Chickens

Gina and I like eggs.  Even in Yakima, Washington, we thought of getting some hens so we could have our own supply of fresh eggs, with orange yolks, and hens that eat bugs mostly as they peck around our house during the day and only are stuck in a shelter of some sort at night or when they are keeping their eggs warm.  Here in Zambia, it is pretty natural for people to have some chickens so we decided to live our hope of raising our own egg-laying chickens.  We bought 2 chickens, 1 hen and 1 rooster from outside of our village to reduce the chance of inbreeding issues.  And I banded each of them to be able to identify them, with the idea that eventually we'll get to know them without the band, but also so that other villagers will know that they are ours.  A funny thing about buying chickens is that I started noticing a lot of things I never noticed before.  You know how you buy a new shirt in the States from a popular store and notice that other people have the same shirt all of a sudden, even though you had never noticed the shirt existed before you bought it?  Or when you buy a car and when you are driving around with your big smile while you are smelling that new car smell you notice that the same model and color is zipping around in what appears to be every fourth car?  It's the same with chickens.  The very same day I bought our chickens and stuffed them into a box, strapped the box to my bike, and rode my bike 25 kilometers back to our hut, I noticed that there was a rooster just next door that was much bigger and prettier than ours.  And it crowed every time my rooster crowed, along with all the other roosters in the village.  I'm not sure if they always crowed in the afternoon or just this afternoon because their was a new cock in town.  And I started noticing the difference between the different breeds of hens, some with tupees, some with colorful necks, some all black, and some with no feathers on their necks.  The first couple of days I kept our chickens in a coop that Ryvus and Ryford built and fed them there so they would get used to sticking around.  On the day that I let them out I realized how much bigger the next door neighbor's rooster was.  It was quickly apparent that our chicken was no match for this comparative bully, and my first instinct was to shoo the bully away.  But then I realized that these are chickens.  If the bully is bigger and can fight better than my rooster, then that is the rooster that I want to have knocking up my hen.  Each night the rooster and hen would come into their coop to sleep, but after about 5 days my rooster stopped coming back to then coop.  I'm not sure if the other rooster scared it away, or it was killed by some animal from the Zambian bush, or if a villager decided to have a free meal, but I didn't worry about it too much and just bought another hen to be another potential egg layer.  After a short fight to establish who was the "queen" of the coop, the two hens tolerate each other now.  We haven't had any fresh eggs yet, but it sure has been fun watching these birds up close while we wait.

Education of Zambians

Staking a fish pond is not a complicated task.  Measure a 15 m x 10 m rectangle, make sure it's square, then measure another rectangle in the center of the first.  Mark the corner of each of the squares with a mark so that all the marks are equal level.  Not complicated, but it does require doing a little bit of math and maybe even some geometry.  Math can be a big challenge for the villagers in our area.  Staking the pond requires the staker to add 3.3 and 3.3, or 3.9 plus 3.9 depending on the side of the fish pond being staked.  My counterparts, the guys who help me do a lot of different kinds of work in my village, have completed either grade 9 or grade 11 math.  They had a little trouble doing the math I mentioned above, but they were able to muddle to the correct answer after two tries.  I've since started a minor program with them to do a few math problems from the Zambian Ministry of Education grade 7 practice book.  I've learned that I enjoy the heck out of teaching basic math, but more on that later.  One day I went to stake a pond with another group of people whose education level was probably similar to my counterparts and was composed of 3 adults and a teenager. When I posed the same question of 3.3 plus 3.3 to them, they tried a couple times unsuccessfully to do that problem in their head before they gave up.  Four people.  Unable to add two numbers with decimals in their head.  When I gave them paper and a pen they were able to do it.  All of these people are intelligent.  They can grow food, build whatever they need with the appropriate materials from not too far from their back yards, raise animals, and survive in the Zambian bush for a long time with nothing on their backs but an axe or knife.  But this is just one extreme example of the difference in the education of people in Zambia compared to the United States.  I can not imagine how my life would have been different if I was unable to add simple numbers in my head.  Would my life have been more on par with Zambians?  Probably not.  Would it have been any different at all?  Does it really matter if someone can add 3.3 and 3.3 in their heads?  I'm not sure if it does but somehow I feel like the skill of addition without paper and pen is only a simple example of the ability of someone educated in a decent education system.  If they can't add that, what else are they unable to do?  Something in me sees this lack of ability as almost a crime considering the grade level these people have completed. In defense of Zambians in other districts and cities, I have heard that the standards in the rural villages are much lower than those in larger towns.  I heard that students in our area need only a 40% to pass the standardized tests that mark their progress through the countries education system.

There is a hardware store in Mwinilunga that Gina and I frequent to purchase various things we need for our hut.  We have come to know one of the operators pretty well.  One day he came outside to chat with me asking lots of questions about how long I've been in Zambia and how I came to know how to speak some Lunda, and where I was from in the United States.  After the small talk, and explaining that I live in the State of Washington on the West Coast of the United States, he asked me if he could ask a question about America.  "Sure!" I said.  I love it when Zambians ask me questions about American culture.  It is, after all, one of the goals of the Peace Corps to introduce American culture to their host culture.  He asked me, "To the west of where you live, what is there?"  "Well," I said, "If you go west of my State you will go into the Pacific Ocean, and if you went far enough you would go to Asia".  He thought for a moment and said, "But, Asia is to the East.  How is it that you go west and find Asia"?  This was not the first time that I have met someone who had difficulty understanding that the Earth was round and that you could go east or west from the same point and find something on the other side of the earth before you returned to the point.  They had learned that the Earth was round, but had difficulty understanding the consequence of living on a round object.  The thing is, this was an educated business man that I was talking to.  He ran what appeared to be a successful business and knew how to speak English pretty well.  How is it that one can go through life without a good understanding of how the continents were situated on a globe?  Again, so what does it really matter that this man didn't understand that you can get to Asia by going to the east or west of Zambia?  Again I ask myself, if he doesn't understand this, what else doesn't he understand about geography?  Does he think that Hawaii is a different country than the United States of America?  Does he think that America only refers to the United States, or does he realize that America can also refer to South America?  Does it matter?  Would he be just as shocked to know that I don't know the difference between the tree that is used for bush rope and the tree that is used for an axe handle?  Interactions like these really get me thinking about the importance of education in different cultures.  Does everyone in the world need to know the same things?  Again, I don't know the answer to that, but I still feel a strong urge to make sure that everyone in the world can do basic math.  And knows that the earth is a sphere.  Anyone know of any teaching positions opening up in Yakima in 2013?

