Carrieing On In Zambia

2009-04-20T11:38:00.011+02:00

Here is my “Close of Service” report. If you want to skip all of this, then the regular blog continues afterward.

Close of Service Report

Introduction

Ms. Pavlik arrived in Zambia in January 2007. After two months of training, she served for two years as a Rural Education Development (RED) volunteer in Mpelembe, Serenje District, Central Province. The RED project is a countrywide collaboration between Peace Corps and Zambia’s Ministry of Education and aims to improve Zambia’s educational system. Each RED volunteer is based at a Zone Center School, which is a school chosen to be a central point for schools in a particular area. It is the goal of the RED project to increase the capacity of this school so that all of the schools in the zone may benefit, particularly the “community schools,” which are headed by untrained community members and usually based in simple mud and thatch structures.

The first two months of Carrie’s time in Zambia was spent integrating into Zambian culture by living with a Zambian host family and receiving formal training in areas that would prepare her for her service. Training consisted of five components: Technical (86 hours): Ministry of Education structure and initiatives, facilitation skills, Interactive Radio Technology methodology, income generating activities, project implementation; Cross Cultural (14 hours): Zambian culture, cross-cultural communication, gender issues; Icibemba Language (116 hours); HIV/AIDS (20 hours); Medical and Safety (32 hours). During her service, she attended additional workshops, including an in-service training held by Peace Corps, an HIV workshop held by PEPFAR, and a library management training held by Changes2.

Demographics

Mpelembe is a small rural village within Chief Chitambo’s chiefdom. The population consists of about 4000 people and the village covers an area of about 20 square kilometers. There is a school, clinic, ZAWA station, and many tuck shops, bars, and churches.

Mpelembe is about 140 kilometers from the boma of Serenje. There is no electricity or cell phone coverage, which made communication with Peace Corps and the Ministry of Education difficult. Ms. Pavlik’s main form of transportation was her bicycle. When traveling longer distances, she hitchhiked, chancing rides from trucks, busses, and private vehicles.

The villagers of Mpelembe live simply in mud and thatch huts without electricity, vehicles, phone coverage, or running water. Ms. Pavlik lived in the same manner, embracing the lifestyle by learning gardening, the cooking traditional foods, chicken and goat husbandry, beekeeping, and the building small structures of bamboo, grass, mud, and bark fiber.

Her house was located about four kilometers from the tarmac and a half kilometer away from the school and clinic. She lived next to the Mumba family and also received support from the headman, Mr. Mwelelwa.

Physical Environment

Mpelembe is located about forty kilometers after Kasanka National Park and about forty kilometers before the bridge to Luapula. It is flat with a lot of small trees and is considered part of the Bangweulu Wetlands, and though it receives a lot of rainfall, it is not a swampy area. Flooding only becomes an issue in the areas surrounding the nearby Lumbwa River.

The main path that leads from the tarmac past the school and clinic is vehicle accessible. Most housing compounds are reached by footpaths branching off this main road.

Access to drinking water isn’t much of a problem in the area. There are many wells and bore holes. Ms. Pavlik had two sources of water. One was a traditional well located on her compound. The water was not clean, however, so she used this water only for washing and watering her garden. She got her drinking water from a bore hole at the school and carried it home on her bicycle.

The environment didn’t pose any obstacles to education beyond those found in the rest of Zambia (e.g. rainy season, dirt paths, long distances for students to walk, etc). Mpelembe Zone covers a large area, however, the furthest schools being about 30 kilometers from the Zonal Center School. This made it difficult for the ZIC to monitor all of the schools in the zone.

Cultural Environment

The people of Mpelembe are of the Bemba and Lala tribes. Some people can speak a little bit of English, but most are not fluent.

Nearly all villagers are subsistence farmers and fishermen. Some earn income by selling crops or fish or by doing piece work.

Most people are of Christian faith and are very devout. There are a variety of denominations represented in Mpelembe.

Social life tends to revolve around the churches and bars. People often gather at the roadside in the evenings.

Description of Zone

Carrie’s cacthment area consisted of Mpelembe Zone, as defined by the Ministry of Education. There are 5 GRZ and 16 community schools in the zone, the farthest being about 30 kilometers from the Zonal Center School.

During her two years as a RED volunteer, Carrie focused on strengthening the Zonal Center School so that all of the schools in the zone would benefit. That means she worked extensively with Mpelembe Basic School, but also worked with teachers from all of the schools in the zone through teacher trainings and school monitoring. She also assisted Chenga, Fumba, and Mupundu Community Schools in grant writing and held a fish farming training at Fumba.

Most of the community schools and government schools are using Interactive Radio Instruction (IRI) as part of their methodology. For some community schools, this is the main form of instruction.

The schools in Mpelembe Zone are as follows:

GRZ Schools

Chalilo
Chipundu
Gibson
Misumba
Mpelembe

Community Schools

Chititima (Grades 1-5)
Chenga (Grades 1-3)
David Livingstone (Grades 1-2)
Fumba (Grades 1-2)
Ibolelo (Grade 1)
Ilisa (Grades 1-3)
Kachelo (Grades 1-2)
Kakuku
Kalungu (Grades 1-4)
Kampasa (Grades 1-4)
Kaoma (Grades 1-2)
Kapepa (Grades 1-4)
Luwe (Grades 1-3)
Misamfi (Grades 1-3)
Mupundu (Grades 1-2)
Musangashi (Grades 1-6)

RED Project Activities

• Capacity Building of Zone Center School

Carrie’s main counterparts were the Zonal Head, Mr. Chisenga, the ZIC, Mr. Kaseloki, and the Deputy Head, Ms. Chisenga. She also worked extensively with the group of six teachers who formed the library committee.

In her two years, she was able to transfer a variety of skills to her counterparts. She held workshops in library management and computer operation. Record keeping, time management, and organization were always stressed.

• Capacity Building of Zone

Carrie and her counterparts worked together to strengthen the zone. One of the main ways this was done was through teacher trainings. Every school, including community schools (and occasionally including schools from neighboring zones), was always invited to all workshops and trainings.

In all zonal workshops, Ms. Pavlik and her counterparts stressed communication skills, classroom management, planning, and school management. They also focused on the use of child-centered teaching methods such as games, student involvement techniques, positive reinforcement, and the use of teaching and learning aides.

Support was also given to schools through monitoring visits. When Carrie first arrived in Mpelembe, there was no one performing the role of the ZIC, and therefore it had been a long time since formal SIMON monitoring visits had been done. It was several months before a ZIC was transferred to the school. Mr. Kaseloki and Ms. Pavlik worked together to plan SIMON visits and visit schools. After monitoring the nearby schools, however, SIMON activities stopped, as the ZIC considered it too far to bike to the remaining schools, which were about 30 kilometers away. A request for a vehicle was made to the DEBS, but was never fulfilled. Recently, monitoring of several of the nearby schools has been taken up again.

Carrie believes in the importance of alternative education and gathered resources for a zonal library, which could be accessed by all teachers in the zone, students, and villagers. Over 1,000 books were donated, classified, labeled, and recorded. A library committee was formed and trained in library management. Unfortunately, the Zonal Resource Center infrastructure has yet to be officially handed over and furnished, so the library is not in use. The library committee has been trained with the appropriate skills, however, so when the building is complete, the library should be able to function.

Ms. Pavlik made sure all the schools in the zone were aware of her presence and encouraged them to contact her if they needed assistance. Unfortunately, only a few took advantage of this opportunity.

• Capacity Building of DEBS

Peace Corps’ RED project focuses on the zonal level for rural volunteers. Therefore, Carrie rarely worked directly with the DEBS office. She did, however, assist in procuring IRI radios for community schools and she submitted reports from monitoring visits.

• Capacity Building at the Provincial Level and of Partners

Ms. Pavlik and two other Peace Corps volunteers held an IRI Review Meeting for Ministry of Education officials to discuss issues with the program, as well as challenges facing the ZICs.

Carrie also worked with the NGO Changes2. She attended a library training of trainers and then helped facilitate a provincial library training for ZICs. She also monitored schools who received books as a donation from Changes2.

• Summary of RED Projects

• Initiated the formation of a library at the Zone Center School
---- Acquired the donation of over 1,000 textbooks, novels, reference
materials, and magazines
---- Classified, labeled, and recorded all materials
---- Set up a lending and record system
---- Trained a library committee in book classification and library
management
• Worked with teachers at the Zone Center School in planning, budgeting for, and facilitating 5 teacher trainings, reaching 67 Community School and 21 Government School teachers
• Taught basic computer skills (using solar panels) to 6 teachers
• Monitored 5 Community School and 2 Basic School classrooms over the course of 12 visits to observe and advise in teaching skills and school management
• Compiled information on all of the schools in the zone
• Assisted 4 schools with grant proposal writing
• Collaborated with the NGO Changes2 and the Ministry of Education to carry out a provincial library training and monitor 3 school libraries
• Co-facilitated a review meeting with the Ministry of Education to discuss the progress of the Interactive Radio Instruction program and the role of the Zonal Inset Coordinator

HIV/AIDS

Carrie and the Zonal Head attended a Peace Corps PEPFAR training together. Both agreed on the importance of spreading what they had learned to others. The Zonal Head arranged for Mpelembe’s “Community AIDS Task Force” (CATF) to be trained. Carrie then invited a CATF member to teach about HIV during a meeting about Jatropha.

Staff at the school have been very open to HIV education. During each of the eight teacher trainings and meetings with which Carrie assisted, a session was devoted to HIV prevention.

Ms. Pavlik also taught about HIV at a fish farming training, to students in her Life Skills class, during a girls camp, and in numerous informal conversations.

A total of around 450 teachers, students, community members were reached.

Other Projects

• Taught “Life Skills” classes to 4 groups of 8th and 9th graders, covering topics such as communication skills, HIV, STIs, culture, planting trees, gender equality, treatment of animals, organic gardening, relationships, indigenous crops, overpopulation, and nutrition
• Taught HIV prevention at 8 teacher meetings, 2 agricultural meetings, 1 girls’ camp, and 9 Life Skills classes
• Started a school orchard and tree planting project with students
• Demonstrated the building of a fuel efficient clay stove and teaching the importance of tree conservation to villagers
• Started a sustainable beekeeping club with 15 students and set up a school apiary
• Worked with a bio-fuel organization to distribute Jatropha seeds to villagers as an income generating activity
• Collaborated with two other Peace Corps Volunteers to organize a “Girls Leading Our World” camp, where girls learned about setting goals, having confidence, forming healthy relationships, being assertive, and preventing HIV
---- Sourced funding and purchased supplies
---- Arranged guest speaker
---- Taught about HIV prevention
---- Demonstrated the sewing of sanitary pads
• Helped village children with math and spelling
• Assisted the Rural Health Clinic with grant writing, HIV testing, baby weighing, and the donation of medical supplies
• Hosted a fish farming workshop at a Community School

Contributions to Peace Corps Zambia

• Facilitated a session on chicken husbandry at an agricultural in-service training
• Hosted two groups of new volunteers to introduce them to village life
• Assisted with site preparation for new volunteers

Recommendations

Ms. Pavlik’s main project was the formation of a zonal library. By the time her service finished, however, the library was not yet in use because of bureaucratic obstacles. It would be beneficial for another Peace Corps Volunteer to finish the work and make sure the library is being used.

That said, Mpelembe has been a challenging place for Carrie. She wanted to reach out to community members beyond just the school, but she had trouble finding people who were genuinely interested in working with her. Most only wanted funding or handouts and then would disappear as soon as they find out Peace Corps does not provide such things. Even more claimed that they were interested in a given topic, but then didn’t show up the day of the meeting. Five times as many projects as were listed on this report were started and then failed because of lack of motivation in the school or community.

Ms. Pavlik’s living situation was a difficult one as well. The community did not follow through with Peace Corps’ housing contract and would only help her with home upkeep if she paid them. She also experienced problems with her neighbors (begging, dishonesty, etc), had an incident with a man trying to come to her house at night, and had continuous theft her entire two year service.

Because of security issues, the community was told to arrange different housing for the volunteer to come following Carrie. They were not able to finish the housing preparations in time, however, so Peace Corps has decided not to replace Mpelembe in 2009. However, the possibility of another volunteer coming in the future is open. If the Zonal Head and DEBS feel another volunteer would benefit the school, they would need to make the initiative to contact Peace Corps with the request.

Regular Blog Continuation:

And now for some final thoughts as my Peace Corps service comes to an end.

I remember when I first moved to Mpelembe, I thought to myself, “Wow, when I leave, these kids are going to be two years older!!! Teenagers will have turned into adults. Kids will have turned into teenagers. Babies will have turned into kids.” But as I look now at Kalunga, Joshua, Makumba, Ngosa, Patty, Bupe, and all the other village kids, they don’t look any different because I’ve seen them slowly grow every day and it’s hard to believe that my two years have gone by already.

Back during Pre-Service Training, one of our trainers was about to finish up her service. When asked for wise words, she told us, “I’ve never loved a place so much … and I’ve never hated a place so much.” She was at a loss of words to explain herself and finally we just broke the silence by laughing. Now, as my service coming to an end, if a new volunteer were to ask me to summarize my past two years, I couldn’t think of any other way to say it. When I only think of the good aspects of Zambia, it makes me want to never leave. When I only think of the bad aspects of Zambia, it makes me never want to step foot in this country again.

So yes, there are some things I’ll be glad to leave behind. I’m tired of swatting away flies and ants. I’m tired of water sloshing down my back as I bike it home. I’m tired of the scorching sun. I’m tired of waiting hours trying to hitch a ride. I’m tired of dealing with cultural things that I just can’t accept – gender inequality, hierarchy, the cruel treatment of animals, and different concepts of time, privacy, and property. I’m tired of feeling frustrated and insulted by people not coming to my meetings or only wanting handouts. I’m tired of roosters. I’m tired of having no privacy in my own home – having to answer to somebody no matter what I’m doing (reading, working, bathing, eating, peeing.) I’m tired of minibus conductors, who I’m convinced are the worst people in the world. I’m tired of having to plan my days around avoiding sunburn and my evenings around avoiding malaria. I’m tired of poorly washing and wringing out my clothes by hand. I'm tired of eating weevils with my oats. I’m tired of buckling under the weight of my basket of vegetables when I stock up every month. I’m tired of kids mocking me and thinking I don’t understand. I’m tired of infected wounds. I’m tired of itchy bug-bites. Most of all, I’m tired of feeling sad and angry because of people doing things that I consider to be inconsiderate, disrespectful, and irresponsible - lying to me, cheating me, inconveniencing me, robbing me, and taking advantage of me.

And there are things I look forward to in the US. Mostly, seeing my family and friends who I haven’t seen for two years, seeing Doug who I haven’t seen for nine months, and seeing my nephew who I’ve never even met! I look forward to getting started on whatever adventures lay ahead. I look forward to stepping foot back in to my dear Hotel again. I look forward to the variety of creative expression and entertainment US culture has to offer. I look forward to the ease of a hot shower. I look forward to letting my knees see the light of day again. I look forward to not having to hold my plate in my lap as I eat. (Even the Peace Corps House doesn’t provide such a luxury as a dining table!). I look forward to rediscovering all of my forgotten music I had to leave at home. And believe it or not, I actually look forward to that overcast Pennsylvania sky!!

So while part of me is happy to be returning home, I can’t say that I’m “happy” that my life in Zambia is ending. Despite the frustrations, I really do love my way of life here and feel very content. I live naturally, slowly, quietly, purposefully, leisurely, physically, and introspectively. This is the longest I’ve stayed put in any one spot since 2002, and it certainly has become my home. It’s my life. It’s my reality. It’s nearly impossible to imagine not waking up in my hut each morning. Suddenly, nearly everything about my life will become non-existent - my thoughts, actions, frame of mind, motivations, and daily activities. I don’t look forward to the emotional rollercoaster of readjusting to a “new” place. I don’t look forward to having to find some meaningless job to make some money. I don’t look forward to trying to find a job during The Great Depression Part II. I don’t look forward to being in stressful social situations rather than just relaxing alone in my hut. And I don’t look forward to feeling chilled to the bone and having no feeling in my hands and feet for three-quarters of the year.

I’ll also will miss my friends in the village – mainly, Mr. Chisenga, Joshua, and Kapiria. I’ll miss my hut. I’ll miss my remaining chicken and goat. I’ll miss the cheap price of vegetables. I’ll miss the tropical fruits, some of which I will never taste again. I’ll miss having hours of time to read, write, think, and lay in my hammock. I’ll miss having my “commute” to work be a bike ride through the bush. I’ll miss the slow-paced way of life. I’ll miss the crisp night sky full of stars. I’ll miss cooking over a fire. (I’ve noticed that my morning oats and tea that come off of the stove at the Peace Corps House just aren’t as satisfying.) I’ll miss living in my own sociological experiment, where I can create jumbled theories about culture and humanity. I’ll miss not having to worry about money, a job, rent, or bills. I’ll miss not even being tempted to waste my time away on Facebook or watching TV. I’ll miss my solo independent life. I’ll miss the light filtering through my “stained-glass” citenge windows as I wake each morning. I’ll miss bathing outside (when it’s not cold and windy.) I’ll miss my long conversations with Mr. Chisenga. I’ll miss living in nature, rather than concrete. I’ll miss the sound of silence, of the wind, of birds, and of women pounding cassava in the distance, rather than cars and trucks. I'll miss living a life of total freedom. I’ll miss the thrill of finally catching that ride. I’ll miss seeing my yard illuminated by moonlight. I’ll miss getting letters from family and friends. I’ll miss my transient lifestyle which gives me a monthly rejuvenation. I’ll miss nshima, icikanda, ifisashi, and roasted tute. I’ll miss the times when I feel that burst of success when a meeting, computer class, teacher training, or Life Skills class goes well. I’ll miss being able to make funny jokes by simply saying something vaguely clever in Bemba. I’ll miss eating a diet of ninety percent mangos for a month each year. I’ll miss having people run up to the car window to sell me bananas. I’ll miss the smell of ulushishi, drying cassava, and eucalyptus trees. I’ll miss being known and sought out in my community – a local celebrity. I’ll miss the friendly people. I’ll miss reading by candlelight in the evenings. I’ll miss very much the ease of conversation with everyone, including strangers. I’ll miss the kids running and screaming to greet me. I’ll miss playing nsolo and icibulia with Joshua. I’ll miss living in a place where words like “Lindsay Lohan,” “iphone,” “Dow Jones,” and “Burger King” mean nothing.

Back in the year and a half between when I applied to Peace Corps and when I finally left for Zambia, so many people I met told me, “Oh, I thought about doing the Peace Corps, but never did…” I’m glad that I will never have to say that statement. Peace Corps is not studying abroad. Peace Corps is not working for an NGO. Peace Corps is not going on a short volunteer/mission trip. Peace Corps is not becoming an expat in a big city abroad. Peace Corps is not backpacking or traveling. Peace Corps is actually becoming a community member in one small place that’s off the map, untouched, real. Not very many people have (or take) the opportunity to live in a rural village in a developing country. I’m so glad I have been able to be one of those people.

And I’m also so glad that my Peace Corps service was in Zambia specifically – where Peace Corps is still the rustic bush experience that it was in the beginning. In many countries today, Peace Corps Volunteers live together in an apartment with electricity, and teach English every day. While that might be “fun,” it’s not the experience I signed up for.

After my time in Jamaica, it took me some time and some hindsight to realize just what I had gained from the experience. But even now, as I still sit here in Zambia and type this, I already know that Zambia has had an everlasting impact on my life. Perhaps Kingston showed me how things can go wrong; and Mpelembe showed me how things can go right.

We join Peace Corps because we want to “help” others, but in the end, it’s always the volunteer who benefits the most. I am indebted to my Peace Corps Zambian service for all the things I have learned. I am leaving Zambia a different person than I came. I’m now an organic farmer. A chicken husbander. A beekeeper. An avid reader. A goat husbander. A professional hammock-layer. A long-distance cycler. A forester. An animal house constructer. A flat-tire mechanic. A Bemba. A chef. A teacher. A librarian. A teacher trainer. A hitch-hiker. A craftsman. A shoe-in for “Survivor.” I am a person ready and excited to see what life has to offer next.

Capwa. (It is over.)

2009-04-09T16:40:00.002+02:00

Well, I was offered an extension position in Lusaka, so it looks like I’ll be in Zambia another two years!!!! April Fools. Don’t worry, I’m coming home.

It’s the time of the season for changing:

Guava Season. Guavas have replaced the mangos in my oats. I’m not feasting on them, however, as I did with the mangos, as I don’t have any trees of my own and have to resort to buying them. At about forty for 25 cents, I can’t go overboard. (Joke.) Guavas are a strange fruit. Unripe (how Zambians eat them), they’re no good. Ripe, the inside tastes a little fermented and the outside tastes green. They’re full of small seeds that will break your teeth, and they’re not even very flavorful. I bet most Americans wouldn’t even bother with them. I like em, though.

The bush-rat-squirrels like them too. I have to pack up my guavas and tomatoes into a bucket every evening or else my little friends will take a single nibble out of each and every one.
Flying Termite Season. Kids like to collect them and pop them straight into their mouths. After being here two years, I didn’t think I would see anything new, but this was something.
Groundnut Harvesting Season. Men do the hoeing and women do the picking. The picking is the fun part, so I don’t really complain about gender roles when I help out!
Planting Season. People keep coming by to show me the wounds they’ve procured from whacking their feet with their hoes. I don’t remember this happening the past two planting seasons.
End of Rainy Season. Each time it rains, someone tells me, “Ah, but that is the rain saying goodbye!” But then the next day, it rains again and I am told the same thing again.

My tomato plant has 75 tomatoes and counting!!!

First my radio’s knob broke off, so I had to adjust the station by maneuvering a little string inside. Then the wires detached from the speaker, so every morning I have to rewire the thing. I feel like a mechanical genius!!

I didn’t spell “genius” right in the above paragraph and spell-check corrected me.

I’m not sure how my house exists anymore, because I feel like I’ve swept out the mass of my house several times over.

Apparently Ngosa is in the juju (witchcraft) business. I found her in the bush one day with a basket of small roots and asked her what they were. She said she sells them to a man from Lusaka who uses them for juju. I couldn’t get out of her what the exact use was, but she let me nibble on one. It was kind of sweet.

Whenever someone is sick or dies, it’s always because of juju. If you want to know who put the juju on your late loved one, a group of people can hold the coffin in the air and it will lead them to the culprit.

It was interesting doing a little blacksmithing with Peter, but I wanted to see it down with a traditional bellows, so I found a guy in my village who agreed to let me observe him work. After he didn’t show up (at his own house), we rescheduled several times and again he didn’t show up. So frustrating.

I was finally successful in recruiting a charcoal teacher, however - a teenager named Kunda. (Actually, after lamenting to Mr. Chisenga about people not helping me, he forced a student to show me.) We spent all day in the bush. I was really surprised what a long hard process it is. Luckily, I was just on fire that day when it came to comic relief. First, I jotted down notes about the charcoal making process. That was very funny. Then I singed off some of my hair. That was very funny. Then I had trouble carrying a huge log. That was very funny. Then I had trouble carrying another huge log. That was still very funny. Then I got lost and started walking the wrong direction. That was very funny too.

On our way out of the bush, suddenly Kunda stopped and squatted to the ground. He pointed to a track in the mud and looking up at me with eyes wide, solemnly said, “Elephant!” This track was about the size of my big thumbnail. I burst out laughing and noted to myself that this was the funniest joke I’ve ever heard a Zambian make. Until I looked back into his deadpan face and realized he was serious. I tried to reason with him that that track couldn’t possibly be from an elephant. Finally I had him describe the beast to me. He said it was “like a small goat.” It was probably a duiker - a miniature antelope. I still giggle every time I recall the image of his face saying “Elephant!”, but really, it’s quite sad that an African doesn’t even know what an elephant is.

Joshua asked me what I’m doing with my bookbag when I leave, as he wanted it for school. I had to tell him I was taking it with me, but in its place, I sewed a little school-bag for each of the school-goers: Joshua, Ngosa, and Makumba. They said thank you and are using them, but their disappointment was obvious. Turns out it wasn’t about having a school-bag after all, but about having an expensive muzungu bag. It’s interesting how in an industrialized country like the United States, people have already gone through that “sterile-manufactured-plastic-uniform stuff is better” stage a long time ago and now some people even appreciate whole grain bread over white bread, real food over processed food, hand-made items over mass-produced items, and so on. But in Zambia, this process is just beginning. Refined white mealie meal is prestigious. Tin roofs are prestigious. Manufactured snacks are prestigious. Plastics are prestigious. Any little piece of junk that’s been made by a factory (e.g. food packaging, broken electronic parts, etc) is prestigious and is horded, even if it has no use. City Zambians are especially adamant about pointing out how they are more advanced than the village folk, but even the villagers would rather a mass-produced product than a hand-made one if they had the choice. To someone who feels like industrialized countries made a huge mistake by ever going down this road, it’s frustrating to see “developing” countries want to do the same. I want to just tell them to skip that step; they’re already where they need to be! But I guess that’d be like an adult telling a teenager what to do, which has absolutely no effect at all. It seems like they just have to experience it themselves before they can decide to refuse it. I hope by then it’s not too late.

Living in kind of a time warp like this, I’ve recently been noticing a lot of idioms that I’ve never really thought about before, but now have literal meanings for me. For instance, as I was cracking nuts one day, I was having trouble with one and said, “Boy, that was hard nut to crack!” Then I paused: Did I really just say that?? Some other examples: “Hoe down,” “Steal my fire,” “An uphill struggle,” “You reap what you sow,” “Fruits of my labor,” “Beggars can’t be choosers” (although if it’s the Mumbas, they damn well will be choosers too), “Empty nest,” “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket,” “Pecking order,” “Cocky,” and what’s been happening all too much lately, “Pouring salt in my wounds.”

When I first came to Zambia, I often would feel shocked or insulted when people would say racially blunt statements. But after awhile, I came to realize that because race isn’t an issue here, it’s ok to make blunt statements about being “black” or “white.” It just doesn’t have the same historically-guilty connotation, so Zambians don’t walk around pretending that different skin colors don’t exist.

I decided to donate my hive (and bees!) to the school and started up a beekeeping club. All the kids in the club had been traditional honey-gatherers, which means destroying the hive to get the honey. (This is like cutting down a mango tree to get the mangos!) So I taught them all about sustainable beekeeping and we set up the apiary, complete with newly planted flowers.

I’m still very busy doing Life Skills, computer classes, library meetings, and monitoring. This isn’t to say that it hasn’t been extremely frustrating. Looking back at my records, I noticed that people have not come to computer lessons more times than they have come. And we only managed to monitor three schools this term, because usually the ZIC just couldn’t get it together the day of the planned monitoring. Of those three, we didn’t find any teaching going on at two of them because the teachers were busy in the fields.

I’ve noticed that my life in Zambia is never just mildly-constantly-stressful-and-mundane as I remember life in the US. Instead, it’s one extreme or the other. Most of the time, I am very content - extremely calm and peaceful. Then there’s drastic spikes of tumultuous emotional stress. For example, my day is perfectly nice and I’m feeling very content and then I have to sit around for two hours waiting for someone to come to a meeting we planned, just getting angrier and angrier each minute until I’m about to explode. Then I go home and enjoy my life again until the next incident the next day.

I never know whether to start my blogs with the negatives to start it out on a bad note, or end them with the negatives, to leave it on a bad note. If you don’t want to end with the negatives, you can go back after you’re done and read the beginning, I suppose!

Otherwise, onto the next bad thing. Along The Great North Road (main paved road), there’s a section with a big pothole trench all the way across the road. Rumor has it that the villagers there hacked it away on purpose so that mealie-meal trucks and beer trucks would flip and they could steal the goods. It’s worked several times already.

And finally, my family here just keeps getting smaller and smaller:

Eggy disappeared. Stolen, probably.
After a week and a half, New Chicken’s neck wound just didn’t seem to be healing and she was losing weight. Upon closer inspection, I found that most of the food she was eating was oozing out of the wound instead of going to her stomach. I had trouble eating for days after seeing this. (And after conjuring up the image again to type this, I probably will have trouble for a few days again.) I didn’t really see how it could heal up, staying moist like that, and I didn’t know if she was in pain or not, so I told the Mumbas to eat her. It was a hard decision, but when I leave, I’m going to have to give her away anyhow and she’ll probably promptly be eaten, so I figured if there’s even a chance that she’s suffering now, I may as well just get it over with. So now it’s just Pocho and me.
I sold Potato and Spud to the Mumbas awhile ago in preparation for my departure, but while I was in Serenje last time, Potato apparently died. I have my doubts, however, because only Victor reported the death to me and no one else even mentioned it. I mean, when their dog died, each one of the Mumbas felt it necessary to individually come over and inform me, but when it’s my own goat, they kept silent. My guess is they ate or sold her, because Iron Mumba was away at the time too, so it seems like they waited for us both to leave to make some money behind our backs. Or, she just could have died and Zambia has made me way too untrusting.

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April 29th, 2009

I didn’t tell anyone when I was coming back to the United States (except for Laura who bought my plane ticket and Doug who just was too persistent in questioning) because I wanted to surprise everyone! Sneaky, eh??? I even wrote this blog in present tense instead of past tense! Ha! I had thought about traveling after I was done, possible to India, but I just couldn’t really decide on anything, so I figured I’d just go straight back to the US. Let me now back up and recap my departure from Mpelembe and Zambia.

My last week at site was strange. I was busy packing, giving things away, selling things, and informing everyone I could think of that I would soon be going. I sent goodbye letters to all of my schools and even had a farewell party with teachers, neighbors, and friends. (Not everyone showed up who was supposed to and a lot of people who I didn’t even know filtered in, but it was nice just the same.) It was extremely Zambian, with official protocol, speeches, guest of honor, chairman, etc. There was food, dancing, and music. I wore my citenge dress from swear-in and gave a farewell speech in Bemba. Everyone understood it perfectly and that made me very happy. There was a ton of food (most I donated, the rest the teachers pitched in for) and for several days afterwards, the Mumba kids kept telling me how full they had been – the utmost compliment.

On the morning that I was to leave, the Mumba’s and Mwelelwa’s and some others stuck around my house to see me off. Impashi (swarms of flesh eating ants) attacked, so that provided some good laughs. Trying to remove the bed from my house was also a ridiculous adventure that took an hour or so. Then I spent the rest of the morning in a marathon tournament of nsolo with Joshua.

That morning, someone stole my toilet paper and my hat, which was a fitting ending to it all.

When the land cruiser finally pulled in, I was both glad to have an end to the strange restless feeling and very sad. As I said goodbye to everyone, I started to cry, which I wasn’t expecting. I just kept reshaking everyone’s hand cause I just didn’t know what else to do. Then I got in the cruiser and we pulled out of Mpelembe for the last time.

Even though I knew I had left Mpelembe, it still didn’t seem real to me that I was going back to the United States. Just impossible to even fathom. And once I got to Serenje, I felt fine, because it just seemed like any other time hanging out at the Peace Corps House. I had to close my bank account, say goodbye to the district Ministry of Education people, and finish up typing my Close of Service documents. Then I had to sit around for several more days (I had to come in before the holiday and weekend so I could go to the bank) with no other Peace Corps Volunteers there, which was boring.

Then I headed to Lusaka for a week of medical and administrative appointments. The end of my service was kind of like reverting to the beginning again. I had to ride out to Chongwe in the old bus we used to take. I visited my homestay family and had my last nshima. I saw my old language teacher and all the training staff. I even got to go visit immigration one last time cause I realized my visa was expired and I had been living in Zambia illegally for over a month. Oops.

Exchanging money wasn’t too exciting. When I came to Zambia, the exchange rate was 3,700 and now it’s 5,700. Which means I only get about half of my money! Argh.

After all my meetings and such, I had some time to kill, so I visited this zoo type place. The gardens were beautiful, but the animals were just kinda sad and there wasn’t really much to see.

The Peace Corps Lusaka staff only has three non-Zambians, but even the Zambian employees are city-folk, so it’s not anything like the village. When I dragged my suitcases over to the medical room to weigh and rearrange them, however, the custodian lady stopped me and made me repack because I hadn’t folded my citenges properly. This took 45 minutes or so. It was so very Zambian and made me smile.

These two weeks of limbo in Serenje and Lusaka were kind of a let down. I would have rather just stepped out of the village and onto the plane for the full excitement and emotional impact. It also was difficult because hanging around the office all week reminded me of things about the way of life in the States that I don’t like – pushing papers, stressful social situations, wasting time on the internet, and mostly, living indoors rather than in nature.

On April 16th, I officially “rang out” with my fellow five remaining RED Peace Corps Volunteers. This high-tech ceremony involves hitting a tire hub with a stick. Whenever I’ve witnessed others ringing out over the past two years, I always get a little teary-eyed, so during my own ceremony, I just tried to ignore everything that was going on so I wouldn’t start crying. Here’s a transcript of my speech: “It’s been wonderful and it’s been terrible and I’d do it all again.”

And on April 21st, I went to the airport to board my 40 hour flight back to Americaland!!

Handy Hut How To: How to Make Charcoal

Cut down some trees and cut the trunks into pieces about ax-length. Build a little platform out of the smaller pieces so that it’s not resting directly on the ground. Then pile up your logs, adding support stakes if necessary. Hack up chunks of sod and pack them around the pile until it’s enclosed, except for an opening on one side. Start a fire between the logs through this hole and keep it stoked for several hours. Then cover up the opening with sod as well and leave the pile to cook for several days, checking on it periodically to make sure it hasn’t collapsed. Then remove the dirt with a hoe and dig out the charcoal pieces. Break up any big pieces and spread them out to cool, covering with some light dirt so that they don’t ignite. Only about half of the pieces will have turned into charcoal, so pile the remain unburned logs into a pile again and let it cook again. Once the charcoal is cool, pile it in your mealie meal sack, lace up the end with bark fiber, and sell it for a price that’s not worth all that work!

John, Martha, and bo-bo - I had a dream that I took a footpath in my village that I had never taken before and it led to a huge mining establishment where John and Martha were working. There were all sorts of fancy buildings and cars and I couldn’t believe that I never knew this place existed in Mpelembe! I explored around some more and came upon a huge monastery made out of burgundy marble. They told me Brady had been working on there, but had just left. I felt bad that he had come to Mpelembe and never let me know!

Doug - Jameson Kunda greets you and your family. The Mumba's and Mwelelwa's greet you. Mulenga and Mr. Chisenga asked about you. Kapiria says he never got a remembrance from you. And Kennedy misses you “a lot.”

My Entire Family - Jameson Kunda greets you. You don’t know him, but he greets you.

Stacy - I still haven’t gotten the packet of letters for my students. Now the term is over (they work in trimesters), so I’m not sure that I’ll ever get to use them in my Life Skills class! I told my head teacher about it, though, so he’ll know to distribute them even if I’m not able.

Anyone - I’ve had several villagers request pen-pals. Does anyone want Jameson Kunda as a pen-pal?? And does anyone want to marry a truck-driver?

2009-03-13T19:11:00.004+02:00

!!!!!STOP SENDING LETTERS!!!!!
Thank you all for the mail for the past two years! It’s been the highlight of each month. Bonnibelle wins the prize for most letters, by the way.

I’m in Serenje again, already, for our going away party. There’s four of us leaving. One is from another intake and is quitting early, so that’s why the party is so early.

I just found out today that Mpelembe is not being replaced. They just couldn’t get it together to build a new house. I’m not sure how I feel about it. It’s upsetting that all the work I’ve put into the library is lost, because without a Peace Corps Volunteer, I honestly think the books will just sit there. But at the same time, there’s been so many set-backs with getting people to work with me, that I know it’s not really the best place to put a volunteer. Fate has decided, I suppose.

