Greetings everyone from Leh!!

Michelle and I left Addis Ababe late on Saturday night and arrived in the steam of Delhi early Sunday morning. We explored that magnificent city for that day and Monday before flying up here to Ladakh on Monday morning. Since then we have been getting used to the 11,000+ foot elevation, continuing to eat as much Indian food as possible, and visiting monastaries. We are hoping to head tomorrow to visit a lake at 14,000 feet to the south east of which 70% stretches into Tibet. Then on the 3rd (Michelle's Birthday) we head out with some Canadian friends we met at the Leh airport for a two day trip north to the Nubra Valley. The road goes over the highest motorable pass in the world at more than 18,000 feet!! We return on the evening of the 4th and then immediately head out for Srinigar in Kashmir. Then its a steady journey to the south ending in the southern province of Tamil Nadu from which we are thankfully flying back to Delhi and home. I will try to again post over the course of this adventure!

Ethiopia was totally unlike southern Africa and an amazing experience. The country is incredibly unique with its own religion, language, text, calendar, time format, and national grain. None of which are in use anywhere else. The time system actually makes a lot more sense as 12:00 corresponds to our 6:00 am or pm resulting in a system that directly counts the hours of daylight and dark.

For a man who loves bread products, spicy sauces/condiments, cold beer, and coffee, Ethiopia was like heaven. Though I was in serious southern African Nshima withdrawal, I came to love the Njera and the various spicy piles of oily sauce madness poured all over it. However, we were incredibly shocked to find that meat made up such an enormous portion of the diet (veggies were only really available two days a week on the traditional fasting days of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church). In southern Africa chicken was the special occasion food and meat was almost unseen. Mufumbwe for example had no butcher in the entire district. In Ethiopia on the other hand, we were very hard pressed to find anything else to eat. Needless to say, oily fried chunks of beef for multiple meals a day can do some very strange things to the digestive system.

The tourist economy focuses mostly on the incredibly rich history of the country leading continuously back to the pre-Axumite periods in the 4th century BC. The Orthodox Church which was started in the 4th century AD still uses many of the same churches made during that period. Some of the later and most impressive churches (8th-13th centuries) are literally carved out of solid stone and have been in near daily use since their completion.

We had a particularly interesting time in the Tigrai region bordering Eritrea where there were extraordinary churhes carved into the top of Monument Valley-esque protrusions.

The tourist economy in Ethiopia is vastly more developed than that of Zambia though completely non-existent in comparison to India's. It has been really interesting to see the different phases and how things play out. We have come to the conclusion that "responsible tourism" is probably a myth and to visit a place and hope to somehow not influence it is rather absurd. There seems something wrong in the growing fascination with the "authentic" and the "traditional." IN any case, I will cut myself off before any rants develop unexamined.

I have to cut off now though I hope this finds everyone well. I will do my best to get another one before I leave India. If I do not, I am not planning on continuing this business once I am back in the states so this may be the last. Thanks to anyone who has read. Much more for all those who have supported me during my time in Africa. I love you all and can't wait to see everyone in person.

Love,

Kevin

Greetings everyone! Michelle and I are currently in Dar es Salaam and are headed to Addis tomorrow evening. We just spent a week and a half in Zanzibar relaxing and investigating the beach front realestate market. It was a wonderful to have a chance to relax a bit after the very hectic last weeks in Zambia. My next update will be from Northern Ethiopia!! I am very excited to be on my way home and am looking forward to seeing everyone. Stay well and I will see you soon!!

Best,

Kevin

Greetings everyone!!

As usual, I must beg forgiveness for neglecting to post any new material in such a long time. I have been completely consumed by work in the best way possible. I am no longer a Peace Corps Volunteer as of two hours ago!! I sadly have to keep this relatively short as am running from place to place preparing to finally leave Zambia. I am leaving tomorrow on the train to Zanzibar with Michelle to begin our 3.5 month trip home. We are headed from there to Ethiopia for a month and then on to India for another 6 weeks. I will finally arrive home in Albuquerque on November 14th. I literally could not be more excited for the trip, coming home, seeing everyone, and the future stretching out before me. I plan on getting on here as often as possible over the next few months to update everyone on my whereabouts and how things are going. I am not sure how the internet will be, but based on its fairly common availability in Zambia, I think it should not be too much of a problem.

I have been dreading writing this last message from Zambia. I feel pressure to produce some sort of final wrap-up of my experience in Zambia. I will sadly dissapoint in that task. I am still troubled by what I have come to see of the world and what I have been doing for the past two years. I am overwhelmingly grateful for having had the opportunity to come here and live for two years. Such a thing would be impossible without the Peace Corps. I will be eternally grateful for the relationships I have made and the learning experiences I have had. I have to thank the Peace Corps, the United States State Department, the Congress, and ultimately, the tax-payer for supporting me here. It is embarrassingly easy to lose sight of how lucky I am when I am upset by what I find myself doing. In my final interview yesterday with the new Country Director, I stated my opinion that the rural work I was engaged in was deeply flawed in two main ways. Both of these flaws lead to the undermining of the stated goals of development and teh acceleration of the rapid urbanization of Zambia. This urbanization is already producing enormous compounds of unstable housing outside the towns spread along the back-bone of this country (the veins of natural resources). These completely unplanned housing areas have the highest rates of all the problems in the scope of the development industry. I could elaborate on the issues of urbanization but will spare everyone. The point was I contributed to it by: 1. my mere presence, though in some senses positive in the role model/friendly neighbor kind-of way, was inevitably negative on the whole in that I provided a constant and highly visible piece of evidence that their community had a ton of problems. This evidence can have many affects not least of which is the reinforcement of the desire on the part of everyone in the area to leave as soon as financially possible. 2. the actual work, if successful, has the ultimate goal of helping people in the community continue to live IN THE COMMUNITY but with healthier, more prosperous, and ideally, happier lives. In reality however, none of the community members want to stay there (excluding retirees who return home from metropolitian areas near the end of their lives). The extent to which the work is successful, (which it is in many cases) it provides people with more means to either get out of the community themselves or to get their children out. This troubles me a great deal and I am trying to keep such complicated outcomes forefront in my mind in all my decisions from now on. I am very grateful though to know this and would never chose to un-learn what I now know. Such is knowledge.

Ah!! Well, as we can see, a rant was produced inadvertantly. I must present my sincere apologies. I have to run now as Michelle is waiting for me to go out for our last supper together in Zambia.

I want to express now that I am so thankful for the support I have recieved from countless family and friends. I am so sorry if I seem upset about this whole thing. It really has changed and made me more motivated to act productively than I thought possible. Please don't be discouraged. We can make a difference. It is just really really difficult. I love you all so much more than I can express here. Thank you so much for all you have done and please just come find me for a hug and free dinner (cooked most likely and probably mostly rice in the short term). I will try to update everyone on our whereabouts. Stay well!

Salutations from Zambia!!!

Love,

Kevin

Greetings everyone!

I have now been in Lusaka for about two and a half months which is hard to believe. I am now definitely comfortable riding in traffic and even more shockinly, wearing a tie every day. I certainly no longer fit the perfect picture of the filthy, hairy, somehow wounded Peace Corps Volunteer. Which, considering the issues I have with the romanticism of such things, is definitely not a bad thing. Life in Lusaka is very interesting. The collision between dramatically different objective standards of living is the most visibly interesting part of the city. It has made me (and by me I mean this was Michelle's observation) realize that poverty is much more visible to everyone here than in the states and it is becoming less so through the process of select economic development. The compounds make up literally 50-60% of the area and the vast majority of the population of the City and yet are like isolated islands of dense humanity kept from view by walls and such terrible ally-roads that none of the upper-clase (commuter-car owning) people would ever drive there. There are obviously many exceptions to that, but the divisions are obvious and growing none-the-less. How this plays into the self-image and levels of satisfaction of people is very interesting to me and I am not sure whether such trends can clearly be judged as good or bad. Such are most things these days. In any case, we (at the Men's Network) are starting to send weekly groups of guys to the Sunday soccer games in the compounds to do sensitization about men's role in sexual and domestic violence. We start the first one this weekend so lets cross our fingers. (anyone know the history of that superstition by the way?) It is a part of our matrix of programs going simultaneously to instigate a shift in the content of Zambian masculinity. I will try to post a link to the 2009 explanatory text for the Men's Network budget on the blog so you can read the details if you are really interested. I can ramble about it for many hours if I am not careful. (no suprise there) The project in general is going very well but we have run into a bit of a snag related to the actual transfer of funds to get the program running. As it involves parties of some considerable import, I will not divulge here but email me and I will tell all. Sorry if that sounds mysterious. I promise that the truth is far from it.

