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.