Hi Everyone!

I think it’s time for a long-overdue update. There’s a lot to write about, so I think I’ll divide this update into two sections (leaving the village and vacation to Israel and Egypt) so you can pick and choose and don’t have to read the whole thing J

LEAVING THE VILLAGE

So after heading back to the village in late January, I had about two months to wrap things up and say goodbye to people. I still can’t believe how fast the past two years went and it seems kind of surreal that my time in the village is over already. During the last few months there were heavy rains (more so than last year), so most of the bushpaths around my house turned into swamps and going places on my bike was definitely a challenge. The road between my village and Mbala (town) got so muddy that vehicles couldn’t even make it for a while; they just got stuck in the mud. Makes me appreciate pavement! But I managed to have meetings with most of the community groups that I had been working with and explain to them how they should move forward and that another volunteer will be coming in September. I also worked with the school to talk about plans for the library and how it’s going to be run. Unfortunately, the Ministry of Education vehicle that was supposed to bring the books to my village got in an accident and was totaled, so we are still waiting for its repairs to be finished so it can bring the books. However, I’m still communicating by phone with all the people involved so I’m confident that the books will be there soon. It seems that things always take longer than planned in Zambia J

Besides official meetings, the last month or so was kind of draining emotionally because it felt like people were constantly coming to visit me to say goodbye. For example, two separate groups from the church I was attending (the women’s group and the choir) came to my house (like 20 people on each occasion) and sang and danced for me and we ate food together and took pictures. Members from one of the more remote health committees within my zone came to visit and brought a chicken for me too, as well as members from a women’s club. It was all very touching but also sad because it made me realize that I’d become fairly integrated into the community and I will miss all these people a lot! Even though I’m still in Zambia, the capital, Lusaka, is pretty far from the village where I was staying (about 2 days of travel) and I won’t have much chance to visit as I’m working a “real” job now. And even if I do visit, it certainly won’t be the same as living there! So I also tried to spend a lot of time with my neighbors during the last few months just hanging out. My neighbor Oscar also came back from the city where he had been visiting relatives, which was good because he was one of my best friends in the village, so it was nice to see him again. His sister, my other best friend there, spent a lot of time teaching me how to cook Zambian food because she’s convinced I’m going to starve living on my own in Lusaka, without her there to cook nshima for me J

Health-wise, there was some drama in the last few months. First, my Peace Corps friend Elise started having really bad stomach pains that wouldn’t go away. Peace Corps told her she probably had an ulcer and gave her medicine for it, but the medicines didn’t help and the pain just kept getting worse and worse, so much that some days she couldn’t even get up or walk around. Ordinarily Peace Corps would have sent her to South Africa for further medical tests, but since she was so close to the end of her service, they just decided to send her home early. This was at the very beginning of March, about a month before we were supposed to go on vacation together to Egypt, so it was a bummer that she couldn’t go, because she had been really excited about our trip. I was really nervous because I didn’t want to travel by myself and my ticket was non-refundable, but luckily two other Peace Corps girls were planning a trip to Egypt around the same time so I was able to team up with them. Elise is back home now and still having medical tests but feeling better in general.

Then, about a week before I was supposed to leave the village, I got SICK. Somehow I had managed to go the whole two years without any serious illnesses, and then something hit me at the very end. Basically, I had a fever and my whole body was just hurting and aching and even when I tried to get up and walk my whole body was in pain. I took the malaria medication that Peace Corps gives us in case of emergencies, and started to feel better, but then the next day the pain started again. At this point, my neighbors started FREAKING OUT because they though I had serious malaria, and decided I needed to go to the clinic immediately. At this point I couldn’t manage to walk the 3 km to the clinic, so they had to take me on the back of a bicycle. When we got to the clinic, the guy working there (who’s not a trained nurse or anything) got worried and decided I needed to go to the hospital in Mbala immediately, so he ordered the clinic vehicle to take me and my neighbor (who was escorting me) to Mbala. Unfortunately, as soon as we left Kawimbe, the vehicle ran out of gas. So then the driver had to borrow my cell phone and climb to the top of a hill where there is cell phone coverage and call an ambulance to come from Mbala and pick us up. After waiting for an hour or two, the ambulance finally came and we managed to make it through the mud to Mbala. When we got finally got to Mbala hospital, it was late at night and there were no doctors around and the only person who saw me was a psychiatrist, and he just gave me more of the same malaria medication that I had already been taking. And they didn’t even do a malaria test to confirm if that was the problem! Being at that hospital just made me realize how ill-equipped the health system is here. I spent the night in the hospital and the next day my director from Kasama came to pick me up and took me to Kasama to rest for a while. After resting for a few days I was feeling mostly better, but I came to Lusaka for medical tests just in case. They told me that I either had a mild case of malaria (you can’t really get full-blown malaria if you’re taking anti-malaria pills, but you can get what is called “breakthrough malaria”) or I just had some kind of virus. Anyway, I was feeling totally better after a week or so. When I finally made it back to the village, it seemed like everyone had heard about me being sick, with all kinds of exaggerations being added to the story (i.e. “Miss Colleen, you are alive! I heard you almost died!”, “Colleen, we heard you were so sick you couldn’t move or speak or walk and we thought you were never coming back”, etc. etc.) I guess that’s just how village gossip is, haha.

Anyway, I ended up staying in the village an extra week or so just to say goodbye to everyone and make up for the time I missed when I was sick. We also had a Peace Corps party in Kasama to say goodbye to all the volunteers from my group who are going back to America (there are only about 5 of us from my group who are staying for a 3rd year; the rest are going back). From there it was on to Lusaka for the next part of the journey…

EGYPT AND ISRAEL

So, after finally moving out of the village, it was time for vacation before starting my job in Lusaka. The trip got off to a rocky start because I was on different flights from my two friends (since we had booked our tickets at separate times), and all I can say is NEVER fly on Kenya Airways if you can avoid it! All of my flights were delayed and I missed my connections and had to spend the night in Nairobi, Kenya and ended up getting to Cairo 48 hours later than I was supposed to! Grrrr… So that was frustrating, but once I made it to Egypt and met up with my friends, things went much more smoothly. We went to see the pyramids on my first day there, and I have to say, it was kind of a shock to realize that the pyramids and sphinx are located right in the middle of the suburbs of Cairo. I mean, we had to use the bathroom so we went into the Pizza Hut across the street and then came back and finished looking around these ancient monuments…bizarre. But obviously they were very awe-inspiring and a must-see if you ever go to Egypt. The other shocking thing about being in Cairo was the craziness of being in a big city after living in the African bush for 2 years. I mean, Cairo has about 20 million people…that’s like twice the size of NYC! Traffic was crazy and I thought I was going to die every time we crossed the street.

Another thing I hadn’t really thought about before coming to Egypt was what it would be like to travel as 3 single girls in a conservative, Muslim country. Obviously there are tons of tourists who come to Egypt as part of package tour deals, but I think it is somewhat different going as an independent traveler and using pubic transport, and I was just unprepared for the amount of harassment we would receive from men! I know it’s bad in most parts of the world compared to America, but this was worse than anything I’d ever experienced. I mean, on the Cairo metro (subway), they have specific cars reserved for women only, apparently because if single women travel in the mixed gender cars they often get groped. Geez. Anyway, we got used to it after a while and dressed pretty conservatively, and most of the comments from men were harmless (i.e. cheesy pick-up lines), but it made me appreciate American society more!

I don’t mean to only highlight negative things, because overall I really enjoyed my time in Egypt. And I always felt very safe—tons of people are out walking around on the streets even late at night. And everything is cheap and good, like the food! I think I ate enough falafel and shwarma to last a lifetime…

Anyway, after just a day in Cairo, we got on an overnight bus to head to Israel, where one of my friend Jocelyn’s dad lives. We got to the border at dawn and then took another bus to Tel Aviv, and then to Haifa, where he lives. There couldn’t be more of a difference between Egypt and Israel: while Egypt is conservative, crazy in a developing country sort of way, and cheap, Israel is liberal, orderly (basically like being in America), and kind of expensive. I have to say, although I enjoyed all of the historical sites in Israel, I also enjoyed the luxury of being somewhere very Americanized, as it’s been more than 2 years now since I’ve been in America. Anyway, Haifa is on the coast of the Mediterranean and is a beautiful city that really reminded me of San Francisco. While I was there I also got to meet up with one of my friends from Stanford, Leila, who is now living there and working at the world headquarters for the Baha’i faith. After staying in Haifa for a day, Jocelyn’s dad drove us around northern Israel where we got to see the Sea of Galilee and a town called Capernaum (where Jesus did some preaching) and we also went to the Golan Heights which is a very beautiful region near the border with Lebanon (don’t worry, it’s very safe now). The next day we went to Jerusalem, just in time for Easter! We stayed inside the Old City, where there is a path called the Via Dolorosa, which is basically the path that Jesus is said to have followed when he was going to be crucified. At the end of this path is the Calvalry, the actually spot where he was crucified and where the tomb was, and they’ve now built a church on that spot. This church is considered a sacred spot for Christians and is actually being shared between 5 denominations: Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Armenian, Coptic, and something else I’m forgetting. It was interesting to be in that church for Easter because there were several services going on at the same time and it was like the different denominations were almost competing with each other: i.e. the Greek Orthodox people were celebrating their Palm Sunday on that day so they were all going around waving palm fronds while the Catholics were having their Easter mass while other people were doing some Gregorian chants upstairs, while tons of tourists and Christian pilgrims were taking pictures…to be honest, it was kind of chaotic! But it was pretty cool to be in the exact spot where all the events celebrated on Easter took place.

And just outside this church is the most sacred spot in the world for Jews, the Western Wall, which is part of an ancient temple. Mainly people go there to recite verses from the Torah or write down prayers and stick them in the wall. When we went there it was during Passover, and before we could go to see it the police searched our bags and asked if we were carrying any concealed weapons or concealed bread. Apparently they take the no-leavened-bread-during-Passover rule very seriously there J

The next day we went to visit Bethlehem, which is in the West Bank, part of the Palestinian Territories, so we had to go through a checkpoint and had to take a taxi because Jocelyn’s dad has a car with an Israeli license plate, which isn’t allowed in the Palestinian Territories. Basically, this whole trip made me want to learn more about the history of Israel and Palestine and the territorial disputes because I’m kind of embarrassingly uneducated about it. Anyway, we saw the Church of the Nativity, built on the spot where Jesus was born. The next day, we went to a place called Masada, which was a fortress built by King Herod, and after that we went to the Dead Sea. The Dead Sea is about 30 times saltier than the ocean, and I know it’s supposed to be good for your skin and all, but I just found swimming in it kind of painful! I discovered cuts I didn’t even know I had, because they started burning… Finally, we spent a day at the border town on the Red Sea before heading back to Egypt. We were going to go to Jordan for a day to see an ancient city there called Petra, but at that point we were all so tired from traveling that we decided to just sit on the beach instead.

After crossing back into Egypt, we took a minibus across the Sinai desert back to Cairo, and then a train down to a place called Luxor, which has a lot of temples and famous tombs (the most famous being King Tut’s tomb, but there are LOTS there). We got to go inside some of the tombs, and it was amazing how well preserved they are, with paintings and hieroglyphs all over the walls. We also visited several ancient temples, and they were really impressive, and again, it was amazing to see things that are like 4000 years old but in really good condition. We also went for a sailboat ride on the Nile, which was fun. From there, we hightailed it back to Cairo, visited the big Egyptian Museum there (with lots of mummies and artifacts), did some shopping, and then it was back to Zambia!

Anyway, I’m now in Lusaka and just starting my new job. I will be working for a year with an organization called Catholic Relief Services, which does all kinds of development projects and has offices in countries throughout the world. I will be working specifically on a microfinance project, which is a way for villagers to take out loans and generate income through small businesses. I’m really excited to be working on something new after focusing on health for the past 2 years and I think I will learn a lot. The staff at the office seem really friendly and some of my Peace Corps friends are also staying in working in Lusaka for the year with different organizations, so it should be fun. I’m also going to America on home leave for August-Sept, so I’m pretty excited for that!

Wow, sorry this email ended up being so long and congrats if you’ve made it this far J I’d love you hear from you about what’s going on in your lives, so please drop me a line! Catholic Relief Services has even hooked me up with a laptop that has wireless internet, so I’m now much more connected than in the past! Take care everyone.

Love, Colleen

p.s. I’m planning on posting lots of pictures online soon, so I will send out a link when I do that!

Hi everyone!

Happy 2009! I just wanted to send an update on what's been going on over here.

First, here's my most exciting news: The books for the library project are finally here!!! YAY!!! So exciting. There was a part of me that was really afraid that the books would be stuck in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania indefinitely, so it almost seemed like miracle that the shipping company FINALLY got them to northen Zambia and they are great books in near-perfect condition! My friend Keli and I spent a day just sorting through them, since they are going to 4 different volunteers' sites in different districts, and let me tell you, 20,000 books is a LOT of books! They are a good mix of high-school level reference books on topics like biologly, world history, English reference books and dictionaries, etc., plus tons of children's story books which will be great for the younger students. The head teacher from my school is working with the Ministry of Education to transport our share of the books for free up to my village. The school is thrilled to receive them and is working to prepare shelves and clean out the space where the library will be. So I just want to reiterate a HUGE thank you to everyone who donated to this project-- you are the ones who made it happen! I paid the shipping company yesterday and we had just enough money to cover the costs (we had lost some money due to the change in the exchange rate, but were able to make up for it with additional donations. THANK YOU!) I will take some pictures of the books and the school once they arrive in my village and send them out.

