Pictures Depicting Everything Mentioned Below (plus village moonshine)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nswaswa/

Caterpillars

Right after the first rains begin, women trek into the bush to collect caterpillars. Armed with a pail and often a child to climb the trees, they collect many different varieties: fat neon green ones, spiky ones, black and white ones. They usually track caterpillars by looking carefully at the ground. If you see droppings, there are caterpillars munching on the fresh new growth on that tree.

Women spend all morning collecting caterpillars and return when the sun is at its peak to cook ubwali for lunch. At home they squeeze the caterpillars starting from the head and moving toward the end, like one squeezes a tube of toothpaste, to rid them of the insides. Then the caterpillars are fried with cooking oil.

Chris enjoys eating them. I see the merit in caterpillars being a protein source where meat and eggs are scarce, but I prefer my texturized vegetable protein pieces.

Not all caterpillars here are benevolent. Chishishi, huge grey caterpillars with bristly hair, are also plentiful at this time. As with snakes, the policy with chishishi is to kill every one you find. If they contact human skin, the bristles will cause you to itch and have a rash, similar to poison ivy.


This Is Our World

A young woman reclines on the clay floor of her parents' cooking shelter. Her breasts hang down nearly to her navel beneath an old red t-shirt, and her arms are thin; the width of an ubwali cooking stick. In a hoarse voice voice she recites her symptoms in monotone ciBemba, a change from the tonal inflections that usually accompany the language: a cough, vomiting, body pains, jaundice that turns the whites of her eyes into a sick mustard color. The clinic's diagnosis is yellow fever, an illness similar to malaria in causation and symptoms. There's no cure but elapsed time, and already these maladies have persisted for over a week. Where Western medicine has failed her, she turns to the traditional umuti of her ancestors. A thin strip of bark fiber from a mutondo tree is tied around her neck to prevent vomiting and her family dabs water infused with pepa root in her eyes, nose, and on her fingertips.

The illness has caused her to stop producing breast milk, so she can't feed her two-month old daughter. In the U.S., the crisis could be averted with store bought formula. But formula here is only available in urban centers and costs USD 5 for a 1 kg tin, unaffordable for subsistence farmers who survive on USD 2 a day. Besides, formula mixed with unclean water would ravage the baby's body with diarrhea. A wet nurse, a compassionate neighbor with her own baby, could help. But no nursing mother here will touch this cursed, sickly little girl. People gossip and whisper "AIDS" behind the backs of their hands. The family feeds the baby porridge instead - corn, millet, or cassava flour cooked in boiled water. It is pure carbohydrate with no nutritional value at all. The baby is very thin and cries all the time.

The aspersions that the women whisper to each other, heavy and ominous like the sagging dark clouds that hang in the sky this time of year, may be true. It's got to be either AIDS or witchcraft; no single family can fall so far from God's mercy on their own.

This woman's husband had a first wife in a distant village that died after a long illness. The husband himself is sickly. People warned the woman's parents not to approve of the marriage years ago, but the parents only scoffed, thinking it was jealousy. The couple has since brought five children into the world, two of whom they've already buried. Soon to be three. Young children face enough adversity threatening their fragile lives without being pulled away from their mother's dried up breasts at only two months old and fed only starch.

In the U.S. ("The Promised Land," as we've taken to calling it) this incurable virus ravaging Africa can seem impersonal. Children dying from preventable illnesses is sad, but detached from your reality; your own children have chubby cheeks from baby fat and grow like weeds. This life is our reality.


Kasama Town Cast of Characters

These are the quirky, omnipresent, mentally disturbed people that inhabit Kasama Town. Kasama does in fact have a mental hospital, but its only a place for people to sleep at night. During the day, they're on their own.

Judgment Man: Has long tangled hair, wears a tunic closely resembling a potato sack, a huge cross necklace, and carries a staff. He'll quietly walk into a place of business or to an individual, draw himself up, and begin a tirade in Bemba. I usually don't even try to understand what he's saying, but he repeats "judgment" a lot and asks for 100 kwacha (~2 cents). He's found on Luwingu Rd, and solicits the internet cafe several times a day because the staff there will quickly hand over money so he'll leave.
Inconspicuous Dude: Is found near Shoprite, often sleeping in a shady patch of dirt beside the road. He has unkempt mats of hair and wears ripped clothing the exact shade of the soil. He doesn't harass anyone and often blends into Kasama itself.

Several months ago, an angry, displaced swarm of bees terrorized the centre of town, disrupting business. African bees are fierce even when unprovoked, so the street quickly emptied, except a few tenacious people who ran by. Inconspicuous Dude, however, strolled down the street, completely oblivious to the swarming mass that seethed around his head.
Bernard: A short, stout man with grey hair, untamed nose hairs, and kind eyes. He used to stand in front of Shoprite everyday just hanging out, but the regulars that hawk newspapers and prepaid talk time forced him out. His new haunt is PJT Market, the local supermarket chain on the next street over. He's supposedly a beggar, but in the two years I've known him, he's never asked me for money. He always greets me by name and is completely lucid except for one thing - he thinks I'm his wife. In fact, he thinks every light-skinned woman he meets in Kasama is his wife. He gets upset if you protest, so I play along. Our usual conversation usually goes something like this:
Bernard: Ah, Nicole! How are you?
Me: I'm fine. And you?
B: I'm okay. Last week I did not have much money for food, but it is better now. How are our children?
M: They're doing well. Little Mary is doing very well on her exams and little Bupe had malaria, but he's recovered now and is back to playing football with his friends.
B: You must bring them to see me soon.
M: Sure.

Bernard is fluent in English and well-spoken and spoke once of being educated at Cambridge in the UK, which I believe. Rumor has it that he was once a successful businessman and was married to a white woman. At some point mental illness crept in.


Hot Season and Hot Tempers
BashiAmose told us his schoolteacher from years ago once noted that there are a lot more disagreements and fights during the hot, dry season (September- November) than other times of the year. I'd be willing to concur. I personally was miserable during this period; it's too hot to do anything but lay in your house from 10 am until 15 hours.