I just read the book “The World Without Us,” about how long it would take nature to reclaim the earth if humans suddenly disappeared. Pretty funny timing, because after being away from my site for a week, nature was already doing a pretty good job taking my hut apart. My patio roof had collapsed. Rats had eaten my pumpkin. Termites were all over. And my bed was infested with mites. It was awful, waking up just crawling with them! I pounded up a mixture of tephrosia (tree used for fish poison) and cassava leaves, which makes a natural pesticide, and splashed it around the house. It was a gorgeous shade of green and worked pretty good.

Then the roof leaked directly onto my phone. It’s actually hard to be upset about it, because the accuracy of the whole thing is really so amazing. So now I don’t have a phone.

My tomato plants are also doing very well. They’re taller than me!!

I think a chicken hawk tried to take away New Chicken! She has a wound on her neck. (I thought maybe someone had beat her, cause someone beat the Mumba dog to death, but the Mumbas are sure it was the hawk.) Now she’s kind of standing upright and is having some digestive problems, but I think she will be ok. What a trooper!

On my birthday, I lit some candles (also lighting the window on fire - oops) and blew them out. I also baked pumpkin cake and invited the neighbors over. Now, I didn’t expect a party or anything, but I did envision us all sitting together while eating our cake. But instead, they each just took a piece and took it back to their house. So my birthday celebration lasted less than thirty seconds. I’ve realized that in the past five years, I’ve only had one birthday in the United States!

And now for a segment dedicated to one of my favorite Zambian words: “Obe?!” (Pronounced like “obey.”) This is an expression of surprise, kind of like “Oops.” So if a person were to drop a pot, they would say, “Obe?!” This just cracks me up every time. Being a two syllable word that just doesn’t flow, it seems like by the time you get it out of your mouth, you couldn’t possible be surprised anymore. And just the way they say it, in question form with such honest excitement and befuddlement. “Obe?!?” Like, “How could that pot have possible fallen from my hand?!?!” Probably this explanation doesn’t do it justice, but it’s something I will miss.

I’ve written a lot about how Zambian and American culture differ and how puzzling Zambian culture can be at times. But the more I think about it, the Zambian side often makes more practical sense.

Animals: Americans treat animals more like people and Zambians treat them more like trees. It’s just a continuum. We think that animals have actual human qualities, but most likely, they don’t.
Preferences: Americans are very particular about things. Zambians are not. Women don’t care what pattern of citenge or what flavor of snacks they buy. (I know this during my stint as shopkeeper.) This seems so strange to us, but really, does it really matter what color clothes you wear?
Art: There’s a lot of art in the States. (Even including home decorating and human decorating.) There’s none in Zambia. It used to make me feel sad, but if you actually think about it - what a strange thing art is. It’s just superficial. It doesn’t put food in your belly!
Cultural Traditions, and Entertainment: Same as above.
Preferences: I always thought it strange to have no desire to eat a variety of food or interestingly flavored foods, but food is for your body, after all, and not a form of entertainment as we see it.

So us Americans are actually the crazy ones. (But I have to admit, the crazerds are much more fun!) And since I've already recieved threats about the above statements, let me say that yes, I DO think that art and animals and all that is very important! I'm just pointing out the sanity of it all!

As my time in Zambia is coming to an end, there’s still some things on my list that I don’t think I’ll get done. For months and months, I’ve been asking people to teach me various trades. How to make charcoal, how to make bricks, how to build an icimbusu, etc. They all just laugh at me and don’t think I’m serious. Why in the world would I want to learn something?! I’ve realized it’s the same mentality that’s attacking the other end of it and making my work here so difficult - trying to spread knowledge to others. They don’t want to learn and they don’t understand my desire to learn.

All - Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Happy Easter, whenever that is!

Brittany - Be glad you’re not in Zambia. Zambians can’t pronounce the name Brittany. Not at all. One of my girls for site visit was Brittany (and another was Carrie! I would have been pretty scared if the third was Stacy or Renee!) and it was pretty funny.

Mom - Is the Park going to be open this summer?!?

2009-03-03T11:11:00.002+02:00

Happy Valentines Day!! Mine was spent at a funeral of someone I didn’t know. I don’t even know if it was a man or a woman.

This past month has been a good one. For the following reasons:

1) Food. For a good two weeks or so, I ate mangos for at least two meals a day (not including the mangos in my oats every morning.) Then an avocado tree came into fruit in the village (imagine a maple-sized tree loaded with avocados!), so I ate avocado-cabbage wraps for two meals a day. My new favorite food. Might have been the best month of eating in my life!
2) Fun. I asked Kapiria to teach me “Nsolo” and “Pacibulia,” two games played in the village with holes and dried seed pods. (Similar to Mangala.) Joshua refers to the pieces as “babies” and taking the other player’s pieces as “eating,” so essentially, it’s the “Eat Your Babies” game. My first few games were against a blind woman and I lost all of them, so that was a little disheartening, but eventually I got the hang of it. It’s really fun and addicting, so I took a hammer out to the insaka and hacked up the floor to make my own board. Now I play with Joshua and/or Kapiria nearly every day, which is really relaxing and fun. I’ve only been beaten at Pacibulia once!
3) Work. Things have been pretty busy. I have computer lessons twice a week, Life Skills class once a week, and am monitoring community schools twice a week. (In theory, that is. Usually only one or two of these things actually manifest.)

Life Skills is going well. I’ve found that my Bemba has gotten good enough to teach nearly the entire class in Bemba.

We had a class about nutrition, which went really well. I compared the different types of nshima (maize, cassava, sorghum, and finger millet), promoting the indigenous ones which are more nutritious and grow well without the use of fertilizers. I had the students guess which one they thought was the healthiest. They guessed cassava and were shocked to learn that one is actually the least nutritious.

We planted the orchard, which was satisfying. But the students haven’t watered it, so most of the trees have died.

We also had a class about how to not kick your dog. I think they were a bit bewildered by that one.

I just got back from a grand adventure. I set out to visit “Wonder Gorge,” which is a view from a mountain looking down into a canyon where some rivers meet. I hitch-hiked for two days, then biked down a dirt path for two days (about fifteen hours, and at least 150 kilometers) up into the mountains. At one point, I was directed onto a “shortcut.” As I’ve mentioned before, Zambians and Americans have different ideas when it comes to efficiency. This may or may not have been less kilometers, but I had to wade across two knee-deep streams – with a bike. It was up and down and up and down ridiculously steep hills, where I had to pull and drag my bike up rocky embankments. It may have been the most physically challenging thing I’ve ever done. After the shortcut, it was better, but still difficult. Rocky, muddy, sandy, hilly. I was either screeching my brakes to coast down very steep hills or getting off to push my bike up very steep hills. Hardly any level ground. This was true mountain biking. Really incredible experience. All signs of civilization stopped and I continued for another thirty kilometers into the bush. No people, no villages. Just bush. It was really cool biking for hours on end alone through the mountains. Biking is suddenly your purpose in life and you are at one with the path, swerving to miss this pothole, swerving to miss that sandy patch, and so on. Completely in tune with what you are doing. (I can’t admit that my tuning is very finely tuned, however. I crashed my bike no less than ten times.) In the end, I didn’t get to see Wonder Gorge. I was directed onto a wrong path near the beginning of my ascent into the bush and ended up at an abandoned mine and then a tent made out of plastic bags where someone was living way out in the middle of nowhere! It started to get dark and rain and only having a hammock, I finally gave up and camped out in the shack and prayed that the person wouldn’t return. I watched the sun set over the mountains, singing all the songs I could think of that mention “hill” or “mountain.” (Now I have an urge to watch The Sound of Music!) After a sleepless night, I watched the sun rise and began the bike ride back. I caught a 3 AM lorry and came out with a film of red dirt over my skin, which looked like a botched tan job. (I bet this could be the next big thing for tanning! Forget cancerous tanning beds and lotions – just stand in a spray of red dirt!) Basically it just ended up being a huge biking and camping trip. I was one rough looking creature when I emerged, let me tell you. Filthy ripped clothes, plastered in spiderwebs, dirt, and grass, bruised and bleeding. (It was nice to be told, however, “Ah, even when they are dirty, they are beautiful!”)

At a stopping point along the way, I met some nice people at a power plant along the river who gave me a tour, which was really cool. It was built in the 40’s by the British, I suppose. There was this thing like the incline (only wooden and open air – really scary!) that went down the side of the mountain at a 37 degree angle. (I got my awesome view afterall! Amazingly gorge-ous!) There was a rickety old bridge and cat-walk over the raging river. They showed me the turbines and generators and stuff. Pretty cool.

After that three hour shortcut, I feel like there’s no road, path, or non-path that I’m not capable of biking. There’s been a lot of moments like that in Zambia. After waiting for transport for two days, there’s no amount of time I can’t pass. After regularly hitching hundreds of kilometers, there’s no distance I can’t travel. After staying in some real hole-in-the-walls, there’s no place I can’t sleep. (Even the Hotel Conneaut!) After basically camping for two years, there’s no inconvenience I can’t handle. After not bathing for two week stretches, there’s no amount of uncomfortableness I can’t endure. After having meeting after meeting fall through, there’s no amount of frustration I can’t get through. After living with bugs and rats and eating bugs (usually not on purpose), there's nothing that can't gross me out. And most of all, after standing in front of a group of forty blushing Zambians and saying “semen” and “vaginal fluids,” there’s really nothing I can’t do.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. The lighting during rainy season is just beautiful. One evening, I was huddled in an insaka waiting for the storm to pass. Looking out one side, the sky was a deep saturated blue. Looking out the other side, it was red. And not just the sky. Somehow the air itself seems to take on the color. Beautiful.

My bees are still here, but they’re not very nice. I went out to check on them one night, and they chased me back to my house! I felt like I was in a cartoon. I had even brought them a dish of sugar water! Ungrateful little buggers!

Oh, and I saw the weirdest bug in the world. A caterpillar type thing that had built a house out of sticks and was dragging it behind him like a snail shell. Totally bizarre.

I read about an interesting way to propagate trees instead of by seed. You cut a slice in a small branch, then wrap soil around it and the tree will get confussed and make roots. Then you just cut it off and plant it. I’m trying it with a mango tree.

The latest citenge is out! The Barack Obama citenge! One of the Zambian Peace Corps staff members had a whole dress suit made from it! Hilarious!

I thought it’d be a good idea to get a video of the village kids dancing to 80’s pop, but they were so bewildered by the noise that they were frozen.

One day, Kalunga came by to borrow my lighter. He wanted to light up a cigarette of “medicine” because he had a cough. I tried to explain the irony of it to him. I think he understood, but it’s hard to tell, because no matter what you say to him, he grins and responds “Ye-es.”

So there’s this old tale about when the Queen of England came to visit and the Zambian women lined up along the road to greet her as her car passed. They were told to cover their breasts, as this wasn’t respectable. So as the car drove by, the women lifted their skirts to cover their breasts, and instead exposed other things. I don’t know if this is true or not, but it seems really relevant to cultural interference and “development” work here in general. Adopting structure but not function. Like my fuel efficient stove. Neighbor Lady excitedly came over one day to tell me they were trying it out. I went over to see, and sure enough a pot of food was perfectly boiling away on the stove. And three feet away --- their usual fire was also blazing away. Yes, they are using the stove, hooray, but the idea was to use less firewood. Now they are using more because they are burning both the stove and the fire at the same time. I take this as the final summary of how my two years of service have impacted Zambia.

A few more cultural insights:

I’ve written before that childhood doesn’t really exist here. That children are just small adults who have to work in the fields and carry babies on their backs. That’s true, but kids do do some kid stuff as well. Girls play some kind of hopscotch game and occasionally make mud dolls. Boys make soccer balls out of plastic bags (and condoms), toy cars out of wire, and these clickityclack things they pretend are motorcycles. The craftsmanship is pretty impressive, really.
In daily life, Zambians have good memories. But every so often, their memories completely fail them. About things that just seem impossible to forget. Like their wife’s name or the village that they live in. Very strange.
I’ve also written about how Zambians don’t drink much water or pee much. (They’re very well adapted to this climate.) But when they do drink water, there’s certain quirks I haven’t been able to figure out. First of all, they must be served water. A man will tell a woman to serve him. A woman will tell a child to serve her. A child will tell a younger child to serve them. Second, a cup of water must be served on a saucer. Third, the drinker will slop water all over (hence, the saucer) and let it run down their neck as they drink. As a rule. Finally, the drinker never finishes the last bit of water and tosses it out.

And some more language observations:

Bemba doesn’t use the letter R. When village Zambians speak English, instead of saying L as L and R as L, as one might guess, they say L as R and R as L. Literally, always. Ritelarry, arways.
- There’s several Zamlish phrases I’m going to miss a lot. All of the following crack me up inside when I say them, so I use them every chance I get.
  - “Just ok.” This doesn’t mean “only ok,” as it may seem to us, but actually means “good.” It’s a handy phrase to use when someone asks you how something went, because it appeases them that it went well, but you don’t actually have to lie if it didn’t go so well. “Ah, my neighbors, they are just ok.”
  - “Fail.” If a Zambian doesn’t do something or can’t do something, they will say they have “failed.” Now this is true, of course, but it just seems so dramatic to us. It’s just not the same connotation. If I get stuck in a mud puddle on my bike: “Ah, I have failed to cross!”
  - “Too.” This might be my favorite one. “Too” actually means “Very.” So I can say, “Ah, I am liking mangos too much!” This simply means, “I like mangos a lot,” but I can’t help but snicker inside: What exactly are those dire consequences of liking mangos too much?!!? I love it.
- Again, another ammendum. I’ve written much about Bemba’s lack of vocabulary. How one word can mean many things. But I’d like to point out that there’s actually three words for “good” and two for “thank you.” Now isn’t that nice?

Now that we’ve said something nice, we can also say that last time I was in Serenje, someone stole my firewood, a lighter, my toilet paper rack, part of my fence, and my dishrack. Yes, my dishrack.

In Peace Corps news, I hosted first site visit again. This is when the new volunteers first fly into the country and immediately go visit a current volunteer. I had three girls (who also all read my blog!) and it was a nice time. We went to a soccer game, had computer lesson, taught life skills, watched an IRI lesson, made peanut butter, and learned how to fix a flat tire and clean the water filter. I brewed a bucket of lemongrass spice wine (which turned out quite delicious, as far as homebrew goes – which isn’t saying much, though, I suppose), but we didn’t end up drinking any of it, so I had to dump it all! I wonder what wine will do to my compost…

Speaking of Peace Corps news, here’s a silly saying for Zambia. They just can’t pronounce Peace Corps. I’ve gotten “Piscope,” and “Peace Choir.” They just can’t seem to grasp “corps” as “core.” It’s usually “corps” as “corpse,” which is just pretty sad that we represent that “Peace Corpse.” Other say “Peace Cops,” which seems rather oxymoronic. Both are rather telling of our time, I suppose.

We’ve chosen a new village where the house should be for my replacement. It’s about five kilometers away. They are supposed to have finished site prep by now, but they haven’t even started, so it’s now up in the air whether old Mpelembe will be replaced or not!!

And backing up to my Close of Service Conference. I was surprised to find that they put us up at an actual lodge for two nights! Kind of a congratulations and thank you. Nice food. (I even broke my vegetarianism again and tried the Puku. It’s free range, after all.) Nice lodging. Activities to do. It’s private land, so they have some game there, which was neat. I even got to see a hyena!! Oh my gosh, I had no idea that hyenas are the cutest animals ever!!! Just big fuzzy teddy bears with goo goo faces! So cute!!!!! The conference itself was alright. A lot of administrative stuff. We also dealt with readjusting to the United States, which is supposedly much more difficult and emotionally taxing that coming to Zambia in the first place. We practiced answering questions like, “Were there lions in your backyard?” and worst of all, “So, how was Africa?” As if two years of one’s life can be summed up in a sentence or too. It made me pretty sad and worried.

Note: I am in Mkushi now posting this. The Serenje computer seems to have crashed, so I’m not sure if I’ll be posting again before mid-April! Keep your fingers crossed!

Carrie’s Book Club

I read a humorous book about grammar, if you can believe that. Here’s a neat little trick I learned:

Every lady in this land
hath twenty nails on each hand
five and twenty on hands and feet
and this is true without deceit.

Confussed?

Every lady in this land hath twenty nails. On each hand, five. And twenty on hands and feet. And this is true without deceit.

Handy Hut How To: How To Bake

Light the coals on the babula (metal container stove fire thing.) Make your batter/dough/etc. Put a lid on the pot you’ll be using to cook. (If using a pan, use bicycle spokes and a lid.) Pile hot coals on top. Put a metal can in the babula, leaving a few coals underneath. Place the hot on top of the can. Bake!

Mom – Thanks for the package of treats! The little sandwich cookie things got squished flat as paper, but taste the same!

Bonnibelle – Thanks for the Silly Sayings book!! The cat-thief and the ski-lift articles were hilarious. I posted them at the Peace Corps House and we all got a kick out of them.

Pookie – Happy Presidents Day!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Stacy – I hope I get those letters before I leave!!

Vince – I hear you have to do your classroom observation soon. You should go observe Stacy! She’s teaching in Northeast.

2009-01-19T14:50:00.005+02:00

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!

Zambian Pets

2009-01-19T14:48:00.001+02:00

Zambian Pets

Cats

The Professor
Finnigan
Ngwi
Piddles
Puddles

Chickens

Fireball
Pocohantas
New Chicken
Corncob
Peeps
Thor
Abraham
Wee Wee Wee
Eggy
Chipmunk
Vulture
Arctic
No Name
No Name
No Name

Goats

Potato
Spud
Pegasus

Dogs

Danger Dog

Bees

Five or so swarms of bees

Bushbabies

Changa

2008-12-21T16:56:00.000+02:00

Merry Christmas!!! Happy New Year!!! We Central Province Volunteers got together in town for a “White Elephant” gift exchange (fun - it’s been so long since I’ve done one of those) and a Christmas Tea Party (thrown by me). I played the two Christmas songs I could on the harmonica and sang Christmas carols all night by the campfire. I had every intention of making a mini snowman out of nshima, but the power was out nearly the whole time and it just didn’t happen.

Well the past month has been full of adventure and not much being in Mpelembe. I had some time to kill between Provincials and Camp GLOW, so rather than going back home only to immediately turn around again, I decided to take the opportunity to check out the local sights. (“Local” being within a hundred kilometers or so.)

First was Kundalila Falls, which means “crying dove.” I thought it sounded more like rushing water. The path leading down to the base of the falls was steep and winded around the edge of the cliff where the water falls over the edge. It was beautiful and quite terrifying. There’s certainly no safety regulations when it comes to things like this and it would be very easy to trip and go over the falls. (Our pot, in fact, did go over the falls. It escaped while we were washing it in the river.) At the base of the falls was a huge pool surrounded by towering cliffs. The water was icy and it was exhilarating to jump in and swim in the swirling mist, looking up at the water rushing down. It was a fantastic experience - one of my best in Zambia. And in general too.

I went with nine other volunteers so we hired a minibus (small blue vans that are notorious for being awful) to drive us. We made it there in one piece, but the way back was a disaster. So hilarious, though, that it wasn’t actually bad at all. Just ridiculously funny. We ran out of gas. Twice. The driver had to walk or hitch to fetch more, which cost us an hour or so each time. Then the bus stalled and we had to push it for a kilometer or so up a hill. One volunteer was steering and the rest were pushing. The driver was just watching. Finally we got going again and thought we were home free, when the door fell off and went clattering down the road, also releasing the spare tire which went bouncing away behind us. We tied the door back on with handkerchiefs and finally made it to town. A one hour trip took five. (And then he wanted more money than we had agreed on!!) The best part was the “Do Not Panic. God Is In Control.” sticker on the dashboard. God must have been on vacation that day.

Next I visited Nsalu Cave with another volunteer. We had to hitchhike for awhile and then bike down a hilly bumpy rutted red dirt road for 25 kilometers. After climbing up the base of a rocky mountain, we came to the cave, which wasn’t really a cave but a natural half dome cut into the side of the mountain. The walls were covered in 2,000 year old Bushman paintings. Artifacts dating 20,000 years old have been found there as well. (I even saw some chunks of what appeared to be a broken pot lying around, but I can’t imagine that the proper authorities could have overlooked them if they really were ancient artifacts. I just left them there.) The paintings were mostly indistinguishable lines and circles drawn in red, yellow, and white paint made from animal fat, but you could recognize a couple drawings of canoes too. The walls were also covered in recent Zambian graffiti, mostly done in the name of various churches. We found a long branch with a charred end that people had been using to write and tossed it over the side of the mountain. At first I was sad that people would mar the cave like that, but I guess it’s really no different than the people who had made the original drawings, right? Maybe in 2,000 years, people will come to see “Mwape was here 2006” and think it is amazing. Anyway, we speculated for awhile on what message the painters were trying to get across. We decided it was probably religious, as the dome is the perfect place for some tribal ceremony. In fact, I really which I could have spent the night up there, banging on some drums as the sun set on the hills and valleys below. It really would have been beautiful and whimsical. Unfortunately, since it took us so long to get there, we were only able to spend a half hour or so looking at the paintings before we had to turn around and head back.

Camp GLOW went pretty well, but not nearly as well as last year’s camp. Only half of the girls showed up, which was a big disappointment. One of our guest speakers never showed up. The biggest problem, however, was with the teachers. Last year, the camp was only for the girls, but this year in order to get funding, we had to bring teachers too. They were just miserable the whole time, complaining that they weren’t getting paid, complaining about the food, not participating in any of the activities, and running off to check their phones all the time. They also disagreed with much of what we were teaching and flipped out when we mentioned condoms. It was really difficult for me to sit there and listen to them blame sexual abuse on the clothes that girls wear, complain that we’re not teaching the girls sewing and cooking skills, discourage male-female friendships, and absolutely refuse to admit that teenagers could be having sex, when we all see young girls dropping out of school because they get pregnant.

It really made me wonder why I’m here trying to push my values on people who obviously don’t want them. How do we really know whose morals are correct? Is it ok for foreigners to try to change Zambian culture or should we just leave them alone and hope they do it themselves? Where do you draw the line between cultural differences and universal intrinsic injustice? Should we leave gender inequality alone because it’s part of the culture or should we try to change it because it’s universally intrinsically unjust? Is it possible that gender inequality is not universally unjust? It’s just so difficult and frustrating. I suppose between the Peace Corps Volunteers and Student Partnership Worldwide (college age Zambian women who we had facilitate all the sessions) versus the teachers, the girls got to see both sides and can choose for themselves.

After having said all this, the camp overall was still a success. Not all the teachers were downers. One (who was a man!) always had a smile on his face and participated in everything – he even helped the girls sew sanitary pads! We had sessions about avoiding sugar daddies, encouraging assertiveness, self-confidence, and motivation, preventing HIV, having goals, etc. There were also fun activities like obstacle courses, pottery making, canoeing, and lots of singing. (It’s interesting how Zambian girls feel no shyness about singing or dancing in front of a group of people – something that most Americans would be horrified to do - yet will cover their faces and squirm when called on during a discussion.) Though the girls may not have opened up and bonded as much as last year, they still had a great time and were sad to go.

We had an agricultural training for our fellow Peace Corps Volunteers. I taught about chickens. I don’t think anyone cared.

When I returned home, I was greeted by the tragedy that I’ve now just come to expect. That termites ate my beloved straw hat was the least of it. Even though I left the chickens in the hands of the headman, someone still stole Corncob. The headfamily blames the Mumbas and the Mumbas blame the headfamily. I now only have three chickens left – Pocahontas, New Chicken, and Eggy.

I also found that Finnigan, my dear dear love, was missing. I don’t think that he was stolen or died because various villagers have reported seeing him pacing back and forth in the bush. I think he must have thought I abandoned him because within two days, Ngwi died, I took the chickens to another house, and I went to Serenje, so he was left with an empty house. I feel really terrible because I loved my Fins so much! We had such long in depth conversations. It’s not a total tragedy, I suppose, assuming he’s just gone feral and is off hunting rats in the bush. I hope he’s happy with his new life.

With suddenly no cats, I noticed the huge void they left – how lonely and quiet it suddenly was. And how many rats had infested my house. So when Kapiria told me he had found someone who was selling kittens, I agreed to go take a look. (He really is one of the nicest people I’ve met. He knew how much I missed my cats and went and found another for me.) I know what you’re thinking. Carrie, you’ve only got four months left! Why in the world would you get another pet now?!? Well, four months is no “only” when it comes to being lonely without a pet. And four months is no “only” to be picking rat turds out of your dishes every morning. I only had Ngwi about that long and felt that was plenty of time to enjoy her. Anyways, there were two kittens – a male and a female runt who was about three quarters of the size of the other and had two different sized eyes. I named them Piddles and Puddles. They were both just skin and bones, but especially the runt. Ridiculously skinny. I thought it’d be fine, that I’d just fatten her up with food and love. I was wrong. Within a day, she had died. I was shocked. It wasn’t nearly as horrific as Ngwi’s death because I hadn’t yet grown attached to her, and it wasn’t my first hands-on pet death, but it was still an awful awful experience. I buried her next to Ngwi.

I’m convinced that I’m being punished for something, but I don’t know what. I’ve lost Grandma, Finnigan, Ngwi, Piddles, Changa, Fireball, Wee Wee Wee, and Corncob all within a month or so. I’ve had so much tragedy and death, things are just morbid. I’m not even counting on Puddles or the chickens being alive when I get back. Maybe someone’s doing juju on me.

The headman also thinks someone’s doing juju on him. He went to a witchdoctor, who took some hair, blood, and bone (not sure how he did that one) and mixed it with amasuku, a bushfruit, and that’s supposed to solve everything.

Joshua has entrusted his school notebooks to me, because he says his older brother Victor will just rip out the papers to roll cigarettes.

We’re still trying to sort out the whole housing issue for the volunteer who is to replace me. With all the theft, we’ve decided to find a different house. The housing committee in the village is dragging their feet, however. They’ve had three months to make a decision and nothing has been done. I wouldn’t be surprised if my site isn’t replaced at all.

I almost rescued another baby monkey, but it was sold to someone else before I could get it. And here’s an interesting factoid: In Bemba, the word for “monkey” and “ancestor” is the same. Looks like old Darwin stole his ideas from the Zambian scholars after all!

Doug’s mom sent me a beaded bracelet that I put on as an anklet. It’s caused quite the stir in Mpelembe. No one can comprehend why I’m wearing it and why I’m wearing it there. People keep stopping by to see the bracelet from “The Mother of Doug.” I don’t think it helps that it resembles the beads women wear around their waists when they get married. Could it be the same difference as a Zambian coming to the United States wearing underwear on their head?

National Geographic is having an essay contest for Peace Corps Volunteers about the Global Food Crisis. By the time they informed of us of it, the deadline was nearly over, so I won’t be entering, but it got me thinking about it anyway. I’m sure they’re expecting sad stories about poor people suffering, but if I were to write the essay, mine would be just the opposite. Here in Mpelembe, it doesn’t matter who the president is or what the economy is doing. Those things happen, and the oblivious villagers just keep going on with what they’ve always been doing. Farming. It’s hard to lose your job if you work for yourself. It’s hard to lose your home if land is free to begin with. It’s hard to starve if you grow your own food. In Mpelembe, there is no “Global Food Crisis.” Most people from “developed” countries would look at the “poverty” of the villagers with disgust and pity. They wear old clothes and are “unemployed” and live in simple houses and have chickens running through their houses and carry things on their heads and don’t own cars and do manual labor. Most people would see this as backward. I see it as the future.

There’s still time left if anyone wants to plan a visit to Zambia!

Handy Hut How To: How To Greet A Fellow Zambian

Everyone you encounter must be greeted. There are different greetings for the different situations you may find your greetee in. For example, if you find the greetee working, sitting, eating, resting, mourning, or traveling, you must use the greeting that matches the situation. One can also greet according to the time of day if it is morning or evening. (If it’s the afternoon, however, you’re out of luck.) When in doubt, the universal “Muli shani?” always works. One greeting is ok, but it is better to say at least two or three greetings before starting the actual conversation.

If you are close to the greetee, you must shake their hand, which is done by grasping hands, linking thumbs, and then grasping hands again. (Beware if you feel a tickle on your palm, as this is the “dirty handshake” and means something else.) The greetee may release you at that time or may choose to hold your hand for the rest of the conversation. This is ok, especially when it is between two males.

If you are far from the greetee, you can squat/bow a little bit and clap your hands as a replacement for the handshake. If you are on a bicycle, which makes it difficult to squat/bow and clap, you can rest your hand on your chest as you pass by.

Heather – Wow. It is the same song! I just assumed, because it was so silly and horrible, that it couldn’t have been anything but a grandma creation. How it came about was that I had this little plastic dinosaur that was green until you put it in cold water. Then it turned yellow. Green and Yeller.

Frank From Zambia – Two cultures is one is an excellent way to put it. When I’m in the village, I find it hard to imagine that town exists. And when I’m in town, I find it hard to imagine that the village exists.

Mom & Dad – Thank you for the Christmas present! I’m not sure what the foot things are?!

Doug – Whenever I swing the babula, the kids remind me that when Doug did it, he swung it all the way around.

Pookie – Thanks for the Christmas package! It was amazing timing for the marshmallows. I donated a bag of them to the Christmas tea/cocoa party. Yum!

Bonnibelle – Thanks for the Christmas presents! Also perfect timing. I’m going on a camping trip and the dry rice and noodle packages are perfect!

Dad – Happy Birthday!

Cathy – Happy Birthday!

2008-11-27T11:31:00.001+02:00

I’m in Serenje now for our biannual provincial meeting for Peace Corps. It’s weird to think that this is my last one! We’re also celebrating Thanksgiving, which is a big thing to cook for twenty people! I’m making pies.

I’ve been worrying about what I was going to do with all of my animals when my service ends, but it seems that Zambians and nature are doing a pretty good job of taking care of that for me.

While I was in Serenje last time, someone stole Fireball and WeeWeeWee. The neighbors were away visiting family, but said that they would return after one week. The day I left was the day they were supposed to return, so I assumed it was ok. But of course, they didn’t return and that left my house even more unprotected than usual. So I blame it on them in part. (Why can’t they just tell me the truth for once?! It’s been a month and half and they’re still not back.) Out of all of the chickens, the three core chickens are Fireball, Pocahontas, and New Chicken (don’t tell the others), so for Fireball to be stolen was awful. She was my first chicken. I took my remaining four chickens to stay at the headman’s house this time so they’d be safe.
I went to Kasanka to visit Changa, my bushbaby. She was cute as ever and a little more chubby. I have gotten word, however, that several days later, she suddenly died. Apparently, the guy who usually looks after her was away and the one in charge didn’t give her water.
It’s mushroom season now so I bought a huge mushroom and cooked it up. I was then ridiculously sick the whole night. I always give the cats some of my food, so Ngwi was sick too. The next day, I looked at the half of the mushroom I hadn’t used and saw it was covered in white fuzzy mold. I hadn’t noticed the night before because it was dark when I was cooking. I recovered, but Ngwi continued to throw up and then became constipated. I don’t know if the constipation was because of the mushroom or not. More likely, she probably swallowed string or some object that was blocking her intestine. After a week and a half, she still wasn’t pooping. I asked my head teacher to take my phone with him when he was going to the boma to call the vet, but he said he would “only as a last resort.” I have a book about caring for cats and dogs which I read through every day in search of an explanation. I gave her vegetable oil and milk, hoping it would work as a laxative. I gave her garlic, which is supposed to be good for gastrointestinal disorders. But nothing helped. On Monday night, I finally decided I’d go to the clinic in the morning to see if they had some syringe or something that I could use for an enema. (I was desperate, as you can see.) The next morning she was a little droopy eyed, but still purred when I would pet her. A half hour later, I found her dead on the porch. It was completely devastating and I can’t get the image out of my mind. Living alone, my animals are my best friends and my family here. Kapiria was borrowing my hoe, so I found him in the peanut field to get the hoe back to bury Ngwi. I started crying as soon as I asked him. I think he was kind of confused and uncomfortable because Zambians don’t have “pets” like we do. He knows I love my animals though, so he went with me (in the rain) to bury her. She now has a proper Zambian burial mound. I put the seed of one of my favorite Zamtrees in the mound so she can be reincarnated as a tree.

Now that I’ve depressed everyone.

Doug sent catnip for the cats, but they didn’t give a diddlysquat about it! The chickens pecked at it a little. It just doesn’t do anything for Zambian cats, I suppose. Ngwi liked pipecleaners a little bit, so at least we know that is universal.

So rainy season has officially started. And all of a sudden, everything is different. Everything looks more saturated and the lighting is beautiful. Grass and weeds are sprouting. Kids are selling mushrooms. There’s huge claps of thunder with lighting and wind. There’s a whole slew of new bugs, including these weird spider/scorpions and even tarantulas. There’s also these neat bugs that flutter in swarms in the evening and look just like fairies. The cats like to jump and twist into the air trying to get them. It’s a very whimsical scene. The patio fence is collapsing from the weight of the rain. Funny fat frogs have emerged that are so fat they walk instead of hopping. The village paths have turned into small streams, which makes biking interesting. I’m covered in bug bites and rashes and have had a botfly already. My hut stinks from mildewey clothes that after washing, I haven’t been able to dry for four days because it’s rained every day. Yep, it’s rainy season.

I was pretty sure I understood that it was rainy season, but Zambia really wanted to make sure I knew. As soon as I left Kasanka on my trip to visit Changa, it started pouring and it didn’t stop for the whole several hour bike ride back to Mpelembe. I was soaked, but it was rather exhilarating, actually.

On the way, a car pulled over and an aid worker from Chicago stopped to chat with me. It was nice. He gave me several bags of delicious food because he had just been to a big grocery store! I felt very bad for him, though. He had just escaped a hunt after him because the villagers he was working with found out he was gay and Jewish and thought he was the devil.

When I got back home the same day, I found that someone had stole the bag of fish I had hung under the back roof eave. I recommended to Peace Corps to replace my site, but I’m not so sure about the house. It would be irresponsible to put another volunteer in that same exact area, given the continuous problems I’ve had with theft. The woman who lived in the house before me wants it back anyways.

I planted some cucumbers, pumpkins and loofahs in ShakeShake containers and strung them up on the poles of the patio roof so they can climb over it. (ShakeShake is this awful lumpy “beer” that comes in a box.) They’re not climbing yet, but they look ridiculously cute and picturesque.

Zambians are funny how they’re so particular about things. I always get in trouble if my shirt is dirty or ripped. And when I was at the Post Office, my tropical (flip-flop) broke. It was impossible to continue wearing it, so I just kicked it off and stood in line one-shoed. Oh the looks I got!

I think one afternoon basically summed up my Zambian experience. First, one of the neighbors stopped by and told me to give her the grass from my roof. When I told her that no, I wasn’t going to do that, she instead asked for the chain on my door. Next, I was sitting in my hammock reading when “Cowboy” came over and proceeded to stand behind me and look over my shoulder for a half hour. Later, I was inside and heard someone calling me from the path outside. I called back, but he insisted he wanted to see me. Thinking he wanted to ask me something, I went outside. But no, he literally just wanted to see me. After he was satisfied, he continued biking along.

The next week continued to be very Zambian. Justin scolded me for using a reed mat as my fence door instead of as a mat. Boy did I get in trouble! Then Peg asked me to accompany her to the roadside while she bought biscuits and Super Mahao (lumpy sweetened drink made out of mealie meal.) She said she needed to buy these things to eat, because if she ate nshima on that particular day, she would become sick. I asked her to explain, and she demonstrated that she’d start screaming hysterically like she has in the past when she has her fits.