Other than that, I enjoyed great vacation in Malawi with five other volunteers over New Year's. We traveled through southern Tanzania and spent the night in a town called Mbeya which is in some beautiful mountains. We also went to the market and found some great chitenges (traditional African cloth) with Barack Obama's face printed all over them. And we heard a Kenyan pop song about him that was playing on the radio (The entire song goes like this: "Barack! Obama! Barack! Obama! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!) Apparently it's one of the number one songs in southern Africa right now. I like Tanzania because it seems to be slightly more developed than Zambia and the food is so much better! They make this type of flatbread called chapati that doesn't seem to exist in Zambia. Anyway, from Tanzania we took another bus down into northern Malawi, which is also beautiful and full of mountains. The great thing about Zambia is that most of the country is completely flat and not particularly scenic, so whenever I go anywhere else I'm impressed by how great the scenery is. We finally made our way to Lake Malawi, which is kind of like a backpacker's paradise, because it's cheap and there are tons of places to stay and go swimming, kayaking, snorkeling, scuba diving, etc. and you meet people from all over the world. We met some people who had been driving all the way from Europe and were making their way to Cape Town, South Africa. We also met a group of 20 or so Peace Corps volunteers working in Malawi, so it was fun to compare experiences. After 6 days we had to drag ourselves away from the lake and make our way back to Zambia, but I can see how it would have been easy to get sucked into staying longer. We met some travelers who had meant to stay a few days and had been there for over a month!

Before leaving for Malawi, I spent Christmas with my neighbors in my village. I wanted to be there for Christmas because I wasn't there for it last year and I was curious to see how they celebrated it. Basically, it involved eating lots and lots of food and going to church. I was excited for church because I had heard that there would be a special Christmas play. I was thinking that this would involve baby Jesus, the virgin Mary, some angels and shepherds…you know, the usual. But no. The church youth group wrote this play themselves and it involved many characters including a bunch of drunk men, a prostitute, and a witch doctor who kills someone using a voodoo doll. They explained the moral of the play afterwards, and it went something like this: "Some people use Christmas as an excuse to do bad things. But Christmas is not a time for drinking beer, going to prostitutes, or hiring witch doctors to kill your enemies. Christmas is a time for remembering Jesus. The end." I wondered if it was ever the time for going to prostitutes or witch doctors, but I decided not to ask. After church we went home and my neighbors had prepared every possible form of carbohydrate (buns, donuts, rice, potatoes, nshima, and a drink made out of maize), plus a chicken and some vegetables. Later we listened to my iPod and the kids showed off their newest dance moves. People here know how to dance! It's embarrassing when the 6 year-old neighbor kids are better dancers that you are. But anyway, Christmas in the village was a good experience and my neighbors were really happy I was there, although I still look forward to some good old American Christmases in the future 

Anyway, I'm writing this from Lusaka, where I've been for the past few days with all of the volunteers from my group for our end-of-service conference. The Peace Corps staff basically talked to us about looking for careers and preparing to re-enter American society, but it was also a social time since it was the last time a lot of us will see each other. Our contracts finish at the end of March, but different people are leaving on different days. There are about 5 of us who are extending for a 3rd year with Peace Corps in Lusaka, and several more who are looking for actual jobs here in Zambia, so it will be nice to still have some of my friends around. Peace Corps is still trying to finalize my job for next year, but it looks like I may be working with an anti-malaria organization that does work all over the country but is based in Lusaka. Elise and I bought plane tickets to Egypt for about 2 weeks in April, and from there she'll fly back to America and I'll go back to Lusaka and start my job. I changed my plans a bit and decided to take my one-month home leave in August rather than May, since one of my best friends from college, Allison, is getting married on August 29 and I wanted to attend the wedding. So it'll be a few more months before I go back to America, but I think I'll be able to handle it. I'm heading back to my village tomorrow to start wrapping things up, and although I feel like I'll be ready to leave in March, it'll also be sad to say goodbye. The good news is that Peace Corps decided to replace my site after all, so another volunteer will be coming in September or October. I feel like there are so many potential projects that no volunteer could do everything, but it's nice to know that someone will be coming to help wrap up some of the projects that I and the previous volunteer started.

Hi everyone! Happy Thanksgiving!

I'm here in Kasama (the capital of Northern Province) with the 25 or so other volunteers in the province for Thanksgiving and a meeting the day afterwards. One of the senior Peace Corps staff from Lusaka came up to celebrate with us, and best of all, she brought 2 frozenturkeys!!! (I had thought there were no turkeys here in Zambia, but apparently the US embassy in Lusaka has a store for government employees with all sorts of food imported from America.) So they brought us turkeys, pumpkin pie filling, and cranberry sauce. Yay!!! I'm obviously very easily impressed after eating village food for a long time…

Anyway, one of the things about writing these updates is that after awhile I feel like there's nothing new to write about. I'm still living in the village, people in the village are still busy farming, and it's the rainy season once again, so work is a little more slow-paced. Mainly, I'm just getting ready to leave the village in about 4 months (at the end of March). I can't believe how fast time has gone! So I'm basically trying to prepare the health committees that I've worked with to work on their own after I leave, because I found out that Peace Corps will not be sending a volunteer to replace me at my site. This was kind of a disappointment because I feel like my community is really great and could benefit from another volunteer, but apparently the number of Peace Corps volunteers in Zambia keeps dropping due to budget cuts, so Peace Corps is temporarily closing down its programs in some of the more far-flung districts, and Mbala is about as far from the capital as you can get in Zambia. In my opinion, however, the remote places are the ones most in need of assistance, so hopefully they'll be able to send volunteers there in the future. Apparently Obama has promised to double the budget of thePeace Corps, so that's good.

The big headache I've been having is that the books for our library project have arrived in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, but have been stuck there for about 2 months! Apparently there were some mix-ups with the paperwork and we didn't have the required documents to move them away from the port, and then they had to be moved into another container, and then that container wasn't full so they had to wait for another shipment of goods going to Zambia to fill up the container before it could move, etc. etc. I haven't been able to get a straight answer on when the books will ACTUALLY be coming, because I feel like the guy from the shipping company in Lusaka just tells me what I want to hear, which is that he's "confident" the books will be coming "very soon" and that I shouldn't worry. However, he's been telling me that for about the past month, and for the past week or so I haven't been able to get through to him on his phone (or maybe he's just screening my calls, I don't know…). Anyway, I'm just going to keep bugging him and hope that the books make it here by January at least. I guess the lesson I've learned from all this is that I never want to work in the shipping industry, especially in Africa (not that I was ever considering that as a career option anyway, but still…)

Anyway, I'll be back in my village for most of December, including Christmas, which I'm really excited to spend with my neighbors in the village, especially because I wasn't there for Christmas last year. Then right after Christmas I'll be traveling with my friend Elise and some other volunteers to Lake Malawi to hang out on the beach for a week or so. We're going to travel from Mbala up into Tanzania to a town called Mbeya and then down into Malawi. There is a border crossing directly from northern Zambia to northern Malawi, but apparently it's really in the bush and it's unclear if there are vehicles that travel there or even roads, so we're not feeling quite adventurous enough to brave that route! In other travel plans, Elise and I are planning to go to Egypt at the end of March/early April, after we move out of our villages (assuming we can find plane tickets we can afford with our Peace Corps salaries). So I'm really excited about that. I don't really know what we're going to do except see the pyramids and hang around Cairo, but I'm going to get a guidebook soon and start planning. From there Elise will go home to the states and I will go back to Lusaka to move in and maybe start my job there. It looks like I will be working at a place called the National Malaria Control Center, although that hasn't been confirmed yet. But Peace Corps will pay for me to go home for a month vacation, so I'm hoping to go home in May. I hope to go to Michigan first and then to the west coast to visit friends and family there and go to my sister's graduation from college in LA.

So, the other thing that everyone's been talking about here lately is the elections. Not just the American elections, but also the Zambian presidential election, which was held on October 30. The results weren't announced until a few days later, and I went to watch the results on TV at one of the teachers' houses in my village. (Some of the teachers have solar panels and satellite dishes so they can have TV, even in the village). Anyway, we watched enough of the news coverage to see who had won (the candidate from the ruling party), and then as he started to give his acceptance speech, the teachers decided that that was too boring, and what they really wanted to watch was….PRO WRESTLING. I didn't realize this, but apparently WWE pro wrestling is hugely popular among well-off Zambians, and they watch it all the time. Here's a sample dialogue as we're watching pro wrestling:

Teacher 1: Madam, these are people from your country. So you must know how to fight like that, yes? Do you wear outfits like that too? Look at those ladies, they are very fierce… (as we are watching someone called "The Glamazon" wearing a leather bikini punching and kicking some other girl in the face)

Me: Um no, I never really learned how to wrestle even though I'm from America. It's only certain people in America that do that, they're like entertainers. And I don't have any outfits like that…

Teacher 1: I don't believe you; you're just feeling shy. Come on, show us some of your moves!

Me: Sorry, I really don't know any…

Teacher's teenage son, talking to his friend in Bemba: Miss Colleen isn't as cool as those other American ladies on TV. Too bad we didn't have one of those wrestlers come and live in our village for 2 years. They could teach us how to fight.

[Then two men start fighting, called "The Undertaker" and "Big Show," or something]

Teacher 2: Ah, look at The Undertaker. He always paints around his eyes like that; he must be a Satanist. I doubt that he has accepted Jesus into his life. [Note: we had just come from church at this point]

Teacher 1: Yes, good work Big Show! Crush his face! Sit on his head!!!

Village Woman (teacher's friend): [Starts cheering and ululating—a kind of cheering by moving her tongue in and out of her mouth really fast]

Teacher 1: Children, come and watch! Big Show is beating TheUndertaker! He is pounding him into the floor and stomping on him!

Teacher's young children: YAY!!! [Start dancing around the room]

Teacher 2: Our children love watching these fights. We are trying to educate them about other cultures of the world.

Teacher 1: Yes, you are very lucky to have such good entertainment in America. [And we continue watching wrestling for the next 2 hours with similar commentary, until I can't take any more and have to excuse myself to go home]

So yes, in case you were curious, it seems that no corner of the world is free from the wonders of American culture!

Anyway, I think that's all the news I have from here at this point. Take care everyone, and keep in touch!

Love, Colleen

So September is almost over, and I guess it's time for an update again...

I really can't believe how time just keeps going faster and faster here. I now have only 6 months left in my village, having spent 18 months there already. Crazy!!

Anyway, I'm here in Lusaka this week trying to look into job possibilities for next year. I'd like to extend as a 3rd year Peace Corps volunteer in Lusaka working with a health organization. There are a lot of groups working here in Zambia, but I think I want to work for one that is addressing malaria (still a leading cause of death here, although there's a lot of money coming in to fight it, so it's starting to be reduced) or child health and nutrition, or reproductive health. The majority of money from international donors coming into Zambia is for projects working on HIV/AIDS issues, but to be honest I'm a bit burned out on that and would like to work on something like malaria where I could maybe learn more new things. Anyway, I've been running around this week, but unfortunately a lot of the people I wanted to talk to have been out of down for various meetings and programs. But at least I've gotten to know what's out there and make introductions to some groups. In any case, I'll be moving out of my village at the end of March, so I still have some time to figure out the next step, I just wanted to start looking early. I'll also be coming home for a month home leave, hopefully around May or June. Yay! I'm definitely ready to at least visit America, if not move back there yet :)

I was ready to get out of my village for a bit anyway, as there has been major drama going on lately! It all centers around a witchcraft scandal that took place in the neighboring village (which is only 1 km from my village, so it affected the whole area). Basically, a whole bunch of people in that village, which is called Chele, have been dying lately. Several people there were sick with AIDS, so that was part of it, and the hot season has started as well, so there are more mosquitoes (and thus malaria). And sometimes people die suddenly in the villages from serious diseases that clinics here don't have the tools to diagnose, like meningitis. Anyway, the headman of Chele village decided that the reason people were dying was not because of any of these things, but because they were being cursed by witches. He called a village meeting and announced that there were obviously witches in the village killing people and he was not just going to sit by and do nothing about it. Instead, he decided to hire a "witch finder", a very wise old man with special powers, who would come to the village and tell them who the witches were.

Another development in the story is that he presented a "hit list", which he claimed to have found on the ground, with the names of six people and the dates when they were supposed to die. He said this list must have been dropped by one of the witches. (I never got a clear answer as to why a witch would be dumb enough to write down who he/she was going to kill, and label the list "People to Kill", but anyway...) No one seemed to suspect that the list could have been written by anyone else. Anyway, my neighbor Oscar was listed as the 4th person to be killed on the list, and he was terrified. He told me that he was praying every night and couldn't sleep. So this list was another reason people decided they had to do something about the witches.