Tidbits, by Scott

Here are some interesting tidbits:

New Ideas:  A tippy-tap is a simple tool to help clean your hands sanitarily after doing whatever dirty business one is up to.  It consists of a 2.5 L jug hanging from a horizontal pole so it swings like a pendulum at its handle, and a "pedal" on the ground connected to the neck of the jug.  When one steps on the pedal the jug tips and pours water onto your hands without its user having to touch anything with his or her hands.  This is being promoted Zambia-wide as a way to reduce the chances of contracting diarrhea and other diseases.  We built one of these with the help of a few young Zambian men.  They do not know enough english to understand our explanation of why we were building it, only enough information to know what parts were required.  A couple of times other people would walk by and ask the men what they were building and we could tell they were saying something like "we have no idea".  After it was complete, I demonstrated its use by washing my hands and one of the men stood there, smiled, rolled his eyes, and said "chindeli".  Chindeli is the Lunda word for "white people" or "traveler", and is not typically used in a derogatory way, but simply as a way to refer to the ways of white people, or for children to greet white people that they do not know.  My translation of the young man's use of it was "Here is another crazy idea white people want to share with us".

Scrabble Challenges:  Gina and I played scrabble in our hut one night without a dictionary.  We came across a few words for which we could not resolve our challenges to one another.  Gina used "om" and "ex", and I did not think either of those would be acceptable.  I used "avian" and "gorp" which Gina didn't think were acceptable.  I am sure the scrabble player's dictionary would find all of these acceptable.  What do you think?  Not that it really matters since my final score was 292 and Gina's was 170-something.  The cat jumped on our counter trays before we could get her official score.

Cross-Culture Spouses: One evening while I was cooking dinner and Gina was out of the village our friend Ryvus commented that Gina was very lucky to have a husband that cooks.  This was likely inspired by Gina saying these very words to him some days ago in an attempt to share American culture with him and instill a sense of gender equality.  I replied that I am lucky to have Gina as a wife because Gina is almost always happy.  The young man replied that Gina was always happy because she has me for a husband.  Whatever the reasoning, I enjoyed hearing his assessment of our relationship when so many relationships in Zambia appear unbalanced with regard to who does what for the family.  I have been told that for men to cook is a taboo, and that really was only half jokingly.

Zambian Women:  For the first time a woman asked if I could come help her set up a fish pond.  I've had women attend the fish farming meetings I have held, and asked me to come to their existing pond for a site assessment, but I had my first experience doing physical work with a woman fish farmer.  She offered me her axe to help cut down the small trees we would need as stakes to mark the boundaries of the fish pond, but I declined so as not to set a precedent that I am free labor for the fish farmers.  My job is to bring knowledge to the village, not muscle.  Zambians already have plenty of that.  So I watched as this 36-year old woman swung an axe in her bare feet, painted toe nails included, for about 1/2 an hour as I selected the trees and branches for her to cut.  This was my first time also going to a fish farmer without a translator, so I really got to test my Lunda skills.  I could get through the basics, but once out-of-the-ordinary circumstances arose regarding the site for her pond, my Lunda was not good enough to get my point across and her English was not good enough to read between the lines.  I am continuing to learn Lunda and the culture of women in Zambia that requires them to be both feminine and hard-working at the same instant.

Bush Notes:  How is this for a postal service:  Ryford can be given a note from a relative in his village, take a bus to a place over 200 km away, throw the note out of the bus window in the vicinity of the town where the recipient lives as the bus zips by at 80 km/hr and fully expect the note to be delivered to its intended recipient.  Gina and I sent a bush note to the chief of our area by giving it directly to a driver who was going to the chief's village.  Because it was an important person we were confident that it would get there, and after we got a reply from the chief our expectations were affirmed.   

Beef Here! Get Your Beef Here!

Eating meat in our village, and most villages in which Peace Corps volunteers get posted, is a rare occurrence.  Not only is it rare for a villager to slaughter one of their animals, but the price is usually pretty high in Zambian terms.  One day when I was discussing a Peace Corps program with Ryvus and Ryford, someone was calling out in Lunda from the road.  Ryvus and Ryford's ears perked up and they explained that someone was selling beef from a cow slaughtered that day.  I wasn't particularly interested at first knowing that village beef is usually pretty tough, but then Gina mentioned it too, which surprised me enough to check it out, if only for the experience of buying meat so locally.  I went to the road with Ryvus and Ryford and found a young man with the skin and bones of a cow strapped to the back of his bike.  He was selling small pieces of the cow to people as he rode along, shouting out in what was the equivalent in Lunda to "Beef here! Get your beef here!" He did not have anything that looked particularly appetizing with him, but apparently this really was just the advertisement for people to come to the home of this young man where the rest of the cow had been butchered.  So I followed along on my bike, watching the skin of the animal flop around the bike carrier as the bike rode down the bumpy road.  When I got to the home of the butcher I was the only customer there.  Despite that fact, the man continued with much fanfare to lay out a mat of freshly cut leafy branches on which he laid the carcass.  Children and neighbors came to watch as he laid out this half of a cow for the 1/2 kilogram of beef that I was trying to buy.  Slowly though, more people arrived with their plastic sacs or plates to carry off their purchase of beef, usually in 1/4 kilogram pieces or less, while the butcher took either an axe or a large dull knife to the carcass to cut off whatever random piece of meat he could get at for his customers.  In the village one never sees regular cuts of beef available for sale.  You either get meat, fat, bone, or some unidentifiable piece of organ.  And from what I've seen the fat is often more coveted than the meat!

Another Week in Village Life (Gina's Post)

Hey all!

Just wanted to give you one more glimpse of village life from last month . . . it's kind of long, but a good picture of what we do during swing season.  We just got back from helping to facilitate a boys soccer camp for village youth focusing on HIV education and gender equality, and then we visited another health/fish farming couple in our district.  So . . . it's back to the village for me and a few days of office work in Solwezi for Scott.

Here it is  . . .

