School shmool

Education in many American communities is a normal part of children's lives. The law says that children must be receiving education until 16, if i am not mistaken. In many families parents are actively involved In the schooling. In m village this is the exception not the norm.

Children are not required to go to school.Often times there is not enough money ,for school fees and if there is children are sent home because they dont have shoes to wear or the proper uniform, or soap to clean their uniforms. If the children are able to sit in the classroom many times they dont have notebooks and pens. Families will often pull their children out of school to help on the farm or perform other daily tasks. Food security, daily survival, and alcohol are more important than schooling.

The children also only go to school for half a day. Maybe from 7:30 to 12:00 through grade 7 and during grade 8 and 9 they may stay an extra hour. Half the students have classes in the morning and the other half in the afternoon because there is only 5 class rooms for grade 1 through 9. The children are also required to do manual labor. In the mornings you will often find children sweeping the classrooms and the surroundings of the school. Certain days children are required to bring hoes to help clear the drive way and paths to the toilet or you will find them slashing grass for the soccer and netball pitches as well as the surroundings. There are no janitors and the teachers aren't responsible for the cleanliness the students are.

The children take similar subjects to those in America. They learn English, math, science, writing, social studies, kaonde, civics and all children are required to take religion as a class. Students are tested at the end of each term in each of these subjects. The school calender is a little different here. There is 3 months of classes and then a one month break then 3 months of classes again.

So that is an overview of school life at Nyansonso Basic School.

Thank you seatbelt

So yesterday I was traveling to Lusaka to go on a short holiday...however on the way a small incident happened. I was in the cab of a pickup truck and we were traveling over the speed limit, like all drivers, there was another car trying to change lanes that did not see us coming. We hit them and spun around. There car spun and flipped over into the median. Thankfully everyone was alright in both cars. I had my seat belt on and there was no one in the bed of the truck. The driver had refused a few people who wanted to hitch to the next city from getting in the back of the truck.

After the incident I called PCMO (the peace corps doctor) and was asked to come to Lusaka for a check up. I was feeling fine but they wanted to just make sure. A little while later my chest and neck were sore. My chest from the seat belt, my neck from the impact. I finally arrived in Lusaka just before the PCMO was supposed to knock off, but thankfully she saw me. Everything was okay I received some ibuprofen and was asked to stay within the PC compound so I could be seen in the morning.

So today I went in the morning..there is some swelling but nothing to serious. I got x-rays taken no fractures seen in my neck from the inital examination, a more specialized doctor is going to look at them later. I have to wear a soft neck brace and take some anti inflammatory and pain medicine for the next few days. But i was so pleased with the way that I was taken care of. It definitely makes me trust in the doctors here and I do know that if something serious was to happen I would be well taken care of.

This accident has definitely made me think more carefully about the hitches I take. Sometimes after you have been standing on the road for 4 hours without a ride you will take just about anything. I am so lucky that i was sitting in the cab of this truck with a seat belt, it was probably one of my safer hitches. You never can predict when a car accident is going to happen and I will be more conscientious of this now.

I am grateful that Leanne was already in Lusaka so she could come and take care of me, I am even more grateful she was not in the pick up truck traveling with me, and I am even more grateful that I can leave for holiday this afternoon.

Cheers to holiday! Hope you all are finding this well.

ny bad

Okay so i had been really bad with this. I apologize but I am going to try to catch you all up to speed. For Christmas vacation I did a few things. For Christmas itself I spent the day at the provincial house with other peace corps volunteers. The next day we went ti the orohanage in solwezi where we gave each child a toy and then left some community toys for the children. It was so humbking. Although I would say that this Christmas was my least commercial yet...the joy in each chikds eyes from some toy cars or small dolls was...I don't know the right word, humbling, heartbreaking. I am nit sure. It makes you appreciate things alot. At the end as we were leaving the children and staff sang us a song which was wicked moving, it brought tears to my eyes. There is a video floating around somewhere, if I can find it I will share it. You could hear in their voices ans are by the movement just how grateful they were. The next day me and a couple others from my province met up with two of our friends from a different province. We went to a chimpanzee orphanage when we literally got to hold some of the chimps and feed them. There was one chimp that was not fit for the human interaction so she was in a seperat enclosure and she was sourtung at us and throwing rocks at us as the guide was telling us about chimps and the program it was so awesome. I was also peed on by a chimp.I was sitting on a log and the chimp was in a tree and decided he had to pee. It was coo. How many people an say they have been pee on by a chimp? I posted some pictures on Facebook. We also went to a waterfall and just relaxed and then to solwezi to celebrate the new year.

For my birthday I spent it in solwezi with some friends. It was nice and relaxing although I did have an infected cut on my foot that made it swell alot and eventually the swelling spread to my ankle. It was difficult to walk. But I am healed now and only had to stay in solwezi a few extra days.

