So i'm trying to think of something entertaining thats happened since i last wrote. Its been a while. I never did find my pants. I've unwillingly given them up as a donation to the village. I ran over a snake with my bike. It was probably the most terrifying moment i've had here so far. &I have a chicken who lays eggs in my bathroom. Its a pretty hilarious scene for the villagers when i get up in the morning and go to the bathroom armed with a stick that i use to poke a squawking chicken until she inevitably flies out of the bathroom at my face. The good news is shes laid me 7 eggs. The bad news is i cant bring myself to eat something that was conceived in my bathroom. 

Hot season has started here. Theres really only 3 seasons: rainy, "cold" & hot. And as much as i think cold season is a joke, theyre not kidding around with hot season. During the day its pretty intolerable (and i say this coming from california) but at night i feel like i'm being punished for everything wrong i've done in my life. The little breeze that flowed during the day stops and the result is awful, oppressive heat. I love october in the US. I do not love october in africa. I know i'll hate rainy season more but hot season is a close second.  

Things here have been moving along. We've started term three of school. Well, by started i mean we're now more than halfway through. We're in week 8 of the term (out of 13) and its going well. I'm teaching grade 8 & 9 english again with a zambian co-teacher, Mrs. Daka. Coteaching is difficult because there isnt much in the way of a work ethic here - its difficult to get teachers to show up for school let alone take an interest in planning and teaching lessons with you - but i'm trying and i have a relatively good counterpart so we're making it work. My students are great &bear with me when i force them to use english only in class to their utter dismay &embarrassment. Most of them dont know english well and definitely dont use it at home so they hate me for it but all of the zambian ministry of education instituted exams are in english so i tell them to deal with it. &since i'm usually the one being laughed at, it provides me with some entertaining moments for a change. Like the other day, my pupils were forming sentences using the vocab words from our reading lesson. One kid had the word "invariably" which we defined as "always or without exception." He was having trouble forming a sentence but after we had gone through everyone else's, he came up with "i invariably go to the toilet!" Considering the fact that even excusing yourself to go to the bathroom is completely taboo in african culture, it was one of the more creative sentences.

Which reminds me...will someone send me an english pocket dictionary? Defining words off the top of my head for 9th graders makes me feel like i'm studying for the gre. They could all be wrong.

Other than that, i've started an afterschool english reading &writing program for my grade 8s that i'm hoping to turn into a library program at the school. We review basic english structure, grammer, punctuation, etc and they do practice exercises and then the kids get to read for the rest of the time. They really love it. To say theyre over zealous when it comes to picking out which books to read would be an understatement. My parents are going to be sending me books theyve collected to use for the program, so if you have any old kids books lying around that you want to donate, feel free. The kids would love it.

Travelling while school was out was great. Victoria falls and lake malawi are both beautiful places. Our next break is in december so over the christmas &new years holiday a group of us are planning to go to zanzibar - an island off the coast of tanzania. I'm so excited! All i'm going to do is swim and eat lobster. &they apparently have a really popular moonlight beach party for new years, so i may take a break from eating lobster to go to that.

Anyway, thats about it. Its weird that I've been here for just about 9 months, which means I'm 1/3 of the way through my service. It doesnt feel like it at all. Even in a place where time virtually doesnt exist, it still feels like its moving too fast. Then again, i do still have 18 more months to enjoy all the chickens in my chimbudzi, roadkill snakes and thieving children i can manage.       

Nothing too exciting has happened since i last wrote. School is coming to an end in less than a month but since each grade takes end of term exams for the last two weeks of the term and preparing for the taking of end of term exams takes up the two weeks before that, teaching for the term unofficially ended last week. Theres nothing new taught from here, they just review the previous term's exam. So i had my last  lesson for the term on friday. For the past few weeks, I've been teaching english to 8th graders with the deputy head (similar to a vice-principal) of my school, Mrs. Tembo. Its been great but i have to speak reallllllly slow and even then half the class doesnt understand my accent. I've taken to speaking "zamlish" where i unintentionally adopt a zambian accent and clap my hands together for emphasis in the zambian way which just makes me look silly and leads me to believe that most of my students think i'm a freak.

Other than that i've been starting to work with the hiv/aids support groups in my area (theres 22, the reality of aids in africa) figuring out how to register the groups so they can be recognized by the government and receive funding and also coming up with income generating activities based on the interests and talents of the people in the group. Most of the groups farm and use the food communally or sell it and use the profits to take care of the members of the group if they get sick or need money but they all want to expand into doing other things too. & i think theres also a real interest in learning to read and write in english since thats something that can help them get ahead so i'm hoping to start an adult literacy group with them.

Once the term officially ends though, i get to do some traveling. I'm planning to head to victoria falls and malawi! Its been great here but after being in a dry, dry village for 6 months, all i want is to be surrounded by beaches and water. And hopefully some lions and elephants. Plus tierney is coming to visit so i've got to show her the sites!  

In other news,  i seem to have involved my village in what feels like a murder mystery. Or a pants mystery.  It all began with a little boy from the neighboring village stealing my solar charger. His parents, upon seeing this odd contraption that they certainly had not given their son, rightly assumed that it must belong to the crazy muzungu and it was therefore recovered before i'd even realized it was lost. 

Then strikes the bafa thief. Some enterprising villager, who obviously did not stop to think of the impact their actions would have on our inevitable & soon to be increasingly unfortunate daily encounters, stole everything i use to bathe out of my bafa bathing shelter. Seeing as i'm 50km from town & cant easily remedy this situation, i will soon smell worse than the goats &i hope the thief will be seriously regretting his decision.

