GLOW

First and foremost, I want to include this link for everyone to peruse. It's a place where you can donate to the Mpika district camp GLOW run by Peace Corps. It's a week long camp for girls grade 7-9. We will be promoting leadership, growth, and discussing all sorts of female issues. It will be an amazing opportunity for girls to get out of the village for a week, meet other girls, and learn how they can be leaders in their community. BUT we need YOUR help. It is all donor funded and we need funds for the site (a private girls school), food, transport, motivitional speakers, crafts, etc etc.Please consider donating:

https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=611-062

So I'm back in the village and doing quite well. I must admit that my trips into town are getting better. While it originally took me about an hour and forty minutes, it is now down to an hour twenty. It may be partly due to the winds- Mpika is notoriously windy so it changes daily. The status of my bike also changse my trip times. PC gave us really nice bikes but I swear mine is out to get me. I've fallen off twice now (the major fall, and then a minor one I had kept to myself until just now). My parents sent me an odometer/spedometer which is amazing. Since I got it in mid July I've done over 400 kilmoeters of riding. It's all on rough roads so obviously there is a lot of wear and tear on this thing- but I swear this is always something wrong. I have a small bike maintenance manual that I read cover to cover anytime something is wrong with the contraption but never seem to make much progress. The best I can do is pump of the tires, wash it off, and oil the chain! As if I'm not already a huge nerd with my bike helmet, gloves, and giant back- I really wish I had mirrors on this bad boy. I am constantly turning around and ending up in ditches because I am looking for cars approaching me from behind. Maybe that will be my next major purchase... bike mirrors- never thoug that would be in my vocabulary....

Up by my site right now it's like a wind tunnel! The weather is warmning up here--- I'm getting nervous for hot season! While it's still cool during the evenings and mornings, days in the sun are getting quite warm. Another change in my village has been the traffic. When I first arrived there were quite a few trucks coming by my road (Kopa road) heading towards a giant palm tree plantation called ZamPalm. They are setting up housing there for workers and basically making a huge complex for this plantation- there's even talk of Zesco (the state power company) coming out there and putting in electricity. However of late, there have been fewer ZamPalm trucks passing by. There have been a few tankers and semi trucks but it's a bit sad not to see the trucks full of people heading out to work in Kopa.

What else... Oh I just finished a great book by Dave Eggers- 'what is the what'. It's about the Lost Boys of Sudan during their civil war. Quite a different Africa than I'm used to here. I love Dave Egger's style of writing (especially his 'Hearbreaking work of Staggering Genius')- and in this he is writing a novel, but it is essentially a biography. I have to admit it's strange hearing abuot all the violence and tragedy happening in other parts of Africa. Right now there is a sad story about a mass rape of over 150 women and children in Congo. Peace keepers there didn't even find out about the incident for a couple days after it happened. Strange to think that some of my fellow PCV's are only kilometers away from the border of the DRC.

Anyways- lots of reading being done lately. I'm diving back into the Harry Potter series again also- LOVE those! It will be difficult finding all 7 but I think we have about 5 of them at the house right now. I'm on book two- wish me luck for the others!