Well, I’ve been in Zambia a year and two months now, and at Mpelembe for about exactly a year, so I guess I should do some mid-service reflection. (Our Country Director told us that besides the first three months, the one-year mark has the highest ET (“early termination” = “quitting” rate)!) So, is my Peace Corps experience what I thought it’d be? Yes and no, for good and bad reasons. In many ways, it’s much better than I ever would have expected. Naively, I assumed that living in Zambia would be similar to living in Jamaica and that it’d be a really terrible and challenging experience. But of course, they’re nothing at all alike. Zambia is calm and safe. The people are friendly and helpful. I’ve been able to work closely with my counterpart and feel totally comfortable at the school, whereas I had no clue what was going on in my Jamaican classroom. I’ve formed quasi-relationships (the best you can with such language and cultural differences) with neighbors, whereas I was afraid of and despised many people I met in Kingston. I love living in my hut with my chickens. I have a life here. I never felt so comfortable living with old ChopChop. While I still can get emotional or go a little crazy every once in awhile, it’s not anything compared to the struggle I went through in Jamaica. (I really appreciated how great it was here during the first few months, but now am starting to take it for granted I suppose, so I need to try to remember these things when I start to get down.)

Because race was such an issue in Jamaica, I figured it would be here too, but it’s not (with the exception of Lusaka). In the village, I really don’t notice that they are black and I am white. In fact, lately, I literally can’t tell the difference sometimes. I will see someone from a distance, and somehow because of how the sun is hitting them or the colors they’re wearing, I’ll think it’s a muzungu when it’s not at all. Maybe I just need new spectacles, I don’t know.

I also expected to see poverty, but poverty has been completely redefined for me. Just because someone is living in a mud hut and doesn’t have a job doesn’t mean they are “suffering.” Education and health care are problems, but I don’t see anything wrong with daily village life.

When I was sitting on my bed in Meadville reading my invitation package, I was totally psyched about this exotic place called Zambia -even though I knew better from my Jamaican experience that the honeymoon stage fades after a couple months (that’s why people take short vacations – so the novelty and excitement of a new culture never wears off). And of course, they novelty of Zambia has worn off as well. That’s probably the biggest letdown of things I didn’t expect and really has an impact on everything else. However, while it does make things way less exciting, it’s never a completely bad thing either. Really getting to know a culture and seeing how it is similar and different from your own is worth destroying your original vacationy impressions. (That can be accomplished in half a year, however.)

Another thing I didn’t expect was how much contact I would have with other Peace Corps Volunteers and staff. I really expected to be dropped in the bush and picked up after two years. But I see a muzungu at least once a month. It’s messed with my total bush integration experience, but I am grateful for it as well at times.

Along with that, I didn’t think I’d see so much technology. I thought I was throwing my cell phone to the wind when I left the states, and now – I have a cell phone in Zambia. (Not that I get to use it much, as I don’t have reception within 90 kilometers of Mpelembe.) Also throw in an Ipod, flash drive, camera, battery charger, etc. Computers, phones, etc – rare, but they’re here.

I also thought this would be a time of quiet contemplation and seclusion from the world, but that’s not the case at all. My yard is public domain and people constantly “ode” me.

Another thing, not so much an expectation, but a goal, that hasn’t been fulfilled – my own project. Yes, I have my library project, and plenty of work things I’ve initiated that I get satisfaction out of, but I need to have some project where I create something for myself. Write a book, make a movie, etc. It hasn’t happened yet and the creative juices are still not flowing.

Once I was actually in Zambia, I formed some more expectations that were blown away. For example, I thought I’d be totally self sufficient – growing all my own vegetables, baking my own bread, making my own soymilk and peanut butter, having fruits and eggs, etc. I haven’t had a full meal yet from anything I’ve grown, making soymilk is the most tedious thing in the world, and of course we all know about the chickens’ laying habits.

I also thought that I was going to transform into a super-woman and be in the best shape of my life – biking, carrying water, eating locally grown vegetables etc. But I actually live a more sedentary lifestyle than in the States and eat way more carbs (e.g. nshima, pasta, rice), cooking oil, and processed stuff (e.g. milk powder), because that’s what I can rely on when my one week supply of veggies is gone.