Then theres my pants. I did a small load of laundry this morning and left it hanging on my clothesline while i went to school (obviously not the brightest idea i realize in light of recent events). Surprisingly everything was still there when i came home. I know this because i only washed 5 things and i moved them all along the line to be in the sun. I went inside to make lunch and an hour later i look out to find there are now only four items on the line. My pants have gone missing. Its been windy here so thinking its the wind i search my compound. No pants. I then go tell my amai because after the bafa incident and my solar charger, i'm starting to realize someone is intentionally stealing my crap knowing i wont do anything about it. So my amai and my neighbor john come over to assess the situation. After looking around for a few minutes hoping the pants will turn up, john, who has suddenly turned into one of the hardy boys, calls us over to show us a trail of little shoe prints leading up to the place where my pants had been, then away from it & out the entrance of my fence. They conclude these footprints are too small to be mine or my amai's and most likely that of a girl since the boys around here never wear shoes. Luckily, my village as a whole is really great and has taken on the role of prince charming, hunting down a pants-stealing little-footed cinderella. Hey, if the shoe fits...  

          

I'm officially a peace corps volunteer living in the village! I've been in kanyelele for a little over a month now - we got posted to our sites on april 27th. I love my village - my aspiring rap-star headman, the ridiculously excited children screaming "jesska, jesska" everywhere, my overly concerned neighbors that yell at me for not sweeping my front yard (its a dirt yard, i have trouble seeing the point of trying to keep a dirt yard clean), the 8lbs of nsima i eat breakfast lunch and dinner; i love all of it.

 

We're in week 5 of school now (in zambia the terms run jan-mar, may-july, sept-nov; april, august, & december are the term breaks). I havent started co-teaching yet, right now i'm going around to the 11 schools in my district spending a couple days at each introducing myself, meeting the teachers and observing classes. Theres nothing like going to a new school and being gawked at by 300 students, who stand open-mouthed mid-chewing of their bananas or sucarcane gaping at what is quite possibly the first muzungu they've ever seen. When they finally work up enough courage, they'll stand waving at me and screaming "hi how are you" (the only english the little ones know) until their arms fall off and their voices are hoarse.

The other day was a holiday (african independence day?), so having the day off from school, i decided to go with my amai to the clinic for the weighing of the under 5 year olds. My amai has 2 children under 5 - sonire, who's 4 and augustine (who knew that was a popular zambian name) who was born 5 days before i got to the village (my amai really was pregnant!). Quite possibly the most hilarious thing i've ever seen, this program, put on once a month at rural health clinics around zambia by the ministry of health to keep track of the health and nutrition of young children in the villages, involves stringing a small scale from a tree with a hook on the end. Mothers come and place their newborns in a cloth sack with leg holes that dangles from the end of the hook. Most children are screaming (what kid wants to be dangling from a giant metal hook?). The older kids, who are too big to fit in the cloth sack, are simply picked up and told to grab onto the hook, leaving them suspended in the air, twirling in circles around the rope while their mothers chase after them trying to read the scale. The community health worker who was there volunteered me to run this program for him each month.

Other than that i've been spending most of my time at school. My zonal center school, chingazi basic school, is awesome. The head teacher, my supervisor, miss banda has been great and extremely involved and excited to have me there. Being the zonal center, its a lot more together than any of the other 10 schools in my zone. Chingazi has 15 teachers in comparison to the 5 or at most 6 that are at most other schools, who are somehow supposed to manage teaching anywhere from 7-9 grades total. I love chingazi - its a well run school (as far as zambian schools go) with a really involved head teacher and a great staff, but i'm also looking forward to working with some of the other schools in the zone that seem to need more help. I'm going to try to rotate to a new school each term, so ideally i'll be able to work at 5 different schools over the course of 2 years. But as i'm learning, lots of things sound great in theory but dont always work out the way you planned in practice.

 

The things i see as important - like education, women's rights, time -  they're just not as important to people here. Which isnt to say people here have the wrong priorities and i have the right ones. In a country where the average life expectancy is 40 years old, its more important to be in the fields picking groundnuts to feed the family than going to school or accepting traditional gender roles because there are more fundamental day to day worries than changing them. Finding a place for education is still extremely important and the only way zambians can advance and find a way out of the bush, but its just figuring out what projects my community really wants to work on involving education and helping them take the initiative towards achieving them. Too often people just throw money at them and projects fail because the community has no investment to work toward something thats been developed without their input or needs in mind which doesnt do anyone any good.

  

Anyway, on a lighter note, after being here a few weeks, my host family decided it was time to introduce me to chinamwali. Chinamwali is a traditional ceremony that marks a girl's transition into adulthood. This used to mean a girl was confined to her house for a few weeks, maybe a month, while the old women of the village visited her nightly to teach her about being a woman. This practice has mostly been stopped because zambians realized that as soon as a girl found these things out, she immediately wanted to go and try them out for herself, which led to lots of pregnancies, but apparently thats not the case in my village. They still practice confinement and i got to go to one of the nightly ceremonies. Not knowing what to expect, i unwittingly walked into a dark hut with about 40 of the old women in my village singing & sitting in a circle on the floor around a young girl who was only half-dresssed. It reminded me of a game of duck duck goose and the girl was the mush pot. Being the second guest of honor, i got to sit next to the half-naked girl as the women of the village took turns performing. I feel like i hadnt really experienced zambia until i had a group of old ladies - gray-haired, toothless - dance in front of me in a manner that would have made shakira proud.

Lastly, i officially have rats. I think its because its getting into the cold season. I havent slept in 3 nights because of their silly rat games in my roof and last night i finally saw two of them. I yelled at them for being in my house and then managed to beat them out with a broom. Dad, you would be proud. Its crazy the things you get used to here. Gotta love living in the bush...  

So a lot has happened since my last update. I have less than a week left of training before i'm sworn in as a volunteer! Up to now, we've just been seen as trainees. I just took my final language oral exam so all thats left now is hoping peace corps considers me competent enough in nyanja to send me off to my village. At this point, i'm very ready to be done with training. Our entire life has been scheduled out for us and extremely stressful and packed for the past 2 1/2 months so i'll be glad to make my own schedule and get started on the actual work in my village.

I got to visit my site for a week two weeks ago and its awesome! The best part about eastern province is there are sunflowers EVERYWHERE! I love sunflowers so i was pretty happy. I spent the week running around like a crazy person trying to meet as many people as possible and tell them a little about what i'll be doing there the next two years, which besides working at the schools, really depends on whatever my community wants me to help them with. Whether that means starting womens groups, working on hiv/aids education, IGAs, grant writing, adult literacy...half of the job will be figuring out what my community needs and trying to help them make that happen. From the look of it, i'll be pretty busy.