As I was biking one day, a man asked me if I knew Chip, who was a volunteer in the area a long time ago. He said they were best friends. Yet he had no idea that Chip hadn’t been in the country for ten years. Zambians treat the word “friend” so lightly, that it makes me wonder if relationships here are as deep as they are in the US. When you read the advice column in The Post, the letters from 25 year olds sound like they were written by a 13 year old with a crush. “I love him so much and want to have his baby, but he doesn’t know my name and is sleeping with my friend,” etc. Marriages are highly valued, but particular spouses are not. When the headman was afraid his wife might die, he wasn’t upset because he would miss her, but because he’d be burdened with raising the family. When my head teacher was afraid his wife might die, again he wasn’t upset because he’d miss her, but because he’d have to go through the trouble of remarrying. Here’s my theories on the matter.

Relationships actually are deep, but I can’t see it because of cultural or language barriers.
Relationships actually are deep, but Zambians don’t display this emotionally.
As for pronouncing a friendship with a muzungu (white person), it’s just to brag.
Because everyone is so kind and polite to each other, there’s no need for specific people to overplay those parts in one’s life. Everyone is a not-so-close friend.
As far as male-female relationships, gender equality and respect is so messed up here, how could they get along?
Because it is more collective than individualistic, individual people aren’t valued for their own personalities, but just as they fit into a role (e.g. “wife.”)

Whenever I think or write about this stuff, I feel so guilty for being so ethnocentric. So here’s my explanation for that. Back in college, learning about “cross-cultural communication,” it seemed so simple. Collective versus individualistic. High context versus low context. Direct versus indirect. Concepts of time. The whole iceburg thing. Easy. Even living in Jamaica didn’t challenge me that much in the cross-cultural sense. It is only now that I realize how difficult it is to understand cultural differences. How difficult it is not to be ethnocentric. Some things are easy to accept. Differences in clothes, food, gestures. Even aspects of etiquette, gender, property, and privacy, though I may not agree with them, I can at least understand that it’s just different. What I’m finding extremely difficult to accept, however, are aspects of value, morality, and logic. Things that I thought were one-hundred percent intrinsic to humanity are in fact, not. How do I accept things that don’t fit into my idea of what it is to be human? Some examples.

Value - It is not in fact intrinsic that a flower is pretty, that a baby animal is cute, that a rooster with all of its feathers looks better than a rooster that doesn’t have all of its feathers, etc. It is hard to understand someone who values a puppy as much as a rock.
Morality - Zambians are a peaceful people. I credit this in part to how they maintain harmony on a daily basis through their communication methods. If the truth is not something that will maintain equilibrium, they don’t use it. This means telling you what they think you want to hear. For example, saying that they’re interested in coming to your meeting, promising to follow through with a task, claiming that the reason they need to borrow your bicycle is direly important, etc. These things sound good in the moment, though they may not bear any connection to reality the next day. To me, it is hard to accept that this is not just dirty rotten lying. The same principal holds true with following through with an action, like holding a meeting. Holding a meeting is a break to the equilibrium of not having a meeting, so they’d rather not.
Logic - This one is perhaps the most difficult, because when it comes to questions of reasoning, we are dealing with cognition and it’s not politically correct to point out differences in cognition between cultures or races. Zambians and Americans, however, do in fact think differently.

One way is in deciding the best way something should be done. Americans opt for efficiency. For example, starting a meeting on time so that it ends on time, tying a bike strap so that it’s easy to untie later, taking the most direct route to a destination, etc. Zambians on the other hand, opt for something else that I have not discovered yet, but the best advice I can offer a visitor is Don’t let a Zambian tie your bicycle strap!!!

Then there’s just basic aspects of logic that I can’t understand. For example, when someone stole my chicken, they made a hole in the grass roof of the chicken house to extract the chicken. They then put a brick over the hole to cover it up, so I wouldn’t know. To me, a brick on top of the chicken house is more obvious than a hole in the grass.

Another example is a joke I heard while riding with some Zambians. It goes like this, “A man hailed a cab and when the cab pulled over, he saw that the driver had the legs of an animal. He screamed and ran away, hailing a different cab. When this one pulled over, he said, ‘Sir, the other cab driver! He had these legs like…’ and the driver said, ‘What, like these?’ They were also the legs of an animal.” All the Zambians in the car howled for five minutes. I was still waiting for the punchline. Maybe it would make for a child’s campfire tale, told with a flashlight under the chin, but if this is “funny,” I don’t know how. While I may not think all American jokes are of high quality, at least I can “groan” and understand why it is funny. It’s a pun. It’s a funny stereotype. It’s a play on words. Et cetera.

Finally, when meeting with one of my community school teachers, he told me that his PTA was like “a dog without teeth” or “a white elephant” and went on to sketch a circle and some lines in the dirt to really drive home his point. I can barely even be troubled by the puzzling metaphors when trying to figure out how a circle and a line relate to either a dog, an elephant, or a PTA.

“They say” that the best way to understand a cultural is to look at its expressions and proverbs. In good old cross-cultural communication class, they give the old “The squeaky wheel gets the grease” versus “The nail that stands up gets pounded down” example. Clear and simple. The only thing I can extract from Zambian proverbs, however, is what I’ve already been saying – that Zambian logic is not logical to me.
- You cannot stop a child from crying by merely showing him a disused garden.
- He who beats his mother-in-law beats her thoroughly.
- Do as you always do. People’s eyes do not eat.
- For a jackal to bark, there must be something on which it has placed its buttocks.
- A cock breaks its wings when it is growing.

So that’s my explanation of that. Anyways.

We’ve had another computer lesson for the library committee. This time actually using the computer. It went really well. We did simple things like opening and closing windows and folders, but it was still pretty overwhelming for them. A storm blew out the solar panels, so I’m not sure when (if ever) computer lessons will resume again.

We also had a library training for the committee. This is a huge step!!! I planned and facilitated the whole thing myself and it went really well! (“Well,” considering it was a Zambian meeting. That means not everyone showing up, starting over an hour late, and dragging the participants out of their homes to attend.)

I’ve been bothering the “Agricultural Extension Agent” about having meetings to teach things like agroforestry, beekeeping, fuel efficient stoves, planting trees, etc. And when I say “bothering,” that’s really what I mean. He’s not interested and won’t follow through with anything he says he will. It wouldn’t really be acceptable for me to go over his head and have the trainings on my own, so I guess nothing will be done. I might just try to build a stove myself and show the neighbors how. Who knows.

Camp GLOW is ready to go next week. We were unable to raise the money we needed and were about to cancel the whole thing. Then I called Changes2, an NGO I’ve worked with before, with the hope that maybe they could cover the rest of the cost. They had to discuss it and then called me back saying, “Yes we can!” (It was the day Obama was elected.) I guess that whole “networking” thing is true after all. We quickly called a meeting and decided which Volunteers would be sending girls. So in a matter of thirty minutes, it went from canceling the camp to having it fully funded and making the final preparations! I feel good that I was able to make that contribution, because I haven’t really done much else to help plan for the camp. I don’t have cell phone reception anywhere near me, so it really was impossible for me to do much.

In defense of Zambian proverbs, here’s one I do like: A child is like an axe. If it cuts you, you still must pick it up and put it over your shoulder.S

So as you know, Obama was elected. All the Peace Corps Volunteers went to a hotel in Mkushi to watch the election. Luckily the power didn’t go out that night. (It goes out most nights.) I tried to nap during the day and got up at 1:00 AM. Results didn’t really start coming in until 2:00 or so, and the final result was around 6:00 in the morning. It was kind of exciting staying up to watch it. We all cheered when he gave a shout out to all those out there in the far corners of the earth “crowded around a radio” to hear the election results. (Though we were crowded around a TV, actually.) I wish I would have been in the United States for this, because I imagine riots in the street like when the Steelers won the Superbowl. Maybe there wasn’t, I don’t know. Everyone in Africa is elated, of course. They love Obama. There’s even an alcohol named after him – “Obama: The Winning Spirit.” I’m glad that Obama won instead of McCain, but I certainly wasn’t as excited as the other Volunteers. I think it’s significant symbolically that Americans elected a black(ish) person as president and it might influence other racists around the world. (For example, Jamaica and some African countries are more racist against blacks than the US is. The lighter ones hate the darker ones, etc.) But I’m worried that it will become an excuse to stop the push for further equality. “Look, a black man is president. All is equal now, so stop complaining.” It’s still going to be a long time until things are actually equal for everyday blacks, so while it’s symbolic, I don’t think it’s going to change the world. The US is going to go on pretty much the same way it has been. Whether things change or not, I think it can only be a positive thing. Perhaps he will make some significant changes (e.g. legalizing gay marriage) and citizens will continue to push their leaders in the future. And if he isn’t the messiah that people think he is, then the disappointment and disillusion that will ensue might result in the actual change of things. Maybe.

So according to the radio, it’s worse than the Great Depression out there. Is this true? I know that food and gas prices are up and that banks and big businesses’ stocks are down, but is it really that bad? Maybe I should stay here. It makes me sick that I could live here for FREE because land is free. Or I could pay $250 for lakefront property on Samfya Lake. One month rent in the US or lakefront land for a lifetime? Makes me sick.

And now for the Carrie Book Club segment. I read a book called “Salt” which was about, well, salt. The best part was a story about the Caribbean island Turks and Caicos, which was used by England as a salt source. Since it was under colonial rule, England required that they have a proper coat of arms. Turks and Caicos sent a drawing of salt workers near huge piles of salt. The English artists didn’t know where the island was and thought the white mounds were igloos, so the official coat of arms of this tropical island featured igloos until fairly recently when they were replaced by flamingos. I just crack up every time I think about it.

All – Sometimes packages arrive here in two weeks, but I’ve also gotten ones that were sent over four months ago. Taking that into consideration, you should probably stop sending packages, as much as it pains me to say so. (Unless you’re ok with the possibility of other Peace Corps Volunteers ripping it open and splitting the booty, which is protocol when a package arrives for a Volunteer who is no longer in the country.) Thank you thank you thank you to everyone who has sent me packages! I think it was my fate to be a Peace Corps Volunteer, if only for the mail. As a kid, I was always SO excited to check the mailbox, even though I never got anything. Even through highschool, mom and dad would leave the unimportant mail in the box so there’d be something for me to check when I got off the school bus. I’ve never gotten so many packages and letters and probably never will again. Keep the letters coming though (which are really better than the packages anyways.) You can keep sending those up until a few weeks before I’m done.

All – Happy Thanksgiving!!

All who donated to Camp GLOW – Thank you!!

Mom – Thank you for the umbrellas (lifesaving) and watch.

Michelle – Thanks for the bracelet. Doug didn’t really explain the significance of it to me though. Thank you for the condolences as well.

Heather – I can’t imagine that the “Green and Yeller” song is the same one….

Bonnibelle – The Crawford County fact sheet was cool. I was proud to see that eight of the claims to fame had to do with Conneaut Lake Park! (I thought the Blue Streak was number one or two for oldest coaster though, not number six! Hmmm..) I think that probably a bed of puppies would be better than a bed of baby goats, cause they have little baby hooves.

Bonnibelle and Cathy – Silly saying. I was listening to the radio and they were talking about solar plants in the Sahara making enough energy to power all of Africa, and I was thinking WOW, picturing these big cactuses with wide flat leaves that somehow absorbed sunlight and could be tapped for energy. It was awhile before I realized they meant plant as in factory, not plant as in plant.

2008-11-02T23:39:00.002+02:00

Every time I hear a car in Mpelembe, I get worried that it’s Peace Corps bringing bad news from home. I run it through several tests. First I check to see if it’s Peter’s car or if it’s the Peace Corps Land Cruiser. If it’s the latter, I then check the faces of those in it to see if they look happy or sad. This morning, my paranoia turned out to be true. They had come to tell me that grandma had died. So they gave me some time to pack up and brought me to Serenje so I could talk to mom on the phone. It’s a strange thing to be here separated from everyone. (And a strange thing to be writing this on my blog.) It seems less real in a way, I suppose. It’s hard to believe that the person I spent nearly every weekend with as a kid is gone. Driving out to see the buffalo, eating creamtoast, going to “the end of the road,” playing at the school, having tea parties with Mrs. Danks on the Moonbird table. Grandma was always on the kids’ side. A person who was so generous that she was usually begging to buy me things rather than me begging her like a normal grandchild-grandparent relationship. She was the author of quite a few classic songs such as “Green and Yeller” and “Put it in the Trash Can,” and the enthusiastic singer of many more – “Thank You Very Much,” “Folks are Dumb Where I Come From,” etc. And we cannot forget the Titanic trick which she showed to a quarter of America. I don’t know. I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry I couldn’t be there for the funeral.

I feel guilty going on with the rest of my blog as if nothing has happened, but I shall because if I don’t, the next one will be five thousand pages long. I realize that many will not be reading this time and that’s ok, but I blog not only to keep those at home updated, but it’s also my own record of my Zambian experience. My memory is so bad that if I don’t have photos and the blog, I won’t remember.

So, the biggest thing since sliced nshima has hit Mpelembe. One day, the village kids beckoned me, so I went outside to see them holding a gray kitten. I went over and reached out to pick it up, but as I looked into its face, I realized it wasn’t a kitten, but a bushbaby (small nocturnal primate.) Not only a bushbaby, but a BABY bushbaby. It’s mother had been killed by a dog. They sold it to me for the equivalence of about $1.25.

I fell head over heels over head for this little critter who had the head of a bat/raccoon, the body of a chinchilla/koala, the hands of a treefrog/human, and the tail of a monkey, with a little opossum and cat thrown in there. Basically, what it comes down to is a combination between a furby, a gremlin, and the little handheld alien from Flight of the Navigator. I named her Changa, which is simply the Bemba word for bushbaby.

Being the furry mess that it is, she thought that my head was her mother and insisted upon clinging there to sleep. If I tried to remove her, I would be scolded with a “click,” “squeak,” or “mumph.” If I were to set her down across the room, she would run back over to me and climb me with her little rubber hands and feet until she was happily perched back on my head. So sweet. After awhile, she decided that Ngwi and Finnigan made suitable mothers as well and would cling to their backs or bellies. This unnerved the cats to no end, trying to walk around with a firmly attached baby primate stuck to them. Mostly they would tip over.

Bushbabies are tiny, but they’re known for their loud cries. Changa was no exception. Come night, she started chirping ridiculously loud in the stereotypical “oo oo oo AH AH AH” sequence. Needless to say, I didn’t sleep.

After several days of enjoying my new pet, I had to make a very hard decision. She was eating fruits, but I couldn’t get her to drink milk, which I thought she would definitely need. I also realized that she was a danger to herself. Her calls could be heard throughout the village, and that means any predator could easily snatch her up. Perhaps an owl, but more likely a human. As soon as word would get out that I had a bushbaby, I don’t think she would have lasted very long. So I made the sixty kilometer bike ride to Kasanka National Park where I handed her over for them to raise and release back into the wild. My eyes welled up as I said goodbye. I really became attached to that little bugger. I plan to visit soon.

News of the bushbaby makes news of my new kitten seem dull, but I also have a new kitten! Last time I was in Serenje, I saw a kitten in the same shop that I got Finnigan, and just had to have it. A little black and white bugger named Ngwi. A “ngwi” is the smallest Zambian currency. So small, it doesn’t really even exist anymore. It’s worth a thousandth of a cent or something. I was hoping that a playmate would make Finnigan a little less insane, but it was silly of me to try to do this by bringing in his sibling. Ngwi is, of course, crazy too. Though she was voraciously eating solid foods just fine, she tried to start nursing from my armpit. (Bushbabies. Cats. My body must just exude some “motherly” chemical.) After awhile she gave up on that and now thinks that Finnigan is her mother and Finnigan thinks so too. He’ll lay down and let her “nurse” from his now engorged nipples. (I rechecked to make sure he’s a boy and he definitely is.) Maybe the Milk Gods felt guilty for giving me a useless milkgoat and gave me a milkcat instead.

One cannot gain an animal in Zambia, however, without losing one. Potato and kin like to pal around with the Mumba and Mwelelwa goats. They all travel around together to eat the other neighbors’ crops (who then insist that I, and only I, pay them for the damage.) When this happened for the umpteenth time, the neighbor kids decided that I should tie up my goats and proceeded to chase them around and around and around the village in an attempt to catch them. In the midst of all this confusion, Pegasus got separated from the rest and I haven’t seen her since. (The kids then demanded that I pay them for their catching services.)

In Zambia, if one wants to make a village announcement, one does so at night when everyone else is quiet and at home. This is done by simply standing in your front yard and shouting. I was touched when Iron Mumba announced to the village to please return my baby goat. A man also stopped by my house to inform me that he as investigating “the case” of my missing goat, as the Mumbas had reported it to their “offices.” What “offices” this could be is beyond me. Do we have a Missing Goat Investigation Bureau in Mpelembe that I don’t know about?

I started to get confident after the bees had stayed put for a week and, inspired by the collective naming of Jamie and Julie’s compost worms, named them Stingsworth. They soon absconded.

So in the matter of a month, I gained a cat, lost a goat, lost a swarm of bees, and gained and lost a bushbaby.

Staying true to her name, Eggy has started laying. Funny small little eggs!

In other animal news, I saw a dog that resembled an African Wild Dog. That unusual black and copper tortoise-shell look. I highly doubt it was an actual African Wild Dog, as they are nearly extinct, I think. But perhaps it was the great great great grandchild of a wild-domestic mix. Or more likely, I’m just dying to see wildlife in Zambia. Here’s a list of the animals I’ve seen so far.

I didn’t think that it would happen, but my toenail did fall off after all. It looks rather strange now.

It’s now tsetse fly, rash caterpillar, and big creepy spider season. Finnigan swatted a tsetse fly right out of the air and ate it!

The fence surrounding my old garden has been permeable to chickens and goats for a long time now and has finally just completely fallen down. I decided to give zamgardening one last shot and converted the old brick bathing shelter (filled with two feet of compost) into a mini garden. Forget French Intensive Gardening. This is Carrie Intensive Gardening! Bugs are now destroying the seedlings.

Someone has put juju (witchcraft) on the headman. Also, did you know that there are two types of crocodiles? One is a “natural crocodile” and one is a “man-made crocodile” which is the product of juju. The way to tell the difference between the two is when someone is killed by a crocodile, then you know it’s a man-made one.

The timing just didn’t work out for me to leave the village for Halloween, so I celebrated alone. Well, not alone. The cats and chickens all took turns wearing a mask of Laura’s face. I think New Chicken really liked it. I also marked the day by walking on hot coals. I didn’t intend to mark the day by walking on hot coals, but my clumsy subconscious thought it was necessary.

I sewed a citenge wallet and it turned out quite exquisite!

I visited Kapiria’s family in a neighboring village. They own a tuckshop (small shop) and let me play shopkeeper for the afternoon, selling soap and sweeties. It was quite fun.

Last month was the annual Cibwela Mushi festival, which is the traditional festival of our tribe. Our tribe is the Lala, which means “sleep.” You can guess how much fun this festival was. The only redeemable part was climbing to the top of a rocky hill to get a birdseye view.

And last week was Zambia Freedom Day. I thought it was the 44th anniversary of Zambia’s independence, but the sign at the school declared it the 44th “universary.” I’m not sure what a universary is but I’ve got it narrowed down to either the remembrance of the universe or, being “uni,” the remembrance of a one time event, which would be in essence the event itself. Hmm. I spent the day at the school were there was an all-day assembly of dancing and singing. I learned at this celebration, that the hot new fashion statement for teenage boys is in fact the fanny pack. Either worn over the shoulder or, better yet, work backwards so it actually rests on the fanny. This helps accentuate the fanny when dancing.

Zambia’s election was on the 30th. There wasn’t much interest in voting in Mpelembe. It’s caterpillar collecting season, so people were more concerned about that. Sata was ahead for a long time, but then at the last minute, Banda pulled ahead and won. Foul play is assumed. There were reports of trucks filled with false ballots heading to the polling stations. Peace Corps has issued all sorts of warnings and restrictions in case there’s political riots. “Zam2K,” as I like to call it.

The US election is of course coming up as well. Most of the Peace Corps volunteers in Central Province are heading to a hotel in Mkushi (about four hours away) where there’s a TV to watch the results.

In other political news, my head teacher is encouraging me to run for governor when I return to the States. After living in Zambia, I will be famous, he says, and then I can easily win. Like Arnold Schwartzeneger.

After happily and successfully living in a bubble for the past year and a half, I decided to give in and buy a radio to listen to the BBC, so that when I return to the States I can pretend to be a real person. There’s eleven waves and it takes a minute or so to tune through each one. There doesn’t seem to be much rhyme or reason as to what station is on what frequency. It’s not the same from day to day. Even when you find a station, it will be there one second and gone the next. You have to kind of “chase” the station around as it moves. Religious stations and sports coverage are easy to find. There’s also a ton of stations in foreign languages (probably covering foreign religion and foreign sports.) It’s kind of fun though.

This is what I’ve learned on the radio: Apparently some deadly mystery disease broke out in Lusaka, but it’s thought now to be “contained.”

Things with work are pretty good. We formed a library committee and sat down to set the policies for the library. I’ve put together a “librarian manual” as well as a ton of record notebooks. I’m a real librarian now!

We also had our first computer lesson (sans computer because the guy that had the key to the room was nowhere to be found) which went really well.

After several failed attempts, I started about thirty trees in a nursery with the grade 8 and 9. (I then added about fifty more myself.)

I also prepared a beekeeping workshop for the one person in Mpelembe interested in beekeeping. I spent a good deal of time on it, so was pretty disappointed when she never showed. We rescheduled and again she didn’t show. Frustrating.

Changes2, an NGO here who works with schools, asked me to visit some schools where they had donated books to see if the books were being used. Embarrassingly, I had to monitor my own school where the books are still piled in a closet. It gave me a chance to see more of Central Province, though. I traveled around, staying with other volunteers near the schools I needed to visit. It’s interesting to see how different the lives of different volunteers are. For example, there are several volunteers clustered around this one town with electricity and internet. They’ve befriended a bwana family there, so they just hang out there all the time watching satellite TV. So odd.

In Peace Corps news, Central Province has lost about a fifth of its volunteers to illness and quitting and such. The Peace Corps budget is doing equally well. They’re canceling medical site visits and denying already-granted extensions to volunteers. I might be able to sue them for the rest of their money as well! A while ago, the Peace Corps Times newsletter emailed me asking permission to quote my blog. I replied that they could only if they first ran by me what quotes they wanted to use. Never heard back, and then I open up the newest newsletter and whose blog do you think is in there?!

I’ve read some more good books lately. If I wasn’t already a vegetarian trying to avoid unorganic processed foods, Fast Food Nation would have done it. Did you know that the lowest grade meat is the meat they use for school lunches? That’s the meat that so bad that even the fast food chains won’t buy it. Boy I’m glad I always packed!

I read another book by the author of Collapse. This one was Guns, Germs, and Steel, which attempts to answer the question of how some societies advanced and came to rule the world and others didn’t. It’s perfect timing to read it, because I’d been sitting in my hut wondering, “If humanity started out here, why is Africa the furthest ‘behind?’ Wouldn’t they be the most advanced because they’ve had the most time to develop?” (For those of you who are planning on reading the book, don’t read on.) Basically, it comes down to luck that Eurasia had the easiest plants and animals to domesticate, so they moved from being hunters and gatherers to farmers. Settling down made a type of society where governments, language, and technology could develop. These developments could spread across Eurasia because the climate was similar east to west. It was slowed moving into Africa because the climate changes north to south and mostly stopped at the Saharan Desert. So then the “developed” societies were able to take over others through weapons, technology, and germs (formed from livestock as well as living clustered in a sedentary setup), which the others didn’t have.

It’s also just amazing to think how long humanity has been around. A long time! And how slowly things like agriculture, writing, civilization, etc, have taken to develop. Then just look at the past 200 years. Electricity, radios, cars, computers. Then the last fifty years. The last ten years! Everything we know is just a speck in human history. Yet more has developed in that short time that the rest combined. And we’ve managed to completely change our whole world in that time. Roads, cars, skyscrapers, supermarkets. And most people just take that as given. That that’s how it’s always been. But only 150 years ago – one and a half lifetimes – there were no cars. And now it’s the dominate life form on this planet. If the world can be transformed in that short a time, then maybe it is possible to change the course of the future after all.

On a similar vein, I’ll leave you with a fable that is essentially another version of The Lottery.

Once upon a time, there was a kitty named The Professor. One day, he was given a treat of peanut butter that was stored in a bucket in the kitchen. Loving it so, since then, he associated the sound of the bucket with peanut butter. No matter where he was, he would come running every time he heard the bucket being opened, even though he received no more treats. One day, a new kitty named Finnigan came to live in the same house as The Professor. Finnigan saw The Professor run to the bucket when it was being opened and very quickly learned to do the same, though he had no idea why he was doing so. By and by, The Professor was murdered. Finnigan lived alone and continued the bucket routine. When he had grown into an adult, another kitty, Ngwi, came along. Ngwi also learned “the way” from Finnigan and began running to the bucket whenever she heard the telltale sound. By this time, peanut butter was no longer even stored in this bucket. But that didn’t matter. It was just the way things were done. The tradition that The Professor (whom she had never met) had started two generations ago was dutifully carried on. And nobody knew why.

Handy Hut How To: How to Process Wax

After processing your honey, add the empty combs to a pot of very hot (but not boiling) water. Stir them around until they’ve melted. Have ready a dish with a cloth or screen over it. Pour the melted wax onto the cloth. Squeegee the liquid through the cloth by whatever means possible. (Usually resulting in some burns.) Remove the ball of gunk from the cloth and repeat to get the last drops of wax out. Then discard. The wax in the dish will float to the top and after it has cooled and hardened, and can be separated from the dirty water. Wash any gunk off of the bottom of the wax chunk and repeat the process.

All - Happy Halloween and happy daylights savings!

Mom – Happy belated birthday!

Pookie - Thank you again so much for doing the pictures. I don't know why some didn't work. I don't have any more CDs, but maybe I can scrounge one up and try again.

Stacy – Thanks for the book and letter! It was exciting to get all the updates.

Bonnibelle – Thanks for the nutella, honey, tea, etc. I didn’t know lemongrass was such a wonderdrug. That’s so cool that your fish had babies! In all of my years of fish husbandry, why didn’t that ever happen to me? Thanks for the Hotel Conneaut article too. I always get a kick out of it when articles quote me or use the names that I have given the ghosts.

bobo - Congratulations on the new job! My friend Jamie lives in Squirrel Hill, so you can get a hold of him if you get lost.

Jamie and Julie – I know you write scripts for film, but there’s a BBC contest for a radio play. Thought I’d let you know since you’re on such a hot streak.

Animals Seen in Zambia

2008-11-02T23:37:00.000+02:00

Animals Seen in Zambia

Cat
Dog (perhaps including an African Wild Dog mix)
Goat
Chicken
Pig
Cow
Guinea Fowl (domesticated and wild)
Duck
Sheep
Fish
Bird (including ndubaluba, hawks, and tucan-like thing)
Bat
Bug
Snake (including puff adder and cobra)
Frog
Lizerd (including chamelion)
Turtle
Monkey (including bush baby, vervet monkey, and yellow baboon)
Deery Things (including duiker, puku, antelope, impala, wildabeast)
Genet
Rat
Mouse
Mole
Rabbit
Squirrel

Animals Seen in Tanzania and Zanzibar

Zebra
Giraffe
Sea Turtle
Starfish
Octopus

2008-10-03T13:35:00.000+02:00

HERE YE, HERE YE, THOSE IN KARMA DEBT:

From December 6th to the 11th, three of us Central Province Peace Corps Volunteers (Emily, Ted, and me) will be holding a “Girls Leading Our World” camp at a posh private school in Mkushi. Volunteers are sending two girls and one teacher from their villages to attend. They will attend sessions about assertiveness, confidence, HIV, setting goals, etc, as well as participate in fun activities such as canoeing and wall climbing. The girls will then return to their communities and start a girls club at their schools with the assistance of the attending teacher.

Camp GLOW has been held by Peace Corps for five years and has been a great success. Peace Corps has changed their grant guidelines, however, and girls camps are not covered, so we need to raise money through donations. This means we need friends, families, churches, girl scout troops, etc, to donate money to fund this year’s camp. We need to raise $3,000 by the end of October. Please pass the word along if you know of anyone who may be able to contribute. Donors can give money online through www.peacecorps.gov under the “Donate Now” link. The project is listed as “Camp GLOW” or can be found under “Emily Alexy.”

Thank You!

PS: There was just a regular post last week, in case you missed it.

2008-09-26T11:18:00.000+02:00

My trip back from Serenje to Mpelembe last time took twenty-seven hours. It should take two. I started trying to hitch at 8:00 AM and by evening hadn’t caught anything. I hadn’t eaten or drinken anything all day, and didn’t want to travel in the dark, so I headed back to Peace Corps and started fresh in the morning.

The Peace Corps travel gods may be harsh, but they are balanced. I’m in Lusaka now. I got a free ride most of the way from a campaigner for Sata (the candidate who ran against Mwanawasa last election and lost, but crookedness was suspected). He had posters all over his car, so people cheered and whistled whenever we passed through towns. (So much for “staying neutral,” as Peace Corps advised.) He bought me snacks and drinks along the way and let me stay at his house. He offered for his driver to drive me wherever I need to go in Lusaka and for his maid to wash my clothes. (The
only clothes I have are the ones on my back, however, so I couldn’t take him up on that.) Dinner, breakfast. He’s even paying for my internet! What luck!

I’m in Lusaka for the sole purpose of using the internet (and the fast internet café is down, so I don’t know if I’ll even accomplish anything!) My to-do list just keeps getting longer and longer and I can’t check things off faster than they’re added with the dysfunctional internet in Serenje. I figured that even after travelling eight hours and paying for a hostel (which I didn’t have to do anyways), coming to Lusaka to use the internet would still be faster and cheaper than trying to do so in Serenje.

I don’t remember last hot season being this HOT! I felt like I was travelling across the desert yesterday coming to Lusaka. We had to stop every hour or so to drink something, and even then I didn’t pee at all and was aching from dehydration. When we got to his house, I took a cold bath, which was the best thing that’s ever happened to me in my life.

Zambia has destroyed umbrella #5 (even including the one with the lifetime warranty!)

Thanks to the ash of citimene season, I got to see one of the coolest things I’ve seen in awhile. One night, I went outside and was stopped dead in my tracks by a blood red moon. I’ve seen plenty of orange moons over the lake, but nothing like this. It was red! Gorgeous.

I have not been able to milk Potato and never will. Sigh. The babies are still cute, but now they follow Potato around, so I only see them in the evening. Those little goatsies are very well spoken. When they say something, you can tell that they very confidently mean it. Usually they say, “Something happened. I’m not sure what to think about that.” For example, “I just jumped up into the air and landed back on the ground. I’m not sure what to think about that.” They have also started doing this adorable little cooing/garbling noise at night. It’s so sweet! Sounds just like little human babies!

Ever since the goats were born, I’ve been waiting for the inevitable to happen and it finally happened. Pegasus got frolicking around too hard and wound up in the trash pit. I ran over there expecting a very panicked little goat, and what did she do? Jumped right out of there! It’s like four and a half feet deep! I don’t even think Finny could jump out.

The herd has expanded, and now consists of Potato, Pegasus, Spud, the Mumba Goat, Kapiria’s goat, and two Mwelelwa goats (including the ugliest beast of a male goat you’ve ever seen.) They like to hang around and eat all my mango leaves. They also ate my small banana tree.

The herd has also de-panded because the Mumba male goat died a terrible gurgling death that the Mumbas invited me to watch. They are sure that someone poisoned it out of jealousy, and thought it a ridiculous suggestion that maybe it just died.

The Mumbas lost a chicken the same week to supposed theft (yet whenever I lose a chicken, they’re positive it was a chicken hawk, not theft), so I decided to give them Vulture, one of the rooster chicks, with the condition that they couldn’t eat him and that when he gets big enough to crow, they eat or sell the other rooster.

Others felt sorry for the Mumbas as well, it turns out, because someone in their family gave them two pigs! I’m not too psyched about it, cause I think they spread parasites pretty easily. So these pigs are now tromping around my yard as well. At least they make funny noises.

Swarm number four of bees absconded. Swarm five is in there now and will probably be gone by the time I return.

My dream of having a carrier pigeon has been rekindled, so I’ve been on the lookout for morning doves to capture as I walk through the bush. No luck so far. You’ll know I’ve found one when you hear a pigeon tapping on your window one day.

My couch/chair is infested with mites. Besides that little problem, I still think that my hut is the most beautiful house in the world, hands down.

One day, Joshua came over with a handful of wire and asked me to make him a toy bicycle. I was honored and flabbergasted that he thought me capable of such a task, and also very scared. The wire was thick and tough, which made it nearly impossible to work with, but I managed to mangle out a decent looking bike. Then Joshua said he wanted to wheels to move, so I had to take it apart and start over. The resulting bicycle had moving wheels, but didn’t resemble a bike anymore. Joshua smiled and claimed it looked good, but I think he was just saying that.

The neighbors have started begging me for small jobs every day, which is becoming a problem. If I say no, then they try to make me feel guilty by saying that Joshua will have to go to school hungry. It’s too bad if they don’t have enough to eat, but how can they put that on me? How can they expect me to support their entire family? They obviously survived before I came to Zambia and will have to after I leave. It’s difficult.

It’s interesting how the Zambian focus on appearance versus reality even extends all the way to hygiene. They wash their hand s with dinner, but after eating or using the same water. They hand you the bun you bought wrapped in newspaper, but they put the bun into the newspaper with their hands. They’ll use a side plate for eating, but still grab the food from the communal dish to put onto their side plate.

Well, pigs are flying in Mpelembe. (1) My Life Skills class had been put back on the timetable!!!!!!!!!!! We’re trying to start a tree nursery (both fruit trees as well as useful trees for firewood and timber), but it’s not going so hot so far. I was even laughed at by the “Agricultural Extension Agent” whom I went to to ask some questions. He thought it a silly project and warned me that it would be very hard to grow trees. When I asked why, he said, “Ah, because they grow too slow.” (2) The library committee has been formed!!!!!!!!! (3) The Zonal Resource Center has been completed!!!!!!!!!! Now we’re just waiting for the official handover.

I re-read “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” and in one part, they are putting on a play circus and charging the kids a three pin entrance fee. I finished reading the page, then stopped and went back. It took me a couple moments to comprehend. He was referring to sewing pins, not “pins” the Zambian currency unit.

Oh, also, on our home planet, we most definitely can fly. I mean, I know how in my dreams. (I suppose on our home planet we also show up naked and late to school a lot too….)

In the Peace Corps newsletter, there was a letter commenting on the benefits given to Peace Corps Volunteers (almost none) versus the benefits given to military veterans (a ton). Of course, the latter are put through much more trauma and are risking their lives, but it’s interesting to see how our country places its value in war and peace.

Bonnibelle – The Toronto island sounds really cool! And no, my knitted pants are not done. They have come to a standstill. I guess bicycle spokes don’t make the best knitting needles. They stitches are very small and just kept getting tighter and tighter until it got to the point where I couldn’t even make anymore stitches. Sigh.

Doug – The purple trees of Kabwe/Lusaka are in bloom now! (The seeds fall next month though. Bad timing.)

2008-09-10T09:31:00.003+02:00

I’m in Serenje after a month long lockdown in Mpelembe. Some people from the new fish and HIV groups are here for site visit, so I got to meet them.

So one morning last week, I was awoken by pounding on my door early in the morning and Neighbor Lady calling that my goat had ukupapa-ed. I wasn’t sure what this meant, but it sounded urgent, so I jumped up still pajamated and followed her down to the village where Potato stays. There in their goat shelter were two dark wet little puppy-things. Ukupapa apparently means to give birth! (Which is hilarious, because it’s pronounced “pop-a” like they’re just popping out.)

Two little baby goats!!!! A girl and a boy! The girl, who I named Pegasus, is an exact replica of Potato. The boy, who is also the same except for white markings on his head, I named Spud. (Get it??) The naming of Pegasus actually created quite a stir, as apparently to Zambians the name is indistinguishable from “Peggy.” So everyone thought I named the goat after our neighbor Peg, and kept stopping by to ask me about it. (I’m not sure if it’s an honor or an insult.)