Other than work, I have been moving around the country a lot in the past month+. I have been back to Northwestern twice including once to introduce Beth, the replacement volunteer for my village. She moved in on Tuesday I believe. I of course remember my first week in the village alone and am hoping her time has been comfortable and fun. That drop-off can be a pretty big shock to the system. I also traveled twice to Eastern province to visit Michelle. As I am now in Lusaka, it is much easier to see each other and we are averaging around once avery two weeks which is amazing after a year and a half of once every 6-7 weeks. It also only takes one or two days of transport which is amazing after the four-day one way marathon it used to be. Our close of service trip is getting finalized. We have our plane tickets! The plan right now is to leave Zambia around Aug 18th on the train to Dar es Salaam and Zanzibar which was made infamous by two complete scoundrels who took it in the last days of 2007. We fly from Dar to Addis in the first few days of September and then immediately north to Lalibela. From there we travel over-land to Bahir Dar over the course of 3.5 weeks. Then we fly back to Addis and on to Delhi. From Delhi (late September) we fly immediately to Leh in Ladakh (Northwestern India). From there we travel south through the mountains back to Delhi (avoiding Kashmir so don't worry). En route we are going no a 5-7 day trek at a more reasonable elevation than Leh. We hope to spend around three weeks in and around Delhi and then home on November 14th. Its hard to remember a time when I was more excited about something. Well, maybe not thinking about pre-Peace Corps but still. Point is, really excited.

In any event, I have to run to work which looks wierd on the screen but is true. (Though I don't get paid obviously) I hope this finds everyone in great health and happiness. I look forward everyday to seeing everyone and boring you to tears with countless stories of Zambia.

Love,

Kevin

Greetings from Lusaka!!

I have now been living here for a month give or take and am getting used. I came down on a Thursday to celebrate valentines day with Michelle and get the house set up. I have been unbelievably fortunate in the housing department and have been put up by PEPFAR (President's Emergency Fund for AIDS Relief) in a three-bedroom house very near the Peace Corps office. Coming from my rather decrepit hut in KamaButa, its unlike any shift up in living standards I will ever experience. Needless to say, I am grateful for it as I realize now that a full jump into electric sink disposal and human-size fridge land would have made me epileptic. Under no circumstances should that sentence be taken as a complaint. Running water is simply amazing. I have been working for 4 or 5 weeks now at the YWCA Men's Network and it has been an adventure of a totally new kind. I have been fabricating tons of record-keeping documents, helping them organize their position within the larger YWCA Zambia, and plan all the activities they want to get started. In short, we are fabricating an NGO office with outreach education, media sensitizations, and on site counseling services. This mass of activities we are conjuring of course will need funds of which we have a current account balance of less than 2$. There are three other men who come to the office with me every day and none of them receive anything at all for it. There has never been enough organization from our office in the past 5 years to get any funding from the National Office or anywhere else. So trying to cross that bridge. The sustainable plan is to start a typing school on site with funds going to support our programming. The hurdles in the grant-writing process as a sub-office of little reputation within an overburdened program are considerable. We will probably figure it out at some point but right now we are swamped with trying to launch a male counseling center (paralegal, sexually violent perpetrators, domestic dispute resolution, and more!), an extensive male targeted community outreach education program Lusaka-wide, an integrated media sensitization program, a peer-mentoring program (think "big brother big sister in the states"), among others. We had our first client today and hope to start handling the offender cases (prison deferrals from Ministry of Justice) next week. We are doing a preliminary male attitude research survey at the nearby secondary school on Monday preparing for our pilot 4-part sexuality facilitation program. If you or anyone else you know wants information about our work, or knows programs operating in southern Africa we might work with, please contact us at ywcamensnetwork@gmail.com. In any event, there is a serious volume of stuff going on everyday which could not be a more dramatic shift from my past 2 years of life. So far so good.

Though I have hardly had time to critically analyze the project I am engaged in, the findings so far are not too distressing. I am appeased to some extent by the fact I am assisting Zambian men in this project and am not engaged in any ideological projects of my creation. However, my ignorance about the process of sexuality education in Zambia is nearly complete and I can't help feeling like we are going to miss something fundamental and end up just making ourselves feel better (the existence of avoidable self-deception is the paradigm anxiety of a skeptical mind). In any event, we are engaging in as careful work in the research department as is practical under the circumstances. Available statistics about incidence rates are very very few. The other muzungu intern at the YWCA is actually engaged in the creating of a femicide register for the Police service. There is no current distinction between murder and the killing of a spouse under circumstances of domestic violence. Similarly, there is no distinction between general physical assault and sexual assault. This categorical shortfall is dramatically exacerbated by the institutional roadblocks of Zambia. In any event, we are doing our best to target our programs to the "critical periods/locations/relationships" of sexuality education with the goal of shaping the content towards a more peaceful egalitarian form. This "ideal" content of a sexuality education raises fundamental questions. It goes beyond beyond the (undoubtedly irritating) issues over the non-existence of a concrete morality. The connections driving our education of sexual morality are so complex and integrated into so much of our experience that simply attempting to change something about it could easily encourage some dynamic of power that itself leads to violence. Action itself, the deliberate act, a volition directed at implementing a shift in the form of sexuality in a society is an overwhelming thought. I am not sure if it is even theoretically possible and no one wants to find themselves spending their life looking for the answer to a how question that really is a why.

In any case I will not subject you all to the full pile of rubbish in my head on these issues but, know that I love it and also the work itself. I am in an office of all Zambians (except Sana the Swedish volunteer I mentioned earlier who is awesome) who all speak perfect English. I can't describe how wonderful it is to be able to communicate easily with the people I work with. In addition, Zambians are beyond wonderful and hilarious. We have a complicated and absurd role-play joke that has been going on for weeks now. One guy is supposedly married to the receptionist with anywhere from 10-15 children. Everyone else is engaged in a constant series of ploys to steal her from him with various imaginary children coming into play from time to time. Seems somewhat inappropriate considering our work circumstances and that both are in mid twenties and not dating but, it is certainly above board. I would say 9 out of 10 sentences uttered at work are jokes or trash talking about people in the room. I really do love being there.

In any event, I am sorry if this post has been less than brilliant but I can promise to make it up to you all soon as computer access is now easy. A pleasant change of pace that.

I hope this finds everyone doing well. I can't believe how soon I will be back in the States. November 14th! Thank you for all the wishes and support. I do not deserve it all but am very very grateful and will always be so. Until next time.

Love,

Kevin "sharpdressedman" Malone

Greetings from Solwezi!!! I moved out of my village in KamaButa yesterday! I will have to plead more time than two days to try and formulate any sort of coherent commentary on the experience of living and working there but I am doing surprisingly well. My last two weeks were very stressful on account of leaving but I have no major regrets about the things I managed to do there or the things that I have left undone. I hope to return at some point (with imagined children) not only to search for vain confirmation of my existence but to find people who I will undoubtedly not be able to contact without actually going back.

I want to take this moment to thank everyone who supported me and my village during my many months there. It has all been appreciated and though the long-term is nearly impossible to predict, I am comfortably proud of what WE have done. My time there and anything I was able to even attempt would have been truly impossible without all of you and I cannot express in words how grateful I am for that. The sense that so many people believe in my ability to do something "good" has been truly unbelievable and has dramatically influenced my ideas about the world and the change possible in it. I will probably call on you again, for one thing has certainly become clear to me from my time here, I will be engaged directly in service to society and humanity for as long as I am able to. That might sound dramatic and self-aggrandizing and for that I apologize. I hope my actions will be able to stand judgement in the future. Point being, Thank you from the bottom of my heart for the love and support that has brought me through everything. I would not have managed without it and doubt sincerely that I or anyone alive deserves to be so spoiled.

I now will regale you with a brief tale of adventure from my time with Phil, Pat and Curtis as per my promise last post. I would first like to reiterate my gratitude to those guys for coming all the way out here and all their loved ones for letting them go during such an important time of the year. We had many adventures but one will always stand out clearly in my mind in vivid detail for the duration of my life. People may judge that we were reckless, others may say we were downright stupid, others may say those are compliments, while I choose to say freedom and time are illusion and leave it at that with regards to judgment. On our last night in Kafue National Park we decided to go on a lion hunt. This is not an African brother to our childhood bear game but a serious operation involving tracking skills rivaling Kaonde hunters of old. For background, Kafue national park is the second biggest in Africa, one of the most undeveloped, and with some of the greatest concentrations of wildlife on the planet. It also happens to be under the management of the Zambian government and for the sake of my position in this country I will leave it at that. We had heard the lions roaring in two directions over the course of the previous two nights and had heard many stories from the park scouts about seeing them lounging on the roads near the camp. Following the indisputable genius of Patrick Johnson, we loaded up the 4x4 pickup truck with some lawn chairs and embarked on a slow stalk for the king. After about a half hour of creeping along jungle roads our headlights brought out in detail from the trees ahead the hindquarters of the largest land mammal on the planet. The male African elephant. Upon hearing our vehicle, it slid deceptively quietly into the trees. Obviously excited by our first close sighting of an elephant, we crept up to the place it entered the trees and killed the engine. Pat "cobra-strike" Johnson was at the wheel and I was riding shotgun. Phil was on the right standing in the bed with good ol'C-monster on his left flank. All four of us were now sitting quietly searching for sounds of the massive creature. Our senses on the full alert that can only be attained under un-fettered, un-armed engagement with jungle creatures, we could hear every sound coming from the active jungle around us. Despite this, we could hear nothing of the massive creature that had just disappeared in the exact position we were taking on the road side. Then, after a few minutes of silence, we heard a few small crunches and brushes similar to that a kitten would make moving though the forest. This small sound slowly grew into shakes of small trees and even a crack or two. These sounds could not possibly be from the elephant coming towards us? Such a large animal? Of course not. Yet, it kept coming closer and, more disturbingly, growing in magnitude. We began to hear whole trees moving and then breaking, the crashing became intense until we were sure that it was almost upon us in the near pitch darkness of an African sky filled with stars. Then for moments that will always be in my memory, we heard nothing. These moments seemed to stretch to eternity but then, just when we thought nothing was going to happen,the trunk, face, tusks, and ears in full expanse emerged from the trees feet from the side of the truck! Framed in starlight, the full grown male African elephant then blew a violent trumpet of challenge that made at least one of us nearly soil themselves with terror. I don't know what would have happened had Pat not been faster than light in not only turning on the truck but screaming away to safety but the rental car agents would have had something to talk about at the very least. Needless to say, we were not too depressed to fail to find lions until the next day. That of course is another tale for another day.