My village is called kanyelele. (i know i said it was chingazi but thats actually just the name of my school).

When i first arrived, the entire village (thats not an exaggeration) was crowded into my front yard anxiously waiting to greet me. They started singing songs in nyanja with my name in them and dancing around me until it started raining and we all crowded into my insaka (gazebo). It was unlike any welcome i've ever experienced. I didnt feel like i deserved to be the center of so much attention but it really made me feel wanted and at home. They were all just so excited to have me there.

My host family in the village is the headman's family (every village has a headman who's supposed to oversee village happenings, resolve conflicts, etc.). Hes a funny guy - pretty sure he idolizes jay-z because he walks around with a big puffy black parka in 90 degree weather blasting zampop on his cell phone. His family is awesome though. He has 5 really adorable children with another one on the way (at least i think theres another one on the way...its impolite in zambian culture to ask a woman if shes pregnant, so i'm not positive, but i'm pretty sure his wife is about to pop). Anyway, theyre great and theyre last name in nyanja is njobvu, which means elephant, so by association, i am now Ms. Elephant.

On one of my visits to a neighboring village, the headman decided to give me a (live) chicken as a housewarming gift. I obviously didnt know what to do with it and planned on setting it free later once it got dark, but our schedule for the day involved cycling to a ridiculous amount of other villages so the teacher who was showing me around suggested i put it in my hut until we got back. Not knowing what else to do he helped me to tie the feet together and put him in a corner of my living room. Eight hours later after biking all over the zambian bush, i came home to a very angry chicken who had broken free from his restraints and shit all over my house out of spite. Having no idea how to round up a chicken, i made a futile effort to chase him out until a little boy took pity on me and retired the squaking chicken to my seperate cooking shelter. There is nothing more humbling than coming to zambia and realizing small children are stronger and smarter than you and basically more capable in every way. I later managed to get even with the chicken by having my amai cook him for dinner. I feel only a little remorse. Village chicken is really good.

I also had a visit from the chief while i was at site. Another volunteer, alex, my closest peace corps neighbor, lives right by the chief of our district. After meeting alex and finding out there were two new volunteers in his chiefdom, the chief decided they'd hop in his car and drive to my site together. So as i'm standing in my front yard washing my extremely dirty bike, who pulls up but the chief in his mercedes with alex and introduces himself by asking me if i've had a chance yet to read a copy of his 5 year development plan. It was a trip.

All in all, the site visit was great. My hut is lovely. Well really, i have two! One is my main house with a living room and bedroom and the other one i'm planning on using for cooking and storing food.

Now i'm back in chongwe til tuesday when we move to a hostel in lusaka for a few nights til swear in. Then friday we all go off to our provinces! Can't wait.

Here are some pictures from our trip to the Zambian zoo. Unfortunately, there aren't really animals roaming all over Africa as I had so romantically pictured - most of them are restricted to game parks. The place we went to - Munda Wanga, which means our field - was just a small zoo with really inadequate chain link fences, which despite adding a little excitement, was slightly terrifying. But i'll definitely be going to the game parks while I'm here and petting some lions.

I still can't download pictures on facebook, so the few I have on my phone will have to do for now...

He was having a good hair day.

Camels!

Cheers.

Muli Bwanji everyone! The past few weeks have been crazy! We finally got our site placements! I will be spending the next two years in Chipata, Eastern province in the village of Chingazi. Google it! Well, google Chipata - I don't think you'll find Chingazi on a map. But the village is only 45 km from Chipata, the provincial capital, where they have pretty much everything I could need - two huge grocery stores, hardware stores, furniture stores, etc. It's pretty crazy how modernized some places in the middle-of-nowhere Zambia are. I updated my address on my contacts page though, so check that out in case you want to send me anything (like candy!).

My site is a first generation site, which means it's a brand new site and theres never been a volunteer in that village before. I'll be the first muzungu (white person) many of my villagers have ever seen! Let alone talked to or interacted with. The school I'll mainly be working at - Chingazi Basic School, the main zonal center school for the area - has grades 1 - 9 and about 600 pupils. Although that's the main school I'll be at, there are 11 schools total in my district that I'll be working with. The idea is to rotate co-teaching at as many schools as possible so we're able to reach the greatest amount of people, but in reality, I'll probably only work at 3-4 schools in my two years, due to distance (my farthest schools are 10-16 km, which wouldn't be realistic to bike to everyday). To reach those schools, I'll still do visits, classroom monitoring, and workshops with the teachers, but the hope is the work I put into the zonal center school - Chingazi Basic - will trickle out to the other community schools in the zone. That's the hope anyway...

This past week we had a workshop with the supervisors from our respective schools, who will be helping us with everything from finding co-teachers to work with to introducing us to the village headmen/headwomen and chiefs. They're usually the head or deputy head (the equivalent of a principal or vice principal) of the zonal school we'll be working with My supervisor is Miss Jane Banda, who is the head of Chingazi Basic School. She's great - I'm excited to have a female head, since Zambia is such a male-dominated culture, even in edicuation, a predominately femaile profession.

A funny story on Zambian culture: When we first got to the supervisor workshop, we met our Zambian counterparts and then went around the room introducing ourselves to each other. One Zambian man stood up with his volunteer and as a way of introducing her, he said to everyone in the room (about 75 people), "I'm so glad America has sent me a fat volunteer!" Apparently in Zambia, being told you're fat is the highest compliment a girl can receive. It's generally seen as a sign of wealth. The girl handled it really well, but it was still an embarassing moment. I later had to try to explain to my supervisor how usually, telling an American girl she's fat will make her cry. To this, she just stared at me in shock and couldn't understand how it would be taken as anything other than a compliment. Compliment or not, I'm not looking forward to the day a Zambian tells me I'm looking very fat...