Tuesday, March 20^th- Going Bananas

   I woke up at 6:45 to no rain, which was a bummer since we had a dry spell for a few days, I would probably have to go fetch water if it didn’t rain in the afternoon.  Breakfast was a nice mix of leftover boiled corn and fried cassava from dinner last night as well as a banana and peanuts.  I sliced some of our excess bananas lengthwise and put them our solar dehydrator that Scott designed from bush wood.

  At about 7:30 Scott had a slew of visitors . . . some of his fish farmers stopped by on the way to their fields.  They were there to sign a handwritten proposal to a local NGO to ask for a seed press, which could ideally provide oil to sell to the villagers and the wastes could be fed to the fish.  Some of the farmers were curious about our garden, so I gave them a tour.  They were most curious about the squash (they grow a completely different type), turnips, and broccoli greens.  Our host father showed the others our compost heap, explaining to the others in Lunda that we do conservation farming, so I was proud of that.  I showed them the bananas drying in our solar dehydrator and gave them each a sample of the already dried ones.  They were ecstatic about the flavor and said it tasted like a sweetie.  We’ll have to do a workshop one of these days. 

   I took a short bike trip down the road, hoping to see some women who invited me to help them soak cassava in the river yesterday.  This is an integral part of their lives, and I always wanted to see how it was done.  But, like so many things in the village, the 8 o’clock time wasn’t exact and I figured they had either left without me or changed their plans.  Oh well . . . another day!

   So instead, I followed Scott to a fish pond digging that one of the local church groups is doing.  He is really excited since it is the first pond in the community being dug according to the design he learned at Peace Corps training.  He put a thin rope to mark the height of the mud walls around sticks that were placed previously to measure the perimeter.  Then he got to helping the men do the backbreaking, messy job of digging the pond, one shovel or hoe-full at a time. 

   I rode over the bridge and up the hill to our network spot to check my phone messages, and got one from a local NGO saying that today’s planned visit to our community would be cancelled and they were not coming.  I went to school right away to let the schoolmaster know, since it had to do with parent education, and then to let Scott know since he was planning on attending. 

   After tons of running around and cancelled programs, I finally made it to the clinic for today.  Tuesdays are antenatal registrations, where pregnant women come to register for clinic services.  We actually only had one woman today, which I think is a record low, but understandable since almost ALL the women are in the bush right now collecting mushrooms or caterpillars or in their fields harvesting maize or beans.  The good news is that her husband came!  We’ve been working since January to get more men to come to antenatal clinics, so even though it was just one couple, it was a success.  The health talk topic for today was the risk of malaria for pregnant women, and the husband was very concerned about borrowing a mosquito net to protect his pregnant wife from malaria caused by dangerous nighttime mosquitos.  Success in small numbers, since she may have been afraid to mention it to him if she had come to the clinic alone.  My second success was an OT moment I had: the health worker in charge was writing a referral for a woman and her baby to go to a distant mission hospital.  Reason: the 1 month-old girl had a small birth defect of her left hand causing several of the finger joints to be missing as well as overall tightness.  I knew she was too young to splint (and we have very limited supplies at that clinic anyway), but did recommend encouraging weight bearing through the affected side when she started crawling as well as grasping with her affected hand.  Hopefully, the mother will be back in a few weeks.

   I went back to the fish pond digging extravaganza and they put a big dent in it, literally.  I put on my rubber boots and tried my hand at the hoe.  After about 3 swipes at the wet, sloppy mud, the men started laughing at me and I could see right away that me “helping” dig was a useless cause.  So instead I went over to Scott and helped him stomp down the mud dike walls with my boots.  Nothing like playing in the mud . . . except when you have to move tons of it by hand!

   I went home and watered the garden with some dirty dishwater since it still hadn’t rained in 3 days, as well as sprayed the plants with our “all natural” pesticide.  Neighbors came by with their treasures for the day: over 2 kg of colorful black, green, blue and yellow caterpillars climbing all over each other in a bucket.  They describe”d the different names of each caterpillar: “mayungu “is the general term and “masesi are the big fat ones, while “mapopa” are the smaller ones.  They did a photo shoot holding all the different types.

   Scott back all muddy and we ate a good lunch, while I went of to a nearby village to look for more bananas to put in the solar dehydrator (they were such a hit this morning!).  I pedaled fast because storm clouds were gathering and I heard thunder in the distance.  The villagers cut down the ENTIRE flower-tipped bunch of 80+ green bananas hanging off a branch and sold it to me for 5,000 kwacha, the equivalent of a dollar.  After they helped me strap the darn thing to the back of the bike, the skies broke loose and the villagers herded me and my bike to a little tin-roofed mud hut with a young woman and her child to wait out the rain.  We conversed in awkward Lunda and I could tell by the fear in her and her son’s eyes that she had never spoken to a white person before.  Luckily who comes in but our clinic birth attendant volunteer came in as she happened to live at that very same family compound!  I didn’t know she was one of the 5 wives of the man who owns the large banana tree-lined compound.  I asked how many children lived on the compound, and she said 18.  I asked in Lunda how many were hers personally, and she said “all of them!” as if the wives took everyone’s children as their own.  Just goes to show community culture around here.

   When I got home, Scott had started cooking a stir-fry of mushrooms, delicious local squash, pumpkin leaves, and YES, a few fried caterpillars for protein, given to us so generously by our next door neighbors. 

Total biking kilometers: 24

Wednesday March 21^st- BOMA and Yard Work

   The 3-day dry spell was broken easily by continuous rain through the night, so we slept in past 7am, which is a treat in the village.  Breakfast was leftover squash stir fry and rice pudding.  I addressed some letters I had written and packed my bike for a 22k trip to Mwinilunga, our District capital, otherwise known as the BOMA.  Scott stayed home since he had some appointments to assess fish ponds. 

   I knew I was pushing it to do the whole round-trip in daylight since I didn’t leave until 10am due to the rain.  But, I had to speak with some of the officers there, so I took my chances.  The road was a muddy mess ¾ of the way but amazingly dried up nicely just as I reached the BOMA around 11:30.  I did multiple and spent 3 days worth of Peace Corps pay on town essentials at various mom & pop shops including: postage, cell phone talk time, peanut butter, guava jam, sour milk, avacadoes, and crackers.  I delivered request letters for the seed press to two different NGO’s in town, so we’ll see if they follow-up.  I stopped by a used clothing shop and visited a friend who was a shopkeeper.  She let me try on a few shirts and gave me one for free!  The ride home consisted of over 100 greetings and most people know both of us by name. 