About a month ago, some men came to BashiAmose's house while he and BanaAmose were away and pressured their fifteen-year old daughter to sell them home-brewed beer. Soon there was a group of men sitting in the shade and drinking. Tempers started flaring and two men began fighting. One was hitting another with a stick, there was blood flying, and the disagreement went on for a good half an hour, to the great interest of the children, whom no one thought to shoo away. Apparently on this same day, just 400m up the hill, a boy from the village and a Sable worker were also drinking and one was threatening the other with a knife.

Remember Chanda, the teenage boy who broke into our house last Halloween? After he stole from several other houses, tuckshops, and finally us, the village agreed to send him to the police. Because he was a minor, he was sent to live in a orphanage and attend school in Kasama for two years. But a few months ago he ran away and returned to the village. We spoke to his legal guardian at the Department of Social Welfare, but the man kept insisting that Chanda would return after a home leave of a few days and if we didn't like it, we could accompany him back to Kasama ourselves. Four months later, still in the village, Chanda broke into a tuck shop again. He was taken to the headman's house to be punished and people ended up forcing the soles of his feet into the coals of a cooking fire so he couldn't run away. We saw him the next day, supported by two other boys as he was barefoot and limping badly, standing at the tuck shop he broke into while the items he stole were recovered. Kids ran over to jeer at him. Later, he was sent back to live in Kasama.

Recently a man stole 11 million kwacha ($USD 2,000) from a business in Kasama. With uncharacteristic tenacity and accuracy, the Kasama police tracked him to his parents' house in our village. When the police arrived, the man had only enough time to hide in the bathing shelter. As they were questioning his parents, the man tried slipping away. The officers tried to pursue him and one fired his gun, but the man escaped into the bush. They recovered half of the money from his wife, and then took her into custody because they thought she knew more than she was telling them. The next day, the police came again in an unmarked vehicle and found the man on the road, trying to find transport out. Again he escaped into the bush and hasn't been seen since.

They're saying that this man was able to evade capture twice because he has powerful spells and is a known wizard. Apparently if he puts money into the pages of a special book, then closes the cover, he's able to duplicate that money. It hasn't been explained why he had to steal ZMK 11,000,000 when he could have just used his book and avoided involvement with the police.

Traditional Leaders

Most villages are named after the headman. (Ours happens to be named after a nonexistant river, a grandiose nomenclature for an area with only two sinuous streams.) Headmen are hereditary, traditional leaders on the most minute scale; chiefs have jurisdiction over several dozen villages; above them are senior chiefs; and finally one paramount chief for an entire dispersed tribe. The Bemba paramount chief is named Chitemukulu and resides in a palace in Northern Province, the ancestral home of the Bembas.

The headman and his panel of good old boy advisors are the equivalent of an American town mayor, council, and court. Most headmen are fair and don't abuse their power. Our own headman has no schooling past grade 4, but he understands the value of development despite a conservative populace. He's consistently been an advocate for us.

Puppies!

Willow gave birth to 6 puppies fathered by Chankulila in mid-October. They're now 5 weeks old and starting to wean. They were a big strain on her body and she was looking pretty skeletal even though we fed her better than most people and even we, eat. We were covertly feeding her boiled eggs, dried fish, and ubwali fortified with soya bean flour and milk powder so our neighbors wouldn't click their tongues at us and demand that we give them some. All the puppies are fat and healthy except for some unavoidable fleas and chiggers. We're looking into getting Willow spayed and dewormed once she's back up to her normal body weight. Wish us luck; the procedures here are done without respirators or monitors in not sterile environments, but our PC Medical nurse (who's active in Lusaka spay & neuter campaigns) said the benefits still outweigh the risks.

The Protected Spring Box

The protected spring box was completed on 2 November after 2.5 days of labor, supervised by an engineer with Rural Water from Kasama. The total cost was $500 (donated by U.S. based Appropriate Projects) plus the community contribution of 1,000 burnt bricks, 1 ton of crushed stones, and K 2500 (~50 cents) from every household to buy wooden planks.

Before the Rains

Synopsis: It’s the season of bush fires. Bashi Mutale sired – in the village another Nikki has been acquired.

In late August and September, fierce morning winds batter grass roofs, snatching handfuls of dried thatch and strewing it on the sand. Dead leaves snarl and circle angrily in the gusts. Ash from neighbors’ cooking fires is thrown on our freshly washed dishes. The afternoon brings the peak of a glaring sun and stifling heat. Panting dogs laze under shelter of skeletal guava trees, ribcages jutting from under a dull coat with each shallow inhalation. Women sigh and sink under the overhang of their grass roof before placing a baby to their breasts. Only evenings, with a blood red sun sagging wearily and bleeding into the surrounding sky, bring relief.

On the heels of this heat the rains will creep in, replenishing the parched yellow land. But before this happens, the stretches of overgrown dried grasses are scorched.

Campfires are mesmerizing in the way flames flitter about, changing the composition of wood and trapping your eyes in its primordial beauty. Fire can be devastating and dangerous, and part of its appeal is being able to control a force of nature. Bush fires hold the same appeal, but on a much larger scale. Entire fields of dried grasses, shrubbery, and small trees are burnt, the flames spreading ravenously. In theory, it is controlled by creating fire breaks, burning a small strip of land first so that the fire doesn’t have fuel to spread beyond the confines of where you want it to. But wind is a variable, and I’ve seen a defiant fire set at the school devour a teacher’s grass bathing shelter and fence. If fire breaks fail, teenage boys grab leafy branches and begin furiously beating the flames.

Bush fires start with a crackling as loud as a thunderclap, which can be heard for as far as a kilometer away. The black smoke billows out into the sky, drawing birds of prey that circle overhead, dining on the emerging exodus of grasshoppers and song birds.

I don’t know why the bush is burnt. Bush fires are often spoken about in relation to kapanga, the rats that burrow in the bush that people eat. But you can find bush rats without burning an area first. Chief Munkonge decreed that the bush should be burnt early to avoid damaging the rainy season sprouts that caterpillars, another bush food, eat, thus diminishing the caterpillar population. In the end, burning the bush might be as pointless as chitimene, or the slash and burn agriculture that’s also practiced. It might be done because the ancestors practiced it, with no regard for its effect on the environment.

