in and out

So I suppose it is time for another update.  My life in Zambia has been super busy these past few months.  I have many different programs which have brought me to various places in Solwezi.  I feel like I have not been in my village that much, alas, most of them I think will be very beneficial to the community.

Also I have had a visitor from the states, Rachel.  You should totally check out her blog because it does a good job of going over the every day facts of life which I am not going to write about in this post. http://bendrothtravels.blogspot.com/

One of the greatest joys that I have in the village is the children.  They are amazing.  If I am having a frustrating day then I go home and the children can cheer me up in a heart beat.  They are so joyful and thankful for what they have.  They know how to make me smile.  With that said they are also becoming more and more like my brothers and sisters and figuring out how to push my buttons more and more but I still love it.

This is Lozi while I was doing my laundry she decided to wear clothes pins as earrings.  Precious.

The kids they even help me out

This is Millie who is in second grade and I swear can carry more water than I could ever imagine I would be able to.

Lukatazho and Evans helped me to catch a mouse in my house.  Here is the successful catch.

Lukatazho playing with a tire. Who knew they could be so fun.

Giravi after he had been dancing...how can this not cheer you up?

Oh no there are 6 puppies in my village.  They are so adorable.  I am in love.

So many of you already know but I got an African hairstyle for a few weeks.  It was painful at first and hard to sleep on but it made the villagers so happy.  I am glad the five hours of sitting on a stool was worth it.

before

 

after

after after...in the process of removing the braids...boy was that a task.

I just wanted to share a picture of my bamaama and bataata.  These are my Zambian parents.  They are amazing.  He is a senior headman which means he is the traditional leader of the village.  Currently they are rebuilding their house so they built a temporary grass shelter in the middle of the bush by their farm and they sleep there at night with their kids.  I think that they are crazy!  I would not want to do that especially sleeping on the ground I would be too afraid of things crawling over me.  I miss them but I have gone to visit them a few times it is about an hour walk one way.

Bataata is the one on the right.  They are drinking Monkoyo a traditional alcoholic drink made out of fermented corn.

This is at one of their fields, they have 2.  It is currently time to harvest the maize.

So as I said since April I have been in and out of my village alot.  One of the programs I participated in was Camp E.L.I.T.E. which is a camp where each volunteer who is participating brings 2 boys in Grade 7, 8 or 9 and then one teacher.  At the camp we play football in the morning and in the afternoon teach about different health issues, gender equality and other things.  At night we watch movies or we shared what smores were.  IT was crazy to see the boys reactions to the movies.  Many of them only watch TV at teachers houses and they usually are charged.  The EE!s and Mamamamas! were hilarious.  But one of the best activities is we did a gender really race.  Where the boys had to do the tasks that many of the girls are required to do before even going to school (fetching firewood, water, washing, shelling peanuts, sweeping) all while carrying a "baby" (5 liter water jug) on their back.  It was awesome.  Here are some pictures below.

 I also attended a nutrition program training.  This was about starting a program where we use mothers of well nourished children to teach mothers of those with not so well nourished children how they cook and care for their child.  It is called PD Hearth or Mama lumieres.  This was really exciting because it was a program that I had written a paper about while in grad school and now I am going to be carrying it out in my village.  Also my counterpart has the cutest baby ever who was there.  I love spending time with this baby and I am going to kidnap her and bring her to America with me.

Minata, my counter part, and me

I also attended a PEPFAR training with Mr. Mafewshi who has turned into a key person in my village.  He helps me with just about every thing I want to do.  He is amazing because he is a new headman and he isnt afraid of upsetting some people for helping out the entire community.  He has been really supportive and receptive to me and new ideas.  We are going to start a health drama group where one week we will learn about a health topic and the next week the group will do a drama about this health topic.  I think this could be really successful.  I hope we can get it up and running.

 So I think that I have figured out my four projects which I want to focus on for my service that I  think will have the potential to be really successful.  One is that drama group that i was just talking about.  The other is the nutrition program that I talked about.  The next is the Womens Group. There is a group of ten women in the community that want to start a women's group.  Right now we are working on starting a garden to help with food security and sell the produce to other villagers.  The next project is going to be sewing school uniforms for the children.  I just want to throw a shout out to the Mighty Oak class at Acorn School for helping to raise money for these women to start out these projects.  We have been raising money by buying talk time for phones and selling that in the village but it is a slow process.  We also are considering starting a small "bank" within the group so when there is an emergency and someone needs money or maybe wants to start a business there will be a small pot of money for them.  The last one is the nursery school.  Unfortunately for this term the school did not open, there was some difficulty.  The teacher, Precious, went for a job interview but has yet to return because she doesn't have enough transport money to get back.  Another women was asked to teach but she refused because she was so busy. The community wants this but no one was willing to step up when the teacher was missing.  I hope that we can figure this problem out because I think that it is a good program.

So that has basically been what I have been up to.  I think it is crazy how my service is finally beginning to come together.  I am really excited for what is to come and being able to really dive into these projects.  Service definitely has its up and downs but I definitely am happy that I am here and  I can not imagine leaving my village.  I realized the other day how sad I would be if I never saw some of these children again.

There is hippo snot on my tent

just chillin with the kids in my village while trying to fix my bathing shelter so that i could begin bathing again

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!