Reality in May

I want to preface this post with a note. I love Zambia, Zambians, Peace Corps and the work I am doing here. However it is hard hard work that comes with a lot of emotional and physical difficulties. So this blog post isn't my usual peppy happy blog post but I don't want that to come off as a negative thing or have anyone think I still am not loving it here. I just think its important to share the reality that is living and working in a third world country. With that said the following blog was written in my hut over the past few weeks and I have transferred it to my computer. Therefore it is read kind of as a mix of a journal entry and blog post. I hope you all enjoy...

Some of you may have noticed that I skipped my monthly blog in May. The reason for this wasn't because I was particulary busy or was on vacation, it was because May was a hard month. It was a month that I wasn't sure I wanted to share with my blogging world. However now that May has passed and we are onto a new month I have decided I think it is important to blog about May. All of my previous blogs have been of my adventures, experience and lessons learned in the village. May was a learning month but in a much harder and different way.

I returned from vacation at the beginning of May after being away from my village for 3 weeks. It always takes me a day or two to get back into the groove of village life; the constant Bemba, being constantly watched but also kind of lonely. However this time there was additional hardships which came in the form of funerals.First let me back track and say that in April the day before I was about to leave for Camp Glow and my subsequent vacation there was a funeral next door.
In Zambia you know a person had died when you start to hear wailing. Wailing is the only way to describe the noise that comes through my hut however it seems more than wailing to me when I hear it. It seems like women loudly yelling out their hearts, souls and tears for the person they have lost. It is the truest expression of grief I have seen in my 24 years in this world.
So the day before I left I was cooking lunch like I do everyday for my Zambian counterpart and I. I was in my insaka (a kind of open gazebo) and started to hear the wailing. At first many times it is hard to tell where the loss of life has occurred or who it is affecting as people come from surrounding villages wailing as the walk from kilometres away. However I asked one of my children and they informed me it was my neighbours granddaughter who had passed. My heart dropped as her two granddaughters are two of my favorite kids. However I soon found out it was a granddaughter from another daughter of hers who lives on the village over. I did not know this little one. But the second I could take a breath of relief I just kept thinking it could have easily been one of my little ones.
The child mortality rate in Zambia is one of it's biggest problems. Children die daily from curable illnesses such as malaria, diarrhoea, and malnutrition. I know this not just from living here but from being a health volunteer who reads the statistics and articles about it everyday nonetheless who sees it daily at my clinic. However this never makes the reality any easier. On my way out the next morning I stopped by my neighbours early in the morning to offer some salt and saladi - cooking oil, as that is what is customary when someone is grieving. I wanted to sit and sing with them and the over 100 people who had slept outside and in their yard that night but truthfully I wasn't comfortable enough yet and so I biked off into town, hoping it would all he better when I returned.
I returned in May. My second day in the village it started again. Wailing. Constant, all encompassing wailing. This time it was the mother of one of the girls in my youth group. I couldn't get a clear reason for her death - a common issue here. Some said she fell off her roof, others said she started coughing blood ( a possibility that she has TB but since there is stigma surrounding TB as it is often an opportunistic infection related to HIV many don't seek treatment). Either way his time i was ready and really wanted to go to the funeral, especially as I had just been with the girl the day before. So I went. Women were wailing, people were singing and talking. It was a Sunday so they combined the church service with the funeral. Here it is traditional to leave the body out in the open so people can pay respects and wail over it until it is buried later in the day. In the middle of the service a few of the bamayos - (village women) that I knew tapped me on the arm and pointed to my arm hair. It was a chilly day so my arm hair was standing up which they thought was hilarious. Zambians don't have much body hair so seeing mine put them on a tizzy. It was a nice break in the service. I left the service early - as they can go on all day- and went back to my hut to reflect and cook some food. Although the funeral was incredibly sad I still felt a bit lucky. I hadn't really known this women although I m sure I had waved to her many times, I couldn't place her exactly and felt lucky that once again I had been one step away from the true grief.
Then Tuesday May 17 came where I wasn't so lucky. I was in Mansa doing some work for my my training and was getting ready to head back to my village. It was early in the morning probably around 06:00 and I got a call and text message from my best friend emanual in the village.

From this point forward I am just going to copy and paste my journal entry from that day. The grammer is horrible, sentences disjointed but it is the truest description of what happened and how I felt. It is very personal to me but at the same time feel its important to share..... I titled it grief that day and just started writing.