When I got back to my village from my birthday addventure I was confronted by my community saying that they had organized the nursery school and that I would begin teaching it the next day. Needless to say I was a little over whelemed, still not 100% but I was very apprefiative of my community's effort and so we began. It has been going really well different from schools in the united states. The resources are just not there, no paper, crayons, sissors, chalkboard But it is not only the resources but also the parental involvement. I feel that in many places I the US parents know what the children are learning about at school and reinforce it, but here most of the time the learning stops once the child leaves the class, especially the english which is what the parents want the children to learn the most. It has been challenging but rewarding.

I also have gone to a training in Lusaka which was nice. I got to go to the movies, eat some good food, see everyone that I did my training with and learn a few things. One bad thing that happened was one of the girls I trained with was sent home after being hit by a drunk driver while walking, causing her to break her foot. Her recovery time was too ling so she was medically seperated.


Right now Leanne, Kim,and I are in the proecess of writing a grant for a joint Netball and football tournament where we will have VCT, which is great since it is not availablin my community and people don't know there HIV status, and HIV/aids educational events. It will require some work but it will be nice if we can pull it off.

This Monday is youth day so we had one of the neighboring villages over for a celebration of dancingm, poems, songs, questions in English and track and field events. Sometimes I have a moment of "wow I really am in Africa this is awesome" and the definitely occurred during these events.

That is a quick update. Hope all is well with you.

Community Entry...almost

Merry Christmas! I hope there is snow on the ground and good food to be eaten.

So for the past almost three months I have been in community entry, which means that I am supposed to be integrating into the community, getting my hut feeling like a home and figuring out what the community wants and needs. It also means that I am only allowed to be in my district, like a county, except for thanksgiving and Christmas which is why I have Internet access now. I am not going to talk about anything in any particular order so bare with me.

Thanksgiving:
For Thanksgiving we had provincial meetings which is when everyone in the province comes to the house and we go over different issues and Peace Corps updates etc... It was the first time that I met everyone in my province which was a little overwhelming but nice to do. As for thanksgiving day the two things that made me the most happy was getting to skype with my family and listening to the song "Alice's Restaurant" which at home we do every year. The food was good, there was a lot of it but it did not compare to the food that we have at our celebration at home. I missed meat stuffing and Aunta's cake and Mom's pies...but I was grateful for the fact that I was able to celebrate the holiday with other Americans and we did make the turkey hand drawings, where you trace your hand and make it into a turkey and write what you are grateful for on it (it was my idea). So all in all you can't compare it to a thanksgiving with your family but it was a nice day with my new friends.

Thanksgiving food

Life in the Village:

I am not exactly sure what to say about this...It seems fairly normal and repetitive so I will tell you about a typical day.

I usually wake up around 6:00 but I refuse to get out of bed until close to 7:00. Then I will eat breakfast (oatmeal or granola), wash my dishes, go to the borehole and get water, sweep my house and dump my ashes from cooking the night before on my garden or in my pit latrine. I am usually finished with that by close to 8. From 8:00 to 10:00 I have free time where I play with the kids, weed my garden, take some me time, maybe go for a walk to see who is in the village. Then around 10 I will go to the clinic until 12:00 maybe see 2 patients and just chat with the clinic workers or read. From 12:00 to 14:00 i eat lunch hang around my house, play with the children, read, work in the garden, nothing special. Then if I decide to go back to the clinic i will head there around 14:00 or if I am going to visit people I will leave around 15:00. I like to be home by 17:00 because there is a radio program on called Border Crossings which I like to listen to. I will bath and cook around 18:00. Eat dinner around 19:00 and kill time before bed usually by reading or playing solitaire and have my hut door closed around 20:00 and read for a half hour or so and go to bed.

Right now, however, most people over the age of 7 in my village are in the fields and are there until 15 or so so the young children are just hanging around taking care of themselves. This is so different since they will cook over a fire climb trees, get in fights, the 7 year old are taking care of children who aren't even one. There is no supervision, and I can end up being their entertainment which can be frustrating. Also discipline of children is not consistent and usually includes hitting a child which I dont feel comfortable to. So it can be hard with some of the more difficult children.

Oh I was also given a Kaonde name by the children. It is lukatazho. This means trouble or problem and now I am occasionally being called ba Lukatazho (ba is like Ms. or Mr.) by adults and children. But you see I gave this nickname to one of the children, one of my best friends in the village, and so they were not very creative but I have embraced it.