All adventures and tomfoolery aside, having three men who know me so well here to not only experience a slice of my life but to witness and via reaction give me a much needed snapshot of how I have changed. That snapshot has taken some time to digest. After making my last post, I returned to KamaButa for my last as a resident with more than the usual laundry list of topics to ponder. I have changed a lot since coming to Zambia and I like myself less in some ways for it. The changes in my capacity for social interaction with other Americans, as indicated by more intense swings from narcissism to empathy are not too worrisome as I have faith merely being around people who understand me all the time will rectify. The greater worry for me is my current manner of manifesting the changes in perspective I actually value. To explain, I have had a number of painful realizations about the systems that govern our world. Painful because for me, based not only on my upbringing, but on my personal history of philosophical thought, there have existed simple, codified rules by which a person of good intentions could always minimize "harm" and maximize "good". Though that may sound like utilitarianism, I tried for most of Junior year to actually live according to Kant's Categorical Imperative as ridiculous as that may sound. I began my foray into philosophy exclusively in ethics as my desire to pursue a virtuous existence had never been satisfied my any of the organized religions. Philosophy, predictably, has proven to be a veritable black-hole with the viability of a concrete code of ethics one of the first structures to fall to critical analysis. At each earth-shattering phase of my journey, insult has been added to injury by writers and compatriots who not only have realized all these things before, but but find them obvious.

To make a long story shorter I am not a pacifist any more. This is not because of any change in my feelings about violence, but due to a dual realization that absolute positions of that sort are not logically defensible, and that feelings completely unhampered by reason can produce more harm than benefit even if they are utterly pure. I have long tried to regulate my emotions towards such a purity of purpose. I have realized recently, the innocence of that and the sincerity with which I pursued it was the basis for much of my positive influence on others. From my time in Zambia I have, more than anything else, come to see that the purest of intentions are the easiest for a system of inequality to cooperate for use in its own perpetuation. Needless to say, that cynical sounding sentence was not written by this hug-loving Quaker without pain. However, it is a sentence I truly believe and furthermore, my painfully large pill of reality has come with a clarifying of purpose, regulation of thinking, and an organization of drive to shape that pure intention into tangible results not despite the complexity of the problems, but through the subversion of that system itself.

The issue, and reason for dragging you all through this, is that I am very much still dealing with anger and disappointment with the world I have come to see. As a result, I owe an apology to anyone I have defensively attacked in argument or ruthlessly depressed via correspondence for demonstrating some of the pure sincerity I have valued above all else my entire life. Please be patient with me. Thank you to everyone for already being so. The path I still have to tread is the resuscitation of that hope and optimism as it is not only essential to the project itself but to my ability to be happy (which are of course interrelated). I can say without a doubt that I would be lost completely without the love and support I have received since coming to Zambia (not to mention my whole life before that!) I love you all very much and promise I have not become a total cynical jerk.

I am now moving to Lusaka for my last phase in Zambia and will hopefully be in much more frequent contact with computers. I hope this finds everyone well and happy. Thanks again for everything.

Best,

Kevin "dumpstump" Malone

Happy New Year!!!

Hello everyone, I am in Solwezi and just put Philip David Crouse himself on a bus to Lusaka for the beginning of a very very long journey back to NYC. He and I were able to spend this weekend in my village while the Johnsons (Pat and Curtis) took off last thursday for an adventure in Cape Town South Africa. All I know is they let you cage dive with Great White Sharks down there and those guys never say no to adventure. We had an amazing time here in Zambia and I cannot express in words how lucky I feel to have friends with the freedom and desire to travel half-way around the world to enjoy the rainy season with me. The Johnsons arrived on December 17th and PDC arrived on the 30th. We spent Pats birthday (24th, as strangly, I also spent Majeed's Bday last year in Zanzibar) and Christmas in the Village with Michelle and a few other North Western Volunteers. I then had a huge going away party for my village involving two goats, an oil-drum vat of nshima, two chickens, a big fish and 60 gallons of monkoyo. All was easily handled by the 100+ guests and all went off without a hitch thanks to the amazing help of my Zambian mothers who toiled over various fires for two days to get all the food ready. Hopefully some of the Johnsons' pics from that will make it up here soon. It was amazing to have visitors from home and Michelle from across the country to be there for such a big moment in my time in the village. I was never expecting to have to leave so early but the excitement about my project in Lusaka is growing daily along with anxiety about having to leave what has been my very intense home for the last 1.5+ years. This will be my last post as a village based Peace Corps Volunteer and as such I have to keep it short if I aim to make it to that village today. Thank you thank you thank you thank you to the Johnsons and PDC for coming to visit me. It means more to me than words can describe no matter how eloquent the metaphor. Also, thank you so much to everyone who sent goodies for me via those clowns. I will have difficulty eating all of the american food before leaving the village which is quite the pleasant paradox. I promise to spend time writing out some of the stories from our adventures this past month but the lions and elephants have not grown sufficiently enough yet in the telling from their already impressive and terrifying size to that worthy of a Majeedesque story. So, stay posted for that. I can now say that I will be home to the states this year and look forward daily to being able to bear hug you all into rosey-faced submission. Stay well and have a wonderful January.

Love,

Kevin "faster than a lion" Malone

Juliet clearly up to no good whatsoever

Loyed demonstrating he is powerf

The Wu-Tang!!

This is an action shot of zambian Badmitton (thanks Jessica Hammerman!!!!)

A standard moment in KamaButa

We 5 Mufumbwe Volunteers under standard conditions wishing happy holidays

Womba (Heather Stovall my closest american neighbor and glorious friend) and myself on top of the house water-tower in Solwezi with storm rolling in.

Interior of Kamfukumfuku Adult School under construction

Construction of roof to Kamfukumfuku Adult School

Kamfukumfuku Women's Club in front of the School they are building for themselves

Greetings! after an outrageous delay as usual. Being "as usual" of course makes it not outrageous but rather normal, but allowing such a thing to become normal is itself outrageous. Thus is an example of the types of thoughts one gets into after 17 months in Zambia. I will spare the reader any other examples such as those about the relation between language and the concept of meaning, as google has not yet developed the necessary add-on. I am currently in Solwezi for a training on HIV/Aids and will be here till after Thanksgiving. Last year I decided to spend the holiday in my village alone which (that morning) I realized was a terrible idea not to be repeated. The entire province will be here at the house and we are planning a huge and crazy dinner. I then will spend a mere two weeks at site till I go to Lusaka to pick up Pat and Curtis Johnson from the airport. This will be a momentous occasion and I hope the old building will be able to handle the excitement exploding from this hairy New Mexican. Our plans are vague as is to be expected of the three of us but I have no fear we will manage a safe and legal adventure.

On the village update front, things are going pretty well right now. I have been focused mostly on my demonstration plot for the past 6 weeks and planted the maize last week. The rains have come here and green has come on like a light. The longer term projects are thankfully progressing without my direct involvement as per-plan. The adult school have mostly completed their school structure and the Micro-finance project has been successfully launched and now only time will tell. I have been growing increasingly nervous about the time when I will have to move from my village and say goodbye. It cannot be denied that my departure will embody a sort of betrayal in the eyes of some of the important people in my life here. This particularly applies to children and adolescents. I spend a few hours each evening with three boys (the Wu-Tang) and have developed a strange and intense relationship with them. They don't speak english and generally speak their first language (Chokwe) to each other. As such, I rarely understand much of what they say unless directed specifically to me in Kaonde. Nonetheless, I pay attention to them and care for them outwardly in a way very uncommon here as they are generally ignored unless needed for work. One in particular, Alfred, has such an effect on me its difficult to describe. At times I feel like I am his father, at times his peer, and at times his bully victim. Considering this all happens accross cultural and language barriers, things are difficult to say the least. However, I cannot and will not abandon him earlier than I have to. I have tried to take steps to re-register him in school as his parents have abandoned him and am helping him start his own small farm for income next year. However, and the reality of this has been growing painfully on me lately, I will inevitably embody, in my departure, another act of abandonment and betrayal. This has not led me to the conclusion I should do nothing, but I am not unaware of the fact I might exacerbate his already growing apathy (at 13) with the world. I am probably giving myself too much credit but I have worried either way.