   I got home at dusk and some of the local neighborhood kids were helping Scott slash the grass that was growing too tall around our house.  They have little sharp slashers and it looks like they’re swinging a golf club really fast.  While Scott supervised the slashing to make sure they didn’t pull up the entire topsoil with the grass, I helped the little ones collect the fallen grass and put it in our compost pit.  More and more came to help, and it ended up being about 15 kids altogether.  They each got a gummy bear vitamin for a reward and loved it!  We sang “head, shoulders, knees and toes” in Lunda and English, and some of them are finally getting the English words. 

   For dinner some neighbors brought us fresh corn and boiled legumes that tasted like a combination of chickpeas and peanuts.  We supplemented with avacadoes and guava jam from the BOMA.  I unpacked the rest of the BOMA stuff while Scott assisted two young adults with math problems.  They are in their early 20’s and never went past 11^th grade, but if they study hard and pass the GCE, they can earn 12^th grade credit and have much expanded job opportunities.

Total biking kilometers: 45

Thursday, March 22^nd- Technology is Amazing!

    I woke up at 6am and did a 30 min. yoga practice, which is a rare treat in the village since most mornings are spent doing household chores or getting ready to bike to some program.  It took Scott about 50 minutes to get the brazier started because it was a cool morning, so while he kept playing with the charcoal, I made pancake batter and mixed dry ingrediens for granola.  Once the brazier FINALLY got started we had a hot breakfast: pancakes with guava puree and toasted pecans (thanks to a lovely care package) and tea.  Scott stayed home to make some bread and cook the plethora of vegetables including sweet local squash, Chinese cabbage, and tomato sauce.

   I went to the clinic and 10 women attended ante-natals, which is still a small number since most are out in the bush collecting caterpillars.  I helped the traditional birth attendants give a health talk about the importance of having a birth plan as well as assisted taking blood pressures as the birth attendants handed out antimalarial and deworming pills to the women.  Three expectant fathers attended the clinic, which is a recors, so the word must be getting out that we are encouraging men to attend with their wives so they can help formulate the birth plan.  The 3 men were rewarded for their attendance as we gave them leftover cardboard boxes that the medications came in.  These are hard to get in the village and very valuable since the villagers can use them to collect mushrooms (“wuwa”) in the forest.  One of our volunteer clinic workers had just returned from a 10-day course and is now certified to perform HIV tests.  He said we could probably start next week (which probably means next month) once we get the appropriate testing solutions.

   I came home to fresh baked bread for lunch and our neighbor brought over yet MORE fried masesi.  I ate about 10 of them and Scott put the remaining 50 on a caterpillar sandwich.  Mmmmm!   “They just taste so meaty!” he exclaimed. He went next door to return the caterpillar dish and saw our neighbor woman sticking her hands in a big bucket of green goo.  It turns out she was taking the insides out of each and every caterpillar before frying them!

  I made a new batch of organic pesticide as grasshoppers were destroying the pumpkin and broccoli leaves.  I soaked tobacco leaves, onions, garlic and very hot peppers in water and let them ferment in a sealed container, where I will strain the juice off and put it into a spray bottle in about three days.  I took a solar shower and had some extra daylight, so I decided to take a stab at making a mentholated spirit stove out of a soda can out of instructions we got in a Peace Corps manual from a training in January.  I cut two soda cans in half, made a slit in the top of one, and then poked holes all around the top with a thumb tack.  Even though Scott had been cooking ALL morning, and we really didn’t have to cook anymore, I was so excited to try out the stove.  It lit in 30 seconds (a little upgrade from Scott’s fire starting adventure this morning) and lasted 20 minutes—enough time to re-heat our food for dinner and even pop popcorn!  Our neighbors heard the pops, so we gave them some popcorn and they gave us even MORE caterpillars.  We had a dessert of homemade ricotta cheese made from strained sour milk, granola and guava jam.   It tasted almost like cheesecake.

   As if I wasn’t already excited enough for the technological breakthrough of the soda can stove, we had the most pleasant surprise of the day happen just after dinner.  I turned on my phone to write a text message in prep for riding my bike up the hill to send it the next day, and to my delight it showed two bars of service!  We heard rumors that they would turn on a nearby cell tower soon, and sure enough, I had enough network coverage to even make a CALL from the hut.  Between the soda can stove and the phone, I figured we’d save 1-2 hours of work per day.

Total biking kilometers: 7

Friday, March 23^rd—Biking Through the Forest

   I woke up around 6:30, took tomatoes to the solar dryer, and filled the solar dryer with rainwater.  We made a quick breakfast of rice, squash, avocado, and peanuts and mobilized to go to a clinic outreach site. 

   I rode my bike to the clinic and helped the clinic volunteer pack a big cardboard box full of medications and educational materials, but he was late as his wife had just had a baby daughter 2 days ago.  We finally left the clinic around 9:30 for a tiny village located about 11k away on a really rough dirt road.  Since we were already late, we decided to take the bush path shortcut to the village, Although it was much shorter distance-wise, the bush path included dodging fallen trees, hiking up muddy hills, and saying hello and shaking hands with each and every villager we saw along the way.  Most villagers had big baskets of fermented cassava and maize on their heads since this is harvest time. 

  As we rode/walked our bikes on the bush trail, sparse trees gave way to thicker trees, some over 100 feet tall.  I learned the Lunda word “evundu,” which means thick forest, or jungle.  After the thick forest, we came upon a floodplain with a beautiful stream winding through and trees in a distance.  We hiked our bikes for the last 3 kilometers due to steep, muddy trails and forded one last stream with our bikes to come upon the tiny village where we would set up the mobile clinic.  The community had a small mud brick church with a thatched roof, and one of the members helped us remove the wood planks that served as a door.  They brought us child-sized desks to put our paperwork and medications, and we hung the baby scale, which looked like a meat scale, from the thatched roof.  We started just on time, since just as mothers and their small children came in, we heard the rains come and felt drips through the thatch roof.  Kenneth gave the moms a brief health talk about HIV in Lunda, although between the rain and crying babies in the packed church, I don’t know how much they comprehended.  Of the 40 children we weighed, we identified three as being either underweight or losing weight (not including the 10 from last month).  We took the names of the children and parents as they will participate in a nutrition program starting in June. 