The Witch Finder finally came from somewhere near Kasama, and everyone flocked to Chele village to watch the proceedings. Seriously, several of my meetings in other villages were cancelled because of this! I stayed away because I didn't want to be involved in this kind of witch hunt, but I heard about it from all my neighbors. Apparently the Witch Finder has some kind of radar inside his head that helps him to sense who is a witch. So he walked all around the village and inside everyone's house until he was able to sense where the witches were living. In the end, he ended up accusing not one but 3 people of being witches! It's really sad because one of the people accused is the husband of a lady on the village health committee and on a woman's group that I work with and she's great. Another man is the grandfather of a girl named Maidy who I hired to fetch water for me. All 3 of them seem to be no different from others in the village, so I'm not really sure why they were accused. Anyway, as punishment, they were each ordered to pay 3 goats, 3 chickens, and 150,000 Kwacha (~$50) to the cheif. If they didn't do that, they were going to be taken to the police in Mbala. And they might be kicked out of the village on top of all that! It was hard to watch all this (the proceedings went on for almost a week) with no other Americans to talk to, because all of my neighbors and everyone around took this so seriously. I think I've said this before, but EVERYONE believes in witchcraft in the rural areas where I live, and so they never doubted anything that the Witch Finder said.

Other than that, I guess it's been business as usual in the village. It's gotten HOT (probably 90 degrees or more every day) and October is going to be even worse, so I try to avoid biking during the day as much as possible. I finally finished training another health committee and I've been working with the ones that were already trained, so I have plenty to do. The local school is also preparing for the arrival of the books for their library. I talked to the shipping company, and apparently the cargo ship will be docking in Tanzania on Sept. 29 and the books will be coming to Zambia by the 5th of October or so. So exciting!

Also, some women approached my who are HIV positive and said they are interested in forming a support group and giving talks to other villages in the area encouraging people to get tested. That's awesome because most people who test positive are very shy about revealing their status to others because of all the stigma. But these women said they have seven people from villages within the area who are openly positive and ready to start educating others. So I'm hoping to start working with them soon.

I guess that's all I can think of for now. Take care everyone and drop me a line!

This is an update that I wrote in August but am just now posting on here...

Hope you're all doing well! Just wanted to give an update on what'sbeen going on in my life lately over here:

1. I was on vacation for most of July when my friend Marisa came to visit from America. It was a great trip and wonderful to see her. We did a lot of traveling: to Tanzania and Zanzibar island, then by train to Zambia and my village, then down to Lusaka and to Livingstone, where Victoria Falls is, and a day safari to Botswana. It was a busy trip and Marisa did a great job documenting it, so I'm going to be lazy and give you a link to her report of the trip, which I've posted on my blog. I'll just add a fewdetails from the beginning of my trip. I decided I would just hitchhike from Mbala to the Zambia-Tanzania border, where I could catch a bus going to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania (where Marisa was flying in). People from my village hitch to the border all the time to buy cheap goods from Tanzania (hitchhiking is very safe here), and it's only supposed to take about 4 hours, although the dirt road is very bumpy and in bad condition. So on the day I wanted to leave, I found a truck that was leaving Mbala at 6 a.m., hopped in the back with all the other passengers and luggage, and we were on our way. Unfortunately, after only about an hour, the truck broke and the driver couldn't repair it, so we were all stuck on the side of the road in this village in the middle of nowhere waiting for othertransport. By about 1 or 2 p.m., we were still waiting, and some of my fellow passengers were talking about building a big bonfire in case we had to spend the night in the bush. Luckily, a beer distributingtruck finally passed by and picked us up. This truck was selling Chibuku, a kind of local African beer made from maize, and it is white and kind of thick like a milkshake or smoothie. So the truck had hugedrums full of Chibuku in the back, and they would stop at every village along the road and people would run out with buckets to buy the Chibuku, which workers would siphon out of the drums with hoses. The driver also offered all of us passengers free Chibuku, so people were definitely enjoying the ride (unfortunately I can't stand the stuff—it's really bitter). Anyway, it was a long ride because thetruck stopped so much, and we didn't get to the border until almost 9 p.m., and my backpack was covered in Chibuku by then, but I made friends with some of my fellow passengers and the driver. I ended up staying the night at a guesthouse with some of the nice ladies I met on the truck. In the morning the driver helped me cross the border, but he took me around a back alley behind the official border post, and suddenly we were in the town on the Tanzanian side of the border with buses to Dar. Apparently he wanted to help me avoid paying the $100 Tanzania visa fee, but I told him I needed to go back and get my passport stamped so I didn't get in trouble with the police…but I guess it's not that hard to sneak across borders here! Anyway, I eventually got a bus, and southern Tanzania is beautiful, with lots of highlands and valleys. I made it to Dar the next morning, and Marisa flew in that night, and we were off to Zanzibar island by boat the next day!

2. Another exciting development is that our proposal to ship books here to start libraries has now been fully funded! So a huge THANK YOU to everyone who donated money or forwarded the info to other people! I'm now trying to iron out all the logistical details of shipping the books, which is kind of a nightmare. I'm definitely getting a crash-course on how the international shipping business works. Forexample, the books are right now being shipped by sea from Maryland to Dar es Salaam (the nearest port). We need to get several original documents from that shipping company and somehow get them to the African shipping company that will be picking the container up when the ship docks in Dar. But the container belongs to the American shipping company, so in order to take it away from the port and into Zambia, we have to pay a deposit. Also, once the container arrives at the Tanzania-Zambia border it has to clear customs and pay some fees and taxes. Then, once the container finally arrives in northern Zambia, we will have 24 hours to offload the 20,000 books, and then the empty container has to be taken back to Dar es Salaam. On top of that, the value of the dollar has fallen since we wrote the proposal, and since we were paid the money in Kwacha (Zambian currency), we got less money than we thought. And fuel prices have risen, making shipping costs higher than we anticipated. But luckily, we found a new shipping company that gave us a better discount, and it looks like everything is going to work out just fine in the end (knock on wood). JThe books should be on African soil by mid-September sometime But yeah, all the logistics are kind of overwhelming, but I'm learning alot. I think the main problem is Zambia being a land-locked country, so anything that is shipped by sea has to clear a lot of customs in order to come here. I'll keep you posted on how it all works out.

3. Another big development here in Zambia is that the president, Levy Mwanawasa, died last week. He had had a stroke back in July and was in a hospital in France, apparently in a coma, and he finally died on Tuesday last week. The news spread quickly through my village (it was announced on the radio), and people were really upset, especially because they don't know what's going to happen now. President Mwanawasa was only the 3rd president that Zambia's ever had, and hewas really popular in the rural areas because of his agricultural policies (i.e. giving subsidized fertilizer to farmers). He was also really trying to crack down on corruption. Anyway, the government hasdeclared 7 days of national mourning, meaning that government offices and things are closed. Also, apparently the president's body is now back in Zambia and is being taken to all of the regions of Zambia so that people can pay their last respects (it's actually coming here to Kasama tomorrow). I'm not sure when the actual funeral in Lusaka is going to be, but I heard a rumor that it won't be until September or October—I guess they embalmed the body really well(?) Under Zambia'sconstitution, the vice president is supposed to lead the country until new elections can be held after 90 days. Everything is very peaceful though, and I don't think there will be riots or anything like that,but keep your fingers crossed. Everyone just seems really sad and a bit shaken up, and it's an interesting experience because I've never been in a country when the president has died before (I guess the last U.S. president who died was Kennedy, right?)

4. And finally on a lighter note, here's something that I could add to the "Things that would never happen in America" list: A 16 year-old boy in a village near where I live was recently arrested for having sex with a goat. I'm not sure if/how the police confirmed that he actually had sex with the goat (he was reported by his neighbors), but they came from Mbala to arrest him and take him to jail. Apparently he's now facing a possible life sentence. Now I definitely don't support the abuse of barnyard animals or anything, but doesn't that seem slightly harsh?Ok, well that's all I can think of for now. Hope everyone's enjoying the end of summer, and let me know how you're doing if you get a chance!

Hi everyone,

My good friend Marisa from college recently came to visit me here in Africa, so I thought I'd post her stories of our travels on here. Enjoy!

On July 1st, I started my 25-hour trip on 3 planes with 4 stops to finally get to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania (the capital.) Colleen, my friend from undergrad, was waiting for me at the airport. Tanzania is on the Eastern coast of Africa, south of Kenya, and a few countries up from South Africa. We stayed at a hostel, and then got up the next morning and hopped a ferry to Zanzibar. This is a small island on the coast. It is famous in Africa for being a spice island, for being Muslim amidst lots of Christianity, and for being a tourist hot spot, with beaches, an old colonial town (Stonetown,) and tourism infrastructure. We spent a few days in Stonetown, where everyone wanted us white folk tourists to come into their shop and buy stuff. We ate some great local food there, and Colleen and I got gelato, which was not good, but Colleen thought it was great because she has been left to her own concoctions for over a year's time. : ) We also did a Spice Tour, in which a very expert guy taught us about what spices were grown on this spice island and showed them to us. That was great. We also were taken to a Slave Cave, where people were kept when the trade became illegal.

Then we took a dalla-dalla (truck with seats in the back, where people are jammed in like sardines) to a hotel between Bwejuu and Paje, two beach towns. The beach was lovely, fringed with palm trees, and incredibly peaceful and lovely. We had an adventure here, coming back from dinner in the pitch-black darkness, with only my headlamp. We had hoped the tide would be down a bit so we could easily follow the beach, but instead, we got pretty wet and had to jump off some embankments and avoid creepy little white crabs. : )

We left Zanzibar and took a train from Dar es Salaam across the country, into Zambia. Colleen's village, called Mula, is just over the border from Tanz. The trip was about 1.5 days, and we had nice first-class beds, and ate in the dining car and so forth. It certainly wasn't a nice train as far as the U.S. is concerned, but still, not bad! We met a pair of British people our age, who were great company, and whom we'd also meet up with later in Livingstone! We also randomly met up with a girl from Stanford, who was a Human Biology major like us, just a year ahead! She was traveling to meet her Peace Corps friend! Pretty crazy!

Our train arrived in our drop-off spot at 5am, which was 6 hours late, and it might have been a bit lucky that we happened to wake up and ask where we were and get off. This town was Kasama. We got a taxi to the Peace Corps (P.C.) house, which is in this town because it's the capital of the Northern Province, and so is the center for the 50? or so P.C. volunteers in the province.

Our next goal was to get to her village: Mula. In order to do that, we took a 3-hour bus ride to Mbala, and then got bikes and biked the 20k to her village. There is a road to the village, but it's in poor condition (like most roads), is made of dirt, and is not traveled much by vehicles, much less mass transport. Colleen's PC friend and colleague, Elise, also came with us to her village. Elise's village was 50k BEYOND Colleen's village. Suffice it to say, these chicks are in much better bike-shape than me, so I was panting and trying to keep up on this slow uphill journey, and Elise was quite kind and would notice me panting and say, "Oh no, I think my bike seat just fell down!" and so we'd stop for a bit. : ) Very considerate.

Scarily (it's a word, I swear), it became dark before our bikes made it to Colleen's hut, so we were biking along a path in the dark. Happily, no one even fell off their bike.

Some background info: Colleen is a Peace Corps volunteer in the Health sector, which means that she lives in a mud hut with a thatched roof and spends 2 years teaching different community groups in the surrounding villages about topics like malaria, HIV, sanitation, nutrition, etc. Back to the story.

In her mud hut, there is no electricity (=when it's dark out, it's dark inside, and food is prepared over a charcoal fire that you have to make,) there is no running water (=it's gathered in buckets). It's all kind of like permanent camping. Oh, and there is no toilet (there is a little brick 'building' like an outhouse nearby, but it's a hole in the ground, so you become very adept at… that.) haha. The weirdest thing to me was actually the lack of lighting in a room. When it got dark at about 7pm, we'd all strap on our headlamps and light a few candles, but the rooms were still not very illuminated.

There were a few events of my particular note that happened in the village. The village time was really the most important of the trip, because it was the non-touristy, this-is-how-life-is-here part. We ate dinner several nights with a family that are Colleen's best friends in the village. The main part of each meal is called n'shima, which is basically cornmeal boiled so much that it becomes a very thick porridge that you can shape into a ball and then a little cup-shape to pick up other accompanying foods, like beans, eggs, or boiled spinachy leaves called rape. (no joke.) If you're me, you burn your fingertips every time you reach into the n'shima because it's so hot. Her friends were quite kind and very hospitable. Colleen had to do a lot of translating.

Another day, we watched the local soccer team play another village team. Some participants played in bare feet! My wussy feet surely couldn't stand up to that! Colleen told the coach that I had played soccer, and so the team wanted me to come teach them drills that they might not already know! So Drill Master Marisa came into being. I had them warm up by running around the field, doing squat jumps, and I even did push-ups with them while counting. Then we practiced penalty kicks, communicating on the field, and it was great fun!

My other skill I brought to the village, was not in fact anything medical (my preceptor Dr. McClellan is reading this and thinking Thank GOD!) It was my skill in banana bread making. (Soccer and banana bread!) The local ladies' club wanted to learn to make a new recipe, so Colleen and I geared up for it. She first taught them some principles of nutrition. Then we made banana bread. The tricky part here was that in addition to the fact that most of these local ladies didn't have access to vanilla/refined sugar/baking soda, etc, nobody has an oven. So what you do is set a pan on coals, and put a top on it, and then put coals on top of the pan lid. : ) It actually turned out pretty well!

Another event of particular interest to me was a tour of the local clinic. Those staffing the clinic were not medical professionals. There used to be a nurse there, but he/she left, and so the cleaning folk, who had seen how to distribute the medications, help with childbirth, etc, were now in charge! I was shown all the medications they had, which was pretty much 1 bottle of medication for each common medical problem. But think: if you had a slightly less-common problem, or a tricky presentation, or you had a bad reaction to that one drug for your ailment, you would be stuck!