Anyways, of course I squealed with delight over my little baby goatsies, which bewildered the Zambians. (They really flip out when you hold an animal up in front of your face to look at.) So I carried them home in the dish bin, unable to wipe the smile off my face. My babies!! Eventually they dried off and fluffed up and looked better (like the chicks.) They’re just the funniest little things! Tiny little bodies on these long long wobbly knobby legs!! Big bunny heads and squished little faces with mouths that always look like they’re smiling. Just shiny little new pennies! Little hooves, perfect little pink tongues, velvet ears and muzzles, and soft little heads perfect for putting kisses on or rubbing against my cheek. (If you are ever unsure about whether something is “good,” or “very good,” just rub it against your cheek and you will know. Of course, I’ve never tested this hypothesis with pizza or chocolate, so it might not be one hundred percent accurate.)

They tried to start walking pretty soon, which was just too much. Teetering around, falling down, tipping over if they got their little tails going too fast. I’m convinced that goats are also from a different planet, because these little babies have not yet learned the law of gravity. They’ll suddenly “pop” straight up in the air or hover on one or two legs across the ground. They’re just as likely to prance forwards as backwards. Pegasus discovered the chickens and pranced and jumped and stomped her feet behind them. Just so sweet. I can’t stand it.

It took awhile for them to find Potato’s udder. Tried Potato’s knee, each other’s tails, my elbow. Potatosaurus hates it when they drink, but she sticks around ok and runs off the other goats, chickens and cat if they get too close. Sometimes she tramples the babies.

They have such silly little bleats and make this sweet little “umph” noise when I pick them up. They’re just cute as can be. I closed off the entrance to the insaka, which is now the kids’ pen (which means I have to muck it out several times a day (including the afterbirth) – yuck!) I set up my chair in the insaka the first day and didn’t move at all. Every day, I’ve spent several hours out there just watching them and putting them on my lap while I read. I love my little babies!!!!

I was worried about the supposed three week “secret” phase that I read about, where the mother hides the baby goats, but it hasn’t been a problem.

I’m going to be able to make them tame, which will be fun. Unfortunately, by the time Pegasus is old enough to make milk, I’ll be long gone. I still can’t even pet Potato, so I don’t think I’ll ever get any milk unless she suddenly warms up to me. It’d be easier to catch and milk a rabid rhinoceros. And I don’t think there’s even any rhinos in Zambia, so that’s saying a lot. (Haha, that reminds me of the mute woodcutter and his one legged blue rhinoceros!) I was getting extremely frustrated with her to the point where I was about to sell her before she even gave birth! She would escape every day and go stay at another village. She’s impossible to catch. It takes Joshua maybe ten minutes to catch their goats, but an hour to catch Potato. Everyone talks about how strong and difficult she is. She ate someone’s mealie meal and they wanted me to pay for it. She refuses to sleep in the goat house and knocked down every door I tried to build (even one Joshua deemed Potato-proof.) If I tie her up, she cries loudly all day. She tramples and butts me. She eats a ton. The milk project is doomed anyways. I still may sell her after she’s done feeding the kids in a couple months and just keep my babies, who knows. (According to the book, mothers and kids don’t form any lasting bond, so it wouldn’t be cruel.)

I miss the little goatsies already, being away for a few days. I hope no one beats them. When I told Joshua that maybe his goats wouldn’t run away if he didn’t beat them, he and everyone within earshot starting laughing like I said the funniest thing they had ever heard.

In addition to the two new goats, I now also have several hundred new bees. August was swarming season again, but after rebaiting the bee box and searching every shady tree I came across, I was unsuccessful in locating a swarm (mostly because school wasn’t in session for me to ask any classroom and have several little boys come forward with knowledge of bees.) Then, just the night before I left, the neighbors came over to tell me they had found an underground swarm in the headman’s cassava field. So we headed over there (Finnigan too) to dig them up. We even got a bunch of combs. Unfortunately, all my lights are dead, so I couldn’t figure out a way to attach them to the bars, so I’m not sure how the whole thing will turn out. Cross your fingers that they’re still there when I get back!

In Chicken news, I’m now down to three chicks. Chipmunk, “Doug’s” chick, was stolen while I was in Serenje last time for my foot injury. (Half of my tree nursery, which I was going to plant with students at the school, was also stolen.) There was a brick on top of the chicken house and the grass was spread, so I know there was some suspicious human activity going on, not just a hawk. When I told Mr. Chisenga about it, he said that the thief probably just put the brick on top of the spread grass so I wouldn’t notice the hole. This logic seemed logical to him, as well as to the thief apparently. Then I gave the two unnamed rooster chicks to Justin as a remembrance gift from Doug. So now it’s just Eggy, Wee Wee Wee, and Vulture left. (Sorry Brady, your name choice are null and void.) The chicks spend all day away and only come back at night, so I never even see them anyways.

New Chicken has let the chicks go on their own and has started laying again. The transition from motherhood to laying hasn’t been easy for her. She’s suspicious of the nest and spends all day poking around for somewhere to lay. She confuses the “I want to lay” call and the “I just laid” call and does them both nonstop all day no matter what is going on.

Corncob has also rejected the nest for my bed, which is pretty cute, except that she sometimes leaves me little presents in there as well.

I think that the problem with the rooster is that there’s just too many roosters concentrated in a small area than would occur in real life. Instead of crowing just ten times a day to assert its territory to one other rooster, Abraham has to challenge twenty different roosters all day because every household has a rooster.

At first, I was glad to have Finnigan as company, but now I’m not so sure. Every day, he becomes more and more needy. He cries all day. If I get off the chair to stand up, he starts crying because there’s the possibility that I might leave the room. If I give him food, he starts crying because he thinks whatever I’m eating might be a better option, even if it’s the exact same thing. I moved his food dish onto a shelf so the chickens couldn’t get it, but he refuses to jump up there himself and instead cries and cries until I pick him up and put him up there. Maybe Zambian cats have just not adapted to jump because there’s no such thing as tables or shelves.

I’ve been pretty busy finishing building projects and repairing things that have fallen into disarray already. I built two different goat house doors, repaired the chicken house roof, repaired the fence, finished the bathing shelter, and put up a new dirt flap over the bed. I got to play with mud and bricks again to make a step and trough for the goats. The goats couldn’t resist climbing onto the step and marked their footprints on it before the mud was even dry (like kids writing their initials into cement, I suppose.)

Things with the neighbors have actually been really good lately. Except that now that the man of the house is gone, nobody pays attention to the fence as a boundary. They just walk around it or open the gate and waltz right in, without even properly asking permission in Bemba. Frustrating.

I tried to start a tree nursery with Joshua and every time we planned a day, he didn’t show up. It’s so ridiculous. I have to practically beg people to let me do nice things for them (if it involves any input from them, that is)! I also wanted to make compost with him, but he was uninterested, saying he already knew how. Alas.

Falling Down Pants Boy must have read my blog, because one day he showed up in a new pair of overalls! I don’t know where they came from, but it’s pretty freaking cute.

The kids love it when I give them math problems, but then I just feel bad because they get so excited about it, and then get half of them wrong. I also made a game with letter flashcards that they have trouble with. Even when I go through the letters in order, they can’t get them right. They also think that “Zambia” is a letter, because in the alphabet song here it ends with the word “Zambia.”

One day, Joshua went running by with a kite he built. How’d he know to build a kite?!?! Is it some universal thing that all people are programmed to do? Fire, language, food, clothing, shelter, kite?

The headwoman has been sick lately. The headman told me (in front of her) that he hoped she didn’t die because then he’d have the whole family to take care of. It’s strange how people are so open with death here.

Most things don’t shock me anymore, but every once in awhile something comes up. I was over at the Mumba’s house and asked what they had done that day. Neighbor Lady said that they had been gathering something that I didn’t know the word for. I asked what it was, and she uncovered a bowl to show me a pile of dead rats. I tried to pleasantly say, “That’s nice,” while hiding my shock. It’s a good thing I didn’t say, “Oh, rats!,” because rats are vile creatures that invade houses, while these creatures were the delectable ones that live outside.

In work news, there’s no news. August was school break, and the start of the term was delayed because the country is in “national mourning” for President Mwanawasa, who officially is dead. (The new election will be the same time as the US election, so that’s kind of cool.)

I finally had my big meeting about the library, Life Skills, and community school monitoring, which I’ve been trying to hold for months. For what ideas weren’t straight out vetoed, it basically came down to – “just wait and see.” Frustrating. I don’t think that anyone would believe me when I say that I’m not exaggerating when I say that I’ve asked about these three things every week. That’s every week for a year about monitoring – which isn’t even some Peace Corps project, but his job. Every week for half a year about the library. Every week for four months about Life Skills. I have to think of new perky ways to waltz into the office and reword the same issues over and over. It’s all so dysfunctional.

Speaking of dysfunctionality, I was supposed to attend a several day teacher training in another village to teach about HIV, but it was rescheduled and they never bothered to tell me. So I showed up with my bookbag and blankets ready to go, only to find out the meeting already happened.

It was also not worth it to tell me that the clinic employee I’ve been working with will be gone for two months, which completely erases my community meeting plans.

I think after a year and a half, I’ve finally narrowed down the problem. It’s one of two things. 1) People need to be pushed over and over to do something or be given a handout, because self initiative is a bad thing. 2) There’s just a big cultural communication difference. Zambians care about words, while Americans care about actions. As long as something sounds good to a Zambian, it’s ok, even if it has no connection to reality. For example, it sounds good to say the mat will be done in a week. It sounds good that a person is interested in coming to my meeting. It sounds good that someone wants to use my bike to go to the clinic instead of the bar. It sounds good that Joshua wants to plant trees with me. It sounds good that the minibus is going to my destination. Those words are good enough for Zambians, even if the mat is done in three months, the person has no intention of coming to my meeting, the neighbor goes to the bar with my bike, Joshua never comes to plant trees with me, and the minibus is going in a totally different direction. What I consider straight out “lying” to them is just making peace by saying what you want to hear.

It seems I would have had an easier time if I had come here under the guise of a missionary. If I claimed that God said not to beat your animals, kids, and wife, and to make compost, then maybe they would listen. But if it’s just me saying it, they don’t care.

Besides Mwanawasa’s death, the other big issue is still the fuel shortage. First there was a twenty litre limit, then gas stations were only selling to people with “accounts.” The traditional festival I was planning on attending in Northwest Province was even canceled because of it all.

Wildlife is now appearing in Serenje boma!! The dogs started barking up a tree at Peace Corps House one night, so we went out to investigate and found – a genet!! It’s a cat/mongoose thing with a leopard print body and long ring tailed. Probably here eating rats. The problem with me and animals is that I can’t just look. I want to touch. (No, don’t worry, I didn’t climb the tree to touch the genet. I’m not saying I didn’t want to though.) Monkeys, goats, genets, you name it. I just want to hold them and play with them and make them my pets. I guess I should start some rescue farm for animals that were confiscated from their owners for being illegal or abused or something. That way I could have a house full of raccoons, de-skunked skunks, parrots, lizards, lions, tigers, bobcats, monkeys, tortoises, and deer, and not have to be the same as the people I’m confiscating them from cause I’m “official” and then I wouldn’t have to feel guilty about it!

In other wildlife news, my closest Peace Corps neighbor showed up in my village with some people from Kasanka National Park who were studying whether bats carry sleeping sickness. So I went with them as they set up nets and drew blood (rather violently) from the little batsies.

Doug took home the working clock, so I’ve been relying on a watch I bought in the Serenje market for the equivalence of about fifty cents. It has a picture of Osama Bin Laden and blinks “I Love You.” ?????????? Every day, it falls more and more behind, so I never know what time it is. This confusion is compounded by the fact that the first number doesn’t show up, so the hours between 11:00 and 2:00 in the afternoon are a mystery. Is it 11:00 or 1:00? 12:00 or 2:00? Sometimes I’m sure it must be 2:00, only to look at the clock later and it’s 2:00 again. It’s probably the closest to time travel I’ll ever get. Anyway, I decided a sundial would probably be more accurate, so I’ve been working the past week on building one. It seems simple, but it’s not. I’ve tried dozens of fin sizes, angles, positions and slopes. It took me several days to realize that half of my problem was that I’m in the southern hemisphere, so the whole clock is backwards. (Either that, or I’m even farther off than I thought!) I got it to work for several hours of the day, but I haven’t figured out how to make it accurate all day.

Hot season has officially started and I think I might melt. The thermometer said it was 121 degrees, but I think it was lying. Maybe not, seeing how the tippytap seal melted, the clothesline snapped, and my bike seat melted.

Thank you to everyone concerned about my injury. Maybe I should get injured more often so people leave me messages!! My foot is basically ok now. I can walk around on it just fine. It’s still kinda stiff when I try to bend my toes and the joint of the big toe still hurts if pressure is put on it. The toenail is still mostly unattached and black (actually, it looks kind of like Indian Corn), but rather than falling off, it seems to be growing. Guess I’ve just got to keep my citenge bandage on a couple more months.

I’ve read several good books lately. One was “Introduction to Permaculture.” I’m proud to announce that our house in Meadville is oriented correctly, even with the Maple tree and deck. (Of course, it’s just pure luck, because all the houses on the other side of the street are backwards.) I want to go around giving permaculture consultations now.

Another was a novel “The Poisonwood Bible” which takes place in the Congo. The quirky descriptions would probably amuse anyone, but for someone who has lived here, it’s just hilarious. She talks about nshima and chitenges and failed gardening. I swear she stole things word for word from my blog!

Warning: Rant Ahead Another is “Collapse” about ancient and modern societies falling apart because of intentionally or unintentionally destroying the environment where they live. It was interesting, because I recognize so many of the same things going on in Zambia and have written about nearly all of these things separately in my blog before, but now I’m going to bring them all together into one big rant.

I think that Zambia is generally summed up by the anecdote of felling one of the few large trees in the area because they wanted to eat the caterpillars living in the tree.

In specific, deforestation is a huge problem. There are no big trees in Mpelembe. They have all been cut for farmland, firewood, building supplies, and aesthetic value (contrary to in the US, in Zambia, it’s preferred not to have trees near the home.) This depletes nutrients for the soil because leaves don’t drop to rot and it severely decreases the soil’s protection from the sun, wind (you can’t even lay much if you wanted to!), and water erosion. The practice of chitimene – aka burning down the country ever year – is used to clear farmland as well as burn everything for fear of unintentional wildfires, as well as for aesthetic value. Slashing and burning also destroys the leaves and grasses that would naturally rot and add nutrients and again decreases protection from the sun, wind and rain. It burns down baby trees that never even get a chance, burns down flowers so the bees have less to eat and can then pollinate less, and destroys the habitat for insects which then move from the bush into the garden (as happened to us) and rats which move to the house (as also happened to us.) The soil is just so old to begin with that it’s like cement – in consistency and nutrients – so the clearing, burning and years of farming just put the nail in the coffin. The country’s un-native staple of maize (for nshima) is impractical because it can’t be grown without chemical fertilizer.

As for animals, nearly all have been over hunted. It’s rare to even see one in a “protected” park (where the employees themselves poach them.) I don’t know of the exact ecological “badness” of no more animals (besides overfishing decreasing predators for the parasite shistosamaiasis), except that it means even more agriculture needed for food. Birds and monkeys are eaten. Bats are killed for fun. Chameleons and snakes are killed because they’re believed to be evil. This wipes out predators for bugs that eat crops and rats that eat stored mealie meal.

Another “problem” which makes me sounds terrible is improved healthcare without the simultaneous practice of decreasing family size. Families usually have around ten children. Perhaps this was necessary traditionally to ensure survival, but now with vaccinations and medication (and fertilizer for the field), there are going to be too many people for this fragile environment to support. The cultural aspects of preferring traditional ways over change, not doing something different from your neighbor, and a general sense of letting things be rather than taking action, also compound things.

Now that I’ve finished making myself sound righteous and ethnocentric, I should say that I’m no ecology or agriculture expert. They’ve been living fine for a long time and there’s no immediate emergency. Certainly things like firewood, building supplies, and food production are all necessary, and I use them too. And while there aren’t a ton of big trees, there’s an endless expanse of bush and small trees a plenty to make house poles and tool handles. And there are certainly a lot of good practices in Zambia that others are not doing. Mainly, living closely with the land without an excess of manufactured things, garbage, cars, and pollution. Agriculture is done pretty sustainably, leaving stumps high enough to resprout and rotating farmland to allow the land to fallow back into bush and small trees. Burning also has its reasons for being done. It protects houses from fire, reduces habitats for snakes, kills weeds, and produces ash which has its own nutritional benefits for the soil. And while city folk (and me) prefer corn nshima, most villagers eat nshima made from cassava which needs no fertilizer or pesticide. Finally, condom use (mainly because of HIV) and family planning methods are being taught, and while rural families remain large, some city dwellers are starting to have less children. I don’t think that Zambia is alone in its problems, nor is it the most dire example by any means. I’m certainly more cynical about problems of overcomsumption and pollution in the United States.

I’m not against agriculture and don’t think that we should revert back to a hunter-gatherer society, as some propose. On the contrary, I enjoy it very much. I just don’t feel like it’s possible for agriculture to sustain a large population without destroying everything. I’ve thought about overpopulation before, but now I’m absolutely certain that it’s the biggest problem facing our world. Others – pollution, power struggles, clearing too much land, hunger, poverty, depleting resources – are directly because of thins. For a couple (anywhere) to decide to have more than two children, I now consider ethically wrong. In fact, for the next one hundred years or so, everyone should really only be having one child until we reduce the current population.

I think my experiences and observations over the past year and a half, as well as these recent inspirational materials on permaculture and societal collapse, have helped me focus my goals for the remainder of my Peace Corps service. Until I fully decide my position, I’m going to avoid agriculture and health topics that add to ecological problems and overpopulation (though that might offend or horrify some) and concentrate on ones that improve the situation, such as planting trees and promoting family planning. My other aims will be neutral and just promote a better quality of life, such as education, gender equality, being kind to animals, and treats like fruit and honey. I suppose that is pretty much exactly what I’ve already been trying and failing to do….. Hmmm…..

Pookie – Thanks for the pictures for the villagers. They’ll be so excited. And for the pens and hair things! You’re a lifesaver! I also accidently deleted the photo on here when trying to put a picture of the baby goats. If you're bored, you can try to figure out how to replace it. Oh boy!

Doug – You’ve made it onto the Peace Corps House picture wall. It’s this hilarious picture of you from the COS party. Your shoulders are kinda arched and you’re making this terrible face. Also, Summer had a dream featuring you, but you appeared as one of the guys from Saturday Night Live. Then the next day, we watched a bootlegged version “Hot Rod” (WORST movie in the world, I’m serious. The best part were the outlines of people in the theater) and that guy was in it! Sometimes I still get a “Muli shani Ba Douglassy!!!!!” as I’m biking. I also have two messages for you. One is from Master Finnigan. He would like you to fetch him his smelling salts. The other is from a mystery greeter who says, “Your friend is greeting you.” I’ll give you twenty guesses as to who it is and you’ll never get it!

foo – The package might definitely be lost in the mail, but I’m sure I’ll get it before I leave!

Jamie, Britt, Renee, and Stacy – Please send me your latest addresses! (And update letters, Britt and Renee!!!)

Jamie – I can’t believe it about your trip! Be sure to tell me all about it!!!

Anyone – Some things that would be useful are carabineers to tie up the goats, and rechargeable AAA and AA batteries.

An Average Day

2008-09-10T09:20:00.000+02:00

Mornings are spent either exercising (biking, running, or walking) or starting a fire and cooking breakfast and coffee. (On mornings of exercise, usually only cold uncooked oats are eaten.) Then comes daily chores such as refilling the water filter, boiling water, taking out the compost, taking out the trash, watering the garden and tree nursery, putting water out for the animals, refilling the candle holders, and managing the chickens’ egg laying. The rest of the morning is spent doing larger chores such as sweeping the house, gathering firewood, drawing water at the school, or refilling the handwasher (done every few days) or even larger chores such as sweeping the house really well, cleaning my bike, buying sugar or oil at the road, managing broody chickens, pounding peanuts, changing the catbox, bathing, or buying charcoal (done every few weeks) or washing clothes, cleaning the water filter, or writing reports for Peace Corps (done every few months.) Then comes whatever is on hand – some project of building or repairing house or animal structures, sewing, visiting neighbors, working in the garden, doing some seasonal thing like gathering mushrooms, bushfruit, or mangos, going to the school for a meting, or doing some work thing like classifying library books or preparing my lesson plans. Then comes lunch, which is leftovers from last night’s dinner. After lunch, water is drawn and dishes are washed. The remainder of the day usually consists of reading, writing letters, writing in my journal, laying in my hammock, making lists, resting, and organizing things around the house. (And if there’s no big chores to be done, sometimes this is all my day consists of.) Work related things such as teacher trainings, Life Skills classes, school monitoring, meetings, and so on also happen on a weekly/monthly basis. In the evening, the dinner fire is started and dinner and tea are prepared. The neighbor’s rooster must also be chased off at this time and the goat gathered from the neighbors’. After dinner, it’s usually more reading and letter writing, listening to music, playing games, sitting and contemplating, or petting the cat. Go to bed early.

2008-08-10T13:39:00.005+02:00

Well, it’s been three weeks now since Doug’s been gone. The first week, spent in the purgatory of Lusaka and Serenje, was pretty terrible, but once I got back to the comforts of home, it was better. Strange and lonely at first. The days go by really slow. I have to relearn how to cook for one, and I now have twice the chores (and have to absorb twice the Finnigan neediness). I read more. I close up the house a lot earlier at night so the goblins don’t get me. The biggest difference is that I catch the window on fire much more often now that Doug’s not here to monitor the candles.

In fact, I missed Doug so much, that I tried to turn into him. I decided to finish thatching the goat house roof, but couldn’t reach a particular spot on one side. The only solution was to stand on the goat house stand and lean over. (The goat house was temporarily on the ground, to be lifted onto the stand upon completion.) Well, I was thatching away one second and the next second I was on the ground in a pile of goat stand. The stand had slipped off its base, and somehow my foot got tangled up in-between. Essentially, thirty ten-foot trees smashed my foot. I just laid there in agony for a long time before I even untangled myself. Shards of wood had gone under my big toenail, ripping it off three-quarters of the way. My foot was instantly swollen and purple and I could barely walk on it. I couldn’t bend or lift my toes. The tendons felt messed up and if I lifted my foot, my big toe kind of “clicked” and slid as if it didn’t want to be lifted with the rest of the foot. That night, if the blanket even grazed my foot, it was unbearable. I didn’t sleep. I was sure it was fractured.

When I first learned that my site was 140 miles from civilization and with no phone network, I was worried about getting sick or injured. Now, as soon as Doug leaves, I get injured. It was kind of scary and stressful, not knowing what to do. I sent the neighbor with an SOS bushnote to Peace Corps to take to the road and send with any transport that was going to Serenje. I didn’t know what else to do. I waited around just waiting for help to arrive. Nothing. (They ended up getting the note a week and a half later! With an emergency response plan like this, let’s hope I never get bit by a poisonous snake!)

When Doug got injured, Iron Mumba came to my house for the first time. When I got injured, he came for the second. He recommended to me that I wash my foot. I was just tickled and wanted to laugh. Whenever the Mumbas get injuries, Doug and I preach and preach and preach to them to wash the wounds with soap and water. Finally! If the only thing I’ve done in Zambia is teach the Mumbas to wash wounds with soap, then I guess that’s success enough.

Despite my washing, eventually the nail started oozing and my head throbbing, but luckily, my body isn’t as puny and weak as Doug’s and fought off the infection on its own. I sewed up a toe sock to try to keep it clean when wearing my tropicals. Bit by bit, it got feeling better each day. After a week, it felt pretty good, but was still stiff and painful.

Then Peter randomly showed up for a visit and offered to drive me three-quarters of the way to Serenje, so I took him up on his offer. (On the path to his farm, a duiker or suni or some other small deery thing ran across the road! I thought it was a dog! So small!) I called the PCMO, thinking they’d send me to a doctor and maybe get an X-Ray, who instead told me it was probably just a “compressure” injury and to just stay at the Peace Corps House for a few days. I couldn’t believe it. I came to find out what was wrong with my foot, not to sit at the house getting electrocuted for half a week. Completely useless. I’d much rather have continued bumming around my hut than hobbling around Serenje on an injured foot! I’m going to try to get out of here sooner than they say, because I’ll go stir-crazy. Plus, there’s no fuel in Zambia right now, so it’d be better to go sooner than later and end up stranded here. So anyways, that is why I’m in Serenje right now. (And the internet is working again here, so I’m able to post!)

Eventually, bum foot and all, I finished the goat house and put it on the stand. Why? Because I got a goat!!!!!!! After half a year of trying to get a real dairy goat, I finally deemed it impossible and decided to try to just find a large village goat and see if I could milk it. So I went to the road to put up a sign, where I encountered shopkeeper Mwape who was talking to some bwana guy who was passing through. The bwana asked me what I was doing and instructed Mwape that he must assist me in every way possible to get a goat. Zambians love bwana authority figures, so by evening, Mwape sent word that he had located a large pregnant goat and to meet him in the morning. I didn’t sleep, I was so excited. I met Mwape and biked him several kilometers to where the goat was. It was white (my least favorite type of goat) and didn’t look very pregnant to me. My hopes died. Then we randomly came across another house that had a brown (with black trim – my favorite type of goat!) goat which was also pregnant. I asked for them to catch it so I could look at it closely. (I had memorized the lists of “healthy” and “unhealthy” goat traits from “The New Goat Handbook.”) They thought this a ridiculous request and were annoyed when I continued to ask them. Why in the world would a person want to look at something before they buy it?!? Crazy muzungu! Finally they relented and caught it (which they would have had to have done if I wanted to buy it anyways, so I don’t see what the big deal was) and I deemed it to be healthy. I bought it. We walked it back half of the way, and then we strapped it on my bike and I biked it the rest of the way. Of course, it started kicking and bucking, rocking the bike back and forth as I’m trying to ride, which was terrifying. It kicked free and fell off once. I struggled with it for a long time, until finally Chulu came across the pile of goat/bike/Carrie and helped me put it back on.

Once home, I tethered it in the yard and it started crying and didn’t stop crying all night. Immediately, I had goat-buyers-regret. The thing hates me. It won’t let me near it. I don’t know what I was thinking, buying a village goat. These things are practically wild and, like all animals, are abused by Zambians whose only interaction with goats is throwing rocks at them or butchering them to eat. There’s no way I’m ever going to be able to hold this beast still to milk it! No way. It’s not even going to be enjoyable as a pet, because I can’t get near it. (When I tried to untether it, the goat ended up knocking a log onto me, tangling me in its chain, dragging me summersalting across the yard, and trampling me.)

And after all that work on the goat house, Doug severing his toe and I breaking my foot, the goat won’t even sleep there and instead insists on sleeping with the neighbors’ goat. Essentially, all I did was buy the neighbors another goat!

And then, you’ll never believe this. Several days after I bought my goat, the Mumbas bought a male goat!!! They had been talking about it a while ago because their goat was lonely, but it hadn’t happened for months, so I assumed they gave up on the idea. Plus, now that my goat and their goat are friends, theirs would no longer be lonely. I can’t believe it. Now, even if by some odd chance, I’m able to catch the goat and milk it, the milk is going to taste bad. (If a male is around, the pheromones mess up the milk.) And she’ll probably immediately get pregnant again and stop making milk. I just couldn’t believe my luck. It’s unbelievable.

Basically the lesson is – don’t have neighbors. Their dog will eat your eggs. Their chickens will eat your compost and poop on your patio (not that mine don’t, but that’s double the poop). Their rooster will drive you insane. Their goats will steal the food from your goat. Their male goat will make your long awaited for goat milk production project impossible. ACKKK!!!!

I named the goat “Potato.”

No milk. No fun pet. The only redeeming aspect of this goat is that it is going to give birth. I CAN’T WAIT!!!!!!!!!!!! I really want to see the birth. And I just can’t wait to get my hands on those little baby goatsies! Oh my god. They’re going to be so SWEET! Those little goatsies!!!! I just can’t wait. I’m just going to cuddle them up! And they’re gonna be stumbling as they walk because they’re little babies and it’s just going to be so cute! I can’t wait! I can raise them so they are friendly and catchable (and therefore milkable), but by the time they’d be old enough to make milk, I’d be long gone anyway. But I sure will play with those little baby goats while I have them and just love them up. I love little baby goats!!

I started making a garden to plant stuff for the goat, but with my injury, it became difficult. I’m not sure how I’m going to do it really, because Corncob eats all nurseries we create.

In other goat news, Finnigan and Mumba Goat #1 loved to play together. Finny would chase her and she would stomp her feet or head-butt him. (Now that the three goats travel around together, Fins has lost his goat-chasing-valor.)

Also, I can’t remember if I said it before or not, but the Mumbas named their first goat “Remembrance” (in Bemba) after DOUG for giving them the small jobs that earned them enough money to buy it! Can you believe it!!??!?! They named it after Doug! I’m the one who gave them most the jobs and the one who paid them, and they named it after him!

On my first night back in the village, the headman burned my firebreak for citimene. I was so disappointed, because that was such a highlight last year and now I couldn’t even enjoy it. (I begged and pleaded for him not to burn up the piles of grass in my yard left over from slashing because I wanted to use it to teach Joshua to make compost. But he would hear none of it. All must burn.) He citimened his yard a few days ago, so I was able to appreciate that more. It’s such a rush to be surrounded by towering roaring flames with the heat whoosing at your face. Feels like your skin’s gonna melt right off.

I brushed my hair for the first time in over two months. Now it looks stupid.

The chicks are growing so fast. They’re three-quarter chickens now. Three still didn’t have names, so I named one Eggy. Any ideas for the last two?

The bananas finally ripened and --- they’re terrible. Yucky flavor and they have chords running through them like celery. Such a disappointment after waiting half a year for them.

It’s been so dark and cold and windy during the day lately! It sounds silly to be so chilled to the bone in Africa, but imagine being outside in fall weather twenty-four hours a day all week. Even though it’s not that cold, eventually it catches up with you and you just never get the chance to warm up. It’s cold at night. It’s cold during the day. It’s cold inside. It’s cold outside. Brrrrr.

Termites destroyed the book where I was pressing my flower collection. Sad.

The neighbor’s rooster has just been so terrible lately! The chickens all love the shade (and protection from chicken hawks) of the patio, so they stay there and poop all day. The rooster poops and crows all day. A rooster crowing in the background is picturesque (soundesque?), but when it’s ten feet away from you, it just jolts your brain. I can actually feel my brain tense up and retract when he crows. I’m not kidding. It’s just a frequency that clashes with my body’s. Awful. He always wants to sleep with our chickens, so we have to chase him off every evening. This used to be Doug’s duty and now I have to do it. I just have to go back there and as soon as he sees me, he jumps down and starts off for next door, stopping every so often to guiltily look over his shoulder at me. I feel like a parent chasing off a teenage boy who tries to crash his daughter’s sleepover.

Joshua has a similar vice. One day, he requested I loan him my slingshot to shoot a bird that’s living in the tree by the well. He put his hands over his ears and writhed in agony to demonstrate how the bird’s twittering pained him so. He said that someone sent the bird as juju.

The first few days alone, I tried desperately to fill my days with work. But work did not want to be done. I went to the Zonal Resource Center to sort the library books into boxes by subject so that when we actually do get shelves, it will be easy to sort. But the books were piled in a closet and Mr. Chisenga forbade me to put them in the library room until the building is officially “handed over.” So I took the laptop to the school to start data entry, but it wouldn’t work. I tried to start planning for the next community school teacher training, but apparently we don’t have any funds for it, so it’s not going to happen. I tried to plan out some community meetings with Ba Chisenga and Ba Mulenga (clinic), but it just went around in circles. Ba Chisenga doesn’t think that people would come to a meeting during school break. Ba Mulenga says they’ve already taught about hygiene, nutrition, and family planning, so I’d feel silly redoing what they’ve already done. Plus, he said, a family planning meeting would be useless because the government isn’t dispensing condoms to the clinics anymore because women don’t like to use them. (The women, eh? Ya right!) He says their preferred family planning method would be to get pregnant and have a do-it-yourself abortion rather than use a condom.

So instead, I went back home and sorted through my bookshelf, classifying all my Peace Corps manuals that I will eventually donate to the library when I leave. I also wrote a librarian manual, drafted up a possible library policy, and lined all of the record and subject notebooks!!!!!!!!! (Only Doug would understand the magnitude of that statement.)

On a bright note, Ba Ferguson got word that his health training grant proposal has been put on the waiting list for approval. This is the one Doug and I helped him with A YEAR AGO!!! Fumba Community School also got the grant that I helped them with, and I think Chenga Community School will too.

After a few days, we finally got the computer to work. It’s very slow, so I’m not sure I can even use it for library data! I’m giving Mr. Chisenga computer lessons now. He’s never used one (and by his typing skills, I don’t think a typewriter either!)

Charles, the headman’s oldest son who speaks English and who I really like a lot, came to visit for a few days. He asked me how my projects were going and I admitted not so well. Lack of community interest. He said that when I came, people expected that I was bringing money to develop the area, and are now disappointed when all I want to do is teach them things at meetings. That explains a lot. He could tell I was distraught about my projects not going well, but couldn’t understand why I was upset. He thought it was because I was afraid that I would get in trouble from my supervisors, and I couldn’t explain to him that I don’t care a diddlysquat what my supervisors think, but that an internal sense of failure feels bad when you’re excited to make a difference and no one wants anything to do with you. I don’t know if it’s an individual/collective cultural difference or what, but the thought that one could have this personal sense of responsibility separate from what others think, was foreign to him.

He wants to start up a laying chicken project, so I lent him the information I had. (Even though I recommended against laying chickens, which don’t know how to find their own food.) I really wish he still lived in Mpelembe so I could work with him on it!

Handy Hut How To: How To Not Injure Your Foot When Making A Goat House

Information not available.

Dad – Thanks for the Meadville Tribunes. Got the letter about the trip too. That boat ride sounds just like trying to pee through the hole in the floor on the train to Zanzibar. And I would give anything to be in that cheese store right now!

Mom – Thanks for taking care of the ghost book situation. But now, I just got a message from Jenny that the Hotel is opening?!?!? What’s this all about?!?!? You’ve never sent me a picture of your short hair like I asked in March! It may not even be short now, who knows. Also – you need to change the answering machine message. It sounds like you just woke up or something.

Jamie – I read this book by the guy who wrote “The Virgin Suicides,” so maybe you’d like it. It’s called “Middlesex.” It has no overarching greatness and the story is not exciting or anything, but I enjoyed it. He’s just a good story teller – goes into so much detail and character development. And it’s funny from time to time and full of little “truisms.” Now I’ve built it up into something and you’ll be disappointed. Remember, I said it has no overarching greatness. Doug didn’t like it.

Emilie – Thanks for Doug’s birthday present!

Doug – Thanks for the birthday present from Emilie! Hahahahhahahaahha. PS. Try adding a glob of peanut butter to our regular vegetable soup concoction. Phenomenal!!!!!!!!!!!

Mom, Dad, and Uncle Bill - Thanks for working those international postal ties and delaying Doug's birthday package until after he left so that I could eat all the goodies myself.

bo-bo – YES!!!! Falling Down Pants Boy and Patty are one in the same!!! You’re psychic!!!

Bonnibelle – That’s awesome you’ve got a garden now! I can’t wait to garden back in the States where the soil isn’t 400 billion years old. (And instead of retiring, if you want to read books, sew, sit in the sun, and rub your pet’s belly, you should just join Peace Corps instead…) Also, I didn’t know John got married too! Weird…

Sarah & Doug - Hope everything goes smoothly for the bike ride and you have a good time. I'm jealous that I can't do it too...