I’m kind of a big deal among the under-five crowd. Malama, Juliet, Charity, and Purity, particularly, the toddlers that live closest to us, openly adore me. If we’re returning home after a short absence from the village, they shout “Ba Nikki! Muli shani?” (How are you?) then enthusiastically cheer “Ba bwela!” (She’s returned) for the next five minutes. If they acknowledge Chris at all, they also call him Ba Nikki.

So in late August when Bana Mutale gave birth at home to a tiny and perfect little girl, older sister Charity immediately declared her name to be Nikki. Her amused parents asked for my approval. So now ka (small) Nikki joins ka Chris and Shaq as a legacy of Peace Corps in our village (The previous volunteer, a basketball enthusiast, was asked to name a newborn boy).

Pre-School Updates

• From September 13 -18, three volunteer teachers from the village were trained in early childhood education. The workshop was funded locally by the Kasama Pre-School Teacher Training College and also by a USAID grant. Topics included the history of pre-school education, its importance on a child’s development, making teaching aids using locally available materials, first aid, creating lesson plans, sample syllabus, songs and dances, and child developmental stages and development. The teachers seem like they learned a lot and are excited to implement this new knowledge.

  

Ba Allan Mwango, Ba Catherine Chisha, Ba John Bwalya Kandeke, and I after their graduation.

• $921 has been donated towards the pre-school construction in just a few weeks. We still need $2872. Pleas e, please spread the word of this project. If you’ve already done so, please continue to do it. It’s pretty difficult raising publicity for what I’m doing when I’m in the village without access to any form of modern communication, so I need help. (Special thanks to Sue and Tim, Rick, Kate, and Sarah). Again the link is https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=611-061

Videos

Project Explanation
Narrated by Nicole Barren and Allan Mwango
Shot at the location of the pre-school, the center of the village often called the station because it's where people hitch rides from. Hopefully it gives you a feel for the atmosphere. Unfortunately, it's very windy on September mornings.



Sukulu Yaliwama
Words: Po po umwana wandi
(Po po my child)
sukulu yaliwama
(school is good)
nokulemba nokubelenga
(and to read and write)

A song about the value of education may seem superfluous in the U.S., but in the village, parents are often uneducated themselves and thus the importance of school is not impressed upon children as firmly as it should be. The students' parents and caregivers, however, are supportive of the pre-school. In addition to educating their children, it also gives overworked women, some of whom are also burdened by chronic illness, a small break in caregiving duties.



Mango Tree
A lively call and repeat song that teaches English verbs. The kids LOVE it.



Donate to the pre-school construction at https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=611-061
Or www.peacecorps.gov, then click 'Volunteer Projects' and search by my name or country.

Donate to the Pre-School

The Peace Corps finally put my project up on their website, so we can start accepting donations.
Please, please, please give the blog or that link to everyone you know. I've lived amongst, loved, and laughed with these kids for the past year and a half; they've taught me the Bemba language and accepted me as their friend. I came to Zambia with the intention of helping people, but the biggest change has happened inside of me. Ba Allan introduced us recently to a visiting relative as "These ones aren't Americans anymore. They're real Bembas." That inclusion into our adopted tribe has been repeated by other people too, and as a Peace Corps volunteer whose goal is assimilation, it gives me a great sense of accomplishment. But all the credit goes to the people we live with, who've taught me how to be strong and happy no matter how hard life may be, who've taught me Bemba songs, dances, cooking, and work. I've learned a lot from their children, too, my peers as far as language goes. In the beginning, they'd come to our house to stare because, well, not many white Americans jabbering in a foreign language make it to the village. Now they come to ask me to informally teach them, to play soccer and monkey-in-the-middle, or just because they're bored and want to talk. I wish I could take all of them to America with me when I leave. I like that village life is simpler, safe for children to wander by themselves, and close-knit. But I can escape it, I don't have to deal with most of the hardships. I want to save them from their futures; alcoholism, HIV/AIDS, early pregnancy and baby after baby, a 45-year life expectancy. But I can't. What I can do is build them a pre-school, which is sorely needed, to thank them for allowing us to enter their lives for two years. The most critical years of a child's development are ages 1-6. Pre-school gives them a good foundation and prepares them for grade one, gets them used to attending school regularly, fosters in them a love for learning. Pre-school education puts them at an advantage years later; children who attend pre-school are more likely to pursue adult education and adhere to development programmes. They have a head start at basic school, and a better chance at becoming literate. Short-term, they're going to be able to learn more effectively in a better-suited classroom and take even greater pride in it. This can make their lives a little bit better, put them a little bit closer to escaping the lives of their grandparents and parents.

I wish you all could come to the pre-school and see the looks of pride on these kids' faces when they write a number correctly, their smiles when they sing, and their eagerness when their hands shoot into the air to be called on. I hope the pictures can convince you to take an interest in these kids and help me help them. Even if you can only give $10, that's fine. $10 may not seem like a lot to you, but it's a very sizeable sum in the village; it can buy 100 heads of cabbage, piles of tomatoes, or bundles of greens, enough to combat malnutrition in an entire family for a very long time. It can almost buy a 50 kg bag of cement. Please help us out. And continue to check the blog; I'll update on the project's progress regularly.

The website is https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=611-061.

Alternatively, you can go to peacecorps.gov, click on 'Donate to Volunteer Projects' and search for Nicole Barren.

I also made flyers that I can e-mail by request (nicolebarrdette@gmail.com). For further information and pictures, look at earlier posts. Chris posted a whole facebook album of pictures of the pre-school at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=211887&id=713467480&l=94dff03873.

Donate to the pre-school

Pre-school students

Beauty Kabwe is five-years old, with a lingering grin and almond-shaped eyes. She's polite, a natural leader and a clown, doing impressions and hamming it up to make the other kids laugh. She's a gifted dancer, and is always the first to tie a citenge around her hips when there's drumming and singing.

She's the last-born child of her family, being raised alone by her mother after her father's death. She helps her mother by drawing water, sweeping and harvesting in the fields.

(L to R: Muso, Beauty, and Mapalo)

Most kids are unable or unmotivated to continue school past grade 7, and end up as subsistence farmers like their parents. However, Beauty's older sister works in Kasama and an older brother attends grade 10 outside the village. Beauty, too, is smart. She started pre-school six months ago, after talking excitedly for several months about going to school. She's learned to count quickly and her mother proudly told me that she writes her numbers and letters very well. It's true. She even helps other children when they have trouble.