   The ground outside the church was muddy and soaked from the rain, so we thought we should ride home fast, except that we were invited for lunch by a local villager, and you can’t turn down an invitation for lunch.  We had a play-dough like substance made out of cassava meal called nshima as well as “wuwa,” or smaller orange mushrooms that reminded me of chanterelles.  The wife even sent me home with a basketful of onions from their garden!  We took the main road home rather than the bush path, which was still plenty muddy, but at least we were able to ride most of the way home.  Besides an ox cart carrying some wood, there was no other traffic on the 1 ½ hour journey back home.

   When I got home, Scott had just arrived from the BOMA (Mwinilunga) with 2 chickens on the back of his bike!  A male and a female we bought from some of our friends who are also volunteers about 30 kilometers from us.  We locked them in the wooden chicken house made of tree branches by some of our neighbors to get them used to sleeping there.  Even before I got home, Scott said the rooster had already gotten in a fight with a neighboring rooster, so that was bad news. 

  The day ended with a HOT bucket bath from water boiled on the brazier as well as cabbage soup and bread.  The surprise of the night came in the form of a bush note, a message sent from the chief from our area who said he would like us to come to his palace on Tuesday, so we were excited about that. 

Total biking kilometers: 24

Saturday, March 24^th—The Brother

   Originally we planned to bike 30K to an old mission further up our road and then visit the chief, but since the chief wanted us to visit on Tuesday, we decided just to do a day trip to the mission to see the infamous American Brother that all of our villagers had been raving to us about.  Apparently he was the only other white person in our area, and the villagers gloated that he had been here so long that he was a true Lunda.  Besides, Scott wanted to see a seed press he had heard about that was at the mission.  We kept the chickens in their cage for fear that they would get lost (or worse, start fights) among the other village chickens without knowing their true home.  We started off on the dirt road and came upon many end-of-rainy-season wildflowers as well as tall grass that was shooting up to replace the thick underbrush.

    We did find The Brother at the mission, and he was happy to learn of new Peace Corps volunteers on his same road after his 6-month stay in America.  He is a Franciscan brother in his mid-70’s who has been in Zambia since 1958, before it was even Zambia.  Apparently his higher-ups were thinking of keeping him in America for health reasons, but he insisted on continuing his mission in Zambia, because “there’s always something to do here.”  He showed us his latest project of getting the hydroelectric dam up and running after 1 ½ years of no power in the area due to a lightning strike, as well as many gadgets that were very useful when there was electricity but are now just sitting in a garage.  He showed us a map of Northwest Province and where all the good game hunting was back in the day that it was allowed and wasn’t all poached.  As we sat down to lunch around a table (a rarity for sure around these parts), he told us stories of several schools he started and ran, and even how some of his Zambian students from the bush went on to university.  The Brother was even around when the locals were still wearing traditional clothes made of bark.  I’m sure if we stayed longer we could have heard more stories.

   We took a long bike ride home in the drizzle and on the way, the one vehicle that passed us was from a Zambian priest who lived at the same mission we just visited.  He was very sad that we were not staying the night and told us to come again.  With the good food and conversation, we probably will.  When we got home, the rain buckets from the roof were halfway full.  We were too tired to start the brazier, so we just took cold showers since we were wet anyway, and ate dinner of leftover bread, oysters, tomatoes, and garden basil. 

   Some of the neighbor boys came over for math help from Scott, and one announced that he was going to get married to a girl from the neighboring village.  He is 23, and she is 15 with only a 6^th grade education.  We asked her why he proposed, and he said it is because her mother is in bad health, and she needs someone to take care of her.  He is saving money now, because as a dowry, he will have to pay the mother 250,000k ($50) and two goats.  In exchange for the math help, the neighbors helped Scott translate sentences from English to Lunda about why his Tuesday fish visit is cancelled; we got an invitation from the chief.

Total biking kilometers: 60.

Sunday March 25^th—American Visitors

   We woke up and did laundry by hand like we do almost every Sunday because we had nowhere to be until church at 10:30.  Breakfast was an amazing time-saving breakthrough using the soda-can stove I made a few days ago.  No blowing and lighting kindling to start the brazier; just lit a match and the stove started flaming in about 30 seconds.  We toasted some bread and made tea, and had to add more spirits to the stove about halfway through cooking as we are still playing with the amount needed to reheat a small meal.  We let the chickens out for the first time in 2 days and they enjoyed roaming around the yard pecking for bugs and soon found their way to the neighbor’s yards, which is common in this fenceless village.  Scott named the rooster Cuatro for the four feathers on its tail and the hen Cleo because its neck looked like Cleopatra’s jewlry. 

   Church consisted of two hours of singing, dancing, and lots of Lunda that I did not understand.  The members spent the last 20 minutes or so deciding how they were going to build a new pit latrine toilet before Palm Sunday and Easter, so the announcements turned into a large community meeting.  I got back home, and the laundry was almost dry in the hot morning sun.  I picked turnips, carrots, and pumpkin leaves for tonight’s stew, and Scott sliced open a 10-pound lumpy squash planted in November from South African seeds bought at the supermarket.  The neighbors were fascinated as they had never seen a squash so big.  We started the soup by boiling sweet potatoes and the squash in a huge pot. 

   Our Peace Corps friends John and Kelly arrived around 3pm and were amazed by the amount of hills we had to go up from the BOMA.  Since they had been in Zambia for over a year, our host family was very impressed with the amount of Lunda they spoke.  We gave them a brief tour of our 2-room hut and garden and everyone had solar showers in this nice sunny day.  Dinner consisted of squash soup with pumpkin leaves on the side.  The clouds broke open and we had a nice cool downpour as we baked brownies on the brazier of our outdoor cooking shelter.  For a minute, we all forgot we were in Zambia and thought we were camping somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, where we have all lived.  Except the fresh air, outdoor cooking and beautiful stars were just out our front door!

Total biking kilometers: 8

Monday, March 26^th—Village Inspections

   We slept in and had breakfast with our guests of French toast with local honey and bananas.  Scott pounded coffee beans with a huge wooden mortar and pestle called an iyanda—a little coarse, but it worked.  We said goodbye to our friends around 9:30, and I put another batch of about 20 bananas in the solar dryer. 