2008-07-22T13:24:00.010+02:00

Dropped Doug off at the airport yesterday. We decided to go out in a poetic bang and called the same taxi driver (Pascal, Doug’s middle name) that picked Doug up exactly one year ago to the day. The last few days at the hut were sad. We made a lot of desserts. (Even attempted to make chocolate from the cocoa beans we smuggled back from Zanzibar!) All the sweets, plus the fact that we both caught some stomach thing from the train, didn’t make our last moments together any easier. I threw a surprise going away party for Doug, inviting the Mumbas, the Mwelewas, Kapiria’s family, the next neighbors, Justin and Brenda, Chulu Kaiyaya, Jameson Kunda and Christabelle, Mr. and Mrs. Chisenga, Mr. Kaseloki, Mr. Mulenga and Mr. Matson. All the women arrived early and helped cook nshima. In fact, they took over the whole thing and I barely did anything! As usual, everyone was horrified and amazed when Doug and I sat down cross-legged, as Zambians are unable to do this. (Just like we’re unable to sit upright without back support for more than a few minutes, but Zambians can do it for hours.) Mr. Mulenga said some nice words about how big our “family” was. Watching Doug say goodbye to the chickens and Finnigan was terrible. Finnigan’s really gonna miss Doug. He loves him dearly. He’s probably on a plane to the States right now, in fact, seeing how he insists on escorting Doug even to the icimbusu.

I’m just still kind of numb. It’s hard to imagine that he’s really gone back to the land of milk and honey. I’m going to stay in Lusaka a day, then maybe stay with another volunteer for a day, and then stay at the Peace Corps House in Serenje for a couple more days to avoid going back to an empty hut and facing reality. These next nine months are going to be excruciatingly difficult, I’m afraid.

Have you all heard about the President Mwanawasa ordeal? Apparently he had a stroke and it's been unconfirmed for awhile now whether he's dead or not. If so, in 90 days there will be a new election. Maybe there will be riots in Mpelembe.

I'm sure my loyal blog reader (aka Bonnibelle) is wondering about the fate of the Professor. He has not returned. The whole thing is inconclusive and probably always will remain shrouded in horrifying mystery. In a sense, it's easier because I can just imagine that he ran away in search of a girlfriend. It's just very strange not knowing what happened and not having closure. Here's all I know -- We investigated and found out that the ruckus the morning of the Professor's disappearance occurred at the headman's house. The story goes that in the middle of the night, his dogs started barking at something in a tree, which he assumed to be an "impaka" that wanted to eat his chickens, so in the morning, he called Kalunga and Victor (bloodthirsty teenage boys next door) to kill it. They pelted it with rocks until it fell from the tree, where their dogs immediately snatched it up and tore it to pieces, eating it, skull and all. We explained that we were concerned because our cat, who goes out every night and comes back every morning like clockwork, failed to come back the same morning the impaka was killed and that we had learned that impaka meant "bush cat." The headman seemed a little distressed, but his wife was one hundred percent certain that the animal killed was not a cat, but an impaka. She motioned with her hands at how large it was. (Which of course was the same size as the Professor. Zambians don't feed their animals so the only pet cats they've ever seen are small.) She also pointed out the marked differences between impakas and cats. Impakas can be solid or striped (unlike our tabby cat, apparently...), have large heads, large eyes, and a nose "like a leopard." Most damning evidence of all in support of the beast's impakaness, was that, as everyone knows, cats are poisonous to dogs, and after eating the impaka, only one of their four dogs died, therefore it must have been an impaka and not a cat.

For the third mysterious animal disappearance lacking closure, another chick has disappeared, bringing us from eight to six. When Doug was drawing water one night, a drunk man approached him and informed him that he would be coming to our home in the morning to take one of our pullets. Doug told him he could not, and he said he was. In the morning, another chick was gone.

Things with the neighbors have been ok. I was so afraid that all contact with them would be cut off after "the intervention." Things were a little quiet at first, but now we're back to greeting and talking with them like normal. It's perfect actually. They're not begging or fighting with us or hanging out on the porch all day, but we can still have a relationship with them. We gave Joshua some seeds and he's starting a garden. And when we gave him a piece of Zanzibar coconut to try, he asked for seeds to plant one because he liked it so much! I'm just in shock and elation. Doug and I have been complaining about how Zambians don't think about the future and think it's silly to plant fruit trees. They could be living in a paradise, but instead of planting more trees, they burn them down. Now I've got this little kid who wants to plant a fruit tree!! (Or nut, I guess?) Doug and I have about ten fruit tree seedlings that I want to plant at some of my schools, so maybe I can teach Joshua about it or try to get more seeds for him to plant.

Doug taught me how to knit. We're using bike spokes as needles. I have this vision for the ultimate knitted piece of clothing, but I won't even mention it here, lest someone out in cyberspace steals my idea. Oh, I'll just tell. I want full length knitted pants. Wouldn't that be awesome?! I have no idea how to do it really, so it'll probably never happen, but I think it's probably the best idea I've ever had.

Peeps let out her first crow. It was quite pathetic. Kind of like the cracking voice of a teenage boy. We were really struggling over what to do with her, because we just didn’t want a rooster. Roosters are horrible creatures. We considered giving her away, but then were afraid she’d immediately have her head chopped off by a zamknife, which would be a horrible fate, as it’d be easier to use a book to cut than one of these knives. We considered eating her ourselves, because then at least we knew she’d be killed humanely, but neither one of us felt capable of killing or eating her. Finally, we gave her to the headman as a gift, with the condition that she was only to be used to make baby chickens and could not be eaten.

We cut down our stalk of bananas several weeks ago, but they are still completely green! After waiting for months and months and months, watering the tree, clearing around it, transplanting the suckers, Doug won’t even get to taste our bananas! (And I’m going to be eating bananas for breakfast lunch and dinner when they finally ripen!)

Since gas prices have gone up, catching transport has become even more difficult. There are less cars driving, and the ones that do go by are often filled up from Mansa by the time they reach Mpelembe. Usually, when starting out around 8:00 am, I’ll get to Serenje by 2:00 in the afternoon. But now it’s even worse, and one time, I was pretty damn sure Doug and I were going to have to sleep on the side of the road with other stranded hitchhikers. It was getting dark and people started making a fire to keep warm. We were only halfway to Serenje. We lucked out and were able to make it, freezing in the open back of a truck late at night. Brrr! And when trying to get to Lusaka this trip, it took us two days instead of one! A nice farmer let us spend the night at his house. He’s trying to start a honey company, so it was really awesome talking to him - and putting gobs of honey in our tea!

I don’t think anyone can know true grief and joy until they try to hitchhike. You’ll sit there for hours and hours with no cars in sight. Or, worse, you’ll see a car coming, your heart will flutter as you start to flag them down, thinking, ”This is it!!!” and then they speed on by, shattering all your hope. Again and again. It’s a terrible process. But, then, when that one car finally stops, and they’re actually going where you’re going, you’ll never know such elation. Suddenly all the torture of the past few hours is instantly erased and you just want to throw dollar bills and candy bars to everyone you see. I imagine it’s like giving birth.

We met this guy from UNICEF who was doing research on Serenje, since apparently it’s the third poorest district in Zambia, with seventy percent of the people living on under $3 a day. He had all sorts of questions and it was really great to meet someone from an NGO who actually seemed to care about what they were doing and who appreciated our grassroots input.

Totally random tidbit – I found Egyptian rosepetal jam in one of the grocery stores in Lusaka! It really is made from rosepetals! It tasted just sicky sweet like any jam, not really rosey at all, but seemed so decadent to eat!

This school term is over. I feel like I did nothing. The whole Life Skills debacle. And all sorts of false leads. People are always coming to me, wanting me to do this or that (beekeeping, sustainable agriculture, agroforestry, life skills, health, income generating activities, etc), but then when I tell them to set a date or come back, they never do. I don’t know if it’s because they find out that I don’t have funding and were only looking for money, or if they just have even shorter attention spans than Americans.

So, I feel like my blog has been really negative the past few months. And maybe even the past few months before that. The problem is, that besides a bunch of stuff going wrong, it’s just easier to report on the bad than the good. New bad things keep happening, but that doesn’t mean that all the good things about Zambia stopped happening. You can only report, “Zambians are so helpful!” a couple of times, because there’s nothing new to update on that. Yes, Zambians are still helpful. So, just for an update on all the positive things that aren’t “new,” I’ll rewrite them now:

I’m happy to be in this place with generally good people who are very friendly and generous and live in a relatively natural and sustainable way. I love laying in my hammock listening to the breeze through the leaves or the sound of someone pounding cassava in the distance. I love cooking over a fire at night. I love my house so much. I love my cat(s) dearly, as well as my chickens. I love having hilarious conversations with Zambians. I love it when Zambians are so shocked and happy that I speak Bemba. I love it when kids screech out, “Muli shani Ba Carrie!!!!!!” as I bike by. I love cooking. I love eating nshima. I love telling Patty to dance and he’ll dance on the spot. I love reading. I love writing. I love the headfamily. I love having a captive audience to push my views on in my Life Skills class. I love building things, especially fences and brick structures. I love the huge sky during the day – blue with perfect burst of clouds. I love it at night with millions of crisp stars. I love how it looks like daylight outside during the full moon. I love not having a 9 to 5 job – waking up when I want, eating when I want, going to the bathroom when I want, reading when I want. I love joking with Doug in Zamlish and Bemba. I love watching my shadow bike next to me in the morning. I love that Zambia is a peaceful place. I love living in nature. I love giving kids a ride on the back of my bike so they can show off to their friends.

Some other things I haven’t mentioned, but will admit to now, is that I, Carrie Pavlik, also had a botfly, but was too ashamed to tell. I also “joined the club” when I had salmonella , but only other Peace Corpsers will understand that.

NOW - THE TRIP TO ZANZIBAR!!!!!!!

It was one of those trips where anything that could possibly go wrong went wrong. It was also one of those trips that was completely worth it despite everything going wrong.

We traveled to Serenje and then walked up and down and around on a back path to the train station to catch the train to Dar Es Salaam, only to find it had been delayed until 3:00 in the morning. Walked back to Peace Corps house, got a couple hours of sleep, and then attempted to re-find the train station in the middle of the night. After walking for an hour through the bush, we came upon some buildings that looked awfully familiar. Turns out we made a huge circle and ended up not very far from where we had started. By this point, it was almost time for the train to leave, so we doubted whether we should even bother. We decided to head back into the bush, getting even more lost, sludging through streams of mud and shimmying across logs over streams.

We arrived 45 minutes late, but luckily the train still hadn’t arrived or left. Thought we were pretty lucky until we found out that they had raised the fares only a day earlier and that they had sold our first class tickets to someone else, putting us in second class. (Main difference is it’s roomier, they get mattresses, blankets, sheets, and pillows, and supposedly they have a toilet instead of just a hole over the tracks. We ended up sleeping on “beds” equivalent to ironing boards and without blankets or pillow.) We also were informed that the cars were segregated by sex, because of course in Zambia, men and women don’t actually like each other and can’t be friends or enjoy each others’ company. (Women don’t want to be annoyed by loud drunk men and men don’t want to be annoyed by crying babies. Where’s that put Doug and me who don’t want to be annoyed by either and want to sit together on our vacation?) The train ride, which I was really looking forward to, was terrible. Freezing when it was cold and muggy when it was hot. Jerky. No water, so absolutely filthy. I had a terrible cold, so was just miserable. Loud Zambians and Tanzanians. (Turns out Tanzanians are even looser with their concept of property. Doug’s cabinmate decided to just up and wear Doug’s shoes when he went to the bar and later took some of our bananas to eat right in front of us!)

As we crossed the border into Tanzania, the immigration officers came on board and told us that our VISAs expired in a couple of days. (When we bought the VISAs, we told them the dates of our trip, but they didn’t give us the right dates.) We were just sick, thinking that as soon as we arrived in Dar, we’d have to turn around and go right back! There was nothing we could do, so we just sat on the train and looked out the window.

The villages and houses are kind of different, but it’s hard to say how. Closer together, bigger houses, more perfectly laid bricks, and more tin roofs instead of thatch. The scenery wasn’t terribly different than Zambia, but there were some beautiful rolling mountains, dried up riverbeds, lush areas, and millions of banana trees. The best was when we drove through a gamepark. At first we just saw skulls, birds nests, and Baobab trees, but then Doug saw an elephant!! I was so jealous, but then a few minutes later we saw a pack of giraffes! And then a pack of zebras! It was unreal. Also saw some vultures and more deery things – puku, gazelle, wildebeests. We decided that even if we had to turn around because of our VISAs, since we got the student discount, our train tickets were cheaper than a safari ever would have been, so it was worth it to see these animals in the wild.

The train continued to lose time as it poked along, and instead of arriving in Dar in the morning, we arrived at 10:00 at night. Lost a whole day!!!!! The next day we walked around Dar trying to find an ATM that would take my card, as we didn’t have enough money for the trip and my card had been denied in Zambia. Finally found one. It was a Tanzanian holiday, so immigration was closed. We still didn’t know our fate! Then we got news that the train had crashed and wouldn’t be running again until the tracks were cleared. Stranded in Tanzania with an expired VISA – oh no, we’re going to get thrown in jail!!! We decided to just take the ferry to Zanzibar, so at least we would see it for a couple of hours even if we had to turn around and come back the next morning to find a bus company to go back to Serenje. I got terribly seasick. A Hassai woman was also seasick. It was very sad to see this magnificent woman with a shaved head, tattoos, huge earrings, and all sorts of bangles throwing up in a plastic bag. Also sad to see them using cell phones.

Once we got to Stonetown in Zanzibar, we again decided that even if we had to go back to Zambia the next day, it had been worth it. Stonetown was just amazing! Zanzibar is mostly Arab influence, as well as Indian and Persian and of course African. It was like we had been transported to the middle east, men wearing long white robes and caps and women with headscarves. Even the little school girl uniforms had headscarves. Stonetown was this amazing section of town consisting of tiny alleyways too small for cars with buildings several stories high only armlenghts apart. Not a place for claustrophobics. It felt like we were lost in some terrible back alley where we weren’t supposed to be, until we realized that this was Stonetown. This crazy labyrinth of streets and buildings. Falling down shambles next to trash pits next to a luxurious spa next to an ancient fort next to a souvenir stand next to an old building with elaborate architecture and brickabracka. So many huge gorgeous elaborate doors covered in brass knobs. Shops will gorgeous fabrics and tapestries, wood boxes with brass hinges, incense burners, bangly jewelry. (It was a good thing we were so rushed, or I would have spent every shilling I had!)

There was an outdoor market at night with all sorts of foods on display. You just picked out what you wanted and they threw it on the fire. Fruits, flatbreads, fish kabobs. Just gorgeous. We decided it was ashame to be on this tropical island and not eat fish, so we broke our vegetarianism again and tried nearly one of everything. I also broke my “I-hate-seafood-ism” and tried fish. Some of it was yucky, like the octopus, some was flavorless, and some was actually really delicious, like the shark and baracuouda. We also drank cup after cup of fresh crushed sugar cane juice! So delicious and refreshing!

Zanzibar has very few dogs, but is filled to the brim with cats! Cats with funny noses! They all must be descended from the same cat that came over on a boat a hundred years ago. The chickens are also very tall and the cows have humps.

The next day, we visited immigration, which was five hundred times nicer than Zambian immigration. They thought our VISAs looked okay, but in case the immigration officers gave us a hard time on the train, they scribbled in that they were valid for another three months. Such a relief!

We immediately rushed off to where a “Spice Tour” was leaving. Again, showed up late, but they hadn’t left yet. We visited several farms where they were growing spices. A guide walked us around and showed us what the various spice plants and trees looked like and broke open the various pods, bark and leaves for us to smell. We saw cardamom (which we now know is closely related to the “wild ginger” we eat in Mpelembe!), ginger, clovers, turmeric, vanilla, chocolate, cinnamon, nutmeg, mace, as well as all sorts of fruits. Kids followed us everywhere, decorate us in rings and necklaces made out of banana leaves, hoping to get a tip. Then we headed for a secluded beach, which everyone seemed to know about except for Doug and I, as they brought their bathing suits. It was gorgeous with big cliffs and palm trees, so finally we just ripped off our clothes and jumped in the water in our underwear.

Outside of Stonetown, it looked more like Zambia with shops and markets. The houses in the villages were made out of crushed coconut shells, coral, and mud, with palm leaves as thatch.

That night, we went to a fancy hotel to listen to live Zanzibar music. It was quite beautiful, men playing harpsichords, violins, bongo drums, guitar, and accordion in these melodies that made it seem like we were in Aladdin or something. Doug and I have talked about “culture” a lot the past year. What culture really is is ideologies, beliefs, sense of etiquette, sense of time, sense of beauty, sense of power, sense of gender, etc, so of course all places have these things. But when you think of culture as language, clothes, music, art, literature, traditions, festivals, food, etc, it is obvious that Zambia is extremely lacking. I feel ethnocentric to write it, but it’s true. There is no art. They eat only one food. Their vocabulary is limited. It was such a change to see Zanzibar. And it will even be a change to go back to the States again, which believe it or not, has a much richer culture than Zambia.

People kept saying, “Hakunah Matata” to us and calling us “Rafiki” which I guess means “friend” in Swahili. It seemed like we were in the Lion King as well as Aladdin. (Doug and I learned some basic Swahili phrases, but it’s amazing how much we take knowing Bemba for granted! It was just so difficult to try to communicate!)

Doug and I realized that Zanzibar really is paradise when we visited the market. Fruit! And none of the fruit was hand size, but HUGE. Bananas as big as your forearm. Grapefruit as big as a basketball. Jackfruit as big as a backpack. Huge soursop, papayas, and mangos. Coconuts. Lychees. Just amazing. We again bought one of everything and feasted on fruit.

The next morning we hopped a minibus to Kendwe beach, several hours away. On the path to the beach, we encountered some Baobabs up close, so Doug finally got to fulfill his life goal of hugging one. By the time we got there, it was late, so we only laid on the beach for about an hour before it was dinnertime. It was touristy and there were a lot of muzungus. It was fabulous to wear a bathing suit and let my knees feel the air again! We also took advantage of all the other culturally-insensitive tourists and held hands in public for the first time in a year and a half.

We heard that another nearby beach had cheaper places to eat, so we decided to walk along the beach until we got there. Turns out that you can’t walk along the beach during high tide. The beach got smaller and smaller until it eventually turned into waves smashing against a rock cliff. Oh no, we’re going to get smashed to pieces against the cliff!! We asked for help and some Tanzanians guided us along the beach-cliff until there was a spot to climb up over it and onto another path. We then trekked for an hour or so in the dark on a windy coral path, having no idea where we were. When we arrived at the other beach, the prices were the same. We ate, then took the terrible trek back.

We stayed in a real hole in the wall there. Basically someone’s house they turned into a small guesthouse. The shower was in the bathroom, water falling right onto the floor. Or the toilet was in the shower, however you want to look at it. It’s amazing how your standards go down. People that might put up with the Hotel Conneaut would never be able to make it in Zambia or Tanzania. If we find a place that has toilet paper, we think we’ve really hit the jackpot!

The next day we signed up to go snorkeling! I got terribly seasick on the boatride and threw up overboard. I think it should be illegal to throw up on vacation. The two hours or snorkeling was great, however - the most rest we’d had in a week! Just floating along looking at the reefs and fish. It was pretty similar to Cancun, except the ocean floor was closer and there was more variety of fish I think. We saw huuuuuge starfish, a sea cucumber, a lionfish, angelfish, a pufferfish, and best of all – don’t be jealous, Stacy – a sea turtle!!!!!!!!!!!! Boy they’re fast, those turtles! It was really great. I wish I was snorkeling right now.

After enjoying our time in Zanzibar very much, we had to head back to Zambia. We went to the dock to catch the ferry back to the mainland, only to find out they had just randomly cancelled the morning ferry! The next one wasn’t for several more hours and we had a train to catch! (Actually we weren’t even sure if the train was running, as we hadn’t been able to get through all week!) We desperately tried to call bus stations to make backup plans, but couldn’t get through. We moped around, again not knowing what was going to happen, and caught the next ferry. We arrived forty minutes late for our train, but thank god for Zamtime and Tanztime – it hadn’t left yet. When we tried to board the train, we found they had messed up our tickets and just kept sending us from person to person. So close but yet so far! I think we pretty much decided in our minds that if the train started moving, we were jumping on no matter what. Luckily, they fit us in even though we technically didn’t have a reservation. Whew! Just when I thought we were homefree, I realized that my bag was dripping. I thought I’d be really clever and fill up a water bottle with that delicious sugar cane juice to drink on the 40 hour train ride. Well, in less than a day, it had rotted, fermented, and exploded all over everything in my bag, including a book I had borrowed form someone. (Pookie, you might have to use my debit card and buy a new one….) It reeked like terrible sour terribleness. Just wretched. All over everything. I then had to put up with Zambians again. They just have totally different concepts of etiquette, which can just be unbearable at times. For example, they think it’s fine to take up the whole cabin with all their stuff, leaving me no place to sit, or to turn on the light in the middle of the night and have a loud conversation for an hour. Ack!!!

Arrived in Serenje and wanted to kiss the ground. Until some guy stopped us and requested our tickets – which some guy had taken from us on the train, saying they were incorrect. We were tired and filthy and still had a walk ahead of us. We just wanted to go and they held us there for ten minutes or so. After arguing for awhile, they finally let us go.

And that was the trip to Zanzibar!

The computer in Serenje died, and now that all my vaccines are done, all of Doug’s immigration is done, and they’ve cancelled my intake’s “in service training,” I’ll have no reason to come to Lusaka again unless I get sick or am dying to buy soysauce. SO, it might be awhile until I blog again. I’m addicted to it, however, so I may have to go back to my ancient method of traveling to Mkushi to use the internet.

Handy Hut How To – How to Catch Transport
Bike to the road. Ask one of the shopkeepers to keep your bike for you while you’re away. Wait for many hours. If you see a car coming, start flagging it down by extending your arm and limply flapping your hand at the wrist. The car may communicate to you by flashing its lights or doing a hand gesture to indicate that they are full, or that they are “just within” the nearby area. Usually, however, they will just pretend not to see you. When the car stops, run up and ask where they are going and if they’ll take you. Assess the bwananess (richness) of the car and person to see if it will be a free ride or not. If not, negotiate a price and hop in! Thank the transport gods.

Vince - Happy Birthday!!

Bonnibelle - Thanks for the wedding pictures!!! It was really exciting to see them.

Dad - I emailed silly sayings to Bonnibelle a couple weeks ago, but forgot to send them to you to give to Cathy also. So ask Bonnibelle to send them to you.

Mom – I thought of another thing I need when you send the underwear. Garlic powder!!

Jamie and Julie – Doug and I were going to give you your souvenir now, when Doug returns, but we were unable to do so, so you’ll just have to wait until I come back!

To anyone who donated to the ghost book fundraiser - Due to the Park’s unopenage, we had to call off the ghost book donation thing, so you’ll be getting a refund check in the mail. Thank you for your support.

MAGIC BLOG DECODER

2008-07-21T04:04:00.010+02:00

I realize that I probably say a lot of stuff that doesn't make sense (and let me know if I've forgotten something that you've been scratching your head over), so here's a handy decoder:

Places

Arcades - Mall in Lusaka where I use the internet
Boma - The district capital city. In my case, I live in Serenje District, so the Boma is Serenje the town
Chachachas - A hostel in Lusaka
Chalilo - A village about thirty kilometers away from me where Kapria worked for awhile
Chongwe - Town near Lusaka where we had our training
Cikandakanda - Village near Mpelembe where Jameson Kunda lives and Chenga Community School is
GM - Store in Serenje
Kabulunga - Section of Lusaka where Peace Corps office is
Kabwe - The capital of Central Province
Kasanka - National Park about forty kilometers from me
Kuomboka - Hostel I usually stay at in Lusaka
Lusaka - The capital of Zambia about eight hours away where the Peace Corps main office is and the grocery stores
Manda Hill - Mall in Lusaka
Miseshi - Village where Kapiria's aunt lives
Mkushi - Another boma in Central Province about four hours away where there is internet
Mpelembe - The village where I live; Also the name of my school and my school zone
Peace Corps House - A hostel/office for Central Province volunteers to stay when they go to Serenje
Serenje - The town two hours away I go to for groceries or to stay at Peace Corps House
Shoprite - Big grocery store in Lusaka
Spar - Big grocery store in Lusaka
Tushenis - A store in Serenje where I often shop and where got Finnigan

People

Akafuna, Miss – Teacher
Amambuns – Lady who sells buns
Brenda Mwelwa – Justin’s wife
Bupe Mwelwa – Justin and Brenda’s young son
Bwalya, Mrs – Teacher
Cawrence / Collins Mwelelwa – The Headman
Chanda – Annoying teenager girl
Charles Mwelelwa – Adult Mwelelwa son
Chisenga Mrs. – The deputy head of my school
Chisupa, Mr – Teacher
Chitambo, Ms – Teacher
Christa Bell Kunda – Jameson’s wife
Christabelle Kunda – Wife of Jameson Kunda
Chulu Kaiyaya – Conganese Villager
Cispon Mwelelwa – Child Mwelelwa
Crisson Mwelelwa – Child Mwelelwa
Darius Chisenga – Head Teacher
Darius Chisenga – The headmaster and zonal head of my school; My main counterpart
Darius Kabwe – Teacher
Dorothy Sinkwaya - Hostmom during training
Elizabeth Kunda – Daughter of Jameson Kunda
Fergus, Mr – NHC
Goiter man – Creepy shopkeeper who we keep our bikes with
Goiterman – Shopkeeper
Hamabaza – Agricultural Ext Agent
Henry Mwelelwa – Adult Mwelelwa son
Iron Mumba – Father of the neighbors
J – Deaf old man
Jameson Kunda – Chenga Community School teacher
Jameson Kunda – Helpful guy and head teacher of Chenga School
Jane Mwelelwa – Headwoman
Joshua Mumba – Third oldest Mumba son
Judah – Creepy shopkeeper
Junior – Justin’s son
Justin Mwelwa – Helpful friend turned into drunk
Kalunga Mumba – Second oldest teenage Mumba son; Terrible guy
Kamulia Sinkwaya – Hostsister during training
Kapiria – Teenage boy who knows a little English
Kaseloki – The ZIC of my school; Also a counterpart
Kaseloki – ZIC
Kasolo – Old Clinical Officer at the clinic
Kasolo, Mr – Clinic
Kumwenda, Ms – Teacher
Maggie Chisenga – Deputy Head Teacher
Makumba / Odrick Mumba – Fifth oldest Mumba son
Martha Sinkwaya – Hostsister during training
Matson – Casual Daily Employee (aka janitor) at the clinic
Matson, Mr – Clinic
Moria Sinkwaya – Hostsister during training
Morise – Conganese carpenter
Mulenga – Environmental Health Technician at the clinic
Mulenga, Mr – Clinic
Muleya, Mr – Teacher
Musonda Sinkwaya / Bufiboy – Hostbrother during training
Mwansa, Mr – Teacher
Mwansa, Mrs – Teacher
Mwape – Justin’s daughter
Mwape – Nice shopkeeper
Mwape – Shopkeeper
Neighbor Lady / Mrs. Mumba – Mother of the neighbors
Ngosa / La Kantini / Beverly Mumba – Fourth oldest Mumba and the only daughter
Patty Mumba – Youngest Mumba son
Peg Mwelelwa – Only Mwelelwa teenage daughter
Peter – South African Farmer who lives 50 kilometers away
Robinson Sinkwaya – Hostdad during training
Triza – Fritter seller
Victor Mumba – Oldest Mumba teenage son; Terrible guy
Weston – Fumba Community School Teacher
Winet – Fumba Community School Teacher
Wizzy Mwelelwa – Teenage Mwelelwa son

Animals

Abraham – Rooster we bought to try to keep away Old Ugly, but ended up giving to the neighbors; Father of our chicks
Artic – “My” chick; Was taken by chickenhawk
Changa - My baby bushbaby
Chipmunk – “Doug’s” chick who was stolen
Cibukishu - The Mumba goat named "Rememberance" after Doug
Corncob – Multicolored chicken on the bottom of the pecking chain
Eggy - One of my chicks
Finnigan / Finny / Fins / Small Fins / Small Kitz / Finnycakes – Younger cat we love very much
Fireball – Reddish chicken
Headless Chicken – Any chicken who doesn’t have feathers on its neck and head
New Chicken – Black and white chicken who hatched chicks (but they were mostly Fireball’s chicks)
Old Ugly – Terrible headless rooster that crowed all the times; Paid the neighbors to eat him
Peeps – Chick we thought was a girl but ended up being a boy, so we gave her away
Pegasus - My female baby goatsie
Piddles - Kitten that immidiately died
Pochohantas / Poco – Golden chicken
Potato - My beast of a goat
Professor / Fessors – Tabbycat that Peter gave us that was killed by villagers or ran away
Puddles - Newest kitten
Spud - My male baby goatsie
Stingsworth - One of my bee swarms
Vulture - One of my chicks
Wee Wee Wee - One of my chicks

Peace Corps Terms

Adminsep – Administrative Seperation (aka being fired)
APCD – Head of the various Peace Corps projects
CAHP – Community Action Health Project
COS – Close of Service (aka finishing your two years)
ET – Early Termination (aka to quit)
HAP – HIV and AIDS Project
IST – In Service Training
LIFE – Linking Income Food and the Environment
Medsep – Medical Seperation (aka being sent home/fired for medical reasons)
PCMO – Peace Corps Medical Officer
PCV – Peace Corps Volunteer
PCVL – Peace Corps Volunteer Leader; Coordinating extension volunteer who lives at the Peace Corps House
RAP – Rural Aquaculture Project
RED – Rural Education Development; My project

School Terms

Chenga – One of my Community Schools
Community School – Village run school out in the bush
Fumba – One of my Community Schools
Government School – School funded by the Ministry of Education
GRACE - Teaching training
IRI – Interactive Radio Instruction; aka LTM; Radio program for teachers to follow
Life Skills - The class I teach to 8th and 9th grade (HIV, setting goals, gender, etc)
LTM – Learning at Taonga Market; aka IRI; Radio program for teachers to follow
Monitoring - Visiting community schools to see how they're doing
Mpelembe – My school; The Zonal Head School
Zonal Head School – Central school in a given area; My school is one
Zonal Resource Center - Building where the future library will be

Bemba and Zamlish Terms

Amaguy – Drunk guy
Ba - Sir/Madam
Babula – Brazier; Cooking thing
Bamaayo - Mother
Banakashi - Sister
Bandume - Brother
Bataata - Father
Bemba – The Bantu language spoken in Central, Northern, and Luala Pula Provinces
Bwana – Rich Person
Bwino - Positive repsonse to "Muli shani?" greeting
Citimene - Slash and burn agriculture method; aka burning down Zambia once a year
Icikanda – “African bologna” – Meat tasting jello made from a root and peanuts
Icimbusu – Pit Latrine
Ifisash – Cooking vegetables with peanut powder
Impashi – Flesh eating ants
Insaka – Outdoor cooking shelter
Kwacha – Zambian currency
Juju - Witchcraft
Lala – Language similar to Bemba spoken in Mpelembe
Muli shani? - Typical greeting meaning "How are you?"
Muzungu - White Person
Nshima – Staple food made of corn or cassava
Nsolo - Game like mangala
Pacibulia - Game like mangala
Pin – Zambian currency
Relish – Vegetables or meat eaten with nshima
Tute – Cassava
Ubwali – Staple food made of corn or cassava
Ulushishi - Strips of bark used as rope
Umulilo - Fire

Other Terms

ABC - Abstinence, Be Faithful, Condoms - How to prevent HIV
Brazier – Cooking thing
Bushbaby - Small nocturnal monkey
Bushnote - Throwing a note somewhere and seeing if it will make it to its destination
Catapult - Slingshot
IGA – Income Generating Activity
Minibus – Terrible van busses things
Natural Fiber - See "ulushishi"
Road – The intersection of the Mansa road and the dirt path to Mpelembe where there are shops and bars
Soya Pieces - Fake meat made of soybeans - delicious!
Tap - Draw water
Tarmac – Paved road
Thatch - Grass roof
Tropical – Flipflop
Under 5 - Weighing babies at the clinic

2008-06-28T14:43:00.002+02:00

I’m in Lusaka for a vaccine, to pick up Doug’s VISA, and to turn in a proposal for Camp GLOW. (I didn’t write the proposal, but one of the volunteers I’m working with on the camp did. Peace Corps has finally finalized the new funding guidelines, so we’re trying again, but because of the push back, the camp can’t be held until December, which is during rainy season….) Following in Doug’s footsteps, I’ve either lost, had stolen or spent all my money. Most likely, I miscalculated how much money I brought. I frantically went from ATM to ATM trying to withdraw money (which I need for Zanzibar anyways), but was denied by every machine. Stuck at the mall with no money for a taxi and it being too late in the evening to safely take a minibus by myself. Luckily, two locals struck up a conversation with me and offered for their brother to drive me where I needed to go. (They couldn't fathom the fact that I lived out in the bush and even wore Eagle PatPat brand tropicals.) So helpful and generous Zambians can be!! I had to wait around for an hour or so, but they were good company. Makes me wish there were people who spoke English in my village so I could have actual conversations sometimes. Everywhere in Lusaka (the affordable places, anyhow) are booked because some religious group is coming in, so I’m attempting to sleep in the volunteer lounge at the Peace Corps office tonight. There’s a couch. I got into a little bit of trouble about it. Hopefully I don’t get into more. What else was I supposed to do? Gonna have to try to get a free ride back home tomorrow…

My advice to any Peace Corps Volunteer in Lusaka is – Make friends with the person next to you on the minibus!! Minibusses are terrible, confussing, and corrupt, so I always greet the person next to me, who is absolutely thrilled and tickled that I know broken Bemba. You can ask them the real price for your destination so you don’t get ripped off, they’ll shout at the conductor for you if he doesn’t give you your change (and would probably even beat him up for you), and they’ll make sure the bus stops at your stop. It’s great.

My sense of time and distance has been altered here. For example, I used to think that traveling from Meadville to Pittsburgh, about two hours, was an epic journey. Now to travel from Mpelembe to Serenje to buy food is two hours and I consider that close. Like going from Meadville to Linesville. Equivalent with the epic Pittsburgh trip is now the eight hour trip from Mpelembe to Lusaka.

We found out that the train tracks are ok north of the accident, so we’re heading to Zanzibar on the fourth of July!!!!!

I’ve managed to get some news here lately, so I’ll comment on that. It’s weird that all this chaos is going on in Zimbabwe, so close to Zambia, yet Zambia is so docile. I’ve been hearing about the increases in gas and food prices, and the possible recession and depression. Scary. Gas prices are up here as well, but the only other thing I’ve noticed is sugar. It used to be K4,500 for one KG. Then it was K5,000. Then K5,500. Now it’s K7,500!! I heard the cause might be from a water shortage near the sugar factory, so maybe it’s a different issue altogether. I heard from a Serenje shopkeeper that Obama won the primaries. (She didn’t realize that he also has to win the election in November to actually be president.) Everyone here is happy about it. They think it’s going to change the world. I’ve really been out of the loop on all this, but I’m glad Hillary didn’t win. Mostly because she supports the war, but also, unfeminist as this sounds, I don’t know if I want a female president. I fiercely support gender equality, but I also fiercely oppose corrupt leaders (aka: all leaders). I don’t know if a female president would be a step forward in feminism or a step backward because women are now joining the evil ranks. If a woman became president, then I couldn’t use the excuse, “It’s evil men that are ruining our world.” I think this is a case where men should be depowered and not women empowered. No presidents and gender equality.