I think grief and grieving is such an interesting emotion. Today Ba Emma and Stella’s first born one month old daughter, Florence passed away. They will never know why as Zambia’s health care system isn’t up to par to diagnose anything other than malaria and a headache outside of the main hospitals in town that nobody can afford. I was suppose to meet her next week. I kept meaning to give emma baby blankets and onesies that my dad sent but I forgot. I wish I hadn’t. I wish I had given them to him. But then would that have made it harder for him? To have a pink blanket and onesie with no little girl to go into it. I mean I am sure they have clothes and blankets that she was wrapped in but for some reason I feel like it would have been harder if it was something I gave to him. But I still wish I could have given it to him.

The only type of grieving I have seen in Zambia is at funerals in the village. I have only been to two. One during community entry when my bamaayos friend passed away from “ high BP- blood pressue”. It was more of a cultural experience at that time. I was taking in the wailing, the waiting, the singing, the following of the cast. It was very sad of course but I was so detached at that point that it didn’t hit me too hard. The second funeral was the one I went to in Kalaba. It was for one of my youth’s mothers. I I felt included when I was invited to the funeral as it was the first I was invited to in my village. This one hit a bit closer to home. It was my village, my neighbors, the wailing could be heard from my house and I had had a meeting with the youth a day before and had laughed and pushed through brush with the daughter. Still, it wasn’t like this.

This one was raw. Emanual was my first and still best friend in the village. Maybe it is because his English is good, maybe it is because for the first few months we were both bachelors living on our own, maybe it is because he is an outsider from Chipata (Eastern Province) like I am from America. For whatever reason we have stayed close friends for the past 7 months here. He has been there when I needed help finding things in the village, would feed me even when he has no money to feed him and his new baby and when Stella came opened her up to me just like we were the three musketeers. This wasn’t a perfect pregnancy. It was an accident. Stella still has one year left of school and when I found out she was pregnant I was FURIOUS at Emma. HE IS A YOUTH, he sells condoms in his shop, how could this happen!? She only had one year of school left, she was a smart girl, she has been through so much in her life and still beat the odds by making it to high school. But she was pregnant and that was not going to change. So then I started worrying she wasn’t eating enough, working too hard. She was my first pregnant friend and she was Zambian which is a completely different pregnant culture than Americans. I had no idea what to do but was just worried. Then the baby girl came into their lives.. Flo.

I found out while all of the crazy riots where going on in Mansa. I was worried because I knew they were planning on going to Senama clinic which is close to where the riots started. Luckily I found out it was ok they delivered at central clinic and mom and baby were healthy. Now it was time to plan a visit. But first I had a bunch of funerals in my village and started getting busy with the NHC planning. So my plan was to visit her during PEPFAR training at the end of May. I would be here for a week and I could give them the baby clothes then. Then came today..

Got a phone call and text which I assumed was Brendan (my ride) telling me about when he was going to pick me up which was instead Emanual saying his precious baby daughter had passed away early this morning. I called immediately. He sounded devastated on the verge of tears. I lost it when I got off the phone. I called my mom in the middle of the night American time. I needed to talk to someone. She was wonderful per usual and calmed me down and talked to me for as long as I wanted. Then I wanted to run, to get out. So I ran. Then I went over in the afternoon. I expected wailing like usual but found out since the baby was so young that the tradition is different and they bury them right away. So instead it was more like a wake where you go and just visit. I sat there as they told me the story of baby Flo and how sick she got. They tried to take her to the clinic but they couldn’t help. So then they resorted to traditional medicine which I have no idea what they even gave them, but like Emma said, they had no other option? I would have done the same. As other people came, Stella moved closer to me. Eventually we were just holding hands as I watched tears stream down her face and could physically feel the pain radiating off of her. It was one of the hardest moments I have ever been through. No words had to be spoken. Just holding her hand, she wouldn’t let go and neither would I. Eventually I had to go, more people were coming and I needed to get back. I told them both how sorry I was again and left. Stella is 17, Emma is 26, they lost a baby today and I don’t know how they are dealing. I do know that all I can do is try and be there for them as I know they would be for me. They are my family as I am there’s.