   On my way to yet another little village to help a community health worker, I stopped by the clinic.  The traditional birth attendant was very proud to have two more village births, and they let me hold a swaddling, wrinkled baby boy.  I went over the bridge and up a hill to an outreach village where I found my community health worker carrying water on her head.  The two of us sat down on little wooden stools in her compound where she showed me a nice organized plastic file full of paperwork for village health inspections.  This is a new program to help village volunteers report health statistics to district officials, because they hadn’t been doing so for the last 5 years.  She learned very quickly, and we started with her own family compound, asking questions like births, deaths, illnesses, and who has been to the clinic.  We also inspected each family’s pit latrines, rubbish pits, and asked who had mosquito nets.  To my surprise, almost everyone did have a mosquito net, but they were lacking in other things like rubbish pits.  

   Through the course of the long morning, we visited 5 family compounds, and walked 3-4 kilometers as many families were out in their fields harvesting beans/maize or collecting caterpillars.  The villagers we interviewed were relatively healthy in March, and reported only a few diseases such as diarrhea, cough, and fever.  The average family was 10 people living on a compound.  I was also surprised at how much Lunda I understand, and the villagers loved speaking with me.

   As I rode home, many of the villagers said they saw Scott ride in the same direction to look at some fish ponds, but I never saw him.  I got home, had a HOT solar shower, and prepared a dinner of leftover stew with fresh tomatoes and cooked it over the spirit stove.  It started raining around 6pm and didn’t stop raining until 8am the next morning, so all of our water collection buckets were overflowing so much we couldn’t even fill all of our containers.

Total biking distance: 16 kilometers.

Total estimated biking for the week: 184k

            Bush trails: 30k

            Dirt road: 151k

            Tarmac: 3k

Health talks: 3

Caterpillars eaten: 25 (Scott ate well over 100).

 . . . And that’s a week in the life of Gina and Scott!

The Joys of Transportation--Gina's Post

Hello all!

Just wanted to compare two recent journeys from Lusaka, the capital of Zambia, to Solwezi, our provincial capital.  Keep in mind that this is usually only day 1 of my 3-day trek back to my village way in the Northwest corner of Zambia.  The first is hitching, which is fairly common here since transportation is scarce and fuel is extremely expensive, so drivers sometimes like to offset the costs of traveling through this large country by picking up riders along the way.  Like long distance shared taxis.  The second is on good ol’ African transport by bus.  Which one is better? Depends on your luck.  So far I’m on the fence, so I’ll let you decide.

February 15^th Lusaka to Solwezi (coming back from a Peace Corps training)

- I had been at a workshop, but hung around with Scott a few extra days because somehow my work permit was missing in the immigration office.  I got my passport back and mistakenly thought immigration was finished, but later found out it was just temporarily extended.  So . . . I packed my bags to get to Solwezi.

- I woke up at 4:30am and took a taxi stuffed-to-the brim taxi with four other Peace Corps volunteers also making their way out of Lusaka.  I think I was sitting on 3 laps as the driver dropped us off just near the stadium where people were making their outward journeys.

- It was raining fairly hard as the taxi dropped us off, and already I was thinking it would have been better sitting in the sheltered bus than the wet semi darkness hoping for a vehicle to see us.  We ducked for shelter at a fueling station, and so some of the volunteers’ luck they caught a ride their direction with a family in an SUV that was traveling toward Northern province.  Unfortunately for Erin and myself, we waited another half hour with no luck so decided to go back in the rain and get splattered by semis and other vehicles as we waved them down.  It was 6:15 by this time.

- The first vehicle that was going in our direction was a truck carrying large drums of fuel on the back.  The other paying passengers were an actor and his “marketing agent” of very low budget (i.e. homemade You Tube quality) Zambian and Tanzania films.  They had a whole suitcase of computer generated CD’s they planned to sell on the street in some of the cities up north.  I was almost going to buy one to humor him and get some comic relief with Zambian humor, but I decided to save my money for the rest of the journey home, so I refrained. 

- At 10:30 Erin kept on with the Zambian actors and I was dropped at a Y junction at Kapiri Mposhi since my provincial capital was in a different direction.  Luckily the rain had stopped, but my clothes and backpack were still soaked from the morning.  I passed by lots of semi trucks getting weighed, which was what looked like the only transport going my direction.  A nice NGO vehicle with well dressed businessmen picked me up, as well as two other passengers.  They charged 30,000 ($6) to Kitwe which I gladly paid to be out of the truck stop.  I usually feel obligated to talk on hitches, but no one was talking so I pulled out my book and started reading (the Help).  The woman next to me got very excited about my book, and I asked her if she could understand all the American southern slang, and she said she could but I doubt it. 

She was so excited I let her read it for awhile and would have probably let her keep it except that I wasn’t finished with it.

- I was dropped at Kitwe, found a nice bathroom with a flush toilet and running water that I got to use for free at a power company office, and started walking to the outskirts of Kitwe, buying some fresh roasted corn for lunch.  I kept walking and walking, but everyone said I needed to get further and further outside of town.  At that very moment, I got a message on my cell phone from Scott saying I needed to be back in Lusaka because the immigration office had finally found my paperwork that was missing for days.  I was just about to hop on a bus and head straight to Lusaka that very same day, but the thought of being on transport all day going absolutely NOWHERE made me sick, and the thought of villagers waiting for me to do my programs prompted me to call Peace Corps to let them know I’d have to come for immigration another time.  She seemed to think I could just pop in the office any old time, not realizing that it’s a full 3-day journey just getting to Lusaka involving buses, cars, sometimes open bed pickup trucks and bicycles.

- Finally I found a ride to Chingola with a worldly business who had lived in South Africa and Botswana, and was talking lots about Zambia’s untapped potential for development, particularly for agriculture.  He kept hinting that he needed investors for some of his business schemes, but only gave vague ideas of what they were.  I kept trying to explain that I was a Peace Corps volunteer and not in a financial position to invest in the future of agro-business, and he nicely dropped me at the bus station.

- I caught the bus from Chingola to Solwezi and got dropped off just before 6pm, which means I was traveling for about 13 hours. The entire trip ended costing me 80,000 kwacha (about $15USD), which is about a 30,000 kwacha savings ($6) from if I had taken the bus to begin with.  It involved interesting conversations, wet clothes, and a lot of walking.  Should I have just taken that very same bus to begin with?  Who knows?