Patty also has some commentary on world news. Probably the most fun thing to do in the village is hand a kid a Newsweek (free propaganda given to Peace Corps Volunteers) and see what he/she has to say about it. This time, Patty pointed to a picture of an Italian supermodel wearing tight jeans with shoulder length brown hair and declared that it was me. Not so fast - it’s not a compliment. The model was a man! He then found an old-timey picture of a white comedian with his face painted black in a baggy suit and top hat. He was sure this was Doug. (Maybe it was social commentary on Western imperialism?) And when Doug goes to Serenje or Lusaka, people think he is either Jesus or Chuck Norris.

In Zambian news, we have two new laws. It is now illegal to smoke and pee in public. I’m not sure if it said anything about pooping in public. Makes it kind of difficult, seeing how there aren’t really public bathrooms. A Peace Corps Volunteer has already been arrested and deported, not even knowing the new law was in effect. He got caught peeing outside a bar in Lusaka, and as they were leading him to the police station, he lit up a cigarette.

We’re in the thick of cold season now. I kept thinking, “Ok, I must have just imagined how cold it was last year. It couldn’t possibly have been that cold,” so I didn’t have anyone send a hat, scarf, and gloves like I had planned. Well, it is that cold!! (But don’t bother sending anything. By the time it comes, it will be hot season.) It gets into the thirties at night. It’s only a few degrees warmer inside the hut because it’s so airy. Brrrrrrr!!!!! Sooooo cold at night and in the mornings!! I long for warmth and then it gets ridiculously hot during the day again and I long for the cold. I think it’s because there’s no humidity this time of year, so the air can’t hold hot or cold. Like the desert. I’ve always been sensitive to cold, but now I just feel totally out of whack. It’s still not as cold as a Pennsylvanian winter, but I just suffer and shiver so much! We’re just not used to going from extreme to extreme in one day. Doug also has a theory that Zambians don’t feel cold the way we do. Australian Aboriginals don’t shiver and I think it’s the same here. Since they’ll never be exposed to life threatening coldness, they don’t need a bodily mechanism (shivering, feeling cold) to alert them of danger. So they just don’t shiver and feel uncomfortable trying to keep their core organs warm. If we go with that theory, however, it should seem that Zambians should be more sensitive to heat – sweating, etc – than muzungus, but that’s not the case either. They’re fine in the heat while we’re sweating and practically passing out. I think muzungus are just designed poorly. Our bodies and health are inferior in almost every way – can’t stand the cold, can’t stand the heat, sun burns, back problems, heart problems, lack of strength/endurance, cancers. How was it that we ever took over the world, anyhow?

I’m actually working on a theory that all humans are descendants of aliens. It’s really the only explanation. Not even getting into the ancient cave paintings of UFOs, star-worshipping cultures, and structures or land manipulations obvious only from above, we’re obviously different from all other animals here on Earth. Just look at what we’ve done to this place!! The Earth and humans don’t mix. Besides our inability to survive in our own climate, as mentioned above, we have all sorts of problems with basic survival. We don’t innately know what foods we can eat and not eat, like the chickens do as soon as they’re born. We require tools for most everything, which isn’t true of other animals. What other animal is allergic to its own environment? Obviously it’s those alien dust and pollen particles which are disturbing our respiratory systems. Many of us can’t even sleep or poop correctly. A human is “the animal that doesn’t know how to live.” Is democracy, socialism, or anarchy the right way to organize ourselves? Should we form monogamous or polygamous relationships? How do we raise children? Should we stay in one spot or migrate? Should we work in an office or farm the land? How do we know what we want? Chickens and bees know what to do with their lives. Nothing is known for humans. We have these concepts that aren’t tangible. Is there a god? Is there such thing as love? There is nothing that is intrinsically right or wrong, good or bad. On our own planet, we are born knowing these things. We also live in a big pool of warm jello that maintains our body heat perfectly all the time. I’m cold.

Speaking of star worshipping, Doug’s building a new bathing shelter, because the old one is so drafty that it’s just absolutely miserable to try to bathe, even in hot season. It’s very tall and strange looking, so when Joshua came over to inquire what we were building, we simply told him “Stonehenge.” He pondered that for awhile and seemed to accept it. A few minutes later, neighborlady also came over to ask about the strange structure. Joshua knowingly told her it was Stonehenge.

Doug also made a drainage system for the tippytap. Pretty impressive!

The neighbors and the headfamily both wanted a family photo. Pretty much impossible to get the whole family together, but we tried. Zambians have certain poses they do for the camera. Usually looking away, looking very sad or serious, or pretending to be engaged in something. They also need props. Iron Mumba solemnly stood there with his little battery operated radio at his side. The headman held a cabbage in one hand and a flashlight in the other. Peg wanted to be photographed holding a purse and a bottle of skin lotion. The best was when the headwoman insisted we bring over our plastic basket and, much to his chagrin, Finnigan.

Finnigan is such a little treat. I’m just in love with him. Doug is too. He says he’s redeemed cats for him. The Professor and Finnigan sometimes groom each other in those hard to reach places on the head. Finnigan has now started grooming our heads too when we’re looking a little too crusty and he thinks we must be having trouble licking our own faces. He especially likes to clean up Doug’s beard, which to his defense, probably does have some leftover food in it.

Well, Doug and I have done it again. Poisoned ourselves, that is. (Aliens!) This time, when pounding icikanda to make icikanda (“African bologna” – if we could figure out how to market this stuff to vegetarians in the US, we’d be millionaires), curious what it was like raw, Doug and I both sampled a little bit. At the exact same second the next day, Doug and I both keeled over holding our stomachs, let out a coordinated fart, and ran to the icimbusu. Exact same second, I’m serious! When Joshua heard we were sick, he came running over afraid we had eaten raw icikanda. He was right. Luckily, we hadn’t eaten very much and were fine.

Also had a bit of salmonella from eating raw cookie dough, I think. Not from our chickens! They wouldn’t do that. It was some other egg.

ARHGHHG. My computer just crashed. Have to retype now. But now I get the time I already spent on here for free. Bittersweet. More bitter than sweet.

We visited Peter again. Apparently his house got struck by lightening during rainy season and burned down! Terrible! Tried milking his cow for goat practice. It’s really hard! It’s exactly like you said in your letter, Bonnibelle, that I felt like I was hurting the poor thing! We watched Peter castrate and remove tails from his sheep (with rubber bands). Did you know that sheep don’t have bobtails?!??!??!??!?! They’re long tails, but they’re always cut off!!! My worldview is blown. We also played on his radio, went canoeing, and slept next to the river under the stars.

Corncob destroyed the strawberries. We’re giving the garden one last chance with a new nursery and then I’m giving up. I’ll save farming for when I get home to that amber waves of grain fertile soil. Africa just needs a few glaciers or earthquakes or something to stir up the dirt.

I’ve been sewing chitenges lately. Made some handkerchiefs. And most glorious of all – a chitenge hammock for Doug’s birthday! It’s quite exquisite, I must admit, but it’s also rather uncomfortable because it rides up the buttcrack. Oh well, at least it looks good. The patios has enough of a fence now that there’s some privacy, so we put up two hammock stands and have been reading out there. Nice.

Now for some tragic news. Artic, New Chicken’s only biological chick, and “my” chick that I held while hatching, is gone. She was taken by a chicken hawk while we were gone one day. It was pretty devastating news. Supposedly they also took a puppy from a neighboring village, but that might just be village grapevine. A few weeks before, I had a firsthand encounter with a chickenhawk when Finnigan came running into the house like a bat out of hell. I heard a thump on the roof and thought the Professor was up there and had scared Finny. I went outside and lo and behold, there was a gargantuan hawk right on top of the roof, several feet away from me. It flew away and I ran inside to get my slingshot. It started to fly away, so I chased it down the path for awhile, only to see that there were two of these humongous birds. They disappeared before I was able to even miss them with the slingshot.

Work has still been at a standstill. The timetable situation has just been so ridiculous, I won’t even go into it again. Finally one day, I went in there and practically begged them to let me teach my freakin class! I’ve taught one time this term. One!!!!. Funding for the library has also been frustrating. It keeps going back and forth between the zonal, district, and national level of the Ministry of Education. Nobody knows anything and everyone says something different. Right now I’m just waiting for the icimbusu to be finished so the building can be declared legally “done” and then the furniture is supposed to come from some unknown source. I don’t think the library will ever be done by the time I leave. On a bright note, another volunteer gave me an old Mac laptop for the library. There’s no way to transfer a document to print or anything, because the CD drive doesn’t burn and there’s no USB drive. So basically, it will just be for storing a backup record of all the books. I was thinking of seeing if some organization would donate library software, but I doubt it would work on this computer. It’s so different from even modern Macs, that I’m going to have to explore it a lot myself before I can even teach people at the school to use it.

It’s funny, not in a haha way, that what the education project is supposed to be doing might become completely irrelevant. The first generation started up community schools and LTM centers (teaching with radio program). Then the Ministry of Education realized there were too many community schools, so they said, “Stop opening new community schools!” My generation is trying to train those community school teachers, many who haven’t even finished grade 7 themselves. Now the Ministry of Education is saying that they don’t want the unqualified teachers at all and want to send government teachers to the community schools. All that training we’re doing and then they get kicked out! (And all that work they’ve put into forming their own school only to get kicked out!) Furthermore, the funding for LTM to be broadcasted runs out next year I think, so all that LTM training is useless as well.

After my first no-show community HIV meeting, I decided to give it another try, combining it with my no-show Jatropha meeting. The date ended up coinciding with when the Minister of Land’s wife was coming to speak, so there were actually about 150 people there! Not sure if any of them showed up for my meeting, but they were a captive audience anyhow. (Twas pretty humiliating, however, when I was standing up there speaking in front of the group only to see the vehicle for her honorable pulling in. Everybody jumped up and ran over to the car, singing and dancing, leaving me standing there alone.) I tried to gauge interest in other topics for future meetings, and there really wasn’t any interest at all. No one wanted to learn about beekeeping, gender, agroforestry, or income generating activities. The headman was interested in fishfarming. And about four people (out of 150) were interested in health, nutrition, and family planning. I’m going to try to have monthly community meetings anyways. A kind of “Life Skills” class for the community, since things aren’t so hot at the school.

It’s hard to help people when they don’t want to be helped. What I think is important (gender, health) they find unimportant and what they find important (radios, tin roofs) I find unimportant. I’ve given this example before, but it’s happened again, so I’ll give it again. One day I heard a ruckus outside only to find neighborlady and Joshua scrubbing my pots that they had found drying on the dishrack. They were perfectly clean, but Zambians need to have the outside of their pots shine too. As I got closer, I found that Joshua was in fact using my knife to scrape the pot. They think what they’re doing to help me is important. But not only is it unimportant to me, it creates a huge problem. Now I have to rewash my pot after having strangers handle it, which means drawing water from the well, chlorinating it and waiting thirty minutes. They’ve also ruined my knife. And they’ve also made me feel guilty that next time they beg for something I have to give it to them. I can’t help but wonder if they feel the same frustration when I try to “help” them.

In Peace Corps Central Province news, we had our Provincials meeting and party. The theme was Disney characters – or – cowboys and Indians. I was Rafiki from the Lion King, complete with a pole of dangly bangles, leaves, and pods on the end to shake. Turned out that I was the only one to choose that theme, so at the last minute I had to switch to Native American Shaman. Just put on some beads and kept the pole. Had an Iron Chef competition. Our team lost, but my dessert won high ranks. It was quite beautiful, topped with chunks of broken chocolate, the platter drizzled with chocolate and sprinkled with powder. Even a little flower. Very nice. An issue that came up at the meeting is that Peace Corps wants us to fire our guards and hire guards from an actual guard company. (Is there such thing in Zambia?) This upset everyone a lot, cause the guards have been here for many years and everyone knows and trusts them. We started up a petition, but I’m not sure what it can do. If anything, we might be able to hire them back as part time gardeners. Also came up that our readjustment salary hasn’t been updated for inflation in over ten years, so a petition went around for that too. We also just had a going away party for several of the volunteers whose service is up. Sad. It’s weird that I’m one of the old people now. There’s only three people in my intake, so now 99 percent of Central Province volunteers have come after me. Doug and I worked hard taking pictures of Serenje and buying souvenirs because it might be the last time he’s in Serenje as well. Another volunteer insisted that she wash Doug and my clothes when she saw us because they were so filthy! Funny thing is, is that I just did laundry that week and took a shower, so I was feeling pretty proud and clean for once. Oh well.

Doug and I have done some visiting lately. First we visited our nearest Peace Corps neighbor. There was an agricultural show (mini mini mini Crawford County Fair) going on we wanted to check out. It was pretty disappointing in a rather humorous way, but we did get to see a few vegetables we didn’t know. It also amazed me that one lady had made peanut butter and jam. That would never happen in Mpelembe, even though it’s just thirty kilometers away! Peg recoiled when I let her taste the peanut butter I was making. There’s just no interest in food if it’s not nshima. In fact, it isn’t food if it’s not nshima. A person may have eaten 3000 calories of peanuts and sweet potatoes that day, but if they haven’t eaten nshima, they will tell you they are suffering, starving, and haven’t eaten anything all day.

We also visited a volunteer who was having a meeting about goats. The meeting ended up being in Bemba, so it was hard to follow, but it was nice to see the goats and a different village. It was like night and day to Mpelembe. Or as Doug described it – the difference between Pittsburgh and Paris. The houses were “painted” up nice with different colors of mud, some with even little triangles for decoration (the closest to Zambian “art” I’ve seen), the yards had shrubs and flowers. People had banana trees and hadn’t cut down all the big trees. Even a little furrow right through her yard! Very beautiful. We got the numbers of several people who might have goats, but haven’t heard back from any of them. When we were eating dinner, her mom called and when she said “Carrie and Doug are visiting,” her mom said, “They have blogs, right? Doug hasn’t updated in a while!” She’s one of the volunteers about to leave (I don’t think she’s told her dog yet), so she gave me a few of her shirts she didn’t want to pack. I’m going to come back to the states with a whole new wardrobe! Everything I brought has been destroyed and I keep getting all this free clothes from volunteers who are leaving.

Visiting these other villages made me realize that things are a little off in Mpelembe. At Alex’s, he lives very close to his family, yet they didn’t bother us at all! Just friendly and pleasant, but not harassing us all day. They even brought us food and heated water to bathe. The people in Laura’s village weren’t a hassle either (although she’s had some problems with drunks and theft in the past), and seemed much more open to new things. Both places just seemed more peaceful somehow. The vibes were different.

Different how? This is what’s been going on lately:

I wanted to get some reeds mats made for the patios. There’s a man who makes them about ten kilometers away, so I went to him in April. He said he’d have four mats done by May 12th at K10,000 apiece. So come May 12th, I biked to Kachelo only to find he had zero mats done. Forseeing disaster, I told him I only wanted one mat afterall. He begged and pleaded for me to buy at least two, because he had already cut the reeds for them (nowhere to be seen). I gave in. After coming back several more times to find no reed mats, he finally finished. He then told me the price was actually K15,000. So not only were the mats over a month late and I didn’t even want the second one but was forced to buy it, but now he wants to charge me even more?!? I argued it down to K12,000, but was absolutely infuriated. After discussing it with some teachers at the school, they urged me to refuse to pay more than the originally agreed upon price of K10,000. The mat maker and I parted our ways, both fuming at each other.

Things have continually been stolen from the homestead. Construction materials, clothesline, clothespins, boxes, dish scrubbers (can you send some more, Pookie?), etc etc etc. When we returned one time after being gone for a day or two, we found that someone had reached up under the roof and pulled out the Christmas lights mom sent that were hanging near the ceiling. They cut off a few of the lights, now making them unusable. When I asked the neighbors, they said they saw someone trying to break in through the window at night. I told everyone I could and an announcement was made at the school to try to scare any kids who might be the culprits.

Stuff like this makes me dread returning home after being away. What’s going to be stolen? What’s going to be messed up? What ridiculous thing have the neighbors done (e.g. lock up our chickens)? Are all the animals here? Is the house ok? I’ve also become an untrusting person. For the most part, Zambia has made me a stronger and better person, but the one thing I fault it for is making me very cynical. For example, when the neighbors told me Artic had been taken by a chicken hawk, my first thought was, “You’re lying. You took her and ate her.” From first hand experience, we know that eighty percent of what they tell us is a lie (excluding greetings - it’s hard to lie about whether it’s a good morning or a good evening), so why wouldn’t I doubt it? They’re the family who cried wolf. Then my mind starts coming up with proof against them. New Chicken is a good mother, so why would she fail suddenly the day we leave? Well, they were angry at us the day we left. Gee, Artic is the exact chick that Mrs. Mumba pointed to and insisted we give her to eat. Odd.

Then came the patios issue. Lately we’ve been giving small jobs to Joshua so they can have a little income and stop begging from us. It was going ok until we hired him to fetch grass for the fence. He brought some grass, and then we had to leave for the agriculture show. Joshua wanted a pre-payment for some vital thing for school, so we paid him for most of the job. When we got back, there wasn’t one strand of grass there and there wasn’t for the rest of the week. We argued about it every day for a week and half, us wanting Joshua to finish the job, and Joshua wanting the rest of the money for the job, as well as some vegetable seeds we said we’d give him. He even kept asking for more jobs before he even finished this one! He was also angry that we hadn’t cut our grass for the chief’s visit (we couldn’t because he broke our hoe) and wanted me to pay him for that (it’s the housing committee’s job and is supposed to be done for free.) It got to the point where we would wake up and he’d be outside our house and we’d immediately start arguing. Finally, one morning, wiping the sleepers and tears from my eyes, I threw on some clothes and biked in a furry to the school. There I broke down in front of Mr. Chisenga, saying I was to the point of changing sites. He called the headman and headwoman (who was absolutely up in arms that I was having a problem, and went on for about five minutes in Bemba, hands waving, fists shaking, it was pretty hilarious, I love the headfamily) and another man from the housing committee together and held an intervention meeting with the neighbors. Wanting them to rectify the relationship with the neighbors, they instead severed it, telling them they were never allowed to step foot in my yard again. (They don’t consider my front yard my yard however, as they still use it as a path every day.) I was pretty shook up. I just wanted things to be better, not to have NO relationship with them at all. After considering my relationship with them, however, sacrificing the ten percent that is positive for getting rid of the ninety percent that is negative, I think it’s probably for the best. We’re attempting to be friendly and still greet each other, so hopefully it won’t be an all or nothing situation. When they’re good, I honestly like them a lot. It’s a sad situation.

Now for the possibly huge tragedy, or, the maybe overly cynical conclusion (to be confirmed in a later blog) ---- I think the neighbors or other villagers killed the Professor. Several days ago, on the morning after “the intervention,” we heard a big ruckus that was the undeniable sound of an animal in the village. Dogs barking, people hooting and hollering, the bloodthirsty cries of Victor. We didn’t go investigate. By that evening, we realized we hadn’t seen the Professor all day. I joked that the hunt was probably after him by our angry neighbors. By the next morning, he still hadn’t returned, and we started getting really worried. We asked the neighbors about the ruckus, and they said they were still sleeping when it happened so they didn’t know. (A lie, because they wake up at 5:00 and this happened around 7:00. Plus, we heard Victor’s voice.) Doug asked another neighbor, and they said the animal they were after was an “impaka.” We figured that was deer type animal because both “impala” and “puku” are deery things. It wasn’t until I was on transport to Lusaka yesterday that I asked the driver what “impaka” meant. When he said “bush cat,” my heart stopped. I just felt sick. I had to endure the rest of the ride holding back tears and the urge to jump out of the car to go back to Mpelembe to assail Victor. Right now I’m just keeping my fingers crossed that when I return home, the Professor will be there safe and sound. I really hope that I’m wrong. I will readily accept guilt and fault and embarrassment from the gods and all blog readers for being so untrusting and cynical, as long as the Professor is ok. If not, I am fifty percent sure (there’s a lot of percentages in this blog), that I’m going to request a site change. Killing my cat is the last straw.

Handy Hut How To: How to Make a Small Roof

Stick a post in the ground knee to waist high, depending on the roof. Cut about ten doublethumbsized straight branches and arrange them in a cone leaning on the center post. Harvest some ulushishi (bark fiber), soak it, and use it to tie the sticks securely together at the top. Harvest many singlethumbsized branches. Start near the top of the cone, attaching the branches in a ring around the cone, securing with ulushishi at each intersection. Continue making bigger and bigger rings, about a foot apart until you have reached the bottom. Harvest dry grass. Arrange grass facing upwards in sections and tie with ulushishi. After first layer is done, arrange a second layer with the grass facing downwards and tie with ulushishi, being careful not to tie in the same spot or else they’ll be a gap for rain to get in. Trim edges of grass around the bottom evenly to look smart. Harvest several young boys to help you lift the roof onto the chicken/goat/etc house. Chapwa! (It’s done!)

PS: A Nice Story
One of Buddha’s disciples went to him and asked to be shown Heaven. The Buddha said, “If you want to see Heaven, you will have to see Hell first.” The disciple agreed. The Buddha took them to Hell, where an enormous banquet table was set up, piled high with fabulously delicious food. Unfortunately, all of the diners had, instead of hands, enormously long forks on the end of their wrists, and they kept trying to get food into their mouths, but could not reach them. They wailed and gnashed their teeth in misery. The Buddha then took his disciple to Heaven. Here was exactly the same situation – diners at a sumptuous banquet table, with long forks on their wrists instead of hands. The only difference was that, in Heaven, everybody was feeding each other.

bo-bo and Nikki – Congratulations on the wedding!! Can’t wait to see the pictures!!! Also, Happy Birthday!

Tony and Carrie - Congratulations on the wedding also!!

Dad – Happy Father’s Day!

foo – Look forward to the upcoming package!! I sent you something to your home address a couple weeks ago, so watch out for that. What’s your address now?

Everyone – Happy Fourth of July! It’s not going to be the fourth of July without fireworks at the Park though?!?!?! I feel bad I wasn’t around when that movie was being filmed too. I feel like I should have been there, seeing how they’re making a movie in my Park and all. And I can’t believe the Ultimate Trip caved in too. It really seems like the end…

Frank and Debbie – Thanks for the box of treats for Doug’s birthday!

Mom and Dad – Thanks for the coffee for Doug’s birthday and the zipdrive for the camera. Also just got a package with the umbrella that you sent in March!

Bonnibelle – Just got the birthday present you sent in March. Thanks!

Pookie – I want to relearn guitar when I get back. Wanna start a guitar mandolin band?

2008-05-22T21:39:00.000+02:00

Here ye, here ye, it’s been the month of icilanda (injuries).

Icilanda #1
While cutting down trees to build the goat house (We’re crossing our fingers on getting a milk goat. The house is practically done, but we still can’t get a hold of the farmer who sells them), Doug whacked his foot with the ax. Pretty bad. We even built a crutch out of a tree branch for him to use, but using only one crutch was difficult and useless. I don’t know how Tiny Tim did it. Then about a week afterward, Doug came down with what we thought was Malaria. But the test came up negative. Thanks to Where There Is No Doctor, we decided that it was a full body infection! After a few days of no staff at the clinic, we finally got antibiotic and after another week or so or immobility, it finally healed up. When Doug informed Ba Mulenga of the clinic – in Bemba - that he had an “infection,” Mulenga was very confussed and later told me that Doug had told him that he had been inflicted by witchcraft. He was still retelling the story to everyone a week later. Like word of anything in Zambia, word of Doug’s icilanda spread far and wide. People as far as Cikandakanda (several miles away) came calling. And the most amazing part of all – for the first time ever, Iron Mumba himself came over to our house and even sat on our porch to mourn Doug’s wound.

Icilanda # 2, 3, 4
Oh little Fins. He’s a very “sensitive” little cat. One day New Chicken pecked him on the top of his head, causing him to go into a fit – writhing around, moaning, finally going unconscious and ceasing to breathe. He simply decided he could not live in a world cruel enough where a chicken could peck a kitten. Luckily he came back to life. Another time, he accidentally got sat on and again went into a fit for an hour or so. The latest incident (besides moaning when he has a hairball), is still a mystery. One night, we heard a terrible clatter outside and then the sound of Finnigan having one of his episodes. We thought he just got scared by something falling off the porch, but after holding him for a long time, we realized he had a wet spot on his side. Upon closer inspection, it turned out he had a tiny puncture wound which was leaking some kind of organ fluid. I don’t know how he got injured (neighbor’s dog, the Professor, a nail, alien probe?) but he seemed to think it was all over for him. The next morning, he was bounding around the yard playing as usual. Crazy crazy little cat.

Icilanda #5
The next night, the Professor also got a mysterious injury. A swollen up eye, as if he had been pecked by a chicken or got in a fight with the dog. It looked pretty terrible, but healed up quick. (Let me tell you what, the Professor is one strong healthy cat. He’s pure lean muscle. Heavy. Shiny. Such a difference between feeding an animal real food (he especially loves squash) and Dads.)

Icilanda #6
When harvesting our field of peanuts (most were eaten by termites), I came across a huge grub and called the chickens over to eat it. A chick went for it and the grub went for the chick’s eye. Apparently it had little pinchers on its mouth. So the chick ran around with the grub hanging from its eye until Doug caught it and pulled it off. The chick is fine now. The grub is not.

Icilanda #7
We got a new chicken, Corncob, who quickly lost pecking order. She lost so bad that she also got her eye pecked. Very badly. Infected. We gave her eye drops for several days and it healed up. She looked like a pirate and we almost renamed her Pegleg.

When the guy was selling us this chicken, I asked when it started laying, and he answered “mailo,” so I thought, “Oh good, it started laying yesterday!” Then later Doug said, “That’s such as lie. How does he know it’s going to start laying tomorrow?” and I realized that, oh joyous Bemba, the word for yesterday and tomorrow is the same. The chicken hadn’t started laying yesterday, and of course he can’t know the exact day it’s going to start laying. He just said that to sell us the chicken! It’s amazing to me that Zambians can be so good in some ways – very helpful, generous, friendly – and so bad in others – completely untrustworthy, lying, deceitful, etc. Maybe the old “Tell me what I want to hear” thing is the answer to peaceful relations. “Oh yes, the shelf will be done in one week” – when they know that’s not true. It sounds good, and that’s all that matters to them, whereas for me, it makes me so angry that I’ve been lied to! After the neighborkids were driving us up the wall one day, we wondered, “Do Zambians ever get annoyed or feel wronged, as we do every other day?!?!” It doesn’t seem so. Emotions aren’t expressed much here (except mourning a death), so are they just not expressingannoyance, or do they really not get annoyed when people lie to them, beg from them, steal from them, bother them, etc? I doubt the neighbors are over there badmouthing Doug and I as much as we do them. We have to experience all that negative emotion and they don’t at all! Anyways, Zambia is peaceful and Zambians are content, and much the rest of the world isn’t, so there must be something to it.

So, the big news!!! The chicks hatched! Eight perfect chicks! Well, except for Wee Wee Wee, who we think has a little brain damage. She can’t seem to figure out how to eat food. There’s also Artic, Chipmunk, Vulture, and four unamerds. It was such an exciting and amazing experience! One evening, still several days shy of when we thought they were due to hatch, we heard some faint cheeping and scribblescrabbling from the eggs! Right from inside the eggs! By the time we went to bed, two had pecked microscopic holes through their shells. It was like trying to sleep on Christmas Eve. In fact, we had to get up during the night and peak. They all hatched by afternoon the next day and it was just so amazing. Terrible looking little monsters until they dry off and puff up. Then they’re just the sweetest cutest little things you ever saw! Little weightless puffballs! (Why do humans think other animals’ babies are cute?) Now I know what it’s like to be a grandma. Seven of the chicks are Fireballs and only one is New Chickens. New Chicken is the mother though. Not very fair, but she doesn’t know the difference. She’s a good mother. The chicks even jump up on top of her and try to ride on her back! Poco got in on the game a little too late. We tried to strap her eggs to the Professor’s belly to finish incubating them, but he just tipped over.

We now live in fear of the chickenhawk.

We also live in fear of weevils.

Finally built a proper tippytap for hand washing out of a bucket, wine box spout, and beeswax. Quite exquisite!

The headman’s dog had puppies again. Such funny little squawking sausages of dogs. Zambians don’t name their dogs with nouns like we do, but instead with phrases or proverbs. One of the headman’s dogs is “All In the Future.” Justin’s dog is something along the lines of “Food Security,” and the Mumba’s dog is “I understand.” I don’t understand.

We shocked the headman and Mrs. Mwelelwa, like so many others, by scooping up a chameleon in front of them. Mrs. Mwelelwa was one hundred percent positive that we would die. This led to a discussion about the different animals in Zambia and the US, Doug and I trying in vain to describe what a bear, raccoon, etc, was. Then, we told them about the beaver. This rodent animal that chops down trees with its teeth and drags them under water to build its house. Thoroughly astounded, the headman declared it a very “clever” animal, saying “That rat, it is going to eat someone!”

Another example of a clever animal is Peeps. We’ve been feeding her all along so she’d make nice eggs, but she’s actually a rooster. Now we don’t know what to do with her! If Chulu Kaiyaya ever gets his chicken club together, I think I’ll give her to them.

Peg has a boyfriend now! She’s forever coming over to borrow our pot to make him food. It’d be cool if she got married while I’m here. A Zamwedding! I don’t know much about Zambian weddings themselves – just the wedding night. --- Stop reading now if you don’t want to hear this. --- Zambians think they invented sex and no one else has figured it out. They must pass down every minute detail to the next generation – including unknowing Peace Corps Volunteers. Luckily, I never got the sex talk from Bamaayo Sinkwaya, but others have from their host parents. Lessons complete with citenges wrapped into phallic forms and bamaayos squatting over each other in demonstration. From the various recollections of horrified Peace Corps Trainees, this is what I can piece together: The new wife presents her new husband with a dish of nshima – naked. She must hold the dish so that her arms push up her breasts, and ever so slowly kneel to the ground. They then proceed to shave each other. Something about a crabwalk. And then the woman carries the man to bed, slung over her back. All the while and the rest of the night, the sex teacher is sitting in the adjoining room, in case she hears the man in pain. Then she knows something went wrong and will intervene to straighten out the issue.

On the other end of cultural happenings, we had to attend another funeral. This one for a baby. Again, the body was laid out on the floor and everyone gathered around, but this time, it was uncovered so you could see the face and all. Pretty sad. Instead of just paying respects and leaving like the last funeral, we had to stay for the whole day. Men and women were separated. Women wailed (this very strange loud fake sounding wailing/singing) and waited; men dug the grave and built the coffin. Then everyone preceded to the burial, where they finished by smashing a cup over the mound to indicate it was a grave.

Since we’re on negative topics, I hit a low point with the neighbors a few weeks ago. Just absolutely fed up with the neighbors wanting me to give them things every day. Not giving me any privacy or peace. The final showdown occurred one dark night as I was cooking dinner. My headlamp caught two glowing red dots up in a tree and I knew instantly – it was a bushbaby. The thing I have been waiting a full year to see!! No sooner did I shine my “torch” into the tree, however, did the neighbors come crowding around, asking what I was looking at. I answered “Nothing,” turned off my light, and headed back for the house. But it was too late. They saw it. Soon the whole yard was set ablaze, sticks were sailing through the air, and people were scrambling up trees. I yelled that since I was the one who found it, it was mine, and I didn’t want them to kill it. I told them that I had just seenpiles of fish laying in their yard, so it wasn’t necessary for them to eat this animal. I told them in my best Bemba that I was not happy. They just mocked me. The next few hours turned into a nightmare. Throwing this and that at the poor thing, cornering it into this tree and then the next. People from all over the village filtered in to see what the ruckus was. Thankfully, so that I didn’t have to swear off all Zambians, two were on my side. Kapiria said it was a shame that “if people kill all of these, the young people will never know them.” And Wizzy (who declared the creature a “baby cry”), while holding Finnigan, told me, “That one looks just the same as this one. If I catch it, I will keep it!” He assisted in Doug’s and my efforts to scare the bushbaby back into the bush, look and point at the wrong tree to confuse the enemy, and put out the fires they had started. He even told me not to use Bemba when speaking of our counterattacks so they wouldn’t know what we were saying. It felt like full fledged war. Finally, someone successfully hit the baby cry with a stick and it plummeted from the tree in slow motion into a pile of weeds. Not an instant passed before every person pounced on that pile. A race between good and evil (or at least against vegetarians and carnivores) ensued to snatch up that animal. The search proved futile and later Wizzy told me that he saw it escape back into the bush while everyone was scrambling for it. Whew. I felt pretty bad for being the cause of a very stressful evening for that baby cry. (Note: My goal was actually to see a Lesser Bushbaby, and this was a Greater Bushbaby, but I don’t know if I’ll go Bushbaby spotting again anytime soon.) One of our watermelons was trampled in the battle. I swore I’d never give the neighbors anything ever again after that. But a few days later, I was buying notebooks and pencils for the kids for school.

I also stood up to their oldest son Victor (drunkard, liar, just bad guy) last week. I was inside and heard the terrible but distinctive sound that can only be an iwe being beat. I went outside to see Ngosa (the only Mumba girl, maybe nine years old) wailing with her dress pulled up to cover her face and Victor trailing behind her with a stick. I stopped him and asked what was going on. It was hard to decipher, but I think the issue revolved around Victor telling Ngosa to bring sieve to him and she didn’t, so he beat her. I scolded him, telling him he was a very bad person for hitting a little child. I told him if we were in the USA, he would be going to jail for what he did. (Sometimes I exaggerate those “In America” statements for my own purpose because I know people look up to the USA. Is that wrong?) He mumbled that he understood. I doubt it will stop him from beating kids, but at least he was totally shocked and humiliated to have a woman stand up to him.

I talked to Mr. Chisenga one day about the problems with the neighbors – mainly the begging, leaving trash in my yard, not giving me space, and stealing my fruits (We didn’t get one orange off our orange tree and last week we saw Patty probing our bananas!). I told him that I thought the only reason they agreed to me living there was because they thought I was going to be their own personal Peace Corps Volunteer. He then told me that the ones who agreed to me living there were the ones who gave up the house I’m living in and that the Mumbas were a “totally different village.” He also stated that Mrs. Mumba was insane. Ok, so not only do you not even ask the people I’ll be living next to if they want me there, but you put me next to someone you believe is insane?!!?! This explains SO much.

I’m now in the process of building a fence, complete with a roof so I can actually do things outside in the shade and in privacy. “The patio,” I call it. I’m pretty psyched about it. For awhile, there was a rumor that I had a “video” in my house, and people kept coming by wanting to see it (probably they heard the sound of strange American music that couldn’t possibly be music, so must be a video). Once I started building the patio, the new rumor going around is that I’m building a movie theater in my yard to show the video.

I also hit a low point with work. First the whole bike project falling through. Then not one person came to my HIV meeting, because I had indicated in the announcement that food would not be given out. The only people who showed up were me, Mr. Chisenga, and one of my community school teachers who I asked to help get the word out for the meeting, along with his troop of kids ready to perform songs about HIV. Not even the Community AIDS Task Force member who was supposed to facilitate the meeting showed. After waiting for an hour, Mr. Chisenga and I decided to just give up and have the kids perform for us, so that they hadn’t traveled all that way for nothing. They then proceeded to do provocative dances about abstinence. (Only young children are permitted to do such dances in public, Mr. Chisenga said, because they don’t even know what it means.) At first I was extremely discouraged, because I wanted to use this first meeting as a launchpad for future meetings – health, beekeeping, fishfarming, family planning, etc. I had pretty much decided to give up, but then decided to give it one last chance and retry two of my no-show meetings by combining them into one – Jatropha and HIV. The meeting is in two days. Cross your fingers.

