Tukopeniko, Ba Chrisi!

Jack fruit, or manna. A really tasty fruit that's the size of my torso.

Before a girl gets married, there's a ceremony in which her female relatives and the banacimbusa teach her some lessons. These were painted on the wall of the bride's house. Every picture represents a lesson. The two red lines on the bottom are a road, so a woman is instructed to look behind her and remember her family and where she came from. She needs to

respect her in-laws and husband. They need to submit to their husbands. Some of the pictures are sexual lessons. The lion represents a man (red, in the middle) and the hyena a woman. The women should let the man catch her when he needs "to feed" (read between the lines). Likewise, the fruit tree (not pictured) can drop its fruit whenever, just like a man's sex drive. On the top left, there is a pregnant prostitute. Women should not be like her.

The BanaBwinga about to get married. I wasn't there, but Chris describes the girl on the right as her "mini bride."

Willow (10 mos. old now) and Tiger. Tiger's adopted us and now wherever we go, we have two dogs following us.
Ba Allan and BanaChrisi, his wife, making nshima. She's a great cook.

Little Chrisi, Ba Allan's son. 5 mos. old.
Little Chrisi is also an aspiring acrobat.

It's a hassle to upload pictures on Blogger with a slow internet connection, so check Chris' facebook page for everything.

A Hot, Rainy Christmas

Catapillar season has come and gone. Women would go out into the bush for a morning and come back with baskets full of various kinds of ifishimu, or catapillars to fry. There was also an abundance of cishishi, giant furry catapillars. Those ones you can't eat, and you need to watch out for them, because their fur can give you a very bad, itchy rash. The children were terrified of them. Chris put one on a stick once and chased the children with it. They loved that game, and even pointed out more catapillars for him to chase after them with.

Mushroom season is now in full swing. There are many kinds of edible, wild mushrooms that people collect. There's one kind that's about 14 inches in width. Small, yellow eggplants are also being harvested from fields now. Surprisingly, I eat both foods now, but I still don't think this will translate to me actually eating mushrooms willingly in the U.S. Here, I can't be picky when we eat with Zambians, or I'll go hungry. We recently sampled some winged termites, and they are surprisingly very good. People go to a termite mound and just pick them as they come out, then rub the wings so they can't fly away. They cook them with some salt, and they almost taste fried, but I guess the oil comes from the termites bodies.

Chris has been teaching compost-making and permaculture gardening, so I have been teaching about nutrition in conjunction as they go well together. According to a 2007 survey, 50% of children in Northern Province are stunted in growth due to chronic malnutrition. 1 out of 9 children dies before the age of 5. Malnourished children are more likely to be sick and die from illnesses and diseases. Malnutrition would be preventable if people grew a greater variety of vegetables, rather than focusing on carbohydrates like corn, millet, and cassava. Chris and I have also been working together to introduce soya beans for human consumption (most people use them to feed their animals due to ignorance; they don't know how to prepare them). Soya
has more protein than beans and groundnuts, and can be cooked as a relish or ground into a flour to enrich foods. People have actually been very receptive to soya beans, so I have been promising people I will give cooking demonstrations and teach them how to cook them if they will grow them in their fields.

Family planning is also one of my ongoing projects that has intensified since World AIDS Day. Women in Northern Province have an average of eight children, according to the 2007 survey. Spacing births more than three years apart means both mother and baby are healthier, but 2 years is the norm. Shortly after they stop breastfeeding exclusively, they're pregnant again. Women are malnourished and weak during their pregnancy. I see all this everyday. Infant mortality is high, and increases as the duration between births decreases. Babies die often in our village, and no one but us realizes that it doesn't have to be this way. If I can convince people to actually listen, to grow more vegetables, to use contraceptives to plan births, less children will die. We can not only better lives, but save them through knowledge. I strongly believe we can have this impact, as Chris is teaching the techniques to grow food and giving seeds for multiplication; I am teaching what foods to grow; how to use family planning; and supplying family planning; people just need to apply the knowledge we give them from theory to practice.

Last post, I wrote about the stories the twin brothers in my English class wrote for their homework. I'd like to share them exactly as they were written.

picture: Me with my English class

Note: I have struggled with being treated differently not only because I am a white foreigner, but also a woman, since we've arrived. Men will often completely disregard me and direct their conversation at Chris. Men are regarded as smarter, more aggressive, and dominant over women. Education for girls is not as much of a priority for parents, so the cycle is repeated. There are many women in our village who can't even write their own names. Women are supposed to submit to their husbands, the head of the household, even though they do the majority of the work. Before a woman gets married, she is taught by her older female relatives, through song and dance, that she must be submissive to her husband. So it is not just men, but women that believe and are teaching the next generation that they don't have as much worth as a male. There is a clear division of labor, with women cooking, drawing water, collecting firewood, watching the children, sweeping, washing, and cleaning. Both men and women work in their farms. We have been trying to actively challenge these beliefs since we've arrived. Most people blame gender inequality on Bemba culture. I have been trying to get people to understand that culture is always changing. Christianity has become a huge part of the culture, even bumping out most traditional beliefs, since colonization, so why couldn't gender equality do the same thing? Apparently, people are listening:

By Godwin
When I was at home I did the cooking. My Grand Father found me. "Why did you do a cook while your wife is needleing?" said the Grand Father. "It's genda [gender]," I asked. My Grand Father replied, "In our traditional we did not allow men to do a cook, is not for men it's for women." I asked, "I told you that it is a genda issue." "Genda...!" He shouted in a loud voice. "Is it a dog [not quite sure what he meant by this] or a joke?" He threw down the stool and waving his hands around his face like a hundred buffalo. I said in a humble voice, "sorry. Sat down, my dear Grand Father, it is not a dog or a joke, it is a way of living that we have learned from American people Chris and his wife Nicole, the Peace Corps trainers, that husband and wife shall work together without separation. "Can you expect that white men can live in huts?" "No, I can't expect," said my Grand Father. I replied, "It is modern Zambia."

By Edwin
...Rinee said, "At 1500 hours I will start English lessons, so that I must go before the hour 15. I have my English teacher the peace corps from America, her name is Mrs. Nic she is very kind and friendly and I and my classmates we loves her so much." Then Wayne said, "I am also go to learn a permaculture garden and compost manure in order to make soil fertile. Our teacher is Mr. Chris the husband of your class teacher, He is also kind and active in the activities and also friendly as his wife." The two friends went and Wayne said to his friend, "Let us go..." Rinee said "Yes, let's go, after 2 years before they depart we will learn more, let's go."...

Up in the mango tree and down in the hot sand

The day after we returned from Kasama after dealing with the police regarding the robbery, a large boomslang slithered into our yard. The toddler and the five-year old girl from our host family were on the porch, along with our puppy and the dog that has adopted us, Tiger. Abandoning American sensibilities (we've been in Zambia too long), Chris grabbed a large stick and proceeded to have an epic showdown with the venomous snake, finally killing it. Tiger, being a Zambian dog, has some emotional baggage, and when Chris began to swing the stick, he thought he would be beat, and bit Chris hard on the leg. According to Peace Corps standards, Chris had to travel to Lusaka for a week to receive two rabies shots. Both dog and guy are still alive and free of rabies, although the snake did not fare as well.

Our next encounter with a venomous snake happened a few days ago. We were bicycling to a nearby village, an hour away, for umunada on a narrow bush path. I was in front and didn't see the large cobra just to the side of the path until I was almost next to it. Adrenaline pumping, I screamed, and pedaled faster, and Chris lifted his legs up so that if the snake struck, it would only hit his bike. We both were unscathed, although I was shaking for a good fifteen minutes afterwards and refused to stop bicycling until we were a kilometer past the snake. On the ride back, we got caught in a downpour, and I lost my glasses on the road, which had turned into an actual stream. Chris eventually found them intact, but it was a very eventful bicycle trip.

