Gina’s Post:
More pictures are up thanks to Chris and Yuki! You can check out the web album at:
Below this post is a blog that I wrote several weeks ago, but never had the time in a town with good internet access to post. As with many things in Zambia, good things come to those who wait.
In the meantime, plans changed a little, and instead of me going to Northwest province two weeks before Scott, I decided to stay with him as he finished training in Chipembi due to lack of a cement floor in our new hut. We are hoping that it will be finished by the time we move in come late October. His host family is nice, and I’ve occupied much of my time teaching them camp songs like “The Princess Pat,” teaching them how to make banana fritters, and passing around the homemade PVC pipe hula hoop (thanks Cynthia).
Not too many new things to report except that I did pass my language exam at an intermediate-mid level and it now VERY hot, although we now have a nice mid-afternoon thunderstorm several times to cool things off. Reminds me much of summers in Colorado (minus the fans or air conditioning), and the clouds are absolutely amazing.
Two of the other wives who are waiting for training to end with me also went to the clinic and took the initiative to give a health talk about diarrhea prevention to new mothers at the under 5 clinic. Although we needed an interpreter to translate it into Nyanja, I think it went pretty well.
Scott swears in tomorrow, which is also the Peace Corps Zambia’s 50th anniversary celebration. We get to be in the state house with newly-elected President Sata. I'll try to get pix if they allow it! Scott had an awesome shirt made for him out of Zambian flag chitenge material, although the Lunda speech he was supposed to give got cut from the program after they figured out it was going to be at the states house. Oh well . . . he did a great job giving it to all the host families at cultural day yesterday.
In the meantime, I thought I’d show my own little musing about more local fare tried in the village:
The Lion King
Scott’s family served warthog last night. I tried not to have visions of Pumba in my head as I gulped down very tender savory bones covered with melt-in-your mouth red meat. Along with the staple carbohydrate of roller-ball nshima, they also served it with some really tasty boiled potatoes. So, for a gal not too used to so much carnivorous fare, I would have to say it was just about the best meat and potatoes I ever ate. Apparently Scott’s host father got the bush meat from a friend of his, and ironically, several other volunteers who have host families near us also got warthog last night. Not something I would have every night, but definitely a novelty. As a side, this is probably the first wild creature I have eaten in Zambia, but Scott has had bush meat on two other occasions as well as caterpillars and termites—I guess the termites have a nice deep fried crunch!
Charlotte’s Web
The female pig on Scott’s family’s compound is so pregnant it looks like she could burst any day. She traipses around with her giant belly covered in mud from some nearby mud pit with a few other slightly smaller pigs following her and likes to scratch all day in the mango tree outside our round hut, or sometimes directly ON our hut. I’m really hoping to see cute pink little piglets but don’t know if I’ll get the opportunity as we’re moving to NW province after Scott swears in as an official volunteer. There are also enough friendly little wall spiders that do a fair job of munching the mosquitoes in our hut that sometimes I think I’m living in the middle of Charlotte’s Web, although I did kill what I think was a poisonous one running across our bed the other day.
I do venture to say that the animals that we have now become accustomed living with side-by-side are probably some of the luckiest free-range animals in the world. The villagers seem to have a kind of symbiotic relationship, which is essential considering their lack of refrigeration. The animals kind of just roam from compound to compound munching on whatever is around and somehow know how to make their home every night. Yesterday as Scott was having one of his last classes, we saw a herd of cows wandering through blissfully munching on banana tree leaves. The chickens at Amaama Annie’s were my favorite as about 5 of them had between 2-9 chicks each and you could see little pecking families digging for bugs, foraging for dropped nshima, and flying up to the wash bin to snag a drink of water. My favorite was watching a mama chicken single-beakedly kill a toad and subsequently divide it up for her little young very quickly before the other chicken mamas started pecking at her for their share of the kill. The little girls would help gather the little chicks each evening and let the mamas keep them safe inside of their cooking shelter.
