Babies Babies Babies!

This past week I have been inundated with baby after baby. I was helping the nurse with the monthly Child Health week. I know I mentioned it before but one week out of every month is dedicated solely to the health of children under 5. It's known as the Under 5 clinic. The nurse travels 6 days out of the week to a different health post in her catchment area (and by health post I mean some sort of building the community has erected for the nurse to hold these clinics in). Usually the clinic consists of weighing the babies and recording it in this under 5 card all the mother's have for each of their children. It keeps track of their weight, the vaccines they've been given, etc etc. The nurse will do some sort of lecture on child health like infant nutrition, hand washing,etc. and that's usually it. This month however, was solely focused on measles. There has been a pretty bad outbreak of measles in Zambia so the Child Health week was geared just towards giving information about measles and then giving the vaccine to kids 6 months to 4 years 11 months. My job in this process was to write down the child's name and age on a pink card. It was pretty hectic, and at times overwhelming. One of the saddest parts was that sometimes if the mother didn't have the under 5 card, she didn't know the day, month or even YEAR her child was born. Just as bad- many of the mother's couldn't spell their children's names. I understand they do not have to write it very much- but it is still pretty sad that they give their child a name they can't spell. The positive is that hundreds of kids are now protected from measles.

Speaking of babies... I have to mention how funny it is when the kids in the village get bathed. You know when a child has recently been bathed because they are literally GLOWING. The mothers here SLATHER the kids in either glycerin or petroleum jelly after being washed. It looks nice until the kid rolls around in the dirt then looks like a ghost because the dirt has stuck to them like flour! Quite hilarious.

The construction on my house is going slow but well. One day a week... Last week one of the wives of a man who was helping made some nshima for us. Since it's usually only about 5 or 6 of us working- it gets tiring. The people here strongly believe that eating nshima gives you power. When they found out there was no nshima in America they laugh and say "oh how do you have power then without nshima?!?" I told them we eat other food that give us energy but they simply cannot accept it. You MUST eat nshima in order to have any power here. Well hate to break it to you folks...

Another thing many of the people here that I meet always suggest is me getting married in Zambia. "Oh you will stay after two years and get married yes?". When I tell them that I probably will not - they get very huffy and upset. "What is wrong with Zambia?! Why can't you marry here?!". I try to explain my parents would be pretty upset if I got married in another country and they weren't there to watch, but this isn't a good enough excuse. Sometimes if I tell them I came to Zambia to work, not get married- that will pacify them. But then they will usually say, "oh you are too old". Haha- thanks!

I had another mishap with my bike involving a broken seat. Let me tell you it is not fun riding standing up. The bolt that holds my seat on completely snapped in half on my way back to my site from town last week. It was quite a hassle trying to get a lift into town to get a spare part. There are pretty much no bolts in town so Peace Corps had to bring me an entire new seat. Ugh. The transportation here in Zambia is pretty upsetting an quite possibly my least favorite thing about being here so far. It's no one's fault really- but it's just really difficult to get around.

The newest intake of volunteers has arrived in the country! They are health and fish farming volunteers. Apparently they missed one of their connecting flights though so they arrived late. A few of them will be coming up here to Mpika for site visit with a volunteer who stays near town. I'm here now to help her host the newbies and hopefully give them the perspective of a new volunteer. Pretty excited to meet some new folks!