While Chris was still in Lusaka, our puppy went mad. Suddenly one morning she began to yelp and run around crazily. Her eyes were almost glassy, and her tail was between her legs, and she lost bowel and bladder control. It wasn't pretty and was very frightening. I had to tie her up for four days because I was afraid she would hurt herself or others because she wasn't in a normal state of mind. By the second day, she had attacks of madness about once every half an hour, but was completely normal in between. By the fifth day, she was back to her old self. People told me that she had eaten a poisonous grasshopper, and it's a common enough occurence in playful young dogs. They gave her local medicine; sweet potato leaves and a lizard. I've since heard that it can even kill if the puppy is too small. People also said she would learn and wouldn't eat a grasshopper again, although she continues to chase everything that moves.

I have been doing a lot of HIV/AIDS work since 1 December was World AIDS Day. As I have some experience doing HIV voluntary counseling and testing in West Africa, I went around with Ba Allan as he conducted his once monthly home counseling visits of people living with HIV in the village. The prevelance of HIV infection in the Northern Province is 7% of the population. If you applied that to our village, that would mean there are actually around 140 people that are HIV-positive, although there are only about 20 people that know they are HIV-positive. I've recently learned that two people who are my good friends in the village have been living with HIV for several years, which upsets me because they are both wonderful, friendly people. There are also several HIV+ children, many of whom are orphaned and attend Ba Allan's pre-school.

An NGO in Kasama donated 50 HIV tests (Ba Allan is trained to do VCT) and 700 condoms for our World AIDS Day activities. I wrote a report on the two days that I thought I'd post.

Report of World AIDS Day Activities in [name of village]
Nicole Barren, U.S. Peace Corps Volunteer

On the first day of programmed activities, 30 November 2009, PCV Nicole Barren and community member Allan Mwango spoke to 105 schoolchildren in grades 1-9 about HIV/AIDS, modes of transmission, and prevention. Pupils in grades 7-9 were instructed on the correct usage of both male and female condoms. Pupils asked good questions, and afterwards, sixteen boys and girls under the age of twenty went to VCT, and many teenage boys requested condoms.
On the first day of VCT, 17 people were tested, and the demand was so great that we decided to also hold VCT the following day.
The candlelight vigil in the evening was attended by 92 people, mostly children. There were prayers and drumming and dancing, and it was a fun, heartfelt ceremony.

On 1 December, an additional 13 people were tested for HIV, bringing the total number tested to 31 people. In the under 16 age group, three males and one female were tested. Seventeen males and one female aged 16-25 were tested. In the 26-35 age bracket, two males and one female were tested. Four males and two females over the age of 36 were tested. Of the 31 tests administered, 9 were non-reactive or negative, and 22 were inconclusive. There is obvious need for further testing to confirm the statuses of the remaining 22 people after the three-month window period.
For this day many activities were planned; a drama, games, an educational speech on HIV/AIDS, and a speech by an HIV-positive woman in the village. However, the Kasama General Constituency had also chosen this day to come and generate National Registration Cards for voters, drawing away many people from the planned activities. Due to poor attendance, the program was canceled, but will be rescheduled later this month, at a more convenient time.
Despite the failed educational programming, the condom distribution was successful. We received 200 female condoms and 600 male condoms from Northern Health Education Programme, and we distributed 735 condoms to 173 people over a span of six days. 52 male youths, 1 female youth, 88 male adults, and 32 female adults received condoms. All had instruction on how to use them. To avoid misuse of the condoms (using them for bangles, balloons, etc.), we didn’t freely hand them out- people had to come to where we were sitting or to our house and request them. We also refused to give them to young girls that we personally knew would not use them for the purpose of HIV prevention. Until five months ago, condoms were not accessible in [village name], so the free distribution was a great method of sensitization on the importance of their use. It is our hope that once people become comfortable using them and their supply diminishes, they will buy them from us (K 200 for a pack of three).

Despite scheduling conflicts, we felt that overall the programme was successful. We were able to reach many villagers with the importance of knowing their status and practicing safe sex. We will continue sensitizing the community on HIV/AIDS and contraceptives, and look forward to working with NOHEP again for VCT Day and World AIDS Day next year.

Among my favorite people in the village are two twin brothers who are in their early thirties. They are part of my devoted weekly English class of four men. They're really funny and always reliable. The previous class, I had given a homework assignment to write a one-page story in which there is dialogue, because they needed practice on punctuation and where to place quotation marks. One of the brothers had written a story in which he is talking to a friend about the Peace Corps volunteers in their village. He wrote how much he enjoys my English class and that I am very friendly and nice. Then he spoke about his guitar lessons with Chris and how much he enjoys their friendship. It was so candid and sweet, and was one of the few moments where I realized what impact my working and living here is having on people. We often worry that we aren't really accomplishing development because we have no means other than to impart knowledge, which is less regarded in Zambia then big, material projects. But large-scale, funded projects don't have the same emotional effect as our work does. Another moment like this happened just a few days ago, when my counterpart returned to the village after a month of visiting her brother. She had left because of problems with her husband, because he's often drunk, but ultimately returned rather than leave the village for good because of me.

There's ups and downs, emotional highs and depressing moments or events when I just want to go back to America where everything is safe and predictable. The newest drama is jealousy on the part of our host mother. She prefers to think that we are just there for her and her family, to give them things. She has been mean on some occasions to people that come to visit us, so that they no longer feel comfortable coming to our house. Apparently when the volunteer before us left, he gave many of his belongings to one of his good friends, and that friend is not allowed to come to our house in that chance that will happen with us. When I last met with my women's group at my house, she caused a scene, so we can no longer convene there. All in all, it's jealousy, controlling behavior, and an incorrect picture of what Peace Corps is. It isn't directed at us, but it's very important for us and for our job that people feel comfortable coming to talk to us.

Village Justice

When we first arrived at our village, and asked the Peace Corps volunteer there from 2007-2009 if he had ever had any problems with theft, he said no. Then he laughed a little, and said, "O.K., this one time I left the window open when I went away, and a candy bar was stolen." People kept telling us how safe it was here. Our headman had some goats stolen once, but the thief, who lived in Kasama, was found and arrested. The school had some solar panels stolen. But other than some firewood and indigenous fruits we left outside, we have never had anything of any monetary value taken.

So we were shocked when we returned home at around four in the afternoon on Halloween and found someone had tampered with our lock with a flat object, possibly a screwdriver. The lock was closed, so at first we thought the break-in attempt had failed. Then we looked inside. Things were just as messy as we had left them, but things were missing from the shelves in our bedroom, the mosquito net was untucked from the bed, and cartons of my thyroid medicine had been removed from a bag under the bed and tossed beside a pile of dirty clothes. Our solar charger, several packages of batteries, and a flashlight were missing. The bag containing our MP3 player was disturbed, but the MP3 player was untouched. We had money hidden, but the thief didn't find it. He had taken some batteries, but left a package of identical batteries untouched on my shelf.

I felt like I had swallowed a mango pit that was pressing painfully against my stomach. My heart was running the Boston Marathon. Worst of all, at that moment, what I wanted most was to go home to America. The repeated infections, bad sunburn I'd got on a boat at Lake Tang, diarrhea that came and went, the homesickness, alone was bearable. But now theft, invasion of the one place in our village in which we had real privacy... why try to help people that stole from you?

Since the lock was broken, Chris stayed at our house and talked with our host father, who summoned the Community Crime Prevention Unit (CCPU). I went to the road with my cell phone to call the Peace Corps Safety and Security Officer in Lusaka, who helped immensely and called Peace Corps staff in Kasama, then spoke with my and Chris' Associate Peace Corp directors. Then I went to inform the school headmaster and a senior teacher, who went with me to the village headman to help translate.

By the time I returned, night had fallen, and Chris and I sat pathetically on our porch beside a candle, knawing on half a loaf of banana bread, the only food we'd had since breakfast. Our host father came to invite us to eat nshima. He told us people were saying it was an "inside job" because only a few items had been stolen; most likely the thief was from our village and broke into our house to steal specific items, not clear us out completely. Some people were even blaming the family that lived around us for not preventing the theft, or worse, saying they stole from us. This, we didn't believe, but our host father was very distressed and later told us he'd questioned his three teenaged children.


Before going to bed, I set an axe between the headboard of the bed and the wall. Then I fell into a restless sleep, punctuated by moments I'd awake suddenly after hearing noises outside, and listen intently, my heart beating with Lariam-fueled paranoia. Chris, on the other hand, slept fine.