Ok, so what things did I expect? I did expect to struggle, and that has been the case with transport, finding food, the heat, trying to get work done, working around Peace Corps obstacles, etc. (Again, I guess I should remember that I did expect this whenever I get overly frustrated.)

I expected to learn about a new culture, to an even deeper degree than Jamaica, and that is true.

I expected to be set apart from others and seen as an oddity by Zambians. This is true, but not as much as I thought, and mostly in a good way, as opposed to Jamaica.

I expected to grow as a person, and I think I have. I have a good work relationship with my counterpart. I have the confidence to flag down a car and hitch alone across the country. I’ve learned to greet everyone I see and make small talk with strangers. My public speaking skills have improved immensely, with teacher trainings and Life Skills and all. My morals have been challenged by dealing with the Mumba's (result of that yet to be determined.) I’ve also learned and discovered so many more things than I’ve taught – how to start a fire, how to keep chickens, how to make compost, how to grow vegetables, etc. And while I’ve had ideas about how I want to live simply in the States, I now KNOW I can do it and even have a template to follow.

Happy one year anniversary, Carrie!

Doug and I went to Luala Pula Province because I had some days off over Easter. First we went to Mansa where the Peace Corps house is. We knew they had a Shoprite (big grocery store) so we wanted to get some groceries for the trip. Unfortunately, it was Easter and the store was closed. We sat around hungry all day and bought groceries in the morning – all of which were stale/expired/moldy/bad. Big disappointment. Then we headed to Samfya where there’s Lake Bangwelu. According to guidebooks, it’s full of crocodiles, but the locals said the crocodiles are actually only in the swamps and wetlands. So we went swimming and it was great. Took a dugout canoe taxi to town for nshima and camped out on the beach.

So we just harvested our first buckets of sweet delicious “golden syrup” (aka “honey”) from our hive!!! April Fools. After staying two weeks and even starting to build a comb, the newest hive abandoned ship as well. Swarming season’s over now, so I don’t know if we’ll ever have bees.

The Zamdog died.

The Professor is really big now. All of a sudden, he turned good and big at the same time. Weird.

Finnigan is eating now and he’s as cute as ever. (He will not allow his soul to be captured on film, however! We just can’t get a cute picture of him!) He’s such a sweet gentle little cat. Always has to be purring on somebody’s lap. Sometimes he’ll gently bat at a piece of grass or something, then out of nowhere, the Professor speeds by him like a bullet, knocking him over. Patty and broody Fireball keep attacking him too. Poor little guy.

We’ve saved up a pile of Fireball and New Chicken eggs for New Chicken to sit on. (Pochohantas started laying too late, so she won’t get to pass on her genes.) New Chicken is really cute, tucking them under her. They’re due to hatch in mid April.

I don’t know if I’ve written about chicken noises or not. They make different calls in different situations. There’s the “I want to lay an egg” call, the “I just laid an egg” call, the “the chicken hawk is flying above” call, the “I’m eating food” call, the “I’m just kinda walking around content” call, and the “Carrie just sneezed” call.

Looks like my purpose in life may actually be fulfilled afterall! Doug and I are seriously considering getting a milkgoat. A goat, Pookie, a goat!!! (Zamgoats don’t make an excess of milk, only enough for their young, so we’re gonna see if we can buy one from a commercial farmer.) We got so excited talking about it one night that neither of us could sleep. If it works out, then I’m gonna try to get more and start a kind of goat co-operative in Mpelembe.

Our banana tree (or “plant,” technically) just shot out its flower thing! Hopefully we’ll get more bananas than we did oranges. The neighbors stole all of them.

I still can’t decide what’s right about the neighbors. They beg every day and it’s driving me insane. We send them away 80 percent of the time, but we do end up giving them a lot – salt, sugar, oil, beans, etc. And I guess we can afford it, so it seems fair. Why should they not get to have the same things we do? But they survived before I got there and will after I leave. I wasn’t sent as their personal Peace Corps Volunteer to give them whatever they want. Ack. Where do you draw the line between being nice and being taken advantage of?