At this point, I have to share my one gruesome event. It's really not so bad (as far as my stories go), and is sort of funny in retrospect. I previously held a 16-year record of not vomiting -- since I was 8, which Dang It! was broken at Colleen's village. It wasn't from food poisoning, or a weird African illness. I puked because I didn't drink enough liquid or eat enough food when I took my anti-malaria pill in the morning. It's never fun to puke, but relatively, it's probably more 'fun' for a weird med student like me to puke than your average Joe, because I'm vomiting and thinking, "Wow, it's so amazing that my body has this auto-pilot system and it just comes up in waves!" Happily, after up-chucking off Colleen's porch, I felt much better, and was able to eat/drink, and took another pill which resulted in no sickness.

After the village, we took a series of bike/bus rides to the capital, Kasama, and down to Livingstone, which basically borders Zimbabwe, Botswana, and Namibia. This took several days. Livingstone is a very touristy city, because it boasts one of the 7 Natural Wonders of the World: Victoria Falls. We did see the falls, twice, and the resultant mist always makes a rainbow with sunlight or with a full moonlight! Very cool. We also went white-water rafting one day, which was my favorite day of the trip because it was so fun. Actually, there are crocodiles on that river, but they never eat rafters because we stay in the fast-moving water and they stay on the shore for the most part. Or so we were told! We flipped the boat on a huge wave and it was great.

We also shopped at a local craft market, and I bought some scarves, earrings, a couple of 'paintings,' necklaces, etc. We went on a sunset booze cruise with some of Colleen's PC friends, which was quite fun, except that I was kissed by our bus driver for some reason (yikes), which I found to be quite creepy. We also went on a safari (that's right, get jealous!) which was actually over the border into Botswana at Chobe Wildlife Park. We rode around in the back of one of those jeep vehicles and saw elephants, giraffes, hippos, monkeys, various types of African antelope like kudu, etc, lots of cool birds, crocodiles, warthogs, and baboons. The baboons are really creepy and were also present around Victoria Falls.

In Livingstone, we also ate some really good food, including what is reputed to be the Best Hamburger in Africa. I got one, and it was darn good. We had two roommates in our dorm-style hostel room, and they were both British medical students! It was very interesting to compare our educations. I was quite jealous that they go right into medicine after high school, so this guy who was 21 was already a third-year, and I'm 24 and and a 2nd-year! No fair! : ) Anyway, they were both very nice and we had fun chatting with them. We also saw our other previous British buds at this hostel (Jollyboys.)

That's pretty much the end of my trip. We took a bus back to Lusaka, had some trouble getting a hotel room, but then ate some yummy Chinese food. Then I got on the plane the next day, and then I got stuck in S. Africa, and then also in London, but remarkably got home only 5 hours later than planned. This way home was over 30 hours long, and I looked at my legs on my Chicago layover, and noticed some swelling (peripheral edema.) It freaked me out a little, because hey! I'm only 24! and I'd really only seen edema in older patients. Of course I understood why I had the swelling – because I'd been in a sitting position forever, and so promptly laid on the ground in the airport and put my legs up on a wall like a weird medical student. It is really important to get up and walk around and exercise your legs during flights, which I did about every 2 hours, but apparently it wasn't enough. After I made it to Phoenix and got some horizontal time, I was back to normal. Or, as normal as I ever am. : )

Africa pics:

http://picasaweb.google.com/marisajo/AfricaTripJuly2008?authkey=5ZdvyZcEKUw

Hi everyone,

I hope you are all doing well! Things are going along as usual here, and my work has really picked up now that the rainy season has ended. I also have a new Peace Corps volunteer neighbor, so that's exciting, and he seems to be settling in just fine. Some other exciting news is that my good friend Marisa from college is coming to visit for 3 weeks in July. I'm going to meet her in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and then we'll travel to the island of Zanzibar first and then take a train down to Zambia and spend some time in my village, and from there go to see Victoria Falls. I'm so excited to see my friend and to travel around with her!

Also, I'm still working on a library project for my village. The main hang-up now is lack of funding, as we only have about half of the money we need to ship the books here. A lot of people have been asking about sending books, but actually we already have about 20,000 books in a warehouse in Maryland that are just waiting to be shipped, so what we really need right now is money for shipping. So if you could please forward information about our project to any groups or individuals who might want to donate, that would be WONDERFUL. All they need to do is go to the Peace Corps website (http://www.peacecorps.gov/), click on "Donate Now" and then "Donate to Volunteer Projects," and then search under Zambia for the "Community Libraries" project by C. Staatz. I know the website was having some problems in the past, but it should be working fine now. Thank you!

Anyway, instead of writing a regular update, I thought I'd just share a few stories, which I could title "Things that would never happen in America":

1) Churches get swarmed by killer bees

I was in church last week—I usually go every week in the village because I LOVE the gospel choir and singing and dancing that makes up most of the service—and suddenly I heard screams coming from outside and all of the children who were outside for Sunday School suddenly ran inside through the church. Then everyone, including the preacher, who was in the middle of the sermon, took off running for the back door. I had no idea what was going on at this point, but I just followed the crowd. Finally I asked one of the teachers who speaks English what was going on, and she explained calmly that a huge swarm of bees had invaded the church. Then, as quickly as it started, the bees apparently moved on and found another building to invade, and we all went back in the church and finished the service as normal.

2) People tell you you're fat all the time and think it's a huge compliment

I thought I had gotten used to this by now, as most Zambians (I think most Africans) think of being fat as being healthy, well-fed, and beautiful. So people regularly come up to me in the village and say things like, "Oh, hello, Miss Colleen. You look so fat today! What have you been eating? You must give me some so that I can become fat like you!" But lately, I don't know why, people have been telling me this ALL the time. And I'm fairly sure I haven't suddenly gained weight since my clothes all fit the same, etc. Still, I was a little offended the other day when a guy at the post office in Mbala cheerfully told me "Madam, you look like you could just burst out of your clothes!" (I was wearing a baggy t-shirt at the time.) But trying to be culturally appropriate, I thanked him anyway for his compliment :)

3) You get marriage proposals at least every week

Another question that Zambians in my village never get tired of asking is why I can't stay in Zambia and marry their son/brother/nephew/etc. If I tell them I want to go back to America because it's my home and I would miss my family and friends, they say that's even better, because then I can take their son/brother/nephew to America with me, and everyone knows that life in America is wonderful and perfect. Usually I make a joke at that point or change the subject, but people never get tired of asking. My favorite recent variation on this theme is when a guy in my village told me, "Madam, you MUST marry an African man so that your children can be just like Barack Obama!"

4) Goats, dogs, and other creatures fall down people's toilets

My friend and Peace Corps neighbor Elise recently went to use her pit toilet in the middle of the night and heard something crying from down in the toilet. Thinking she was just imagining it, she went back in the house, but came back with a flashlight to investigate, just in case. Looking down the toilet, sure enough, there was a terrified baby goat inside at the bottom, making loud baah-ing noises. Elise, feeling bad, woke up her neighbors who then somehow managed to use a piece of Elise's rope to lasso the goat and pull it out. Apparently the goat stood there hyperventilating for a while, too scared to move or go anywhere in case it might fall in such an awful pit again. I thought this was a funny, random incident, so I told the story to my neighbors in my own village, who were unimpressed and said something like, "yeah, baby goats are falling down people's toilets all the time. Stupid goats." And then just today, another Peace Corps volunteer said that her puppy fell down her neighbor's toilet last week and had to be rescued with a very long shovel. This is why Ikeep a cover over my pit toilet…

5) People are arrested for being witches

I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before, but belief in witchcraft is very strong and widespread here in Zambia. EVERY single Zambian I've talked to about it believes in it, including very educated people like teachers. And not only that, there are very specific, well-known ways that witches behave, including thefollowing:

they only travel at night they travel at night through the sky in flying basketswhen they are in the flying baskets, they must be nakedwhen they are flying, they are invisible, so you can't see them or the basketsthe baskets move very fast, faster than an airplanethe baskets are fueled by blood (someone told me that "the petrol for the baskets is the blood of people killed by the witches")you can recognize a witch if you find a naked person in public at night, because they must be a witch who has fallen out of their basketThe amazing thing is that everyone I've talked to agrees about all of these details and states them as indisputable facts. They usually ask me if we have such witches in America, and then if I say I don't think we do, they say, "ah, that is because you are a developed country." There are other things that some people add to the story, like that witches eat people's hearts or come and haunt people's houses at night, but the other details remain the same. Not only that, but the police regularly arrest people and take them to jail for being witches, and these arrests are reported on the government news and radio. Recently a shop owner in Mbala was arrested and taken to Mbala prison. When I asked my neighbors how the police knew he was a wizard (what people call male witches here), they said he was found naked in the street outside a bar at night. When I asked them how they knew he didn't just get drunk and take off his clothes, rather than having fallen from his flying basket, they looked at me like I was stupid and said they didn't think that was likely.Ok, well, I think that's enough stories for now. I hope everyone is doing well, and I'd love to hear from you!

Just wanted to give an update from over here-- it's been a while. Ijust realized I never sent an update about my family's visit backaround Christmas and New Year's, which was a while ago! It was GREATand a bit surreal to see them here in Zambia. I was sooo nervous thatthings wouldn't go smoothly with all the transport (long bus rides tomy site) or that they wouldn't like roughing it in my mud house, orthat someone would get really sick, but everything went amazinglywell! They did fine even with the big bugs, mud, rain, etc. On the wayto my village, we took a taxi from Mbala, and the taxi got stuck inthe mud and barely made it all the way to my house, because there hadjust been heavy rains, but it got there. They didn't really get tomeet any of my Peace Corps friends, since most other volunteers wereon vacation other places for the holidays, but it was great that theygot to meet tons of people in my village. We visited my clinic, thelocal school, church, shops and they also met all of my neighbors. Weeven had a party at my house on the last day with munkoyo, this drinkthey make in the village out of maize, kind of like an energy drink,but surprisingly good (or maybe I've just lived in the village toolong so my standards have lowered), as well as fritters (fried dough,like doughnuts). We invited all my neighbors to my house, and someonebrought a stereo with tapes of Zambian pop music, so everyone wasdancing. I think the villagers especially enjoyed my dad's dancing :)They also got to eat nshima and learn how to make it, so I'd say theyhad an authentic village experience.So after spending a few days in the village, we headed back to Lusakaand then flew to Livingstone, where Victoria Falls is. My dad andsister went whitewater rafting on the Zambezi river (which I had donewith my friend Clara earlier last year), while my mom and I did some

other adventure activities. There's this huge gorge between Zambia andZimbabwe where the falls are, and you can do this thing called theGorge Swing where you're attached to a harness and basically jump offthe cliff and fall really fast and then swing across the gorge. Ithought it was really fun, but I like that kind of thing...We also went on a safari just over the border in Botswana, which wasgreat and kind of luxurious (really good food, free drinks etc). Andalso lots of animals, of course :)Overall, I thought the vacation was a really good mix of being in thevillage and seeing how most Zambians live and doing the tourist thing.And it was so great to see my family and spend a few weeks with them,and now I feel like they have a much better idea of what I'm doinghere. Hopefully my mom will stop worrying so much!Since that time, I've been back in the village mostly, except for ashort trip to visit Lake Tanganyika with some other volunteers. In thevillage, things have been going pretty well, except that work is SOfrustrating in the rainy season. I haven't been able to reach one ofthe villages I used to work in since December, since the path has beenflooded and the water would be above my waist. And in the villages Ican go to, people have been incredibly busy with farming. Some thingshave come together, though: I organized for a mobile HIV testing unitto come to my village and offer testing at the clinic, for example.The first time the testers were supposed to come, turnout was greatand people came from up to 20 km away, but unfortunately the testersdidn't show up because of a vehicle breakdown. So we rescheduled, andwhen testing actually happened the next week, turnout wasn't that highbecause people were afraid the testers wouldn't come again. But Ithink I'll keep trying to arrange for testing to happen every month or

so, because people are really eager overall to know their status.On a sad but related note, I stayed in the village an extra day beforecoming to Lusaka last week because of a funeral for a teacher I usedto work with in my village. She had been sick with AIDS for some time,but her condition deteriorated really fast: up until December she hadstill looked ok and was teaching at the school and everything. It wascrazy because even though I know AIDS is everywhere here, she was thefirst person I had worked closely with and been friends with who hasdied. One of the nurses at my clinic also has AIDS and now has TB aswell, so she's on leave right now. It's terrible because AIDS reallyis affecting the workforce here, as well as the families and friendsof those who are sick.I've also been continuing to work with the health committees that havebeen trained and trying to motivate them to keep doing healtheducation and village inspections, even during the rainy season. I hadalso been planning to do a camping trip with students from the schoolsin my area during their break in April and do anti-AIDS activitieswith them, but my proposal was rejected. Peace Corps volunteers canget funding for HIV/AIDS related projects through US government moneythat Bush has earmarked for HIV/AIDS activities, but the rules areconstantly changing and proposals have to meet very specific criteria.For example, I'm not allowed to do a camping trip involving studentsfrom 3 different schools because they can only fund projects thatinvolve one specific "community." (even though the 3 schools are in 3villages right next to each other, apparently that is not acommunity). I'm planning to re-write the proposal so that it involvesonly one school, so it might actually get funded and we can do thecamp over the next school holiday in August. Oh, the US government...