The following morning, at around 9 am, the CCPU came marching into our yard bearing some of our batteries that had been stolen. Our neighbor, a man that takes guitar lessons from Chris and English lessons from me, said he had become suspicious of his nephew, and upon entering his house, found the batteries. The twenty-year old boy confessed and the CCPU found the rest of our belongings, hidden in a hole under a rock which had been urinated on. Our flashlight, which doesn't take batteries, and you shake to charge it, had been smashed. Apparently the guy couldn't figure out how to use it. Our solar charger had been damaged and knocked around a bit, and the connecting cable was cut. About half of our batteries had been recovered. We also got back a bottle of shampoo, an inhaler, and my old cell phone from the states, which he didn't realize had been stolen. We've speculated quite a bit on why he took the inhaler. Chris' guess is that the package resembles a pack of cigarettes.


An impromptu community trial was arranged at the school to determine punishment. The robber sat under a tree, his head bowed, skinny legs poking out from baggy faded brown shorts, and one wrist shackled in a pair of ancient handcuffs. The headman, CCPU, and Chris and I stood around him, surrounded by a gaggle of children pushing frantically to get a view, and somber adults. The boy (he was so thin, helpless, and baby-faced that calling him a man or guy doesn't seem right) was mentally ill, we were told. He'd stolen before. A couple of days before breaking into our house, he'd stolen a mattress from a teacher's house. The headman, the boy's grandmother, and another older man scolded him in rapid-fire icibemba. Chris bent down, and in Bemba, said "We are here to help the village. Why did you steal from us?" The boy just mumbled that he didn't know. The community decided that he should go to jail. Jails in Zambia are horrible pits of dispair, where they don't think twice about beating prisoners. Our friend's host father had spent two nights there, and had to pay the biggest prisoner there ZMK 5,000 a day or the man would kick his butt. But there are no real facilities for the mentally ill, and the consensus was that if he remained in the village, he'd continue to steal.


The Peace Corps staff in Kasama had heard about our ordeal, and Ted and Scorpion came to the rescue, bringing us a new lock and a flashlight. The police in Kasama have limited funds and there is a fuel shortage, so you can only buy 5g of black market gas for over $10, so we would have to bring the thief to them. At that time, he was being held by the CCPU near his uncle's house. With nothing else to do on a Sunday morning after church let out, a large crowd of children sneered at him. Chris and I got into the land cruiser, then three men escorted the placid boy in behind us, and BashiKatongo, a senior member of the CCPU, came along to hold the boy and present the story of his capture to the police. As we rolled away from the village, the children stood on the red sand, waving enthusiastically. BashiKatongo grabbed the boy's hand and made him wave back. After a sleepless night and the comforting bounce of the cruiser speeding over the mud, I dozed. Chris awkwardly held the boy's handcuffs when BashiKatongo had to pee. And the boy looked in wonder at the bush speeding by out the window. This was his first time ever traveling to Kasama.

At the police station, we handed over the "evidence," a plastic Shoprite bag full of the recovered objects that had been stolen. We made a statement and the police locked the boy in a cell, a large concrete room with one side that was an open window with bars that faced the courtyard. The trial was supposed to be yesterday, and then today, now it's tommorrow. He's expected to plead guilty, so we won't have to testify.

October has been a busy month for us. Since I've last wrote, we attended a Permaculture/Bio-intensive home garden workshop in Kasama, were confined to the Peace Corps provincial house after one person died and one was injured at a political rally in a busy market in Kasama the day before elections, camped out in the village 8km from our home for two nights for meetings, returned to Kasama because I had an infected cut on the edge of my toe that made it painful to walk and kept spreading further down my foot, then took a day trip to Chishimba Waterfalls and a three-day trip to Lake Tanganyika with other volunteers.

Our own village can be a bit apathetic to our projects, so we really enjoy working with the small village 8km south, because the people are very excited to work with us and make sure we are well-fed. We decided to camp out so we could conduct two and a half days of meetings, without biking there and back every day. The first day, Chris taught making and using compost, followed by a meeting on HIV/AIDS that I facilitated. The second day, Chris met with the PTA community school garden committee, I met with the two teachers, and I taught a nutrition class that didn't go so well, then helped a newly-formed women's group to realize their purpose and make plans. The last day we had a question and answer session about farming that turned into questions about family planning.

Bamaayos (Zambian women) adore Chris. They smile warmly at him when he goes to the well to draw water or wash dishes. This is considered "women's work." I always ask people why it is women's work, and they answer intambi, or culture. We've both tried convincing people that culture is not static and men can do women's jobs and vice versa (which I proved to our host father by helping him move 200 kg bags of maize, which greatly impressed him, as he was convinced women couldn't lift heavy things). I don't think we've made too much headway, as I raised the point that men too can help draw water at the well meeting, and all the men in attendance began smirking. Because Chris does women's work and treats the women just the same as the men, the bamaayos bat their eyelashes at him and greet him enthusiastically. Left in single gender groups, women are boisterous, talk very fast, and laugh hard, but in the presence of men they immediately clam up. This is not the case when with Chris; they're very comfortable with him.

Chishimba Waterfalls is 60 km from our village, in the direction of Kasama. It's actually a series of three waterfalls, the tallest and most impressive one plunging deep into a green valley. To the side of where this waterfall drops off, there is a pool where the current is not very strong, where you can swim. Usually the park is empty, but we went the day after the Zambian Independence Day, so there was a group of Zambians dressed in their nicest clothes stripping down to swim.

From Kasama, Mpulungu is a four-hour bus ride north. Only a small portion of Lake Tanganyika is inside Zambia's borders, the majority is in Tanzania. Lake Tanganyika is the largest lake in Africa, the second deepest in the world, and one of a series of geologically old lakes in the Rift Valley. From Mpulungu, the port town, it was a hour by boat to Isanga Bay Lodge, where we camped. It was a private white sand beach with palm trees, next to a quiet village with fisherman and children playing in the water. It has an entirely different feel than the rest of land-locked Zambia. The lodge owner was an older, spunky British lady that cooked us amazing food. The first night it was rich beef stew, creamy potatoes, and moist chocolate cake. The second night we had rice and beef and chicken curry, with mango chutney, spiced mango pieces, coconut, and tomatoes, with apple cake for dessert. For 12 Peace Corps volunteers that survive primarily on nshima and other bland staples, it was heaven.

In addition to swimming, we snorkeled along the jetty. Bright blue fish, schools of tiny black ones, striped ones, and fat ones darted among the dark rocks. Chris went on a four-hour hike to Kalambo Falls, which is the second highest waterfall in Africa, taller than Victoria Falls. I wasn't able to go as I was still limping from my runaway toe infection. Right above Kalambo Falls, I read afterwards in a guide book, is an important archaeological site with the earliest evidence of humans using fire. The Rift Valley has yielded many monumental archaeological finds that have revealed the history of humans.

We really enjoyed Lake Tanganyika and decided it's time for our first proper vacation, so over Christmas we are planning to go to Tanzania and possibly Zanzibar. On the Tanzanian side of Lake Tanganyika is Gombe Stream National Park, the site of Jane Goodall's chimpanzee research. You can take walking safaris to see the chimps, who are pretty acclimated to humans after decades of research there. As an anthropology major in college, I took a number of classes on primates and greatly admire Jane Goodall and her colleagues and their contributions to the field, so going to Gombe will be an amazing experience.

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New Pictures of Chishimba Falls and Lake Tanganyika:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=131178&id=713467480&l=49132a13c2

We Met the President of Zambia!!

