I’m in Lusaka now for my “Close of Service” Conference. I came to Zambia at the end of January 2007, so it’s nearly been two years! I haven’t been to the big city in a long time. Normally I’d be excited for the pizza, chocolate, running water, and usable internet, but this time I’m just sad. They chose the worst time possible for the conference. Right in the heart of mango season! I’ve been waiting all year to eat mangos all day every day and then this! I’d trade the pizza, chocolate, running water, and usable internet for piles of mangos any day. I have gotten a good solid week of mangos beforehand, at least, and it’s been fantastic. I feel like I’m radiating mangos, which is a sensation which can’t be understood until you radiate mangos yourself.

Before Christmas, I decided to visit a hot springs in Northern Province! It was a small-swimming-pool-sized pool of two-foot water which looked bluish green and was surrounded by tropical trees and ferns. The water bubbled up from the bottom and the sand was a different texture and color in those spots. A very different texture, in fact. It was quicksand! At first I was horrified and swam away, but finally my curiosity got the best of me and I stuck my leg in as far as it would go, which ended up being about thigh length. Then I felt less horrified. I tried to pretend it was snowing outside as I swished around in the warm water.

I spent Christmas Eve hitchhiking (and nearly getting stranded) back to Serenje. Christmas morning was spent washing clothes. There were two other volunteers at the Peace Corps House, so we made eggnog and had nshima with red and green relish. I also decided to celebrate the day by trying caterpillars. They were awful. It didn’t feel like Christmas at all.

For New Years, I was just in the village. I set my alarm for 11:59, so I could play Auld Lang Syne on the harmonica in sync with Doug in the States, but I was so confused, I just blew a few notes and then collapsed back to sleep. In Zambia, New Years is celebrated on the 1st, and it was essentially the same as how they celebrate Christmas. Everyone congregates at the road, eating fritters, getting drunk, and watching other drunk people fight.

I decided I wanted to learn how to blacksmith (I swear, Doug, I sent a bushnote to Peter before you wrote me about it!!!), so I visited the South African farmer Peter, cause I knew he had a blacksmithing set-up. I was a little disappointed that he powered it with a car fan instead of bellows, but it was still neat. I decided to make an imbaso blade, which is kind of like an ax. First I cut out the shape from scrap metal using a blowtorch! That was the best part. Then I stuck the blade into the hot coals of the forge until it got red hot, then pounded it into shape with a hammer. We ran out of charcoal before I could finish it, so now I have a dented lumpy imbaso.

Peter had a hand-pump carbonating machine, so we carbonated orange juice and added a little cassava ethanol to make “champagne.” I was so excited and ready to carbonate everything - coffee, tea, etc, but we ran out of gas after carbonating sour milk. (Not a beverage I’d recommend.)

I also got to drive a tractor to plant beans! It was really fun!

I had an extra reed mat, so I gave it to Kalunga, the teenage son of the Mumbas, cause I knew he didn’t have one. (Reed mats are what most Zambians sleep on.) He was so happy that he ran off with it hooting and hollering, then ran back hooting and hollering, shook my hand, and started dancing. It was great.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. There’s no rhyme or reason to what Zambians will wear. The best was when I saw a man with a polyester shirt decorated with repeated images of Jesus’ face hugging a man wearing a woman’s shawl. (Hand holding and such between people of the same sex is perfectly fine, remember. Homosexuality or holding hands between people of opposite sexes is totally taboo, however.) I also saw a teenager wearing a shirt with Che Guevara’s face. As social/political interest is rare in the village, I asked the boy if he knew who this man was. He said, “Ah yes, it is Bob Marley.”

The village kids keep wanting me to teach them math and letters, so we’ve been doing a lot of that lately.

It’s funny how easy it is to just get by in Bemba. If you don’t know the word for something, chances are if you guess, you’re probably right. To “grow” is to “biggen.” To “sharpen” is to “smallen.” To “fix” is to “gooden.” A “puppy” is a “small dog.” I couldn’t stop smiling when Joshua told me his banana tree had “babies.” (It had made a bunch of bananas.)