Giravi a boy a few houses away from me
Lukatazho/Bene and Ronica

Bene, Lozi, Me

Finase

The 2 Lukatahos

The children Dancing

So my community has identified some needs. They think that the biggest problems in the village are no market, no nursery school, not enough fertilizer, body aches for older adults, malaria, upper respiratory infections and eye infections for children, the ability to attain school uniforms as the major problems and no hammermill. A hammermill is used to ground the corn into basically corn flour which they use to make nshima. Nshima is basically like grits of mashed potatos that are in big lumps that stick together sort of. Now if a Zambia does not eat nshima for a meal it means they haven't eaten. So if I was to make my neighbors some food for lunch with rice and veggies and beans and that is all they ate for the meal then they would tell someone that they had not eaten lunch. The closest hammermill is 7kms away in one direction. Could you imagine carrying a 10 lb bag of corn on your head 14km just so you can eat..pretty crazy. So solutions that we are hopefully going to attempt are to start a nursery school, I am hopefully going to begin health talks at the clinic and I am going to talk to the representative to see if it is possible to get a hammermill, there used to be one but it is broken, or talk to an NGO that does this. We will see what projects are actually successful and what are not.

Rainbow

Sunset

My hut:

So I live in a two room hut with a thatch roof that has a few leeks and mud walls. I have a pet. His name is Larry the Lizard, he has a short tail that was bitten off I am assuming and he likes to run into my hut and eat the bugs on my floor but I let him stay. Since it is the rainy season there are many bugs, spiders, ants, insects I have never seen before, termites...it is an adjustment but you learn to pick your battles. I also caught three mice in one day with a mouse trap but haven't seen any since. Anyway below are some picture and a video of my hut

My hut from the road

There are also these really cool flowers that are like upside down... Check it out. When I ask the children what they are they just say Christmas and Happy New Years. So I think that they just come out around this time of year but they are so nice.

Really random but while hitching to Solwezi from my village I was with Ryan and Charlie two friends and we were in the back of a truck and Charlie decided to braid Ryan's beard...look at how beautiful it is. It was a great way to pass the time. Ryan isn't shaving or cutting is hair until the next hot season.

Other than that I am just hanging out trying to stay busy and keep positive. I know that I will begin some neat projects and learn a lot. I hope you all are well.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Years!

Waiting

So there was a small problem moving into my site on tuesday which means that I am back in Solwezi for a few more days but I willl explain about that later. I figured I would write a proper blog post for you all.

I don't know how well you can see it but Leanne is standing in the middle of the picture and that hill behind her is an ant hill...now I understand why they call it an ant hill. They are everywhere in the Northwestern Province.

First off I wanted to share some pictures from my first visit to my village, Nyansonso.

This is a picture of my host, Precious, and her son, Douglas.

A picture of some of the landscape.The basic school is the buildings in the background.

Okay so after visiting my village me and three others, Charlie, Jon, Leanne and myself all hitched back to Lusaka from Solwezi. It is about a 10 hour drive, or at least that is what is should be. The morning started out uneventful we got two rides from Zambian buisness professionals and then stopped for lunch. However, at this point I was not feeling well, so I didnt eat more than a bite of my sandwich and then had some soda. We then had to wait a while for another hitch to pick us up. We ended getting picked up by a Zambian who worked for an NGO, DAPP. At this point I had taken some anti nausa pills, stomach antacids and more medicine but I could not sleep...it was a rough end to the day but we made it safely to Lusaka albeit a little late but

The end of training was rough. It was hard because we had seen our sites and it was so close to being finished but there were still many exams and celebrations to prepare for. Below is a picture of my language class on our last day of classes.

Charlie, Frank (teacher), Leanne, Me

Language class had its ups and downs and some days I wanted to throw things at Ba Frank because I was so fed up with learning the language but other days we would joke and tease and try to get Ba Frank to teach us inappropriate words (like poop and pee) and I would learn a lot. I am definetly greatful towards him. I learned so much and the class was not unbareable which I think would be quite difficult in such an intense program with so many Peace Corps guidelines on what needs to be taught and how quickly. I will miss the class although he said he would come and visit us.

This is a picture of Leanne, Jennifer, Sarah and me after we finished our LPI (language proficiency something that begins with an I, basically language final) It was such a releif to finish that. It was stressful to study for everything and after that exam we only had one test left and a weekend to study for it...although tha weekend proved to be problematic. Lets just say I joined the "club" multiple times. The club is when you poop your pants. I had some crazy diahhrea and barely got any sleep and what was the most frustrating was that it was my last weekend in Chongwe so I just made sure I was close to a bathroom or pit latrine at all times. I still made the most of it, considering how poor I felt. This included hitching to Lusaksa in the back of a truck!

Charlie, Me and Lizzy

I also wanted to show you some pictures of my host family in Chongwe.

This is Erria and his mother which they call mother erria. I am not exactly sure how they are relaetd to the family but they moved into a house on the compound that my sister was staying in with about 1 and a half months left in my stay there. My sister moved into what they were using as the kitchen.

This is Charity and Baby Hanson, not her child. I am not sure how she is related but she moved in a few weeks before I left and lived with my sister. She was going to school close by but the strange thing is that her grandmother lived a few compounds down, so I am not exactly sure why she was staying at my familys compound.