This month in constituencies all over Zambia, people are electing new members of Parliament. The two main competing parties in our area are the Patriotic Front and the Movement for Multi-Party Democracy (MMD), which holds the majority of seats in the country, including the Presidency. Both parties have been actively campaigning in our village, and every household has a flyer or textile feauturing their candidate of choice plastered on their hut. The campaigners have been driving through in big trucks with PA systems blasting, holding rallies and recruiting voters. About four days ago, a helicopter circled around the village and headed back in the direction of Kasama. We never see aircraft overhead, so the village was in an uproar with everyone exclaiming about the chidayo and pointing into the sky.  There was word that the president of Zambia would be visiting the village the afternoon of October 12. We didn't believe it because we live in a remote village of no real political importance. The day came, and to our surprise, a plethora of cars and a battalion of soldiers arrived at the schoolyard and began setting up a tent, a covered podium, and a temporary flagpole for the Zambian flag and coat of arms. Opportunistic sellers arrived with vegetables, beans, and scones to sell, and urban-dwellers from Kasama and bigger cities eagerly snatched up the "village food." Women began beating drums, wagging their citenge-clad hips to the beat, and singing about the MMD. Radio Mano arrived from Kasama with their "velvet-voiced" DJ to broadcast the event and blast Zam pop. Then, the helicopters arrived, stirring up thick red dust and landing on the football pitch. Everyone ran to wave at their arrival, choking on the dust while throwing their thumb and forefinger in the air, the sign for the MMD. We were shepherded back by stern soldiers with AK-47s, then his excellency President Rupiah Banda greeted the people, lingering long enough to shake our hands and mention he had just been to New York, and all his children attend university in America. Some of his officers spoke before him, urging support for the MMD's candidate, Burton Mgala. Then Banda (an iciNyanja speaker reared in Eastern Province) took the microphone, speaking eloquently in English, as his words were translated into icibemba. He spoke against the PF's candidate, Mr. Sata (nicknamed "King Cobra") and urged support for the MMD. He spoke against tribalism influencing politics, chanting "One Zambia, One Nation," the mantra to avoid the tribal fighting that has consumed many of Zambia's neighbors. Glancing at us, he said Zambia should follow America's example, and look beyond tribal similarity to elect the best candidate, much as Americans, a white majority, elected Obama. After concluding his speech and introducing his officers, President Banda gamely took a picture with us, then was shuffled off by his security. Everyone circled the helicopter to watch it take off, and President Banda waved to his supporters, then spotting us waving back, waved both arms over his head in an enthusiastic goodbye.




****Disclaimer: As Peace Corps volunteers, we are politically neutral. These are primarily observations of events, and do not indicate a support for the MMD. ****


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I don't think many people can say that their oven is made out of scrap metal from an old car and clay bricks dug from the dambo and fired in a homemade kiln. We didn't make the bricks ourselves, although that may be Chris' next hobby after he gets bored of making charcoal, but we laid the bricks with a mortar of clay, sand and water.

There are men in Kasama who work just outside the entrance to the Roundabout Market, surrounded by scraps of old metal, which they pound into braziers and pots with hammers under the merciless hot season sun. If you need anything made, say a large cooking pot called a shomeka, they can form it in a day and sell it to you for the cost of a magazine in America. We sat and watched an old man as he filled our order, screaming in icibemba over the clanking of metal about how a shomeka can be transformed into an oven. Give a shomeka to a bamaayo in Zambia and she'll cook nshima in it over a wood fire, but give it to us and we'll encase it sideways in bricks and use it to cook pizza.

The chimney is made of powdered milk containers wired together and covered with clay. Unfortunately, we don't drink enough Cowbell, because the chimney is only about three feet long, and doesn't clear the grass roof of our insaka. The first time we used our oven, we marveled on how well the chimney drew smoke out, that it insulated heat well, and that you didn't need to build an actual fire, just throw some kindling in and light it. Ten minutes later, a rapidly growing patch of our roof was in flames. We spent some frantic moments dumping any water we could find on it. Our roof now has a bald spot, but we like to pretend it's a skylight.



On the second day of every month, a traveling market comes to the next village over. It's called umunada, a Swahili word. There's merchants crowded on both sides of the road for a kilometer selling citenge, clothes, gum boots, meter-long bars of soap, 50 kg bags of flour labeled "for human consumption," vegetables, piles of dried fish swarming with flies, and colorful cardboard-backed signs depicting Jesus dying gruesomely on the cross. Congesting the road further are slow-moving flatbed trucks carrying a cargo of people, bamaayos in colorful citenge with babies slung over their backs haggling deafeningly over said wares, and intoxicated men stumbling from the beer huts. I was peeling carrots by candlelight when Patricia, a nine-year old neighbor, came over carrying a brown rooster with its legs bound with a strip of citenge. The chicken protested, Willow bounded at her, and she threw the chicken at me as if it was a detonated bomb. Her uncle was selling the chicken to get money for the market, and a chicken that cost the price of two shriveled chicken nuggets in the U.S. flying into my lap amidst carrot peelings was an "only in Zambia" moment.

On the 9th of October, a 65-year old woman in our village passed away. She had been suffering for quite some time from a malignant tumor on the inside of her cheek, without the benefit of chemotherapy or painkillers. Like all the elderly in the village, she had only snuff to ease the pain.

On the day I attended her funeral, we were also frantically called to the house of a teenage girl
who had swallowed battery acid in a suicide attempt, so needless to say it was an emotional day.

On the day of a person's death, their body is wrapped in a blanket and put inside their family's hut. Mourners quietly sit inside the dark house with the deceased's closest family members upon arrival, then go outside to sit segregated by sex. People arrive throughout the day, and as a sign of respect for the deceased, sleep outside the house at night. All the while, some men work on piecing together a coffin out of roughly hewn timber.

When the coffin is finished the next day, there's a processional to the cemetery. The graveyard is deep in the bush, far from the village, so that the spirits can't bother the living. Children are buried in one graveyard, adults in another, with mounds of dirt marked with rough wooden crosses.

As the gravediggers were working, the old woman's daughters and granddaughters leaned on the coffin and wailed. A choir sitting in the leaves sang. The coffin was lowered, a prayer was said by a Catholic shimapepo, and the family members threw clods of dirt on the coffin.


It's the hungry season now, so relish is becoming scarce. Everything has been harvested and is diminishing quickly, so we've seen more kids than usual out hunting small birds, bush rats, and catapillars. We saw two boys around six-years-old holding pieces of strings, the ends attached to the tails of bush rats that greatly resemble gerbils. Evidently, playing with food is popular. Patricia came by with some friends one morning to offer some catapillars to Chris.

Shortly after we arrived back from Lusaka, we found there was yet another new communal well to draw water from. This one was a very shallow hole in the ground, only about a foot and a half deep, and perpetually murky. Since this is also the water we drink from, all the sediment was a bit disconcerting. For a week, we drew from this well and tried to ignore all the pieces of root and clods of dirt floating in it, while we continued to wash dishes in the spring nearby, which had become a breeding ground for frogs, with little tadpoles flitting around our dishes as we scrubbed them with sand and soap. A week ago, some boys bearing hoes and shovels came to our house to collect Chris to clean the old old well (which had become the place to wash dishes). It was dug out deeper, the sand littered with nshima scraps was tossed aside, and a wall of river stones was built as a bridge. Best of all, it's refreshingly clear.

I dove right into work when we returned to the village, but unfortunately the teachers with whom I had projects planned failed to return from Kasama. They were supposed to be gone for two days, but they've been away for over two weeks, while their students have not been attending school during this time. I had planned to teach English to interested kids twice a week, help implement the new School Health and Nutrition Programme, and begin adult literacy classes. Only the adult literacy has panned out, and poorly at that. My counterpart was to teach literacy in the local language to a large group of enthusiastic women, but he's proved to be unreliable, despite repeated warnings. I have only held one class so far in upper-level English, but my section seems to be going well. The first class I had two men, whose end goal is to achieve their grade 9 certificates, which could offer them more career-wise than just being subsistence farmers. I've since had another four people sign up. One of the men in my class is also taking guitar lessons from Chris. I've usually stayed out of these lessons, so I didn't know him well, but he's very nice. He stayed an hour after to tell me his life story, which I always take as a sign that someone likes and trusts you.

One of the things I need to work on with my students is the distinction between he versus she. I am often called Mr. Nikki. In icibemba, there's no such distinction between male and female, only between ages. If, for example, you say baleisa, it can mean either he is coming, she is coming, or they are coming. Ba is the person, le is present tense, and isa is from the verb ukwisa. If you wish to talk about a younger person, whom you don't have to show extra respect to, you say aleisa.

