Cold Season is coming!

This update is long overdue. It's definitely strange to be in the habit of procrastinating after being away from school for so long. Here, there seems to be no need to procrastinate since I have so much time to plan, execute, and finish tasks. Anyways… I’ll try to backtrack a bit and explain what’s been going on in my little corner of the world.
The beginning of April was pretty busy for me in a number of ways. First, the oldest intake of volunteers was COSing (Close of Service). We had a big party at our provincial house in Kasama which was a lot of fun. It’s sad to think that this place is pretty much like a revolving door in terms of friends and co-workers. Every 6 months or so, people leave, and new people come in. I suppose that’s life though. Anyways, we lost a good group of volunteers after their two years of dedicated service. Many went on to grad school, while some are travelling around, and others are back in the states trying to figure out their next step. Immediately after this party, I hosted what is called ‘second site visit’. The newest intake of LIFE (agriculture) and RED (education) volunteers arrived in Zambia in February. During their 11 weeks of training, they visit two current volunteers’ sites (once in the first week of their arrival and once in their 9th week of training). Two new LIFE volunteers came to my site to see what Mpika is like since they were to be posted here. One of the nicest parts of site visit is the fact that these newbies are given money for food for their visit and get to shop in Lusaka at the nice grocery stores. I had two other current volunteers (my neighbors Chris and Scott) come and help me ‘host’ the newbies. I really only planned one big activity for the newbies to help me with and that was my permaculture garden demonstration at the school. I’ve been waiting to do this demonstration for months, but as is life in Zambia, things were constantly being pushed back. The environmental education club I work with at the school had finally finished a fence and we had purchased seeds, so it seemed like second site visit would be a perfect opportunity to hold the demonstration. Not only would the newbies learn a little about gardening that they hadn’t gotten from training yet, but having that many ‘misungus’ in one place was sure to draw a crowd. I advertised the demonstration by making posters and hanging them at the clinic and our local meeting shed, and also by writing letters to the churches announcing the demonstration so they would be read on Sundays. Unfortunately, people kept asking me, my family, and my counterpart if I would be providing food for such a demonstration. Zambian’s don’t seem to want to attend large meetings/workshops without some sort of compensation since most NGO’s and government agencies provide food and/or money for similar events that they host. This put me in a sticky situation since I did not want to set a precedent for providing food at my demonstrations. Plus, I don’t have the money to be feeding hoards of people. I settled on buying the ingredients for a local drink called munkoyo. It’s made of the munkoyo root, millet, water, and sugar. My counterpart’s wife brewed the drink, but we kept quiet about who paid for the beverage. The event was somewhat of a success in my eyes, while others said it went much better than I thought. Many people came, but we had to do a lot of clearing of grass in the fenced in area before we could dig the actual garden. This is a tedious process and many people were tired by the time the actual gardening began. We made a compost pile, and then double dug three beds to be used as nurseries. The garden will fit about 8 beds, so you can see how short we came of actually finishing the garden. Even now, no more beds have been dug, and nothing has been planted. The environmental education club is supposed to be taking it over now, but since April is a break month for the school, there have been no children around to help. It did seem as though the newbies and the villagers got a lot out of the demonstration which was a major goal of mine to begin with. The only downfall was after we finished working and the villagers sat down to drink the munkoyo. All of them complained that the drink wasn’t sweet enough and that I needed to buy more sugar. I was extremely frustrated at this and simply said sorry and walked away. The rest of site visit went well with us doing walks around the village, eating with my family, and watching my cat Lucy get spayed…I’ve been trying to get this cat fixed for months but the vet in town never had the anesthetic to do the procedure. He called me the day of my garden demo and asked if he could come the next day to fix the cat. I was hesitant since I had so many visitors, but did not want to pass this chance up. He came with his assistant and did the operation on my table in my insaka. I was quite worried since he said he had prayed this morning that it would go well. It indeed went well and Lucy is all healed and healthy now.