In other news, there's a new group of Peace Corps trainees in countryalready, and one of them will be posted a new site only about 20 kmfrom me, so that's exciting! The new volunteer will be coming to staywith me next week for a few days so that I can orient him/her to thearea, and then they will move in after finishing training in April.Apparently some of the new volunteers are former Peace Corps Kenyavolunteers who were evacuated after the recent violence there. It willbe exciting to meet them all and have a new neighbor in my area.I was here in Lusaka this week for medical and dental exams, as wellas a conference with Peace Corps staff to reflect on our first year ofservice. We also were given information about opportunities to extendfor a 3rd year by working with an organization in Lusaka. There areTONS of organizations doing interesting development work here (malariacontrol programs, nutrition programs, maternal health, as well asHIV/AIDS of course), and I'm interested in pursuing a career ininternational health/development, so it would be a really neatopportunity to work with one of those groups, and completely differentfrom working in the village. It's definitely something I'mconsidering, and if we stay for a 3rd year, Peace Corps will pay forus to go home for a month vacation. It's tempting, but we'llsee...luckily I don't have to make a decision for a while...

Colleen's family had a terrific time visiting her village over the Christmas holidays. Getting there and back (via the renowned Zambian transportation system) was certainly part of the adventure, but the most memorable part was the three days we spent living with her in her mud house and meeting her neighbors, friends and work colleagues. After the village visit, we spent a few more days having adventures (whitewater rafting, jumping off cliffs) at Victoria Falls, and then several more days on a safari at Chobe National Park in Botswana. All in all, it was one of the best trips of our lifetimes. Here is a link to photos of our time in the village, which gives an idea of Colleen's life in Zambia. We hope they might entice anyone reading this to get on a plane and visit her yourself. She would love to have more vsitors, and we guarantee you won't regret it!!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/17231459@N08/sets/72157604041157021/

Just thought I'd write a little email update for the holidays! I hope everyone's doing well, and I'd love to hear from you! I'm here in Lusaka (the capital), waiting for my parents and sister to arrive for their visit! I think they just left Michigan around this time, so it'll be like 36 hours or something until they actually arrive here, but I'm still excited :)

So, here are a few glimpses of what's been going on in my life recently:

1) I had a little adventure with my friend Elise. She's my nearest Peace Corps neighbor, and our villages are about 50km apart, which takes us about 3.5 hours biking on the main road (a dirt road in

pretty good condition). So, a few weeks ago, I had gone out to Elise's house for a visit, and we decided to bike back to my house using this shortcut we had heard about. Supposedly the shortcut was only 30 km, so we were very excited about this. We started off from her house down a small path, and all was going well until we arrive at this HUGE swamp/river. There was no way we were going to cross that thing unless we wanted to go swimming, which wasn't really possible with our bikes anyway (plus the water was really more like mud). But suddenly, out of nowhere, this man paddles up in a wooden canoe! Well he didn't really "paddle", since he basically just had a stick he was plunging into the mud and pulling the boat along. He assured us that there was no problem, he would take us across the swamp in his canoe. Somehow he managed to fit both of our bikes, our bags, and the two of us into the canoe. I seriously was wishing I had my camera at this point, because it was kind of ridiculous. After some hard work paddling us across the swamp, we reached the other side and thanked him. We thought this was the end of our adventure, as the man told us just to follow the path and we would reach my village. Well, somehow, we completely lost the path and ended up in the middle of a bean field. We didn't know what to do, but we saw a large procession of people so we decided to follow them. Turns out they were going to a funeral-- oops. So after we crashed this funeral, one lady was nice enough to show us the way back to the path (it had also started raining by this point). She warned us that we would have to cross another river, but it was "just a small one". In the end, we crossed a total of 4 more rivers: two by stepping on rocks to get across, one by walking on a log "bridge", and one by just wading across, all while

carrying our bikes. We were in the middle of the bush-- we even saw a monkey sitting on a rock watching us at one point! And we ended up walking a lot of the way because it was too muddy to bike. But the scenery was gorgeous-- we hiked through this incredible gorge between two large rock formations. It was probably the prettiest scenery I've seen in Zambia. And finally, more than 6 hours after starting our journey, we arrived at my village, wet, exhausted, and covered in mud. Luckily, Elise has a good sense of humor and we laughed about the craziness of the whole day afterwards :) Needless to say, I will be using the main road next time I want to visit Elise, rather than braving the "shortcut" again!

2) It's the rainy season here now! It doesn't rain nonstop or anything, but when it does rain, my yard basically turns into a giant mud pit. I have definitely slipped a few times. And if I want to bike anywhere, I've started carrying a washcloth with me so I can at least attempt to wipe the mud off of me after I arrive at my destination. I think I might need to give the girl who washes my clothes a raise or bonus during the rainy season :) Another consequence of the rains starting is that it's planting time. I planted some watermelons and pumpkins around my house, but I'm most excited about the sweet corn seeds that my mom sent me. People have never heard of it before, and are baffled that a kind of corn exists that can't be used to make nshima (i.e. you can't take it to a grinding mill to make flour, as they do with the maize that is grown here.) I'm excited for my corn

to be ready so I can cook it for all my neighbors :)

3) In terms of work, things are definitely slowing down, since most of the community health committee members I work with are also farmers, so they're extremely busy right now. We had a nice event for World AIDS Day on December 1 with many village headmen (the leaders of

villages), teachers, clinic staff, women's group members, etc. There were some dramas performed, a question and answer session, and all was going well until the Cheif stood up to give his speech. He basically declared that we should not be promoting condoms because they encourage promiscuity and warned people not to trust condoms to prevent HIV because they could break. (NO! this was not the message he was supposed to convey). He declared that we should only promote abstinence among young people instead. And on top of that, many of the teachers and community leaders agreed with him. It was so frustrating, because part of my job is to teach about condoms, and studies have continually shown that encouraging condom use is MUCH more effective that promoting abstinence alone. But it is so hard to change people's mindsets about condoms, at least over a short period of time. People in rural areas still mainly believe that condoms are for prostitutes to use, or among married couples as a method of family planning. There is a ridiculously high rate of teen pregnancy and STDs here, so obviously people aren't abstaining. The head teacher recently told me that at Mbala High School, almost a quarter of the girls got pregnant in the last year. It's crazy! I get so frustrated when discussing this issue sometimes.

4) Since my work with the village health committees is slowing down, I'm starting to work on some secondary projects, especially with the local schools. I'm working with some teachers to plan a camping trip for students in the 8th and 9th grade for 4 days during their next school holiday in April. We plan to have 60 students and 6 teachers to facilitate and discuss HIV/AIDS issues, assertiveness, goal setting, career plans, etc. I'm writing the budget here in Lusaka this week and submitting it to Peace Corps (we can apply for money for certain projects, especially those relating to HIV/AIDS), and I really hope it works out!

Another project I'm working on is developing a library for the biggest school in my area. The lack of reading materials available here to students and community members is pretty astounding. My neighbor has 1 children's book about animals that I'm sure she's read at least 50 times. Whenever I get Newsweek magazines from Peace Corps, people are always asking to borrow them. Also, teachers don't really have any reference books to look at if they want to expand on their lessons or

answer students' questions. So I'm working with a few other PC Volunteers who are also doing library projects, and we found a group that will ship books for free from the US Naval Academy (in Annapolis, MD) to the nearest port city (Dar es Salaam, TZ). We're working on getting funding to get the books shipped from Dar to Zambia. There are a few NGOs that we'll apply to go get books, but any personal donations would be helpful as well. I'll let you know the details when I find out, but I think there will be an address in Annapolis where people can send books (and I think that books can be sent relatively cheaply using the media mail rate at the post office). Simple reference books such as atlases, dictionaries, encyclopedias, etc. would be especially helpful, as well as children's books, so let me know if you have any old books lying around that you'd like to

donate :)

5) My saga battling the termites continues...they just don't give up! They've eaten a hole through another one of my walls and built some more mounds of dirt inside my house. My neighbor gave me the name of an industrial strength pesticide I could buy, but I think I'll look for something a little less toxic here in Lusaka. In other bug news, my neighbor killed a monster scorpion in my yard-- it was definitely more that 6 inches long, and kind of resembled a lobster! Later someone told me that I should have saved it to eat, and that they taste like crayfish.

OK, well I think this email is long enough, so I'll stop here. I'll try to post some more pictures after my family's visit and let you know how it goes. People in my village are really excited to meet them and are planning a party :)

I wish everyone the best in the holiday season and in 2008! Drop me a line and let me know how you're doing if you get a chance. Take care!

Hi everyone,

Ok, I guess it's time for another update! I can't believe it's Thanksgiving time already. I realized that this will be my third Thanksgiving in a row spent in Africa (during the last two I was in Tanzania)—crazy, huh? Although I miss seeing family and friends from home, I'm still very thankful to be here .

Well, first of all, I had a WONDERFUL time when my friend Clara was here to visit back in September. You can read her account of our time in my village below. It was really fun for me to be able to take her around in the village, and a bit strange to have someone from my world back home here with me in Zambia! I think Clara wins the award for most easy-going traveler. I was so impressed that she followed my instructions to pack lightly when she showed up at the airport with only a carry-on backpack. Amazing! She also didn't seem too fazed by the LONG, crowded bus rides that we took all over the country, or at least she put on a good act. Most importantly, it was really nice to catch up with her and hear about everything that's been going on since I left back in January. I think I hadn't realized how much I've missed my friends from home until I got to hang out with Clara for 3 weeks and then had to say goodbye to her again—sad!

After our time in the village, we headed to the opposite end of the country to be tourists at Victoria Falls and go to Botswana. It was really nice for me to have a vacation from the village, and we met a lot of interesting people from all over the world at our hostel. Clara kept making fun of me because I got really excited about things like eating pizza and Chinese food in Livingstone (the town where VicFalls is) and telling her that it was like being back in America, although she reminded me that America is still a bit more developed. We also went white-water rafting on the Zambezi river, which was a lot of fun, and a bit scary! They didn't really warn us that we would have to walk down into a HUGE gorge at the start of the trip. And the rapids were pretty big too—some were class V, which is the biggest kind. Luckily our guide was really good and Clara and I only fell out of the raft once. We saw a few crocs, but again our guide assured us that they were "just baby crocs" and that they "generally avoid the rapids" so we didn't need to be worried. We also went on a 2 ½ day camping safari in Botswana, which was awesome! It was a great time of year to see animals, and we saw EVERYTHING, including leopards, lions, and hyenas. And the scenery was gorgeous too—like a scene from the Lion King or something. I'm excited because I'm going to that same park with my family when they come at Christmas time.

So, after Clara left, I headed back to my village for a good stretch of time. It took a little while to get back in the work momentum again, but now things are starting to go really well. I started training another Neighborhood Health Committee in another village, and this group is SO motivated, which is really exciting. They are really excited to teach people in their village about improving sanitation conditions, nutrition, family planning, etc. They've even prepared a drama about diarrahea and the importance of good sanitation and washing hands, which was hilarious.

It was also Zambia's Independence Day on October 24, so it was interesting to see the festivities around that. Zambia has only been independent since 1964, so there are actually a lot of older people around who remember the time when the British were still here. The students at the local school prepared a lot of dramas and dances that day. There was a soccer game with the teachers, clinic staff and other government workers playing against the students from the school. Somehow I got forced into playing with the teachers' team, which people got a kick out of. I think the highlight of the game may have been when I kicked the ball into the WRONG GOAL—oops! I kept telling people that I'm terrible at playing soccer, but they didn't seem to believe me.

In other news, the rains have started here, so everyone is very busy with farming. Some people have oxen and they farm with plows, but others just farm by hand using hoes. It's SUCH hard work! The other day I went to the field with my neighbor to learn how to plant beans. I was exhausted after about half an hour of bending over and digging! And then after I left, my neighbor stayed in the fields for about another 4 hours. Wow, I always feel like a wimp compared to people in my village…Another consequence of the rains is that my house has been invaded by termites! They're so gross. It's terrible; they've already eaten holes all the way through two of the walls. I guess that's the problem with having a house made out of mud… Luckily I finally got some poison and my neighbor helped my fumigate my house and fill in the holes with more mud. So hopefully that solved the problem. I'm just glad we put more grass on my roof so that it doesn't leak…

I'm REALLY excited because my family (parents and sister) is coming tovisit in about a month! They're arriving on Christmas Day and we're doing basically the same thing I did with Clara: going to my village and then going to Victoria Falls and on a safari. I'm excited for them to see what life here is like. Well, I hope everyone is doing well! I'll be in town for the next few days, so if you have the chance to shoot me an email, I'd love to hear from you. Otherwise, I'll be in touch through letters; I've gotten WAY behind on replying to people so I'm sorry for that! Take care and much love,

Colleen

Hi All,

I can't believe it has already been over a month since I returned from Zambia visiting Colleen! I meant to update her blog with the "visitor's perspective" right when I returned. Oops. Anyway, we thought it would be fun if I posted my impressions of Zambia and her village as well as some of my pictures (since it was less weird for me to run around her village with a camera than is was for her) on her blog. I have to warn you, this post is likely to be exorbitantly long. Sorry! But hopefully after you've read it, you'll feel like you visited too!

So starting from right where Colleen left off in her last post, I arrived in Lusaka on Sept. 6 after only a minor delay at the Joburg airport. We stayed the first couple nights with Colleen's family friends, Mike and Fran in Lusaka, which was a really nice adjustment from the 16 hour flights. We got a chance to walk around the neighborhood in Lusaka a bit and visit the Peace Corp office. It was really funny, though, because Colleen kept saying she was in culture shock because the city was so developed it was, "like the US!” Which it is not, at all... it is very much like cities in most developing countries: Crazy traffic, lots of beat up dirt and gravel roads, fenced and walled houses, and lots of street vendors peddling goods (Colleen picked up a pair of pineapples... which was my first encounter with her excellent haggling skills.) I happen to enjoy cities like these, but no one was going to confuse it for San Francisco. But after spending time in her quiet village, I could see where she was coming from.