On the other hand, I am very excited about the work I hope to do in Lusaka for the last six months of my service. My replacement arrives in Zambia in February and I have to vacate my site to them and find another project for the interim of my contract. The project I have found is with the YWCA Men's Network which organizes male-targeted prevention activities for gender-based violence. GBV is any form of violence that serves to perpetuate the discrepancy in power between the two genders. As I hope to do exactly this type of work as a career in the U.S., this project is a truly amazing opportunity. It will be a dramatic change from my village life with its quiet and complete lack of structure, but I am hoping for the best. So, right now, things are a bit complicated but all-in-all I am content with the situation.

I have to sadly stop there as I am headed back to site today. The internet has been terrible and this is the third time I have written this whole thing to no avail with regards to actually posting anything. I wish everyone a belated thanksgiving. I am thinking of everyone always and know that I love and miss you enormously. Stay well.

Love,

Kevin "chindeli ikatampe" Malone

First my apologies for such a delay in posting. I have a bit of time today so will get up a short one if only to end the drought. My parents left the day before yesterday for the states after spending just over three weeks here which was totally fantastic. We went to Livingstone (Victoria Falls), a safari on the lower Zambezi, and 9 days in my village. It really could not have gone better and although I am now sad looking at another year and a half before seeing them again it i feel incredibly lucky to have been able to have such a solid block of time with them here.

I am now pretty much exactly half-way through with my time in Zambia. I feel continually fortunate to have the opportunity to live here and am looking forward to my second year with much more planned than i can possibly get done. Thank you thank you thank you to all the wonderful friends and family who havesent me letters and packages and called. I really appreciate the support and look forward to a time when closer communication will be possible.

From the work update perspective, I am involved in a few major projects and am beginning to prepare for the next growing season which will start in November. I would like to thank publically all the contibutors to the Peace Tales project here and announce that bricks have been made, roofing supplies have been purchased, and building should begin soon on the adult school and office. I will try to send more frequent updates on their progress on the project as the dry season (and building) progresses.

From the hilarious event side of my life, i can say with great conviction that caterpillars do not taste good. I had a dance off two nights ago on stage at a Zambian concert and emerged victorious thanks to some vintage moves from my days with the Break Dancing Willies in St. Louis including the running man, the lawn mower, and of course, the worm (i did not break my nose this time). Also, cheese is delicious.

My apologies again for making this so short. I miss you all and hope you are well.

-Kevin "crazy feet" Malone

Hurray(correct spelling)!!

Hello my friends, family, and assorted parties not yet so classified. I am, as usual, in Solwezi recovering from another outrageous 25 hour cross-country transit experience including nothing particularly romantic or story-worthy (which takes a good deal of the fun out of it I have to say). The tale I will tell after a life/work update is both romantic and story-worthy in the way all romantic and story-worthy stories are. This very evening 5 new trainees destined for North Western Province will arrive for a week of their training which will take place at my site. By that terrible sentence, I meant to say that I am hosting the site visit week of training for the new LIFE project intake. Other than a bit shocked to find myself on the other side of the training barrier, I am very excited to have 5 visitors as captive (literally) audience for stories and extreme hosting. I promise here in this public forum (to try) not to abuse their potential as free labor on my farm. I am reminded right now of a drive home in my early youth with my Dad from a days work for his landscape maintenance company being handed 8$ and a reminder of the lunch I had so blissfully completed hours earlier. Not complaining! I learned a lot, but I think thats probably illiegal. Anyway, as you can see, this as with most of my writing since graduation may contribute inadvertantly to atrophy of your brain upon reading.

I have been quite "busy" in KamaButa and hope that it keeps up. I am still doing all the same projects I have mentioned before but the Green Gram and Maize harvest is starting to come in with the sunflower, lab-lab beans and others yet to come. The phrase "come in" has just been used misleadingly on two accounts. One, it implies that the produce has the ability to make the 3+K walk (1.5 wading in knee deep water) on its own (which I assure you it cannot). Second, that the yield itself is somehow considerable (when in fact it is embarrassingly not so). I am still harboring hope that the sunflower will produce in some sort of reasonable way. On more productive fronts, I am now teaching jam making, solar-dryer construction, and other life skills material four days a week at two separate adult schools. The students are almost entirely young and middle-aged women who are truly fantastic individuals and absolutely hilarious as a group. After a particularly successful 4 hour jam making practical at the school very close to my home, I cannot ride my bike anywhere without raucous greetings from colorful child/water/firewood bearing women at every turn. I am trying to get a training together for all the adult-school teachers in the district as most of them are local volunteers and have never had teaching training of any kind much less for adults in particular. More updates on that as the grant proposal progresses. Anyway, transplant some bananas, play some soccer, eat some nshima, throw some rocks at goats, throw the W to some kids, and that’s pretty much my life. As I mentioned earlier, my folks are coming in June. I could not be more excited about it and considering I will be holding up in the village until then, it will be here before I know it. They have a saying in Peace Corps that a day seems like a year in the village, a week an hour, and a month a second. I can attest that considering I have almost been here for 10 months now and am baffled by it, the saying is very true. In other ways, I feel like I have been here much longer though. When I think about driving a car on a high way, using a computer daily, having electricity, etc., I am more afraid than excited. Anyway, sorry to get thoughtful for a second there and voice some poorly thought out anxieties. We all know I will be fine assuming green chille and skiing still exist.

Well, that’s enough of that, on to the story. Like any great road tale, it involves nothing but two young men with pockets full of dreams (citation to Phil Crouse), an open road, and the warm sun on their backs. Unlike most great road tales, this does not involve two young men but myself and a possibly male kitten whom I named Bob on that assumption. Bob and I left KamaButa one Thursday evening after a session of the Kamfukumfuku Women Club Literacy Class (the name always changes). After hitching with a sweet old missionary man full of tales of Africa (who was not too taken aback by sharing the name of my furry compatriot) and sitting in the aisle of a 5 hr bus, we arrived safe and sound in Solwezi with only minimal scratches and urination incidents. It should be noted now (because in general you cannot assume) that any discussion of scampering, growling, or unfortunate bowl movements are in reference to Bob the kitten and not myself. I had been hoping to meet my good friend M in Solwezi to give her Bob as an expert Cobra killer but on account of my phone problems was unable to. Pets are not allowed in the Peace Corps house particularly those in edible forms in the eyes of the two dogs in residence. Bob obviously violates this rule and is cute to the point of criminality. So, I faced a dilemma. I could not leave Bob unattended at the house and no one was here to look after the young feline so I stepped to the plate and decided that Bob would have to accompany me the following day on what could easily be described as a double-black diamond hitch-hiking Odyssey from Solwezi to Chipata. Under the best of circumstances it takes 9 hours from Solwezi to Lusaka and another 9 to Chipata. Attempting such a journey puts me clearly in the completely reckless camp of Peace Corps transportation schools. Doing so with a kitten, is grounds for concern as to my sanity. Furthermore, doing so when the final destination of said kitten is actually 20km from the origin of the journey doesn’t even make sense to me and I decided to do it. We left the house to hitch around 4:30 AM and only just avoided getting the little fellow eaten at the front gate by Boss and Axle (our house dogs whose names make them seem more viscous than they really are). We did not arrive to the Chipata Peace Corps house until 3:30 the next morning where Bob was almost eaten by their dog too. Along the way, I was charged extra for him on a bus, dove under 4 trucks to save him, had to explain what the hell a white dude was doing on the side of the road with a kitten 200 times, got peed on by him 6 times that I know of, scratched countless times, charmed twice that number, and continuously confused as to how this was my life. In all our lives, we have experiences where we are baffled that such circumstances have happened. This happens much more when you are the white dude in Africa and even more if you have spent as much time with Majeed, Pat, Phil, Curtis, and such characters as I have. I have some great pictures of Bob on his adventure but don’t have the card reader to upload them. Expect them in the future. Even better, come to Zambia and we’ll steal a baby Cheetah and one up this story. Longer story short, while in Eastern Province M was forced to permanently leave the country thus no longer even needing the little snake killer anyway. I therefore left him with Michelle in Eastern where I hear he has been learning the different language well and has regained some bowl control. I don’t really have the words to express how I feel about the loss of M on top of Stacey and Adrienne but am now the only member of my Language group left in Africa. I wish all three of them the best of luck in America and think of them often. I also hope not to lose any other close friends to America under unfortunate circumstances or to join them under any of my own. Well, hopefully I will have a better story and photos the next time I get to a computer. I have to run now and prepare for the new trainees what really has become my international culinary shtick, garlic naan.

As usual, I thank all of you who have sent me letters, even those who have thought about it but not b/c trust me, I know how it goes. I feel incredible support from the States and elsewhere and would not be anywhere near as happy without it. Thank you. I love you all and hope that you have a great month, great day, great next five minutes.

Love,

Kevin “Kitten Wrangler” Malone

These pictures were mostly taken by Andy Stoll and relate to the blog entry (absurdly long) following them.