Since our future site has mostly goats and sheep around (the latter looking so much like the former that you sometimes can’t tell the difference except for the ubiquitous “baa” sound and a longer tail), I’m looking forward to utilizing the compost for gardening and possibly even starting a goat milking project. Although first step will be to build a bamboo or thatch fence around our future garden because any hope of keeping these hungry foragers away in the land without boundaries is to fence them away from vegetation that we happen to want to eat.
The roaming phenomenon applies to children as well. Since I have been with Scott’s host family for less than two weeks, I have a very hard time distinguishing which children belong to whom. After 11 weeks, he is better, but can’t always place a child with his or her particular family. It doesn’t help that aunts are very often referred to as “amaamas,” so the kids you think are brothers and sisters for so long actually turn out to be cousins or friends. Good thing they all know me simply as “Mrs. Scott.” One thing I do know is that whenever the hula hoop gets broken out, or people start beating on their jerry can drums, you can guarantee that a nice little group of 3-4 children will quickly multiply to 20 or more. So, when planning village activities, we have to keep in mind that we might just attract the entire neighborhood within a matter of minutes.
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Gina’s (old) Post from early October:
I will officially be a Peace Corps volunteer this Friday. That is the day our entire CHIP group (health education) will go to the US Ambassador’s office in Lusaka for the fancy event. Scott will join me for the hooplah, and then his RAP (fish farming) group will officially swear in on October 21st. Unfortunately I won’t be able to go to his because I’ll be up in Northwest province preparing our new house before the rains come, which is supposedly mid to late October for Northwest province. We’re in Lusaka today for a banking day, so I wanted to relate the last few events of the CHIP training while we have internet access J.
HIV Education
One of our practicals last week consisted of going to one of the local schools by our training site and teaching about either HIV or empowerment. Since we had only a 45-minute session, Heidi and I chose to teach about HIV and test our own knowledge about HIV and Zambian culture that has been drilled into us for the past 10 weeks. When we arrived at the school, we were pleasantly surprised to find out that we got a 12th grade class of an all-girls boarding school. Most of the girls came from cities, and many were college bound. Their English was impeccable, and they made fun of us for our American accents.
We started with the handshake game that illustrates how quickly the virus can spread when a person doesn’t know they are infected and doesn’t use protection. We then had them do a “race” at the chalkboard where each team got a piece of chalk and the members of each team had to write a word or phrase on the board having to do with HIV. We got everything from “human immudeficiency virus” to “condom” to “virgin power” to “sex before marriage is a sin.” The activity facilitated a nice discussion to some of the myths surrounding HIV transmission in Zambia, and these girls’ role as they are entering one of the highest risk times of their lives—the university. We also talked about the fact that many married couples in Zambia have at least one partner with the virus and what they can do to lower their risk. The girls were excited and wanted our mailing addresses at the end so that we could keep in touch.
It was very refreshing having such an active and knowledgable audience, although we definitely will not have the same level of English proficiency and literacy in the village. In fact, my village only has a school that goes to the 9th grade, and many women drop out at that time to tend the fields.
Election Week!
Election day was September 20th and it was apparent far and wide in Zambia, even in the villages, as carloads of singing Zambians and political parades filled the streets. Peace Corps declared a standfast for all volunteers and trainees, which meant that we couldn’t travel to Chongwe for several days prior to and after the elections, and we also couldn’t leave our homestays the actual day of the elections on the off chance that violence should break out. Most of our Zambian language and technical trainers all left to journey to their respective provinces in order to vote. My host mother, sister and brother all voted, and proudly demonstrated the brown ink on their left thumb as a sign of their voting.
The two most prominent candidates were incumbent president Rufiah Banda and opposition party leader Michael Sata. After two days, no official result had been announced, and you could tell the Zambians were holding tight, and some were questioning why the Zambian government was taking so long, as they said in previous elections, most results come out the following day. Some even suspected the results were being rigged in favor of the incumbent, which is why it took so long.
