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.