It’s also funny how after two years, this culture just becomes less and less clear. Some examples:

1) I was biking along the road when a woman pulled up on her bike next to me. I greeted her, but she just stayed there, staring at me. I sped up. She sped up. I slowed down. She slowed down. I stopped my bike and got off. She stopped her bike and got off.

2) I was bathing when the headman came into the backyard to talk to me. I told him I was bathing, thinking this was a hint to come back later, but instead he just stuck around and we had a conversation through the grass wall of the bathing shelter as I stood there naked.

3) I was biking and two men flagged me down and told me to give them food. There was nothing but me and my bike – no possible place I could have been squirreling away food. When I told them this, they suggested I bike to Chalilo (30 km away) to buy them food.

4) The first week of school is usually a little slow, so I made sure to confirm that I was actually starting to teach that week. I was given one hundred percent reassurance. I showed up and no classes were going on. The same day, I reconfirmed that the library committee would be meeting the next day for computer lessons. Again, one hundred percent positive. Again, I showed up to find that no one had been informed, there was another meeting scheduled for the same time, and the one who one hundred percent confirmed nowhere to be found.

5) I still don’t understand Bemba grammar. There seems to be no system to the use of pronouns. People will ask “How is she?” instead of “How are you?” Joshua told the ants he was killing “We are dying,” instead of “You are dying.” And when people gossip that I don’t understand Bemba (which I understand enough to know they’re talking about me and to know that their grammar doesn’t make any sense!), they’ll say “You don’t understand” instead of “She doesn’t understand.

(It’s also funny how after two years, the sight of my blinding white skin still occasionally causes babies to burst into tears.)

There is much of the culture I do understand, of course, and I’ve come to realize that Americans have it all backwards. We think of “luxury” as having machines to get chores done as fast as possible, so then we can have free time to go to our jobs. But here, I feel like I live a more “luxurious” life by dedicating three hours to the act of breakfast, the entire day to the act of bathing, or several days to the act of grocery shopping. For example, the other morning, I strolled around the yard gathering mangos, washed, peeled, and cut the mangos, started the fire, cooked mango pancakes and tea, and listened to the radio by candlelight as it poured outside. This is the life!

Here ye here ye, big news! I finally have bees who are here to stay! And they came completely voluntarily to occupy my hive! It’s neat to watch them going in and out with pollen. (Unfortunately, I don’t think they’ll have made enough honey to harvest by the time I leave.)

During school break, no one took care of the tree nursery so it’s in disarray. Possibly unsalvageable. Sad.

I decided to go at the tree issue from the other side as well and teach about conserving trees by building a clay “fuel efficient stove,” which uses a third of the amount of firewood. The construction of it uses ash as insulation, so Joshua and I went around the village asking dozens and dozens of households to collect their ash for us. I then invited the same families to come learn how to build the stove. It wasn’t a huge turnout, but some people came, which is truly a first. It went pretty well, although they complained that it looked like a pit latrine right there in the middle of the cooking shelter (which I must admit, it did.) We had a good laugh about that. We also had a good laugh at my Bemba. In a moving speech about the importance of trees, I mixed up the words for “wind” and “knife,” which differ by just one letter, and told them that “Trees protect the soil from sun, rain, and knives.” Can’t you just imagine those heroic trees fighting off bands of knife wielding Ninjas?

We’ve had several more library committee meetings, classifying and logging books and such.

Computer lessons came to a screeching halt when a storm blew out the solar panel at the school. We’ve now moved to the clinic’s birthing room (the most hot stuffy room – I couldn’t imagine giving birth there) and things are going well. They’ve mastered using the mouse pad and opening and closing folders.

With rainy season has come allergies again. I was sneezing so hard one night that the neighbors commented on it in the morning.

