Zam Wedding and Christmas (cont.)

Last weekend I attended my first Zambian wedding! The wedding was for our language trainer, Ba Leonard, who taught Ellyn, Ricardo, and myself Bemba during training. Ndola is in the Copperbelt Province, and is one of the big mining cities in Zambia. Ellyn and I decided to go and learn about another part of the Zambian traditional culture. There were three parts to the wedding, starting with the church service in the morning, followed by the “kitchen party” for the women, and finally the reception in the evening. Most of the wedding goers wore three different outfits, one for each event. We had citenge suits (traditional African dress) made by a tailor in Kasama, and decided just to stick it out with one outfit.

The greatest cultural shock at the wedding was that the bride was unhappy all day. The Zambian tradition (possibly even just the Bembas) is that the bride is in mourning on her wedding day because she’s leaving her family. During all of the wedding activities, she never smiled, and kept her gaze to the floor. It was pretty strange to us, since it’s supposed to be one of the happiest days in our culture!

Our favorite part of Ndola was Shoprite. Shoprite is the grocery store in Zambia; we have one in Kasama, but it’s nothing like the one in Ndola. Ndola is comparable to Lusaka in terms of development, due to the copper mining money. Ellyn and I were so overwhelmed by the variety of foods that we spent 2 hours looking at things like cream cheese, Doritos, and pasta sauce. It’s the small things, right?

Life in the village is rainy! I couldn’t believe when my family told me to put my bucket under the runoff from the roof during a storm instead of drawing water from the well. Just one big storm filled my 25-liter bucket completely! That’s a lot of water!

I used some leftover paint from the world map project at school to paint my sitting room this past week. Now my house is neon green! Photos soon to come!

It doesn’t feel like Christmas. Without snow, a tree, ornaments, cheesy decorations, Christmas music, obnoxious commercials, crowded malls, good food, or good company, it sure doesn’t feel like Christmas to me. Instead, it’s hot and humid, rainy, and the mosquitoes are sneakier than ever. Good company is the only redeeming quality, as I’ll be leaving for vacation later today with 6 of my closest Peace Corps friends. Hopefully I won’t be complaining about the lack of snow or materialism once I’m sitting on a beach in Malawi in a few days! Merry Christmas friends and family, I miss you all dearly!

Zam Wedding and Christmas!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving all!

Yesterday was as close to a "real" Thanksgiving as possible, as my Peace Corps family gathered to celebrate the holiday in the sweltering African heat. It was complete with frozen turkey, chicken, and duck. The duck was even chased around the yard, killed, and plucked all by my fellow volunteers. It was a great time to share our traditions with one another, and even some of our wonderful Zambian friends. I must admit, the heat, lack of football and snow, and being without my family definitely had it's difficult moments. Luckily, my Peace Corps family is a pretty close second, and we had a great Thanksgiving together. I also received a fantastic homemade video from my friends at home yesterday, and was happily singing "Bong diddy bong bong" all night long!

Life in the village is...quiet! School finishes today for the holidays, and won't start up again until mid- January. This leaves my work in the village pretty much up to my imagination. So, I've just started a compost pile with some of the Ba Maayos in the area, as well as a permagarden for some vegetables. December might be a bit of a slow month, but that will make Christmas vacation that much more exciting to go to Malawi! 6 of my PC friends and I have planned a 9 day trip to Lake Malawi, complete with beaches, boats, snorkeling, and full moon parties for New Years. Should be great fun, and a bit different from the typical CO Christmas.

I hope this message finds everyone at home enjoying the fall and coming of winter, happy Black Friday!

Some snaps...

This is my favorite child in the world, Trusting, he's wearing a little girl's dress!

Progress on the world map, that's southern Africa!

The children in my family in their "motoka" outside my house.

Me with my counterpart, a Ministry of Education official, at the Ukusefya pa ng'wena cultural celebration.

Too long!

