he couldn’t remember the right word in English, so he just said that instead. Really he meant puku deer type things. I guess they take their dogs out to hunt, which is equally as ridiculous because Zamdogs are just little pockets of skin and bone. This one little dog I see sometimes has ears that are bigger than it’s whole body. It’s ridiculous. They’d probably have better luck hunting with their catapults (slingshots). Doug and I (and Wizzy and Kapiria) built a catapult so now we have something to play with. There’s no rocks in Mpelembe so we have to make bullets out of dirt first and dry them in the sun. Quite tedious, but we had fun shooting at the dish bucket up in the tree for a target.

One day we were over at the headman’s house and Peg asked what kind of lotion I used. When I told her I didn’t, she was amazed and the headman told her it was because we had “Jehovah’s skin.” I’m not sure what that means.

Speaking of Jehova, Jehovah’s Witnesses brought us an AWAKE pamphlet! Right to our hut! Even in Zambia.

My friend Kapiria who moved to Chalilo came back to Mpelembe for two weeks to retake his grade 9 exams that he failed last year. It was nice to see him again. I went with him to visit his aunt in the next village. They were shocked that I was wearing trousers instead of a chitenga and gasped when I swung my leg over my bike to get on. His cousin was very, um, open, with me though. She asked me about birth control and whether it worked. I told her it did if used correctly. She said it didn’t work, went into the other room, and brought back a baby as proof! Then she was trying to ask me if women in the US breastfeed. I was getting the general idea (the whole conversation was in Bemba, of course), but wasn’t fully understanding the question. So to further explain, she came over, set the baby on the lap, grabbed my boob and pointed at both! I already knew the question involved breastfeeding, so this hands on approach didn’t narrow it down much more. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it before, but Zambians looooove wall decorations. Anything. They have wall calendars dating back five years on their wall. Two clocks – neither one working. The one clock was the gaudiest thing I’ve ever seen. Fake wood with fake gold trophy columns on both side and a fake gold eagle at the top. Bright fake flowers behind plexyglass and fake butterflies on both the clock hands. At the bottom is scrolled, “High Class Quartz Clock.” The most hideous thing I’ve ever seen.

Some other good Zambian things I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned or not. Middle/upper class men loooooove long toed leather shoes. I mean looooong toed. Some even curl up at the end. My ZIC loves em. And some people wear puffy winter coats in the hot of hot season and wrap their babies in several blankets while wearing knitted hats and booties. And as much as Zambians think they have such distinct gender roles, when it gets combined with ours, it just gets so mixed up. Boys will wear second-hand shirts with the PowerPuff Girls and the purse I gave to Peg the headman now carries around every day. Funny.

Found some more chameleons. They’re just so cute. Try to stretch themselves all tall and bite. They don’t have any teeth, but it does kinda hurt. Zambians think they’re poisonous (or related to witchcraft) so they kill them as soon as they see them. We were over at Justin’s one day and found a chameleon. We were so excited and started playing with it, letting it crawl all over us, onto our heads. They were just in shock. Mostly amused I guess. We must look so crazy to Zambians. It’d be like a Zambian coming to the US, thinking a squirrel is amazing, picking it up and putting it on their head.

I decided that I’m going to start collecting flowers to press and bring home so I can make a flower arrangement of Zambian flowers when I get back! It’s kind of exciting cause now I’m always on the lookout. Gives me an important purpose to guide my life I guess. After two years, hopefully I’ll have a few flowers. They’re so rare. Mostly just little weeds.

There’s these funny little short square boy and girl kids, same height, that live the next house over. They have to be only a year or so old, but you’ll see them just standing somewhere alone out in the bush. They both have the grumpiest little faces and always accuse us “MULI SHANI!!” so angrily. It’s hilarious. They’re so cute.

Fallingdownpantsboy now has a hole in the FRONT of one of his pairs of pants. Butt cheeks in the back, winkydoo in the front. Does he really not notice?

I’m teaching Doug how to play Gin Rummy. I think he’s only beat me once.

So I found out that Stacey from my training group was hit by a truck while waiting for transport! She has some injuries and is back in the US recovering. I hope she’s able to come back once she’s better!

If anyone can find me strong balloons, could you send some? The kids use used condoms they find trash pits to make the inside of their plastic bag balls. They blow them up like balloons which is completely unhygienic, especially with HIV and all. I guess HIV can’t live out of the body for more than a couple seconds, but still, that’s just gross.

Speaking of trash pits, I feel good that we hardly produce any garbage. I guess a lot compared to Zambians, but NOTHING compared to Americans. All food scraps go to compost. All one sided paper goes to the scrap paper folder. All two sided paper or used scrap paper go to the burn bag, as do all boxes and burnables. Cans and bottles go to the garden for tree nurseries or are used in the house to store things. Other garbage knickknacks are kept for various purposes as they arise – candle holders, etc. Much of the actual garbage is swooped up by kids to make toy cars. So what’s left really isn’t that much.

