Biking adventure

Hello again!
I am back in Mkushi Boma after just one week, its crazy! I think I’ve been avoiding my village like the plague, I’ve rarely been there and when I have been there I’ve had visitors for half the time. I wasn’t really meaning to avoid it consciously, and don’t get me wrong I love my site still (The scenery still amazes me and I am fortunate enough to have made one really good friend and counterpart plus about 4 other friends and one other potential counterpart) but I have been feeling a little frustrated lately and the more time I sit there alone and think about things the more frustrated I get so I’ve been keeping myself too busy to sit and think for the past 2 weeks. I know that I am not supposed to be working for the first 3 months which officially ended yesterday (can you believe I’ve been here that long?) but we each made a list and timeline for some small projects when we met with our village hosts at the end of training. Well, it seems I have not accomplished any of them except to visit 2 of the schools which I did by myself because no my host was too “busy, sick, tired or whatever other lame excuse he had that day” to go with me. I don’t mind doing things alone, but it’s difficult when you don’t know where anything is. I have sufficiently explored the area to be able to find my way around fairly well by now, again no thanks to my host. Even the small things on my list like plant a garden, get a cat, collect seeds, build a clay cook stove, visit the headmen and chief (I have met 2 headmen I think there are 5 and the chief is coming to visit next month so maybe I can meet him then, who knows?) I didn’t expect to change the world by joining peace corps and I didn’t even expect to change the whole village, but I would like to be able to help some people otherwise it seems a little pointless for me to be here. Don’t get me wrong I love being here and it sure beats trying to find a real job in the real world of America, but I sometimes wonder why Peace Corps is paying for me to have a 2 year summer vacation. Yes I realize my work is just beginning and there is still plenty of time and I do have hope, I’m just saying that it has been a little frustrating lately, especially when I see that other volunteers from my intake and program and province are actually doing things and accomplishing things. My village seems too lazy to ever want to work with me (they still haven’t finished the cimbusu pit latrine or the insaka/gazebo thing that were supposed to be finished before I moved in. There is always some excuse, first it was raining to they couldn’t make bricks, then they were making bricks for the school, now they are making bricks for the chief and soon it will be raining again there is no end to the possibility of excuses!) Mostly I think my frustrations lay with my host who was supposed to help me get settled in the village and he is on the housing committee that is supposed to build these things for me, but he is a lazy, lying, greedy, angry (he beat up a man that ended up in hospital for no apparent reason), stealing, cheating, horrible man, probably one of the worst people I’ve ever met and it turns out he’s the pastor of United Church of Zambia. I really like the church in general but I hate that he’s the pastor of the branch in Kafwa so I also have been avoiding church. I think it’s not worth going to service if it makes you feel bitter and angry so I’ve just been having my own church with my Bible, journal and praise songs on my ipod. So far it’s fine although I’m a little disappointed that I miss out on worshipping with other people in my village. As for the rabbit project and the pigs and the tree nursery they are at a stand still. I am very thankful to have found such a great friend and counterpart, Ackson, and he is more than willing to help me with anything, but also he is busy with his own work as well because he has a wife, young son, brother, mother, and younger cousin that he is somewhat responsible for. This past week I returned to site on Thursday and then spent some time reading, until Sunday when Cindy came to visit me and then on Monday we went to visit Mary (I realized later that we weren’t really supposed to because she lives in Serenje district and we live in Mkushi district and we aren’t supposed to leave district during the first 3 months without permission, but I live really close to the border so it’s not even that far away) It was a really cold and dreary day, it drizzled a touch and the sun never came out. We biked 10km to Chalata (the village on the main road) and left our bikes there then tried to hitch but we waited a while and even then we had to pay (generally we wait until we can go for free but the traffic was so slow and it was so cold that we paid). We got out at Mulilima and tried to buy a few things like bread and tomatoes to bring to Mary, but even the market was practically dead and they barely had anything. Mary lives about 23km down a main dirt road behind Mulilima and we were told we could get transport, but it was so dead and too cold to sit so we started walking. A few minutes later a nice fancy land cruiser drove by and the back was completely empty but it didn’t stop! We were pretty angry about that I mean when you see two bazungu (white people) walking on a dirt road in Africa it’s pretty clear that they are Peace Corps or at least some sort of volunteer and cruisers generally belong to government organizations, or NGOs of some sort so they should have given us a ride, but they didn’t. After 2 hours of walking we found a seemingly deserted village and finally found one tuck shop with an attendant to sell us some biscuit/cookie things and then almost to Mary’s we found another village with drunk people where we bought some more cookie/biscuit things and a man called out “girls…Africa…why?” At that point I was kinda wondering also what we were doing walking 20km down a dirt road in rural Zambia, not entirely sure where we were going. Then just past that town we got a lift in the bed of a sweet potato truck for the last 4km or so. Only when we got there did I realize how tired my feet were and that I had aggravated the blisters from the mountain climbing experience that still have not healed yet (things don’t heal here and I am fortunate enough that with all the cleaning and bandaging they have not gotten infected at least). We had planned to spend just one night, but we were so exhausted that we didn’t want to think of transport yet the next day so we stayed 2 nights. We made pancakes, bean burgers and tortillas on the brazier and it was delicious although the consistency of the pancakes and bean burgers were a little off. We were supposed to get these cook books that have recipes for using a brazier specifically designed by former volunteers that know what is sometimes available ingredient wise but of course PC didn’t give them to us just another of the many let downs by PC. I mean really how hard is it to give us a little cookbook that you photocopied in your office and that one little thing would have been so nice and helpful, but no we are left to mix random things together and hope that something turns out ok, which it does for the most part. We walked around her town a bit, but mostly we sat around the fire talking, reading and drinking tea to stay warm. On Wednesday morning we got transport out and back to Chalata then biked back to my site where Cindy spent another night and Ackson gave us a goat leg that we cooked into a curry and it was delicious. Eating meat is such a luxury here and I felt somewhat like a dog devouring chucks of goat. I biked with Cindy past Cangilo village to the tarmac (it is supposed to be a shortcut to Mkushi, but I don’t think it’s shorter it just avoids the tarmac for a bit which is still nice) it turned into a 42 km bike ride for me by the time I got home. Yesterday I biked about 20km trying to find the place where they are building a house for the chief to stay in when he visits (Zambians are not very good at giving directions or estimating distances for the most part) I announced that there will be a village meeting on Wednesday the 29th so that I can introduce myself and my program as a Peace Corps volunteer (again things my host should have done before I even arrived, but he hasn’t done a thing!) also a few people from the Forestry Department are coming to help me implement my programs in the community. Overall I am very happy that the Forestry Department is so willing to work with me and they seem very on top of things. Technically I am an extension agent working under the Department of Forestry but I also work with agriculture and other things. (I guess this is all hypothetical work because I haven’t done any really work yet). I’ve also been working out and doing exercises/stretches in my hut so if I don’t accomplish anything else at least I should be in shape and well read at the end of two years! Today I got up and biked into Mkushi Boma I made 53.5 km in 2 hours and the first 10 are on really rough rocky and sandy roads that I had to slow down for plus the few slight hills along the tarmac. Overall it was wonderful and I feel great now! The weather was perfect, cool, but sunny and I was riding a little into the wind which kept me cool. Also I had my ipod going in one ear and when I wasn’t climbing a hill I would sing along a bit and enjoy the lovely scenery. Our bikes are very good at general things which is perfect because we have a little bit of sand and a little bit of rocks and a little bit of hills and a little bit of mud and a little bit of everything, but today I wished I had a real road bike with more gears so that I could go faster. I have 3 gears in front and 7 in the back and I stayed in 37 the entire time along the tarmac and twice I got up to 55km and hour but my feet were practically flying off the pedals. Regardless they are good enough bikes and I am very thankful for that and it was a lovely bike ride which really brightened my spirits. I was a little worried about biking along side semi-trucks that but there was very little traffic and I biked facing the traffic and in the shoulder so I could move even further over if necessary. At one point I saw a semi coming and I had plenty of space in the shoulder but then just before it paced me I realized there was a semi behind it that decided to pass at that exact moment but there was a bike going the other direction in the other shoulder and the passing semi started to run the other semi off the road and onto the shoulder where I was it was a little scary and I biked into the ditch fully expecting to fall off my bike but willing to do anything to avoid being hit by even a slow semi and somehow I manage to get my feet on the ground while the bike slid out from underneath my and aside from a cut on my hand (from a thorn when I picked up my bike) I was just fine and kept right on biking.
Now I will spend probably 2 nights in the Boma and then head back home for my meeting and some other things maybe I will actually start the tree nursery and the rabbit project although I’m not really counting on it. Then next week I think I will go to the house now that I’m allowed and there will be a goodbye party for 2 of the volunteers that are finishing their service now. Then on the 16th of August we “new” volunteers are headed back to Lusaka for In Service Training or IST. After that most of the volunteers are going to visit Victoria Falls but I decided not to go with everyone because it seems more stressful than vacation like so I think just Mary, Cindy and I will go to Lake Kariba for a few days if we can work out the details.