Wow it has been way too long since I last posted! Life in Zambia is as “regular” as it has ever been, although that’s definitely not to say I haven’t been enjoying my fair share of adventures. Since our trip to Lusaka, I’ve been spending most of my time at site, with a few exceptions for birthdays, a workshop, and the arrival of our “newbies” from the newest intake (in Peace Corps lingo, they’re the “freshmen,” so now I’m a “sophomore”).

The most recent news involves the PC Emergency Action Plan, which is what they use when they need to inform us of imminent danger. Don’t worry, please. Zambia is one of the most peaceful countries on the continent of Africa; this is more a testament to how cautious the Peace Corps is. Zambia is holding their bi elections right now to vote for positions such as MP, or Member of Parliament. Apparently Zambians are fed up with corruption by the ruling party, MMD (Movement for a Multiparty Democracy), and are ready for “change,” so the new party they want to see in office is PF (Patriotic Front). Kasama has been littered with political propaganda over the last few months, including spray paint saying, “vote PF” on every free space of wall/door/kiosk/tarmac/etc.

All the volunteers in Northern Province have been in Kasama this past week for our permaculture workshop, to which we brought counterparts from our respective villages. The election for Kasama district MP took place on Thursday, during our workshop. On Wednesday afternoon, we heard about some pre-election violence that took place in Kasama. The PC promptly put us all on “standfast,” meaning we were not to leave the compound of the PC house, until Saturday morning. The concern was that if the MMD party stole the election, then all hell would break loose in Kasama. Lucky for us, PF won by 6,000 votes. Unfortunately, we were all stuck going stir crazy at the house for a couple days, while Kasama was going about its normal business. Better safe than sorry I suppose!

Life in the village is great! I absolutely love my family, and everyone in my village. My friend Ellyn came to visit last weekend and help me put plastic in my roof so there are no leaks during the rains. It was a nice visit, my family bought and cooked a chicken to welcome her, and we made a cake on my brazier. Unfortunately, my host sister, Cleopatra or Kabebe, is pretty sick with severe asthma. There's not much they can do for her at the clinic, except give her injections while she's having an attack. She had 2 attacks within one week when it began to rain, luckily it hasn't rained since then. I'm pretty worried for her during rainy season, which should begin in less than a month. Please keep her in your thoughts, as she's my closest friend in the village, and don't even want to imagine my life here without her!

Work has been coming along slowly but surely. I've been working with the pupils at my school to draw a map of the world as a mural on the side of the school. Also, I've been attending workshops for teachers throughout my district, and even participated in World Teacher's Day...by dancing in front of 200 teachers. Needless to say, they got a kick out of that.

Well this post is too long already, so I'll just touch on a couple other things I've done in the past couple of months since I wrote. I went to some hot springs with other volunteers, and saw the Shiwa (Africa) House, built before Zambia's independence. You should look it up if you're interested, the man who came was apparently pretty crazy, but built this incredible mansion in the middle of the African bush.

I also attended a workshop in the community for community leaders about the traditions involved with marriages in Zambia. It's called Bana Chimbusa, and teaches the young couples special dances and about the importance of marriage through the use of different clay dolls. I participated by soaking my feet in mud, wading through a river, painting our faces, and tons of dancing to drums. Although I'll most likely never teach the young couples these traditions, it was interesting to learn the traditions, and the ba mayos really enjoyed watching me participate.

I hope everyone at home is doing well and enjoying the fall!

Photos!

Hippo!

Victoria Falls!

That's the bridge we bungee jumped off

Ellyn and I on the gorge swing

My feet are always dirty in this country

In Service Training and Vacation!!!

Well, hot season is just around the corner here in Northern Zambia, I’ve heard rumors of the daytime temperatures reaching the upper 80s already. So far I’ve at least sampled a bit of all the seasons except the hot and dry season, so let’s do this Zambia!

I returned to Kasama last night at about 2:30 am after a very long day of hitch hiking. I had been away for about 2 weeks for our in service training, followed by a short vacation to Victoria Falls. It felt surprisingly home-y driving through the streets of Kasama, hopefully not only because it was the middle of the night and there was no traffic or people shouting at the muzungus. It is very good to be back though, although I still haven’t been to my site since August 7th.

