Up in the mango tree and down in the hot sand

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Village Justice

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

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

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

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

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


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


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


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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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New Pictures of Chishimba Falls and Lake Tanganyika:

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

We Met the President of Zambia!!

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




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


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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We are Bwana

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

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

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

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

Our Life in Pictures

African Animals!

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

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

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

Water

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

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

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


Our House

Our sitting room and bedroom.

Fun with Iwes

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

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

They like using our guava tree as a seesaw.