I am sitting in an internet cafe trying to reply to emails and blog. There is a random Zambian man sitting on the chair to my right. When he walked in a few minutes ago he stopped in front of my computer and looked me up and down with googly eyes. I looked at him and tried to convey through my disgusted expression that his behavior was inappropriate. Then he sat down and repeatedly leaned forward to look at me while I was sitting. The back of the computer screen was visible, so it isn't like he was trying to read what I had up on the page. After the second time of him making googling eyes at me, I leaned forward and asked if he needed something. He said no and began telling me how he was hungry.

First, if I was a black woman, he never would have made inappropriate eyes at me. Second, because I am white he equates me with money and him saying he is hungry is the Zambian way of asking for money for food or for food. I've been here a year and a half and I still become infuriated with the lack of tact and rudeness some people have. "I want to marry a white woman" and "Take me to America" are commands I hear too often. I am not sure if it is an inferiority complex, the desire for a white woman to raise one's socioeconomic status, the chase, the belief that white woman are easy, the desire to get out of Zambia- a country without opportunities, or a combination of everything but I am sick of being harassed whenever I go into my shopping town and its not my job to improve these men's lives. When I tell these men that in America you have to work at least 40 hours a week at your job and that you can't build your house out of mud- you have to buy or rent it- they grow quiet and soon after the conversation ends.

People in Zambia don't understand that Americans are wealthy and live good lives because they work hard for it. Yes, we have a better education system that produces people with analytical and comprehension skills. Yes, a 12th grade education in Zambia is the equivalent a grade 8 or 9 education in the States. Yes, the government is corrupt (the former president, Chiluba, was acquitted a few weeks ago of embezzling billions despite the fact that the international community believes otherwise), completely dependent on foreign aid and failing the people in the rural areas (and in some urban areas). People here are desperate and life is hard, but that is not an excuse to be a rude jerk and disregard one's cultural rules of etiquette.

I recently read the book "The Motorcycle Diaries" by Che. And could someone please explain what all the fuss is about with the book? I didn't see how it was that exciting because his experiences in SA sound like a nicer version of my life hitching to get around in Zambia.

Sorry I haven't not updated in a long time!! Here is quick update of the last 6+ weeks or so:

-I got food poisoning for the 76th time in the beginning of May which resulted in a midnight barf attack all over my bed. FUN!!

-We had mid-term conference in Lusaka for week. Found out I don't have TB or HIV!! Wahoo!!! AND I got to gorge myself on good food and catch up with fellow pcvs from other provinces. Also learned how to do a bio-intesive garden which I am now trying (unsucessfully) to get a few of my schools to do.

-My host sister is pregnant and about to pop and she said I can watch her give birth if I buy her a chicken!

-I biked for 5 hours to visit Ryan and we accidently went on an almost 8 hour hike because one of his villagers lied to him about how far away the school was where the football match was taking place. That was an interesting day. I was wearing my chacos and had horrible blisters and the last hour and half of our hike back to his house was in the dark with no moon and it was cold outside.

-We just had our bi-annual PC provincial meeting and it was fun, but I was sick with a sinus infection and someone in the House kept stealing my bread.

-Ryan and I went to visit the Missionaries by me and had a fun filled day of avoiding the topic of religion, eating American food (pecan pie!), explaining we aren't married (the missionaries are obsessed with marriage) and listening to Texas accents.

-I had a spider infestation in my house and killed over 20 spiders one night.

-The weather has gotten cold and "winter" has arrived.

-My teachers went on strike last week so I don't have anything to do because all my programs have been postponed until the strike ends.

-I lost my sunglasses (my only pair) on the main village path and a young boy returned them to me.

-I found out one of my favorite villagers is sick :( Mrs Jafita isn't working because of heart problems and is on bed rest.

-There is a New Zealand couple staying in my village for two months working with the Mutanda Center (a strange church owned ngo of sorts). They seem very nice.

-I started a seed nursery with tomatoe and pepper seeds. I am hoping they grow.

-My mom is coming to visit me and will arrive in Zambia on June 25th! Can't wait!

-I've been biking a lot and have actually begun enjoying it and my villagers have told me I have "decreased". An added benefit.

-I had bananas growing in my yard and one of my neighbors stole them and then I told her kids they were gone and that night she sent her kids to return them by burying them in a pile of sand in my yard around 8:00pm. My family saw the kids enter my yard with them and bury them and the woke me up and we unburried them. Who knew bananas could be such a great buried treasure?!

Dear Friends and Family,

I am still alive and have not died from malnourishment or malaria (or lost my sanity) in the Zambian bush :) I have been living in a rural Zambian village for one year and one day now. And I can honestly say that life here is challenging in ways I never anticipated it would be. In my 12 months in the village I have a developed a new found appreciation and passion for hot showers with water pressure, vegetables of multiple varieties, non-foam bed mattresses, parents who don't let their children pee the pants and leave them in pee soaked clothes for the rest of the day, endless debates on what is development and the institution of foreign aid, complaining about non-sustainable development programs and NGOs, government dependence on outside donors, banks with the ATM machine that work and where patrons don't cut in front of you in the queue, queues in general (Zambians don't queue EVER), reliable Internet, customer service, efficiency in government and private business, people who want to better their own lives through hard work and the pull yourself up by your boot stretch mentality, beautiful clouds and sunsets, my home culture and loved ones in the States and Zamlish among many others.

My life here is almost always unpredictable but at the same time always predictable. My days in the village are spent struggling to fill my immense amount of free time, yet I somehow end each day wondering where the day went and wondering how I managed to spend 4 hours playing with the gang of mischievous children who rely on me for hours of entertainment. The moments of awe and amazement in the people and landscape here that punctuated my early days so often have begun to be less frequent as my time in the village has progressed. The Peace Corps experience in Zambia is definitely a roller coaster ride full of twists and turns, euphoric highs and seemingly never ending drops into an abyss.

I've learned how to solve problems without asking anyone else (like a friend or parent) for advice. I've learned how to deal with difficult people who have ulterior motives and don't treat me as an equal or who treat me with special privilege only because I am white. I've gained an understanding of the effects of government (in)action and policy implementation on people in the rural areas that I don't think I ever would have learned in the States. I've learned how to avoid incredibly negative Peace Corps Volunteers who are down on Zambia and how to not let their negativity bring me down. I've become a professional liar ("Yes, I am married" or "No, I can't give you food/money because I don't have any") and can say no to even baby without feeling too guilty. In need of some small talk? I can make small talk with anyone about anything now!

Work wise I don't feel like I have accomplished very much in my first year of service. I have done well at the cultural exchange aspect of my job, but getting programs and workshops organized to do professional development trainings with the teachers has been an uphill battle. I go to a school and the educators I need to see aren't there because they are in town. I try to schedule a workshop and am informed we have to find money first so we can provide food and beverages to the teachers. I show up at my Zonal Head School with an already scheduled appointment to go monitor another school with my Zonal In-service Coordinator and I am informed we can't go today because he has to go to town or is over-worked and has another commitment. I still have not found a reliable counterpart or even someone who I can rely on a regular basis to be my translator so I can set up meetings with local groups independently (I am not gifted when it comes to speaking the local language, kikaonde). One fourth of my work related frustration comes from how my Peace Corps program is set up, another fourth from Zambian/Kaonde culture, another fourth from my own community and the last fourth is frustration with myself for not having done things differently (if only we all had hindsight before we did things).

I think a lot of the past year has been about getting used to the culture and systems for doing things. During the next school term I am planning on teaching Zambian history or religious education to the grade 9 class, re-starting the HIV/AIDS club at my Zonal Head School and do HIV/AIDS trainings with my teachers at all my schools (I recently learned that two of the teachers I've worked the most with think there is a cure/vaccine for HIV). Often the problem I have faced isn't that there isn't a need, the need is there; the problem is that the need is so great I've often found myself overwhelmed and unsure of where I should focus my time. I think that being overwhelmed and unsure of what to do is common during the first year of service. It seems that many of my friends from my intake have gone through similar emotions and work frustrations. When I am most frustrated and feeling useless I often find myself wishing I had a project that needed outside money to get accomplished, but quickly that idea fades when my conflict about handouts and foreign aid surface.