After site visit and the garden demo, my next big adventure came over Easter. A bunch of PC Zambia volunteers decided to take a vacation to Lake Malawi. Ever since I arrived in country, one of the places almost every volunteer told me that I should visit is the Lake. Malawi is a tiny country to Zambia’s east, and is relatively easy to get to. The spot we decided to travel to, Nkhata Bay, is almost directly east of Mpika. Unfortunately, there is no direct road there so we had to take the night bus south to Lusaka and then hitch north east to the Lake. When all was said and done, it took us two days to get to the Bay. Hitching to Malawi went well, and after we crossed the border and arrived in the capitol of Lilongwe, we got on a horrible bus to Mzuzu. This bus was more like a city bus than a coach so there was no cargo space and lots of room in the aisles. Therefore the aisles were filled with everything from desks to pots to chickens, and people. These poor folks stood for the entire 12 hour ride to Mzuzu. I’d have to say it was one of the worst travel experiences I’ve had here so far. Anyways, after arriving in Mzuzu late, we caught a taxi to our lodge in Nkhata Bay. This area is one of the only parts of the Lake that isn’t notorious for harboring schistosomiasis- a really nasty infestation of worms in the body. It was absolutely beautiful, and we had a great time. The lodge was built on the side of a cliff essentially so there were lot of stairs to get from our dorm to the restaurant and water. However the food was great, and the water was beautifully clear and blue. I spent a lot of time snorkeling and laying on a floating raft in the middle of the bay. We also took a rowboat out a few times and had a motorboat take us to another bay to do some cliff jumping. While I only travelled with my 2 Mpika neighbors, Raekenya and Chris- there were about 20 PC Zambia volunteers at the Bay that weekend. It was great to catch up with people I hadn’t seen in a while, and even meet a few people I never had before. Transport on the way home was equally as rough and long, but the trip was worth the discomfort.

This past week I helped the newbies do their big shopping for their sites. There are only 5 new LIFE volunteers in Northern Province so it wasn’t too stressful, but it did bring a lot of memories from about a year ago when I was going through the same process. Still can’t believe I’ve been here over a year now… How time flies.
On a less cheerful note, my counterpart’s wife has been in the Kasama hospital for the past week now. She has been sick with a number of ailments for months now and has been unable to receive proper or successful treatment. The hospital/clinic system here is grossly inadequate and sometimes really scary. She had gone to our local Luchembe clinic a number of times only to receive ‘panado’ which is essentially aspirin. Then she was told she should go to Kasama because there was an eye specialist there she should see for her eye ‘sores’ (I still have yet to understand exactly what these sores were). However, the family was having a difficult time raising funds to get to Kasama which is 210k away from Mpika and requires money either for hitching, a bus, or the train. As a white female, I hitch to Kasama, and usually end up getting a lift for free. Unfortunately for Zambians, they do not like to give their fellow countrymen free lifts. Then, they were told that in order for a doctor to even see them in Kasama, they needed a note from our local clinic nurse which would refer them to the Mpika hospital. From there they would need another note referring them to Kasama. For some reason, people aren’t allowed to go to hospitals or clinics that are not in their neighborhood. Anyways, Lawrence was finally able to procure some money for him, his wife, and their two youngest children to travel to Kasama. I visited them in the hospital today and wanted to cry. While Dorothy’s eyes are in much better condition and she has actually been seen by a doctor more than once (a rarity in these hospitals), the hospital facilities itself was so sad. I suppose it would be what you might imagine a third world hospital to look like, but even so, I felt horrible. It didn’t have that sterile hospital smell that so many facilities have in the states. There were no crisp white jackets on the doctors and nurses. A private room is unheard of, and often times the children of the patients are sleeping in the same bed as the sick. I do hope she is released on in 3 days time like they told her she would be, but you never can tell. It’s Saturday, and she won’t see a doctor until Monday.
Otherwise, I have my ‘Midterm conference’ to look forward to this next week. My entire intake will be going to Lusaka for meetings with administration and visits with our medical staff and a dentist. Since we’ve been here one year now, they think it’s time for us all to get a general checkup and to also check in with our supervisors. I’ll actually be in Lusaka for my 24th birthday which is pretty exciting since I’ll be with friends, have good food, and maybe get to see a movie.