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Hello everyone! Life here is still going fairly well. After my mountain climbing attempt in the last blog, I returned to the village for a week and then headed to Serenje BOMA (each province has a Peace Corps house where there is an office and bedrooms so we can stay there up to 4 nights a month for almost free, and there is electricity to charge things and a real oven to bake and cook fancy things) I went to an Agricultural show there that was kinda fun and it was nice to see some people. I love my village because it’s beautiful and peaceful and I have 2 really good friends that are brothers and speak English fluently plus I have 3 other semi-friends and a nice teacher plus family that I like to visit. Aside from that I have not done much though because there were some frustrations with miscommunications-about why I was there and what Peace Corps is-and my host that was supposed to help me settle in for the first 3 months of community entry before I actually start working is lazy and not a very good person combined with the fact that everything happens much slower in Africa means that I haven’t done anything and I don’t even have people interested in future projects yet. I know I haven’t been here long so I’m hoping it will get better and I will actually be able to do something in the next two years that I am here. For these first 3 months we are not allowed to have vacation and I feel a little stuck knowing that I’m not allowed to leave my district (Serenje is the next district over but I can go if I have permission) Still, I feel like even now I have not spent all that much time in my village because of going to the BOMA or going to visit other volunteers (I also had my first visitor at site). Mkushi BOMA is about 50km and Serenje BOMA is about 65km away so really it’s not far and I live only 10km from the main road that goes to the BOMAs but it’s still somewhat of a hastle to get transport although I admit I have it much better than many people in other parts of the country. I hitch most of the time and only if I can go for free. One time I had to pay 5pin or about 1 dollar for a ride in a semi truck and it turned out the driver was really drunk, still drinking and scary but after I realized that he didn’t want to let me back out so I just prayed that we wouldn’t crash and luckily we didn’t. That was not the first or last time that the driver was drinking beer on a hitch. I try to wait for a “safe” driver but there’s only so much you can do. The bus drivers and mini bus drivers are usually worse and their vehicles are less road-worthy plus overcrowded. I did take a minibus last week for free in exchange for telling the driver and his friend about America, it was fun but took twice as long because we stopped so much for passengers. I am currently in the middle of starting a few projects-one is raising rabbits for a source of protein and the rabbit cage is behind my hut, almost finished. It took me and a 15 year old only one day to go in the forest and cut down 35 small trees to strip the branches into poles and carry them back to my house. It was kinda nice to finally do some physicl work and the next day my friend Ackson and I took down a wall and salvaged 400 bricks to use for a building to house the pigs we hope to get soon. I also collected a bunch of jatropha seeds to start a tree nursery. I still have a lot of work to do on each project and I still would like to plant a garden but we’ll see when anything happens if ever. Now for some random facts: the 5 second rule from America has become the if the ants haven’t taken it yet you can still eat it despite the dirt because it’s a shame to waste good food. I read about a book a day and sometimes I feel like it’s almost not worth starting a new book if I know I won’t have time to finish it that same day.