I also became pretty discouraged by people only seeming to want things. Mr. Chisenga even said that people only want handouts, and that he’s never encountered people in other parts of Zambia such as these. Ba Mulenga also claims that the people of Mpelembe are “hostile.” Anyways, Chulu Kaiyaya, a Congolese man, came to me asking for assistance with income generating activities for his club. He said they needed funding to start a chicken IGA. I asked if everyone in the club kept chickens (no one in Zambia has less than five chickens running around their yard), and he said yes. I suggested that each give one chicken to the project and they’d be set. Once new chicks hatched, they could even make back their original investment if they wanted. He didn’t like that very much, so he suggested some other IGA idea. Again I gave ideas for how it could be done without startup fees. Again, and again, and again. Finally, he straight out admitted that the members just wanted funding. After sending him off empty-handed, I felt bad and wrote him a letter telling him to come back so we could discuss it further. I sketched out a whole little plan for how to carry out IGA’s and thought I could just meet with his club. I haven’t heard from him since.

On top of all that, Mr. Chisenga has been pretty unreliable lately. Since he got a motorcar, I guess. I’ll show up for a meeting we had planned and – he’s in the boma. One day I didn’t’ find out about a teacher training until the day of, and had to run home to plan my sessions! The latest thing has been waiting for him to determine the school’s timetable so I know when to teach Life Skills. It’s three weeks into the new term already, and I haven’t taught once. Shouldn’t the timetable should be determined before school starts, not halfway through the term? Stacy?

SO, I was feeling pretty useless, unwanted, used. Feeling better about it now though I suppose. Just enjoying the chickens and cats, reading, anticipating the goat. (Although the neighbors just got a female village goat and plan to get a male one. Now I’m worried about disease, unwanted pregnancy stopping our milk flow, and the milk tasting funny because of the presence of a male goat. C'est Lavie.) I’m hoping to start a milk goat cooperative of some sort, so I’m looking forward to that as well. I’ve also had some leads in people interested in bees, agroforestry and sustainable agriculture, and HIV. Haven’t heard back from any of them yet.

Still sorting books for the library. I finally got some books from people besides Mom, Bonnibelle, and Grandma!!! (I think we probably have enough books now, so you can stop sending them. It’s too expensive for you to do so anyways. But thank you thank you thank you! Much appreciated!) Three organizations I wrote to came through – Zambia Library Services (lots of boxes), Changes2 (3 boxes), and Operation Bookshelf (a few books). It’s a little bit sad, some of the things they just try to get rid of to charity. Sooooo many teacher’s textbook guides - without the student versions to go with them. Absolutely useless. And best of all - - - - - a television instruction manual.

At least we can thank Mpelembe Basic School, beacon of education, for teaching Joshua one English phrase. I overheard him practicing one day: “How are you, Mr. Patty?” Patty, taken aback, quickly stammered, “Kwisa?!?” (“Where?!?!”)

Doug has mastered iwe communication as well. When one kid wants to contact the other kid, they’ll call out their name and the other will answer with a “wooo-oooo!” or “a-kwisa!” Doug now gets a kick out of answering the iwe call randomly to bewilder and bedazzle the kids.

Been doing some more cooking experiments. Peanut butter, macadamia nut butter, bagels, icikanda, peanut butter cookies, mmm!

So one of the reasons we came to Serenje was to buy our train tickets to for our June trip to Zanzibar! We arrived only to find out that a cargo train crashed last week, mangling up the railway beyond Zambian repair. We even paid for our Visas already!!!!!!

Doug says my blogs are too long, so I’m going to stop now and save the rest for another time, so that my next blog will be even longer than it should have been…..

So, I’m sending home the second CD of photos! Finally! A years worth! The ones of the hut are pretty bad – very hard to photograph – and still incomplete, so I’ll try again.

Handy Hut How To: How to Dig a Post Hole
Get your ax and bang it against a hard stump, hitting the head above where the blade is, until the blade falls out. This takes between 7 and 30 hits. (Mini How To: How to Figure Out How Long it Takes to Cut a Tree, Dig a Hole, Hoe a Bed, etc: Divide the time it takes Doug to do any task by two, and you’ll have the time it takes a Zambian to do the same. Double the time it takes Doug to do a task by two, and you’ll have the time it takes Carrie to do it.) Use the ax blade to form a square hole, cutting up the sides and middle, scooping out the loosened dirt, and repeating. What will form is a perfectly square tubular hole, with no tapering of the sides whatsoever. Put your post in the hole, push some of the dirt back in. Wiggle the post around a little to let it settle, and pack it with a big stick. Put the rest of the dirt back and repeat. Stomp it down to make sure it’s tight. Watch out for the stinkpods that Finnigan will lay in the loose dirt around the base.

Mom – Happy Mothers Day!

Pookie – Happy Birthday!

foo – Happy Birthday!

Mom and Dad – I just got the Easter package yesterday! Thanks!

Mom and Grandma – I also just got the library books you mailed back in January for the school. Thanks! Doug and I devoured the scrap of Meadville Tribune you used as packing. Funny.

Christy – Thanks for the labels!

Jon and Lori – Thanks for the package! I’m gonna try to send you a message if I get the internet working ok!

Anyone – How do you get the smell of cat pee out of fabric?

2008-04-01T17:02:00.004+02:00

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.

2008-03-17T15:16:00.005+02:00

I’m in Lusaka now for “mid-term meds,” where we get a medical check-up. Boo. Get to see everyone from my intake again though, so that’s good. We’ve actually lost a lot of PCVs along the way. Medical, quitting, etc. One in training, one right after getting posted, and four more recently. (One of them being one of the girls I was friends with during training) Guess that 1/3 dropout rate isn’t as ridiculous as I first thought!

I was just in Serenje working on a “Peace Corps Partnership Program” proposal to get my bike project underway. I’m working now with an organization called Zambikes. I’m not getting 300 bikes, but only 19, and am not distributing them all over Zambia, but only Mpelembe. I need to raise money to pay for all the bikes, then am going to resell them cheaply and use the money to buy shelves for the library. One bike will be reserved as a community bike for an income generating activity at the school. I just finished the draft of my proposal. Reminds me of college, spending hours writing a fifteen page paper. Once the project gets approved, I’ll post more about it and will probably need help getting the word out to raise money.

It’s been awhile since I wrote, it seems. Happy Groundhogs Day, President’s Day, Valentines Day, St. Patrick’s Day, and Easter! Doug and I celebrate Valentines Day by breaking our vegetarianism and eating “screechbugs,” those terrible loud bugs I wrote about last time. Apparently villagers love them and have been driving us insane digging them up all over our yard, flowerbeds, and field. We fried them up in cooking oil and sat on the floor staring at each other for about ten minutes before we finally got up our courage, did a countdown, and stuck them in our mouths. They were surprisingly good, but probably just because they were fried.

Doug had never been to the good old Luombwa River, so one day we packed up our bikes and headed there. I kind of forgot the way and we kind of got lost. It was the peak of rainy season, so the paths were basically small rivers themselves. We had to get off our bikes and sludge through for hours. My tropicals kept getting stuck in the mud and painfully ripping at my feet, so finally I just took them off, figuring if I’m going to get attacked by schisto/hookworm/leeches/snakes/crocodiles, it’s going to happen whether my shoes are on or off. That was much easier and was actually quite pleasant. Reminded me of old stream walking. We passed a house that was completely surrounded my water. The house and insaka were literally islands. It was absurd. After a long and terrible journey, we reached the Luombwa. Unfortunately, because we took a different route, we intersected it at a completely different point than I had been before, one that was totally unpicturesque and provided no spot to relax or picnic. Luckily, a fisherman with a dugout canoe just happened to be there and offered us a ride! Those ten minutes made the whole trip worthwhile. The canoe was long and skinny and sunk so that the rim was practically at water level! The water was moving swiftly, and the boat kind of spinned as he maneuvered it. It was dizzying and exhilarating! Amazing! Then we headed back to shore, got out of the boat, and began the long journey back home.

A couple weeks ago, I was host for “first site visit.” This is when the new volunteers first arrive in country and are immediately shipped off to an established volunteer’s site to see if they hate it so much they quit before training even begins. A couple days before they were due to arrive, Francis, a Zambian Peace Corps employee, came to my site and was appalled at the grass in the yard, high weeds, and falling down icimbusu fence. He demanded to see the housing committee and we spent the next three days laboring away trying to make everything look “clean.” Francis told the housing committee that they had to do the work, and that is part of our community contract, but I just can’t have people slaving away for me, so of course Doug and I were out there every day working too. In fact, we ended up doing more work than anybody, because people came in shifts over the few days, but we worked the whole way through. It was pretty infuriating, because I really don’t care if there’s grass in my yard, but Zambians do, so I had to waste three days in the hot sun scraping grass away with a hoe. (Oh, we came across a snakeskin in the weeds and as Doug was about to pick it up, they all yelled for him to STOP, claiming it was poisonous and he’d die. We tried to explain, to no avail, that it’s actually snake venom, not a discarded skin that can be poisonous. After they left, we picked it up to play with it. The Professor saw it laying on the ground and hissed at it, so maybe they were right afterall.) Despite the misery of its preparation, site visit itself went well. We had four girls – Kirstie, Kim, Caitlin, and Lisa. Ted, from my intake, came along too just to hang out. When they arrived, they said, “We read your blog!” which just seemed really surreal. They didn’t really seem shocked and awed at all at village life, which was good I guess, but a little disappointing from an entertainment perspective. They were rather frightened and disgusted by the chickens, however, much to the chickens’ disappointment. Poor little things had to put their little party hats away. It was fun having houseguests and Doug got a chance to spout out all of his bush trivia facts to captive victims. We stayed pretty busy. We toured the school, watched an IRI lesson, met with Mr. Chisenga, sat in on a teacher training, tried local brew at Justin’s, tried cassava at the headman’s, and learned how to clean the water filter. We were going to do a bike repair lesson too, but it got rained out. It rained so hard in fact, that it soaked the tents, so it was a big slumber party inside. It was fun having visitors. Very lively. We even celebrated my upcoming birthday by singing, opening my birthday package from mom/dad, and cooking marshmallows! (I felt sick just about every day they were there cause of all the good food they brought.) Cooking and washing dishes for seven people wasn’t as difficult as I thought it’d be. Guess I could be Zambian afterall! We gave the girls strawberry seedlings to take to their own huts when they get posted. Hopefully they’ll survive two months of training. The strawberries, that is, not the girls. Actually, the girls too - training is pretty rough.

Another big event – my birthday! We went to Victoria Falls to celebrate. The ride down was miserable. Terrible potholey road. We got stuck on a crappy bus that kept stopping, tried to overload the bus (I don’t think I’ve ever known pure rage before dealing with Zambian bus drivers and iwes stealing my mangoes), and poked along slowly. What should have been a seven hour trip was eleven hours. Thirteen if you count the two hours we sat in the bus waiting for it to leave. We arrived at 2:30 in the morning and went straight to bed. We woke up to find ourselves in the beautiful Jollyboys guesthouse/hostel. It really was awesome! And cheap, if you go the dorm bed route. The Falls were fun, but unfortunately, we picked a bad time to go – the end of rainy season. The river was roaring so much that the falls were pretty much invisible behind all the mist. What we did see was beautiful, however, and it was awesome being drenched in mist on a hot day. We even put our feet in the river twenty feet from where it falls over the edge! We tried to go down this path to “the boiling point” – this whirlpoolish area near the bottom of the falls. The path had been flooded over, however, so we climbed over huge fallen rocks to get there – pretty fun. To get out of the boiling point, we had to climb up a long set of makeshift stairs. Doug and I were both horrified at how difficult it was! Our legs were burning and we had to stop several times! Then I realized that I haven’t climbed stairs in over a year, unless you count the five steps in front of the GM shop in Serenje. Our legs shook and ached for several days after. When passing from Southern Province back into Lusaka Province, we had to get out of the bus and have our hands sprayed for mad cow disease. How you spray for mad cow disease, I don’t know. We weren’t too happy about being sprayed with some chemical when we don’t even eat meat. And then as we were waiting in line, a Zambeef truck went speeding by! We asked why in the WORLD they didn’t stop truck carrying BEEF, but they stopped us!?! They just said, “Oh, I guess the police man was sleeping.” (“Sleeping” = “not paying attention” in Zamlish.) I don’t know why they try to protect Lusaka Province so much. I remember on the way back from Eastern Province, they sprayed the outside of the car for tsetse flies. Maybe they should start doing HIV spraying at the border too. The actual day of my birthday was spent hitching for transport, getting stuck near Mkushi for several hours, and getting terribly burnt in the sun.

Rainy season is on its way out, it seems. I was rather unimpressed with it, really. There were a couple awesome storms, it’s true, but it wasn’t nearly as rainy as I was expecting it to be. Things look more beautiful and saturated during rainy season, which I will miss. It was funny looking at photos of the same spot during dry season and rainy season – from barren wasteland to tropical lushness! And I’ve seen more rainbows in Zambia than I’ve seen my entire life before!

And though I miss mangoes, it’s actually a bit of a relief that mango season is over. Dealing with people stealing my mangoes was one of the most stressful things I’ve dealt with, I think.

I’ve been having bad allergies at night since rainy season began. Sneezing, coughing, bleck. I think it’s cause the roof leaked onto the bed and now it’s probably moldy. Why couldn’t they just have helped me with the roof before the rains started, like I asked, instead of halfway into rainy season?!

The headman’s family hasn’t had good luck lately. First his brother died, then Jane’s (headman’s wife) father died the next week. Wizzy is off staying with his older brother Charles now, so I won’t see him again until school break.

A couple tomato plants are growing in the garden now, that’s about it. The loofah, lemongrass, and strawberries (the plants anyhow – no berries) are doing well too. The field is basically dead, but we will get some peanuts out of it. Out big corn harvest was about four ears of corn, each no bigger than my pinkie. I hope that I’ll be a better gardener back in the States. It really has to be the soil…

One day when I was doing dishes, Mrs. Mumba came over to show me the mole Joshua had killed. It was the most ridiculous looking thing I’ve ever seen! Huge! This thick square pudgy thing with huge nasty teeth. Probably the best fed animal in Zambia. She then insisted that I call Doug over so that he could admire it too.

It’s been a year and trying to feed myself hasn’t gotten any easier. I still can’t buy any food in Mpelembe, so have to go to Serenje once or twice a month to get groceries. I dread it each time – waiting for transport, carrying 500 pounds of vegetables and tomato paste through the boma and back to the village. Ack. Then of course, the vegetables only last a week and we’re back to nothing again.

Last time I was at the Serenje Market, I came across these round white balls. I asked what they were and I was told they were “soil.” Then she demonstrated that you could eat it. I just had to try that. Turns out a dirtball tastes pretty much like you’d think. Like dirt. Later I asked Mr. Chisenga about it, and he told me, “Oh, if you were pregnant, then it would taste very good!” I guess the dirtballs contain iron or something.

Jamie and Julie sent us this fun game called Fluxx. It’s cool cause the rules change as you play and it’s basically a good game in its essence. For example, cookies and chocolate beat war and TV. It doesn’t promote competition or “killing” the other player. It’s actually sad when someone wins, cause then the game is over. Anyhow, the day we got it, Doug and I started playing. After awhile, Doug started feeling kinda funny and weak. Then we realized that we had actually been playing for many hours and hadn’t even eaten all day! Oops.

We had a going away party for the Central Province volunteers who will be leaving soon. The theme was “ganstas, homies, and hoorats,” so we all dressed up and formed rival gangs. Stereotypical, but fun. We also had Ba Lawrence, the Zambian guard, act as policeman. If he caught you, he brought you to “jail” and drew a teardrop on your face. By the end of the night, I think I had more teardrops than anyone else. Most everyone else was “safe” inside dancing, but I kept sneaking around trying to free people from jail and hit the other gang members with water balloons. Stuff like this reminds me of how much I don't like the US because everyone just has to get drunk to have a good time, but also reminds me of how much I like the US because there's just so many more ways to be creative and fun. I can't imagine what a Zambian would think about a theme party. I've had a lot of internet time this week and was even looking at some of my old Facebook pictures. Makes me pretty nostalgic for all the fun times I've had in the States.

The new RED, LIFE, CAHP volunteers will be coming in May. Soon I will no longer have the title of the only volunteer in Zambia without a neighbor. They’re putting a LIFE volunteer in Chalilo – about thirty kilometers away. Now I’ll have someone to borrow sugar from.

Sometimes village organizations will write me letters, asking me to give them money or come to a meeting. They’re written in English, and sometimes they’re just so funny. In one, they addressed me as “sir” throughout the whole thing. Another was addressed to “Keli” of “Piscope.” Another just made no sense at all. I’m keeping them for souvenirs.

Zambians just don’t make sense a lot of the time, actually. When meeting with one of my community school PTA chairmen, he tried to explain to me that the PTA was like “a white elephant.” When I didn’t understand that, he clarified by telling me it was like “a bulldog without teeth,” and proceeded to draw a series of squares in the dirt to further drive home the point.

Another funny thing was when Mr. Chisenga told me about some guy from the US, but added that he wasn’t a “pure” American, because he was Indian.

Here ye, here ye – Mpelembe’s grade nine results are in. Out of 54 students, only 13 passed, and out of those 13, only 4 earned a score high enough to be accepted to a highschool. Ridiculous. And it’s not like it’s hard to pass these things, either. Out of eight subjects, they only have to pass six of them. And to “pass” means getting score above 40/100.

Besides the bike/library project, I’m still working on other small things. Still teaching Life Skills, which is frustrating as ever. During a lesson on good communication skills, they talked and didn’t pay attention through the whole thing. It was absolutely ridiculous because I was teaching about how to be a good listener and they were basically doing the opposite of everything I had written on the board. I tried to point out the irony of it, but of course they didn’t understand. We did have one awesome class, however. I taught about STDs, which bored them to death as usual, until I pulled out a condom and hammer to do a condom demonstration. Let me tell you, those kids got dead silent and all crowded around me in the middle of the room. They thought it was pretty funny, of course, but it went really well. Hopefully President Bush doesn’t find out now. I’m sure he’s an avid reader of my blog, afterall.

I’ve also been busy classifying and labeling books for the library. A huge task! I’m finally done with all the books I have currently, but I hope that more are on the way. I don’t know when that Zonal Resource Center will be open! It’s been basically done forever, but they just won’t officially open it. The workers just keep kinda puttering around, scraping off paint here and repainting there. I think they just want to prolong the job as long as possible because they get to sleep there. All I ever see them doing is cooking nshima out back.

I’m also helping Fumba and Mupundu community schools with grants to build new schools. Fumba just wants a better structure and Mupundu wants its own structure, as they are currently using a church. Most community schools are run from churches, actually. I’m helping them write the grant proposals, but I also think it’s a pretty pointless thing. Will their teaching really improve if they have a cement floor instead of a dirt one? They just want things to be given to them and for things to look good. I even tried to explain that teaching quality actually goes down with a tin roof because it’s really hot and you can’t teach half of the year because the rain is so loud. Oh well. One cute thing to point out though – On the form, it asked for the “total value of the project” and instead of writing a monetary figure, Winet wrote, “to further the development of our community.” I felt pretty bad making him cross it out.

I wanted to start a partner program with community and government school teachers, but again, it won’t happen because of funding. People won’t come to a meeting unless they’re getting lunch and a “sitting fee” (being paid to go to the meeting.) NGO’s have really ruined it for us measly little Peace Corpsers.

Meetings are usually frustrating. People show up an hour or so late – even the ones supposed to be running the meeting. Half the time, I never know about changes to the day or program either, because they just don’t think to tell me. Frustrating.

The biggest developments are, of course, with the animals. I’ll try to make it brief.

1) Chickens
- Doug finally got rid of the terrible headless rooster and Abraham!! He offered to give them our rooster and pay them if they would sell theirs. Whew! Abraham still comes around to mate, but he’s not outside the window crowing every morning.
- The Professor is terrified of baby chicks, weary of chickens, but is fearless when it comes to the rooster! He chases him around the yard and the rooster runs away like a, well, chicken.
- Peeps ran away. We thought for sure someone stole her or a chicken hawk got her. It was a pretty depressing day until Doug was biking to the school and saw Peeps at one of the neighbors’ houses! Fireball likes to pick on Peeps (she’s probably jealous cause they look similar) and the neighbors had been peeling cassava, so I don’t blame her for running away. She’s back now, hopefully for good.
- We built a state of the art chicken laying shelter on the back porch, so the chickens won’t lay on top of the charcoal bag anymore. It was really fun to build, brick-laying and smearing with mud, and actually looks quite stunning!
- We’ve accumulated a pile of Fireball and New Chicken eggs (Poco isn’t laying yet), so as soon as someone goes broody, we’re going to try for baby chicks again!
- The chickens can be pretty bad sometimes. One morning, Doug had a bowl of oats in his hand and Peeps decided to perch on the side of it. The bowl went flying into the air and Peeps landed on the table, knocking the other bowl of oats onto the floor. It was a complete disaster.
- New Chicken hurt her foot and was standing around like a flamingo for a week. Doug cleaned it off and put a new bandaid on it every day until it healed.
- One night last week, we were awoken by some strange noises. We went outside to find that impashi (flesh eating ants) had invaded the backyard! The chickens had all fled (except for New Chicken who was bravely, or just stupidly, trying to eat them.) We lit some grass to scare the impashi away, got bit a lot, recovered the chickens from the neighbors house, and let them sleep in the house for the night. Whew.

2) Cats
- Yes, that’s catS. On our way back to Mpelembe last week, we stopped in Tushenis, a shop in Serenje, to get some last minute groceries. Doug came across this funny little black kitten and as we were swooning over it, from around the corner comes this absolute little puffball. Kinda tabbyish, but brown/white/black with white booties. Looks kinda like Fluff. I just had to have it. Tushenis practically forced it on me as well, because another one of their cats is pregnant. So we put it in a box and brought it home! We named him Finnigan, and he’s just the cutest little thing you ever saw! Pure puff! He follows you around wherever you go, trotting as fast as his little legs will carry him. By the time he reaches where you were, you’ve turned around and gone somewhere else and he has to follow you back. He loves to curl up on my lap and sleep. The only problem is that he won’t eat. We didn’t realize it, but we must have taken him away from his mother too soon. Attempts to feed him end in him being covered in peanut butter and baby formula. The most pitiful thing was when he nuzzled up next to the Professor, searching for a nipple! He’ll drink water and he licked at some pancake batter the other day, so I think that’s a good sign. The Professor’s mother is also a Tushenis cat, so the two might actually be distantly related.
- When the newbies came, we put the Professor in his “restraint harness” (aka his sock sweater), so that he would be calm. He gets sleepy and good when he wears it. Much to our surprise, however, when we took it off, he remained good! We thought maybe it was just a farce to impress them, but when they left, he was STILL good! No more biting and attacking, a lot less food stealing, and he loves to sit on our laps and purr! It’s a complete 180 from the devil-cat he was. Maybe he finally eradicated the house and yard of all the demons and now can rest easy. (He still chases demons at night though, that’s inevitable.)

3) Bees
- February and March is the swarming season in Zambia. This is when hives split and look for new homes. The bees will clump together in a tree like a big blog of jello, sending out scout bees to look for a new place to live. It’s the best time to capture bees, because they’re just hanging there and you don’t have to cut down a tree and cut apart an already established hive full of wax and brood. (We realized that you HAVE to capture African bees, because they don’t naturally flock to wooden boxes baited with wax like they do elsewhere.) So last month, I discovered two swarms of bees in the mango grove at the school! We went back at night (they’re calmer when it’s cool and dark) to capture them. Doug climbed the tree they were in and I stayed in the tree next to it to pull the branch they were on closer to him. We spent several hours scooping bees into a bucket, waiting for them to calm down, then scooping more. Doug did the dirty work, but we both got stung many times. We weren’t sure if we got the queen, so we decided to capture the other swarm too. I captured that one, scooping them into my empty bookbag! We biked back home in the moonlight with a bucket of bees strapped on my bike and a bagful of bees on Doug’s back. We dumped one swarm straight into the bee box and put the other in too, but kept it in the bucket with a paper seal as the lid. Supposedly, by the time the bees are able to chew through the paper, they will have accepted the smell of the other queen and join hives. Unfortunately, we captured super-bees who must have chewed through in record time. When we went out the next morning, there were piles of dead bees from the battle that ensued during the night. Others had escaped and were reswarming on a nearby tree. We managed to recapture and trap them, but the next day, many were dead, and the remaining bees were chased away by impashi. We felt terrible for being responsible for so many bees deaths, and I was about to swear off bees forever, but then just last week we found another swarm! This time we were better prepared and did the job much more quickly and with less stings. When I left Mpelembe, the bees were still in the box, and I’m praying to the bee gods that by the time I return, they still will be there. Honey harvesting begins in May!!!
- When Doug put on his “bee suit” to go check on the bees, he looked so ridiculous, I couldn’t stop laughing. Shirt buttoned all the way to the neck and tucked in, jeans tucked into his socks, baseball hat with a mosquito net draped over it. When Patty saw him, however, he exclaimed, with absolute sincerity, “Monika bwino, imwe!!!!” -- “Look good, you!!!!” It’s interesting to wear whatever terrible concoction you can create in the village, looking like a complete fool by American standards. But Zambian fashion knows no rhyme or reason. I’ve been complimented on terrible things and scolded for what I thought was fine. I think that no matter what I wear or how I do my hair, I look completely absurd to them, so it really doesn’t matter.

4) Zamdog
- This is a less happy story. One night last week, we heard a terrible crying noise outside my house. We couldn’t tell if it was an animal or a person. Doug went out to investigate and discovered the most terrible ratty looking little puppy. It was covered in botflys, fleas, and ticks, has fur missing from its head, and is somewhat crippled in its front paws. After removing the bugs and giving it a bath, it looks better, but it’s still a pretty ugly little Zamdog. We asked around and found that one of our villagers “threw it out” because it “looks bad” and advised me to do the same. He later showed me one of its siblings, which was about three times its size. Apparently, this puppy was probably abandoned by its mother because of its paws. Without milk, it hasn’t grown properly. It was also abandoned by its owners who forced it to sleep outside on wet dirt, hence the botflys. Finally, they “threw it out,” sentencing it to die a slow lonely death. The puppy is currently sleeping in a Jungle Oats box in my insaka (that’s all it has strength to do), but I do not want a dog right now, cute or ugly. (I won’t be able to bring enough food back from Serenje to feed it, I won’t know what to do with it when I’m away from Mpelembe, and I don’t want it giving any disease to the cats. There’s plenty of dogs running around it can catch things from.) I can’t “throw it away” and I can’t give it to another Zambian. Either is cruel. I’m going to see if maybe another Peace Corpser will take it - if it even survives. I really don’t know what to do. I got tears in my eyes thinking about that poor little puppy being thrown out in middle of the night, wandering scared and lost in the dark until it was just so sad it stopped in front of our house and started crying and crying. Poor little thing. I just don’t understand the mindset of Zambians, to treat animals so cruelly. They really see them as lesser beings. Dogs are just for protection (awful protection at that, because they’re beaten so much, they run AWAY from humans, not attack them) and cats are just for mousing. It’s fine to yell at them, beat them, and starve them. I realized that Bemba and Zamlish don’t even have endearing terms like “puppy,” “kitten,” and “chickie.” It’s just “small dog,” “small cat,” and “small chicken.” Take that, linguisticers!

So as many of you know, Dreamland Ballroom burned down, along with part of the midway. I can’t believe the Park’s luck. About one hundred years from when the old Dance Pavilion burned down and Dreamland Ballroom was built in its place. Weird. I learned of it over the phone, and then it was just so sad when I hung up and was stuck in Serenje with no one who even knew what Conneaut Lake Park is.

Since Doug was never able to get his work permit, he has been on a visitors permit, which unfortunately lasts only one year. We thought this was the case, but only found out for sure a week or two ago. So looks like he’ll be heading home in July.

Once mom sends me the right thingamadoodle, I’ll try to get some more photos online! No one even knows what my hut looks like!

Jamie & Julie – Congrats on the ball and chain announcement! Brady & Nikki, Tony & Carrie, now Jamie & Julie – geesh! Thanks for the books, game, etc. Thanks for the dead ant that stowed away to Zambia too! Doug got nostalgic reading the Co-op paper you used for packaging. Not so much with the Giant Eagle one though.

Mom & Dad – Thanks for the birthday package! I waited ALMOST until my birthday to open it.

Pussy Willow and Buster – Happy Birthday!

Bonnibelle – Hope the cruise is fun! Thanks for the hot chocolate (delicious!), crackers, soap, syrup (Doug LOVES pancakes and LOVES real maple syrup), etc!

Sarah – Already told you, but thanks for the zines!

2008-02-03T13:30:00.001+02:00

I’ve been in Zambia one year now!

I’m in Serenje now to get groceries cause we ran out of food. It’s so frustrating. I was just here two weeks ago.

Well, mango season is just about over. For us, anyways. For awhile, there were so many, it wasn’t a problem that the neighbors were carting away a tub of mangos every day, but it didn’t take too long before it all caught up. They picked every ripe mango and now are working on the unripe ones. Right now, there’s probably only about fifteen mangos left on all of our trees and I doubt we’ll get to eat any of them.

It’s still rainy season though. Last week, it rained for three days straight. But then this week, it hasn’t rained at all. Nevertheless, the bushpaths are rivers. When you bike through them, your feet are submerged in water. I even saw a turtle swimming by!

Here’s some exciting news! I saw a cobra! It was just a mini cobra, but it was a cobra alright!

I also was witness to the loudest animal in the world. I really truly have no doubt in my mind that it has to be the loudest animal in the world. One night, this big (size of fifty-cent-piece?) bug flew into the house and as it vibrated its wings together, it let off this ear piercing screech. It was worse than one of those personal alarm things when you accidentally pull the plug. We didn’t know how to even get it out of the house – we didn’t have any free hands because we had to keep them over our ears. The Professor was intrigued.

The Professor is intrigued by many things, in fact. Just about every day, he proudly brings us a piece of bark or a stick he has found. And he’s quite a good watch-cat. When the neighbor dog sneaks over to our house at night to try to eat whatever we’re cooking, the Professor detects the intruder and runs outside to confront him. Zamdogs are so ridiculously abused, that all the Professor has to do is start to run towards it, and the dog runs away yelping, even though it’s twenty times bigger than he is. The funniest thing about the Professor, however, is his deep love for fritters. As soon as I come back from buying fritters, he knows! He’ll rip open whatever bag they’re in and drag one out. It’s pretty hilarious because as he holds it in his mouth, it looks as big as he is. If you get near to him when he has a fritter, he’ll growl something terrible.

The chickens are all broody now, so we’re trying to sync them up so they start laying eggs at the same time, so that we can get baby chicks from all of them. The problem is the roosters. They’re making my life miserable. If there’s one thing that would make me quit Peace Corps, it’s the roosters. I don’t know what to do. Abraham has decided to crow in the chicken house (right outside the window) at 4:00 AM every morning. So we have to get up, go outside, throw him and another chicken for him to play with into the backyard. An hour or so later, he’ll start crowing again, so then it’s earplug time. Then throughout the day, we have to put up with old ugly headless rooster crowing as well as Abraham. We’re trying to strike a deal with the neighbors – they eat their headless rooster, then we’ll give them Abraham. That way, we eliminate the headless rooster and move Abraham farther away from us, while still having him around to father the chicks. They don’t seem to understand the proposal, however.

Speaking of chickens, when I returned home after being away last time, I found that Doug had bought a new chicken, Peeps. A half chicken, really. She looks just like Fireball, but is still very young and doesn’t have a tail. Apparently, she was irresistible to him because she peeped so cutely. I was wooed at first too, I admit. She would come up on the couch with me as I was reading and sit on my stomach. Pretty cute. But then she started pooping everywhere and stealing the Professor’s food. So now she’s been banished from the house. Shoulda named her Poops, really.

After successfully making delicious veggie pies from recipes we found in the magazines Doug’s mom sent us, we were pretty convinced we could make absolutely anything on a brazier. After failed attempts at making peanut butter cookies and oatmeal cookies, however, I’m not so sure. Actually, I think they were just really bad recipes. The peanut butter cookie one didn’t even call for peanut butter.

I tried to dry mangos in the solar dryer, but they just rotted.

After two failed nurseries and a weed invasion, we finally got the garden weeded and hoed and are trying to get it going again. The only thing growing in the garden now is the loofah, and boy is it going crazy. We’ve been eating the leaves. Nothing exciting, but something to eat. We also made a new compost pile! A lot of work for just a pile of gunk.

The tree nursery is doing ok. Some custard apples, tamarinds, and leeches.

Doug’s been trying to teach some of the neighborkids the alphabet.

So the Pepfar HIV training went well. I was excited because several other organizations gave presentations about various things they were doing and two said they worked with maternal health or preventing mother-to-child transmission. My chance to get a Traditional Birth Attendant training!!! Unfortunately, one wasn’t working in my area and the other, like the Ministry of Health, is afraid to touch the issue. They’d rather teach NOTHING then perhaps be liable for some mistake. They’re basically ignoring all Traditional Birth Attendants, which is the way most village women give birth. Ridiculous. I’m trying to see if I can get medical gloves donated from a US hospital, aty leasty. (Zamlish for “at least”)

As part of our “Action Plan,” Mr. Chisenga and I decided I should train the Mpelembe teachers about HIV. So the day of the meeting, I showed up and of course he had forgotten. Rescheduled for a different day. Only had forty minutes, so we couldn’t cover nearly as much as I wanted to. It went well though. Adults are so much easier to work with than teenagers. We did spend too much time arguing whether or not a company had put HIV into contraceptive injections, however. I couldn’t convince them that even if this were true, the HIV virus wouldn’t be able to survive in a non-body-fluid. Another popular rumor is that manufactures put HIV into condoms. It really must be some Catholic Church conspiracy. We also had an argument about whether the “withdraw method” was ok for preventing HIV. Mr. Chisenga chipped in and said that no, it wasn’t, but that it WAS an ok method of birth control. Sometimes I can’t believe it. These are trained teachers at a government school.

I’ve also been teaching HIV in my Life Skills class. It’s frustrating as ever. Each week, we review, and each week they have absolutely no idea what we’ve talked about the week before. Last class, we were talking about “stigma” and that a person isn’t a bad person just because they have HIV. I was trying to give examples, like if one spouse was faithful, but the other was not and contracted HIV and then gave HIV to the faithful spouse, did that make the faithful spouse a bad person? They answered “yes.” In another attempt, what if a child was raped and got HIV – does that make the child a bad person? “Yes.” So frustrating.

After many attempts of getting a fish farming Peace Corps volunteer to come to one of my community schools to do a training, it happened! They were extremely tickled we came and even gave us nshima and chicken – with the gizzard. A very high honor, but of course I didn’t eat it. Unfortunately, the “dambo” (marshy) area where they live is absolutely the worst place to put a fish pond. Rob tried to advise them the best he could, but it’s not going to be easy for them. They also asked me to teach them about HIV! I was really surprised and luckily was able to do it spur of the moment. It’s a pretty bush area, so I hope I got some information out there. I love one of the teachers there, Winet, this cute little short chubby man that looks like an elf. They seemed motivated, and I’m also helping them fill out a grant to build a new “classroom block.” They’re twenty-five kilometers away though, so it’s a trek to do a go-come often.

So after being discouraged by Peace Corps, and just having a huuuuge delay in the project, I’ve decided to give up on my bike project. Even if I decided to go ahead without Peace Corps’ support, I wouldn’t be around to manage the project by the time the bikes came. I would need a couple months to get my proposal approved and write the contract with the organization, several months to raise the money, six months for the bikes to arrive, and then I’d be going home. Plus, when I asked the logistics guy months ago about having the bikes delivered to the Peace Corps Headquarters, he said it as no problem. Now I am being told that it's not ok and since he's leaving soon, whatever he said doesn't stand. Argh. I see I have some emails about it, if the internet will ever let me read them, so maybe it’s not a lost cause, who knows. It’s disappointing cause I was really excited about it for awhile. It seems like I can’t get anything accomplished here. Either the project is “too big,” there’s no funding, or the people I want to help just don’t want to be helped.