April 5^th Solwezi to Lusaka (coming back from immigration appointment)

- So the bus ride to Lusaka was smooth and I was able to put  very large dent in the book I was reading, The Poisenwood Bible, so hitching back to Solwezi didn’t seem nearly as appealing after my last journey home on 4 different vehicles only to end up on the bus I could have been on from the beginning. Plus, I had a good book to finish!

- Another volunteer Kim was also leaving the city and decided to bus it with me.  I woke up at 4:30 and called a taxi.  I was lucky to have a homestay with an AMAZING embassy family for 3 days, and he found that place easily.  Unfortunately he went to the wrong backpacker’s place to pick my friend up, so we made it a little late (or so we thought) for the 6am bus.

- We were confronted by swarms of wheelin’ dealing ticket sellers, each saying their bus company was the best (one wearing pink sunglasses and a zuit suit sticks out in my mind), trying to herd us toward their bus.  Each charges a 10,000 k ($2) mark-up to sell us a ticket, so they were using all their loud obnoxious sales skills.  We decided on one that was almost full, figuring it would actually LEAVE at the 6am departure time since usually buses don’t leave until they’re full.  Once we got our backpacks situated and sat down, about half the passengers on the bus promptly got off.  Did they get on the other bus?  We’ll never know exactly.  Kim thought maybe they got paid something just to make the bus look full.

- As we watched the other dueling bus leave about 6:15, we got to sit in the bus station for another hour and a half.

- Finally we got going and Kim fell asleep while I became enthralled with my book.  All of a sudden I noticed a piece of luggage in the aisle next to me, which is my pet peeve on African buses since no one can move through the aisles, but it happens frequently as people come back from Lusaka with virtual warehouses full of goods to sell upcountry.  I looked over though, and noticed it was Kim’s backpack, which had fallen from the upper shelf and we hadn’t even noticed.  I turned around to put it back and a poor little old lady who spoke no English grimaced at me and kept pointing to her head, implying that it had fallen on her head.  I said “sorry” the best I could, but she kept giving me the evil eye.  I didn’t want to risk more falls on innocent old ladies, so Kim squished her big backpack between her legs for the rest of the journey so her legs fell asleep.

- We stopped at the weigh station in Kapiri Mposhi, and I kept reading, not realizing that almost everyone got off the bus.  It was only about half an hour of being stopped that we realized the bus was overweight and the driver was trying to make deals with passengers and get some of them off.  It finally got started again and we felt bad for the passengers who did get off, until we realized that they all got on a mini bus and met up with us just 2 kilometers down the road, far enough out of sight of the weigh station officials to get back on the bus.  So much for weight limits!

- We ate our snack of boiled peanuts and ice cream which we bought out the window, and at the next town I ran to find a pay toilet while Kim watched my bags and made sure that the bus didn’t leave without me.  The first one I saw had a 1 inch puddle on the floor, probably hadn’t been flushed in a day, and didn’t have any toilet paper, which is what you pay for in the first place. I left and the guy wanted 1,000k (20 cents), but I only wanted to pay him 500 due to the toilet situation. He handed me the roll, like it would do good after the fact, so I grabbed a big wad on my way out and ran back to the bus.

- The music alternated between Zambian gospel pop and 1 cheezy American 80’s song but stopped two times on our journey to let on two traveling preachers who jumped on the bus to buy our souls.  One was shaking from the wrath of God and the other very carefully trying to read an English Bible without mistakes into various Bantu languages before they both went down the aisles asking for money for their cause. 

- I think that inspired some of our fellow passengers to argue whether or not the Bible endorses the practice of polygamy (still common among several of Zambia’s tribes) or not in mixed English, Kaonde, and Bemba.

 -Kim went back to sleep and I started reading a magazine since my book was finished, and the last leg of our journey from Chingola to Solwezi seemed to drag on forever and stop at every tiny little village to drop people off.  It was no more than 5 minutes after she said “does this thing have to stop at EVERY single village along the way?”  that I looked over her sleeping head out the window at yet another stop to see a poor little 3 year old girl passenger squatting outside with clearly no success.  While her mother tried to help and the entire left side of the bus was able to see, we realized why the bus stopped at THAT stop. 

- After all of the days trials and tribulations on the bus, we couldn’t help but start laughing hysterically and then couldn’t stop.  We laughed so hard we cried, and then arrived in Solwezi just in time to hit 6pm traffic and watch as people walked on the street faster the bus.  We asked to get off in the gridlock, but apparently we weren’t allowed to since it was an “official” stop.

- So we sat in 30 minutes of city gridlock before finally being allowed to get off.  As we ran down the street to get to the grocery store before its 7pm closing time, a taxi swerved left onto the dirt walking path (no sidewalks around here) and almost hit us.  As we gingerly walked past trying to avoid a pedestrian collision, the backseat passenger projectile vomited not one foot in front of us.

- Total transport time: 14 hours.  Total cost: 120,000 kwatcha including the kickback for the pink-sunglassed ticket seller.  Was it worth it?  You tell me.

World Wise Schools

World Wise Schools is a program through Peace Corps where volunteers serving in various countries are connected with teachers in the States.  We are either randomly selected for a teacher or we can choose.  The Peace Corps volunteer shares info with the students about the country through letters and e-mails, and if appropriate, matches students to write to each other. 

We were lucky enough to pair with our friend Jane, who teaches 7^th grade math and science in Yakima.  The Yakima students mostly come from Mexican American backgrounds, and many were born there or are first generation Americans.  For almost all of them, English is a second language.  She is lucky enough to teach a class called AVID which focuses on college preparation and writing.

We paired up with students from our village basic school, which serves grades 1-9.  The students that wrote back were from grades 7-9, and were anywhere between the ages of 12 and 19, as repeating a grade several times is not uncommon in Zambia.  All of the students who responded speak Lunda only in the homes, and get basic English instruction at school.  The deputy headmaster hand-picked his best and brightest English students from the school.  Most of the selected students were male, as many girls in the village don’t stay in school past 4^th or 5^th grade.