I am looking forward to the next year and the adventure that it brings. I continue to update my blog about once a month. Feel free to read it or not read it at your own leisure :) The address is http://davygockel.blogspot.com/.

If any of you are teachers, I would love to have a class to be pen pal's with! Please let me know if you are interested!

Of everything from the States that I miss, it is the people that I miss the most. All of your support and encouragement the past 14 months has helped me endure many rough patches and I can't thank you enough. I am glad I can share this crazy beautiful experience with all of you. Please continue to update me on your lives in Americaland. Hearing about life across the Atlantic reminds me how strange my own life is and keeps me connected to all of you back home.

Be well and healthy,

Davy

Don't hold this against me in the future, but the other day I actually missed cold weather.

I am no longer the owner of Cat. I gave her back to my family after two days. She was annoying and a lot of work. Human children must be a ton of work....Cat still comes to my house to play/eat, but now she sleeps at my grandparents house.

Everyday I have the same conversations with the same people. Our conversations vary only slightly and I am beginning to go crazy from the lack of intellectual stimulation. How many times will I have to answer the questions "do you eat nshima?", "do you cook nshima?", "are you married?", "how long have been in Zambia?", "do you stay alone?", "you are awake!"...the list goes on and on. Everyday the same thing. The kids ask me if they can wash my dishes, I say yes and then two hours later they ask me again even though I haven't cooked since the night before. My family asks me where I am going and I tell them I am going to school. I go to school and come home and they welcome my return. We talk about what they are cooking. They cook one of three meals every day. We are beating a dead horse.

I feel frustrated. I miss stimulating conversation with other humans. My daily conversations with my three year old sister doesn't qualify as stimulating. I miss talking to people from a similar culture. It is nice to interact with the other volunteers, but none of them are in the village with me, so once we go our separate ways I begin to feel indifferent.

On top of feeling bored with life in the village, my counterpart told me today that he will only be going to monitor schools once a year because he has too many other commitments. Hmmmmmm. I thought he was supposed to go at least twice a term. What am I supposed to do now? I don't want to go monitor the schools all by my lonesome self. I don't think it is very sustainable and I would be doing his job. Not why I am here. Now, I feel even more useless and unchallenged. I need a project and someone who wants to work with me. I feel like everything I have tried to do has fallen apart in one way or another and I am at a loss. I feel useless and bored. Anyone have any project ideas? I need something to get excited about, that is feasible and would actually be implemented by my teachers. I am desperate for ideas, so please share if you have one!

On a positive note I've been in Zambia for one year! Woot Woot! Only 13 months left! It is strange how normal living here has become. The pit latrine, the bucket bath, dirty kids with flies on them, crickets living in my house and a unidentified critter living in my roof are normal parts of life now.

Last week I hosted first site visit for a group of 4 brand new trainees. I made them kill two chickens which was a lot of fun and we ate nshima with my teachers. Being with the 4 trainees fresh from America 4 days into their Zambia stay made me realize how naive I was a year ago. I didn't know a thing last year!!!!!!! I still don't know much, but I don't think I see everything through such rose colored glasses anymore. I think I might be more realistic about my role as a volunteer than I was a year ago. The trainees were freaking out about how to use the squat pit latrine and do the bucket bath. I tried to be empathetic, but the truth of the matter is that those two things are going to be the least of their problems during the next two years.

Last night my grandma gave me her kitten! I named her cat. I've been feeling a bit like Holly Golightly lately and thought it was an appropriate name. She is gray and white and annoying. She wants to be held ALL THE TIME. And she took a crap in my house last night. Thanks, Cat. She doesn't know how to run yet and it is pretty entertaining watching her hobble along as she tries to run. For some reason she only uses three legs when she runs, so she looks pretty ridiculous. She has fleas and ear mites :( Poor Cat. I am hoping she can help keep me entertained in the village.

It is a new school year in Zambia. My little sister, Queenie, started first grade last week. Not to be the bragging motherly type, but I have to say, she is the cutest little first grader! At school when her class is hanging around the yard during their break, she pretends she doesn't know me. I will walk up and try to greet her or give her a hug and tries not to acknowledge me. It is really funny. At home she will hug me and we play and read books and sometimes I can't get her to leave me alone, but at school she is embarrassed. Which is funny, because I would think she would want to show off how she is good friends with the muzungu.

The rural teachers in Zambia receive a rural hardship allowance if they are located in the bush and meet at least 2 of the 12 criteria. Fifteen schools in my area including my schools did not receive the allowance, despite meeting more than half of the criteria. Earlier in the week the teachers had a meeting to decide what to do and a lot of them want to strike. Personally, I think they should stick up for themselves and make a stand. They don't work long hours, but they do live in isolated areas and transport to the BOMA is expensive. Also, I just think it would be entertaining if they strike, not good for the learners, but entertaining.

My head teacher continues to be semi-inappropriate. I can't tell if it is just because we have a good relationship and he feels comfortable saying things he wouldn't normally say to a Zambian women to me because I am not Zambian or if he just always like that. Last month he told me my butt had stopped jiggling and this week he told me my pants were too tight. It isn't like Zambians to be direct, so I am not sure what is going on. It doesn't make me feel uncomfortable, just odd. I guess it is just another example of how I don't fit into this culture's gender roles. I am a random third gender because I am white and men treat me differently than they treat Zambian nationals.

One thing that still bothers me after 11 months of living here is how rude some people can be. I know you have rude people everywhere and a lot of the rudeness stems from ignorance, but it still irks me. I hate it that children and adults think it is OK to stare at me or to try and touch me. They know it is rude to stare and to touch other people, so why do they think it is OK to stare and to touch me? I still don't get it.

I have developed a new tactic for dealing with the street kids in Solwezi who beg and try to get me give them money: I ask them for money or for food and then they get uncomfortable and try to walk away and I ask again and then tell them to go to school and learn how to read. The street kids in Solwezi are very rude, once one grabbed my breast and another time one grabbed the arm of APCD (Associate Peace Corps Country Director aka my program director/boss).

I realized that my village has a crazy guy. I've seen him a few times on the side of the tarmac, but I thought until recently that he was just a farmer who was tired and was taking a nap. I've started running on the road he hangs out on and realized he isn't all there. He wears the same outfit, (which isn't saying much because most people here only have two outfits) but he is absolutely filthy with mud caked in his beard and hair. He carries around two hoes and is either asleep on the shoulder or standing on the shoulder mumbling. There is another crazy guy who stays in a village about 3k away from me. He wears army fatigues and likes to stand in the middle of the road and lecture passersby in kikaonde. I can never tell what he is saying though because he speaks too fast for me to understand.

Hello ya'lll! I am back in Zambia after a great trip to South Africa. I have fallen in love with Cape Town and have decided I must find a way to move there after PC! Maybe I can work for USAID!? We spent about 5 glorious days in Cape Town. The city is gorgeaous, it has Table Mountain and the ocean! And amazing food!!!! And everything is relatively inexpensive if you have USD, unforunately for me I exchanged Zambian Kawacha for Rand.

While we were there weclimbed Table Mountain, tried to go to Robben Island (it was booked for the next three weeks), went to the beach, indulged (I got a proper pedicure and my first proper hair cut in almost a year), went to Cape Point and saw the African Penguins!!!! I am in love the penguins! They are absolutely adorable! They are going to extinct though:( It is rather sad because they are just so cute! I even saw some sitting on their eggs, it was precious! If you need a new pet cause for the new year, I suggest saving the African Penguins!!!!!!!!