In other news, the Serenje Peace Corps House has been declared a health hazard by the Peace Corps medical people. They came to investigate after one volunteer got bronchitis and another had an allergic reaction so bad that he was sent back to the States. Others, including me, have always been complaining that our allergies are terrible here cause it’s just so dusty and moldy. So we started a cleaning mission and also have been approved to get all new sheets and such!

Handy Hut How To: How To Make Peanut Butter

Start a fire and roast peanuts. Pour roasted peanuts into a container and swirl around a bit until the shells become loose. Spend ten minutes blowing away shells, reswirling, and reblowing. Best to do it with your eyes closed and on the day you’re planning to bathe, because the shells become encrusted on your skin and hair. Once a lot of the shell things are gone, pour into twatwathing and start pounding. Blow away more shells if desired. In the meantime, keep roasting more peanuts and blowing the shells away until you have enough. Pound peanuts for forty minutes. Don’t panic when they don’t look like they’re going to turn into peanut butter – it happens all at once. Add salt and sugar to taste and keep pounding. Scoop out and put in container. Attempt to rinse out and scrub twatwathing with boiling water, but know that it’s never going to come out of all the crevices due to poor craftsmanship and is just going to get moldy. Set twatwathing out in the sun to dry for a couple days.

Renee – Thanks for the necklace! My sister and I used to make those kinds of beads with my grandma, but they never looked anything like that. They were pretty terrible.

Bonnibelle – I made a shirt out of those handkerchiefs you sent awhile ago. It actually turned out really good! The other Peace Corpsers were quite impressed. Thanks for the more books! And yes, if they’re in those envelopes, I don’t have to pay to receive them.

Anybody – Can someone check into how expensive those little blank return address label things are that you can print in the computer? I’m not having much luck labeling library books with paper and Zamtape.

2008-01-12T14:56:00.000+02:00

Most the time life is pretty ho-hum and I forget I’m in a different country. It’s just life. But every so often, things happen that remind me. Like sitting at the clinic and watching more chickens walking around than people. Then having the Health Worker come into the waiting room pointing and announcing to everyone that a man there tried to commit suicide by drinking battery acid. He just kept going on and on about it. I couldn’t believe it. Just so different than the US.

It’s mushroom season now! Some are so huge, over a foot across! We’ve gone mushroom hunting with the neighbor kids a couple times. The best is the Telfia, which grows half under the ground, usually under piles of leaves. It looks like a big egg, but then you peel most of it off and there’s a mushroom-shaped mushroom inside, all clean and shiny! It tastes kind of cheesy.

We made a sweater for the Professor out of a sock. At first he was horrified and tried to back out of it, like he does when he gets his head stuck in a jar, but soon he gave in and will wear it all day. It makes him sleepy. I think because it keeps him warm. Zambians are of course bewildered by it since there’s no concept of having a “pet” here, just something to throw rocks at. Kapiria gets a kick out of telling people about the time he came by the house and saw us bathing the chicken.

When we first got the Professor, Wizzy decided that he was “too fierce to kill the rats.” Does he consider them beneath him? Will he only go for Puku? No, it’s just another one of those confussing Zamlish terms. “Too” in Zambian English actually means something like “very.” Like the headman’s instructions: “When the rains are coming too much, you are putting the seeds in the ground.” Another one is “just ok” which seems like it would be not very good, but here means good. Like “just fine” I guess. So if you ask someone how they like something and they say “just ok,” they actually mean good. Back to the Professor. I don’t know how Wizzy ever determined in the first place that he was fierce, this scared mewing little kitten, that he proceeded to turn upside down and drop to the ground.

We’ve also just now found out the word for “why” – “nindo.” In Lala, anyhow. There’s still no word for it in Bemba. After many frustrating conversations, I had pretty much given up and accepted that there was no word in Zambia that meant “why.” Which would make perfect sense, seeing how they never question anything. The next mystery is “pene” which someone says at least once per sentence it seems, but no one is able to explain to me what it means.

Speaking broken Bemba is fine I think. Like someone who speaks broken English, it makes everything you say sound funny. And it also keeps you on your toes because you have to think of more creative ways to say what you want. Like, “You have water because rain” (“You’re soaked.”) or “Ratbird” (bat). Bemba’s so simple though, that sometimes you get it right. “The chicken is making eggs.”

Fallingdownpantsboy (aka Patrick aka Patty) gets on my nerves most of the time, but he can also be pretty cute. One day, it sounded like he was inviting us over for dinner. We kept asking him to repeat, cause we couldn’t believe that the Mumbas could possibly be inviting us for dinner. After much repeating, we were pretty sure we understood, so we went over to their house. Once there, Neighbor Lady said “Bufi!!” (lie) Apparently, it was his own little idea to invite us for dinner. Another day, he was looking through some of our magazines and commenting enthusiastically about all of the pictures. A wheelchair was a bicycle, a lawnmower was a motorcar, any town was Serenje, and any animal was meat to eat. He narrated a loving picture of a father and son with a scolding “Iwe iwe!!” He also declared that a man stealing someone’s wallet was Peter.

His brother Oldmanface (aka Odrick aka Makumba) is also cute. Not looking, but acting. Whenever I say anything to him in Bemba, he repeats it back to me in question form word for word.

The roof is finally patched!! Justin never came through. He hasn’t been too reliable since he opened his homebrew bar. Jameson Kunda, another from the housing committee and teacher at one of my committee schools, brought his son and two nephews over to do it. (All roofs in Zambia must be thatched by kids, cause adults would fall through. Or, at least, Jameson Kunda thought he would fall through.) They just laid more grass up there and I guess it’s supposed to stay put. Hopefully the house will be less damp now. It was getting pretty bad.

New Chicken went broody, so we strung her up in a cage for a couple days, which we read can break broodiness. I guess by keeping her away from the nest and keeping her belly cold. The spraybottlefan that Cathy sent also works well for keeping chicken’s bellies cool! If you flip them over, they’ll just lay there helplessly and let you spray them. They’re such odd creatures. They’re absolutely expressionless which makes it hard to tell if they’re deeply contemplating something or thinking nothing at all. Probably the latter. Sometimes they’ll go into a deep telepathic trance with each other too, but sometimes one will break it before the other and walk away, leaving the other to look like a fool for being in a trance by itself. Anyhow, the broody cage worked and she layed for about a week then went broody again, along with Pocahontas and Fireball. Now only Fireball is laying.

Doug and I decided we want to try for baby chickens again (if they chickens ever start laying again, that is), so we bought our own rooster, hoping it would win pecking order (and thereby mating order) over the terrible headless enemy rooster. We bought Thor, a very beautiful black and green iridescent roster from the Headman. As soon as we let him go in our yard, he ran away and we didn’t see him again until the next day. We asked if we could trade it for a different rooster, so we got Abraham, a also beautiful black white green and blue iridescent rooster. He lost pecking order. Now we’re right back where we started from, but 25pin short and another bird to feed.

I really hate the neighbor’s rooster. He crows almost as annoyingly as the rooster in Chongwe during training. It’s driving me insane, really. It spends most the day in our yard crowing its terrible crow. I don’t know what to do.

The neighbors are annoying me too. Always begging for stuff. Lying about everything. They eat more mangos from our trees than we do. And they’re always walking through the backyard – stepping on the field and walking right past the icimbusu, several times when I was in it. Even in Zambian culture, that is supposedly considered rude.

We have gotten to eat a lot of mangos though. Besides just plain mangos, I have mangos in my oats every morning, which I’ll really miss once mango season is over. We’ve also made mango pancakes, mango cobbler, mango bread, and mango jam! The solar dryer is in ruins just from being outside the one or two times we tried to dry tomatoes, so I tried to just set it up in the insaka as an air dryer for mangos. Last time I checked, they looked green and were surrounded by fruit flies.

In other failures, still no bees.

In other failures, we’ve grown two nurseries which have grown strong, but then just die. So our joy at not having to water the garden during rainy season doesn’t matter because we don’t have a garden. In the time we’ve raised the two nurseries, the garden has been completely overgrown by weeds. It’s quite overwhelming just to look at it.

The field is growing well, though, if the neighbors would stop stealing our pumpkin leaves.

I think Doug and I are literally the only ones who ever take books out of the Peace Corps House’s Reference Library. We’re always getting excited about some book about vegetable diseases or goats. Recently, we found a book about “Microlivestock” and there was a section about carrier pigeons! Apparently, they’ll fly hundreds of miles a day back and forth to their feeding and nesting locations. (Pretty stupid creatures, it sounds like. Why don’t they just nest near their food?) I’ve seen some birds that resemble Morning Doves (Move Doug!) on the path to the school, so if I can only capture one, I think I’ll try to set it up to fly back and forth from my hut to the Peace Corps House in Serenje. That way I can actually communicate, seeing how I have no cell reception. I don’t know if a Morning Dove is the same thing though. And I’d have to convince the guards to feed it.

We also found a book of Abe Lincoln jokes. Not jokes about Abe Lincoln, but jokes by Abe Lincoln. Let me tell you, he was no comedian.

Another funny Zambian thing – They love to put these furry car covers over their dashboards. Hideous.

The new school year is starting up now, so hopefully the Girls Club and Life Skills will work out better.

I’ve still been sorting books. I have a bunch of little notebooks by category I sort them into instead of a card catalogue.

We had a Grade 2 IRI Training for Community School and Government School teachers, in our zone and the next. It went well. One of the teacher’s relatives died and we were all expected to go to the funeral, however. It was weird. Not in a church or anything, just a hut. A few people at a time went in where there was a mattress on the floor with a body covered by a sheet right there in front of you. We just sat there a few minutes, then left.

Pretty much everything else workwise has been frustrating. I set up a meeting with Mr. Mulenga of the clinic and Mr. Chisenga (who is apparently the head of the Neighborhood Health Committees) to discuss how I could be working with the NHCs and Traditional Birth Attendants. The whole thing was just frustrating, everyone arriving late, difficulties in communicating. It basically came down to that nothing could be done because there’s no funding to do trainings. Zambians will NOT go to a meeting over an hour or so unless there’s food and a “sitting fee” – money just for going to a meeting or training. In the US, you have to pay if you want to be educated, but here people expect to be paid. The also told me that the Community Health Workers are useless and don’t work and have already been given bikes by other NGO’s – something they could have told me months ago when we were discussing my bike plan. Later I talked with the head TBA and she seemed uninterested and only wanted me to give her things. I might still try to work with people who are willing to do trainings without sitting fees and those will be the ones who get the bikes.

The bike project is going along very frustratingly and may not happen at all. The organization who donates the bikes requires this big contract and lots of follow up, which I may not even be around for, and certainly can’t track with other PCVs I distribute bikes to. They would also like to do a rolling plan with money raised from selling bikes to bring more bikes in, which I like the idea of, but I would need some way to pass the money on to the next interested volunteer after I leave. I tried to set up a meeting with my APCD (Education program director in Lusaka) about all this, but she wasn’t in, so I talked with the former APCD, who basically thought that the project was too big for one Peace Corps Volunteer to do and wants me to hand it over to an NGO. The whole thing was very discouraging and disheartening to not be supported after being so excited about it. She was supposed to get me the contact information, but of course she has not.

Mr. Kasolo, the Clinical Officer got transferred, and Mr. Mulenga left for more training for six months, so now the only employee left at the clinic is the janitor. There’s no one to work with if I wanted to. And no one for Doug to if he ever did get his work permit. (And why don’t they want people to work for free?)

Last frustrating thing was the Jatrofya meeting, where Peter was to come and teach about farming Jatrofya, give out seeds, and make arrangements for payment. I had Mr. Chisenga announce it at a PTA meeting and posted flyers around. The day of the meeting it rained – the only thing that keeps Zambians away from meetings more than no sitting fees. No one came. Five hours later or so, we saw the headman, all dressed up, heading to the meeting. We told him it was already over, no one came, and Peter had already left. It couldn’t be rescheduled because the seeds needed to be planted right away for the rains. Some people have stopped by the hut since, however, so we’ve been able to distribute a good number of seeds, but not nearly as many had the meeting taken place, and certainly we’re not representatives of OvalBioFuels to explain any of it to them.

After thinking to myself, “Wow, I’ve been in Zambia almost a year now and haven’t gotten Malaria!” – I got Malaria. It started with just an eyeache. Then the next day, I slept all day, headache, weak, hot, sweaty, cold, no appetite. Then the next day, same again, but just completely foggy, couldn’t really walk right without feeling like I was going to pass out. The thermometer Peace Corps gave me didn’t work, so I wasn’t sure if I had the over 101 temperature that is one of the main determinants. (The thermometer is in Celsius anyhow, so I wouldn’t even have known.) I started to take my Malaria medicine that night and went to Serenje the next morning, as instructed by the Peace Corps Medical Handbook. The next step after taking the Malaria test was to go to Lusaka, but once I got to Serenje, I found that all the Malaria test kits in our medical chest were expired – most by over a year. I called the Medical Officer and she told me just to stay in Serenje and take my medicine. Another volunteer called and asked if our PGSO (jack of all trades worker at the PC House) could go to the clinic or somewhere to get a new one. I don’t know what the result of that was, whether she said no, or they weren’t available in Serenje, but it didn’t happen. I took the expired test and it said I had Malaria, so I called back and told the Medical Officer. She told me to take my temperature and call her back. So I took my temperature and called back to find that she had “knocked off” already. Frustrating. I would have rather just relaxed and gotten better in my hut then have dragged myself to the roadside, waited an hour and a half for transport, and rode two hours sitting upright (anything but laying down was difficult) for two hours only to have to recover at the Peace Corps House which I’m terribly allergic to and is always very noisy with people clattering around and music playing loudly all day. Anyhow, I’m feeling much better today, just a little hot. It was really only three days that were bad.

Now I’m still in Serenje for a Pepfar (HIV) Training that starts Monday.

Little boxes in the village
Little boxes made of sticky-thatchy
Little boxes, little boxes, little boxes, all the same
There’s a brown one, and a brown one, and a brown one, and a brown one
And they’re all made out of sticky-thatchy and they all look just the same
And the people in the thatch huts all farm in the cassava fields
And they all live in little boxes, little boxes all the same
There’s a farmer and a farmer and a farmer and a farmer
And they all get put in boxes and they all come out the same
And the men sit in the insaka and drink their chibuku
And they all have fifteen children and the children don’t go to school
And the children go draw water and then to the cassava field
And they all get put in boxes and they all come out the same
And the young girls get pregnant and marry and raise a family
And they all get put in boxes little boxes all the same
There’s a brown on and a brown one and a brown one and a brown one
And they’re all made out of sticky-thatchy and they all look just the same

Handy Hut How To – How to Do Laundry
Take the following outside to the insaka: Laundry, two wash bins, soap, stool, bucket. Place one bin on stool (for washing) and the other on the ground (for rinsing). Draw a bucket of water. Dump half each bin. Draw another bucket of water now and get it over with, because if you try to draw water with soapy hands it’ll cut right through. Do your best to wash the clothes as the water gets black from dirt and dye and throw into rinse bin when done. Rinse, dump out wash bin and fill with water again for second rinse. Use old water for new wash bin and pour clean water into new rinse bin. Ring out “clean” laundry. Pull clotheslines from out of bathing shelter and tie to trees. Hang clothes. Hope it doesn’t rain.

Bonnibelle – Silly Sayings!! The Green Olive cracked me up. Thanks for all the library books!! Especially the kids atlas and the dictionaries. They’ll be good for the library. And thanks for the Christmas presents! The chicken books look funny.

Michelle – Thanks for the packages! The necklaces, chimes (it’s funny, I had just been talking about wanting chimes and was thinking of trying to make them out of bamboo), all the treats, magazines, books, containers, etc.

2008-01-02T15:02:00.000+02:00

Everytime I finish a forty page blog, I think, “WHEW done! I’ve FINALLY said it all” only to have just as much to write next time. Not that it’s anything much exciting to say, but there’s a lot to say about those chickens! This time, unfortunately, I don’t have much time to use the internets, so it’ll just be a short one.

It’s weird to think that Doug’s now been in Zambia about the same amount of time that I was here before he got here!

The big news is that we have a puttytat now!!! Professor McTiddlywinks. I think he’s about three months old, so he’s not tiny, but still a kitten. Peter unexpectedly brought him one day, so Doug couldn’t refuse it, hahaha. Now Doug’s the one letting him sleep on the bed and buying him fish treats and such. He looks like a grayishbrown tabby with a polkadotted belly. Peter claims that the cat is part Genet which is completely ridiculous. He may in fact be part African Wildcat or he might just be a plain old Tabby. Peter claimed, because of his wild origin and the fact that he bit Peter so hard it left a scar when he tried to catch him, that the cat was simply untamable. He said it’d try to escape the house as soon as we opened the door and would never play or sit on our laps. In reality, the cat is actually afraid of the outside and cries cries cries if we put him out there. He’s also afraid of the chickens, and they’re afraid of him. (Except New Chicken, who will stand there and stare at him, like she stands there and stares at everything else.) He also loves to play (especially with fingers) and when he finally tires out, will cuddle up and purr. Mostly he just plays attackcat though. There might be some truth in his wildcat origins because this kitty is insane! He plays all day, then goes absolutely berserk at night, running around chasing demons of some kind doing the little gurgle/growl that cats do when they’re excited. So fierce. But then if you catch him, he lets out a pathetic little squeak. He does the stand-up-with-arms-wide-spread attack cat move the best. Very cute. He also performs his kitty duties quite well. He knocked over the “Christmas Tree” as soon as we put it up and he knocks any lighter he can find sitting around onto the floor. He’s a good climber too. Can climb right up your leg to your shoulders.

Christmas was good. Or “Happy Day,” as Wizzy put it, which I think I will refer to it as from now on. We found a tiny tree branch that vaguely resembled a triangle and used that as our tree, complete with the battery-powered lights mom sent. With the presents under the tree, candles and Christmas lights, eggnog and cocoa, it was very beautiful and Christmasy on Christmas Eve. Missed the snow, Christmas music, smell of a real Christmas tree, going to Cathy’s on Christmas Eve and Bonnibelle’s on Christmas morning, but it was nice. We spent much of Christmas Eve Day and Christmas baking bread for the Headfamily (technically not the head family anymore because he got his title revoked, but I’ll always think of him as the headman), the neighbors, and Justin/Brenda. On Christmas morning, after opening the presents, we headed to the road where the biggest celebration Mpelemebe has ever seen was going down! A huge crowd of people, just hanging out, drinking, standing in the road, eating fritters. Half the village must have been there. We mostly just sat around people watching. Zambians lend themselves so well to it, the ridiculous outfits they come up with trying to look “smart.” On the bike ride back from the house, people kept yelling “Christmas!!” at us. Twas nice until we learned that “Christmas” or “Give me Christmas!” means “Give me money.” It was the same on New Years. “Give me New Years!” Strange concept to think that you can give someone New Years.

New Years wasn’t as eventful. Since apparently I’m the only Peace Corps Volunteer in Zambia without cell phone reception at my site, I never know what’s going on. I missed the Christmas celebration because by the time I found out about it, I had already planned a meeting for that day. So I thought, “Well, I won’t be out of the loop for New Years. Certainly, EVERYONE in Central Province will be at the Peace Corps House to celebrate New Years!!” So Doug and I packed up and made our way to Serenje, only to find that absolutely no one was there. Everyone was still traveling from their Christmas vacations in whatever countries everyone can seem to afford except me. So we drank our Redd’s (this delicious, lightly alcoholic carbonated apple-ish drink thing) alone and watched “1408,” which was actually quite scary. I don’t know if it’s because I haven’t seen a scary movie in so long or if it was actually really scary. We ended up missing News Years by several minutes.

I guess that’s all I have time for now, but first, I have a question that MUST be answered. Someone must find the answer to it and let me know. Why is it that you can wear a pair of pants and they’re just fine, then if you roll up the bottom of the legs, the pants suddenly become twice as heavy and fall down? The weight of the pants doesn’t change when you roll them up, it just becomes more concentrated in one area, so why do they feel more heavy and fall off?

Also, can someone give me the address of a map company? I want to see if I can get free world/Africa/Zambia wallmaps for my library.

Bonnibelle – I found a portable paper Sequence board at the Peace Corps House and am thinking of brining it back to the hut. I don’t remember the rules though. Can you play with just two people? If so, how do you play?

Dad, Grandma, Cathy – Happy Birthday!!!!!

Thanks to all who sent Christmas gifts. It was exciting having something to open Christmas morning!

2007-12-11T02:11:00.000+02:00

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.

2007-11-16T07:04:00.000+02:00

I’ve decided that the worst part about being in a rural African village, 150 kilometers away from the nearest town, is going outside at night and seeing the AMAZING display of stars, so clear and crisp with stars I didn’t even know were there, and NOT being able to lay out under them for fear or malaria-carrying mosquitoes, stinging ants, impashi, and rats. Standing for a few minutes looking up just doesn’t do it for me.

On nights when there’s a full moon, it’s also amazing how bright everything is at night. It’s like sunlight, only it’s moonlight. Very beautiful, yet eerie.

I want to make a correction. I think that I was mistaken in my last blog when I complained about Zambians not having any regard for nature (e.g. cutting down a tree just to get the caterpillars out; breaking a bird’s legs long before you eat it, letting it suffer, etc.) The more I thought about it, the more I realized that most people in the United States have no regard for nature either. But since they’re not LIVING with nature, they’re a step removed. While they may cringe or criticize the Zambian examples I just gave and not have the heart/stomach to personally perform such deeds, they still cause such things to happen. Trees are chopped down to build their malls all the time, and the chicken they bought at the grocery store suffered in a small cage with its beak cut off. They’re not holding the chicken down and cutting its beak off, but its happening for their benefit anyhow. Is it any different?

Some kids came by the other week with a bucket full of honeycomb they had chopped out of a tree. We bought the whole thing for a ridiculously cheap price. (I guess we’re just as guilty – benefiting from a robbed hive without doing it ourselves… oh well.) After picking out dead bees, we squeezed and strained the honey into one mayonnaise jar and two jelly jars. I thought we’d have a life supply after that, but we’ve polished almost it all off in just two weeks! Hopefully once we get our beebox repaired, we can get our own hive of bees and be able to humanely harvest enough honey to satiate our honey needs.

The night that we got the honey, I even dreamed about it! I “woke up” telling Doug to get the honey stick. He wouldn’t cooperate and I fell back asleep. Now we’ll never know what a “honey stick” is and how it works.

On another honey note, Doug’s grandmother has been sending us articles about this colony collapse disorder that’s been happening in hives recently. On the one hand, it’s interesting that bees are in the news now and hopefully someone can find a cure for whatever the problem is, but it also makes me worry that beekeeping is going to become a fad now and we’ll have too much competition when we get back to the States!

Now I’ll talk about the chickens. New Chicken is really funny. She’s like a dog, coming in the house all the time and begging for food – or stealing it right off of our plates! Doug also taught her a good trick. He holds a peanut up several feet in the air and she’ll jump up to pluck it out of his hand! Fireball will do it now too, but not Pochohantas.

Fireball is still broody, and now we have THREE broody hens, which means no new eggs for over a month. They’re broody differently though. Fireball is just plain crazy, picking up pieces of debris and throwing them behind her as if she’s building a nest, no matter where she is. New Chicken makes a wonderful little meowing-gurgling noise if you approach her when sitting on the nest and puffs up like a turkey when off the nest. Pocahontas doesn’t have any distinguishable traits and doesn’t really compete for the nest like the other two. One day, Fireball and New Chicken were both piled on top of each other on the nest. Pretty cute.

Since all three are just sitting around now, we decided to let them hatch the last two eggs they produced and cross our fingers that they’re not headless. We candled the eggs and you can kinda see some veins and something moving around in one of them, but the other one isn’t doing much. Maybe it’s not fertilized. I’m excited to see if they’ll hatch!

I believe that I have found my favorite bush fruit! Mufundo was my favorite, until we discovered that a certain bug likes to lay its eggs in the fruits. Now, it’s the Monkey Orange, this ball with a rock hard shell and gray innards that look like liver/brains. It’s looks terrible and is all slimy, but tastes really good and is fun to pull apart to eat.

We’ve been rushing around trying to get some gardening done before the rains come more steadily. (Now, it rains lightly on and off all day every other day or so.) We built a tree nursery out of the fruit tree seeds we’ve been saving – Tamarind, Baobab, Custard Apple, Mufundo, Suku, and some flowering trees. That’s all I can remember. It was pretty fun. We’re doing experiments to see which grows best – planting the seed as is, cold water treatment, hot water treatment, or scarification. Even though I will never get the benefit of any of these fruit trees, I think it’s a good thing to do. No one plants trees (anywhere, not just Zambia), even though it’s so easy – and free – to do. I figure if I can’t make any difference in my actual work by the time I leave, at least I will leave Mpelembe with lots of fruit to eat for years to come. If they don’t chop and burn the trees, that is.

We also made our own small field behind the house! Hoed one day, composted the second day, and planted the third. Pumpkins, Melons, Beans, Peanuts, and Corn! Now we’ll just sit back and wait for the rain to do the work.

It’s funny that we try so hard to garden and farm, yet the garden is still a disaster being destroyed by insects and disease. Doug and I even were invited to do a training in Chalilo about “food security.” So we spent two full days on the living room floor planning out how to teach about planning ahead, diversification, saving seed, solar drying, storing food, fruit trees, livestock, etc, as well as composting, natural ways to prevent pests, and how to make income from agricultural projects. (It’s pretty funny because as we were preparing the topics, I was also reading “Ishmael,” this philosophical environmental book that’s kind of anti-farming, anti-storing-food, anti-aid-to-developing-countries, etc, book.) So on the day of the training, we traveled the 30 kilometers to Chalilo and set out to search for “Rayd Kabango,” the one who invited us. He was supposed to meet us at the market and the meeting was supposed to start at 10:00. (He was to announce to the others that the starting time was 9:00, because according to Zamtime, they would arrive at 10:00.) We had bad transport, so didn’t get there until 10:00. After not having much luck finding him, my old neighbor Kapiria who is now a shopkeeper there, led us to the bar where Rayd was drinking. After some confussion about what was going on, he said that 32 people arrived for the training at 7:00 – 8:00, and when we didn’t arrive, they left at 10:00. At first I felt really bad and guilty that we had missed them, but the more I started thinking about it, the more I thought maybe it was “fiction,” as Kapiria put it. Maybe I’m just too cynical or am trying to find an excuse to not feel bad that it’s my fault, but I’ve heard of this exact same situation happening to other volunteers. Stuff just didn’t add up. If he told people 9:00, why in the world would they show up at 7:00? I’ve never heard of a Zambian showing up early to anything, let alone two hours early. And if Rayd was supposed to meet us at the market, why didn’t anyone know anything about it when we arrived? The “Village Action Group” head guy, who runs the place where it was supposed to be held, was saying that he knew nothing about the training and apologized for people being drunk. And Rayd answered “32” – a very exact number – very quickly when we asked how many people were there. Did he really count them all? I don’t know what really happened and I guess I never will, but he’s gonna send us a bushnote if he wants to reschedule.

On the way back, we were crammed in the back of a pickup with several other Zambians and a chicken (a transport regular) when it started raining. I was enjoying the rain, but quick as a whistle, they pulled out a piece of black plastic to hold over all of us. It smelled like fish and flapped around in the wind so violently on my head that it sounded like we were in a warzone or in a firework or something. It was such a ridiculous thing, all I could do was laugh.

When we got back to Mpelembe, we told Peg that we saw Kapiria in Chalilo (because we think maybe they have a thing for each other). She acted kind of confussed, and later the headman tried to ask us what we were talking about, because apparently “icililo” means “dead body” and she thought we were saying that. Oops.

Another terrible Bemba mistake, is that Doug said “Mwacibukeni” (Good Morning) to someone too late in the day and was scolded by Rayd, who said that could be taken as an insult because you’re implying they just woke up. This just cracked Doug and I up and now if we want to brutally insult each other, we know how.

For several nights, I heard koswe (rats) squealing up a storm in the kitchen, but was too tired to go investigate. Finally one night Doug got up to see what the ruckus was and found a koswe in the bag of chili peppers Peter gave us. So apparently, night after night, this stupid koswe was munching on the hot peppers, then squealing in agony, but kept on eating more and squealing in agony more. So stupid.

Another evening, as I was coming toward the house, my heart stopped when I saw a swarm of impashi going up the bike ramp into the house! I jumped around for awhile, not knowing what to do, until neighborlady and her daughter caught my Carrie-crafted broom on fire to sweep the impashi away. It was quite exciting. Fallingdownpantsboy got bit, but he thought it was funny. Later, I found an impashi clinging onto my skirt, but it never got me. They’re soooo tricky. They’ll crawl all the way up your skirt or your pant leg and you’ll never feel it until they get high enough that you can’t get them. THEN they start to attack.

I showed fallingdownpantsboy how to make paper airplaines and origami frogs, but he wasn’t very impressed. As I was trying to play with him, he just kept asking me to give him things. Neighborlady and Iron Mumba send him or one of their other slavechildren over all the time to beg from us. “Ba Mumba balefwaya shuka/imbalala/lapu/umusalu/etc/etc/etc” (Mr./Mrs. Mumba wants sugar/peanuts/rape/vegetables/etc/etc/etc.” It’s gotten to the point where one of them asks us for something every single day, often several times a day. Of late, sugar has been their main request and I’m pretty sure they want it to brew beer.

Fallingdownpantsboy has a “new” pair of pants – that have a big hole in the back! So we still see his little buttcheeks even if the pants are not falling down. Doug claims he’s seen these ones fall down too.

I’ve given up on my girls club for the term and am going to try to start fresh next term. Life Skills class is going ok. I did a session on HIV last week and it went pretty well actually, so that’s good.

So I’ve been comparing Jamaica, the USA, and Zambia, and trying to figure out some trend. Jamaica is the most violent, but also has the most lively people. Zambia is the most peaceful, but also the most boring. (Remember my description of Zambian holiday celebrations?) United States is in the middle of both. I don’t know if these two qualities correlate or not, but maybe. How could a very bad quality correspond with a very good quality though? I’m not even sure what I mean. Like, Zambians will sit on the minibus and let the driver totally lie to them and rip them off, and not say anything. They just put up with it and won’t step out of line. Whereas if that happened in Jamaica, someone would probably throw the minibus driver out the window. Zambians just won’t step out of line in any way – the clothes they wear, how their houses look, what they farm, anything. Trying to buy K8,000 of peanuts instead of K10,000 of peanuts was like pulling teeth. One CAN’T possibly have K8,000 of peanuts. You just can’t. It must be K10,000. Along the road, all the people sell the exact same item for miles. It’s just not good to be different, creative, or to prosper. Guess it’s the whole collective thing. I’m still not sure what I mean. Does anyone else know?

Another strange Zambian thing is that they’re pretty concerned with “looking smart” and having things clean. I’ve been scolded by neighborlady many times for not washing the outside of my pots. “Doowty,” she says and then scrubs it with sand until it’s clean. I’ve also got scolded several times about my “village shirt” – this terrible white man’s shirt (white colored shirt) I wear all the time to keep the sun off me. It’s completely filthy and is full of holes because I caught it on fire once. A Ministry of Education guy told me I looked like a charcoal burner and a shopkeeper told me I could NOT go on transport looking like that. Zambians also get concerned when I sit on the ground instead of a mat, chitenge, chair, ledge, etc. I’ve been asked many times by confused Zambians, in the village and in the boma, just WHY I was sitting on the floor/ground. It really doesn’t matter at all to me. I actually find it more comfortable to sit on the ground most of the time. But to them it’s just savage and doowty.

I’m not sure what I’m going to do for Thanksgiving. Doug and I might try to make a “feast” at the hut as best we can, or we might come to the Peace Corps house to celebrate with other volunteers. Some people are going to Kasanka (the national park by my house) too, which I still have to do soon to see this supposed fruit bat migration.

I think it’d be fun to travel somewhere for Christmas, but I just don’t think I can. Most volunteers visit one of the neighboring African countries (Zanzibar, Mozambique, Malawi, Namibia – I’m sure none of those are spelled right) and claim it’s cheap, but as they describe it to me, spending $500 - $1,000 or more, I just can’t imagine. I barely have that in my home bank account. I might wait til Easter to do it so I can save up money from my stipend here. Right now I have nothing from all the trips to Lusaka and such.

So since I can’t take or post photos, I guess I’ll just give in and describe my house. It’s made of fired mud bricks held together with mud. The roof is thatched grass. It’s set up off the ground with a “wrap around porch” as I call it – basically a mud brick ledge just wide enough to sit on. I built a bike ramp and step going up into it. The door fits loosely in its frame and is secured with a chain and a lock. When you go through the door, it’s a hallway that goes to the back and then to the right. What used to be on the right was a solid brick wall, but I took part of it down, so you can get into the living room from there. The main hallway is used for storing our bikes, so it’s pretty hard to even get through. The old back hallway is now the closet/garage with my new shelf for clothes/books and tools/seeds hanging on the wall. There’s some windows of missing bricks back there. If you back up to the beginning of the main hallway, the kitchen is on the left, where I have a table for making food, a shelf with storage bins for food, lots of hanging baskets for food, water filter, water bucket, water jerry cans, a bag of charcoal in the corner, and pots and pans hanging on the wall. It has a real window with a shutter. A bent nail keeps the shutter closed, so if you want it open, you have to twist the nail. On the back left is the bedroom, which is literally a bed surrounded by wall. There’s a mosquito net and a “dirt flap” hanging over the bed. More of the little hole windows. The living room is on the right as you walk in, with two real windows. It has a reed mat on the floor, a little loveseat bench, a camp chair, a wood chair, a basket for books, and a little side table. Some hanging baskets, a “bulletin board” of string and clothespins, and a wall of photos. There ya go.

So right now I’m in Serenje for a Ministry of Education meeting and also to help Michelle and Mary Lu (the new director of the RED program) visit schools to decide where to place a new education volunteer. We visited two possible zonal schools. The one seems good because it has a female head teacher, which is rare, so I think it’d be good to support that school, but the other one I really prefer. It’s older and probably needs more help. The headteacher was this funny little man with huge thick glasses. They seemed more friendly and eager to have Peace Corps than the other. Then Mary Lu is coming out to my site because she wants to see where all the volunteers live and meet with their counterparts. So since there’s a motoka going directly from the Peace Corps house to my house, I’m busy stocking up on toilet paper, candles, milk powder, oats, etc. Exciting!

Note: If anyone’s thinking of ever visiting, just to let you know, the best time would be April – July, April being the most lush, but maybe slightly rainy or buggy, June being the coldest (too cold at night, actually), and July being the most barren and ugly, but with a slight chance of seeing a citimene.

Handy Hut How To – How to Make Drinking Water

Get your bike out of the house and strap your jerrycan to the back. Bike a kilometer to the school where there’s a water pump. Wait for all the kids to get done filling up buckets to water the flowers at the school (which happens more than they’re in class), then line up the hole in the jerrycan under the spigot. Pump about 80 times, then put a piece of plastic over the hole and screw on the lid. (It’ll leak all over you as you bike otherwise.) Lift up the 900 pound jug and try to balance it on your kickstand-less bike as you tie it on. Walk the bike out of the schoolyard (no bike riding allowed!), then hop on. Maybe stop and see if Triza is selling any amabunsies. Bike back to the hut, try to balance your kickstand-less bike as you unload, and lug jerrycan into the house. Pour water into the tea kettle. (Most of it will go on the floor.) Build a fire and boil the water. Pour the boiled water into the red bucket. Once the water is cool, assess the fullness of the waterfilter (too much water and it’ll leak!) and pour the cooled boiled water into the top. Wait for the water to filter. Turn the tap and drink! Repeat all day every day.

Bonnibelle – Thanks for the candy!