Learning the Ropes

So it has been a while since we posted, and we don't expect to be able to again for a while, so I'm following Gina's post earlier today right away with my thoughts on how we have been learning to live in Zambia now that we are really living here in our own house and our own village.
Zambians are very helpful when you ask them for information, but they can't give directions very well.  Everything is "just there", or "very near".  If the place you need to go is more than 100 m away or takes more than one turn to get to, you probably will have to ask another Zambian to clarify the directions as you get closer.
During my first weeks in Zambia I tended to lump Zambians into just a few categories.  While I was learning the language, these categories largely revolved on how well they understood English, how patient they were with me as I tried to speak Lunda, or whether they seemed like they were hoping to get something from me or not.  Now that I have been here for a while I am identifying a myriad of personalities and characteristics and seeing that Zambians are very diverse.  I still haven't figured out sometimes whether the diversity is because of their Zambian culture or their own specific personality, but it is very important for me to observe and not anticipate a certain response when interacting with them.  Regarding the language, the responses from people who don't understand the Lunda that I'm speaking is all over the board.  I really appreciate the one's who try to speak slowly and work with me to understand what I am trying to say.
Even if Gina and I were not white and from a different country with a different culture and language, Zambians love to check the new folks out.  The "front porch" culture of American days of yore is alive and well in Zambia.  Just about everyone cooks outside their house, including us, and there is a path between each house that links everyone like beads on a string.  So it is very easy for people to see what you are doing on a regular basis.  This has been a great way to meet people, but the drawback is that we are stuck interacting with some people we'd rather not.  But those are rare and meeting our neighbors has been a great way to get to know the village, learn the language, learn the culture.
After having our outdoor dish-drying rack built by some Zambians shortly after our arrival in the village, I took a shot at building some shelves for our outdoor bathing shelter.  The shelves themselves were easy to construct after borrowing an axe from a friend, but I didn't have enough rope to tie all the shelves to the frame of wooden poles driven into the ground.  So I learned how to make bush-rope after following one particularly helpful neighbor into the bush for a couple of hours one day.  There are a couple of types of trees whose bark can be stripped off into long strips, and then cut into thinner strips which have the characteristics of thick and wide Zip-ties.  Zambians use the stuff for all applications that Americans use rope and sometimes nails. 
When I left my bike outside the house one day my neighbor commented that I should take the tire pump that is attached to my bike off because it could be stolen.  Apparently tire pumps on bicycles in Zambia are similar to stereos in cars in America. 
I have been enjoying the thunder and lightning storms in Zambia.  We get a dose of it nearly daily and the thunder that precedes the storm, the deluge of rain in the beginning, and the slow taper to a drizzle afterwards is similar to one's favorite TV show- we really look forward to the routine, but the differences in duration and intensity are interesting to note.
I had my first meeting with fish farmer's last Sunday.  Sunday's are the only day no one works in the fields, so it is the best day to get the most people to attend.  The meeting went very well and I was delighted to help them problem solve some of the issues they are having with their fish ponds.  One was in regards to weighing their fish.  When they harvest, it is good to know the weight of the fish they harvest so they can sell it per kilogram, or keep track of their harvests.  They asked that I try to locate a scale for the farmers so they could perform this important basic task.  Paying for a scale is next to impossible for these farmers, and getting one donated is not likely, so I suggested that they could make bricks, rocks, or sandbags of known weight (calibrated on the scale at the nearest clinic), and then use a portable balance (hand made in the village) at the harvest site to know how much the fish weighed.  The "Oh Yeah!" look on their face was priceless.  I'm looking forward to helping them develop their new balance and weights when I return next week. 
Gina and I had to go to our provincial capital of Solwezi for a meeting of Peace Corps volunteers and administrative staff, as well as celebrate Thanksgiving.  Now that we are officially volunteers, we had to travel to Solwezi without a Peace Corps vehicle for the first time.  We were going to take a bus, but we found a truck that was going to go to Solwezi that was charging a little less than the bus, and it would get us to Solwezi earlier, which we preferred.  The back of the truck was an open bed with about 20 people packed into the back of it, ages 4 months to 60 years.  Gina and I see this type of travel all the time in Zambia, but this was the first time on a trip of this length (expected to be about 4 hours).  So we loaded up with the Zambians, their chickens, sacks of sugar and grain, and giant mushrooms for sale in Solwezi markets, and enjoyed the wind in our hair despite the cramped conditions.  At one point I had a small boy so close to me that I felt I could have been arrested had I been in a country that enforced anti-pedophilia laws. And then the rains came.  After getting a little wet the driver's helpers, who rode in the back with us, unrolled a heavy tarp to put over our heads.  The tie down straps were nothing but the hands of those passengers near the edges willing to hold the tarp down.  It only rained for a total of about an hour on the trip, so we weren't traveling under wrap for that long.  After stopping what seemed like every 15 minutes in some sections of the trip for goods for sale on the side of the road, we made it to Solwezi in about 6 hours.  Gina and I appreciated the Zambian travel experience, but I think we'll pay the little bit of extra cash and take the mini-bus to Solwezi next time. 
It's possible that neither Gina nor I will be able to blog until January and February, when she and I, respectively, head to Lusaka on separate trips for training in our different programs.  But we should be able to check email on our cell phones, and will be able to check snail-mail in Mwinilunga, so keep those emails, packages and letters coming!