Cape Town has a great mix of cultures and people and everyone I met was incredibly friendly. I cannot tell you how exciting it was to be in a place that has good customer service! Service workers actually acknowledged me when I tried to get their attention and they were prompt with a response and acted like it was actually important! It was very refreshing to say the least.

We had heard from various friends and sources that Cape Town is not safe and that we would be mugged. I am pleased to report that no one in our entourage was mugged or had an attempted mugging. We all came back with the possesions we arrived with and a few more. It was so nice to buy NEW clothes. All the clothing I have purchased since arriving in Zambia has been from a thrift store named DAPP that gets clothes from Europe and uses the profits from selling them to help orphans. It has been nice to have new clothes that aren't stained and dirty and gross. When we first arrived in Cape Town I felt like a dirty hippie that didn't belong in such a beautiful cosmpolitan city. So, I shaved my legs for the first time since Ocotber '07 and went to the largest mall in the Southern Hemisphere. And then I felt like a proper city lady.

Merry Christmas! I am currently in Stellenbosch, South Africa on holiday. We are going to be here for a few days and then we am going to Cape Town for New Years and then Pretoria to visit a fellow Ohio University grad who is a PCV outside Pretoria. Since South Africa has broad band Internet (amazing!) I am going to try to update as much as I can.

This morning we went on a wine tour and visited some of the local wineries. We are going through unexpected culture shock in South Africa because it is so much more developed than Zambia. The roads are actually all paved and without pot holes! We can drink the tap water! They have garbage pick-up and garbage trucks; a huge contrast to the Zambia way of throughing your trash in a pit/burning it/throwing it on the ground. In Zambia, there are very few public trash cans and it is acceptable to throw your candy wrapper etc. on the ground. But in South Africa, they have public trash cans and garbage men who wear proper uniforms!!!!!

Our driver this morning definitely thought I was a little weird when I saw trash bags on the side of the road waiting to be picked and exclaimed "You have garbage pickup?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!" He just looked at me through the rear view mirror and said "uh, yes" with a look that asked where did this heathen come from? The night before we were all excited and relieved to learn we can drink the tap water. Again, we got the "who are these uncivilzed heathens???" look.

One of the biggest shocks is how many white people there are! Whities only make up 3% of the population, which is still a lot more compared to life in Solwezi. At the Joburg airport we got off our flight and were bombarded by white people, specifically white men in short shorts! In Zambia it is inappropriate to show your thighs, let alone your knees because they are sexual, the way breasts are sexual in the West, so seeing thighs, let alone white thighs was a shock (coincidentally, breasts are not a turn on for black Zambian men). While we were at the airport we did a lot of people watching/staring at all the scantily clad white people.

Living in a rural village where everyone around you is a black Zambian and you are the only different one tends to create an amplified idea of being unique, because in the village we are unique and mysterious. But once we leave the village bubble, we realize how unspecial we are when we no longer have everyone we walk by staring at us and watching our every move. When we got off the airplane at Joburg we were immediately encassed in a sea of Muslims wearing the head scarf and no one was staring at us or even really noticed us, we blended into the multi-ethnic crowd in a way I have not blended in since I left the States 10 months ago. We became the ones who stared.

At the airport there was a food court with KFC!!!! We didn't eat there, but seeing a KFC in Africa is a little weird.

Stellenbosch is beautiful. It is surrounded by mountains and vineyards. I went for a run this morning and fellow white runners greeted me. The disturbing thing is that I saw lots of white professionals/exercisers out and about, the black and colored (colored is a socially acceptable descriptive word here)people I saw were all working class and were walking to work in the their uniforms. I feel a divide among the different segments of the population here. There are a couple hundred elephants in the room. Last night we were at a bar and the bartenders were young white Afrikanners and the bar maid was an older black woman. The differences in who can have what job is already apparent.

Our hostel owner, who is a white male, also told us that 50% of the students at the University of Stellenbosch have HIV. Obviously, that is a gross exageration. I am curious to learn more about South Africa and her people as my trip progresses.

Here is a selection of pictures from my first two months in Zambia.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2274853&l=1f067&id=12300172

Last Wednesday I was sick as a dog. I had diahrea, vomiting, heat flashes, stomach cramping, muscle aches, nausea, tiredness and pooped my pants. I came into the PC house because I was worried I was going to pass out in the village or be so weak the next day I wouldn't be able to walk the 1/2 kilometer to my tarmac to hitch.

I took a malaria test and it was negative. I have a temperature of almost 104. I don't know the last time, if ever, I had a temperature that high. The PCMO put me on cipro (the best drug ever, they even use it for anthrax) and the next day I was 50% better.

I think it was food poisoning from nshima and chicken a villager made me eat for lunch the day before.

"Ba Davy, whenever the Republicans are in charge America does not seem to do well"

-a quote from one of my villagers

YAY for OBAMA! YAY for the States! I am so proud of voters for getting out there and taking the chance to vote for someone who wants to change the status quo. Too often we accept how things are and don't see the potential benefits that a little bit of hard work and positive change can bring. Even if you didn't vote for Obama, I hope you embrace the fact that he is OUR president; not only my president, but also your president. Lets make the United States a better place.

At the PC house we have a TV, but no satellite. We got the local posh hotel to stay open all night for us and a few of us and some other volunteers from the NGO Forge stayed up all night to watch the results. We are 7 hours ahead of east coast time. It wasn't until 0300 or 04000 that the results started coming in. We watched Obama's acceptance speech while everyone staying at the hotel was eating breakfast around 7:00 am.

I am excited to go back to my village and discuss with my African villagers the election of America's first African American to the presidency. All my (educated) villagers have lots of respect for Obama and it is all they have been talking to me about the past few weeks. They kept asking me if I thought Obama was going to win, why I support him, why he is good for America etc.

For us PCVs, it has been an election filled week. On Thursday Zambians voted for a new President as well. The main candidates (there were 4 total) were Sata and Banda, the acting President and VP. Sata hasn't conceded yet, but Banda is the unofficial winner. I was nervous for a few days while Sata was in the lead before Banda overtook him. I was nervous because Sata is not a fan of foreign workers and I heard a rumor that he wanted to give Northwest Province, where I live, to Angola. I was a bit worried that he would be elected and turn into another Adi Amin and destroy the Zambian economy by kicking out all the foreign workers (including Peace Corps!) You never know what can happen, after all this is Africa: land of corrupt elections.

*I acknolwedge that not everything the republicans do is bad and not everything the democrats do is good either*

This morning I woke up to the sounds of Ba Dorthy pouring maize into a bucket and Vera and Queenie running around the compacted dirt yard giggling as they played. I rolled over in bed and look at the 6 inch gap between my walls and the roof to see how much light was coming through. There wasn't much, I guessed it was early, before 6:00 am, so rolled back over and fell back asleep.

I arose around 7:30. It is a Sunday and everyone was preparing for church. There was more light coming through the gap. I untangled myself from my covers, unclipped the opening on my mosquito net and tried to climb gracefully out of bed/mosquito net. But then, I saw a giant spider. It looked like it was on the outside of the net and I reached up to hit the net hoping the spider would move away from the mosquito net opening and decrease the change that it would find its way into my safe haven. I hit the net and the spider came flying at me because it was not on the outside as I had thought, it was on the inside. I let out a scream as it soared at my leg. Convinced it was on my I did a little jig that resembled a bad version of the hokey pokey and tried to climb out of bed.

The wood in my door frame has expanded and yesterday I could not open the door from the inside. I had to have my brother, Ba Joseph come and push it open from the other side. Last night I closed the door enough so that I could open it without assistance, which meant is was just resting on the door frame. I opened the door and greeted the cloudless sky and bright sun. I greeted my family and went about my business.

I walked over to the kinzanza of Ba Dorthy to play with Vera and my brother Joesph started saying something about a snake. I didn't understand until he started brushing my back and off flew the spider from inside my mosquito net. For the last 20 minutes or so it had been loitering on my back and in my hair.