After our PEPFAR training, the 6 of us in my intake headed down to Lusaka for our in service training. The Northern Province cruiser took us to Serenje, where there’s another PC house and we met up with all the volunteers from 3 different provinces (Northern, Central, Luapula). From there, the PC bus took us the rest of the way to Lusaka. This was very overwhelming after being in the village for 3 months, 20 loud Americans excited to see each other again, perhaps you can imagine. Our training was much like our pre-service training: long days stuffed with lots of information, and even longer nights socializing with my fellow volunteers. The last two days of IST were for the permagarden workshop. This is an extremely efficient type of garden that produces high yield in a small space year after year, and doesn’t require massive amounts of fertilizer, which Zambians typically rely on. I’m very excited to bring this idea to my village, as the hunger season is right around the corner.

As soon as IST was finished, 11 of us headed even further south, to Livingstone. We stayed at a great backpacker’s hostel called Jolly Boys, just in case you are interested in traveling to Zambia any time soon. Our first morning there we headed straight to the bridge that separates Zambia and Zimbabwe over the gorge below the falls, without even seeing the falls first. Then 5 of us proceeded to bungee jump off the bridge. After bungee jumping, I decided that wasn’t enough thrill for one day, and did it again on the “gorge swing,” which is just like bungee jumping, but you swing instead of bounce. It was awesome! We also got to see the falls and lots of baboons! The next night we went on a booze cruise on the Zambezi River just above the falls. This included dinner, snacks, and drinks, all while watching the sunset. We even saw some hippos in the water next to the boat!

Today I’m heading back to site, which I’m excited and a bit nervous about as well. I’ve been very disconnected from village life for almost a month now, so it might be a bit of a challenge to get back into the swing of things. I am excited to see my family and sleep in my own bed! Now that community entry is over, we’re supposed to get down to work. I can’t believe I’ve been in Zambia for over 6 months now!

My first Zambirthday!

I'm terribly sorry for waiting so long to write again! I'm still enjoying my time in Zambia very much, and this week I had a wonderful 24th Zambirthday! All of the volunteers in Northern Province have been in Kasama all week for our PEPFAR workshop on HIV/AIDS. For those of you who don't know what PEPFAR is, it's the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, and about 45 billion dollars given by the former president to countries all over the world. It was a week long training on HIV prevention and healthy positive living. We each brought a community partner from the village, and the workshop was in "Bemblish," a combination of Bemba and English. It was held at a very fancy guest house in Kasama, although the PCV's all stayed at the PC house. I found it to be very beneficial, especially for our counterparts, helping to clear up myths around HIV existing in the villages even today. Also, we learned many interactive games/lessons about HIV prevention that will be extremely useful in our communities. I'm certainly looking forward to bringing some of these tools to my community meetings when I get back to the village!

My first Zambirthday was fantastic! After the workshop on Wednesday, my fellow NorPro volunteers and I had Mexican food night, including margaritas, woohoo! My friend Ellyn even made some pancakes in the shape of the letters of my name in the morning. I'm very lucky to have such great friends up here in the Northern Province!

So I left my site a week ago now, and won't be making it home until the first week in September! Tomorrow morning I'll head down to Lusaka for our in service training, which comes 3 months after we were posted to our villages. Can you believe I've already been here for 6 months now? I can't!! The next two weeks will be spent in Lusaka with all the volunteers who arrived in February, working all over Zambia. It'll be the first time I've seen most of them since April. After our 3rd straight week of trainings... about 15 of us are going on vacation to Victoria Falls! I'll be sure to take lots of photos! Some of my friends are even talking about bungee jumping, which seems to be a huge tourist attraction down there...we'll see.