In Lusaka, I purchased a bag of tennis balls and a soccer ball to bring back to the village. Often, when the blistering hot day is melting into night, we've been playing catch with the children. It started out as monkey in the middle but morphed into two teams, each keeping the ball away from the other team. One game turned into boys against girls as more children joined, with about two dozen laughing, barefoot children running in the sand in front of our house. When the oldest children, in their early teens began to play, the youngest ones were a little left behind. Muso and Beauty are only about five-years old, so they'd hang onto my arms and make me promise to pass them the ball. I did, and they'd take it and run determinedly and hand it to another older girl.

Our puppy continues to grow, but after meeting other dogs in the village, we've found something interesting; she is the only dog in our village that isn't named Tiger or Danger. When I mentioned to my counterpart, Ba Catherine, that all the dogs seem to share one of these names, she laughed and said, "Yes, 75% of the dogs here are named Tiger and 25% are Danger."

Another interesting fact about the Bemba people and their naming habits: Twins are called mpundu. I think due to the higher birth rate, there are a lot more twins around here. The children usually aren't referred to by their given names, they're just called mpundu. The child born after twins is usually named Icoola, meaning bag. This is because the younger child always must follow his twin siblings to carry their baggage.

And a special birth announcement: Chris' namesake, Christopher Mutale Mwango, was born 14 July, 2009.

And for my dad, our house in it's entirety:

We are Bwana

We've just completed In-Service Training, and have been enjoying Lusaka for a week and a half now. It's really nice to be able to go to one of the big supermarkets and buy anything you want, even "American" brands like Oreos and Lays potato chips. Unfortunately, fruits and vegetables are outlandishly expensive because they're imported from South Africa- a very small package of grapes for the equivalent of $7, etc. We spend more money in a day in Lusaka than we do in several weeks in our village. Most goods are comparable in price to things in America, so it's a bit of a culture shock in itself to come from life in the village, where we pay the equivalent of $1 to have our laundry washed and 20 cents for a head of cabbage, to the hustle and steady flow of cash in Lusaka. We have managed to watch three movies since we've arrived; The Hangover, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, and Knowing. It was very funny to watch all of those movies with a Zambian audience. To express disapproval, Zambians click their tongue against the roof of their mouths and shake their heads. This clicking sound accentuated every crude part in The Hangover, which just made Chris and I laugh harder.

Earlier today, Chris and I returned to Chongwe to visit our host family during training, Bamaayo and Batata. It was really wonderful to see them again, and our brother and sisters. Bamaayo kept trying to feed us and invited us to spend the night. I think we all felt that our visit was too short. They are the closest we have to family here in Zambia, and we really do love them. We also got to meet the newest group of Peace Corps trainees, who will swear in as volunteers in a few weeks.

Tommorrow, we're off to Kabwata market to get my hair done, then to Cairo Road to buy Indian spices. That's another thing that I've begun to love about Lusaka, the Indian food. Especially naan and samosas. There's a decent population of Indians in Zambia, who I've just learned where brought by the British during colonialism to be the merchant class. There's also a lot of other white people; ex-patriates, British, Afrikaaners, and the occasional tourist. It's nice not to be the only white people around for once, especially when your mere presence evokes so much curiosity in the village. Even in Lusaka, though, there are places where white people aren't very prevalent, which are always the places we seem to find ourselves in, conversing in icibemba. These include mini-buses, cramped and cheap public transportation, which is always an adventure.

We will return to Kasama in four days, amid mixed emotions. It'll be nice to be back home after a three-week long absence, but we're sure going to miss hot showers, easy transportation, cheese, electricity, Indian restaraunts and pizza, and movies.

Our Life in Pictures

African Animals!

Our host family's dog, Tiger, and our puppy, Willow. It seems to be an unwritten rule in Zambia that animals get English names.

Tiger, we think, has got to be mostly Rhodesian Ridgeback, a dog breed that was developed here to hunt lions.

Our hen, Kalipa, and her week-old chicks. She's down to seven now, as one was killed by either a dog or a hawk.

Water

Our well, one of only two in the whole village. We usually draw water once a day.

The washing hole. We wash our dishes here, and our feet and dog downstream. The people think it's hilarious that we wash our dog, and we've gotten demands that we do it so people can watch.

BashiMutale's (our neighbor's) fishpond, just behind the well. He drained it to harvest fish and everyone came to watch, because there's not much happening in the village. In the foreground, in the red shirt, is his second oldest son, Everisto. Everisto washes our clothes for us, and I give him and his older brother Mutale English lessons. On the far left is another brother, Nicholas. The second youngest boy, Lazaro, is on the far right in the blue shirt. They're one of my favorite families.


Our House

Our sitting room and bedroom.

Fun with Iwes

The girls like playing with their Ba Chrisi's hair. Odder still, he allows them to. Celia is on the left, and her cousin and our host sister Maureeni is on the right.

Chris always comes home with a lot of sugar cane after he visits farmers. We don't eat it often, so we give it as rewards to the kids.

They like using our guava tree as a seesaw.

Urban Bushrats

My first official workshop as a Peace Corps volunteer was held 5th August and attended by around 120 men and women. It was on the topic of family planning, as so many women expressed interest in being able to attain it in the village. I bought a huge box of male condoms and Safeplan, the contraceptive pill, to sell after I explained about the pros and cons and how to use both. Unfortunately, I was not able to get as many women on Safeplan as I had hoped, because most of those in attendance were nursing babies, and Safeplan decreases the quality and quantity of breast milk.
I spoke to the women, through Ba Catherine, who translated, while Chris and Ba Allan spoke to the men. Men, quite unfairly, hold most of the power when it comes to making decisions regarding sex, so it was very important to convince them that contraceptives are beneficial to their family's health. Women in the village have an average of around eight children, usually starting when they are in their late teens, and give birth in their homes. There aren't even any traditional birth attendants, let alone trained midwives. So introducing contraceptives not only saves lives but also empowers families to be able to have the number of children they want, when they want them.

The next day, I held an end of the term academic awards ceremony at the school. My mom had sent me a box filled with all sorts of wonderful toys, so I decided to use them to promote education in the village, something that is seriously undervalued here. The two children who received the best overall grades on their exams in each grade level, were recognized and given a toy. It was the first time in the teachers' memories that such a ceremony had been held. Usually, academic accomplishment is not acknowledged; exams only serve to admit the student to the next grade. Needless to say, the children seemed very excited to get toys and puzzles and balls. I wrapped each prize in plain paper, so there were delighted rushes of children who mobbed the students unwrapping their prizes.

This week, we are in Kasama for a PEPFAR (President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) workshop. Each volunteer was allowed to bring one village counterpart to learn and help implement HIV/AIDS prevention, education, and support for the individuals that are HIV-positive in our village. Chris and I brought Ba Allan and Ba Catherine, respectively, who each are already involved in doing community health work. In sub-Saharan Africa, the vast majority of people with HIV are infected through unprotected sex. Young women are especially vulnerable due to many factors. Young girls are often enticed into sex for material gain, and in Zambia especially, it's not uncommon for men to have a "spare wheel." This is the disgusting term for a man having girlfriends, in addition to a wife. Sadly, spare wheels are all too common and excepted here. Often, men will have unprotected sex with their girlfriends, become infected with HIV, and give it to their passive, ever-faithful wives, then their children will be born with HIV. It's a sad phenomenon I observed in Ghana, West Africa, while working there as a VCT counselor, and also something I spent several months investigating for my senior thesis in college. The opressive chauvinism of males here is unbelievable sometimes, and we are working on gender relations in the village, but sometimes the problem is just so overwhelming and frustrating.

Tommorrow, we will start off for the capital city, Lusaka, a 12-hour ride by car. We'll spend ten days there for In-Service Training. This is additional training after our community entry period, after which we can begin to actually implement projects. Afterwards, we are going to take some cultural days to visit our former host family (who are now hosting a new couple), go Christmas shopping (a bit early, but Northern Province is not a tourist area), and visit the National Museum. Then we are going to return to Kasama via hitching rides, do some errands, and accompany our new Rural Aquaculture Program neighbor, who will be posted to his/her site in October, to visit their new site, 30 kilometers from our own. We'll return to our site around the 3rd or 4th of September, to marvel over how large our puppy has grown in our absence, and begin working on projects. The things I have in mind are a Halloween party for the kids in the village at the school (not that beneficial, but it'll be fun), holding an adult literacy interest meeting before we begin to plan classes and the corresponding nursery school, beginning an English club and an anti-AIDS club at the school, and strengthening some area women's groups.