I ate at granola for breakfast because I am out of powdered milk to go with my granola. Then Ba Vera came to visit, I was in bed writing and she pranced into the house to see what entertainment I could provide for her. Together we washed the clothes I wore yesterday by hand. To wash a pair of capris, a bra, undies and a tank top took about 30 min.

After a few more interruptions I gathered myself together and began the adventure to the market in Solwezi. As I walked past each house on my way to the tarmac I greeted every person I past, about 20 or so people. Then I was stopped by Ba Martin who began a discussion with me in English about the word "texture" and the difference in openness and privacy between Americans and Kaondes. It would have been interesting, but he didn't make much sense until he started talking about how his wife doesn't like him drinking alcohol. After about 20 minutes Martin released me from the conversation and no sooner did I depart but I met a teacher from my school.

In America our handshakes are short and sweet. In Zambia, you will have entire conversations with your hands still embraced in a death grip handshake unable to get the other person to release your hand. It is like my hand becomes a POW unable to negotiate release. For a germ phobe like me, these exchanges are uncomfortable because I can feel all too much how clean or dirty someones hand is while we are interlocked in a 5 minute handshake. I also feel uncomfortable during these daily encounters because even if my hand is loose, the other person is squeezing and refusing to loosen the grip. It is like an uncomfortably long prayer where you have to hold hands at Thanksgiving with a creepy relative who you don't want to touch but have to and this relative or family friend is squeezing your hand just a bit too hard.

As I greet the teacher she gripped my hand in a death grip despite the floppiness of my own hand. We exchanged pleasantries and eventually I was on my way. As I approached the tarmac a young girl whose name I don't know approached me. "Ba Davy, where are you going?" she asked. "I am going to town" I replied, "aww, then you have money, give me 10,000 kawacha!" she insisted. No please. No thank you. It is frustrating living in a place where please and thank you don't exist and people demand you give them things. I told her no, I don't give money and she made some sounds of disgust and so I asked her to give me money. My new tactic for beggars. They ask me for things and I say "No, you give me ________". My favorite is to ask them to give me a motocar. They laugh and laugh and then they see I am serious and slowly they feel uncomfortable and walk away.

I stood in the treeless area off the rode waiting for a car to come by. Cars pass and don't stop. Finally, a truck stops. It is one of the local policemen. I climb into the back of his pickup truck and pray that the car the doesn't crash. My transport ritual. The truck is having engine problems and the sun is blaring down on me. Car after car pass us and the trip that normally takes 25 minutes takes 45 minutes. Eventually, we reach the market in my BOMA and I climb out in one piece.

I head to the corridor between the market and road in search of apples. I find some fine ones and begin to pick out which ones I want. Nearby a man begins yelling "Mommy! Mommy! Come here!!". I try to ignore the cat calls. I have become used to them and usually they stop. I pick out an apple and while looking for bruises the voice from afar appears at my side. He begins asking me why I won't answer him, because as he says "he wants to know me, wants to be my friend and I should answer him and not ignore him". I ask him to leave me alone. He doesn't. I tell him in Kikaonde to go away. He doesn't. He continues to harrass me as I conclude my purpose. He gets in my face, close enough to feel his breath and asks me why I won't talk to him. I move around him and go to pay. The women I am buying my apples from tells me to ignore him and reassures me that his behavior is innappropriate.

Life is going pretty well right now. I returned to the village in the beginning of September and spent the the first few weeks on home improvements and on trying to figure out what was going on at school.

I got the walls in my house plastered with cement, so I no longer have mud walls. Well, actually they are still made of mud, but now their is a concrete barrier between me and the dried mud. Unfortunately, that has not disuaded the termites from their mission to eat their way through me house. The termites are currently eating away at my wooden window frames. I put some thick oil on the wood today as a deterent to the termites. As the rainy season progesses we will see how well the deterent works. I am planning on liming my walls in the next few days as well. I am looking forward to living in a brighter and whiter house. I would like to paint the walls, but pain is expensive and I am trying to save my money for a trip to South Africa in December.

I have become the leader of a neighborhood gang. My kinzanza (cooking shelter/gazebo) is the new neighborhood hangout for about 8 little kids. I like having the kids around, we read stories and sing songs and they do my dishes for me in return for a sweeties. The relationship is working out well. The other morning I came home from running and there were 9 kids sitting in my kinzana. It was overwhelming. I was tired from running and just wanted to be alone while I finished my workout. I told the kids to hit the road and they went home, but it was one of those moments where you wish you were in the states because you want your privacy back and don't want 9 little Zambian children staring at you while you try to do abs.

Work wise, thins are going well. I am happy with the progess in my work relationships and what we are trying to do. My counterpart, Kapalai and I are working together to montior the schools. Last week we monitored two schools and tested students reading levels. I tested a grade 7 class. I used a grade 1 book to test them with. Of the five students I tested, none of them were above a second grade reading level. My counterpart tested grade 5 and most of the students could not identity at least one letter of the alphabet and had no clue what sounds most of the letters make.

When I visit schools, I also find out when they have teacher group meetins. Teacher goup meetings or TGMs are one hour meetings they are supposed to have once a week to do continuing ed. Schools are supposed to have about 11 TGMs a term. My zonal head school only had two last term. Another one of my schools hasn't had one since November 2006. I am using my pull as the muzungu (white person) outsider to get the schools to schedule and actually hold the TGMs.

When I go to visit the schools I ask them for their TGM schedule and if they don't have one I tell them that they are supossed to have one every week and that I would like to see the schedule on my next visit so I can attend one of their TGMs. So far they have been receptive and the indirect shame tactic is working.

A few weeks ago I had my first training workshop with the teachers at my zonal head school. Almost all of the classrooms have empty, blank, unpostered, boring walls. The walls are supposed to talk to the pupils. The workshop I facilitated focused on why talking walls and learning aids are important to the learning process. I had a bag of sweeties (candy) and I gave a sweetie to every teacher who answered a question or read one of the definitions about learning aids. We spent about half an hour doing (here is a very peace corps word for you) experiential learning and then we had craft time. The teachers were divided into small groups based on what grade they taught and were given a list of wall posters to make for their classrooms. They made multiplication tables, shapes, color charts, simpliication charts, parts of speech charts and kinds of other things for their classroom.

About 40k from my house is a missionary outpost with a bunch of Texans. I met one of the missionaries, Brian, and he told me about a container they had full of educational materials. We arranged for me to go there and before my workshop I was able to get a ton of construction paper, markers, crayons and glue. Having those materials made the workshop so much better and fun. The frustrating part of the workshop was that the two fifth grade teachers were extremely late and were just rude. They interrupted our flow when they came in late and didn't contribute.

While I was in training for PC, I read this article in the NY Times and wanted to share it with everyone. It got me thinking a lot about the importance of communication in development and role of cell phones in the development process. Also, I read it on my nokia cell phone.

Here is a preveiw of the article. Go to the link to finish reading:

"If you need to reach Jan Chipchase, the best, and sometimes only, way to get him is on his cellphone. The first time I spoke to him last fall, he was at home in his apartment in Tokyo. The next time, he was in Accra, the capital of Ghana, in West Africa. Several weeks after that, he was in Uzbekistan, by way of Tajikistan and China, and in short order he and his phone visited Helsinki, London and Los Angeles. If you decide not to call Jan Chipchase but rather to send e-mail, the odds are fairly good that you’ll get an “out of office” reply redirecting you back to his cellphone, with a notation about his current time zone — “GMT +9” or “GMT -8” — so that when you do call, you may do so at a courteous hour.

‘‘HUMAN-CENTERED DESIGN’’ Chipchase talks to Accra street vendors about what an ideal phone (ideally made by Nokia) might do.

Keep in mind, though, that Jan Chipchase will probably be too busy with his job to talk much anyway. He could be bowling in Tupelo, Miss., or he could be rummaging through a woman’s purse in Shanghai. He might be busy examining the advertisements for prostitutes stuck up in a São Paulo phone booth, or maybe getting his ear hairs razored off at a barber shop in Vietnam. It really depends on the moment.