Tomorrow morning, we'll be heading out for a site visit. Each volunteer is spending five days in their soon-to-be home villages during the work week to visit the school, meet our counterparts and the villagers, etc. Miss Banda, my head, tried to prepare me for the extensive welcoming preparations they've made. I'm not sure what they entail, but I'm sure they'll be big and include lots of dancing - Zambians love welcoming new people. It's one of the many awesome parts of their culture.

I'm really excited to visit my site and see where I'm going to be spending the next two years! And a little nervous - people here tend to see Americans as miracle workers with tons of money, which can lead to some pretty high expectations. The whole idea of Peace Corps is to build sustainable development by helping people to improve their own lives. All I can do is bring my skills to the table and hope that by being there and offering my help, I can give the villagers, pupils, teachers confidence in their own abilities.

Anyway, I'll try to update everyone after the site visit and I'll have some pictures to post to show you all my village and my new home/hut. I miss you all & send lots of love from Africa!

I'm trying to post some pictures on facebook, but here's one of my host family, the Chitatus, outside their awesome pink and blue house:

And here's one of our whole Peace Corps group:

Cheers!

Hello from Lusaka! I'm at an internet cafe frantically trying to type an update, since it's been said by some that the bible has been more recently updated than my blog. We had a cultural day today in the city and have some free time now to hang about. I just had some thai food for lunch with some fellow volunteers...it was the highlight of my week! I miss thai so much and I've only been here 3 weeks haha it's gonna be a long 2 years.

I survived my first thunderstorm last night! I'm talking wind, pelting rain, thunder, lightning - the whole thing coming down and me lying in bed terrified that my roof is going to fall in on my head. I woke up from a dream at 4 am in which I had been struck by lightning so I spent the next 30 minutes counting the seconds between the thunder and lightning to tell how far away they were. I eventually fell back asleep, but let's just say it was veryyy close.

It's beautiful and sunny now although we did have some rain in the morning. My host family atate (father) and amai (mother) were happy to finally have some rain for their maize. It's been really dry here for the rainy season.

Training has been great but overwhelming. My Nyanja (the language I'm learning - spoken in Eastern province) is coming along alright. I've got the greetings and family descriptions down. My amai made me flash cards the other day to use in class which was really cute.

I can't believe we've almost been here a month! Our days right now are so scheduled - between language classes in the morning, technical (working on our co-teaching and classroom skills) in the afternoon, safety and security trainings, medical trainings (we get shots and learn about all the exciting African diseases we can get here every Wednesday...) - it's all gone by really fast and at the same time really slow. I'm having a blast though and I love my host family - the Chitatus - and the fellow PC trainees.

I should be finding out my actual village two weeks from Monday so I'll let everyone know. Until then, lots of love to everyone and I miss you all!

To give you an idea of what the Zambian "classroom" looks like...

This is Charlie, he's helping me with my Nyanja skills.

Tidzaonana!

Hey guys!!! I finally got into town for some minutes! I'll write a longer post when i get to a real computer but just wamted to let everyone know i made it here safe and its been amazing so far! I'm staying in chongwe with a host family - the chitatus -who are a great retired couple who take great care of me. Lotsssa of nsima! Too much nsima...

I found out i'll be going to eastern province (right by malawi t!!) and i'm learning nyanja which is the language there. I'm really excited about it.

Today a group of us hitched our first ride into town for a girls birthday. Our drivers ne was brian and he was a very friendly farmer - Totally safe dad so don't worry!

Anyway i'll update more soon. Love and miss you all but zambia is amazing! Come visit!

Tomorrow morning at an ungodly hour I leave for Philadelphia (slightly earlier than my fellow Peace Corps volunteers) in order to have one last rendezvous with friends out there before Peace Corps orientation begins next Monday.

Have I packed? No.

Was that a bad idea? Probably.

Here's to not sleeping tonight...

What better way to start this blog than to bypass the months (ten to be exact, but who's counting?) of waiting and aggravation and waiting and tormenting myself with guessing games and ahhh more waiiiiitingggg and just say...

I've been invited to serve in Zambia January 31st 2011!!!!!

Before today - sadly - I could not for the life of me point this country out on a map, but after doing some quick wikipedia-ing (I know that's not a word...) - I'm very excited to get to know it. :)

Hey Everyone!!

Well, I’ve been at site for about 2 weeks, so I thought I would type up a quick blog to tell you all how it’s going.

Well, I’ve been at site now for about two weeks, so I thought I would type out another blog. Things are going incredibly well, which I expected, but I am very glad that it is going as well as I thought it should.

Let me start at the beginning. As I put in the last blog, I got posted on Friday of the week everyone got posted. The only two newbies left at the house were me and Joe, and we were posted together because we were in the same district. One of my neighbors, Tamra, was at the house (she had a friend visiting and they were going to her site), so they rode up with us. We stopped on the way up to give my other neighbor, John, a package he had received (and to get a bag from him that he wanted taken to Solwezi), and then it was off to my site.

When we got to the driveway of my compound, it looked like a party had already started. Before the car got fully on the driveway, everyone there was cheering and clapping, and by the time the car stopped, it was fully surrounded. A lot of the village had turned out to see me get posted, which was kind of cool. They also prepared a feast – nshima, chicken and cabbage – for us to eat as a “welcome dinner” and thanked Lauren (the PCVL of NW Province) and the driver who drove us for “bringing their daughter to them.” By the time the car left to go take Joe to his site, all the people who came to see me posted were working hard to help me get situated, and when the car finally pulled away, they stood with me to wave at the volunteers leaving. As soon as the car was out of site, that is when their real mission began – to make me feel at home. In fact, their exact words were “we want to make you really happy so that you won’t get sad and leave to go home until your two years are up.” They immediately began pulling in bricks and planks to make bookshelves and a bedframe, saying that there is no way they would let me sleep on the floor. Of course, they made jokes about the size of my bed (I had gotten a double in case some of the other volunteers wanted to come visit, then we wouldn’t be smushed into a small bed… plus sleeping on a big bed is kind of fun, you can spread out), including asking me if I got such a big mattress because I wanted a man to come sleep in it with me. I, of course, told them no, it was just for me… but I don’t think that they believed me.