A woman on my compound (the daughter of the headwoman) just had a baby a couple of weeks ago! If you're on facebook, I've put a photo of him on there. They asked me to give him his English name, and I decided on Max. I thought it was an easy name to say, and nothing too crazy. I've heard some interesting names here, including Madinusa (Made in USA), Gift, Precious, Loveness, and Cupboard. Even though he may never know it, I was doing Max a favor with his name! His Bemba name is Kashinka, and his father gave him that one.

That's about all my big news for now, I've finally figured out how to get photos online with the slow internet in Kasama, so be expecting more soon (unfortunately, soon in Zamtime means a month or so). I hope this finds everyone at home well!

Amasnaps (photos)

Kanyanta! She lives next door.

Trusting! You can read about him in my previous post.

Ubulanda! You can also read about him in my last post.


My house!! To the left is my insaka (kitchen), right is my house, in the back is my cimbusu (pit latrine), and my clothes are hanging between my house and my bathing shelter, where I take my wonderful bucket baths! The small circular thing in the middle is my brazier, where I cook with charcoal. Kind of like a mini grill!

How are you? I'm fine.

Greetings from Zambia! It has been awhile since I've been to Kasama when the internet is working, but I'm here now, and perfectly happy after just having inhaled an ice cream cone. Life at site is great, I'm enjoying settling in to my new home in Mungwi. Tonight I'm staying at my friend Ellyn's house, where we'll be making spaghetti, salad, and garlic bread for dinner. Sometimes it's great to have American food and speak in English with my fellow PCV's. Thanks for the spaghetti sauce packet in my last package, Dad!

The teachers at my school were on strike for the last month, and just began teaching again on Monday after some threats from the government. I did my best to stay out of it, so I did a lot of work on my house! I finally got cement on my floors, and spent almost a week painting the inside walls to seal in the dust. Next up is making some shelves for my clothes and books, I'm ready to be finished living out of my suitcase.

I went to my first Zambian funeral this week, which was an interesting cultural experience. A woman in my village just a few compounds away passed away after being in the clinic for a week or so. After she passed away, everyone in the village visited the house to pay their respects. All of the women, including me, wore citenges (a piece of cloth in various colors and patterns worn like a beach towel around your waist). We entered the house where the body was, and sat with about 15-20 other women singing. Then, we went outside, and sat in silence outside the house for another 30 minutes. Many people remained at the house all day and night long, until burial the next morning. My Ba Mayo, who is the headwoman of the village, spent the entire day, night, and next day with the body and the family. It was an interesting experience, and I'm sure it will not be the last in my two years here!

I have two favorite children in my village. Their names are Ubulanda and Trusting. Ubulanda is actually not a child, he's a 22 year old with Down's syndrome. He's absolutely wonderful to hang out with, and I've been working on counting with him, so far he's only at 2. Unfortunately, he doesn't get to go to school, there is neither a teacher, nor the resources to get a teacher for him to learn. Lucky for me, he loves hanging out with me, so I get to see him on a daily basis. I've also taught him to high-five, which he, and the rest of the children love. Trusting is a two year old who lives one house over from mine. Every time he sees me, no matter how far away I am, he shouts "Ba Lola!" and usually comes running to me. Lately I've been giving the kids "sweeties" (the term used in Zambia for anything sweet), which is raisins. They come in my cereal and I don't like them, but the kids love 'em. It reminds me of Halloween in the states when the neighbors tried to be healthy and gave us raisins instead of candy. Luckily Zambian children will take anything I give them that's even remotely edible.

Work is the topic I'm procrastinating writing about. That's because there's not much of it, and it can be very frustrating. I won't complain about the difficulties, but instead, I'll tell you about the good parts! There's a school in Kasama that's I've been visiting every time I come to town, where my fellow PCV friend works, for kids with special needs. It's absolutely wonderful, and have gotten to know some of the students and really enjoy coming to town to visit. I've recently spoken to the head teacher about working with the physically disabled kids in their physiotherapy center. They have tons of equipment, and no one to work with the kids. There is a PT who comes about every 1 or 2 months, but they really want me to keep the program going, and even teach some of the teachers how to work with the kids as well. It will be great experience, especially since I've been contemplating going back to school for PT after the PC. First, I've got to figure out what I'm doing, but I'm very excited, even if it is a 30 km bike ride from my site!