Rainy season also means that wounds just don’t like to heal. I minorly burned myself on the fire, which wound up as a full body infection. Any little cut or scrape I had would then get infected. When I ran out of wounds that were already there, my body decided to bubble up the infection into even more boils. My hand was so swollen that I had to transfer all my daily duties (like putting my hair in a ponytail and squeezing mangos to test for ripeness) to my left hand. I tried my hardest to fight it off, but these Zambacteria are tough, so I finally went to the clinic. There was no one there. So it was another four days or so before I could finally get an antibiotic. It’s mostly cleared up now, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I have a few scars!

And it wouldn’t be a Carrie blog without the latest tragedy. I really think I may believe in juju (witchcraft) now. There’s just no other explanation. If you recall, last month, Finnigan disappeared, Ngwi died, and Piddles died. That left me with just Puddles when I wrote the last blog. I returned to my hut on the day after Christmas to the joyous joyous news that Joshua had found Finnigan in the bush!!!! I was bursting with happiness as I opened up the chicken house where they had been storing him. I was quickly deflated when I picked up a skinny Finnigan who was already going stiff. I brought him onto the porch and tried to give him water, but it was just too late. He died ten minutes later. My dear dear beloved Fins. The next morning, Puddles was kinda droopy and not very warm. I tried to warm him up all day, but eventually he went unconscious and died a long grueling death. It was a tearful day spent cursing the gods for ganging up on me and losing most of my hope for good in the world. FOUR CAT DEATHS IN ONE MONTH. Horrible. One of the worst months of my life, I think. Kalunga and Joshua helped me bury Finny and Pudsies in the growing cat graveyard. Word must have spread of the strange muzungu (white) tradition of planting a tree on the top of burial mounds, because they made sure I stuck some seeds on the new mounds.

I now have no cats, so unless my juju curser decides to move to the chickens and goats, at least am feeling relieved that the tragedies are over.

Here’s an interesting factoid I recently read: “There are more chemicals in the average American home today than there were in the average chemical laboratory one hundred years ago.”

Laura's put more photos online, so check it out!


Handy Hut How To: How To Build A Fuel Efficient Stove

Gather some clay bricks. Gather a bucket of ash. Dig up a bucket of clay from a termite mound and mix it with a bucket or so of sand and water. Form a perimeter of bricks, mortared together with clay, leaving the front open. Place a thick log into the middle, so it will form an empty spot when the clay dries. Start filling in the stove with an inch or so of ash around the edge and clay in the middle, leaving a hole in the middle (another log can be used), so an empty spot will be formed for the fire to heat the pot. Let it dry for a week. Gather a third of the firewood you normally would. Remove logs. Cook!




Bonnibelle – The piano in the woods article was hilarious! So weird! I posted the how to tell if your cat wants to kill you one in the Peace Corps House and everyone thought it was funny.

Bonnibelle & Cathy – Silly Saying. When teaching about fuel efficient stoves and why we should conserve trees, I mixed up the Bemba words for “wind” and “knife,” and said “Trees protect the soil from sun, rain, and knives.” Later, when explaining which way to orient the stove, I told them, “You want to put it in the direction that the knives are coming.”

Stacy – The day I sent you a letter was the same day I got your Christmas Card. Bad timing for replies, so I’ll just reply here. I loved Mable’s glamour shot. She’s looking plump as ever. Thanks for the pine needles and the old note. It was hilarious. I guess I was psychic about termites! I forgot all about how excited we got about that “Seedlings” gum. Do you remember?

Vince – How’s your teaching practice going???

Doug – During our ukusambilila, I’ll ask the kids what words they want to learn, then I’ll write them for them to copy. This time, they wanted to learn how to write “Ba Doug.” Oh, and there’s a moth in the icimbusu at the Peace Corps House which is just crazy! All triangle and sharp and aerodynamic. I wouldn’t be surprised if it could break the speed of light.

Mom, Dad, and Bill – I’d like to congratulate the United States and Zambian Post Offices for a job well done. I sent a letter with the wrong address and it was returned all the way back to Serenje!