Alice Malipenga and Family with her tomatoes

Dom (member of Wu-Tang)

Me and Juliet

Rug Rats

Kelvin (center my main co-worker) and his two buddies in his field

Chilling in Kinzanza

Cooking bush pizza

In front of my house With the Malipenga Family, Wu Tang Clan,and Rug Rats

Andy at fieldsNote: not my field i.e. good

Rug Rats

Juliet

A few of the adult schoolstudents and teachers

At the Women's Club Field

These are the best quality I could get up in a reasonable time period but they are much better in their larger format. Hopefully they will get to my parents soon and they can email out the better files to those interested. Thanks.

First of all, my sincere apologies for such an absurd delay in posting anything. After my trip with Majeed to Tanzania and Zanzibar, I wanted to get back to my village as fast as possible and well, lets just say I dropped the ball. In order to make up for this, I promise that this blog entry will be the greatest thing you have ever read in your entire life. It may in fact turn out to be the best thing that has ever been writen. I can say this now because I have no idea what the future 30 minutes might bring, unexplained brilliance for example. Anyway, I can promise some pictures, some updates, some stories, and some more of this rubbish you have been reading for the past twenty seconds.

First of all an update. Life is great. My field has been predictably overrun by weeds and my past two weeks of work (with help, story later) have made only a small dent. The work has helped my overall project though because everyone I see in the village asks me about the "huge field" I am farming and give much more thought to my agricultural advice. There is no basis for this belief both because they have not seen the farmtastrophe I have spent the past 4 months on, and becuase I am in fact not qualified to be giving agriculture advice at all. The fact that I had two months training and am now doing extension education work in fairly technical areas is part of my larger criticisms about Peace Corps. Were I less used to not being an expert on things (being in such a position is in fact my only expertise), I might have some issues but things are going great. I am working on a number of legitimate projects but sufice to say I am not having any of the standard "why am I still bothering these people?" Peace Corps breakdowns. I have been back from the holidays for two weeks and am back in Solwezi to write a grant proposal and help my friend M deal with a considerable rat infestation (hopefully not a snake one as well). I will then head back to site for a couple weeks before jetting off to visit some friends in Eastern Province for a week or so. Then back to the village until Easter when the Zambia government gives us a few straight days off giving me a chance to head to Malawi (ohh cheap Malawi). After that, its up in the air until June 12 when Mama and Paps Malone arrive in Lusaka for their adventure which they are planning much more carefully than the "we need a place to stay?" style that got Majeed and I around the continent. Should actually be relaxing. More project updates later if it seems interesting.

Now, on to the good stuff. STORY TIME!!! Looking back on the number of completely insane events that have unfolded since my transport tale, its tough to decide what I should include here. I will instead include three shorter ones. One about something hilarious in my village life, one about my trip with Majeed to Tanzania, and one about my past two weeks living in the village with a guest named Andy Stoll (noboundaries.org) and our plans for future fame. So, after many months of terror on the part of the young children in the village, un-abashed wonder on the part of the older, and absurd level of respect on the part of the older adolescents, I am now fairly mundane to the youth population of my neighborhood. By fairly mundane, I will use the metaphore I originally used in my introduction of Majeed. I am like a break dancer on fire...all the time. Seriously, visualize how you would respond to seeing a man breakdancing on fire on the side of the road. Its like that all the time. Anyway, the three categories listed above all have developed absurd relationships with me which I have obviously tried to make more ridiculous. So I will start with the infants and hopefully some pictures a bit later. The ring leader of the Rugrats is a little girl named Josephine who takes no shit from no one, wears no underwear, bosses me like a spiteful mother-in-law, and may be my favorite person in the world. She and her many many cronies have a regular schedule of rolling up into my kinzanza and demanding candy (masweets) until I play with them. They like to be swung around violently, are completely fearless, and abuse each other to a level that might be criminal were it in america. I have started tutoring many of the young people in their english and she got wind of this and aparantly did not want to be left out. She is maybe 4 years old. She stole a notebook and pencil (both very prized possessions in the village) brought her own stool, and plopped down in my kinzanza and commanded, "mbena kukeba kufunda kutanga mufunjishaimi!!" (I need to learn how to read, teach me!!) This obviously being beyond my abilities even were I fluent in her language(s), I managed to bore her with the Zambian ABC's song until her older relative tracked down her school supplies. A brutal battle ensued with the pint-sized monster holding her own.

The second age group I affectionately refer to as the WuTang Clan and have taught them the hand signal which they all do as they approach me. Im not sure what Rizza, and Ghostface would say if they saw all these Zambian boys with W's held high but I get a kick out of it. They are a crew led by the ruffian, non-school going gangster named Alfred who is the Zambian version of Huck Fin. Seriously, pictures following. This is a crew of four or so 13 year old boys who display equal insanity in their brawls (i saw a forehead to nose headbutt the other day). These guys sit in my kinzanza every day for hours just running a steady commentary in chichokwe about what im doing or astrophysics as far as I can understand. When my SW radio finds some tunes though, they get buck-wild. These boys smell bad when they are not moving and throw the five of us into a serious dance party and the stank factor becomes truly astounding. I have almost passed out on occasion. I attribute this funky odor to them when it very well might be mostly me but who knows. Alfred though, that boy is pungent no matter how you spin it.

Anyway, the final group is three young men and a young woman who come to have tea with me and speak in our broken english and kikaonde to practice their english. The young woman is actually the mother of the aforementioned Juliet and after witnessing the sass her mother readily demostrates on any and all adversaries I see where she gets it. The three boys have taken on my encouragement to writing letters to my friends which are hilarious. If you have not received one yet, im sorry but we still have a lot of time. They generally include a lot of jesus protect you and thankyou for sending kelvin (me) to us because he teaches us good things about cow poop. Anyway, I adore all of these groups of regular visitors and if you happen to find your way to Zambia, they will overwhelm you in the same amazing ways.

Now, quickly on to a tale worth of telling from my trip with Majeed. After a long day on the road, we arrived in the mysterious beach on the east coast known only as pwani mnchangani. We were being accompanied on this adventure by Majeed's new partner in crime Elaine Cote whose story with us would itself fill a novel. The three of us had already pirated our way into an exclusive Italian resort on the false claim that we were interested in a room in order to strip to our grundies and dive into the ocean. The private beach filled with beautiful Europeans were not completely pleased to see these dirty ruffians but what were they going to do? We escape back to the open road and only find some slightly cheaper places but nothing within our "we will spend no more than 10$ on a room if it kills us" budget. We pass by for a beer a huge and bumping night club during their happy hour (no price specials just magically happier) and plan on trying to make it back later to show off our moves hopefully in front of many of the same Italians we shocked earlier. Little did we know Italy would play no role in the rest of our trip at all with only insanity and surreality filling the leathery and boot-shaped void in its absence. We are about to give up when we pass by an aweful looking establishment the guide we had acquired only referred to as "place of drink". We find a restaurant on the beach a few K away next to our much over priced backup lodging option. I head out with the guide to escort him back to his huge and empty club of employment. On our way I again ask him about the aforementioned house of disrepute. He confirms this title by elaborating on "place of drink" to "house of ho". Now clear as to the nature of the establishment I should have avoided it at all costs. I should have not stopped there and asked their price for a serviceless room and an outdoor tent space. Shoulda-coulda-woulda. I return to the other adventurers triumphantly with a paid for 10$ room, a 2$ tent space, and very few details. After a great dinner and air-intrument competition, we head up the street to the den of sin that I had sentenced my friends to stay in. I set up my tent while they struggled to handle the stench of the room in which they were to stay. Somehow, they took it completely in stride and we remain friends. I have diagnosed their problem at the time as "living through the lense of a later story syndrome". We head out to the club expecting a bumping Italian mad-house and instead find the exact same empty club which we left hours before. This club is what we in the scene call bangin'. It is huge, with great speakers, 50+ tables, many dance-floors, and some sort of silly platform in the center for people to embarrass themselves on with their dancing (which I insist I did not do). Anyway, the bangin'ness (music bumpin') of the club stood in stark contrast to both the vacancy and horrific service. There were only a few warm beers available after a struggle, and many bottles of what appeared to be alchohol and other beverages until upon further inspection they became clearly empty and dust enshrined. This bizzar scene only became more strange over the evening as NO ONE else came and we cleaned out their one cooler of beers and danced the night away with the very awkward staff of bouncers. I have not had that large of a place to myself since I showed up on time to the 6th grade Winter Ball dressed in my gold shirt with matching tie chain and black vest. Seriously mom, who wears gold and black only, a tie chain and no jacket? How could you let me do that? Anyway, we made it home to our house of the rising sun, managed to avoid the customers, and get a good nights sleep. I would like to note that this story took place over the course of one afternoon and evening. We were in Zanzibar for more than a week. Do the math.