They’re also on my bad side now because lately they’ve started only addressing Doug and not me, seeing how he’s the man of the house and all. (Even though obviously they know that it’s my house and I survived fine without a man before Doug came.) I guess it’s fine because it relieves me the duty of having to deal with them because they request Doug when begging (even if they want to use my bike). Let me tell you, these patriarchal little Mumba’s are not gonna get one grain of salt after Doug leaves and they start talking to me again only as a last resort!

Despite this, it’s really only Patty, the adult Mumba's, and the Mumba dog who eats our eggs, that get to me. Not a big fan of Kalunga or Victor either, but they’re not around much. I really like Joshua and Makumba, and Ngosa seems nice.

The neighborkids took us on a wild ginger (sour/spicy/fruity root thing) hunt the other day. Doug and I were so bad at spotting them! The kids had bags full and we could only find a few! It was really funny, them guiding us around like we were little kids, saying, “Ba Carrie, kuno!” (“Here, Carrie”) as they cleared the weeds away and let me dig it up so I could feel like I found it myself. In the end, I think I found about twice as many ticks as I did wild gingers.

Seems our muzungu novelty has mostly worn off. We used to see the headman, Peg, Wizzy, Justin, etc, just about every day and now it’s hardly ever.

Doug made me a swing out of wood and ulushishi (tree bark fiber) as a surprise!!!! Unfortunately, I have not gotten to use it yet, because if I get on, iwes come out of the woodwork to watch the muzungu on a swing. The kids are getting a lot of use out of it, at least, but now it’s broken.

Most of the best stuff that happens here is impossible to capture. Just conversations with people. I talked to a truck driver for three hours about family planning. He swore that the pill does not work, because his wife just had another baby that week. He wanted to know what “secret” we had in our “donor country.” (This is actually the second person who has complained to me that the pill doesn’t work. I wonder if Zambia’s being given expired pills or there’s a fake pill trade or something?) I explained exactly how she must take the pill and he claimed that was what she was doing. Finally he concluded that Zambian men are just “too powerful.” He also did not believe me that we don’t have tribes in the United States. After much argument, finally I just told him that I was of the Czechoslovakian tribe and he was satisfied. I got another ride from the Minister of Lands for Serenje and his wife who works at Tushenis. They’re from Mozambique and of Portuguese descent. She said to me, “You only have two races in the United States – white and black. How did they get there?” That took some explaining. Then she went on about how we have those snakes that eat diamonds in the US. I tried to convince her that while it is possible, most snakes do not regularly eat diamonds. Must be some crazy movie she saw. My conversations with Mr. Chisenga often turn interesting too – from divorce, to abortion, to overfishing the local rivers.

History repeats itself. Again, I don’t know if the bike project is going to happen. After completing my PCPP proposal, I was told I had to redo it in a different format, even though I followed what it said in the guidelines. So I spent several hours doing that, then met with the appropriate Peace Corps staff to discuss it. Turns out, only one out of three even read my proposal, yet they were unsupportive of it, saying it wasn’t community driven and wasn’t sustainable. I started crying right there in the office, because after months upon months of working on this, I’ve just been delayed and shot down along the way by Peace Corps staff. They knew what I was working on from the beginning, and even recommended the new bike organization after they disapproved of the other, yet they couldn’t tell me half a year ago that it had no chance. While I also have issues with community involvement, sustainability, and monetary aid in general (not wanting to just give a hand out; wanting people to help themselves instead, etc), I don’t see why this project is any worse than another. If anything, mine is more sustainable, because I am not just taking money and buying a library, but am using the money as start up for a fundraiser for the library. And the participants will be trained in bike skills (one as a professional bike mechanic) and library skills. Isn’t that sustainable? If one person learns one thing from the library and uses that information, isn’t that sustainable? And one bike will be used as a continuous income generating activity for the school. Isn’t that sustainable? What is “sustainability” anyhow? I guess I don’t really know.