We highlighted just a few of the letters and responses, as we’ve had two batches from America so far and sent two batches from Zambia.  It’s really fun seeing the similarities and differences of English learners writing to each other from halfway around the world.  Just a few examples, with as little editing as possible:

Dear Zambian Student,

Hi!  I’m 12 years old.  I live in the State of Washington it’s in the Northwest corner of the United States.  I live in a small town called Yakima in Washington.  I’m in 7^th grade.  I’m 12 years old.  My favorite subjects are science and language arts.  My 3 favorite sports are Volleyball Soccer and Baseball.  What are your favorite sports?  My favorite foods are enchiladas.  It’s a Mexican dish.  They’re really good.  I like them a lot.  What’s your favorite food?  My hobbies are spending time with my family, watching T.V., playing on the computer or getting on my facebook.  What do you do on your spare time?  I am really excited to hear back from you!  I have a really big family that live here and in Mexico.  How big is your family? My favorite show is the Simpsons, it’s a really funny and interesting show.  I just love it.  Well if you right back could you please write a section in your language.  Please.

Dear Zambian Student,

Hi Zambian student.  I am 12 years old and I go to middle school & I want to tell you about the people in the state of Washington is that how is your place in Zambia it it preaty far from here I will show you how I look I also need to know how to live in zambia as I have seen it looks cool I had a great time in zambia & I have a lot of questions have you ever seen a cheetah or a tiger have you ever seen a waterfall Because I have they are cool & I have seen your waterfall on a pic & it looks real Big  I have lots of stuff here and I think it is fun I wish people don’t have to not have lots of stuff plus I hope you can give me a picture of yourself  my life is ok here but sometimes I wish there was a lot of cool stuff happening & I wanna know how your life is I think going to the wildside would Be cool  and I wanna know how old you are & how your life is and I hope you can write back to me.                                                                

Dear Zambian student,

I’m 11 years old.  I go to middle school.  I love going to school.  I love math and I also like staying after school for Environmental Club.  In Environmental Club we plant seeds to get flowers, vegetables, and fruit.  I love shopping with my friends.  I go to 7^th grade and I have a sister who is 10 years old and goes to 5^th grade.  I also has a brother who is Ricardo and he is 10 months.  Im planning to go to the fair this weekend.  I love eating tamales.  I love eating tomatoes.  In my house I have a little garden and when I see a red tomato I eat it.  When you respond please write a section in your language.  If you can please send pictures also.

Dear American student,

I hope and trust That you are fine as for me I very fine I read your letter & your written English is Good I’m in Grade 9 my best subject is Geography, English and mathematicts dificont to me.  I’m still learning but this term I’m not learning well because I don’t have maney to pay for school fees because my father is not rich he is poor person This is my problem if I have I don’t have maney to pay at school.  My favorite food is ishima, mango and bread whi I like it so much I have two friends you and Benjamin Who I like so much. Wating to hea more from yours friend.

Dear American student,

I am a school pupil in Mwinilunga.  Mainly I go to the farm on weekied.  In our farm there is tomato and bananas.  My favorite food are bananas and maize.  I like friends at school and in our classroom.  My favorite subject in our classroom is civic and I study it very much.  And you can ask me any questions in civic book  I can answered very well.  I like playing football.  In Sports I play number 2.  I like my mother because my mother given me a big food.  In our family we are 9 children.  And I our family, I am the last born.  And I am the remaing one who going to school.  But to tell you the trueth my friend I come from a poor family.  I am 15 years old.  I want to ask you some questions.  How are you in your family? And many Teachers are there at your school?  How many subject are you doing in your class?  How old are you?  Here in Zambia we have a lot of Nation parks.  I am very excited to write a letter back to your.  I am patiently waiting to hear from you.

Dear American Student,

I like to do this.  I have a lot of things that in my opinion, like playing in our culture.  I like hunting, fishings and soccer.  My kind of animals are cat, rabbits, cows, and dogs. And me also my family is really big because I have grandmother, grandfather and I have one sister but both mother and father are dead.  Am a orphan.  I like the flowers of guavas, mangos, and othe flowers that I don’t know.  I like to go to school But am very hard working in class but I don’t have a supporters Sometime I planting vegetables to saling on the boma it is very far from our village to boma but am very clever.  That I can find the money to spend to school.  I want you my friend to help me to school to pay for me to school  Oky my favorite subject in school I have do is am very calculating mathermatics and reanding English am doing Grade eight.  And I haven’t you send me some camera phone to communicating wien you my friend.  Thank you very much.  God bless you friend.

Dear American Student,

My uniforms are white shirt and green necktie black shoe and green traws.  We do not wear id badges.  We wear a nicktie in green coulor.  Me also I think it is very good to like mango.  I like mango because at our house there is many tree of mangoes why do you like mangos? Our horiday was good.  In Christmas I got a chicken from my father? Dancing is common and me I like dance during my birthday.  Now I am in grade 8.  My school is nearly I just walk it is about 50 meters long.  My favorite subject is English.  Do you have a phone?  Do you run faster the me.  I Run about 3 kilometre par hour.  How taller are you.  I am 1 and half metre taller.  Do you like playing basketball?  Do you like swimming.  Want jobs do you enter if you finish school.  In your opinion your think you will pass and go to grade 8 do you write examnation in grade 7. But we write exam in grade 7.  I am 13 year old; I want to learn your language.

Dear Zambian student,

I’m 10 years old in 7^th grade.  It is pretty all right. Sure we have to wear uniforms but I can live with it.  The people (friends, staff) are pretty cool, fun, and good people to be with.  Do you guys have uniforms at your school?  By the way are you boy or girl? What we have over here in America is pretty cool.  With all of our technology, transportation, and food!  Me personally, I like the XBOX 360.  I’ts a video game console.  The game I like to play is Call of Duty: BLACK ORB.  It’s sort of a war game with shooting and killing other players online.

Dear Zambian Student,

I’m a boy I am 12 years old and in 7^th grade I live in the state of Washington and I like football too but in our country we call it soccer im not that good but Im still practicing.  Were I live were just coming out of the season of winter.  Like you I do good in school and I enjoy going to it.  To me my knowlage is important.  I know a lot of things now and im glad to know what I know.  Well nevermind that I yope you receive this.

Dear Zambian Student,

I read your letter and I thank you for answering my questions.  I really liked your handwriting and you have one of the best handwritings I’ve seen compared to other letters.  All though I also have more questions to ask you like, how is the weather there?  How does your house look like? Are there any Americans there in Zambia? Those are my questions for now, do you have any questions?  I would be happy to answer them, until then thank you.

. . . Stay tuned for more letters!