Chipchase is 38, a rangy native of Britain whose broad forehead and high-slung brows combine to give him the air of someone who is quick to be amazed, which in his line of work is something of an asset. For the last seven years, he has worked for the Finnish cellphone company Nokia as a “human-behavior researcher.” He’s also sometimes referred to as a “user anthropologist.” To an outsider, the job can seem decidedly oblique. His mission, broadly defined, is to peer into the lives of other people, accumulating as much knowledge as possible about human behavior so that he can feed helpful bits of information back to the company — to the squads of designers and technologists and marketing people who may never have set foot in a Vietnamese barbershop but who would appreciate it greatly if that barber someday were to buy a Nokia.

What amazes Chipchase is not the standard stuff that amazes big multinational corporations looking to turn an ever-bigger profit. Pretty much wherever he goes, he lugs a big-bodied digital Nikon camera with a couple of soup-can-size lenses so that he can take pictures of things that might be even remotely instructive back in Finland or at any of Nokia’s nine design studios around the world. Almost always, some explanation is necessary. A Mississippi bowling alley, he will say, is a social hub, a place rife with nuggets of information about how people communicate. A photograph of the contents of a woman’s handbag is more than that; it’s a window on her identity, what she considers essential, the weight she is willing to bear. The prostitute ads in the Brazilian phone booth? Those are just names, probably fake names, coupled with real cellphone numbers — lending to Chipchase’s theory that in an increasingly transitory world, the cellphone is becoming the one fixed piece of our identity.

Last summer, Chipchase sat through a monsoon-season downpour inside the one-room home of a shoe salesman and his family, who live in the sprawling Dharavi slum of Mumbai. Using an interpreter who spoke Tamil, he quizzed them about the food they ate, the money they had, where they got their water and their power and whom they kept in touch with and why. He was particularly interested in the fact that the family owned a cellphone, purchased several months earlier so that the father, who made the equivalent of $88 a month, could run errands more efficiently for his boss at the shoe shop. The father also occasionally called his wife, ringing her at a pay phone that sat 15 yards from their house. Chipchase noted that not only did the father carry his phone inside a plastic bag to keep it safe in the pummeling seasonal rains but that they also had to hang their belongings on the wall in part because of a lack of floor space and to protect them from the monsoon water and raw sewage that sometimes got tracked inside. He took some 800 photographs of the salesman and his family over about eight hours and later, back at his hotel, dumped them all onto a hard drive for use back inside the corporate mother ship. Maybe the family’s next cellphone, he mused, should have some sort of hook as an accessory so it, like everything else in the home, could be suspended above the floor."

*taken from NYTIMES.com

I got back to my village on Saturday and spend the day sweeping and dusting my house. I had to sweep multiple times to get the majority of the dust out. My semi-creepy sister is back from Kitwe. It was nice to see her again, but she gives me the creeps. Vera, is her two year old daughter and it seems like she is always speaking harshly to her and she invites herself into my house, which I really don't like. Every time she comes into my house she just looks at my stuff and looks like she is talking an inventory.

My house has become the new hangout for the neighborhood kids. They all come and sit in my kinzanza. I don't mind them there as long as they go home when I tell them to. They are usually dirty though and have snot around their noses. I realize that we live in a very dusty place and all they do is play in the dirt, but they could at least keep there noses clean.

My baby brother, Calvin, is sick. They took him to the clinic, but he isn't getting better. I hope he doesn't have something deadly. A couple of weeks ago I was doing house work and was wearing my "you have died of dysentery" t-shirt (a reference to the Oregon Trail game) and realized that I shouldn't wear it in the village anymore because people actually do die of dysentery here.

Sunday I went to church and sat through the longest sermon of my life. It was over an hour and they covered at least 10 verses. There wasn't any real analyzing of the verses. They just re-phrased the verses said something about how it is what god wants us to do and then moved on to the next verse. I wish they would shorten their sermons, half of the congregation was asleep. After church, they fed my nshima and beans. And I had someone tell me that I got fat while I was in Lusaka. It was nice to be back in the village and with my friends. People seemed to genuinely have missed me.

Work wise things are going well. Samapimbi came down to Lusaka for the counterpart training and he seems much more motivated and co-operative than before. He showed me letters he received from project proposals he sent out to get funding for a class room block and he sent them haphazardly to anyone and everyone. He sent one to a European NGO asking for $51,000 USD, the NGO only fund small income generating proposals. I think I can teach him how to find funding and how to find out if you qualify and how to write proposals so he qualifies. I am sure the the NGO worker laughed out loud when he saw the request for $51,000 USD.

Next week, I am doing a teacher group meeting with my teachers and we are making learning aids. The classrooms don't even have the most basic learning aids on the walls, i.e.- multiplication table or the alphabet. I am going to be monitoring schools with my Zone In-service Coordinator this term as well, so I should be doing a lot of biking.

I know I have talked about this before, but I am serious this time, I am going to do the marathon in Livingston in March next year. My friend Maria and I are going to train together. She did the marathon around Mt. Kilimanjaro last year. I think running the marathon will be a good way to see the falls.

A few weeks ago we had IST (in-service training). A. and I decided we would try to hitch down to Lusaka from Solwezi. Our first long hitching trip. We left the house at 6:00 am and walked for an hour until we were out of town. We got a ride with a guy from Tanzania who is buying scrap metal in Zambia and selling it to people in China. The Tanzania gave us a ride in his aircon (Zamlish for air conditioned) car to Chingola. About a two hour trip. It was nice and we got to take a nap. Then we got kind of worried about hitching and took a bus from Chingola to Kitwe and got on a big bus from Kitwe to Lusaka. The bus trip consisted of bad Nigerian movies and windows that were not open. It was a hot ride (temperature not physicall attractiveness).

We got to Lusaka around 1800 hrs. and went on a wild goose chase in a taxi trying to find a hostel to stay in. We finally found one and met up with another volunteer who shared the room with us.

Sunday we got to the government hostel where we were having IST and had a great time catching up with everyone.

After IST, we went on vacation to Malawi. Before we left we had a group meeting to discus transport. Seven of us wanted to hitch and 5 of us wanted to take the bus. I was in the hitching group.

We left the hostel in at 5:30 am and walked to the road where we split up into even small groups. I was with Katie and Kai. We got a hitch to the airport turn off and then got a hitch to the police checkpoint. At the police checkpoint we met up with another volunteer and the four of us got a hitch in a SUV to about 4 hours down the Great East Rd. Katie and I had the pleasure of sitting in the trunk, which was not too much fun because the trunk had a metal floor and the driver didn't slow down for bumps. But, it was free.

At the intersection where we were dropped we lucked out again and got a hitch with World Bank Engineers who were going all the way to Lilongwe. We had a pleasant trip and talked culture and they dropped us in front of the the PC house in Lilongwe.

The house in Lilongwe was nice and the volunteers there were friendly. We didn't spend much time with them though because we arrived around 1700 hrs and left at 6:00 am. We took a minibus from Lilongwe to Muzuzu and had some unpleasant experiences along on the way.

About half way to Muzuzu our minibus driver, who told us he was going all the way to Lilongwe stopped at a bus station in some random town and preceeded to drive in circle into the bus station, wait in line and drive out again numerous times. Each time our minibus would be surrounded by hordes of Malawian men. They would try to open the windows to talk to us, ask us to marry them, grab us or just be rude/obnoxious/annoying. One guy told Jeanna that he wanted to buy Danielle, who was sleeping; he repeatedely yelled "that one, I want to buy her. How much?" Each time we would come back to the station the men would re-appear and hound our bus.

Finally, we left the station and went to a gas station. Our minibus driver informed us that we had to switch buses. We had already paid the first driver and didnt want to pay another. After a few minutes of getting the payment cleared up and getting the first driver to pay the second the driver we finally left. It had been over an hour since we first arrived at the bus station.