I persuaded Muso and Mapalo, or banabwinga and bashibwinga (husband and wife; I swear those kids are going to get married one day), to start attending the school a month ago. Muso and Mapalo are the two equally mischevious children that always find their ways into my blogs. Mapalo picks up really fast with writing too. Often children who are just learning have trouble reversing their letters or getting the shapes right, but I've watched Mapalo get them right on his first try.

Musonda, also five-years old, is Ba Allan's niece and another pre-school student. She also is not an OVC, but her aunt and uncle passed away from AIDS, a contributing factor to Ba Allan's HIV activism.

Musonda is a little shy but a natural model. This photo shoot was actually a riot. Chris got out his camera and Musonda immediately started posing with her hands on her chin. She changed her position and facial expression slightly with each shot. Chris in turn starts shooting her from all different angles. I'm afraid her brothers and cousins, behind her, got neglected.

Pre-school

The Mumana Lupando

Pre-school for Orphaned

and Vulnerable Children

Nicole Barren
The Condensed Version:

Our counterparts, Ba Allan and Ba Catherine, are volunteer teachers at this free pre-school. The students range in age from 2 1/2 to 6 years old, and are mostly orphans or from families with HIV or other chronic illnesses. I go often to help teach, have made some learning materials, and suggest new teaching methodologies. I've also arranged for the teachers to attend a workshop on early childhood education. It's important to note, however, that this pre-school functioned before I arrived and will continue after I leave.

The children have regular attendance, which is pretty rare in Zambian villages, are eager to learn, and come wearing their best church clothes. This is the only educational opportunity they have before age 7, when they can enter grade 1 at basic school. Most children seem to start school years later than that though. A lot of the first-graders look to be about ten or eleven years old. This is a shame because the early years are a formative part of a child's development, and studies have shown that children who attend pre-school and kidnergarden are better prepared and learn more effectively when they enter school, and even puts them at an advantage years later in life.

Since 2007, the pre-school has been using a cramped, abandoned general store as a classroom. The problems with this arrangement are many. The shack is located in the center of the village, where the men drink home-brewed beer, there’s always a radio powered by a car battery blaring, and older children duck in and out to satisfy their own curiosity. Adding to the distractions, there are no chairs or desks, and children crouch together on pieces of broken brick. The floor is dirt, and in the absence of a blackboard, functions as a slate upon which to practice writing letters and numbers. There’s no locking door, so the learning aids utilized by the teachers are restricted to what they can carry in and out each day. During harvest time, traders squat in the building, forcing the school to meet outside. Finally, the students are orphaned or from families dealing with HIV or other chronic illnesses, so they especially are prone to fall through the cracks. The pre-school functions to instill in them an early love for learning and prepare them for basic school, but it’s difficult to impress upon them the importance of education and their own self-worth when they’re learning in a dilapidated, ill-suited classroom.

Additionally, expansion of the programme is impossible without a larger facility. With a new building, the teachers could separate the students into classes by age, increase enrollment so that a fraction of the village's 300 other children could receive the same opportunity, and utilize new teaching methods and materials.

The community has agreed to donate local building materials, labor, and equipment to construct a new school building. However, as subsistence farmers, each family survives on only about $40 a year, so they can only contribute gifts-in-kind. The remaining money will come from US donors, through the Peace Corps Partnership Programme. We will need $4000.

This is my plea to you to help my village educate its children. Soon Peace Corps Washington will set up a website so that I can accept donations. Please help me by telling your friends, colleagues, church groups, clubs, and schools. I know times are difficult now in the US with the economy, but these children have it so much harder. Every little bit helps- especially because every little bit stretches a lot farther in Africa.

The Long Version: Copied from my proposal
Background InformationThe village of Mumana Lupando is located eighty-five kilometers west of Kasama, in the Munkonge chiefdom. Approximately 3,200 people reside in the village proper, an area of about 5 km². With the exception of four GRZ (public school) teachers, all adults in the village are subsistence farmers, with an average yearly income of ZMK 200,000 (USD$40).
Around 65% of all children aged seven and above attend grades one through seven at Mumana Lupando Basic School. 241 boys and 201 girls are currently enrolled. Attendance is often sporadic, dipping during planting and harvest time when children are needed to work in the fields. Teachers as well frequently take unauthorized leaves during the term, so illiteracy rates in even the upper grades are high.
In the villages surrounding Mumana Lupando, there is no existing formal education for children prior to grade one. Children often don’t begin school until around age seven to age ten, leaving a gap in preliminary education attained during their formative years, which puts them at a disadvantage. Since September 2007, the Mumana Youth Care and Supporting Group has partially filled the void for pre-school education in the village. Around 80 orphans and vulnerable children (OVCs) aged two through six attend the weekly three-hour long class, taught by the group’s chairwoman and secretary. In Mumana Lupando, families in which parents are deceased or chronically ill, struggle with poverty to a greater extent than the rest of the village. OVCs are less likely to attend school due to a lack of funds, support and encouragement. The pre-school was established to rally around the village’s most disadvantaged children and foster in them an early love for learning, so they would be more likely to enter and excel at Mumana Lupando Basic School.
The Mumana Youth Care and Supporting Group (MYCSG) was established in 2000 with help from the Northern Health Education Programme, a local NGO located in Kasama. MYCSG’s goals are:
· To sensitize the youth and general public on HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention.
· To correct misconceptions about the transmission of HIV, including the overemphasis on superficial blood contact.
· To discourage the stigmatization of individuals living with HIV and AIDS.
· To support OVCs in education and enable them to develop an interest in learning before they reach grade one.
· To promote good nutrition for OVCs and HIV+ individuals.
MYCSG is registered with Kasama local council and is comprised of twelve members and an executive board of a chairwoman, secretary, and treasurer. The group meets weekly and has established itself as the most active philanthropic group in the community. It accomplishes its goals through organizing educational events for the observation of World AIDS and Voluntary Counseling and Testing Days, conducts mobile VCT, and has worked hand-in-hand with two generations of Peace Corps volunteers for HIV/AIDS sensitization. It provides home-based care for nineteen HIV+ individuals and their families and conducts monthly growth monitoring for over one hundred children under age five. It dabbles in environmental conservation, and especially conservation farming techniques like permaculture gardening which can improve nutrition for at-risk families. It also has established a piggery to provide vulnerable families with protein. Taking into account MYCSG’s previous activities, excellent organization, and commitment to the community, MYCSG is perfectly capable of managing the activities outlined in this proposal.
The Project
The aim of this project is to construct a 16 x 6 m classroom block so that the children can have a larger, stable, comfortable, and quiet learning environment. It will be furnished with a blackboard and stools, located in a quiet section of the village away from the main road, and will have a locking door so that learning materials can be stored safely. The community has pledged to donate everything they can short of money, which they don’t have to give. Instead, they are donating building equipment such as shovels, wheelbarrows, and trowels; local building materials like crushed stone, sand, bricks, and clay; and labor to prepare the local materials and construct the school. It also speaks about the motivation of the community that they began molding bricks for this project in early June, four months before the project is set to begin.