Finally, on the way home to Zambia Majeed and I were in a train car with two white guys!! one of whom is traveling around the world and the other was a Peace Corps volunteer from South Africa. Andy, the world traveler, expressed shock at the 100$ Zambia visa for his planned two days in the country and I extended an invitation to come and check out the rainy Northwestern Province and my village. He being the crazy world traveler he is not only accepted my invitation but is still here. He spent two great weeks in the village helping with my field, taking fantastic photographs which I will hopefully be displaying here shortly, and planning our documentary/bid for the Guiness book of world records. His website noboundaries.org should be checked out and you should all get to know him becuase he is the man. We have a fantastic idea which was born out of his life-long fascination with the G-Book, his work in the film industry, and my general crazyness. First of all, did you know that right now 64,000 people are trying to break world records? Not sprinting or swimming records. I am talking backwards unicycle, cricket spitting, egg tossing, huge cake baking, bog-snorkling, wife carrying, fat getting, handstand walking type of records. Andy and I are going to find many of these people and interview them about what could drive them to want to be immortalized in this book in order to make some commentary on the concept of eternal progress (and be funny) while we are simultaneously trying to organize our own attempt. Our attempt will tie into the commentary by involving our attempt to break the record for the greatest number of different record attempts failed in a 24 hour period. We will each (in front of a large crowd) try to break as many records as we can in a day and in failing to break a singly one, set a record. Anyway, we see some serious potential here and are looking for investers. If you are scoffing right now, I ask you to think of the documentaries you may have seen on the spelling bee, wheelchair rugby, and the type. We clearly have a great idea.

I am sorry for the length unless you liked it in which case you are welcome. I hope you are all doing great and I can not thank you all enough for the packages, letters, and phone calls. I am literally the luckiest man alive. (not in the book for that one yet)

Love you all very much,

Kevin "World Record Holder in Failure" Malone

Ahoy! I have just returned to the wonderful NW province today after a week of trainings and celebrations in Lusaka with all the other volunteers from my training class. We have all (note: I miss Adrienne) completed three months at site! Before I embark upon the telling of a tale worth your time and eye muscles, I have to comment on spelling. A certain person of the motherly pursuasion has never ceased to comment on my writing as long as I can remember in this manner, "its nice but your spelling is quite embarrassing". She apparantly copies these posts, corrects the spelling, and only then emails it to the important people. So, if you get that email, WARNING!!! I cannot spell this well!! I am being edited without my permission!!! Finally, to conclude this absurd digression, I will give a short defense of myself and what I like to call my creative interpretation of spelling rules. 1. the point of language is communication and it has been shown in multiple studies (i am citing the actual study not the chain email here) that the only important letters in reading comprehension at a normal rate are the first and last with no importance whatsoever on the accurate placement of those in the middle. 2. (an excuse) I live in the bush people!! seriously how can I be expected to spell properly when I am ending world hunger? 3. A winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature who you may have heard of, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, writes in his memoirs on two separate occasions how he himself is a terrible speller (pgs 100-101, 267 GGM, Living to Tell the Tale*). If he can win such an award, I feel no need to adhere to the foolish rules of inferior literary men. Point made. Thank you and now back to the real point. I am in Zambia.

I will give a brief (ish) account of a recent transportation experience which I will probably never forget. I was coming into Solwezi from Mufumbwe and as per usual, I refused to take the bus which is both expensive and uncomfortable for a big old pirate such as myself. I therefore try to hitch a ride on one of the many trucks carrying goods from the even more rural areas towards the less rural ones. I manage to secure a ride after waiting for about an hour in front of my house (many volunteers have no such option being many many many kms away from any such road). This was around 10:00 AM and I did not complete the supposedly 4 hr trip until around 1:00 A.M. Many volunteers would not accept this as a long trip but, I pleade newbe. As an act of utter bravado, I chose to take the seat at the very front on top of the cab, putting me in clear view of all the people along the way to both cast doubt on their image of the cushy transport reserved for white people, and enjoy the near constant exclamations of shock at my personage perched upon a hurtling mass of maize, chickens, goats, and a lot of people. This decision was a very bad one. I was not injured at all but I admit that I am a complete idiot. I will get to the exact why sometime around sundown but we have many hours to go before I became sure of my error in seating. My error in truck selection became obvious much sooner when the driver alerted me and the other passangers that we would wait in Mufumbwe BOMA for at least four hours to prevent the tires from exploding on the hot asphault during the middle of the day. I had at this point only moved 12k from my house. I know the BOMA well and consider it part of my "Hood". I therefore was able to chat and eat the hours away with a growing sense of frustration at the other possibly more reckless trucks going by and my inability to hop on after making the rookie mistake of paying at pickup. We finally pile on and I leave the BOMA triumphant, almost Titanic flying scene-esque, upon the peak of the truck. We arrive at the police check point less than one km from the BOMA and are told to get off and start walking. The truck (with all my worldly belongings) promptly turns around to go back for "negotiations". We all walk for about an hour and then post up on some abandoned cars to wait. About a half hour of hoping it doesn't rain later, the truck returns belongings intact and finally ready to rock. I remount the beast eager to continue. After about an hour, I begin to have doubts about my seating decision but its too late now, the truck is packed. The dusk brings some rain and even worse, the seasonal explosion of the airborne termites from the ground to go eat some more trees. I therefore found myself literally assaulted by millions of moth-sized bugs hitting me everywhere while hurtling down the road on top of a huge truck. This was the moment of truth. I had to accept that I had been a silly fool to take such a perch. Nonetheless, complete darkess finally came and the bugs dropped away eventually but the trip had more to offer. The truck itself broke down completely for hour-long stops on two separate occasions and we did not make it to solwezi until 1:00. I staggered down and walked exhausted toward the Peace Corps House which is about 2.5 K.M. down hill. As I was walking with my back-pack down the back road, an obviously somewhat tipsy driver flies around the corner a hundred yards down. Finding it pertinent to remove myself from his path, I sought the shallow gutter on the side of the dirt road. As I step quickly into the shallow gutter I find out abruptly that it is nothing of the sort and is in fact closer to 5.5 feet deep and filled with mud at the bottom. Clearly a bit tired and confused my normal cat-like reflexes failed me and I went back-pack and all rapidly to the bottom of the ditch. Moment of truth number two. Here we are Kevin, in the bottom of a muddy ditch on the side of a road in Zambia and a fairly drunk man is so shocked to see a Muzungu simply disappear from existence that he has stopped to find you. Brushing my irritation aside, I tossed out my pack and accepted his hand up but not his ride and staggered the remaining distance to the house. My story upon arrival was met with the usual Peace Corps response: "Oh yeah, thats rough but let me tell you about the time a goat peed on me and then ate my backpack." My apologies for the length, but thats the way it happenend. I hope this finds everyone well. I love you all.

Love,

Kevin "John Wayninator" Malone

p.s. I have broken down and will ask for things to be included in packages. First of all, thanks! Second of all, I will still love you if you just send a letter. Ok, here it goes but Im blushing.

1. Big League Chew (its simply the best bubble-gum in the universe)

2. Drink mixes of any kind.

3. Spices particularly new mexican ones.

4. ground coffee

5. pictures of yourself and family especially if they are funny

6. granola/granola bars

7. camping food (particularly if reading the contents makes you say, "they freeze dried that? no way!")

8. American Pens!!!

9. Maps of places I will probably really like including ski areas.

10. NY Times

11. seriously, anything you know will make me smile as long as it will not also hospitalize me.

12. Thank you notes so I can send you one!!

p.p.s Aunt Meme, your cookies were amazing, expecially the ginger snaps you felt did not come out right. I ate everything in one day due to anxiety about ants. You are amazing.

p.p.p.s *Completely fabricated. (Are you serious? I think he mentions it though, maybe more than once?)

Whooop whooop!! Hello!! I am back in Solwezi for Haloween and am happy to say that aside from two close friends being forced to leave Zambia at least temporarily for health reasons, I am happy as a clam. I have continued to be blessed with more work than I can do. I am working on a few major projects with the two primary schools in the area and ahve started to cultivate my own small farm (two limas or 200 meters x 100 meters) for demonstration purposes for agroforestry species and conservation farming techniques. Lets hope that some of the skills of my father and grandfather in agriculture have made it to me because as with most things in my life, I am making most of it up as I go along. I have realized that the content of my blog has been unacceptably devoid of actual stories so I will try to recount a few experiences today. The last week has been filled with more than the usual number of ridiculous experiences. Last wednesday was Zambian Independence day and all the country was engaged in serious celebrations. In KamaButa and Kifuwe the activities focused around the school and I was fortunate enough to be a guest of honor at both locations. Being double booked, I chose to attend the independence eve celebrations in Kifuwe and the day of in KamaButa. Both were wonderful and hilarious. The celebrations at Kifuwe tuesday night revolved around a fashion show which I wish I had the writing ability to describe in full detail. It was one of the most funny and depressing 5 hour long experiences of my life. There were about 10 participants ranging in age from about 7 to 17. To the soundtrack of absurdly loud and bad american hip hop music, the young girls did their very best immitation of runway strutting to the riotous applause of a large audience. Its hard to describe the surreality of sitting at the judges table at a beauty pageant in the African bush with power provided by car batteries brought in on bicyles, but lets just say it was really really weird. It was interesting to see how Western culture and obsession with physical appearance is percieved and even immitated here. It was also at many many times beyond funny. A teacher friend of mine was doing the commentary on a fairly broken megaphone. His comments were fairly limited in scope but not in either volume or emphasis. The whole of the 5 hours that I was there, he would yell out "WOW!!! Look...oh WOW, what is she....oh WOW......Look, she...is.....walking!!!! WOW!!!" All in a very, very high pitched voice and in english despite the complete inability of most of the audience to even understand him. There were two formal outfits, a sporting outfit demonstration, and a section in traditional Zambian dress. As the competition continued the runway walking developed into elaborate performances of make-up application and fake phone conversations. The best part was the inter-segment dancing performances by the DJ and invited guests. The leaders of the community were allowed to come up on the stage and dance very, very awkwardly during the costume changes. On two occasions, I was also called up to the stage to dance myself as the sole white guy at the event. I have long fostered a love of dance performance. I know that my mother's refusal to allow the continuation of my musical theatre career after 8th grade (West Side Story) was driven more by a fear of my running away to Broadway, than her oft stated anxieties about my academic perfomance or the influence of older women. I obviously saw through to her true fear and have nonetheless continued to dream of a life in dance. Given the opportunity of the stage, even if only in the African bush, I felt obligated to perform to my full potential. I demonstrated energetic renditions of many american cultural dances such as the running man, the fishing line, lawn-mower, and shopping cart. I even demonstrated the macarena. I felt that YMCA would be too much for my already rabid audience who were all screaming in response to my performance. It could be argued that they were only excited to see a white guy dancing, but I believe they saw the true art of dance in practice. Either way, I felt fortunate for the opportunity to demonstrate my dancing skills. I did not stay to the end of the competetion which apparantly lasted 7 hours in total. Life here is wonderful and I hope you all can come and visit. I have to run now and get ready for the Haloween party. I am going as Paul Bunyan so it should be a good time. I hope you all are well.