The next day, John (my neighbor) came to visit and see how things were coming along. He came in the middle of the hot time, so I don’t think many people were out, but when he left, it was starting to cool off a little bit, so many more people were out. When he went to go get his bike to ride to Tamra’s (he was going to see the chief), the women asked him all sorts of questions, like who he was, where he was going, where he stayed, etc, and when he left, I found myself sitting in my hut laughing like a crazy person. I was laughing solely because for the next 10-20 minutes, all the women talked about was that he was here (I couldn’t understand everything they said, but I know it was about that, because I kept hearing Jessica and John in the same sentence) and was in my hut (he was looking around, it was the first time he’d seen it). I found it quite funny.

Since I was posted on a Friday, I asked the man who volunteered to be my counterpart and show me around (his name is Fordson) if he wouldn’t mind showing me around on Monday, that way I had a couple of days to kind of adjust to being there and to get my stuff arranged. He agreed, and on Monday, he came to show me to my clinic. We also tried to go meet the chief, but he had gone out of town, so we couldn’t.

At the clinic, I talked extensively with people from HBC (Home Based Care) about some of the things they do, how their program is set up, etc, and I was invited to go to the Ante-natal clinic and Under 5 Clinic being held on Wednesdays and Fridays, respectively. I tried to meet with the other person who volunteered to be my counterpart, a Sister who worked at the clinic (it’s a Catholic Mission) but she had gone out of town also. Over the next couple of days, I met with people from all over, from Anti-AIDS clubs (2 of them) and Nutrition Clubs. I was also approached by a few different people asking me to teach them about HIV/AIDS, so I was quite excited about that. I finally got to meet the chief on Saturday, a week and a day after getting posted. He had apologized for going out of town, asked me how I liked the area and about the program, and suggested that I come to the CDC (Community Development Committee) meetings when they are held. He said he was glad to have me here, and that he hoped we would work well together.

As I told you earlier, I have also been attending the Antenatal and Under 5 Clinics at the hospital. They are kind of cool. The Antenatal Clinics are held on Wednesday, and expecting women show up, get talked to a little about HIV/AIDS and PMTCT (Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission), then they go through the VCT (Voluntary Counseling and Testing) process (pre-test counseling one on one, followed by the test, and a post test counseling). While that is going on, the women all get weighed, they have nurses feel the stomach to see how the pregnancy is progressing, and they are given anti-malarial medication to prevent that also. The first week I went to that, there were (at most) 15 women. The second week, the number exploded to 78!! It was a very crazy day that day. The Under 5 Clinics are for the children to have a check up until they are about 5. They are weighed, and a count is taken for how many are above, below and average weight, the mothers are given a health talk, the kids are given injections (if needed), and the mother is given Vitamin A (if she hasn’t had it yet). It is quite fun to see all the kids, although there are still quite a few who cry at seeing me (they have never seen a white person before, usually).

The second week here has been just as busy as the first, with people approaching me about meetings they want me to attend, etc. I’ve also visited all of the schools nearby (there are three, two in one direction, one in the other), and went to the Mission. All of the schools said that they would love to work with me, and I was told by one that they will have a meeting and I would be informed of the time that they want me to come and teach about HIV (they are giving me a timeslot… whether it’s minutes or hours, I don’t know, but they wanted to be sure that I get a time). The other schools said they worked very closely with the previous CAHP (Health) Volunteers in the area, and that they would like to work with me too, but to come back in a week or two when everyone is around for me to meet, at which time we’d discuss when I was going to teach/work with people.

Overall, things are going very well here. I have yet to do my Community Entry assignments, but there is plenty of time (I think I’ll do them with the groups that I’ll be meeting with soon). I have only a few things on my programme (schedule) for next week, the clinics of course, and tomorrow is a celebration in John’s village for the boys who went to the circumcision camp. That sounded quite interesting, so if it turns out to be, I’ll be sure to type up another blog for you all to read about it. I hope you are all doing well, and I look forward to hearing from you soon! Love and Miss you all!!

Hey everyone!

Sorry it took me so long to post here… I know it has been over 2 months, but things have been crazy since I left the states.

Since I didn’t post anything yet, it makes it easy to make a blog, huh? I guess I’ll start at Staging. On the way there, my family and I left extremely early in the morning to drive down to Philly. We stopped on the way there and saw Erin and Dominick (who gave me some Carebear stuffed animals and a card) and then headed to the city. The car randomly quit (not exactly sure what happened, I think it had something to do with the electric stuff… I’m not a car person) in the middle of the PA Turnpike, but it started again after a few minutes and we went on our way.

We got to the hotel, unloaded my stuff, said goodbye to my family, and met the new people I was going to hang with. I was crying when I said goodbye, and at that exact moment, the bus-boy decided to inform me (quite loudly so that they could hear) that there were a lot of Peace Corps people in the lobby, so there I was crying, smiling, hugging and waving all at the same time. It was quite amusing I’m sure. After Gram, Jay, Scott and Naomi left, I met a bunch of the people, and they seemed pretty cool. Within a half-hour I met most of my training group, and I knew it was going to be interesting. All of the people in my intake are pretty cool, very friendly, we had a blast at Staging.

From Staging, we went through our extremely long flight to Africa. We landed in South Africa on June 16th, where we stayed in this amazing hotel in Johannesburg. The next day, we flew a few hours and landed in Zambia, where we were greeted by many PCVL’s (Peace Corps Volunteer Leaders) and staff members. We went to this government hostel in Lusaka where we stayed for almost a week, doing things like getting cell phones, learning a small amount of local language, picking the languages we were going to learn (and, for some of us, we learned where we were going based on the language picked), and getting somewhat accustomed to the food here. From there, we went to hour homestay families… which was a whole new adventure!

