COS Conference

New Years eve was spent in the village. I decided I wanted to see what a major holiday is like in rural Zambia. I spent most of the day baking bread, banana bread, and brownies for my family. I cooked soya mince as a relish, and they prepared chicken for our supper. It was a lot of fun just sitting together and talking about what people do on New Years Even in Zambia (drink and go to church). The father from my family, Phillip, was going to go to church with his sister and a few of our other neighbors at around 19 and apparently stay until 6am. I gave him my headlamp after dinner and away he went in his nicest suit, in the dark, to pray at church for a good new year and thank God for the past year. I stayed with Poulin and the kids and handed out glow stick bracelts which they all found very entertaining. Earlier in the evening, Phillip had approached me with a piece of Hanukkah gelt I had given to the family in a Christmas parcel, and asked me if it was real money. He was quite concerned that I was giving him some sort of coin money that he didn't know how to use or where. Everyone thought it was quite funny when I showed him it was just some bad chocolate. The rest of new years eve went pretty badly as I spent the night vomitting and being sick in a myriad of other ways. While it was unpleasant and probably the sickest I have ever been in my life, it was definitely memorable. I was picked up by Peace Corps the next morning and taken to the central province house. Because of logistics and fuel costs and whatnot, they were unable to get me down to Lusaka until the 2nd of January. I saw the Peace Corps medical officer and he gave me some medicine, but by that time I was mostly feeling better. We determined it was some sort of food poisoning. It took a few days for me to get an appetite back, but I wasn't worried about losing that! Luckily, I had to be in Lusaka on the 3rd for the beginning of my intake's Close of Service (COS) Conference. Getting sick turned out to be a blessing in disguise since I would have othrwise had to find my own transport down to the capitol. We all stayed a guest houst together on the 3rd and then had administrative meetings the next day. The purpose of this conference is to prepare us for when we leave the country in April. We talked to a career panel of RPCV's (Returned PCVs) who all work in Lusaka which was pretty interesting. On the 4th, they took us to a really nice hotel outside of Lusaka in the bush. I'm now sitting in a gorgeous chalet with air conditioning, a beautiful bathtub, and huge down comforters and pillows. They bring us here as sort of a treat and it's been wonderful. The food is fantastic, there's a pool, and the best part is getting to hang out with everyone. We've had meetings that deal with learning how to market our Peace Corps service, writing a resume, dealing with leaving the village, etc. Last night, we had a nice candle-lighting ceremony where each of us was given another member of our group and we had to talk about them. It was really emotional for a lot of people, and it has been a really good time for reflection. I was put in charge yet again of another side show so I tried to condence 2 years of photos from a bunch of us into 15 minutes. It didn't turn out being too difficult and I think everyone enjoyed the show. I've been having so much fun here, it's just now starting to process what is actually happening. My roommate is sleeping, it's early in the morning, and I'm getting incredibly sad at the thought of leaving this place. Zambia is my home right now, and noone likes to leave home. These people are my family right now, and leaving family is like leaving a part of yourself.