The rest of the transport to Nkhuta Bay was less eventful. On our way back we had enough people to fill an entire minibus and didn't have to deal with the bus stations more than necessary. I hate bus stations now.

On our way back to Solwezi, A. and I hitched from Chipata to Lusaka and left the house there around 6:30 am. We had a ride by 7:15. We lucked out again and got a free ride to Lusaka with a man who works for the company that makes the Chubuku, the maize brew. On our way from Lusaka to Solwezi we got a ride to Kapiri with one of the PC cruisers and then we got a hitch with a Zambian man in his hummer. The guy in the hummer was very nice, he was on his way back from Manawasa's funeral and he took us all the way to the Solwezi turn-off. From the turn-off we got a ride with the Fed-Ex delivery man to Solwezi.

Lake Malawi is beautiful. It is a HUGE lake, more of an ocean feel. The water is crystal clear and full of colorful fish.

While we were there, a few of did the PADI scuba course. Scuba diving is hard. I had trouble with buyonancy and a few times found myself at the surface of the water when I was supposed to be at the bottom of the lake. I am excited to diving across Souther Africa during the next few years. Zanzibar, Cape Town, Mozambique here I come!

The people in Malawi are very friendly and the culture is similar to Zambian culture. The food is the same too...nshima and relish. I did not enjoy being propositioned for marriage by our hotel staff. We met a ton of Malawian rastas with crazy names, for example: Chicken Pizza, Happy Coconut, James Brown, and Cheese on Toast. Yes, those are their names.

I have come to the conclusion that I have a love/hate relationship with Africa. I HATE being propositioned for marriage on a daily basis. I HATE that people think it is ok to grab my arm or touch me when the Zambians don't invade each other's personal space. I HATE it when I am getting harassed and HCN don't stick up for me and allow the behavior to continue when I am obviously uncomfortable. On the other side of the spectrun, I LOVE how friendly everyone is. I LOVE the sky and clouds in Zambia. I LOVE the weather. I LOVE the colors in the chitenge cloth. I LOVE the challenge of living here (sometimes I hate the challenge too).

This morning we had a meeting at the DEBS office. On the way to the meeting a random man with nothing to do started yelling at me and insisted that I greet him. He looked scary, so I kept walking and ignored him. He then yelled at me again and grabbed my shoulder. I yelled at him and told him not to touch me. I HATE HATE HATE it when random people touch me. Where is the sense of personal space? Why do they think that they can touch me? Touching me is not going to get me to pay more attention, it will only make me walk faster.

Kirsty, Amanda and I then met with the DEBS and other district officials. We all have been problems with our communities. Kirsty already has given up on her schools and is starting a pre-school. Amanda has good counterparts, but her community still hasn't built her house. She has been living in someone else's house for the past 3 1/2 months and the man who owns the house wants it back. My community took forever on my house and don't understand that they need to work with me and treat me with respect or as a colleague. Amanda works with the DEBS office and has encountered a lot of problems because they don't have regular meetings and the DEBS is often hard to find.

Needless to say, we had a lot of issues to talk about during our meeting. It only started 15 minutes late too. Impressive. The officials gave us a lot of good ideas for things we could do, but the problem is the majority of teachers I work with aren't motivated and I don't have a counterpart. Since they aren't motivated, it is hard to schedule meetings and since I don't have a counterpart it isn't sustainable.

Lack of organization and planning is a big problem. Whenever I am in a meeting at the DEBS office people are constantly coming in and interrupting. It is disrupting. The bank I go to is a perfect example of lack of organization. The customers don't know that they can ask for their balance after they withdraw money, so there is always a huge line at the Customer Service Desk of people trying to get their balance. Actually, I lied. There isn't line. Zambians don't really do the stand in line and wait your turn thing. They push and cut and try to get the bank workers attention even though they are in the middle of helping another customer. It is incredibly frustrating when one is used to the operations of a western bank.

I swear, if everyone adopted a pick a number system like at the butcher for getting waited on, started making appointments and sticking to the start times, and waited in line until it was their turn things would run much more efficiently.

I got a package slip today and will be going to the post office soon! Thank you to whoever sent it! I will write you a letter.

Yesterday I went to immigration to get my visa extended. We are waiting on our work permits and have to get our visas renewed every few weeks until they come. It took some persuasion to convince they immigration guy to renew it. MY visa expires while I am in Lusaka for IST and I am not going to have time to go to immigration while I am there. They guy didn't seem to understand that concept. After explaining the situation a total of three times, he finally decided to extend my visa for me. It is his job to extend visas. I don't understand what is so hard about stamping the passport and dating it.

Yesterday, I saw the Deputy of my high school while I was in town. He said that I have not been seen recently. I am glad people are starting to notice my absence, it means they like me! I tried to explain to the teacher that I keep getting sick and have been resting a lot, but he looked at me like I was lying. He obviously is not aware of my affinity for contracting illnesses. Currently, I have a bad cough and wheezing. I am going to call the PCMO after I get back to the house today. I have tried cough syrup, which I despise, and it hasn't reduced the coughing. We have hypothesized that I have a giant ball of mucus and Solwezi dust in my chest cavity.

On Saturday we are going to the UN refugee camp about 30k from my house. The refugee camp is huge. We are going to be biking a total of 50k inside the camp. There are refugees from Angola, Congo, Rwanda, Somalia and other places. The camp was set up in the 1990's. The people who live inside are starting to be re-settled. I hope my cough gets better, if not I don't know I will be able to bike. The dust I breathe while walking around town irritates my cough and makes it worse.

Tonight is the last night for the '06 Rapers and Hapers (fish farmers and HIV/Aids PCVs). They will be sorely missed.

My best friend in the village, Macy, got into nursing school! I am so happy for her. She left a few weeks ago. I was with her when she found it and I have never seen someone so joyful and full of hope as she was when she found it. I was at a teacher's house waiting for her while she went and called the admissions people. When she returned she acted like she hadn't been accepted. We left and I tried to comfort her and then she told me she had gotten in! She broke down and cried on my shoulder.

Geting into nursing school means she will be able to support herself, leave the village and build a better life for herself. She is too cosmpolitan for Mutanda. She wears trousers and hats in a society where most women do not wear trousers. I have a picture of her after she found out, I will try to post it.

I don't know what I would have done without her during my first three months. She was my life saver. She reached out to me, shared her food with me, shared her time , answered my cultural questions, gave me advice, checked my hair for lice, gossiped with me and gave me a sense of normalcy when nothing was normal.

As volunteers, we often talk about how intense Zambia is. We spend a lot of time alone. I have been wondering maybe it isn't that hard. Maybe we have talked ourselves into believing it is harder than it really is. Maybe it is harder than we even realize.

Next week the '06 fish farmers and HIV/AIDS PCVs are swearing out. This week is their last week in Solwezi. Most of the volunteers in the province have come in spend some quality time with them before they depart for their cos trips and americaland. I have only spent a few days total with the COSing volunteers, but I am going to miss them dearly. They have offered words of wisdom, advice, encouragement and a fun time when I have been frustrated, lonely and stressed. Thank you.

I've been thinking a lot lately about what kind of volunteer I want to have been when I leave this country. What type of impact I want to make on my community and how I can make a positive impact. I want to try to focus on agriculture education in the schools, literacy and life skills.

Everyone here is a farmer, so they can all benefit from sustainable agriculture practices. My brother who is in 5th grade can't read. I am going to teach him, but he doesn't know all his letters. It is going to be a long journey. And my basic school had 8 girls drop out to pregnancy last year. The children in my village need to be informed about their basic bodyily functions and reproductive health.

I am a first generation volunteer, which means I am sensitizing the community to Peace Corps. It seems first generation volunteers have a hard time getting work done. But, after they leave the community realizes they won't have a volunteer forever and begins taking the replacement volunteer seriously and working with him or her. I think I am going to be spending a lot of time familarizing my teachers to my work style, organization and overall work culture.