After a couple days of rest and relaxation (not to mention great food in the care of Fran!) we headed off to the bus station to start our long journey North to Kasama (the capital of Northern Province). Colleen has already explained some of the adventure that is the bus systems, but I wasn't thoroughly prepared. The buses themselves aren't bad. They look like they were luxury buses in China (there are lots of Chinese symbols printed about) about 20 years ago. But finding a seat was madness. As soon as the bus arrived in the terminal, the entire crowd launched themselves at the door so that Colleen and I were sandwiched between lots of sweaty people carrying various items such as Chickens, children, etc. Colleen just kept telling me to elbow my way through. But as it was, we still barely got seats in the back. The ride was LONG. The seats aren't terribly uncomfortable, but sitting on a crowded bouncing bus for 13 hours while you're trying to get some sleep is hard no matter what. And to be honest, the scenery in that part of the country, at that time of year is pretty darn flat and dry... not very interesting. I was VERY happy to arrive in Kasama at 5:00 am and take a taxi to the Peace Corp Northern Province house, where we found an empty bunk and crawled in. We spent a day in Kasama recuperating from our travels and stocking up on items from the last "real" grocery store before the village. Although Kasama is the biggest "city" in the province, it really feels much more like a town, with roads that are more a network of dirt paths, and only a couple blocks of streets with shops and restaurants on them. The Kasama Peace Corp house serves as kind of a meeting spot and "little America" for the volunteers to get together for meetings and just get away when they need to. I had a lot of fun meeting the other volunteers and hearing about their experiences. After picking up an unused Peace Corp mountain bike, we headed off to the bus station again for the trip to Mbala.

The 3 hour ride to Mbala was actually really nice. The bus was a lot smaller, and the ride was a bit more harrowing (the driver would make huge, fast paced swerves to avoid pot-holes in the road), but there was fun music playing and a lot more to see. We passed a lot of villages along the way, and the scenery got more and more pretty the closer we got to Mbala. There were a lot more hills, and I was obsessed the whole trip with all these blooming purple and red trees everywhere. Mbala, which is the closest town to Coleen's village, was very cute. It looked a bit like an Old West town, with a main street with a half dozen stores and restaurants. We stopped there for lunch to wait out the heat and I got my first taste of nshima. Nshima might well be the national dish of Zambia. They eat it for every meal. Multiple people told us that unless they ate nshima, they would be hungry. One guy told us that he would have to eat 5 kilos of rice to feel as full as one plate of nshima. :) Nshima is basically corn meal mush. It is very similar to grits, except stiffer. Colleen taught me how to eat it, so that I was able to scoff off the fork that was offered. You eat it with various fried vegetables or beans or chicken and use the nshima balls to scoop up the food with your hands. It doesn't sound very good, but actually, I kind of liked it on first taste, and have been craving it here at home since I've returned. :)

After lunch, we biked a couple hours to Colleen's village. I'm sure it takes Colleen less time, but I was recovering from bronchitis and slow. :) As we rode over the final crest into her village, I saw one of my favorite scenes from the whole trip: there was intense soccer game going on in a field off the road that the whole village seemed to have shown up for. And in the midst of the crowd and soccer game was a whole herd of probably 50 cattle. It was fantastic. As we walked by, all sorts of people said hi to Colleen and tried to greet me. I just stood there smiling like an idiot, though, because I had yet to memorize the appropriate Mambwe greetings. Finally, right before sunset we arrived at Colleen's hut/house.

My time in Colleen's village was definitely the highlight of my trip. I was there for about a week. We ate dinner with the neighbors nearly every night, and it was easy to see how Colleen keeps from getting lonely. In fact, it was generally great to see how integrated and comfortable Colleen is in her community. People all seem to know and like her, and she has such a great attitude about everything that it is hard to faze her. I was definitely impressed. I have included some pictures. When I pulled my camera out on the last day, the village head man (one of the few who speak English in the village) came to visit and invited me to take a picture of him and his cow, as well as his new granddaughter. Here are some highlights and lowlights from my time in the village: Little children who would race to the side of the road yelling "muzungus, muzungus" (Africa equivalent of gringos) as we passed on our bike to Colleen's village like the circus had come to town. :) I think it annoys colleen at this point, but I thought it was hysterical... like they just saw Mickey Mouse riding by. Taking bucket baths in Colleen's "bathing shelter" (essentially 4 grass walls about 6 ft. high, and no ceiling.) Was fantastic bathing in the hot sunshine... although a little disconcerting when a random goat almost joined me once. Colleen's neighbors- a widow and her 8 year old daughter and 19 year old brother who we ate dinner with every night. The mom was fantastic and determined to teach me Mambwe (they don't speak English) and how to cook traditional Zambian food in my week there. ;) So she would randomly point to items in the house and have me repeat their names. And the most fun was she taught me how to cook nshima and made me prepare it over the fire outside every night. I also spent an entire afternoon with her pounding peanuts to make this yummy peanut veggie dish. One night Colleen, her friend Elise (another volunteer) and I taught a bunch of the neighbors yoga moves, and they tried to teach us to do Zambian dances... Colleen assured us that our efforts have made us a legend in her village for years to come. They will now talk about those crazy redheaded muzungus who tried to dance. It was pretty hysterical. Everyone was super friendly... like even the guy who is trying to sell you something will give you directions to a competitor's shop.... really nice, generally. On my last day, I rode with Colleen about 5 km to another village she was working in, and along the way some little kids by the road said, "Mwam bene, ya Clara" (How are you, ms. Clara) because they had heard from someone in Colleen's village about me and knew my name... :) I didn't get sick!!! You will understand what a feat this is when you see the picture of the single village water source - essentially a stagnant mud puddle with algae growing on it (it was particularly bad in the dry season). Also, we ate with the neighbors in communal bowls with our hands. Really understanding that although there are hopeless aspects of poverty in village life, the people are generally happy and it was generally a very hopeful, rather than depressing place to be. Seeing how completely competent and in her element Colleen is. She is my current hero.

Lowlights (there aren't many!):It was really hot and dry, which made afternoon activities a little uncomfortable. But I think October is supposed to be hotter. There were some really creepy huge bugs in Colleen's hut. I pretended to be brave, but was secretly SO glad to sleep under the mosquito net just so they wouldn't come crawl all over me at night. Colleen's "outhouse" definitely is an experience... and I grew up with an outhouse! Not only does it not have a door (meaning critters can come join you), it is essentially a hole in the ground you squat over while trying to swat away nasty flies. Not a place you want to spend much time in, if you can help it. So there you have it. Now when you go visit Colleen, you'll all know what to expect! :) After the village we made the long bus trek down to Livingston, where we had an amazing touristy time rafting, shopping, and safariing in Botswana. I highly recommend it. The animals were AMAZING in Choebe National park in September, when they are all gathering at the river and really easy to spot. But I'll let Colleen tell you about that.

The point is, it was a really fantastic trip, and you should all go visit! And you can rest assured that Colleen is doing fantastic... she's not just sounding cheerful for our sakes. Both Colleen and Zambia will hold a special place in my heart now for introducing me to Africa. Now I just need to figure out how to get back there again soon!

If anyone as specific questions, don't hesitate to contact me. clarals@gmail.com.

Best,

Clara

Colleen cooking with the neighborsClara cooking nshima with the neighbors

Dinner with the neighborsThe "watering hole", which apparently has since dried up.Pretty scenery around Colleen's village

So, I guess it's time for an update! I arrived in Lusaka this morning because one of my good friends from college, Clara, is coming to visit and will be here in just a few hours! I'm really excited to see someone from back home and especially to show her around my village and see how she perceives everything here. We're planning to go up to my village for about a week, and then after that we will travel back to Lusaka and then south to Livingstone (where Victoria Falls are) and into a national park in Botswana for a short safari. I feel a bit guilty leaving my village for all that time (about 2.5 weeks) but I guess it's my first real "vacation" since being here so I should just enjoy it. Plus, how often do I get to go sightseeing in Africa with one of my good friends from home?

Anyway, I'm just happy I made it here to Lusaka in one piece. I took the overnight bus from Mbala yesterday, and let me just say that a 15 hour bus ride on a bus with no bathroom when you have diarrhea = not fun! Another highlight of the bus trip was when a preacher (or maybe just some crazy guy with a Bible-- I'm not sure) decided to give an impromptu sermon in order to bless our travels in the middle of the night. I didn't understand much because he was speaking Bemba, but he did sprinkle in some key English phrases (e.g. "let the blood of Jesus Christ spill all over this bus"), so I got the general idea. I'm just happy that they didn't play any Nigerian films on this bus trip. If you've ever seen a Nigerian film, you'll know what I'm talking about. The last time I was on a big bus, they played one involving a midget, a prostitute, and several other characters screaming at each other, and they tend to play them at top volume throughout the night...

In any case, life in my village has been really good overall during the past month. Well actually, I guess I'd say that my personal life in the village (getting to know people better, working on language, knowing my way around the area, etc.) has been going really well, and my official "work" has had some ups and downs. I was supposed to start my first training in August for some of the local Neighborhood Health Committees, and it has been a lot more challenging than I anticipated. At the first meeting I held to discuss the training, a large number of people showed up and they seemed really excited and motivated, so I was feeling really good about it. However, since that time, attendance has really dropped off and we've only had 2 actual training sessions so far due to things like funerals, not enough people showing up, facilitators not being able to attend, etc. I realize that some of these setbacks are to be expected, but I was still feeling pretty discouraged about it last week. I know I just need to be persistent, and I think I'm learning a lot about myself, especially that I need to be more assertive (i.e. to insist that at least 2/3 of the health committee members show up to the next meeting before going ahead with the training). I think it's just a learning experience and I'll get better at this work. Still, I have trouble having confidence in myself and not constantly questioning whether I'm doing a good job or not. One of the difficult things for me about Peace Corps is that there is no one directly supervising you or giving you feedback on your work, so you have to be really independent and also try to figure out on your own the best way to do things.

But in other work-related news, the Neighborhood Health Committees trained by the previous volunteer, Leigh, have been doing really well, so that's encouraging. They have all been doing village inspections, which means that they go around to every house in their villages and check the sanitation conditions, i.e. whether they have a pit toilet, bathing shelter, dish drying rack, rubbish pit, if they boil/chlorinate their drinking water, etc. And people have been getting really into it! The Cheif of the entire area recently held a meeting and declared that anyone who didn't have a pit toilet (some people don't and just go in the bushes) as of September 1 would be sentenced to pay him 1 chicken or the cash equivalent. So that's been a good motivator for people, and a lot of people around my village were rushing to finish building toilets and digging rubbish pits before the health committee came to inspect last week. Finally, the free mosquito nets were distributed to all households in Mbala District during August, so that was an exciting and hectic time for the clinic staff. I just hope that people actually use them-- the clinic staff was worried that people might use them for fishing nets or sell them over the border in Tanzania-- but I think at least some of them are getting used, so that's good.

In other news, I've been biking a lot lately. I biked to visit my friend Elise for the first time, which is 50 km away, and it's a beautiful ride to get there. It was really fun to see her and meet the people in her village, since I had just been hearing her stories withough actually having met the people. While we were there, we also went to visit her local cheif. Apparently she had met him before and it was fine, but on the day we went to his palace (most of the cheifs' "palaces" in our area are mud houses just like everyone else's) he was so drunk that we couldn't understand anything he was saying. He could barely stand up, but at least he seemed to be a happy drunk and he even gave us a live chicken as a gift. Luckily I didn't have to kill the chicken this time, and Elise's neighbor killed it and prepared it for us for dinner :) It was pretty funny though.

Apparently there is a shortcut between my village and Elise's village which makes the bike ride a lot shorter, but it involves crossing a river in a wooden canoe (which could be difficult with my bike, especially since the canoes here are pretty tippy.) Also, sometimes the canoe might be on the wrong side of the river when you get there, so you have to wait until someone comes from the opposite direction to paddle it across. So I'm not sure if it's really a "shortcut", but I'll try it sometime if I'm feeling particularly adventurous.

Another funny moment in the village was when I got to coach soccer practice for the men's team in my village. The funny thing about being the resident "muzungu" (white person/foreigner) in an African village is that people seem to assume that you are well-educated and therefore an expert on EVERYTHING. It can actually be kinda scary sometimes, like one time when this woman came to my house seeking treatment after being really badly burned on her face in a fire. She thought I could treat her burns, but I just told her to go to the clinic ASAP. I've also been asked to deliver a sermon in church, and to "sing an American song" in church, among other things...