Camp GLOW

For the past two months I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to work with 3 other wonderful PCV's in organizing and planning a girls empowerment camp called Camp GLOW (Girls Leading Our World). Camp GLOW was first started in Romania by PCV's during the 1980's. It has since been picked up by fellow PCV's in countries throughout the world. In Zambia the camp has been going on for a few years in the different provinces throughout the country. However my province, Luapula, has never before planned and held a Camp GLOW. I am not exactly sure why, but it just never happened until this year when three girls who came a year before me and will finish their service in September decided to take on the task of planning the first camp from scratch. In late February, only two months before the camp was planned to start, one of the PCV's had to go home unexpectedly to take care of a family illness. It was at this time that the other two girls asked myself and my friend Tiffany to hop on the organizers committee to help them plan the camp. It was an honour to be asked to be such a vital part of such an important project so early in my service, and it is something that I will be forever thankful to them for. Therefore for the past two months my every thought and movement has mostly been around planning this camp. From getting things sent from the U.S., to going around to local businesses for donations, there was a lot that needed to happen in a very short time. However, it all got done and this past week Luapula province held its first Camp GLOW. It was indescribable.

The girls showed up this past Saturday to a catholic youth center that we had rented out for the week. There were 16 girls and 8 mentors. Eight PCV's were asked to bring two girls from their village, ranging in age from 13-16 ( grade 7 and 8) and a mentor who was a women in the community which was well respected and would continue to work in forming a GLOW group back in the community after the camp was finished. We had everyone from teachers, to Traditional Birthing Attendents to Women's development leaders. It was quite an amazing group of women that I was lucky enough to get to know throughout the week. The week was filled with educational sessions on issues which have been proven to hold girls back from succeeding, especially in Zambia. We discussed boyfriends and peer pressure, early marriage, HIV/AIDS, rape and sexual assault, reproductive health, women and traditional rituals, confidence and motivation, educational goals and ended the week with a career panel filled with women that had grown up in the village and were now working women in Mansa, the provincial capital where the camp was held. It was an amazing week and the girls were absolutely incredible. They participated in a way that I have never seen girls in Zambia perform, they opened up about very personal and sometimes painful issues and they grew close to one another as the week continued. They also were able to participate in the fun camp activities that I as well as my fellow organizers remember so well about our summers at camp. We had a movie night with popcorn, arts and crafts sessions to decorate journals and tshirts, sports which included an intense game of netball, friendship bracelet making, a talent show and finally a bonfire on the last night that was filled with dancing, singing and of course Smores. At the end of the week it was like the last day of camp that I remember so clearly from every summer of my youth. There was lots of hugging, some exchanging of information and all smiles as they all departed with a bag filled with lots of goodies, but more importantly with friendships and knowledge that they will hopefully take back to their village and continue to spread to their friends and peers. It was by far the most impactful week of my service this far. To teach these girls the basics of puberty and how their own bodies work, which they would have never known if they hadn't been to this camp ( because its just not taught in schools or really talked about in home life) is just one of the things which really seemed to hit me hard. It makes you appreciate your upbringing and all of the education and knowledge that we took for granted as well as how important it is to spread that knowledge to others who might not have had the opportunity otherwise. To sum up the camp in one blog is nearly impossible, however my friend tiffany did make a slide show that we showed at the end of the camp which is attached to my facebook page. So please look at that to see all of the smiling faces and wonderful girls and women that I was able to get to know over this past week. Peace Corps has its highs and lows, as does life, however this past week was why I have always wanted to do Peace Corps. To see such a difference that you can make in 5 short days makes you wonder the difference that you can make in two years or even a lifetime of work. I am not saying that some of the girls might go back to the village and ignore everything they were taught, as they are 13 year old girls and that is a reality with anything you do. However with my service I have realized if I only changed one girls mind about staying in school, using a condom, or standing up for themselves in school or at home, than I think it was all worth it. I hope you all check out the slideshow. It is pretty wonderful and tiff did an amazing job on it. So now I am off to Livingstone for a short vacation after a long two months of work, just the next adventure in my service! Thank you all for continuing to read, keeping in touch and being so supportive from near and far.