For IST, we were instructed to prepare a presentation explaining some high points and low points during our first three months at site. It got me thinking, and I thought I'd share some moments. High Points: 1. Ba Allan informed us recently that he and his wife, who will have their eighth child any day now, are going to name the baby after me if it is a girl, or Chris if it is a boy. 2. Chris and I went down to the well together to wash dishes, as we do most days. A woman greeted Chris enthusiatically, then, in icibemba, proudly explained to her young daughter that in America, men wash dishes, too. She then mentioned something about how her husband should do it as well. We were very proud because we try to set an example of an even distribution of work, and change the attitudes concerning women, and it is nice to hear that people are getting it.
Low Points: 1. Receiving news that a friend of ours in our training group was hit and run over by a truck while buying vegetables at the side of the road. He broke many bones in his face and legs, and has spent the past month recovering in a hospital in South Africa. He was just moved to the U.S., where he faces several more months of recovery. He's a great guy and would make an excellent volunteer, so we hope he recovers and is able to return. 2. Returning to our house after five hours of absence, and finding two of our chickens mysteriously dead. One was a hen, the other a week-old chick. When slaughtering the hen, we found the cause of death was natural; an egg had burst inside of her. The chick had been crushed between the chicken wire and a brick chicken house. We think she got stuck and either a hawk or dog lunged at her and crushed her little body in the small gap. 3. About a month and a half ago, our host father was away one day, and our host mother sold beer at their house to make money. Naturally, there was a crowd of staggering drunks hanging out near our house. Chris was inside, sleeping because he was sick. I saw a guy going next to our bathing shelter to pee, which made me fume silently. Then I saw a man actually go inside our bathing shelter to relieve himself. I woke Chris, and he stormed over and began to scream in icibemba, at both the man and our host mother. Our host mother denied it happened, but the party broke up. Shortly before we left to come here, a new bathing shelter was built for us, on the other side of the house, in a more private location. 4. Our keys were pickpocketed at a large market the next village over, which meant we had to spend about two hours breaking into our house, and another three hours repairing the damage we'd caused.

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A Plea to Get People to Visit: We are going to be in Zambia for another year and nine months. This is your chance in a lifetime to visit Southern Africa and experience culture and get an insider's tour of the country. We really want to show people our new home, and writing about it can never adequately capture our life here. It's breathtakingly beautiful in parts, the people are friendly and open, and Zambia is home to both Victoria Falls and about a dozen national parks. Book soon to get a flight here for next summer.

Mom: I am going to send a package to your house in approximately three weeks. Expect to receive it around Halloween time.

Twalisambilia sana

I've been asked several times by Zambian women if Chris and I have babies that we left in America. Most girls my age have infants slung on their backs and a couple of toddlers with dirty faces and distended bellies trailing behind. There's a plethora of babies in our village. African babies, as I see them, are wonderful accessories. They're much cuter than white babies and they don't fuss and cry nearly as much either. Unless they see us, that is. Most of the babies burst into tears when we acknowledge them in any way. Chris and I are the only white people within a 30 km radius, and the only other musungus are also Peace Corps volunteers.

We got Willow in early June, the darkest puppy with the most expressive eyes out of a litter of three scruffy, half-wild little dogs. She urinated from fear when she was caught and touched by human hands, and trembled the entire journey back to our village. Within just under a week, though, she had lost all fear of us and instead wiggled her lanky frame into our laps to be pet. All the animals here are free range, which is a much better life for them, and Willow, too is free to be a puppy. She spends her days chasing goats and chickens, playing with our host family's very patient dog, and chasing guavas that we throw for her. I hope, and I think that we are, setting a good example for dog ownership, because Willow is not lacking from affection or food. People see that we are very fond of her, and the children will call her name ("Weeloo! Weeloo!") when we walk around the village and play with her. Some of the adults even will pet her. That may not sound extraordinary for you guys in America, but if you've been reading my previous posts, you know that Zambians do not have quite the same relationship with their dogs as Americans do. In other animal news, we have acquired two more chickens, bringing the grand total up to three. The chief gave us a young black and white rooster after Chris took his picture. One of the farmers Chris visited gave us a golden hen. She remains my biggest hope for actually getting eggs, because she doesn't stray far from our home. We've also heard that our first hen is sitting on a brood of eggs now, so we should have some chicks soon.

I had another venomous snake sighting one afternoon while Chris was at the garden with our host family. I was sewing in our insaka, our outdoor cooking structure, when I heard a rustle on the grass roof, about three feet above where I sat. I saw the end of a tail, too big to belong to one of the little lizards that frequently crawl around up there. I scrambled outside and sure enough, it was a large green snake. I called a few boys who were passing by, and one of them ran to get a man who lives nearby (Bashimpollo, father of Mpollo, the rambunctious and mischevious four-year-old I've written about before). Within a couple minutes, a crowd of about two dozen children materialized in my yard, all staring up at the insoka on my insaka. With precise aim, Bashimpollo hit the snake behind its neck with his slingshot, and its limp body fell to the grass, where the boys proceeded to beat it with sticks. Satisfied that it was dead, they stepped away, and I got my first clear look at it. It was about two and a half feet long, the thickest part of its body about half the size of my wrist. I ran to get my wildlife identification guide, and it immediately became clear the snake was a boomslang. Boomslangs have highly potent venom that prevents blood from coagulating, which makes its bite more dangerous than those from a cobra or mamba. When Chris returned later that day, we skinned it. Some girls watched with wide eyes and asked if we were going to eat it. I just wanted its skin, but Chris insisted if he had returned earlier and he didn't fear the meat was bad, we would have had it as a relish.

My counterpart, the head teacher at the school nearby, has received a transfer to another school near Kasama. He is very motivated and has worked well with the previous volunteer, so I am sad to see him go. The new head teacher, if his reputation is to be believed, has received the transfer because of his reported conduct with some of his young female pupils. One is said to be pregnant. In Zambia, teachers are very rarely fired; if they behave inappropriately, they're just transferred. Too often, male teachers take advantage of their position. In the case of the new head teacher, I haven't met him yet, so I think I will suspend my judgment of him. It may very well just be a rumor, but I worry about the girls in the village in general, because of the attitude that women should submit to men. Too many get pregnant when they are still children, and subsequently drop out of school, further hindering their progress in this patriarchy.

My new counterpart, Ba Catherine, has been teaching me about Zambian culture. A few days ago she taught me how to smear the floors of the insaka and toilet with a mixture of clay, ash, and water. Sort of like village concrete, I guess. It was a lot of work, and of course Ba Catherine had covered five times of much area as I had in the same amount of time. And that's supposed to be done once a week! On Sunday, she and BanaPeggy (the mother of Beauty, another of my favorite kids), brought over some peanuts, sweet potatoes, and a live chicken for a cooking demonstration. I couldn't bring myself to actually slit the chicken's neck, but I helped with preparation. First she dipped it in a pot of boiling water so that the feathers would come off easier. Then we plucked it, and cut it into pieces, and boiled it. The necks are reserved for men, as is the gizzard. The rest was delicious, delicious chicken though. The women also showed me how to make porridge; cooked sweet potatoes mixed with a peanut paste and either salt or sugar. It's one of my favorite foods here.

Chris and I have been tutoring a grade seven boy that lives nearby, Patricia's older brother, Mutale. His books are all in English, but most of the kids in the village do not understand much English. Part of my work as a RED volunteer is to sensitivize the community on the value of education; in a village where everyone are subsistence farmers, children miss school often because they're needed in the fields, and it's assumed they will have the same lives as their parents, and their parents' parents before them, and so on. So according to the Ministry of Education's guidelines, grade one is taught in local language, but after grade two all instruction is to be done in English. At my government-run school, the teachers will speak first in English, then Bemba, so the children can actually understand.