But anyway, soccer is a huge deal in my area, with weekly games and teams competing against each other for cash prizes at the end of the season. The team in my village has been ranked #1 or #2 in the league for most of the season, and the team captain is my neighbor Oscar. I eat dinner with his family every night and he's become one of my pretty good friends in the village, and he had been bugging me for a long time to come to soccer practice and teach them some new things. I told him that I had never been on a soccer team in my life and don't even know how to kick the ball straight, but he kept insisting. The previous volunteer had introduced some exercises to the soccer team like stretching, sit-ups and push-ups (which they had never done before) and different running drills like running with high knees, kicking your butt, etc. So I just reviewed all of these exercises with them, and it was SO FUNNY to watch these guys try to do stretches and the other exercises. The best part is that they totally went along with it and never questioned if I knew what I was talking about-- they even gave me a whistle to blow at the start of each drill. Ha! As I was leaving my village, Oscar told me that I should buy cleats and shinguards in Lusaka this week so I can play with the team, but I don't think I'll be doing that anytime soon. I like playing soccer with the little kids who are just learning how to kick the ball; they're more my level :)

Well, that's about all I can think of for now. The weather is changing here; the cold season is over and it's starting to get REALLY hot during the day time. So hot, in fact, that goats have started taking up shelter in my pit toilet during the afternoons, apparently seeking shade. Once I chased 4 of them out of there at once! I wouldn't mind except that they ate the toilet paper... Apparently the locals call the next month "Suicide October" because of the extreme heat, so I'm sure by that time I'll be looking forward to the start of the rainy season in November.Anyway, I'll be sure to update again after my travels with Clara and hopefully post some pictures as well! Hope everyone is doing well back in the states :)

Here are a few more pictures. They are: my Bemba class from Peace Corps training with our teacher; our teacher by himself; some of the kids from my host family during training; and my nsaka outside my house in the village (an nsaka is a small hut that people use to cook under). I haven't taken many pictures in my village, but now that I know how to load them onto the computer, I'll be sure to start taking more!

Here are a few pictures since I finally figured out how to load them from my camera onto the computer!!! I am having technical difficulties, so some are sideways-- sorry for that! Above: My pit toilet, my grass bathing shelter, me preparing to cook some veggies, and my crazy cat playing in my the mosquito net on my bed.

The first one below is me with my host family from back when I was in training (my first 2 months in Zambia)

This is my house in the village!!! It's really nice for a village house, and much bigger than the houses a lot of other Peace Corps volunteers have. The outside is "painted" with different colors of mud.

This is me inside the house with Leigh (the Peace Corps volunteer who lived in the house before me-- she's the one I replaced). She's now back in the states.

This is my friend Elise and I visiting a large waterfall in our province

Hello world!

So, time is going incredibly fast here. It's hard for me to believe that I've been living in my village for 3 months already. I'm back in Lusaka for about a week now because we're having a meeting with all the volunteers that were in my training group to talk about how the first few months went and to share ideas with each other. It's crazy being back here, though, because Lusaka is SO developed comepared to the rest of Zambia. We're at this modern mall now, where I just ate pizza and ice cream, and we're going to see Harry Potter at the movie theater tonight. And just a few days ago I was in my mud house in my village with no electricity, cooking over the fire. The world is so strange!

Anyway, things have been going really well in my village lately, although there are definitely still lots of ups and downs. I got a cat, so that's made things a bit more interesting at my house. I've never had a cat before, and for the first week or so she was incredibly scared and would just hide from me all the time. But she's warmed up to me and now she's causing trouble scratching up things inside the house, especially my mosquito net! She's also killed two mice and a lizard, though, so I guess she's doing her job. I'm trying not to spoil her too much, since she'll be going back to live with a family in the village when I leave in two years, although I do buy her dried fish sometimes.

The best thing about life in the village lately is that I started eating dinner every night with my neighbor's family, which is making such a difference in terms of my language skills and just my overall happiness level. My neighbor is a single mom and has a 7 year-old daughter, Ruthie, who is in 1st grade and is possibly one of the cutest kids I've ever met. Her 19 year-old brother also eats with us, and he is my unofficial Mambwe teacher since he loves to quiz me on new words and things. He's also the capatain of the soccer team in my village, and soccer is a HUGE deal here. One of my other favorite things to do is watch the soccer match every weekend. People go

crazy cheering for the team-- sometimes they even bring drums and sing and dance.

I also got a new "official" Mambwe tutor (i.e. I'm paying him) who is a teacher at the local school, and he is amazing! I had one tutor when I first arrived in my village, a retired teacher who is 80 years old, and he was a cute old man, but I was always kind of afraid he was going to fall asleep or pass out during our lessons. Anyway, my new tutor is much more with it, and he is trained in teaching languages, so I'm progressing a lot more than I was before. He's very formal about it-- he even stands in front of the blackboard and has me sit in a desk in this empty classroom at the school. Although I feel kinda silly working so hard to be good at Mambwe, since it's really only spoken in the one district that I live in within Zambia. I can't even use it here in Lusaka since no one speaks it. Seriously, I don't know how I could have found a more obscure language to learn, besides maybe Esperanto or somthing! Oh well, at least people in my village get a kick out of me trying to speak it :)

Ok, I have to go now because the movie is going to start soon, but I should be able to update this again sometime before I leave Lusaka next week, because I feel like lots more has happened in the village!

So, I'm now back in Kasama, the capital of Northern Province, after living in my new village for almost 6 weeks! It's been an exciting ride so far. I feel pretty lucky that I replaced another Peace Corps volunteer in that village, so people were already used to having a random "muzungu" (white person) around. Still, that didn't stop hoards of curious kids from gathering around my house during the first few days. I think they eventually got bored once they realized I don't do anything that interesting and got bored of watching me, but I did feel a bit like a zoo animal at first!

People in my village have been incredibly nice and welcoming, so that has been great. I'm still trying to figure out who different people are and where they live, but I'm learning slowly. It's taking me a while to get used to some of the cultural differences in terms of how people interact with their neighbors here. In Zambian culture, if someone is spending time alone, people seem to think that something is wrong or that they are upset. So when I first moved into my house in the village, I was enjoying just unpacking my things and getting settled, but it turns out that my neighbors were worried because they thought I was spending too much time in my house! So I started visiting my neighbors and different people in the village, and it's funny because it's totally appropriate to just show up at your neighbor's house and just sit there with them for HOURS. In fact, people love it, even if you are just sitting there with them and hardly saying anything to each other. I felt sort of awkward at first, but I'm getting used to it now :)

Not too many people in my village speak English, which is both a blessing and a curse. It's good because it's forcing me to learn Mambwe, which I am starting to do, very very slowly. At the same time, it's hard feeling like all my conversations with people are like that of a small child. One of my Peace Corps friends lives really close to a bunch of doctors and teachers who speak English, and she was telling me about the great conversations they have about politics, African history, development, etc. Meanwhile, most of my conversations with my neighbors consist of phrases like "How many cows to you have?" or "the maize is very tall" or "look at that big chicken"....not always the most stimulating topics :) However, I think I'm starting to get better at communicating, and there's one neighbor in particular that I really like spending time with. I think I might start eating dinner with her on a regular basis.

I'm really excited about the health work I'll be doing in my area, because I think there is so much potential! Malaria is by far the biggest health problem, and it's really striking. Seriously, even in the short time I've been here, I've heard about at least 10 people in my village being sick with it. My neighbor's small daughter was hospitalized just last week. But it's difficult, because sleeping under a mosquito net is the best way to prevent malaria, but no nets have been available for sale in my area for about the past year (apparently there was some problem with the distributor.) But I just found out that there is a donor organization that will be supplying 3 FREE nets per household throughout my entire area, and they are supposed to arrive within a month. We'll see if this actually happens, but it will be very exciting if it does, and I will be able to work with the Neighborhood Health Committees to help them organize the distribution and education about how to use the nets. There are lots of other projects and trainings for me to work on, but right now my main focus is just getting to know my area and having meetings to introduce myself and reminding people what Peace Corps is, as well as working with the health committees that were trained by the previous volunteer.

What else... I feel like much of my time is spent just getting used to the little things in the village. Like making a fire to cook food... it took me a while to master that! One of the first nights I was having trouble getting my fire started, so I decided to pour some kerosene on top of the charcoals. Apparently I poured way too much, because the fire got HUGE all the sudden, and I was afraid it was going to catch the roof on fire. This was the exact moment when a bunch of women from my village came by to introduce themselves, and they probably thought I was crazy because I was freaking out and pouring water on the fire trying to make it go down. I've since learned the art of using kerosene in moderation :)

Another classic moment was when I locked myself out of the house. There is a padlock on the front door, and I closed the lock, only to realize the I had left the keys inside the house somewhere. My house has some windows, and luckily I was able to push one of them open. But these windows are small, and the smart thing to do would have been to get one of my neighbors and have them send one of their kids through the window to get the keys. However, this was pretty soon after I had arrived in the village, and I was kind of embarrassed and didn't want a big crowd of people to come to my house, so that didn't really occur to me. So I waited until no one was around, got this bucket to stand on, and then jumped headfirst through the window into the house. Not only did I kind of hurt my shoulder (since the window is a couple feet off the ground and I landed on the cement floor), but as soon as I got inside and found the keys, I realized that I was now locked INSIDE my house, since the padlock was on the outside of the front door. So then I had to climb back out the window. I'm just glad no one was watching-- at least I hope not! Anyway, I just had to laugh after that whole ordeal.

But overall, I feel like I've just had a lot of moments lately where I just have to sit back and realize how amazing it is to be here. The views from the trails behind my house are beautiful (green rolling hills and huge valleys below), and I get to bike on them almost every day as I go to meet with staff at the clinic or meet with one of the health committees. There are gorgeous sunsets and more stars than I've ever seen in my life at night. Even just learning to live without running water-- heating water over the fire and then bathing outdoors in a shelter made of tall grass-- is an exciting experience! So I feel pretty lucky to be here.

And luckily, I've been able to see my Peace Corps neighbor, Elise, about every 2 weeks, so that's been a needed break. I think being able to talk and vent to another American sometimes is kind of essential for maintaining my sanity. The first time she tried to visit me, she waited by the side of the road for more than 8 hours trying to hitch a ride to Mbala so she could bike to my site, poor girl! Luckily, she's now figured out which days there is more traffic on the road, so that shouldn't happen again. And we're now in Kasama for a few days for a meeting with all the volunteers in Northern province, so it's been crazy seeing everyone again! The night we got into Kasama, Elise and I ran to this big Western-style supermarket and bought wine, cheese, and chocolate. I think it was a bit of a shock because I spent the next day throwing up and feeling terrible, but I've now recovered and am enjoying speinding time with everyone. We're heading back to the village on Sunday. We have to come back to Kasama within a month, though, to get our work permits renewed.

Anyway, I hope everyone is doing well back home, and I miss you all! Thank you SO much to those of you who have written and sent packages-- mail means the world to me here! I'm starting to enjoy writing handwritten letters too. So please keep writing! Take care, everyone.

So, the pictures below are from our "graduation" ceremony last week, meaning that my group of volunteers has finished training and we are now official Peace Corps Volunteers! It's an exciting time because all of us were getting tired of sitting in class all day and feeling pretty burned out and ready to move to our villages. So after our graduation on Friday, we had one last night in Lusaka to go out and say goodbye to everyone, before we were shipped off to our separate provinces where we'll be living. There are 9 of us new volunteers going to Northern Province, so it's still a pretty big group. Yesterday we had an epic day of shopping, where we all drove around Kasama (provincial capital) trying to buy everything we'll need for our houses (mattress, pots & pans, groceries, and whatever other random supplies we could cram in the car). I'm really lucky that I'm replacing a current volunteer since I don't have to buy so much for my house since it's pretty much ready, but it was still kinda stressful. Once we get posted to our villages, the Peace Corps vehicle will go there very rarely, so if we want any more supplies, we'll have to stap them onto racks on the back of our bikes and haul them out there ourselves. (Or pay someone to do it for us-- I don't think I'm skilled enough to carry things like huge bags of charcoal on the back of my bike yet!)

So here's my plan from here: On Thursday I get posted to my village, which basically means that the Land Cruiser will drive me up to my village with all of my stuff and my bike, drop me off at my house and that will be it. Pretty crazy, huh? The first few months at site are mainly a time for volunteers to introduce themselves and get to know people in the community, and just get settled and get to know the area. I'm planning to visit my friend Elise (my closest Peace Corps neighbor) after about 2 weeks, and then we'll bike into Mbala from my house to check mail and pick up food. There's no phone reception at my site, but there is in Mbala, so I'll check text messages when I'm there too. The next time I'll be in Kasama (the provincial capital, where I am now) is around May 18, when we're having a Peace Corps meeting there. So that's the next time I'll check email.

Sorry this blog is so short, but it's hard to get to use internet for very long here and we have to pay buy the minute. I just overheard one current volunteer who is here say that she hasn't used the internet for an entire year! So if you want more updates about my life here, just write to me, and I'll fill you in! Here's the address again:

Colleen Staatz

Box 420083

Mbala

Zambia

Africa

Ok, hope everyone's doing well and I hope to hear from you! Wish me luck out there in the village!

Hi from Colleen's mom. I've been asked to be her proxy for this post, since she's not going to be able to update you herself. Tomorrow when the other volunteers go into Lusaka for an internet cafe visit, she's opting to go instead with her Zambian host family to do some sightseeing. As always, Colleen has grown very fond of her family and regrets not having had more free time to spend with them. They did attend the "American culture show" the volunteers put on yesterday for all their families, featuring barbecued chicken, burritos, American songs, and thank-you speeches to the families. Anyway, she has only a few more days of training left, and then the official swearing-in ceremony on Friday. Then she's off to her village and the whole settling-in process there.