Other work potential includes helping my school start a library, helping a community school (15 km deeper in the bush from me) finish their school building, and painting a giant mural of the world on the side of my school. Although work can be frustrating, I know things will come along, but everything just takes time here.

I'll be back in Kasama next week to celebrate America's independence with some other volunteers, so I'll try to get another post up with photos! Other than the rainy weather, I hope everyone is enjoying the summer!

ps. I LOVE getting snail mail here...hint hint!

One month down!

Hey everyone! I apologize for taking so long to get another post up! It's been a month now at my site! Adjusting to life at site has been pretty good, and work is coming along rather quickly, which I was definitely not expecting. My village is great, I've been making lots of friends, and my house is slowly coming together.

As far as work goes, I've been spending a lot of time at the school near my house, and traveling by bike to visit some of the other schools in my zone. One day a couple of weeks ago I biked over 100 km with my counterpart to visit 4 schools. I was extremely unprepared, and only brought one water bottle, and no food. It was pretty tough, especially on one part where we were carrying our bikes up a cliff! It was wonderful to arrive home to find my host family waiting with a hot bucket bath for me and some fresh nshima! Other work has involved teaching some of the teachers how to use the computer. My school has an old desktop computer with windows 98 on it, but at least it's something! I've also made a new friend at the school, she's an 8th grade student named Fridah. She has recently moved to Mungwi from Lusaka after her mother passed away. She speaks great English, and is the only student I can really communicate with, beyond small conversations about food, school, etc. She is very smart, and I'll probably be helping her with science, as she helps me with my laundry...and I definitely need it!

My village is fantastic! I live right on the compound with the headwoman and her family, so there's always something going on. They have a big insaka behind their house, which is used for meetings and other village gatherings. Recently, my village has started a dancing and cultural club, with drums and singing! I took some video footage, which I'll try to get posted up here if possible. They also had a blood donation drive, and some other workshops and meetings. I'm usually invited to most meetings, although I have a hard time following as they're mostly in Bemba. I've also made friends with tons of neighbors, and of course the kids. There are usually about 15 children hanging around my house, they love looking at my photos I brought (especially my calendar of the Boyd side of the family, thanks Mom!). They call them snaps, and have a lot of fun picking out Ba Laura in a sea of muzungus (white people).

So I'm in Kasama right now for our provincial meeting which happens every 6 months. When I left on Saturday, there were 5 people working to put cement on the floors of my house. I'm very excited to return to my new floors, I sure am sick of sweeping my mud floors multiple times per day. My time in Kasama has been great, tons of American food, and catching up with friends I haven't seen in a month. We had one meeting this morning, and another tomorrow. One of the PC staff from Lusaka is here to meet all the volunteers in Northern Province. Wednesday night we're heading out to camp at Chishimba Falls, some beautiful waterfalls about 45 km from Kasama.

There's a big football (soccer) match coming up on June 6th, Zambia's playing to qualify for the world cup...I expect you all to be watching. I will be, along with the rest of the country. I've been invited to one of my teacher's houses to watch the game, should be a ton of fun. Zambians love football!

I'm definitely getting used to life in Zambia, and enjoying every adventure! I hope summer is wonderful at home! I hear that camp started yesterday, it's strange not being there, I want to see tons of photos! Congratulations big bro for graduating from law school, Marigny from Vandy, and all the Trinity 09ers! I'm loving all the mail, please keep it coming, getting mail and emails is one of the my favorite things! I wish you all the best, happy June!

It's Official!

I'm officially a Peace Corps Volunteer! This past Friday we swore in as PCV's at the residence of the ambassador to Zambia. Before swearing in, we had a busy week full of our final language interview, cultural day preparing American food for our host families, and saying goodbye to our families.