At 1:30 in the morning of the 23rd, I heard cymbals, screams, and running, mostly coming from the bar of the street. For about 5 minutes I sat in my bed terrified that the result was angry people mad that the election was rigged. Then, as the sounds came closer to my house, I heard “Sata, Sata, Sata” and “wawato, wawato, wawato,” which was his election campaign of row row row your boat. I was shocked as I thought he didn’t have a chance over the incumbent’s well funded campaign. The yells and calls were those of joy in the takeover of a 20-year dominating party. Rufia Banda conceded and Sata was sworn in that very afternoon.
Most of my Zambian trainers were pleased with the result, although my language teacher and host mother were not so happy. I guess just like any democracy, you can’t please everyone . . . but it was an interesting experience to see the democratic process alive in a developing nation. Zambia prides itself in being a country of peace, and except for a few isolated events in Lusaka, election day went off without a hitch and the result was favored by most people I asked. Just like any new president, I’m sure this one will have challenges unimagined while he was campaigning, but it was fun to see the energy of the people that day. Our standfast was lifted the day after his swearing in.
Stir Crazy
I feel like I’m back in high school right now as the weather is just starting to get uncomfortably hot during the day (nights are still cool), and each training session seems like it lasts twice as long as it should. It’s just like every last week of school that I’ve ever remembered. It doesn’t help that a few days ago, the huge ceiling beam of our large nsaka (grass-ceiling open-air meeting pavillian) collapsed while we were in it. The beam itself was made of two long tree trunks roped together—forget about steel beams or treated lumbar around here. Luckily, the ceiling didn’t collapse all the way and everyone quickly got out. The beam is now being held up by three more tree trunks used as crutches to keep the entire structure from crashing down. Needless to say, we are not having class there and have been delegated to a hot, stuffy classroom, which has further perpetuated the “when is this going to be over?” mentality.
We just had interviews with our mentors from the ministry of health to go over the technical objectives, as well as our LPI, which stands for Language Proficiency Interview. It is supposed to be an interview that lasts 15-30 minutes where an officially-trained tester orally assesses one’s language proficiency. It is taped and then scored by a number of trained scorers. Topics can range from anything from basic greetings, to talking about one’s family to anything random. Mine lasted 50 minutes, so I don’t know if it’s good or bad, but I do know that my tester in Lunda asked me very specific questions, such as why I liked teaching yoga to children with disabilities, why it was a problem that women in rural Zambia had so many children, and to explain my application process in Lunda for getting into the Peace Corps. Needless to say, everyone came out of their LPI’s feeling a little tongue tied, but I think everyone in our group passed their various languages.
On Saturday a group of us went to a swimming pool at a lodge in town to celebrate the almost-end of our training and beat the heat. We even talked the manager down to a 5,000 kwacha ($1) discount by saying that we were Peace Corps trainees. It was glorious to bask in the sun and hang out for a few hours until we saw the storm clouds roll in. It had happen once before, but just wind and clouds and not a single drop of rain. This time the rain came down and we quickly got out of the pool in time for a spectacular show of rain, thunder and lightning. It reminded me of a July afternoon in Denver. On the way back, we rode our bikes past Chongwe to pick up a few of the guys’ swearing-in outfits. I and most of the gals already had our colorful chitenge outfits made by local tailors, but the guys chose a tailor in the market that took a week longer to complete the outfits than she already said. Seeing as we have to move from our host families in Chongwe on Wednesday, she was pushing the time limit, which seems to be a trend here in Zambia. Marcus tried on his ostentatious orange-flowered Austin Powers looking shirt and it fit perfectly, minus the button holes that the lady still didn’t put in. Danny put on his authentic looking elephant vest that fit quite nicely until we realized that the elephants were all upside-down and the tailor made the entire vest without realizing that small little detail. We started looking very upset, saying “but the elephant feet, they are up in the air,” and she profusely apologized, offering to give Danny a 5,000 kwacha discount from the 35,000 price it cost to make the vest. I will try my best to post pictures of my lovely poofy-sleeved chitenge outfit when I wear it at swear-in!
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