The $4,000 needed to buy building materials will hopefully be donated by friends and family in the US, through a Peace Corps Partnership Programme.







Community Need

This project is important because education is vital to development. A strong, early foundation obtained during the formative years of a child’s life will put him at an advantage later in life. A child who attends pre-school will be more likely to continue to basic school and excel. He may continue to upper basic school and university, or he may remain in the village and use his knowledge to improve his family’s health, nutrition, and quality of life. The community needs skilled, educated people to break the cycle of poverty and this foundation and early emphasis on education is the first step.
The more rural a community, the less likely it is they will have a pre-school. Mumana Lupando will be the first community in the region to properly address the issue of pre-school education. In this way, the village can serve as an inspiration to surrounding communities and ignite positive change. The community has proven its support of the pre-school since its inception in 2007. The current classroom, an unused tuck shop, was donated by a local businessman. The children’s attendance is regular and punctual and encouraged by their parents and caretakers. The teachers at the GRZ school have offered encouragement and suggestions, and the school’s founders strive to improve the quality of the school. The community definitely recognizes the value of pre-school education. If the project is not implemented, the pre-school program will continue to function at minimal effectiveness. Enrollment will not increase to the desired 120 students, and only OVCs will benefit from the program. The children will continue to learn in a cramped, unstable environment with many distractions, so that they won’t absorb all of the material they are taught. The teachers will be unable to utilize new learning aids and teaching methodologies, because the classroom is too small and they can’t store materials in the current classroom due to the risk of weather damage or theft.

Project Sustainability

Through this project’s implementation, MYCSG members will gain budgeting and money management skills, and managerial and planning skills. These new skills can help them plan their own household budgets or other group projects, including IGAs. The whole community will receive sensitization on the importance of pre-school education. Few people understand exactly why it is that early childhood education is so important, and I would like to use this project as a platform to promote learning at home, not just when children are in the classroom. Also, this project presents the opportunity for young adults to learn about construction under the supervision of older, skilled members of the community.
This project will increase the aptitude of the three teachers to teach. A more spacious and distraction-free classroom will leave students more attentive and receptive, while a locking door means they can use learning aids. This project will be carried out after a SPA-funded five-day training of the volunteer teachers by the Pre-school Teacher Training College, which will give them the knowledge to make the most of their new classroom.

Kafue National Park

HIPPOS

The most exotic wildlife we've seen in our village is five-year-old Muso running down the path naked, so we were excited when we arrived at Kafue National Park and found hippo tracks the size of dinner plates on the bank of the river, only 25 ft from our campsite. However, what was novel in the daylight became frightening after sunset when the Kafue River became shrouded in darkness penetrated only by a glaring full moon. Hippos bellowed as we cooked dinner, the sound echoing over the dark water so that we could only nervously guess at their location. Around 23 hrs, we awoke to the sound of splashing and scraping along the bank, followed by lumbering footsteps and snorting. It was too nearby for comfort.

"Chris," I whispered as he peered through the mosquito screen, "What if it tramples our tent?"
He hesitated. "It won't."

"Hippos graze on land at night," I reminded him. "It's coming closer." Beyond our flimsy, nylon two-person tent lay a field of lush grass, kept green during the dry season by a sprinkler system.

We sat in the darkness, straining to track its movements by sound. Minutes passed slowly, but the hippo never strayed far. My heart leapt when it unexpectedly fell silent. I was sure it had heard us rustling and was creeping up, dangerously curious. But then it returned to foraging. We deliberated with growing dread. Should we wait for it to move away and then quietly slip out, and walk three minutes upstream to the lodge to wait out daybreak? Or where we safer remaining and being quiet? Chris dimmed his headlamp with his hands as I opened our Bradt guidebook. "Hippos are widely credited with killing more people than any other African mammal," I read softly. "Strongly territorial, herds of ten or more animals are presided over by a dominant male who will readily defend his patriarchy to the death." Close to hyperventilating now, we decided to wait for it to meander a safe distance away before we escaped to the lodge. We listened and waited as it slowly foraged its way downstream, our hope growing. Then it turned around. It was circling, not leaving. With resignation, we realized we were helpless, at the whim of an unpredictable 1,500 kg animal. After an hour, I began to calm down as I realized it hadn't strayed from the water's edge. My earlier adrenaline melted into exhaustion. "We can sleep in shifts," I offered drowsily to Chris. Two hours later it finally moved away.

BASIL

The following morning, we found out that was our first introduction to Basil, Mukambi Safari Lodge's resident hippo. A young male, he was violently chased away by another group but found a sort of refuge from harassment at Mukambi. He grazes on the grass in front of reception regularly and even enters the lodge. Once, a larger male hippo chased him right through the dining room in the midst of a meal, so the staff always watches him closely. When we were there, they hurried to block off the dining room and reception area with a wicker sofa when he came around. So Basil lay down and slept right there on the second floor of the stone patio overlooking the river like an overgrown house cat. For over two hours he was sprawled out as guests tip-toed behind the relative safety of the sofa and the glass-fronted doors of the lodge taking photographs.