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To all our readers: It's so nice to hear from so many people that you really enjoy reading our blog. One of the Peace Corps three goals is to educate Americans about the countries it is active in, so I feel like I'm accomplishing that much at least. It's really hard for me to write e-mails or messages to people because typing on my internet phone is hard, and I only get to Kasama to use internet about once a month. So while I can receive your messages on facebook and e-mail within a couple of days after you send them, I can't reply as much as I would like to. I'm slowly becoming a letter writer, though, so you can definately expect a reply to letters. Our new address, which I keep forget to post, is P.O. Box 410374, Kasama, Zambia, Africa.

Mom (and maybe Andrea): I got Andrea's letter. It was postmarked July 8th from Endicott and July 16th from Kasama- that's got to be a record. The pictures are so great, I can't believe how much older Makayla looks in a matter of 5 months. I miss the kids and you guys so much. I still seem to cry everytime after I talk to you or read a letter from you guys. I'm going to try to find some trinkets and mail them in a package.
I have a slip for a package at the post office, so I'll let you know if it's the package you sent, mom.

One Month of Being at our New Home

The open well where we used to draw water looks like a wishing well. It's a small clear pool engulfed by sandy soil and rocks, and is fed by a mini waterfall that cascades between the knarled roots of a tree. After all the men in the village got together and dug a new well, this has become the place for washing dishes, which isn't as romantic as its previous use, because now there are fragments of nshima leftover from meals littering the silt. Because we don't have the convenience of running water, we go once a day to draw water in a 20 liter jerry can (a container for cooking oil -saladi- in its previous life), then carry it the half a kilometer back to our house.

Two of the kids, both about four years old, were pretending to ride sticks in our yard, and Chris and I debated about what the sticks represented- bicycles, motorbikes, horses, oxcarts? I asked the boy, Mpollo, "Cinshi mulecofa?" -what are you riding? He answered "ncinga" with his trademark big grin. Chris' eyes got really big and he turned to me and said, "That is so profoundly sad. Children in the U.S. don't have to play riding bikes, they actually ride bikes!" The kids also improvise toy cars by poking sticks through the sip holes of old beer cans. The old Castle Lager cans the volunteer before us left behind are the treasured toys of Muso and Mpollo. Plastic bags are also wadded up and tied with tree bark to make soccer balls. So Mom, thank you so much for sending us toys to distribute. I'm sure they will be cherished.

Most of the clothing that makes it to the villages comes from European or American thrift shops or are donations. The clothing is then sold in little stalls and worn until its permanently dingy anf literally in tatters. Party dresses from the 1980s, with broken zippers in the back, seem to be the favorites of Zambian little girls. Garments that were manufactured as nightgowns for girls in developed countries have metamorphisized into everyday clothing as well. Most amusing though, is the boys who wear fitted tee shirts with sparkly letters or sayings like 'girls rule.' One of our immediate neighbors, a boy of about five or six, wears a now beige, but once white shirt with rhinestones and 'angel' printed in rainbow letters. On Sundays though, the whole village transforms, very Twilight Zone-ish, with everyone well-scrubbed, clothing spotless, and shoes are actually worn. Zambia, as we are told over and over, is "a Christian nation," which means, I guess, that everyone has to look their best for God.

Most of the children in our village have the big, distended bellies and thin limbs characteristic of malnutrition. The staple food is nshima, cornmeal and water cooked into lumps that is then broken into small balls and dipped in beans or greens. Nshima is eaten for lunch and dinner; people will say they haven't eaten if they have ingested anything other than nshima. The typical villagers diet is also lacking in protein; meat is expensive and people are without refrigeration, so it is a very rare treat. While mealie meal (cornmeal) is cheap, it doesn't provide the energy and vitamins children need, so although their bellies might be full, they're undernourished. There's also a hunger season once a year, several months after harvest, that is approaching soon. Most everyone are subsistence farmers, so they'll often sell too much food to get money, and not leave enough for their family.

To get some much needed protein in our own diets, we are keeping chickens for egg-laying. We paid a neighbor 20,000 kwacha (about $4) to make us a log henhouse. It's about 3 feet by 3 feet with a grass roof and elevated so that my head is even with the top of the roof. Best of all, it was constructed without the use of nails; it's sturdy but free standing. Finding chickens, however, has proved difficult. Everyone keeps chickens, but no one wants to sell them because they represent food security. Finally, Chris' community mentor rode his bicycle into our yard, with his young son on the back clutching a brown hen under one arm. I sat on our front porch with the hen in my arms, stroking her soft cocoa feathers, for about twenty minutes, while Ba Alan and Bashiamos, our host father, laughed that I was holding her like a baby. In my defense, I've never held a chicken before! We named her Kalipa (ukukalipa means to anger or hurt in Bemba) because she clucked angrily at us a lot that day. She is free range like all the chickens around, so for the first few nights we had to chase her around or ask a boy to grab her from a tree and then shut her into the henhouse for the night. Now however, she'll go on her own to her house every night at around 5:45pm. She has become very friendly with a gorgeous brown rooster from next door, but she is yet to lay any eggs.

The young boys here are very adept at catching animals. Near the school one day, we heard a pack of boys shouting excitedly from inside a grove of banana trees. Ten minutes later they emerged triumphantly, the oldest one dragging what looked from far way to be a young crocodile from the tail. We went closer to investigate, and it turned out to be a 3-foot long monitor lizard, vaguely resembling an iguana, but brown and with a heavier body. Monitor lizards aren't venomous, but they're a creature to be reckoned with. They can be very dangerous if harassed because they have strong jaws and a serrated tail.

Another time, a boy by the road was holding a genet he'd killed. Genets have sleek, long bodies and tails, big ears and pointed noses, and spots. They almost look like a cross between a house cat and a weasle. Birds, too, are killed by the boys with slingshots with surprising accuracy. In the early evening we were sitting on our porch with some boys, when we heard some birds begin chirping from a nearby tree. The boys picked up some pebbles and nailed two little birds, smaller than the palms of their hands. They are very tasty, we were assured. Every animal caught is cooked and eaten with nshima.

Our house is two rooms, plus a small storage room, with a grass roof and a cement porch. The walls are made of mud brick coated with plaster, and are now varying shades of purple and sky blue, after we used a large chunk of our settling-in allowance to splurge on paint. Also calling our house home are termites who like to tunnel on our freshly painted walls, mice who have shown little interest in our food and instead eat the platstic lining of our roof, ants who apparently really enjoy Chinese cabbage, and strangely, wall crickets. "Why," I asked Chris exasperated, shortly after we arrived, "can't we have a plague of something pleasant, like butterflies?" Prophetically, the next day as I walked into our bathing shelter, a swarm of beautiful blue butterflies rose into the air. Bathing here, in that sense, makes me feel like the heroine in a Disney movie.

Our double bed, shrouded with a mosquito net, takes up most of our bedroom, so we didn't bother to paint that room. From our flight over here, we liberated two thin red blankets that serve nicely as rugs on our cement floors. Opposite our bed are two shelves that hold most of our belongings. The sitting room is furnished with a table, two wood sling chairs, and a camp chair. A piece of purple fabric, or citenge, with Obama's picture and a map of Africa, is a nice wall hanging.

Our pit latrine is a separate plaster and grass building with a small square hole about five feet deep. We throw ash from our fires down the hole every so often, which makes the smell not bad at all. If you shine the flashlight down the hole at dusk, you can see bats flying around, which is both disturbing and kind of neat.

From when we wake up in the morning until dusk, there's a flow of children that trinkle through our yard. They have four favorite activities. The first is to say "mpeeleniko" (please give me) books, pens, plastic bags, candy, et cetera. When that fails, they request "lisheni cilimba," or play guitar. Or, increasingly, they'll say "Tulefwaya ukusambilia icisungu." This means they want an English lesson. One of my favorite kids, a girl of about eight years old named Patricia, is particularly fond of this. She'll listen attentively while Chris and I converse in English, not comprehending a word, but then will carefully repeat sentences. Once Chris and I were checking phone messages by the road, at the only tree in our village with cell phone service. Chris opened an e-mail and suddenly exclaimed, "Oh wow, this girl I worked with at Bassett, she popped!" Immediately, Patricia triumphantly echoed, "She POPPED!" So Sheena, if you're reading this, Congratulations!