By the 26th of June, we were at our homestay family’s homes. I shared a family with another girl, and there was a third on the same compound (her amaama was my amaama’s sister). To add to that, we had another trainee within a 2 minute walk from us, so we all got very close to each other. Homestay was a pretty cool experience. My amaama is a single mother, she worked very hard to support herself and the seven children she was caring for (of course, two of the 7 are old enough to help out, one had a job in Lusaka to help financially and the other helped with the other children and around the house… not to say the other kids didn’t help, because they all did a lot of the chores). Anyway, so my amaama sold fruits and vegetables at the market, while my host brother worked in a rose farm. That is where most of the money they lived off of came from. Anyway, so chisaka chami chi Zambia (my family in Zambia) were really cool, they helped a lot with learning Lunda, and got very excited when they heard where l’d be posted, since that’s where they are from. I did hurt my knee, it got “partially dislocated” as the doctors described it, and the family (and entire village) were very supportive… visiting me when I was forced to be on bed rest (they didn’t know what happened, so they made me be on bedrest), helped me walk when it was difficult, brought me food to my room so I didn’t have to walk to the other girls place where we usually ate, they did a lot for me through the process, which I am extremely grateful for… they were genuinely concerned about me, which made the inevitable homesickness a little less harsh. It was hard saying goodbye to them when we left, and I will miss them a lot when I get to my site, but I was also very excited to move on to the next step after swear-in.

While at homestays, we were going through the laborious process of training. In the mornings, we had 4 hours of language training, then we had 4 more hours of technical training in the afternoons. On certain days, we also had cultural lessons, safety and security lessons, and of course, the HIV/AIDS sessions (since I’m in the HAP program, we were often separated from the rest of the group for this, so we could learn stuff in more detail). With every topic of training, we got another manual… which made packing for site quite interesting!

I should tell you a little about mine. As I may or may not have told you, I am in the Northwestern Province. I have lots of fruit trees in my yard, mangoes, avocados, guava, orange, banana, etc… so I am very excited about that. I don’t know much about my community yet (I don’t get posted until Friday the 24th), but from what I hear they are very excited to have me there and to work with me. My PC neighbors have been telling me that they meet up in my area (I’m almost exactly in the middle of them), and that the people in my community have been asking them to help, cause they were so excited to get started. That helps a lot, at least I know I have a motivated community….they actually want to get the work done, which makes it a lot easier on me to do my work.

So, as of Friday, I am officially a PCV. We swore in on Friday, August 17th. It was a pretty nice ceremony, kind of like a graduation of sorts. We did dress up, some people even had outfits made for them. On the 14th, we moved out of our homestay families, that was a sad moment… we will miss them a lot, and from then until the morning of the 18th, we stayed at this campground-ish type place called Eureka. But, this wasn’t like a campsite in America… there were game animals walking around! The first night we were there, a bunch of us were just hanging out, a few people playing guitars, drums, etc and we were all talking, when we look over and there were 10-20 zebras about 20 feet from us. It was amazing. After swear-in, a bunch of us decided to walk around the game park at Eureka, and we saw a family of giraffes, a bunch of water buffalo, some monkeys, lots of impala, and many different types of birds. It was breathtaking to see all the animals so close…. And without a fence to shield us from them. I loved it!

The night of swear-in, all the new volunteers, the trainers, the PCVL’s and pretty much anyone else that came with us partied it up, much like graduates do after they graduate (don’t deny it… I know you did too J), so getting up at 5:30 to leave for Northwestern Province was a little difficult for the 9 of us newbies that came up here. Luckily, no one got sick on the 10 hour drive, but I think that most of us slept almost the entire way. When we got here, the other volunteers had made us a nice dinner to welcome us, and we just hung out for the rest of the evening. The next two days (Sunday and Monday) were spent shopping for all of the stuff needed to move into our huts (think back to your first apartment… all the stuff you needed to get because it wasn’t furnished or anything… and then add tons of storage things for water, cleaning, ways to cook without a stove, and pretty much anything else you can imagine). The first group got posted on Tuesday, 4 people out of the 9 that came up were gone by Tuesday night. One more got posted today (Wednesday), two more tomorrow (Thursday) and the final two… including me on Friday. We are all very excited to get to site, get started, but like anyone starting a new job we are all a little nervous. We are all certain that we will be fine, and do well as volunteers, and we know we have been prepared enough… so that has helped calming the nerves a bit.

Other than that, there isn’t much more to report. I am sitting at the provincial house in Solwezi, working on getting all the stuff needed for site, hanging out, and even reading some of the mail that came while here! I hope things are going well for you all, that you are enjoying the summer in America (we are just moving out of the cold season, just barely into the hot season here), and that all of you kiddies who have to go to school soon are getting ready (or are having fun, if already there). I look forward to hearing from you soon!! Miss you all!!

Hey everyone!!

Well, I've been on my Peace Corps adventure for 15 days now and I thought it was time to update. As you probably know, my group made it safely to Zambia. There were 48 of us (now only 47, unfortunately one girl was allergic to a very important shot) and we are all getting along great! You'd think that by mixing over 40 20-something-year olds that there would be a lot of drama, but there really isn't, it's kind of cool.

So, betcha want to hear about the trip, huh?! Well, after a VERY long flight (it took over 15 hours), we land in Jo'burg, South Africa where we stayed the night.The hotel we were at was amazing, so nice it was a little unnerving to some (many were trying to find a hidden meaning in our stay there), but still, very nice. We left there in the morning to fly a couple more hours to Lusaka, Zambia. Once we got there, we got out luggage (well, most of it, some people were missing bags...including me) and we went to stay in a government hostle for a few nights. While there, we met lots of people, from PCVL's (Peace Corps Volunteer Leaders) to volunteers to the staff. It was a lot of names to take in. We also went to visit the offices in Lusaka (where I was able to get on the internet once), we went to buy cell phones, and get on the internet in another area near Lusaka, and we went to get materials for our first site visit.

While we were doing all of this, we were also having "sessions" (a fancy terms for classes), one of which where we picked the languages we would be learning..I am currently learning Lunda, which means I will be in the Northwestern Province. I don't know exactly where yet, but once I know, I'll send out information as soon as possible (probably won't post it on here though, just for security reasons).