LIONS

Kafue was the sixth National park I've been to in Southern Africa, the second in Zambia. I've been on many game drives and have seen it all. Except lions, which tend to be elusive. In Kafue, we were lucky enough to see two lionesses a total of three times. On a morning drive, we found a lioness in a dry riverbed, chasing away a pack of vultures. She pawed the sand where the carrion-eaters had been and plopped down to rest. Suddenly she rose, keeping her tawny square head at the same level of the long, sunburnt grasses, looking intently into the distance at a herd of puku. Lithely she stepped through the grasses, never losing concentration, not unlike a house cat stalking a mouse. 150 yards away, she stopped. The leader of the puku herd had spotted her and was staring at intently at her as she was at him as his unconcerned charges nibbled grass. Neither predator nor prey moved for several minutes, trapped in a staring contest. Our land cruiser moved on. More than likely, the lioness had lost her advantageous element of surprise and abandoned the hunt, preferring to pick up again in the cooler temperatures at dusk.

We saw her again at the same place in the late afternoon. She was on the opposite bank of the dry riverbed but crossed right in front of our land cruiser, undisturbed by the breathless humans eagerly snapping pictures of her.

Our second night camping, we heard a lion calling multiple times from the northwest. By the third time, it had undeniably gotten closer, but as their roars can carry a distance of over 8 km, he still could have been some distance from us. It was really amazing to sit around a campfire and hear lions and jackals though.

WARTHOGS

At the lodge's ground level, there's a storage area cut into the stone foundation containing bags of charcoal. And a resident family of three warthogs. To my extreme delight, they snort just like domestic pigs.

ET CETERA

In addition to watching vervet monkeys, puku, some amazing birds, and warthogs right in our campsite, we also went on two day game drives and one at night. Animals spotted: lions, bush baby, civet "cats", elephants, jackals, warthogs, vultures, puku, water bucks.

It was an amazing experience seeing this side of Africa that we don't get the chance to see in our daily lives.

Top to bottom and left to right: A male kudu. Definitely the ugliest antelope.

Puku in flight and puku mother and fawn.

Baboons.

A bush baby. One of the few nocturnal primates.

Elephants sniffing the air to smell our scent.

A tree hyrax that fell out of its tree and landed with a thud.

A pretty bird that looks like a lilac-breasted roller, except its green.

Funeral for a Child

I’ve become accustomed to the distended bellies caused by malnutrition, the fungal infections that cause the children to lose patches of their hair, and small dusty, bare feet running on chigger-infested soil. It’s become scenery just as much as the tall, thirsty grasses burnt by the relentless sun during dry season. But the death of a child is not something I can get used to. Despite the special cemetery just for children, with unmarked mounds strangled with weeds stretching far into the distance.
Mpundu Kandeke was five-years-old, with chubby cheeks and a bright smile like her father’s, a farmer Chris worked closely with. Sometime on Friday, she went with her twin brother and some other children into the woods to dig for bush rats, so their families could have some meat with dinner that night. She was young and a girl, so the boys told her to sit and wait for them. She didn’t see the spotted puff adder that blended in with the dead leaves and dried grass she sat on. It bit her on the thigh. On Saturday, her family managed to take her to the clinic, although their house is 3 miles from the road, and another 10 miles from there to the clinic, by the only transportation they had, a rusty Chinese-made bicycle. The clinic could do little for her. No clinic in Zambia could; there isn’t the infrastructure to store anti-venom.
She passed away on Sunday morning, nearly forty painful hours after she was bit. That same day, we and her father were supposed to play in a soccer match organized to celebrate the World Cup, which she probably would have watched. Instead, her male relatives were hammering her small coffin together.
In Bemba culture, twins are revered. You don’t wail for one twin if the other is still living. In this instance, though, her twin brother was the first to cry upon hearing of her death, making it acceptable for the rest of the family to mourn.
The morning of her funeral, the Pentecostal Church choir was singing in her grandmother’s yard for the mourners. Inside the small, empty traditional stick and mud hut, her mother, grandmother, and others sat around her body. It’s custom for mourners to sit for a few minutes with the body after they arrive. She was swaddled in a wool blanket, with only her face in view. The hut was dark and quiet and she was surrounded by her relatives on both sides. It was very peaceful, even after her mother began to softly wail, accentuating the melodious voices outside. She could have easily been only sleeping. Later though, as they prepared to move to the cemetery and drove the nails into her small, rough hewn coffin, that illusion was ruined. We were really going to leave this small girl in the ground, alone, away from all the houses in the village. She would become just another unmarked mound among many mounds, just another child lost. A too-familiar tragedy played out in the savage but beautiful landscape of Africa.

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On 30 June, two proposals I’ve spent the last three months working on will be evaluated. The first is for almost $200 funding from USAID to train three volunteer pre-school teachers in curriculum, lesson planning, and learning aids. The Kasama Pre-school Teacher Training College has agreed to facilitate this five-day workshop for free, although such a training usually costs around $400. The money requested is just to cover stationary supplies, transport, and food.
The second proposal is through the Peace Corps Partnership Program to construct a pre-school building. Since 2007, the pre-school has been using a cramped, abandoned general store as a classroom. The problems with this arrangement are many. The shack is located in the center of the village, where the men drink home-brewed beer, there’s always a radio powered by a car battery blaring, and older children duck in and out to satisfy their own curiosity. Adding to the distractions, there are no chairs or desks, and children crouch together on pieces of broken brick. The floor is dirt, and in the absence of a blackboard, functions as a slate upon which to practice writing letters and numbers. There’s no locking door, so the learning aids utilized by the teachers are restricted to what they can carry in and out each day. Finally, the students are orphaned or from families dealing with HIV or other chronic illnesses, so they especially are prone to fall through the cracks. The pre-school functions to instill in them an early love for learning and prepare them for basic school, but it’s difficult to impress upon them the importance of education and their own self-worth when they’re learning in a dilapidated, ill-suited classroom.
The money for this PCPP comes from you, my family and friends in the great United States of America. The community has agreed to donate local building materials, labor, and equipment, but they cannot contribute the necessary $4,000 in cash. As subsistence farmers, each family survives on a mere $40 a year.
If Peace Corps approves this proposal, I can begin accepting donations in 1 – 2 months. There will be a Peace Corps-affiliated website where you can donate. Of course I’ll post further information, as well as pictures. Please, please pass it on to any individual or organization that you think can help. The kids love attending their pre-school and it really has great potential to prepare children for basic school, improve literacy rates, and keep more children in school for longer.
Stay tuned…

Rotten Guavas

So, recently, here at TBPLTB, we've been doing some thinking. Have we gotten ourselves into a rut? Is it time to move away from the same old text and pretty picture posts we've been doing for the better part of our services? These questions were met with a resounding YES.