Patricia asked me about my mother one day, so I showed her my pictures I brought. She studied them very carefully, and after I'd named off everyone in my family a few times, she'd point to them in subsequent pictures and name them. She was especially pleased when we went through my pictures from graduation, and I pointed to American Patricia, my roommate Trish from college.

In the absence of television or toys with which to amuse themselves, the next best thing to children here is the musungu man playing American songs on his guitar. Chris gets this request at least twice a day. When he starts to play, the kids will flock, tie citenge (brightly colored fabric) in a band around their hips, and dance. The crowd pleasers are always "Twist and Shout" and "What I Got" by Sublime. The children don't understand what the words mean, but they have developed int0 fine little backup singers. Mwenya, the youngest boy from our host family who is about 11, will often walk by our house on his way to the well singing "Looovin' is what I got."

Chris and I have decided to partake on a "door-to-door campaign" of the vilage, as my counterpart, the head teacher, amply calls it. On Saturdays and Sundays we visit people at their houses, with Ba Mulenga to translate, to introduce ourselves, ask what they think the biggest problems in the village are, and urge people to talk to us anytime. Some of the problems we've heard again and again are the scarcity of clean water sources, the need for adult literacy, gender inequality, and a lack of medical facilities. The women are overburdened with work and childcare, and want family planning (the average number of children in a family here is probably around 7 or 8), pre-natal care, and to learn about nutrition.

While our visits have given us a good idea of how we can help as Peace Corps volunteers, they're very depressing. We stopped at one house, inhabited by a skeletal-looking old woman with an apple-sized tumor on her inner cheek, that had only sniffing tobacco to make her constant pain go away. At another house, a shy, pregnant teen-ager cut cabbage as Ba Mulenga explained she had dropped out of grade six to get married and have a baby, which is sadly very common. We've also recently had a death in the village; a baby that was less than two-years old.

Our latest pictures can be found at:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=97895&id=713467480&l=dc0311ffd9
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Todd- I'm glad to hear your students would be excited to write to the upper grade students at the village school here. It would be letters, in case you misunderstood, there are definately no computers. Comprehension of English is minimal (Zambia is actually slipping backward as far as English language goes; adults are more likely to be able to communicate in it than their children), although in schools they are taught in a combination of both English and Bemba. I'm sure if the teachers and I help translate though, your kids will be able to understand correspondence. It would also help kids here learn English.

Heather and Mom- Doreen is 17 years old, she was born two weeks after Heather, actually. See above for explanation of language. She likes dancing and playing netball (kind of like basketball). Write her a letter when you get a chance Heather, and I'll pass it on to her.

Sheena- Thank you for the card and picture. Your baby girl actually has the same hairstyle as Chris now; he let me cut him a mohawk one lazy afternoon.

We're officially Peace Corps volunteers!

Chris and I swore in as Peace Corps volunteers along with the 33 other people in our training class this morning at the American ambassador's residence in Lusaka. Chris read his speech perfectly, and singing the American national anthem followed by the Zambian national anthem felt pretty amazing. We feel really proud to be two of the 170 volunteers working hand-in-hand with Zambia towards development, fulfilling John F. Kennedy's legacy, and making Obama proud.

On that note, Chris and I bought Obama citenges yesterday. They're pieces of fabric with Obama's picture printed on them and the map of Africa. I intend to have mine made into a skirt. Everytime we say we're from America, we inevitably get a Zambian shouting "Obama!"

The next big event is moving into our new house in just a few short days! Our first house as a married couple... a mud hut in Africa!

Imiti iikula, e mpanga

<--- Playing hopscotch with some of the kids who live around. Our house for the next two years is in the background. Muso is on the far right.

We are nine weeks into our pre-service training, with a little over a week until the Peace Corps Land Cruiser drops us at our mud brick hut in a small remote village in the Northern Province to fend for ourselves. As terrified as I may sound, it's the light at the end of the tunnel, the event Chris and I have been eagerly anticipating since we visited out home for the next two years about two weeks ago. Our village was very welcoming and people were excited to meet us. There was even a big party at the school, with dancing, speeches, and one goat and several chickens killed in our honor. And of course the afterparty - Zambian pop music, dancing, and ubwalwa (the local beer brewed with corn that tastes a bit like vomit) that flowed until dark fell. Our two-room hut (but with a real bed Dad, so now you have no excuse to not visit) is about 75 feet away from our host family's house. The father, Bashiamos (literally father of Amos, their firstborn that died) is fluent in English, but Banaamos and the seven children ranging in age from just under two years to 17 years old, know very little. Our favorite, one of the spunkiest children, is four-year old Muso, who always has a mischevious smile on her face. Our host father even has a car, although as we've learned, it's not very reliable. It broke down no less than four times on a 85 kilometer journey from our village to Kasama. A plastic jerry can (jug) serves as the gas tank and the engine is held together with twigs and bark fiber.

<-- The Dreaded Black Mamba

We had our first venomous snake sighting several weeks ago. Our host sister in Lusaka province knocked on our bedroom door and said "insoka." We went outside to where our family members had accumulated at the edge of the yard. Our brother, Ba Katonga, had killed a black mamba with a stick as it was eating a toad. The toad was still alive, and clearly suffering as the venom spread through out its body. Zambians, we've learned, will kill any snake they encounter, which seems somewhat heroic to me considering that Zambia does not have its own supply of anti-venom (the nearest country with any is South Africa- a 2.5 hour plane ride away). So I'm sorry to all of our Camp friends and especially Rick, but we now advocate the slaughtering of (venomous) snakes. It's different here, where they are more prevalent around where people live. We saw a dead flattened puff adder on the road the other day as well; cause of death unknown. Because of snakes, we're both afraid to go to the latrine at night, and instead have decided upon the use of a chamber pot at site.

Other creepy crawlers here are furry catapillars and blister beetles. We have wooly bear catapillars in the states, but these Zamcatapillars look like small mammals! They aren't so cuddly though, they cause skin to itch intensely for several days, similar to a reaction to poison ivy. Blister beetles, if molested, will secrete a chemical that causes a painful burn. I think being in Zambia is difficult for Chris, an entomologist at heart, because there are all these cool bugs, but you can't get to close to them. Even the giant centipedes bite.

On April 12 (on Easter Sunday because his birthday falls on a Monday), we celebrated Chris' birthday Zam style. Six of our friends came over for a feast of potato salad, chicken, rice, nshima, coleslaw, cooked potatoes, shake shake (local beer) and CHOCOLATE CAKE! Everyone was jealous because our family has a nice house. Most everyone else is staying in one room huts in their host family's compound.

Last week, after a well-hid pregnancy, one of our host family's dogs, Kimbo, had 7 adorable puppies. We hope to adopt one after our In-Service Training in three months, when we are in Lusaka again. The puppy from her last litter that our family kept, that Chris adores, is named Dirty, so we think we may name the puppy Filthy. Scandalously, the mother Kimbo's brother also happens to be the father to this litter, so our puppy may be a little... special, but TIA (This is Africa; the risks of neutering/spaying far outweigh the benefits).

At our swearing-in ceremony next week in Lusaka, when we officially become Peace Corps volunteers and not lowly trainees, one person (most proficient at language) was selected from each program and language group to present a speech in the local language. Out of the twelve LIFE Bembas, Chris will be presenting the speech which will be aired on Zambian national television. Chris Audette, international celebrity.

I don't excel at Bemba, but at least I got a nice write-up last week in the e-Tower Times, Hartwick's virtual newsletter: http://www.hartwick.edu/x26731.xml

Also, to see more pictures of our hijinks, go to

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=83025&id=713467480&l=b88c6e5b92

TWATOTELA MUKWAI
-I'm sorry that we have been too busy to write any letters to anyone, but we will post our new mailing address shortly and will write soon since once we get posted, we'll have a lot of time to kill.
-Thanks for the blog comments everyone, we like reading them.
-To the Staff at Bassett: it is so nice to know you guys are thinking about us. We loved the card, but sorry Chris, I don't think I'll be coming back to work anytime soon. I do miss everybody a lot. Please give my regards to the people & patients who still remember me on the floors.

<--- This is what rabies looks like.

Chris and Dirty, the before-mentioned elder pup.