Best,

Kevin "Crazy Feet" Malone

I found out yesterday that KamaButa is a reference to having fat cheeks as a description of the good health of those living there. The people of the area I will be living with for the next tow years certainly display the happiness of good health and I have been welcomed with open arms. Those arms also immediately began putting me to work. I arrived around 2 in the afternoon and was taken to a local agriculture cooperative meeting at 3. I ended up not being able to unpack for a few days because of all the group meetings I was invited to. My response to local friend's commenting on my busyness has itself become a cheer as I ride quickly past. "Better to be busy than bored!" However cheesy that is, it certainly is true when boredom literally means sitting in my steamy hut reading all day. I have had few of those days in this first month and I am very grateful for it. My hope is that the work continues. I am working with two schools, about 5 community groups, and many farmers in the area of KamaButa, Kalambo, and Kifuwe. It is hard to imagine how fast the time has flown by to be back in Solwezi already. All of the volunteers from the entire province have come in today and yesterday for a big bi-annual meeting for Peace Corps updates and to provide a forum for the discussion of any problems. It has already been a joy to see all of the other new volunteers from my intake and soak up some of their experiences. Everyone seems to be enjoying their sites. The other volunteers in the Mufumbwe area have welcomed Ryan and I into their midst with such joy that I am already sure that many of them will be friends for life. My closest neighbor Stacey Johnson, who lives just outside of Mufumbwe, was able to accompany me on my first transport ride on Tuesday night into Solwezi. I am certainly glad she was there. It was a memorable first ride in the back of an open top "Cantor" truck over-loaded with bags of Maize and Casava and about 25 other people. It also happened to be outfitted with a turbo-charged engine and a driver without the faculty of fear. On the bright side, the speed did make the ride much shorter than predicted, a mere three and a half hours all the way from Mufumbwe. To put that in perspective, Adrienne took longer than that on a similar vehicle from a little over half as far. Stacey and I have a great deal in common, (most of all our ability to conversate or as M always puts it, my "longwindedness") and much of the ride was spent in laughter. Uploading pictures has proven to be quite the operation with the internet connection here so some alternatives will have to be found. Keep checking here and on the picture link for new ones but also don't get to dissapointed to find nothing as of yet. I will be coming back to Solwezi and the internet at the end of October to renew my work visa and "coincidentally" celebrate halloween. So, expect another post at that point. My most sincere thanks for all who have written me and I hope to continue to catch up on responses. I try to write at least one a day. I hope you all are well and know that I love you dearly.

Best,

Kevin "Pappa Stump" Malone

P.S. My sincere apologies for the lack of sign-off nick-name on the last post.

My LIFE partners, Ba M, myself, and Ba Adrienne sampling honey.

Merging traffic outside a small village on second site visit to Doug in Northwest Province.

The entire LIFE team sticky with honey during PST.

Sitting on a wall with M contemplating chicken murder.

Looking so fresh and new with Tim at the airport waiting to fly to Jo'burg.

My homestay brother posing with my tree the Fade Herbia.

My hut at Ba taata Nyoka's during PST. Notice the amazing doormat.

Taking pictures with M on a quick run into Lusaka to buy groceries.

Local ladies greeting us on a LIFE tour of an organic farm.

Dambos in Northwest Territory

My job: try to lessen the illegal charcoal production that is running rampant in Northwest Province and all of Africa and one of the biggest factors of deforestation in Zambia. This is a typical illegal load heading into Lusaka.

I’m writing this from Solwezi the day before I get posted to my site in Mufumbwe! Since my last brief post, much has happened. Training came to a close and it still amazes me that we made it all the way through that schedule. It does seem very recently that I was sitting in Lusaka for the first time nearly overwhelmed with the training schedule in my hands. We had a wonderful cultural day before we moved out of our home stays with all of the trainees preparing a TON of American foods for the host families and staff. We prepared beef soft tacos with tortillas from scratch and guacamole that was off the chain. We even threw in a massive amount of mac and cheese and much more. Everyone (about 300 people) were fed and there was even enough left to feed the village kids from Chalimbana. Then there was a ceremony where each language group sent a representative to read a speech in the local language directed to the host families and village leaders thanking them for their hospitality. Our group decided to just all do it together cause that’s our style and the three of us spoke together. My host father “Ba tata Nyoka” as I called him was so excited he almost jumped onto his chair which was quite the sight considering he is a wiry 60+ year old, in a fantastic combination of dress clothing. I am still working on getting some pictures of him, Ba Christina (Mama), Robbie, Joyce, and Uni (the children/grandchildren) up on the web. Rest assured, the pictures have been taken and will be there eventually. Many technological/transportation dependent tasks become a bit more complicated in Zambia. The ceremony also included the recognition of each family where we all went to the front and they gave me a small gift. (some plates, silverware, and a hand broom all things I will soon need) I also was given the opportunity to publicly thank them and the Kaonde hand shake/greeting/thank you involves clapping and dipping as low as possible to emphasize the point, in this case resulting in Ba Tata and myself clapping, dancing and laughing, in front of the entire crowd, while in the lowest crouch each of us was capable of. When mom and dad come out to visit, we will definitely go and visit the Nyokas and the occasion may warrant the next step of emphasis which involves rolling on the ground I believe. Upon the discussion of the possible visit Bamama said in some of the few words I know in kikaonde that she will get and cook a really, really fat chicken. It was considerably funnier at the time considering I was dancing around imitating a fat chicken and my Ba Tata fell off his stool he was laughing so hard. Anyway, after the ceremony, there were cultural dance performances culminating in all the trainees and host families getting’ buck wild as Majeed would say. It was a great day. We moved out of the home stays the next day and moved to a nice lodging place just south of Lusaka. We swore in on Friday which was a nice ceremony and pictures galore were taken. The following morning we had the bittersweet farewell with all the new volunteers from our intake as the ten of us loaded all our stuff and headed up to North Western. The 45 of us have now spread out to remote areas all over the country for our postings. In the next 48 hours I believe all of us will be at our sites! I am very excited for so many things it is hard to describe. I certainly have a fair share of anxiety but I think that moving to a remote village where I know no one and feeling no anxiety at all would border on the foolish. My village is called KamaButa and is located 10Km west of the Boma of Mufumbwe. My new mailing address will be there and is Kevin Malone/PCV, Peace Corps, P.O. Box 130050, Mufumbwe, Zambia. I will be able to access the internet again when I come back to Solwezi for our provincial meetings the last weekend in September. Please feel free to write me emails but know that it will be very difficult for me to write long responses. I will have considerably more time now though to write all those letters I owe you guys. Thanks so much for the support and love. I love you all and hope the next month treats you well.

Love, Kevin

p.s. I think my phone may able to receive text messages at/near my site. The number from the states is 011 260 97 836 7104. Give it a try sometime. Peace out.

Whats the good word my fellow pirates? Piracy here in the wonderful landlocked nation of Zambia has been beyond my wildest imaginations. I am loving it. I actually tried to explain piracy to my Kikaonde instructor the other day and gave up at "theft of items and boat, from a person on another boat, while displaying extreme good manners and dressing well." I thought the point was made quite well. After re-reading my first few sentences of this post, I am again convinced of the importance of writing these things out ahead of time. My apologies to all. I should possibly be forgiven on account of the fact that I was unaware that I would get to use the internet today. We came into Lusaka today for the Zambian National Agriculture Show (83rd annual I believe) and after a while I walked over to this shopping center for a bit. I just got back from the NW province from a second site visit. It was fantastic and I am more exited than ever about my post there. Speaking of which, I am going in only two weeks! I will be in the heavily forested area near Mufumbwe. When I am up there post swear-in I will have an opportunity to post pics, respond to emails, and post a longer entry. I have spent too long online already and hopefully have enough kwatcha to pay the guy at the counter and considering the fearsome looking guard (looks like a good pirate) I better. I love you all.