The language interview is how they judge whether we're ready to venture out into Zambia on our own, and we have to receive a grade of "intermediate low" in order to move on. I passed just fine, with an intermediate medium. On Wednesday, we had cultural day, where we prepared delicious American food for our host families. I made about 20 pounds of mashed potatoes. Others made pizza, stir fry, cookies, cake, chicken, and hamburgers. It was a great success, and our families' bellies were full. Saying goodbye to my family was very difficult. They were so wonderful to me during my time in Kabeleka, and I'll miss them a lot. I know I'll make it there to visit them sometime in the next two years.

Our swearing in ceremony took place on Friday, and was wonderful. My Bemba speech went fantastically...I had all the Zambians laughing. The Ambassador's residence was beautiful, with a pool, basketball court, and tennis court, it really felt like being in America again. Saturday morning we started off on our 13 hour drive to Kasama, with the PC land cruiser stacked high on top with our belongings. We've been shopping and preparing in Kasama for the past few days, before heading out to our posts, today!!!

I'll be in the bush for one month straight, as it's my first part of community entry, and we're not supposed to leave our sites. At the beginning of June, I'll be back in Kasama for a meeting with everyone in the province.

I hope this finds everyone well at home! I hope to hear from you all soon!

Photos

Hello everyone (and anyone, hopefully someone's reading this):

We swear in in less than a week! On Friday, April 24th I'll officially be a Peace Corps Volunteer! The ceremony will be at the American Ambassador's residence in Lusaka, and I've been chosen to give a speech, in Bemba! This time I have it prepared though, so it should be a bit more smooth than last time... Here are some photos for the time being, I'll try to write again once I've made it to Kasama for good.

Happy easter!

Hello friends and family! I hope everyone is having a fantastic weekend! All is well here in Zambia, just enjoying some time off with my fellow volunteers. We have less than two weeks left in training! We swear in on the 24 of April, then head on out to our respective new homes.My site is in the northern province, in a town called Mungwi, about 30km east of the provincial capital, Kasama. Last week we spent the week at our new sites getting oriented to our new communities. I live on the compound of the head woman of the village, and i have my own two room hut, insaka for cooking, bathing shelter, and cimbusu (pit latrine).On the first day in my new village, my new community held a welcoming ceremony for me. There were 200 or more people attending, and dancing by the kids and elders. I was also presented with gifts of a live chicken, corn, beans, pumpkins, and caterpillars. I was asked to give a few words in Bemba... And the entire crowd laughed when i spoke. It was exciting and very welcoming, as well as a little scary. I'm very excited to get to my site and get started as an actual peace corps volunteer!On second site visit I was also able to meet with various other community members and visit some of the schools I'll be working with.There is a nice market in Mungwi, where i will be able to get most of the things I'll need. My closest peace corps neighbor is in Kasama, about 30 km away. I'm very excited about my new village!

We haven't had much time off from training lately, as the past two Sunday's were spent in the land cruisers traveling to and from the northern province, which is about 12 hours from Lusaka. Of our training group of 18 education volunteers, 5 are headed to northern.In addition, one of the agriculture volunteers will be joining us, as he's married to one of our 5. Today some other trainees and myself are getting together for an Easter/ American food party. American food can be a welcome break from nshima twice a day.

Yesterday was our language trainer's birthday, so we had a small celebration with a bit of cultural exchange involved. We bought a balloon that said 'happy birshday' on it, and filled it with some candy. We intended to hang it from a tree and blind fold him and have him hit it like a pinata. Unfortunately, the balloon popped before we got it there. Instead, we found a medical rubber glove, filled it with candy, and blew it up. After blindfolding Ba Leonard and spinning him around 3 times, he started trying to spear the balloon. Of course we can't just say, 'swing it like a baseball bat,' to the Zambian who only knows soccer. It may not have been the best pinata, but definitely worth the attempt.

Here's my new address! You can write me here from now on, I've even heard the mail gets to northern province faster than Lusaka!