This is my host sister Erissa.

Bataata (father), me and Bamaama (mother)

Bamaama and me

Bataata and me

To celebrate the end of training and the end of staying with our host families we had cultural day, which i talked about in the previous blog post.

Here is a video of some of the entertainment

Let me tell you a funny story about Bamaama...these ladies were dancing and in the middle of the dancing she got up and stuffed some Kwacha (Zambian money) down the girls shirt. Then many other people started doing this. Apparently this is completely normal but i felt uncomfortable about it. It kind of reminded me of a strip club...oh well something I will have to get used to.

Bataata, me and Bamaama

Me and Ba Charles, one of my favorite tech trainers.

So all of the Kaonde ladies and our teacher got matching dresses...none of us are sure exactly how this happened, but it did.

After that we headed into Lusaka to tie up some loose ends and then have our swearing in ceremony at the Ambassadors house. Which by the way is spectacular and they had delicous food like chocolate chip cookies and peanut butter cookies and muffins. It is the little things I swear. So this ceremony is when we officially become volunteers and are no longer trainees. So you can now refer to me as Ellen Taetzsch, Peace Corps Volunteer.

This is me giving my speech.

Me, Sarah, and Jennifer

Me, Ba Frank, Leanne and Charlie

The CHIP 2011 volunteers

So the next day we traveled up to Solwezi to do some shopping for our sites. We bought buckets, food, brasiers (the things we cook on), gerry cans (to carry water in) etc...

On Tuesday Leanne and I packed all of our things and headed out to Mufumbwe to move into our huts. We first dropped off Leanne at her site. I helped her move her stuff in but we didn't stay long because Ba Patrick (the driver) was afraid it was going to rain so we moved on to my site. We unloaded everything and put it in my hut, which is huge fyi...perfect for visitors ;). Then Ba Patrick took a look around and realized that my pit latrine was not finished and neither was my kynzanza (out door kitchen). My pit latrine had a hole but no structure around it for privacy and my kitchen only had poles stuck in the ground. PC has a policy that we cant share pit latrines so we loaded my stuff back into the cruiser and ended up locking it up in the storage room at the clinic. So hopefully everything will be finished by saturday and I will be able to move in then. But it was nice to come back because I ordered some furniture for my hut. There is more I want to get but I figured I need to save some money and there needs to be room to transport it out there. Anyway I will just be hanging out in Solwezi until my hut is ready enjoying warm showers, flushing toilets and electricity.

Stay well.

My New Addresses

So I found out my address for the next two years but it is alittle confusing for the beginning of my time here.

You can send all letters for until November to:

Ellen Taetzsch
Peace Corps
PO Box 130050
Mufumbwe, Zambia.

All packages and letters after November can be sent to

Ellen Taetzsch
Peace Corps
PO Box 110264
Solwezi, Zambia

I hope this isnt too confusing.

The end of the beginning

I am now an official Peace Corps Volunteer! I have completed training and will be posted to my site on tuesday! It is bittersweet I am going to miss my host family and friends and the ability to speak english and vent and the comfort of the known but I didn't sign up for the PC for that so now the real journey begins...

The past few weeks of training were pretty uneventful..I had more classes and lots and lots of tests which I am happy to say that I passed all of them. Our last day at our training site was cultural day in which the trainees (us) get to cook for our hosts.Many of them were not fond of the food. We had a cook out where there was hamburgers and sausage and a bunch of different salads. However, Zambians don't seem to enjoy when there is a bunch of things mixed together (i.e. most salads) or when things need to be chewed so I think that the Americans enjoyed the food more than the Zambians..but I suppose cross cultural exchange took place. I got a little teary eyed saying good bye to my family...they just did so much for me and really cared and took care of me when I was sick. Which I got pretty sick twice in the last few weeks of training with some explosive diarrhea for a few days.

I was also chosen to give a speech at the swear in ceremony in front of the ambassador and both Zambian and American government officials in kaonde that was being broadcast on the national television station...i dont like doing this sort of stuff and was not to pleased about not having a choice in the matter. I can't say I did a a great job, I definitely pronounced some words wrong, but it wasn't awful. It was a nice day and there were some great food.

Below is a link to all the pictures I have taken so far some are more relevant than others but I figured I would share:

http://www5.snapfish.com/snapfish/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=7361150008/a=53767593_53767593/otsc=SHR/otsi=SALBlink/COBRAND_NAME=snapfish/

I am excited to move to the village and not live out of a suitcase, eat what I want when I want, bathe when i want. I am a little anxious but starting anything is nerve wracking to me and i need to look forward to the many rewards that are coming in the future.

I know this was a quick to the point post so I apologize, I am borrowing someones computer to write this so I dont want to take too much time. I hope you all are doing well. Stay in touch!