Please enjoy our lives through the quirkily honest lens that is Rotten Guavas...

Livingstone and Victoria Falls

A mature baobab, hosting buffalo weaver

birds, and a nesting stork

In the beginning of May, we had to come to Lusaka for our Midterm Conference and medical physical and tests. We both got a clean bill of health, including no tuberculosis. We were a bit worried because everyone in the village seems to have a persistant cough and chickens wander in and out of huts regularly. A lot of the young girls have deep, hacking coughs similar to those produced by an 80-year-old lifelong smoker. Of course, they also spend a lot of time sitting in smoke-filled insakas, leaning over cooking fires, so that could be a contributing factor as well.

This also marks the halfway point of our service. 13 months down, 12 months to go. At this point, Peace Corps Zambia tells us, it's common to have a nosedive in morale. You start feeling like the difference you're making in the village is marginal, like your family and friends in the U.S. have forgotten about you and moved on with their lives, like you've changed too much to fit back into your old life in the states. Chris and I both feel this, along with most of our intake. (speaking of which, our original group has diminished by 9 people since February 2009. Most people were medically separated, others chose to go home). So we had a touching rededication ceremony, received some helpful project-specific books, shared ideas about what has and hasn't worked for us at our individual sites.

For some reason, Peace Corps thinks married couples should stay in a quiet guesthouse 2 kilometers away from all the other volunteers when down in Lusaka on official business. So Chris and I, and Daphne and Tyson (a LIFE couple from Kansas living in Central Province) were corralled into Cheshire Homes Guesthouse while our twenty-odd other friends stayed elsewhere. This turned out to be not so bad because Cheshire Homes is actually very nice, and we met an older American staying there named Craig, a returned PCV from Samoa in the '70s. He's a professor of epidemiology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and is director of some global health programmes, and travels to Zambia frequently for work. He bought the four of us dinner at a nice Indian restaraunt, and a book about Zambia that he found out we'd never read. It was really nice that we had this instant connection to someone we might not normally know, just through similar experiences.

One night, we went out bar-hopping with our intake. We hired a mini bus to take us around for the night. We started at the new casino at Arcades Shopping Mall. Lusaka surprisingly has two classy casinos now. The first bar we went to, the band that was supposed to be practicing didn't show. So Chris picked up an electric guitar on the stage and started jamming with two Zambians that were milling around. They were really into it, and invited him to come back a few nights later. Unfortunately, we couldn't. We moved onto another bar, then ended at the infamous Alpha Bar. Infamous because if you aren't careful, your phone or money will be stolen, and it's where the prostitutes loiter; women squeezed into too-short skirts and plunging necklines hanging onto men in business suits. However, it also happens to have the best atmosphere. Inside, they blare Zambian pop music over a strobed dance floor, and outside, there's a quieter porch with picnic tables. I don't think anyone ended up getting more than 4 hours of sleep that night, before we had to be up at 8am for a session.

After MTC, Chris and I decided to take a four-day vacation in Livingstone. Livingstone, home of Victoria Falls, one of the seven wonders of the world, is the most touristy part of Zambia. It's 6 hours south of Lusaka, and the Falls are flanked by Zimbabwe across the Zambezi River. It's also very close to Mosi-o-Tunya National Park.

Victoria Falls themselves make Niagra Falls look like a small brook trickling over a pebble. It's the end of the rainy season now, so we saw them in their full grandeur. They're about 2 kilometers in width, and plunge into a deep, carved gorge sprinkled with rainforest foliage. It's really breathtaking. You can walk all along them, and onto a bridge cutting across. The spray is so strong that your clothes unavoidably become soaked through, even at a distance of 1 kilometer away. They even have a rent-a-raincoat stand set up at the entrance to the Falls. At the bridge linking Zambia to Zimbabwe, you can bungee jump off the side into the gorge. There's also light aircraft and helicopters that will give you an aerial view of the Falls. Unfortunately, it's a little beyond our volunteer budget.

The Boiling Pot and the bridge where people bungee jump

If you really squint, you can see someone at the end of her/his jump.

The person on the left is coming to "rescue" the jumper before all of the blood rushes to her/his brain.

Our first hike, before we got soaked, was to the Boiling Pot, the massive, turbulent pool under the Falls. It was a beautiful walk through vivid rainforest foliage, with birds calling over our heads and monitor lizards sunning themselves on rocks.

A view from the "Boiling Pot" trail.

On the way back up, we encountered a troop of baboons foraging on the steep hill. There were about twenty in all, from small babies clinging to their mothers to a few large males strutting around. At first I was a bit nervous, because baboons are about German Shepherd-sized and have very sharp canines, but they seemed rather habituated to people wandering around, and ignored us. Until Chris dropped his open bag by our feet (we were with an American living in Tanzania named JJ), and walked up to take a picture of a baboon that was sitting on a garbage can, banging it like a drum. I was transfixed by a very adorable baby clinging to its mothers' back as a male groomed her. Another female walked over and the male grabbed the baby, walked a few meters away, and sat down to play with it. This wasn't necessarily the father; baboons have an interesting social network in which they make friendships that are sometimes lifelong, but don't always mate with that individual. I didn't even notice the male that had ambled up to us until he grabbed Chris' bag, spilling his new internet phone and other belongings on the hillside. I watched in horror for some long seconds as he picked through the bag, dragging it downhill, and considered whether I should throw a rock at him. Then JJ growled at him and raised his arms, and the baboon skulked away, realizing a bag without food wasn't worth the trouble. This occasion marked the second time in less than 4 months that a primate has rifled through our bags and stole things. (The first was when a vervet monkey named Jocko opened my bag and stole some hairclips. Luckily, like a dog, he was easily fooled when I picked up a leaf and pretended it was extremely interesting, quickly discarding the clips in favor of the new thing).