Today is the 4th of August. Which means that my birthday is (if I counted correctly) 39 days away! I will be 24 on the 11th of September. It will be my first birthday in Zambia. People have begun asking me what I would like for my birthday, instead of e-mailing individual responses I am going to post it here. These are things that I can live without, but would love to have. Comforts of home and healthy goodness. So, if you would like to send something, here are some suggestions:)

-Bellbrook Chocolate or any good chocolate

-Sour Jelly Bellys

-Skittles

-Tuna and Chicken packets

-Fruit leather

-Fruit snacks

-Dried fruit (think Trader Joe's/Whole Foods)

-Dried vegetables (think Trader Joe's/Whole Foods)

-AA batteries

-flavored drink mixes (not lemonade)

-Apple sauce or other fruit in individual containers

-Rattarans/Ricearoni type stuff

-Jiffy or Skippy PB

-Kashi crackers, cereal, anything by kashi

-Beef jerky

-NUTS!

-current magazines- yoga journal, fitness magazines, economist, Atlantic monthly etc.

-Coffee (anyone have an old french press they don't use anymore?)

-Cheese-Itz

-Any kind of cheese that can be shipped.

-Suprises!

Hopefully, this have given you some ideas. It seems that the best way to insure that a package gets here is to cover the outside of it with bible verses and praises of God. My address here is: Davy Gockel/PCV

P.O. Box 110264

Solwezi, Zambia, Africa

(Allow 4-6 weeks for delivery.)

Zambians don't celebrate birthdays.I was telling one of my teachers about my upcoming birthday and she said she didn't know when her own birthday is. I am going to make a cake to share with my teachers and family on my birthday. Try to do Peace Corps goals 2 & 3 and exchange some culture.

The Simple Life

Before I came, I thought life here would be simpler. I imagined that it would have a utopian feel: life would be centered on the family, we would sit around the fire and I would listen to stories of their ancestors and we wouldn’t have stress. Life is centered on the family here, but that is because anyone who is from the same tribe as you is considered family. Family has a very different definition. Yesterday, a woman asked me how many are in my family. I told her there are two of us (as in my parents have two children). The woman, like everyone else who finds out, was surprised and shocked that my parents only have two children. She asked me if there was jealousy between my sister and me. I tried to explain that there wasn’t, but she didn’t believe me. I tried to explain that it is expensive to have children in the United States and that we don’t build our houses out of mud and grass, so housing costs more. There is such a different idea about family size. I think there would be more jealously with a large family because the parent’s attention is stretched. Maybe she was asking in her indirect Zambian way if I admire large families.

I think life here is harder. I don’t spend as much time on facebook/the internet or TV here because I don’t have access to either. I don’t miss TV. I do miss being able to communicate easily and quickly with friends and family. Access to communication channels should be added to the UN list of Human Rights.

Communicating here is harder, if you want to talk to someone in the village you have to go to their house and hope they are there. If they aren’t there, you are usually out of luck. You can come back later in the day (but since life is dictated by the sun, once 5:00 pm roles around you want to be at home cooking in the light, not tromping through the village) or wait until the next day. Things take longer to organize and accomplish here. If I want to talk to my parents on the phone I have to climb a 20 foot ant hill and make sure my body is facing north-east and not move my head to the right or left too much so that I have enough cell service bars to be able to talk on the phone without it cutting out. If I want to check facebook on my phone, I have to stand under a specific branch at another network spot and point my phone toward the X two branches make ten feet away from where I stand.

I spend a lot more time reading here. I’ve been able to read a decent number of books. I also spend a lot of time writing. But, I am not a Zambian villager. The villagers (specifically the men) spend a lot of time socializing. The women spend a lot of time cooking and cleaning. They do more physical labor here but they don’t use their brains in the same way. Everything here is different and almost the exact opposite of the United States.

4th of July

This was my first 4th of July outside of the United States. I usually don’t feel patriotic, but this year the 4th had a new meaning for me. The longer I am away the more I appreciate my home country’s ability to provide basic services and our cultural values. We take for granted things like functioning schools where children actually learn and teachers are dedicated, roads that are paved without pot holes, electricity, running water, easily accessible modes of communication, social and economic mobility, individuality and a strong economic system to name a few.

The day before the 4th Zambia’s president, Manawasa, suffered a stroke in Egypt. It was reported that he was dead and the Zambian government was denying it. No one knew what was going on. In the United Sates we wouldn’t have more than a few hours of conflicting reports on whether or not the President is dead. The media is state controlled and freedom of the press doesn’t really exist. Now, he is in stable condition, but I heard a rumor that he has a breathing tube. Obviously, he is incapacitated and isn’t acting as the head of state. Peace Corps put us on alert after his death was announced as a precautionary measure. It would have been exciting if there was a coup or something, but it is better that there wasn’t.

America has streets paved with gold. That is pretty much what every Zambian I have met believes. Every week at least a few people ask me about going to America. I try to tell them that America is not as nice as they think it is, there are places that aren’t nice and it is very hard to get a job. I try to explain that we don’t have many subsistence farmers; we only have larger commercial farms. Then they ask me if I like Zambia and are surprised to hear I like living here.

I’ve become very aware of my privilege since arriving. First of all, I am white. Second, I am here. It costs a lot of money to transport a person from Dayton, Ohio to Zambia. My country can afford to have a government agency that pays to send volunteers to work all over the world. I am privileged because whenever I want I can say “the village life has been fun, but I want to go back to life in a developed country”. The villagers can’t say that. They were born here and will die here. They don’t have a government that is able to provide a quality education or sustained economic opportunity.

Wednesday I went into town and met with the Provincial Education Standards Officer (PESO). While I was waiting for Amanda and Kirsty to show up a guard at the office building started talking to me and asked if he could visit me. He then asked for my phone number and I told him that I can’t give out my phone number because the phone is owned by Peace Corps and Peace Corps is part of the United States government. Hence, it is a government phone. I have to tell white lies like that often to prevent unwanted attention.

There is a man named Richard who works at the District Education Board Secretary office. He is an accountant there and I made the mistake of giving him my phone number when I first arrived because I didn’t yet have the “the phone is owned by the American government” story down yet. Almost every time I am in town I get a call from him and he asks if he can see me. Of course, on Wednesday I get a call from him shortly after my visit with the PESO. This is how the conversation went:

Me: Hello?

Richard: Yes, hello. This is Richard.

Me: Hi, How are you?

Richard: Yes, are you still at the PESO’s office?

Me: (thinking “how do you know I was at the PESO’s?!”) No, we have left.

Richard: I want to see you.

Me: I am very busy today with meetings. It is not a good time.

Richard: Ok, bye.

Me: Bye (but, he had already hung up)

Sometimes the men here are very creep. Actually, most of the time they freak me out, I never know what their intentions are. Next time he calls I am going to tell him I am not interested in seeing him outside of the DEBS office. Hopefully, that works, but I doubt it. Playing hard to get is institution between the genders.

I also have another stalker of sorts. His name is Fredy and he works for the road construction company (as an engineer) that is working on the road by my village. He keeps trying to invite me over to his house for dinner. I don’t feel comfortable being alone with him and have been trying to ignore his invitations. He is nice and he has a college degree from the University of Zambia, but I am not looking for what he is looking for.

Head Lice Continued… July 1, 2008

Thursday morning the little girl with lice got her hair buzzed. Her mother, Dorothy then washed all their clothes and bedding. Those kids are never sitting on my lap, in my hammock or in my chairs again. I do not want to get head lice. I talked to the PCMO about it today and I shouldn’t get it, but she said I should wash my hammock in hot water with soap just to be safe.

Lice Update as of July 10, 2008

About the time the girls got lice, I started getting little bites all over my body. I sprayed insect killer around my bed and found dead brown bugs. Bed bugs. I called the PCMO and she confirmed my fears. I went to town and bought more killer bug spray and had a little spray party. I was told not to sleep in my bed for 24 hours to allow the bed bugs to starve to death. There is a guest house in my village, which is owned by the Evangelical Church of Zambia (the dominant church in my village and thorn in my side); I got to stay there while the bugs died.