Lots of love to everyone,

Kelsey/Bupe

A Day in the Vil

So everyone always asks me what " a typical day in the village" looks like. I always have a hard time answering the question because each day can be so different from the next. One day I can have a meeting with one of my zones which is 25 kilometers away through the tall grass, broken bridges and muddy slush. Another day I can sit in my hut all day, reading an entire book, listening to the BBC and doing cartwheels with my iwes. However I know that is difficult to explain my new Zambian life to everyone back in America. I thought I would take just one day last week and take you all through step by step. Now this is going to be detailed, so if you don't have time to read it now, you are at work, about to go to sleep, or just busy, I understand. No worries, this blog isn't going anywhere and you can always come back and finish reading later. So, here goes one example of a "typical" day in the village. I usually wake up around 6 to 630am, usually awakened by my rooster which lives outside of my hut and decides to crow, starting around 5:00 am. I lay in bed for about a half hour listening to the rooster constantly crowing, some kids playing and whatever morning madness is going on as most of my villagers have already been up for at least an hour at this point. This particular day I woke up and decided I wanted to go for a short run. I laced up my very muddy shoes ( rainy season=everything is muddy and moldy constantly, one gets used to this quite quickly) and decided to get my day going. I started off on my normal path, which goes over a river and up into the next village however today it had rained an incredible amount so the river had flooded the road and created a small lake on either side of the river. Therefore there were about 20 naked little boys swimming in the newly formed pond and yelling " Kels, Kels, Kels" ( its either Bupe or Kels at this point as Kelsey seems a little difficult for Zambians to pronounce). At this point I realize two things: first, in the U.S. this would be considered wildly inappropriate even though none of the boys were above the age of 6 and were just enjoying a nice morning swim, and secondly, I needed to turn around unless I was going to try and forge the river. So I decided to turn around and run back towards my house and along a different path that led to a different field. However this required me going past my house, where I had already greeted all of my neighbors (Mwashibukeni Mukwai, Good Morning in Bemba had been said at least 20 times at this point) but there weren't many other options. I went back towards my house, where all of my neighbors children started running after me which only made me run faster which therefore made me tired much quicker. Anyway, I got a good 30 minute run in ( a good amount considering all of the distractions) and went back to my hut where my iwes ( what they call children here) were awaiting my arrival. Yes I know right now you are thinking, wow a lot has gone on in the first activity of the day, but just wait it gets better. I returned home, where I know have to light my brazier so I can cook some breakfast and heat my bath water. My iwes are very good at helping me with this as they have been doing it everyday, three times a day since they were born. I on the other hand am still pretty horrible at it and must swing the brazier at least 50 times back and forth ( yes I count when I get bored) just to get some of the coals warm. Therefore, the iwes win. So I made my usual oatmeal for breakfast, took a nice bucket bath and swept the hut of termites and ants which continuously form greater piles every night. They really are quite interesting little things. Anyway, this day I had a meeting with one of my Neighborhood Health Committees to discuss an upcoming training which I am putting together for them as well as some ITN's (Insecticide Treated Nets, aka Mosquito Nets) which are coming through the district and will need help being distributed in March and April. So we walked to the meeting (usually we bike but this zone actually happened to be in my village) and sat under a tree to wait for the meeting to start. This usually takes about an hour (on a good day) from the time we get there, to organize everyone and get the meeting started. However this particular meeting happened to be very well organized so it only took about 30 minutes until it started. The meeting took about an hour and then we were done. However at every meeting it is also culturally necessary to feed your guests so even though this meeting took place in my village and my hut was only about 1 kilometer away, we still had to wait to be served lunch ( which is usually the highlight of my day considering I am not a huge fan of cooking lunch in the hot heat in the village.. yes even though it is rainy season the days have stayed VERY warm). While waiting for lunch one of my committee members took out his sling shot and started aiming into a tree. I didn't see anything so I didn't think much of it, when all of a sudden he shot and something fell from the tree. He went, picked it up and brought it back to show me. It was a baby bird. I almost started crying on the spot. It was dead. I was confused. I asked why he shot the little bird and my counterpart told me he was going to eat it. It was a "I am in a third world country" type of moment. It was only exasperated when a few minutes later my counterpart and I were led into the home to feast on a lunch of half a chicken (meat is only served on very special occasions), nshima, the traditional porridge type of food made out of maize ( my friends call it grits in a hardered form and without any butter or cheese) and a leafy green vegetable. This is the Zambian way. Even if they haven't eaten all day or might only have one meal in a day they will be sure to feed you their best chicken and make sure you eat until you can't breath any longer. After the meal was finished, my counterpart and I walked back to the clinic where he had to go back to looking after patients as he is a voluntary casual employee who although not formally trained gives out medicine when no one else is there to, while I finished up some notes from the meeting and headed home. Of course within 5 seconds of being home my iwes were there to greet me, wanting to fetch my water, sweep my yard and just stare at whatever I do of course all in reward for a "sweetie" which they don't know is actually a flinstone gummy, haha I am so tricky. We hung out, had an art hour where they got to draw whatever they like with the crayons I provide while I got to write in my journal, listen to Larry london on Border Crossings , Voice of America, and then turn in for the day. However not before being lucky enough to stand on my mound and talk to my parents for a few minutes to tell them about my day. After that, its about 6:30 which means a light dinner ( if you ever eat Nshima you won't want to eat for days) and an early bed time, usually crawling into bed by 7:30pm. Yes I know it sounds crazy but when it gets dark, my mouse (which I have named micky) comes out to scavange for food as do other insects, rodents, etc. Therefore I tuck myself into my mosquito net, read for a while, check the news of the day and turn in by 8:30 or 9 for a good 9 hours of sleep. These days the rain usually puts me to sleep, especially now that the leaks in my roof are fixed I can stay asleep without worrying that I will wake up to a flood in the morning. Then the day starts over again. This might sound like a horrifying day to some of you, or one that is unimaginable, however for me it was a great day. I got a lot of things accomplished, only if just meeting people in my NHC and learning what their needs are and what we will work on in the future. I got to hang out with my iwes, have some time to myself, and watch a rainstorm roll in. Life in Zambia is great. It is VERY different than my life in America but I love it all the same. So hopefully this gave you a little better of an idea of what at least ONE of my many days here looks like. So I know my blogs have been few and far between but now that I just got my computer sent, hopefully I can catch you all up a little more often! So I hope everyone is keeping warm in the last few months of winter, just know that lots of love and warmth is being sent from Zambia!