The project is currently waiting to be pre-approved by Peace Corps Zambia before it would be officially approved by Peace Corps Zambia, then Peace Corps Washington. After having a week or so to think about it, however, I’ve pretty much decided that I’m not going to go through with it whether it gets approved or not. Originally, when I was working with Pedals for Progress, I was going to have so many bikes that anyone who wanted one in my village could buy one. While I don’t think that making a difference in the lives of only a few people is unimportant, it just seems like a lot of work and money for something that doesn’t benefit everyone. The only fair way to choose would be a raffle, but then there’s no way of knowing if the people who get the bikes are the ones who would most benefit from them. I also foresee problems with jealousy, maybe even theft and juju. And even though I’d be selling the bikes, not giving them away, I don’t want to encourage the “give me things, give me things” attitude that’s so common here. I hate to support the old Protestant work ethic, but I guess I do want the community to work for some of this stuff instead of it just being a handout. All the books for the library have already been generously donated – the least they could do is put up some shelves, right? I don’t know. The most important part of the project was to fund the library, so I’m still going to try to work on that. Hopefully we can get the Ministry of Education to do it. If not, hopefully by community contribution. If not, I’ll have to go for some other grant or funding.

So it was not a total waste, I’ll post my rough draft of the proposal (minus boring budget and stuff like that) after the blog. Oh boy!!!

Peace Corps has also changed the guidelines to their other grants - the SPA and VAST. The SPA has been used for the past couple years to fund Camp GLOW (Girls Leading Our World), but now camps aren’t allowed according to the guidelines. It’s completely ridiculous, because a girls empowerment camp is really really important! I’m one of the three who is supposed to be organizing the camp for this year, and now we’re stuck. Our options are: 1) Doing a PCPP, but I am already doing one, so it’d be difficult 2) Somehow changing around the whole camp to fit through some loophole in the guidelines 3) Finding a private donor to pay for the whole thing, but unfortunately none of us were in Girl Scouts or a sorority, and those are the only ideas we had 4) Trying to find some other NGO to fund it 5) Not holding the camp.

I don’t know the reasons, but I have my guesses for why funding has been cut for so much lately. (They didn’t even have money to reimburse us for travel for mid-term meds last week!) I know that George Bush was trying to increase funding to Peace Corps to increase the number of volunteers around the world, in attempts to make people like the USA better. And we are getting more volunteers. Too many! Eastern Province’s Peace Corps House already has twice as many volunteers as bedspace, and it’s just going to get even worse! Why don’t we take care of the people and projects that are already here, rather than throwing more confussion into the mix? More funding to Peace Corps sounds great, but shouldn’t we focus on quality rather than quantity?

The Peace Corps gods have been with me lately. I’ve gotten a bunch of bwana free rides!

I’m now in Serenje for second site visit. I’m taking one of the new volunteers to see his/her site where he/she will be placed in a month. I'm curious to meet the new Central Provincers. It's going to be such a change, because we're losing half of our group that has been here since I arrived and replacing it with all new people. Weird.



Mom/Bonnibelle – Do you know (or ask Gloriabelle maybe if you don’t?) what the furthest back woman’s surname is in our family? I’m curious what my last name would be if lineage was matriarchal. The most I know is only Irons-Brown-Mason. (Of course, even the furthest back surname that can be traced is still her father’s last name. Oh well.)

Britt - Happy birthday, assuming I don't get to blog again til then!

Renee - I think I forgot to tell you happy birthday, so happy belated birthday!

foo - Happy birthday! April Fools, I know it's not your birthday, but didn't want you to feel left out.



Attachment 1 ----- Useless PCPP Draft

Summary

The end goal of this project is to have a functional school library for students, teachers, and villagers to access books, thus improving education and literacy. The structure already exists and books are currently being donated by family, friends, and book donation organizations. To finish the library, only shelves, furniture, and office supplies are needed. Instead of requesting the finances directly, we are taking a different approach for fundraising that addresses other community needs along the way. We are seeking financial assistance from the Peace Corps Partnership Program to purchase nineteen bicycles from the organization Zambikes through ACIRFA. Eighteen will be sold at a reasonable price to villagers and community workers (e.g. Traditional Birth Attendants, Neighborhood Health Workers, Community School Teachers, etc), as the bikes being sold locally are not only expensive, but very poorly made. The money raised from selling bikes will be used to purchase the needed library supplies. Bike recipients will be trained in bike repair, and one will be trained as a professional bike mechanic. The remaining one bike will be donated to Mpelembe Basic School to be used as a community bicycle as an income generating activity to pay for a night watchman for the school’s new Zonal Resource Center and library.