I didn’t live at the guest house while I was staying there, I would just show up around dusk and return to my house after I woke up. Staying at the guest house made me wonder why I wasn’t in the guest house during my first 7 weeks. It would have been a much better situation than the Resource Center because there are people who live all around the guest house.

One of the little boys in my compound has ringworm on his head and it is infected. One of his lymph nodes on his neck is swollen to the size of a golf ball and had pus seeping out of it yesterday.

Later in the day, I was checking network (cell phone for text messages) and I saw a woman walk by carrying underwear less child in her arms. The child had large open wounds on both legs in the inner thigh region. It looked like the girl had done the splits over a fire or had boiling water splashed on her. They were on their way to the clinic.

I found out later that the girl had been burned from water that fell on the fire and turned into hot steam. She is doing well though and the burns are healing. She should be going home soon.

my family eats rats and mice and pigeons.

i met a man from south africa who is old and and mumbles who has had 7 heart attacks.

best friend in my village, macy, got into nursing school. happy for her, but need to find a new best friend in the village.

please save the letters i send you for me so when i write my autobiography i can refer to them or show them to my grand kids.

will update more soon. i no longer like the internet or having to do things on the internet. get a brain fart everytime i try to use the internet. too much pressure to think. too much i want to do.

things are good. i have a cold. i am done with community entry. have ist in two weeks. going to lusaka for training then vacation to lake malawi. excited. will be scandalous and show my thighs in malawi.

school is out for the month of august. little work to do. will be socializing with fellow pcvers and the villagers.

birthday is coming up. will be 24.

weather is transitioning from cold season to hot season. had a giant rabid animal trying to get into my house. it is gone now.

more later when i dont have a brain fart and can use the internet at the pc office in lusaka for free.

I have been going around meeting the villagers with a boy who is in grade 12 who acts as my translator. His grandmother is in the Mutanda Women’s Club and she informed us when we met her that the club meets on Tuesdays at 10:00 am. We scheduled a meeting with her for this past Tuesday. Tuesday, my helper showed up to help me with my visits in the village and we went to the club, but no one was there. (This particular club has a very nice poultry and grain storage building – there is even cement mortar instead of mud mortar between the fired bricks)

Since the women weren’t there we continued on and we went to the house of the Deputy Head for Sandigombe Basic School, one of my schools. I have been here for ten weeks and no one thought to tell me until about three weeks ago that the Deputy Head for one of my schools is my neighbor. So we went to meet him. Sandigombe has grades 1-7 and about 100 pupils and 4 teachers. Very small number of staff and pupils compared to most other schools. It is also located deep in the bush; 18 kilometer bicycle ride on a dirt bush path. So, I finally got to meet the Deputy and I will be going to visit the school next week. My head teacher at my Zonal Head School, my primary school and the one for my village, told me I am not allowed to go there by myself because it is too far. But, the Deputy Head of the school said once I go there I will be able to go by myself. (Update as of today: I saw the deputy and they don't want me to come until next term because they are preparing exams right now and two out of the four teachers are gone.)

At the co-op meeting on Friday I scheduled a meeting with women’s club members who were represented at the meeting. We scheduled the meeting for Tuesday afternoon at 1:00 pm. I was exhausted on Tuesday and fell asleep after lunch. I woke up after 1:00 and wasn’t concerned. After all, this is Africa and it is ok to show up late. So I take my time getting ready and get there around 2:00 pm. The one time I don’t show up to a meeting on time or early and decide to come late, like the Zambians, is the one time when everyone else is on time. The women had met in the morning and were working to shuck soy beans and by the time I got there some of them had already left. Oh, crap.

It ended up being ok. Sometimes meetings are better with less people anyway. I found out what activities the women are involved and what they are interested in doing. They want to expand on their chicken raising and selling business. I asked them what their goals are and what they want to do with the profit they will get from selling chickens- they want to use the money to send orphans to school and help orphans. They want to build a big poultry building and apply for a loan through Chief Mumena’s community bank. I gave them a long list of questions that they need to answer before we can contact the loan agency and even talk about applying for a loan. Basic financial planning such as, “how many chickens do you want to buy? How much does it cost to buy a dozen chicks? How much feed will you need for each dozen chicks? How much does one bag of feed cost? How many bags of feed will be needed each week? Ect…”

We are meeting again tomorrow and they are supposed to have the answers. They were going to meet with the local Ministry of Agriculture worker to get the answers. Basic financial planning skills are not prevalent here. The women are also interested in learning how to bake. Personally, I am more interested in teaching them how to make banana and pumpkin bread than I am in teaching budgeting. At least with baking you can eat your mistakes.

Update: I showed up for the meeting today and no one was there. Mrs. Manguella, the head of the club said that the agriculture officer won't have the budget planning done until Sunday and we are going to pick it up then.

Things here have been hectic. On Friday I had a meeting with the farmers’ co-op and Amanda and Kirsty came to visit for the 4th of July too. The meeting with the co-op went well. I finally met my group leader. I had been having a hard time finding out who he was, for some reason none of my teachers knew who the group leader is. There were also women present at the meeting. I am not sure if they are part of the co-op or if they just came for fun.

Without really thinking, I suggested the idea of a community garden and the farmers ran with it. We scheduled another meeting on Monday to go look at the land that they want to use. Monday, I showed up to meet them thinking that we were just going to look at the land….The farmers had different ideas. They came prepared with slashers and there were about ten of them total. We walked about a kilometer up the tarmac and then turned onto a bush path and walked about ½ kilometer into the bush. The spot they picked is along a stream which doesn’t dry up, so watering shouldn’t be a problem. We got to the farm and the farmers went to work slashing. I don’t know how to slash. I felt like an idiot because I couldn’t really contribute to a project that was my idea. So, I walked back onto the path we had just created and worked on steeping on the vegetation to make the path wider while the men were sweating from slashing for about ½ an hour. I think I did a good job making it look like I was contributing.

After we finished slashing we walked back up the path. I thought that the path was pretty easy to follow until we started back to the road. I don’t think I will be able to find the garden without any of them with me because there are so many places where another path appears and branches off the main path.

I have started a garden! Actually, my brother Joseph has started it. I tried to help hoe, but they ended up laughing at me and everyone came over to watch me “hoe”. Sorry, I don’t know how to hoe and we got rid of hoes a long time ago in the United States. I do know how to use a rotatiller though. But, I didn’t try to explain what a rotatiller is because it is a superior technology and I want to do what I can to break down their inferiority complex.

The garden is just a bunch of dirt right now. We are still in the process of tilling the soil, then we have to make a fence and beds. I am very excited to plant cantaloupe! I asked them if they knew it and they haven’t heard of it before. They didn’t believe me when I told them it is better than watermelon.

Yesterday, Joseph started working on the garden. I joined him and we worked for about an hour and then he announced he was done for the day. We had done enough work for the day according to him. I was confused; I thought we were going to finish tilling the soil and build the fence all in one day. I guess it was too much work for him to do in one day. The men here don’t do that much work (if any). The women do everything: cooking, cleaning, most of the food production, and the wash.

Thursday I went for a run and started following a random path into the bush. I ran and ran and eventually found myself in the middle of a little farm with a farmer working. I stopped and introduced myself and the man seemed to have his head on his shoulders and we talked about where his kids go to school, so I asked him if he was part of the local farmers co-operative. He is and we talked about seed multiplication and working with the farmers to do some agricultural work. He is talking to the chairman to set up a meeting with the co-op.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what my area needs and food security and agriculture seem to be the themes that keep reappearing. I don’t know what I can do to help the schools. I can encourage the teachers, but I can only do little things to help affect change because there are too many bureaucratic problems that I don’t have control or influence over that are major obstacles.