Malawi My Love

Happy Belated New Years everyone!
I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season and start to 2011. My holidays were spent slightly differently this year as they were my first holidays in Africa. I was lucky enough to spend Christmas day with some close friends at a home stay family here in Lusaka. We went swimming ( yes the weather is still very warm here, even with the rains), watched TV and made a delicious Christmas dinner for some other friends who were in Lusaka. The next day we were off to Chipata, the provincial capital of Eastern province. My friend Tiffany and I got a lovely hitch from some men who worked at Barclays and who bought us chicken on the way as a snack. Truly lovely people. I think that is why I love hitching so much, it can be a pain and sometimes it can take forever, but you always meet different people who have different stories. I really wish it was safer in the States so that I could just get rid of my car and hitch everywhere! I have started keeping a "hitching journal" where I tell about our hitch and the people we meet. I hope to look at it at the end of my service and have such good memories of all of my travels throughout Zambia and the surrounding countries. So we arrived in Chipata and met up with some fellow PCV's who were going with us to Malawi. Spent the night there and then we were off to Nkhata Bay! It took us another full day of taxis, mini buses and big buses to get there but once we did we knew it was worth it. We stayed at a lodge which was right on Lake Malawi which other PCV's had recommended to us and it was BEAUTIFUL! It was right on the water, we all had our own porches overlooking the lake, and the people, food and atmosphere was unmatched to any other vacation I have taken. While there we went on a boat tour where we got to go cliff jumping ( not really a cliff but more like big rocks), saw monkeys and eagles and played soccer with some locals on the beach. The rest of the week we really just laid on a platform in the middle of the clear blue water, went snorkeling, ventured into town to explore and ate good food. It was wonderful with amazing company of 12 other PCV's, truly a perfect ending to our Community Entry. So we ventured back into Zambia after another LONG day of hitching and getting back across the border, then stayed in Chipata for a few more days. Chipata is really a beautiful city with green mountains surrounding it. I was happy to get to explore another province for the first time since being in country. My goal is to get to all of them before I leave, they are each so unique and I think you have to see all of them to get the real feel of Zambia. So from there we hitched back to Lusaka, a hitch that should have taken 6 or 7 hours which took 9, ah the life of a PCV. So now I am back in Lusaka for training for two weeks. It has been wonderful eating good food, Thai, Chinese, Irish Pubs, Indian, really anything you could want! However now I am ready to get back to my village. It really has become my home and I miss my friends and family back in Kalaba. So I am here another week and then head back to beautiful Luapula. So I know this blog entry might not have been as profound or "cool" as my other stories from the village, but I thought it was important to know that as Peace Corps volunteers we work hard and play hard. So far 2011 has been an incredible year that I only hope will get better and as these past almost 6 months have been, I can't see it going anywhere but up.
Love and miss you all! Keep the letters, emails, and good thoughts coming. Oh and of course, GO STEELERS ( I will actually be able to watch the game tonight!!!)

All my love,

Kelsey/Bupe