Laura Martel/PCV
Peace Corps Zambia
P.O. Box 410374
Kasama, Zambia
Africa

Laura is a very difficult word for Zambians to say due to the 'l' and 'r' ... So I'm going to be 'Rolla' for the next 2 years. Sorry Mom and Dad!I hope everyone at home is doing well, and I hope to hear from you all soon! Take care, and tukamonana!

Upcoming Adress Change

Hello all!

Just wanted to write a quick note letting you all know that my shipping adress will be changing soon as I will be finding out where I will be working for the next two years!!! Please wait for this new address to send all those packages and letters, otherwise they will be sitting at the headquarters until I have a chance to come back to lusaka. I will update again as soon as I have my new address. Life is beautiful and I love and miss you all!!

Photos!!

This is my bamayo! And the dog is Problem, yep his name is Problem.

Baby Elisheba and Mulolo!

My four month old baby sister! She peed on my lap last night!

Mulolo, he's 5, and quite a ham.

This is my hut and my brand new trek mountain bike...pretty cool eh?

I hope I can post some more soon! I've tried to get some up on facebook but it's not working. I'll try again in a couple weeks when I'm Lusaka again! Life is still wonderful, and I hope you're all doing well and enjoying spring!

Muli shani!!!

Hello all!

I deeply apologize for taking so long to update! Today marks 2 weeks
in country...already! As you've probably guessed, the peace corps
keeps us very busy, leaving not a lot of time for the internet and
keeping in touch. I'm having a fabulous time, and just cannot get over
how beautiful it is here, especially the sunsets! I'll try to get a
photo posted soon!

Now that we're 2 weeks in, we're a bit more settled in and working on
a semi regular schedule. The language i'm learning is bemba, meaning
that i'll be serving in the central or northern provinces. There are 4
different languages that trainees are learning from my group. We've
been living with our host families for a week now, and my family is
wonderful! I have 2 little sisters (one is just 4 months old), and 2
brothers. We have 2 cows, 18 goats, 4 dogs, and countless chickens.
There are also various other family members always around, but i
haven't quite figured out who belongs to who.

My village, kabeleka, is about 6 km from the training center, where we
meet most days for technical training. The training center is in
chongwe, about 45 km east of lusaka. I have a brand new shiny mountain
bike, which has become my best friend, and will be for 2 years! The
trek to the training center can actually be pretty tough, as it's on
all bush paths which are usually muddy, and there are definitely no
street signs! Finding the way certainly is a challenge on the bush
paths, lucky for me zambians are the most friendly people on earth,
and will go out of their way to help us out.

Nshima! Or ubwali in bemba. The staple food here in zambia, and the
ONLY thing they eat! It looks like mashed potatoes, but is stickier,
and tastes like nothing, with a hint of corn meal. Ok that's a
terrible way of describing it, but it's what i eat at least twice a
day! There's no nutritional value, except possibly in the relish you
eat with it. The relish usually includes some vegetable cooked in
saladi (oil) and salt. Occasionally they'll kill a chicken to eat with
dinner.

On the first night with my family we had chicken, and they gave me the
gizzard, showing that i am the welcome guest and they're happy to have
me. The gizzard is a rubbery part from the neck of the chicken, i
believe. Every thursday we get to eat more american type foods at the
training center, which was happily welcomed by all this afternoon!

It has been a wonderful adventure so far, and i'm absolutely loving
this country and all of the amazing people! Thanks for tuning in, i
can't wait to hear from you all, and hope all is great at home! I miss
and love you all!

Welcome!

Hello! Welcome to my new blog! I'll hopefully be keeping up with this while I'm in Zambia, sharing some of my adventures with you. In case you didn't know, I'm heading to Zambia on Wednesday, February 18 with the Peace Corps. I'll be working on a project called Rural Education Development, or RED. Today marks just under a week before I leave for DC, wish me luck in packing! I'll write again from across the pond, I hope this message finds everyone well!