(Warning – Sarah – Don’t read this – I already wrote this to you in a letter first.) So I’ve been reading this collection of articles called “Women’s Health: A Global Perspective” and it’s really interesting and shocking. Like, in all countries besides the US and Canada, women work longer hours than men, not including housework and childcare. And women produce something like 80% of food, especially in developing countries. (I think it’s interesting that in the US, we say women were being oppressed if they stay at home not working, yet when they are the main breadwinner, we also say they’re oppressed. I guess it should just be equal.) It also talked about how females are disadvantaged when it comes to health throughout their whole lives. As kids, often male children are given priority and girls don’t get as much food or are taken to the clinic as often. (I don’t know if this is true for Zambia, but certainly children are given low priority. They eat the leftovers after the adults eat. Girls are certainly sent to school less, as well, as to not waste school fees on them.) Then as they get older, there’s problems with early marriage and pregnancy, way too many births, unsafe abortions, etc etc. I had no idea abortion was so common either. It said that one out of five Romanian women are infertile because of unsafe abortion. Rape too. Anyhow, it’s all very interesting and saddening. I don’t know how much of this stuff happens in Zambia, but I’d like to talk to one of the female teachers and the clinic about it. I still want to work with Traditional Birth Attendants at some point too, so maybe if my girls club never happens, at least I can do that.

I don’t know how much I can actually do in Zambia development wise. Their basic way of life is good and doesn’t need changed. The main things are gender issues, HIV, health, hygiene, income, nutrition, education, and just a general attitude change as far as there only being one way of doing things. As difficult as change seems, it’s also very strange that under the right circumstances, Zambians will accept radical change without question and never look back. Collective cognitive dissidence, I guess. Like, although it wasn’t immediate, they completely abandoned their own religions for Christianity and now cling to it more tightly and literally than the missionaries who converted them. And various school policies or farming techniques can be adopted immediately and retaught as the right way – with no question or wondering why the old way was replaced. I think it has to do with who gives the information. If it is some kind of respected authority, they just accept it, because leaders are very much valued here. (There’s a photo of the president in every public building.) Then they don’t think about it or modify it to fit their own situation – they just do it. Then cling to it as tightly as they clung to their previous “one way” way of doing things. Blind change is just as bad as no change at all I guess.

So, workwise, I’m still working on trying to get books for the library. So far I have 34 books, magazines and articles. Donated by mom, Bonnibelle, and myself. Just today, I got 14 boxes of random textbooks and teaching materials from Zambia Library Services. It’s exciting, but I’m not sure how useful they will be. What are we going to do with 30 copies of a literature textbook? I guess I’d like more children’s books for students and villagers to use, not just materials for teachers who will probably never touch them. I’ve decided to make some little books in Bemba too! I’m having trouble coming up with story ideas though. I’m just not a good fiction story writer I guess. I want to try to make them Aesopey, with the hidden morals the desired changes I mentioned above.

As for my bike project, I don’t have enough PCVs interested yet, BUT I have a new brilliant idea. The bikes for sale in Zambia are just of ridiculously poor quality. And they’re not cheap to a villager. It makes me so sick that they can spend a year’s worth of money on something that will fall apart in a week. So my new idea is to take all the bikes not going to my health project or other PCVs and sell them very very cheaply in the village. If I can prevent even 100 rip-off bikes from being sold, I’ll feel pretty good. Then I want to use the money from the sales to get a village carpenter to build shelves and tables for my library. Other supplies too – paper, folders, tape, pens, dictionaries, etc. (Otherwise, I’m not sure how I’m going to get these items, especially shelves! Eeek!) I emailed the bike guy today to see if he was ok with this idea of reselling his bikes and if it’s legal. I hope it’s ok and works out!

We had a community school teacher training last week. It went pretty well. I taught about “Revision and Remedial Work” and did an HIV game.

Another project is helping farmer Peter distribute Jatrofya seeds to villagers in Mpelembe. He’ll give them the seeds, pay them to plant them, then buy the seeds they produce back to make biofuel. We’re holding a community meeting about it this coming Saturday.

Note: Check out my Profile thing to see the books I've read so far. I'm sure I'm forgetting a few though.



Handy Hut How To – How to Light a Brazier

Fill the brazier with charcoal. Grab a lighter and take it outside to insaka. (Charcoal, brazier, and lighters must be kept inside or they’ll be stolen.) Pile twigs, sticks, dry grass, and scrap paper (stored in the insaka) in layers on top of the charcoal. Light it up. Keep adding the aforementioned tinder to keep it going several minutes. When the flames are just about out, take the brazier out of the insaka and swing it back and forth (or over your head if you’re brave) for several minutes. Be careful not to lose momentum or hot coals will fall on you. If you’re wearing a skirt, hold it back. Then but the brazier on the front porch and let the coals catch each other on fire for several minutes. Cook! When the coals are done, dump the ash down the icimbusu.



Mom – Thanks for the books for the library, especially the childrens books. I wrote a letter to that National Geographic Little Kids magazine to see if they’ll donate more.

Mom, Dad, Grandma, Cathy, Isabelle – Thanks for the Christmas presents! I’ve been good and haven’t opened them yet. But one ripped open and it was the one with the battery Christmas lights, so that’s good! They look good in the hut.

Pookie – Thanks for the new bookbag and such. I have a bunch of stuff to carry back with me this time so it works out perfect. I just got a letter from dad that said you were robbed AGAIN! How?!?

Doug’s Dad – Thanks for the books, chocolate, etc

Tony & Carrie – Thanks for the variety pack package! Especially the Dr. Bronners! Or is it Brommers? Either way, I’m excited.

Grandma – How’s that ant and rubbertree song go? I can’t remember the beginning of it.