-Kevin "gansta' " Malone (Kersi Contractor Secret Agent gave me that name yesterday, I promise)

p.s.- Thanks so, so, so, so much for those of you who have written me. I have gotten a good amount of mail and the other trainees are sick with envy.

Hello friends and family! I have made it back to a computer to the first time in a few weeks. My apologies if you have emailed me or checked this blog in the interim with no sign of change. I have been in fairly constant activity since my last post. My daily activities are mostly very enjoyable, educational, and enlightening. (I promise that alliteration was not planned.) I will only say that any activity, no matter how enjoyable, will become draining at the four hour mark. I am doing pretty well in the training program which basically means that my excitement and motivation continue to grow despite the occassionally challenging moments of language. My stellar language team of M "Hurricane" Jackson and Adrienne "Mad Dawg" Moretti have provided amazing support and frienship. Thankfully not all of us get frustrated simultaneously very often. I would love to post pictures of them, my homestay family, and much more but amidst the rush to prepare to leave, Dad and I managed to purchase a card reader not even remotely close to the right size. I fell that, considering the circumstances, our oversight can be excused. We are working to rectify the situation, so expect pictures soon (by soon, I mean a few months).

I am staying with a wonderful family in a village called Kakubo. It is situated about 45K east of Lusaka near a town called Chongwe. Chongwe itself would fit easily inside an American mall of any considerable size and has a standard market, row of shops, government buildings, and a disproportionate number of bars. My family is wonderful and I promise that in my next post, I will tell more of them and our daily activities. However, I must run now. I hope everyone is well. Know that I am doing fantastic and love you all immensly.

Love,

Kevin "hobbes" Malone

Hello my friends and family!!

Byepi means hello! in Koande which is the language I will be learning frantically starting today! I am going to be stationed at a brand new site (i will be the first Peace Corps person) in the North-West province of Zambia. I have learned that Zambia has the most bush (remote) placements of any country in the Peace Corps and the North-West is the most bush province, so it seems that I can claim to have one of the most bush assignments in all of Peace Corps!! Fantastic! My home village will be somewhere around 14 or so hours away from the Capital of Lusaka but I will only be around 4 or so hours from the Provitial capital where a Peace Corps house is for internet and relaxation. I am having a fantastic time so far and am headed tomorrow up the NW for my first site visit. Then its into training about 45 minutes south of Lusaka for the next 9 weeks where I will learn all the language possible and the technical skills for my project which is becoming more clear and exciting by the minute. I will be working on all sorts of things from sustainable agriculture (organics dad!), teaching environmental education, finding new income sources from non tree forrest resources, and HIV/Aids education. Either way the country is beautiful, the food edible, and the Zambian people are truly the example of what humans should act like. They are the picture of respect and friendlyness and they take their appearance and clothes more seriously than most business men in the States. Everyone should come and visit. (wait 6 months so I am allowed to see you) I have to run now and go get a cell phone which I will be able to use when I leave my site to recieve calls (I will text everyone when they can call me). I am loving every minute of my time here and can't wait for the next day to start. I hope everyone is well and will write again the next time I can get internet which may be in 9 weeks (hopefully sooner).

I love you all very much.

Kevin "muzungu" Malone

First of all, I would like to thank my parents and grandparents for making my college experience possible in both financial and developmental ways. I will never be able to thank them enough for the care, attention, love, and devotion they have shown me in my life and I can only hope to use them as a guide for my life. I also want to thank the incredible crew of people who trekked out to STL for the graduation hullabaloo. An over blown rite of passage in funny outfits. The dinner afterward was undoubtedly the best part. I almost would rather have the dinner and a huge dance party in the quad instead. Either way, thanks all for coming it meant the world to me to have everyone there.

I am now in the somewhat unexpected emotional drop off after leaving school. I will certainly stay in touch with those people who have been at the helm of my fantastic experience of college, but it will never be in the same circumstances. We will never have the freedom over our schedule in the manner experienced in college. Now I would rather avoid a long awkward written reminiscence but I am certainly in a funk about it. I will miss the friends I have made because I love them dearly and they have changed me in the (mostly) the best ways.

Ok, so enough of that. Don't want to get sloppy this early in my blog's history. I am now in Florida and PDC's wonderful home. This house is fantastic and the Crouse family is pretty much the perfect example of how to raise four rowdy boys under one roof and make them all the picture of courtesy, charm, and sincerety. A remarkable family. We have been just soaking up the Florida sunshine and some spicy wing sauce. I actually entered into a spicy wing challenge at a local late night place yesterday and was added to the "Wall of Pain" father than the "Wall of Shame." As a New Mexican I can say that I am pretty sure they put something illegal into that sauce becuase I still cannot feel my face and was in serious fear about my life last night. I was tended to by an emergency race to the supermarket for milk. I have recovered mostly and we are headed out to the beach via boat and to play golf with Mr. Crouse this afternoon. On Monday its back to NM for a few days before its going, going, back, back, to Cali, Cali. I hope everyone who reads this is great both now and when they read it.

Send me an email with your mailing info when you have a chance so I can write you during training because I will not be able to use the internet for those months. Take it easy out there.

-Kevin "The Rocketeer" Maone

What up?!?

I am currently in the process of writing my last paper of college. It is a rather absurd piece of work. Not to say that the paper is poorly written or utter BS. It is merely a very abstract and academic analysis of internal consistency in a set of texts written hundreds of years ago. Modern moral philosophy survives on the back of such minute debates as whether or not Kant's claims in the Doctrine of Virtue are in direct conflict with some made earlier in the Groundwork. Only a few people on the planet can even understand the contents of the text much less this paper. If I were to write a totally novel modern doctrine of moral philosophy with a fully fleshed out conception of moral psychology, only a few hundred people would ever really get it at all. For this reason, I support the continued study and pursuit of philosophy and plan on keeping my preferred doctrines as the basis of most of my major positions on the world, I could never see myself working in the field. Nonetheless, this paper is a rather nostalgic piece of uselessness. I have written a considerable number of papers in college, and the fact that this is the last one is a major point in the larger mass of "lasts" all of us seniors are going through. My college experience has been an enormous number of things, all of which have been invaluable. I am so grateful for all of the people I have known these four years. They have taught me so much (grammar not included). I will probably not write another post until graduation which will probably be even more abstract and emotional, so be prepared. My post graduation pre-Zambia plans are as follows. I am leaving STL on the 19th with my wonderful grandparents and youngest cousin (Jenna who rocks) and driving down to Alabama. My parents will be driving all my crap back to NM (not much I promise mom/dad, seriously, we are having a yard sale) in the interim. Philly "monkey business" Crouse will then pick me up in bama en route to his spot in Sarasota. I will hopefully get to see my aunt Julie and uncle Greg in St. Petersburg on the way by. I will then be flying back to NM on the 29th for a few days. On the 2nd or so (sorry again mom for my usual cavalier attitude about air travel), I am flying to San Diego to see the old stump Pat "brew boss" Johnson for a few days. We will hopefully get in touch with Tonia "purple pirate" Herrerro while there. Then I head back to NM until my June 13th staging event. Its only 9 days and they will be quite full I am sure. Mom has probably already planned out most of them (a good thing). Oh, if anyone reading this is in ABQ on the 9th, stop by the Friends Meeting House in the afternoon for some good grub and good folks for a farewell shindig. Claire "Renaissance Woman" Johnson will be leading the dancing. I will be sure to post more info as the date approaches. Well, thats about it other than a repeated statement of how lucky I feel to be where I am. Thanks to everyone who has helped me get here. Love you all.

-Kevin "funky fabricator" Malone

Hello!!

Welcome to my first blog! I have created this page purely as an avenue for communication with all of the truly unbelievable people I will not be able to see (much) for the next two years. I aim to post something new each time I can get computer access. Being that my internet time during these instances will be limited, I may not be able to write extended personal emails. At my posting location on the other hand, I assume that I will have considerable time each evening to respond to any hand/type written letters anyone feels inclined to send. In light of this more old-school but unquestionably more romantic option, I will post the address necessary to get something to me as soon as I am told what it is. Post cards are also encouraged by the way (looking at you Phil). Either way, I will be sure to update everyone via mass email and here as soon as I figure out more info on contacting me. The main purpose of this first post other than figuring out how to do so, is to explain my goals for this blog. I hope that when you all are bored or have a few minutes and some curiosity about your old stump of a friend/son/grandson/nephew/person that owes you money (note to mom, this last one is a joke, I am financially very responsible), that you might stop by and read my most recent post. Either way, I hope this proves helpful for anyone who is curious about my time in Zambia. Enjoy!

-Kevin "BBQ saucy" Malone

p.s.- I chose the name of the blog after my mother's (Sarah Malone) famous CD project entitled "Peace Tales" Stories for Children. The main motivations I have for joining the Peace Corps can be clearly tied to the influence of my wonderful parents, and the incredible lives they have led. I sass them both constantly but would be nothing without (in more than the obvious way).

p.p.s- I plan on changing my nick name every post. The goal will is to never be "BBQ saucy" again. You may question my logic in using such an obviously fantastic one so early but I stand behind my decision nonetheless.