Wall of Fame:

Grandma and Grandpa

Grandpa and Chris

Laurie and Andy

Gary and Tracy

Cindy M.

Lori N.

Patti W.

Cathy R.

My parents

*Thanks for the packages because I truly appreciated them and to those of you who haven’t sent packages, there is still time for you to make it onto the wall of fame. (Also I very much appreciate the letters but I don’t have room to list all of you who have written to me)

For those of you that would like to know here is a list of some things I would particularly appreciate:

1. chocolate bars and/or chocolate chips for baking

2. peanut butter m&ms/reeses pieces

3. dried blueberries

4. raisins

5. Gatorade

6. mac and cheese

7. marshmallows

8. cheezeits!

9. baking soda (just a little)

10. brownie/cake mixes

Finally I will leave you with a little info about the food I have been eating in Zambia. The staple is ubwali/nshima which is a polenta type mush that is made from ground finger millet/cassava/sorghum or most commonly maize and eaten with the hands-you dips the balls into a relish. The relish is usually some leaf that is boiled far too long with a little bit of cooking oil and a tomato. My least favorite leaf is rape which is by far the most common in the village unfortunately. Another of my least favorite foods is a tiny dried fish called kapenta that smells horrid and tastes just as bad plus you have to eat it with the eyes and everything. I commonly eat boiled or mashed or fried sweet potatoes which are less sweet than the ones in America and they taste amazing. Mostly I eat pb and j because its easy. Every now and then I have a tuna sandwich or cereal with boxed whole milk (tuna, boxed milk, and whole milk are all things that I never would have eaten in America, but here it’s like a special treat.) One of my favorite parts of leaving the village is eating good food, but I also enjoy seeing other volunteers. I must admit that I recently ate a roasted rat in the village. Actually, it tasted pretty good once you got over the fact that you’re eating a rat. I did have to ask my friend to rip of the head and the tail before I would touch it though. I think that’s all the news that I have for now but I will be in Lusaka in one month and maybe I can put some pictures up then keep your fingers crossed!