Saturday, August 14, 2010

Mwapoleni Mukwai!

Mwapoleni Mukwai- very excited to have my first Bemba title for my blog! Mwapoleni Mukwai is the greeting in Bemba for when you first meet someone or haven't seen someone in a long time. Since I have been gone for almost a month now I thought it was an appropriate title. So first and foremost I want to thank everyone who has written or e-mailed me over the last few weeks. For those of you who don't know I do have an internet phone here and can receive e-mails on my phone just about everyday. Sadly I can not respond to as many or as long as I would like as they haven't quite gotten the "crackberry" in Zambia and I still have a normal phone with a normal keypad, thus writing is quite a challenge. However do know that for those of you that send me an e-mail I will at least write back with a little thank you!
So now that the logistics are out of the way back to the important stuff! So I have been in Zambia for about three weeks now and I am loving every minute of it. There is so much to catch everyone up on but I will start with where I left off on my first site visit. So to summarize it was wonderful! I stayed with a CHIP volunteer that was just hitting her one year mark and she was great. Shockingly enough she was from Atlanta and went to UNCW for college so we hit it off from the start. After our long journey we arrived in her village and her and her two other PCV friends went on to host a wonderful three days together. We cooked pasta, tacos and rice and soya, we asked her and her friends about a million questions about their service and just tried to soak up every minute. The next day she took us to her NHC (Neighborhood Health Committee) where they were painting a new building they had just gotten as well as putting up posters and planning for a VCT event ( Voluntary Counseling and Testing- aka HIV/AIDS testing) that was coming to her village soon. They were all so sweet to us and all of the bamaayos ( mothers) cooked us a typical Zambian feast, it was about enough food to feed an army even though there were only four of us girls. So I wish I could give you more of a minute by minute of my time but basically the next day we went to this Lake near where the PCV lived and relaxed and asked more and more questions. Oh and I had my first official hitching experience- we hitched on the back of a truck filled with rocks, no wonder the ride was free it was not the most comfortable I've had!
So now back to today. So I have been living with my host family for two weeks now and love love them! So my family is composed of my baamayo (mom) my dad, three brothers and a sister. I am the 7th PCV they have hosted so I think they are basically pros by now. I live in a small small round mud hut. I have a mattress on the floor ( of course with my mosquito net covering me) as well as two small tables and my water filter. There is not much room for anything else but at the end of a long day of training it is my favorite place to come back to. I live in the middle of my families compound which includes their house ( small mud house with a tin roof) and a few other small huts for cooking, bathing, and the other boys to sleep. They speak a little English so it that has made adjusting a bit easier but they are insistent on me learning Bemba so they talk to me and study with me almost every night. As for my "typical day" it is a little hard to describe because in Peace Corps nothing is "typical" or "uniform" and everything is scheduled to change! However to generalize Monday through Friday I wake up around 7 am and I am at language training in my village by 8. My language class is just me and one other girl so the one on one attention is wonderful. Also it is in the village which makes it easier when we need to practice our Bemba, we just walk right out the door! So language is from about 8-12 and then I walk home to have lunch with my family ( probably Shima, a protein and a vegetable, probably doused in oil and salt- Zambians LOVE oil and salt). By 2:00 pm or 14:00 hours I am at the training center for our technical training. Our technical training is anything from HIV/AIDS education, Malaria training, guest speakers or cultural programs. Then by 5:00 we are usually done, just in enough time to bike home before it gets dark, take a bucket bath ( which I have learned to love very quickly), sit around the Brazier and watch my bamaayo cook dinner, eat and I am in my hut by 8:00 pm asleep by 9 or 10. So that is my day in a nutshell. On Saturdays we have half days and Sundays we have free. Last Sunday I went to my first Zambian funeral with my bamaayo. It was one of the most interesting and overwhelming experiences I have had yet but I am so glad I went. The people here are so honest and open about their emotions that they just wail and wail and nobody tries to stop them. It was almost a freeing experience in some sense and I think it is something that you don't see in the West very often.

So I know this is an extremely long post but I feel like everyday I learn something new and experience something completely out of the norm. So for now all I can say is that I am truly loving Zambia, the people are the most accommodating and hospitable people I have ever met. They treat me like their daughter even if we have just met on the street and they would offer me dinner even if they didn't have enough to feed their own family. Their country is beautiful and everyday all I have to do is look at the Zambian sky and know I am doing the right thing. Whether it is in the morning as the sun is coming up and the sky seems to go on forever , my bike ride home as the sun is setting and the most beautiful colors can be seen, or at night before bed as I brush my teeth under the most stars I have ever witnessed in my life, the Zambian sky is incredible. So I guess that is it for now! I don't know how often I will get internet or how much I will be able to update the blog but I promise anytime I get near a computer, a blog will be posted!

So I love and miss everyone very much and if I don't get to post in the next few weeks Happy Birthday to all those back home and know that I will be thinking about you on your special days!
All my love, Ba Cas ( what my host family calls me, "Ba" is a term of respect and Cas is their version of Kelsey since they can't pronounce my name).