The first site visit was very fun. We went up to Northwestern Province (at least my group did) and, although it was a very long drive, we had a blast once we got there...and even along the way. We had some time to stop at the Provincial House for that province and met even more people. The volunteers (and staff) all seem very cool..which is a good thing.

Currently, the group is now scattered as we have entered the homestay part of our training. Once we got to homestay, we got our bikes (which I am getting used to) and that is our main mode of transportation. My homestay family seems very cool and they are very helpful as I try to learn Lunda.

Anyway, I should get going. As I write this out for my lovely friend Melissa to post for me, it is 21:50 (9:50pm) and I have been getting up very early..thanks to a friendly rooster nearby. By the way, whoever said roosters crow at dawn is full of it...they crow at all hours of the day and night. I hope you are all enjoying your summer, its actualy winter here now. I will try to update sometime in the near future.

So, I've been asked by many people to know what they could send me in a care package. I did make a little list up, just to give you all starting points. Of course, I'm not expecting anyone to send me carepackages, it is a nice thought, but if you really don't want to, that is fine. I am fine with just getting cards, letters, emails, etc. But, for those who would like to send something to me, here is a list to kind of get you started thinking:

- Snacks:

Ø Pretzels (either the sourdough or regular, I like the salted ones better than unsalted)

Ø Chips (pretty much any kind, my favorites are salt and vinegar, ruffles, cheddar and sour cream, and cheetoes)

Ø 100 Calorie Packs (Love them! The fruit snacks, oreos, chocolate chip cookies, I have tried, haven’t tried much as far as the others)

Ø Cookies: Oreos, chocolate chip cookies

Ø Snack cups, I like fruit cups, especially tropical mixes (especially if they have mandarine oranges, lol), applesauce, pudding, jello

Ø Candies: M&M’s, Reese’s, KitKat, Butterfingers, Starbursts, Jellybeans (especially Starburst flavored), Hershey Kisses (caramel and PB filled are good too, as well as plain). If candy is sent, that is a big hit with the locals, so even if I’m not a big fan of the flavor you sent, I’m sure it will get eaten.

Ø Crackers: Saltines, Cheese Nips (or whatever they’re called… I also like the White Chedder things too), basically any flavor crackers… nothing too spicy

- Drinks:

Ø Stuff that is “Just add water” is best. So, for that there are a ton of possibilities. Some flavors I like (Crystal Lite is best for them, but I’m sure anything works):

o Fruit Punch

o Wild Strawberry

o Orange

o Lemonade

Other Stuff:

- Make-up:

Ø Mascara: anything goes, just make sure it’s waterproof. Currently, I’m using “Maybelline’s XXL Volume + Length” (the kind with the two steps, a white part that adds volume or something, and a black part on top of it.

Ø Eye Liner: I really like the “Maybelline Unstoppable” stuff.

Ø Eye shadow: any color, but I mostly use greens, browns, and golds (those colors bring out my eye color)

Ø Almay’s Smart Shade makeup (medium)

I know it seems silly, but I am taking a little bit of make-up with me. Although I may not wear it all the time, I am taking it just in case I want it on a particular day.

- Magazines:

Ø Pretty much anything, I mostly read things like Glamor, US, People, etc. I tend to stay away from magazines that have a high level of sexually-based articles in them. Cosmo is really bad about that, so just beware if sending magazines. I would really appreciate not having a magazine chalked full of sex… it would be nice to show the nationals that Americans care about more than just sex and money.

- American Stamps: They are nice because a lot of people come visit volunteers, and volunteers go home to the USA a lot. This way, a bunch of us can send the letters with whomever is going back, and can rely on the American postal service alone rather than having both the American and Zambian (which can be iffy sometimes).

Of course, use your judgement on whether or not to send certain things. The mail can be especially iffy with packages, so don’t send anything that you don’t think will last at room temperature (or hotter) for long periods of time.

Just thought I’d give ya a quick update on the last couple of weekends. As I posted in the last post, things seem a lot crazier than they actually are. But, as time gets closer and closer to the time I leave, they seem to be calming down bit by bit.

Well, my party went pretty well. About 30 or so people showed up, and a bunch more sent cards and whatnot to show their support. It was nice to see such a great turnout, reminded me how lucky I am to have the wonderful people I do in my life. Anyway, back to the party. It wasn’t anything spectacular, just a little picnic, but it was a nice little picnic. We had some problems before the party (the store lost the cake we ordered- and it was a special made one… had the Zambian flag and a Zambian phrase on it), but the weather cooperated very much so (it didn’t even start raining until about an hour after everyone left and we were on our way home) and it was very sunny and warm. It was nice enough to get into a “Splash Ball” fight, and it seemed like everyone had a good time.

This last weekend, Gram, Naomi, and I went to the Women of Faith conference in Rochester. We had a blast. We had to leave the house at like 6:30 in the morning to get there by the time we were supposed to register, but Naomi and I kept from falling asleep in the car by playing LIFE (the boardgame) on my computer. Once we got there, we went to the Blue Cross Arena and had some amazing speakers talk. That was for the pre-conference, so we were pretty excited about what the rest of the conference was going to be like. We got done with the pre-stuff around 3ish and had until 5 to waste (the actual conference started at 5), so we went to the hotel. Thankfully, we had registered early there (went during one of our breaks) and we went up to our room. We went to dinner with the group we had registered with (Gram’s friend at school’s mom had registered us) and got to meet some of the people gram spends her days with. Then, after dinner, we went back over to the arena to claim our seats. They had put our seat numbers on our tickets, so during the earlier stuff, we tried to figure out where we’d be, and we had AMAZING seats, or so we thought. So, we went to them and realized that we were right behind the box for the videographer who was putting the stuff on the screen for the upper rows. The ladies in front of us complained, so they got moved, and after finding them suitable seating, we were asked if we wanted to move also. They found us seats in the floor seating, 4 rows from the stage. It was awesome! Of course, we were around a couple of grumpy people, but we dealt with it in stride. They said multiple times, and it was on the Rochester news, that 10,000 women were there. It was awesome to sit on the floor seats and hear them all singing… its like the best kind of surround sound you can imagine! We had lots of great performances there from Sandy Patty, Anita Renfroe, Nicole C. Mullen and Allison Allen. We also had amazing speakers – Patsy Clairmont, Marilyn Meberg, Sheila Walsh, Carol Kent, Henry Cloud (pre-conference only). All together, when we left, we had two CD’s (both Nicole C. Mullen – everybody MUST see her perform at least once… she’s awesome! Even Gram was “Raising the Roof” to her music!), two books (both by Carol Kent, Gram is loving them), two t-shirts (one for Naomi and one for me) and a bible for me to take with me to Africa.