Background Information

Mpelembe is a small village of around 4,300 people located 135 kilometers north of Serenje Boma on the Mansa Road. It is a quiet place with a few shops and bars at the roadside, a hammer mill, a Zonal Head School, three community schools, an understaffed clinic, many small churches, a ZAWA station, and a woman who sells buns and fritters. Villagers are of the Lala and Bemba tribes, most speaking their native tongues, with only a handful of people fluent in English. The people of Mpelembe live simply in mud brick huts with thatch roofs without electricity or running water, although a few own small solar panels to power their radios. Water is drawn from a well or pump and food is cooked over a fire or charcoal. Three quarters are fish mongers, gathering their wares from the nearby Luombwa River or the farther Luapula River which forms the boundary between Central and Luapula Provinces. The rest are subsistence farmers, and in fact, everyone – whether fish monger, shopkeeper, or teacher – has at least one small field of cassava and groundnuts. Nshima is still the staple, but you won’t find much breakfast meal in these parts. It’s sticky smelly cassava nshima, or “tute ubwali,” territory.

Established in 1949, Mpelembe Basic School has six classrooms, thirteen teachers, and 822 students. It is the head school for the zone, which contains four government schools and fifteen community schools, the farthest being thirty kilometers away. ZEST has been active with IRI Trainings and GRACE meetings for community school teachers, although monitoring has been difficult due to weather, distance, and teaching schedules. Students can participate in the Congololo, Drama, AIDS/Red Cross, Culture, Mathematics, and Science clubs. Parents can participate in the PTA, which meets at least once per term to discuss the general running of the school. In (2006?), the Danish International Development Agency funded the construction of a state of the art Zonal Resource Center, complete with solar panels. It is currently in its final stage of construction and will hopefully be the home to an office, library, and conference room for teacher trainings before the year is out.


Community Need

The project actually has four parts, so there are four needs to be discussed. First, the need for a library. Most people in Mpelembe are illiterate. While students are taught English early on in school, by grade nine, most are still not fluent. This is obvious from my difficulty in teaching Life Skills to eighth and ninth graders who stare back at me blankly when I speak in English. It is also obvious from this year’s grade nine test results, where out of (fifty-four?) students, only thirteen passed, and out of those thirteen, only four earned a high enough mark to be accepted to a high school. For better or worse, Bemba students are taught in English and grade nine tests are written in English, so if a student doesn’t understand the language, it is impossible for them to succeed in school. Yet, students are curious and motivated to read. I continually lend out books and magazines to literate teenagers, and the village kids constantly go through my pile of burnables, begging me to let them have my old letters and pages from my tax instruction booklet. Access to a wide selection of books and magazines in a library can help villagers to improve their literacy skills.

Books also educate, entertain, stimulate thinking, and provide insight into topics and ideas a person may have never considered. Zambian culture is based on tradition and maintaining the status quo, not on change or thinking “outside the box.” This works fine for aspects of daily life, but change and critical thinking is needed in areas such as gender equality, animal welfare, environmental conservation, and debunking health myths, to name a few. If reading can help to expand the mind or show that there’s more than one way to approach a concept, it is one of the greatest needs in Zambia.

The library will also be of great use to teachers, who can use the books in their classrooms. This is especially true for community school teachers who teach far into the bush and have no resources whatsoever. Furthermore, teachers who are pursuing their (degrees?) at teacher training colleges will have a supply of resources to use for their studies. I have had several teachers come to me to borrow “anything at all” (even Peace Corps’ Bemba training manual) that could help them write their (?thesis’s?). Others choose to leave the village to seek out books, which only hurts the students they are being trained to help, because time in the classroom is lessened.