Colleen wants everyone to note that once she's in her village, her access to the internet will be very infrequent, maybe once a month at best. She's been able to read the e-mails people have sent her; but her computer time is so limited that she hasn't been able to reply by e-mail. She has, however, actually written to everyone who's sent her letters by snail mail. She really wanted me to stress to everyone that the best way to communicate with her from now on is by good-old-fashioned snail mail. I think getting mail is the best antidote to homesickness the volunteers have, so please do write. It only takes a couple of weeks for letters to arrive in Mbala; and she'll probably make it into town once a week. She promises to respond to everyone who writes. (Postage for a regular letter is 84 cents.) Here is her new address:

Colleen Staatz

Box 420083

Mbala, Zambia

Africa

Apparently it's important to add the "Africa" part, as some U.S. postal employees are geographically-challenged and don't know where Zambia is.

Colleen has asked me to send out her old film camera, as she has no way to download (upload?) digital pictures to a computer, but she can get pictures developed in the provincial capital and then send them home. When she does, we'll scan them onto this site so everyone can see her in action! Thanks for reading and supporting Colleen!

So I don't have much internet time now, but I just wanted to share the news: we got our site placements, i.e. where we'll be living for the next 2 years! I'm going to be living in a village in the far north of Zambia's northern province (just a few kilometers from the Tanzanian border, so it's about as far north as you can get). I spent the last week at the site with the girl I'm going to replace (she was the first volunteer in that village, so I'll be the 2nd Peace Corps volunteer at the site), and I'm soooo excited! The area is gorgeous-- I think it's the prettiest part of Zambia that I've seen so far. There are rolling hills and it's generally cooler than other parts of the country. Also, the house is pretty much a mansion by mud hut standards :) It has like 5 rooms!

Also, the current volunteer has done amazing work setting everything up in the area (forming the neighborhood health committees and starting to train them, training teachers to teach about HIV/AIDS and life skills in schools), so I'm really excited to pick up where she left off rather than starting from scratch. And there is still plenty of work to be done, so I think I'll have no trouble keeping busy.

There are only a few things that I'm nervous about. First, people in the area where I'll be living (Mbala district) don't actually speak Bemba-- they speak a dialect called Mambwe. The two are definitely related, but it's still kinda intimidating to have to learn another language, especially considering that I have trouble even speaking Bemba like a 5 year-old at this point :) Also, there will only be one other Peace Corps volunteer in my district, although they are supposed to add some more volunteers when the next group of trainees arrives this summer. Until then, my closest neighbor will be my friend Elise, who will be about 50 km from my site. Let's just say I need to work on my biking skills a bit before I can go visit her! I loved biking out to my site when I went to visit (you have to bike about 17 km from Mbala town to get to my village), but that was just about long enough for me. I guess I just need to build up those leg muscles...

Oh, and I will have a new address in Mbala, which I will post soon! Letters would be great since there is no internet in Mbala, so who knows how often I'll get to check email.

Ok, take care and I miss you all!

Hi everyone!

So...where to start? A lot has happened since the last time I wrote in here. I feel like time is going really slowly here for some reason, maybe since everything is still so new!

Well, about two weeks ago I went with 4 other health volunteer trainees to visit a current volunteer and stay with her at her site for a week. The girl we stayed with has been here for about a year and is in the Luapula province, which is in the north towards the border with the Congo. It was a long ten-hour drive, which was not so fun with 8 people in the back of the Land Cruiser, but it was good bonding time I guess :) It was amazing to me how much of the countryside seemed to be completely EMPTY. Like there weren't even shops on the side of the road or anything, just endless grass and trees with random people walking or on bicycles from time to time. I think I read somewhere that Zambia is a very urbanized country, which means that the majority of people live in cities, and in the rural areas the population is very spread out. So it was interesting to see that. Also, the site that we went to visit was unusually remote, even for a Peace Corps site. In fact, they aren't even going to put more volunteers in that area anymore, because the girl's site was 120 km from the nearest BOMA (i.e. somewhat big town). People use the term BOMA here a lot, I think it means British Overseas Management Area or something; it's a term left over from the colonial days, but now the capital of every district of the country (similar to a county) is called a BOMA.

The site visit was fun because we didn't have too much scheduled besides observing the training of a village committee on HIV/AIDS and visiting the local clinic. Mainly we just got to see how volunteers go about their daily lives. For example, we had to fetch water from a nearby well (the girls attempted to carry it on our heads like the locals do-- I spilled most of it on myself). We also learned how to start a charcoal fire and cook some different things. I was impressed with how much good food you could cook over a fire! They have these things in here in Zambia called soya pieces, and they are my new favorite food. Kinda like tofu but more like the texture of meat. Anyway, I had fun learning how to cook them, as well as pumpkin leaves, homeade peanut butter, etc. Oh, I also killed a chicken, which was actually really sad. Our host Kristin lives next door to a Zambia family who have become her good friends, and on our last night they cooked a big Zambian meal for us. They had two chickens and they decided that two of the Americans should kill them. So another girl killed the first one (by cutting off its head with a kitchen knife) and it was fine because it was a small chicken so it was quick. Then somehow it was decided that I should kill the second one, and it took forever because it was bigger and its neck was really thick and the knife was dull so it took forever to saw the poor thing's head off! And it keep squawking and then it wouldn't stop twitching for a long time even after its head was off. I was kind of traumatized...I think I'd like to go back to being vegetarian once I'm in my own village.

It was also pretty rainy on the site visit. We pitched tents in Kristin's yard and mine held up pretty well in all the rain, so that was exciting. There are also lots of rivers and swamps nearby, and we even got to ride in dugout canoes across a swamp one day. Apparently lots of volunteers have to go by boat to reach parts of their district during the rainy season. It was funny because once you get in the boat, they give you a dish so that you can bail out water (since the canoes start to fill with water almost immediately.) I was just happy I didn't fall in-- those canoes seemed like they would tip over pretty easily!

Ok, I guess that's enough about the site visit, since it wasn't too eventful other than that. Oh, one other funny thing. At the Zambian meal on our last night, some of the villagers came and perfomed some traditional Zambian songs and dances for us, which was really cool. Then they asked us to sing some American songs for them. Sadly, we couldn't really think of many that we all knew the words to except for songs from Disney movies. So we ended up singing them songs from movies like The Little Mermaid and Beauty & the Beast, which was kind of ridiculous, but also really fun :)

Anyway, after driving back to Lusaka, we moved in with host families to start our official training. Our families live in villages about 45 km outside of Lusaka, so although we are in a village setting, it is not quite as remote as the areas where we will eventually be posted. My host family is a lot of fun: I have two host brothers who are 18 and 19, a sister who is 13, a brother who is 10 and another sister who is 7. They are great at helping me learn new Bemba words, which is nice, but also does get tiring after a while. Ahhh, I feel like Bemba is sooo hard! I realize that I've only been learning it for about two weeks and I need to give it time, but it's still frustrating when I don't understand anything. Also, although Bemba is the local language in the area where I'll be posted, there are many other languages spoken in Lusaka area, so that just confuses me more. The older kids and parents in my family speak English though, so that has made things easier.

Basically, training is just incredibly busy. We have 4 hours of language class every morning, come home for lunch, and then have health classes all afternoon. By the time I get home, I'm exhausted! It's nice to have a break and hang out with my host fam in the evening. They love playing frisbee, cards, and teaching me how to cook. My host dad also likes to buy me beer when he comes home on the weekends (he works in Lusaka during the week). Yesterday, he and my host brother asked if I wanted to walk to town with them (the town is called Chongwe, it is the BOMA in that area). I thought we were just going for a walk, but they ended up taking me to a bar with them and we played pool all afternoon-- it was really fun! I need to work on my pool-playing skills to keep up with the Zambians, though...

We're all getting really anxious to find out where we will be permanently posted as volunteers. We find out where we will be placed at the end of February, and then we leave at the beginning of March to visit our new sites for 2 weeks and meet the community. The site really vary because some of them are a lot more remote than others (they can be anywhere from 5 km to 60+ km from the nearest BOMA). Also, most of the health sites are new sites, but some are replacing current volunteers. The way Peace Corps Zambia works is that there are 3 generations of volunteers at each site: the first one gets things started and introduces the community to what Peace Corps does, the 2nd one works on programs that were started by the first volunteer, and the 3rd one works to make the programs sustainable and turn them over to the community. So the type of work that we do will be really different depending on what generation of volunteer we are. They will interview each of us to find out what are preferences are and try to determine which type of site would be the best fit for us! I can't wait to find out!

Alright, I should probably go now because my friend is waiting for me, and this post is long enough. Peace Corps took us to the mall in Lusaka for the day and it is amazing! I miss eating things like fruits and veggies (not really available in the village), so I'm gonna go by some now. Oh, and please write letters, since I was barely able to check my email and didn't have time to respond to people. Sorry! Hope everyone is doing well!

p.s. One of the dishes that my host family likes to cook is fried caterpillars. They were so shocked that I had never eaten them before! They were surprisingly not as bad as they sound (I guess anything tastes ok when fried with lots of oil and salt), but still couldn't manage to eat more than about 2 or 3. So now my host fam makes me soya pieces instead whenever they eat them, which is way better :)

Hi everyone! I just wanted to write a quick update and say that I made it safe and sound to Zambia. I've been here in Lusaka (the capital) for a few days. Tomorrow we head out on our first site visit, which means that we stay with a current Peace Corps Volunteer for about a week to observe their work and get a taste of village life.

Last week my whole training group met up in DC where we stayed together in a hotel for about 2 days. There are 40 new trainees in total: 32 girls and 8 guys. About half of us are health volunteers and the other half will be working on rural educational development. Everyone seems nice so far and people have really interesting backgrounds (from all over the country, lots of different work/study abroad experiences, etc.) A lot of people are right out of college too.

After going to the health clinic for our first round of shots, we boarded the plane for our 16 hour flight to South Africa. Before the flight we also managed to gorge ourselves in the airport with our last American meal for 2 years, eating burgers, fries, and ice cream. When we finally got to South Africa, we spent the night in a swanky hotel in Johannesburg, but they didn't let us leave the hotel grounds because apparently it's a pretty dangerous city. We were all kind of exhausted at that point anyway. Then the next day we flew to Zambia!

Now that we're here in Lusaka, we've been staying in a government hostel just outside of the city for the past 2 nights. Some of the current Peace Corps volunteers picked us up at the airport in land rovers, and they're helping to run our training. Yesterday we had a whole bunch of information sessions in the Peace Corps headquarters in the city. We had to pick which language we will learn during training, which determines which region of Zambia we will be placed in for the next 2 years. I decided on Bemba, which is one of the most widely spoken languages, and that means I'll be placed in a province in the central or northern section of the country. I'm happy because apparently those provinces aren't as hot, and they have lots of lakes and waterfalls. All the more reason to come visit :)

Today we came to a modern shopping center in Lusaka to get groceries for the next week, and I'm really surprised at how modern it is. There are tons of fast food places (including a Subway), clothes stores, movie theaters, bowling, etc. It'll be interesting to see another part of the country on our site visit and get out of the city.

I'm going to visit a current health volunteer's site in the Luapula province, which is in the north, with 4 other health trainees. We'll stay in tents by her house and get to see what her daily life is like. Apparently her site is about a 10 hour drive from where we are now.

After we get back from the site visit next Saturday, we'll move in with host families for the rest of training. This is the first time Peace Corps has done training at this site near Lusaka (they used to do it in a different city in the north) so none of these families have ever hosted Americans before. And since we haven't started our language classes yet, the first few weeks with the families should be quite an adventure!

Ok, well I'm out of time and I'm not sure when I'll have internet access again, but please write! I would love to get letters and promise to respond :)

Hello world!! I created this blog as a way to keep in touch with everyone while I'm working with the Peace Corps in Zambia over the next two years! I'm leaving on January 22 for Washington, DC, where I'll meet up with all the other Peace Corps volunteers in my training group. We'll then fly to Zambia on the 24th, where we'll have training from the end of January until the end of March. After that, I will "swear in" to become an official Peace Corps Volunteer, a position which I will have until the end of March 2009. This is both very exciting and kind of scary for me!

The program which I will be working on is called the Community Action for Health Program (CAHP). Here's a little info about it:

"Health Volunteers in Zambia work with rural health centers to address health problems that exist at the local level. In addition to providing leadership and organizational training, Volunteers also teach communication skills and facilitate improved linkages among rural health centers, communities, and district health management boards. Volunteers also help communities implement cost-effective and sustainable health interventions, addressing malaria, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, maternal and reproductive health, child health and nutrition, and water and sanitation. Volunteers have also helped form anti-AIDS clubs and several Volunteers have set up HIV/AIDS youth awareness sports camps."

So, I don't know too much about what day-to-day life will be like at this point, but luckily I will have 2 months of training to teach my how to do my job! I will also be learning one of the local languages of Zambia, so we'll see how that goes...

During the training period I will be living with a homestay family that speaks whatever language I decide to learn (I think when we get there we choose from about 4 local languages). After that, I'll be placed in a village, where I'll most likely be the only volunteer. Luckily, Peace Corps will give us mountain bikes to get around, and there are usually other volunteers living within a couple hours by bike. I'll also have my own house/hut (although it may be in a compound with a family), have the chance to cook for myself over a fire, have to carry my own water, etc. Should be quite the adventure!

It sounds like we won't have too much internet access during training, so letters would always be welcome! Here's my address until the end of March:

Colleen Staatz/PCT

c/o Peace Corps

PO Box 50707

Lusaka, Zambia

Anyway, I'll keep everyone posted when my address changes and if I get a phone while I'm over there. I really would like to stay in touch-- I'm going to miss everyone!!!