Anyway, so that is the update of what’s going on. There isn’t much time left here in the states, so there is much to do. The agenda from now on is to work for the next 5 days (scary that that’s all I have left), pack up my stuff, and leave a week from Wednesday. Then, my adventure begins. It’s getting closer!!

Hope you all have an amazing day, just think, within the next couple of posts, I’ll be doing it from Zambia!! I’m getting excited!

My apologies to anyone who tried to click on links from my page and did not get to where they were supposed to be. When I set up the links, somehow extra letters/sections in the address were added, and so the sites were not recognized. But, they all should be up and running for you to click on and look through. If there are any problems, feel free to let me know...

Also, feel free to comment if you want. The comments are open to everyone, I purposely made it that way so that people that love to comment on my blogs *cougherincough* still can, even if they are not a member of blogger.com.

Hope you are all having a good day, and I look forward to seeing some of you this weekend for my party!

Hey everyone!

I thought I would put a post in here about getting my invitation to Zambia. The story is funny (at least to me), especially if you know me. Here is what I wrote in my journal about that little adventure:

Well, it finally happened. I got medically cleared and got my invite to Zambia. I didn’t think it’d ever happen. I mean, I tried for so long to get all that stuff done, then I slacked a little, lost insurance, lost a lot of my chances, and here I am today with an invitation to Zambia doing exactly what I wanted to do in the first place. HIV/AIDS education along with gardening and good nutrition promotion. I can’t believe it. It seems to be so sudden. Let me explain how this happened.

So, for a few weeks I was getting random things from the PC. And by random I mean random. I got one letter saying that the refund couldn’t go through because I hadn’t submitted my bills, then another week I got a thing saying I had to get my wisdom teeth removed, then another week I got something saying that I needed a repeat urinalysis. So, I did all those things. I got copies of all the bills and sent them in (last Thursday). On the same day, I got the urinalysis done, got that faxed over. Then, on the day I was scheduled to have my wisdom teeth removed (Friday), I got the invite. But, that’s not even the funny part of the story. See, I was kind of nervous about getting my teeth pulled, so I opted to have the Valium pills beforehand. So, I went on Thursday to pick them up. I was to take one pill on Thursday night before going to bed (after closing) and two an hour before my appointment on Friday. So, I took one at 1:30 in the morning (when I got home and was ready for bed), then went to bed. Around 10ish, there’s a ringing of the doorbell and the dog goes nuts on me. Of course, I had to get up in order for him to stop barking, so I went and realized that only one thing would do that. A FedEx package. So, I looked to see what it was. It was an “urgent” package from the PC, so I immediately opened it. I thought I was still dreaming when I saw the words “The Peace Corps Invite You To Serve” on the front. Now, don’t get me wrong. It’s not like it was out of left field. I mean, the day before I had logged into my toolkit thing and it said I was an invitee and my packet would come soon. I just wasn’t expecting it at 10:00 in the morning the next day. Anyway, so I’m reading along and I see that I’m going to Zambia, keep reading and see I’m going for HIV/AIDS. I was so excited that I texted almost everyone in my phone to tell them. Gram was so excited for me, her class had just finished studying Zambia for their history thing, so she went off on a tangent telling me all about how it’s a plateau and about the climate and stuff like that. It was kind of funny. Anyway, on with the story. So I was on cloud 9 and realized that I still had to take a couple more of those pills. Gram got home around 12ish and brought lunch and as we were leaving, I took the other two pills. I guess (according to Gram) I talked non-stop on the way to Dansville. I was so excited, and I guess the Valium just increased the excitement for me. Then, I go and get my teeth pulled, they only had problems with one of them. I decided that since it was Friday and it was almost 3, we needed to go pick up my check. So, into BK we went, me kind of stumbling along still kind of loopy on the drugs that I had to take for my teeth, still having gauze in my mouth, and all I did was hand Angela (the restaurant manager) my letter saying that I was invited. The letter said nothing about where I was going, what I was doing, when I was leaving, I just wanted her to see it. She kept asking me all these questions, and of course being out of it, I didn’t know the answers, so I guess the only thing I really agreed to was to work until the Saturday before. Then, walking out, someone asked me a question, so instead of answering them, I randomly just handed them the letter, but then took it back before they could read even two lines. I guess the girl was a little baffled and asked someone if that was really me that was just in there. So I’m working until June 9th, and I’m leaving for pre-service training on June 13th. I, of course, came back on Saturday to explain more and to tell her that I wasn’t being weird, I was just on drugs.

So, there’s the story. I got invited to Zambia on the same day that I was all loopy from getting teeth pulled. We will see how far the excitement takes me (I’ve kind of been riding on that to get me through all the stuff I have to get done and the stress associated with it). This is a whole new adventure… are you ready to go on it with me?

Well, I decided to start a blog about my adventures in Zambia. I am leaving mid-June with the Peace Corps to be an HIV/AIDS Mobilizer. What that basically entails is living in RURAL Zambia and helping to educate some of the people over there about the disease and how to care for those with it.

I will try to update as often as possible, if required, I will send my blogs to someone at home and they can type them out for me. I plan on taking lots and lots of pictures, and I'm hoping that all of those at home will keep in touch.

That is all I have to say for right now, perhaps a little later I will update more. Hope you all have a good evening/day.

*Jess*