One of my main projects as a Rural Education Peace Corps Volunteer has been gathering books from family, friends, and organizations to open a small library at Mpelembe’s Zonal Resource Center to meet these needs. Textbooks, novels, magazines, reference materials, school management manuals, HIV information, and children’s books have arrived and will continue to arrive. They are being recorded, classified, and labeled according to library standards. The Zonal Resource Center structure is almost complete, with a room set aside for the library. There’s a space and there’s boxes of books, but there’s nowhere to shelve the books. Books stored on the floor can have no usable locater system and will be destroyed by termites. Before the library can be opened, it needs furniture – shelves for the books, a desk for the librarian, and tables and chairs for library users. It also needs supplies such as notebooks, pens, markers, paper, and tape. DANIDA, the organization that funded the construction of the building, has not allotted funds for furniture. While the Ministry of Education has promised to furnish the office and conference room, the library is still unfunded and it is even questionable if the money for the other rooms will ever manifest, given the MOE’s lack of ability to fund other basic needs. Therefore, another source of income is needed. The money from the sale of eighteen bikes will be able to cover the cost of library supplies.

The second need this project will meet is that of a night watchman at the Zonal Resource Center where the library will be located. With solar panels, school supplies, and a room full of books, a guard is needed. The Ministry of Education has not allotted a salary for Zonal Resource Center guards, so his or her payment will come from community donations as well as money raised from the community bike IGA. One of the nineteen Zambikes will be kept at the school and lent out for a small fee to villagers to use who do not own their own bikes. Neighbors are constantly begging me to use my bike to go to the hammer mill or a shop at the roadside. Even if I was permitted to lend out my bike, it couldn’t possibly be used by all the people who want to use it. Therefore, a community bicycle will assist villagers as well as pay for a night watchman to protect valuable education resources.

Third is the need for bicycles. Mpelembe has two motor vehicles. One truck is privately owned and the other motorbike is for clinic use. Everyone else walks or bikes. It has been said that the bicycle is the “great equalizer.” Folks with little income suddenly have a means of mobility that can be used to improve their lives, without the cost of a car or fuel. (In fact, with the rising cost of fuel, the realization of environmental problems associated with vehicles and problems of a sedentary lifestyle (yes, even in Zambia), those who know how to ride a bike will be at a great advantage.)

In the United States, most people see bicycles only as a form of recreation or exercise, but this is a vast oversight. A bicycle can be a tool for sustenance. As most villagers are fisherman, bikes are essential for going to and from the rivers – the Luombwa being (ten kilometers?) away and the Luapula being (forty kilometers?). Fisherman can then sell the fish and use the money to buy food for their families and send their children to school. A bicycle can be an ambulance. Clinics are few and far between, so bicycles are used to bring the sick to the clinic. Many villagers rely on traditional medicine and traditional births as a first line of defense, and only go to the clinic in the case of an emergency. When such an emergency arises, the patient may not be able to walk on his or her own and must be delivered to the clinic quickly via bike. A bicycle can be a truck, cutting hours and backaches off of heavy work, such as carrying lumber, furniture, charcoal, mealie meal, or jugs of water. A bicycle can also just be a means of transportation for everyday tasks such as going to a shop to buy cooking oil, going to church on Sunday, or visiting family in the next village.

Bicycles are important to the common villagers, but are even more vital to community workers who must travel within the village or to neighboring villages to reach the people they serve. Traditional Birth Attendants, Community Health Workers, Neighborhood Watch Committee Members, and Community Schools teachers, would benefit greatly from the use of bicycles.

Bicycles are sold in Zambia, but unfortunately, the price, starting at K3,000,000, is too high for most villagers who live off of their own vegetables, livestock and fish with little or no income. Even when a villager saves up money to buy a bike, they end up paying for it again many times because they must repair or replace the seat, tires, tubes, pedals, racks, and so on as they break one after the other. Therefore, providing affordable high quality bikes fulfills a need that is of great importance to the villagers of Mpelembe.

Zambikes, the organization providing the bicycles, will also train recipients on bike maintenance and repair – the fourth great need. For the amount the Zambian villagers use bikes, they know surprisingly little about bike repair. I’ve seen a person take an ax to a bike in a repair effort, seen tires spokes threaded in absurd patterns, cleaned years of gunk out of gears, and readjusted brakes that came nowhere near the wheel they were meant to stop. While credit can be given for innovation, proper bike repair knowledge is invaluable to people whose livelihood depends on their bicycle.