This is a good baboon. She didn't steal anything from us.

Here we are after a good soaking from walking around the falls.

JJ. Our hero.

We went to Gwembe Crocodile Farm the second day to catch a feeding. They have about 20 adult crocodiles that were wild-caught from the Zambezi River, mostly because they were causing trouble. For example, there was one female that was stealing campers' backpacks. Once she even took off someone's foot that got to close to the water, at which point she was relocated. Now all of the crocodiles are used for breeding. Their eggs are incubated at another farm, and the young are used for meat or crocodile skin products. We tried some crocodile meat, and it's pretty good. It tastes like a cross between fish and chicken.

A 1 1/2 year old crocodile we like to call "Dinner"

Our guide actually nonchalantly jumped down into this croc's enclosure and hit him on the snout with a stick to show us his teeth.

*No animals or people were harmed in the making of this picture.

One thing that surprised me was how massive adult male crocodiles can get. They're easily the size of a four seat couch, as long from head to tail as a full size pickup truck. They're not horribly exciting to watch, you can easily mistake one sunning itself on the bank for a statue. They're fed chunks of raw cow meat weekly. They become animated when the meat is dropped into their enclosure, huge jaws with pocket-knife teeth knashing in the air, stubby prehistoric bodies sliding over the ground.

We also went on a sunset booze cruise on the Zambezi River. We heard it was likely we'd see hippos or crocs as we were sailing through National Park waters, but the water level was too high. We did get a nice view of the sunset though, and as much alcohol as we could drink. We ended up spending a lot of time with a Bemba man named Kelly. The predominant tribe in Southern Province is Tonga, and many people speak Nyanja (which is very similar to Bemba. We can understand some of it, but aren't able to speak it). Kelly, though, was originally from Northern Province, very drunk, and excited to be speaking Bemba, a language not commonly used in Livingstone. He was a tour operator and kept pointing out all the other boats on the river to me. Apparently, the large double-decker boats were all Zambian, while the smaller ones came from the Zimbabwean side. Of course, Zambians are proudly nationalistic (There are private companies named ZamBike, ZamBeef, ZamChick, ZamTel, and many more), so this could have been complete heresay.

Obviously not a Zimbabwean boat.

The following day, we went on a "lion encounter." There's an organization named ALERT in Zambia and Zimbabwe that works specifially on lion conservation. They relocate at-risk lion populations and orphaned cubs. Starting at 6 weeks old, cubs are taken on walks in the bush in order to become familiar with it and develop hunting instincts. Once they are able to become self-sufficient, they are put in a fenced, managed area with no competition like hyenas, and allowed to form prides on their own. Finally, they are released into the larger park to have wildborne cubs and become completely independent from humans. So Chris and I went on one of these walks with three 11-month old cubs named Rwanda, Rema, and Rafiji. There were guides with us, and two scouts walking ahead to make sure we wouldn't run into any game. The cubs were playful with eachother, rolling and tackling until they turned into one large blur of golden fur. Chris took some great pictures. At one point, the male Rwanda found a pile of elephant dung and began rolling around in it. Whenever lions find dung they will cover themselves in it to disguise their own scent, so that their prey becomes confused.

Elephant dung: catnip for lions.

Our final activity was a walking safari in Mosi-o-Tunya National Park (only 66 km2). I've only been on game drives before and was afraid that being on foot, we wouldn't cover as much distance, and would be less likely to see any animals, but the opposite was true. On foot, we were able to get deeper into the bush past the roads, and weren't competing with other Land Rovers. We went on the walk with a German couple, the company owner, and a game scout, walking at the front with an AK 47. The AK, he told us, was to fire into the air to scare away an animals in case of an incident. That, and for killing poachers. The first animals we happened across were a herd of zebra grazing on the savanna. We were able to slowly get closer, until we were about 40 feet away. The stallion made sure to stay between us and his herd, keeping one eye on us while he lipped sunburnt grass. The rest of the herd meandered away to keep some distance, then indifferently returned to grazing, flicking their ears against flies. A small brown oxpecker with a red beak perched on one of the zebra's withers, eating its parasites. Slowly, the herd moved

away, and the scout pointed into a thicket of small trees, where a buffalo was staring at us. Unfortunately, we were in an open savanna while the buffalo had the advantage of cover, so it was unsafe for us to approach him any closer. Undoubtedly he had friends hidden from us nearby, so we didn't want to stumble into a herd of buffalo, and gave him a wide berth. We edged away, but he continued to watch us uneasily. Then, a solitary giraffe with eyes half-closed crossed our path, not noticing us until he was just 25 feet away.

He looked at us curiously once from under a fringe of thick eyelashes, then turned to a scraggly low tree. He too ambled away, and we continued, all the while with the buffalo still glaring at us. The scout went ahead because he spotted a rhino in the trees ahead and wanted to make sure it was safe for us to approach. For the grand finale, we were 25 feet away from a white rhino, dozing in the shade. White or square-lipped rhinos are among the rarest of Africa's endangered species. There are only five in the whole 66 km squared Mosi-o-Tunya park. Female rhinos have a gestation period of 18 months, then raise their young for five years. This means female rhinos only have two young during their lifetimes; three if they are extremely lucky. The large male dozing in front of us was one of a dying species. Unconcerned with us, he laboriously shifted onto his side, then stood up, all 3 tons of him. He had intense marble-sized eyes under long, horse-like ears and a snout with two horns underlined by his large, square lips. Except for a hump on his back, his wrinkled body almost looked like an elephant's.

After admiring him for fifteen minutes, we trekked back to the Land Rover, and took the long way out of the park, and managed to see some baboons and vervet monkeys, a family of running warthogs, countless impala, and some hornbills, beautiful graceful cranes and a vulture, both carrion eaters. This was Chris' first game park adventure (and almost, I feel, a rite of passage for travelers in Africa), and he was ecstatic, looking at me every so often with a big grin. I've been on several game drives in South Africa, including a night one at Kruger National Park, but never have I had an experience like this one. A walking safari is definately the way to go to get up close to these animals.