The need for bikes reaches father than just Mpelembe. When I first started this project, I was working with a different bike donation organization and was expecting to receive over 300 bicycles. I knew this was more than I needed, so I reached out to Peace Corps Volunteers all over Zambia to see if anyone else was interested in receiving bikes. I received several responses, but unfortunately, due to problems with logistics, I wasn’t able to work with that organization. Zambikes and I have discussed how Peace Corps Volunteers could be a medium for distributing their bikes. Once we have forged the way and our project is completed, we will set up a template for future volunteers to do the same without having to rebuild all the steps along the way.


Community Participation

The need for bicycles was first brought to me by a member of Mpelembe’s Neighborhood Health Committee. He needed assistance writing a proposal for a nutrition workshop. Within the proposal, along with flipcharts and food, he requested money for bicycles. I advised him that unfortunately, his proposal would not be accepted if he requested bicycles, as that has little to do with nutrition. It made me realize, however, how important bicycles are and how desired they are in my community.

I discussed the need for bicycles with my counterpart, the Zonal Head at Mpelembe Basic School. He agreed it was important for the community and was excited at the idea of the project. He (as well as the ZIC, who has been trained in library skills) is also in full support of the library to be established in the Zonal Resource Center. Together we have talked about the importance of the projects, worked on the budget, and determined how the money from the bike IGA should be used. We will continue to work together to plan and carry out the project.

The community will be involved throughout the various stages of the project. A committee formed of PTA members will be in charge of storing and distributing the bicycles until they are all sold. A committee will be formed to manage the community bike IGA. Community members will have the responsibility of gathering and delivering building supplies when construction on the furniture begins. As lumber is hard to come by in the village, this will be a great contribution, villagers cycling five to twenty kilometers to carry back 150 pieces of wood. The local carpenter hired to build the shelves will also work at a discounted rate. Finally, once the library is established, community volunteers will be needed to serve shifts as librarian. Together, these contributions will equal twenty-five percent of the project value.


Project Implementation

Month One

- PCV meets with Zambikes to finalize plans.
- PCV and Zonal Head discuss budget and have a carpenter come to the Zonal Resource Center to give an estimate.
- PCPP application is completed.
- Letters are sent to community leaders inviting any interested parties to attend a meeting about buying affordable high quality bikes as a fundraiser for the school’s library. (The meeting doubles as an HIV sensitization workshop.)

Month Two

- Community meeting is held and names of those interested in buying a bike are taken down. Community is informed that there will be no additional funding beyond the project budget and funds are to be used only for costs associated with the project.
- PCPP is approved.
- Raffle is done to choose the seventeen recipients of bikes. (One bike has already been offered to be purchased at full price.)
- Zambikes assists with setting up a website to link to the donation site.

Month Three

- Donors give money to the project.

Month Four

- Donors give money to the project.

Month Five

- Donors give money to the project.
- Committee is formed to manage the community bike IGA.

Month Six

- Zambikes is paid and deliver bikes to Mpelembe.
- Recipients will be informed that they can pick up their bikes. Bikes will not be released until payment of $100,000 is complete.
- Community bike IGA can begin.

Month Seven

- Payment installments for bikes may continue until all bikes are sold. If a participant shows no motivation for paying for his or her bike, it will be sold to another community member.
- Zambikes comes to Mpelembe to train all recipients of bikes in bike maintenance and repair. One member of the community is trained extensively in bike repair and is given tools for the job. He or she can now do bike repairs as an income generating activity.
- Once bikes are sold, community members will purchase and deliver building supplies for library furniture.
- Zonal Head will purchase other library supplies (pens, etc) in Serenje.

Month Eight

- Carpenter builds shelves and furniture.
- Library operation guidelines are determined by PCV, Zonal Head, and library committee.
- School staff and library committee is trained in library management by PCV and ZIC.

Month Nine

- Carpenter finishes construction.
- Books can be sorted and shelved.
- Night watchman will be hired by Zonal Head.

Month Ten

- Library will be open and running for teachers, students, and community members to access books.
- Library period for students can be established. For example, a class visits the library once a week to learn how to use the library and to check out books.