My host family

I am staying with ba Doris and ba Kefas, and their 10 year old niece Dorinda and their 3 year old granddaughter Yuni.  They have a daughter named Joyce who lives in Lusaka, but since she doesn't live here I pretty much just consider Do and Yuni my sisters. Ba Kefas is a bricklayer and he's not home a whole lot, at least while I'm here and awake.  Ba Doris speaks Bemba, Nyanja, Tonga, Soli and English.  She's very good about helping me practice Bemba.  The girls mostly just hang around with a group of kids who live nearby.  Do goes to primary school and we usually eat breakfast together.

My room is a separate structure from the house,  and from what I've heard it's pretty large compared to where the other trainees in my group are staying.  I also have a bed and not just a mattress on the floor like most people have, so I feel pretty lucky.  I also have had only a couple spiders and ants and the occasional small lizard in my chimbuzi, which is pretty nice compared to the giant black widow Rachel has in hers.  Some people have also had a rat problem in their houses, which I am mostly thankful not to have to deal with, but Jodi had rats in her house and Peace Corps brought her a kitten to fix the issue so I feel like at least if I did have rats there would be a small silver lining.

Usually I have bread and peanut butter and hot tea for breakfast, and sometimes there is also a hard boiled egg or a banana.  My bamayo gives me a snack to take to school, which is usually an orange or some popcorn or groundnuts.  For lunch and dinner we typically have nshima, which is the staple food in Zambia.  In this part of the country it's made from corn, but in other places it's made with cassava.   It's basically just finely ground corn added to hot water until it's solid, kind of like grits but harder.  We eat it with relish, which are side dishes that are usually cooked vegetables (cabbage, tomatoes, rape, or pumpkin leaves) or protein (eggs, soya, chicken, or beans).  A couple of times my bamayo has let me help make the nshima, which is pretty easy until you get to the end and then it requires a lot of effort to stir it.  I need to work on my nshima-stirring muscles.  On the weekends I usually go with to get water from the borehole, which is about a 10 minute walk away.  It makes me feel like a weakling when my 10 year old host sister carries 20L of water on her head like it's nothing and I struggle along with my two 5L containers (not on my head) but I guess I'll get better eventually. 

We've talked a lot about school and snow and how you can't see as many stars at night in America as you can in Zambia.  My host sisters and neighbors asked me a lot of questions about how people cook, what we eat, how we wash our clothes, etc. They also were really confused by ny kindle and thought a book with a battery was a hilarious concept, and I kind of agree with them.  Overall my homestay experience has been really good.  My family is really nice and we've had some good conversations about how life is different in America and in Zambia.

Fifteen things I learned at first site visit

1.  Never go on a long car ride without an ipod and a camera.

2.  Nshima is way better when your host mom makes it than when you eat it at the Barn Motel.

3.  Whenever someone greets you in Nyanja and you don't understand what they said, just say bwino and then repeat what they said.

4.  Babies generally do not like being weighed, but they can be tricked into getting deworming pills and vitamin A drops if their mom tells them it is a sweetie.

5.  Cooking on a brazier, doing laundry by hand, getting water from a borehole, and taking bucket baths are more time consuming than doing things the way I am used to,  but overall not bad.   (Although I'm sure I'll get tired of it soon.)

6.  A stick lying on the ground in the chimbuzi looks an awful lot like a snake when you go in there half asleep at night.

7.  If you are very lucky, your host dad will take you to see his garden and you will get to taste sugarcane and bring back some oranges and lemons.

8.  When you go visit the chief you are supposed to bring a white chicken as a gift,  but if you don't have a white chicken cookies from Shoprite are acceptable.

9.  People in the U.S. who have dogs train them to come when called, and in Zambia you spend most of your time telling dogs to go away.   You also constantly have to tell pigs, goats, and chickens to go away or they will eat your food or sometimes try to come into your house.

10.  Eggs don't have to be refrigerated in Zambia.  Apparently they only have to be refrigerated in the U.S. because they are pressure washed and it removes some membrane. Here they last up to a month at room temperature.

11.  There are at least 101 ways to use a chitenge.

12.  When you play the "I'm going to the chimbuzi and I'm bringing..." ABC game with health volunteers,  people bring iodine, sunscreen, and diabetes screening.

13.  You can put "Zam" in front of any word and it instantly becomes better.  Zamfriends,  Zambeef,  Zamtired,  Zamfries,  etc.

14. Peace Corps friends are unlike any other friends.  I'm having deep conversations about life and love and bodily functions and everything else with people I only met a week ago, and it's really great.

15.  Zambia is absolutely the most beautiful place in the world.

Finally in Zambia!

I'm finally in Zambia!   I left for staging in Philadelphia on the 10th.  Staging was part introduction to Peace Corps,  part travel logistics and part meet everyone and discuss our expectations and concerns.  It was quick,  but I really liked it because it was nice to be in a room full of people who all are feeling the same excitement,  anticipation,  and nervousness.  There are 63 people in the group, 33 health and 30 education.  We got on buses at 2:30am to drive to New York, waited in a pile on the floor at JFK for a couple hours until we could check in, then went through security and waited some more.  The flight to South Africa was 15 hours long and we were all exhausted so it wasn't a ton of fun.  Then we just had a quick two hour flight to Lusaka.

Peace Corps picked us up from the airport and took us to the Barn Motel,  which is pretty much where we've been since then.  We've been doing a lot of paperwork,  got a rabies vaccine, picked our malaria prevention, and heard a presentation about safety and security and a couple about how to stay healthy.  We also had a session with Ba Beene, the health program manager.   She's really great and very funny, and it made us all really excited for what's to come.  The Barn Motel is really nice;  the electricity works most of the time and there are toilets that usually work.  There is hot water for showers most of the time too, and occasionally a lack of cold water so that anyone who tries to take a shower gets scalded.  That's kind of the opposite of what we expected to happen since we were told to expect cold showers.

Yesterday we went to Lusaka to go grocery shopping for first site visit and get sim cards and phones.  I am going to Eastern province for site visit with Ginny, Meghan, Jodi and Katherine.  We're staying with a volunteer named Sue for four days to see what it's like to live in the village and be a health volunteer and such.  I'm super excited to finally get out of the sort of closed-in environment of the Barn Motel and experience something more similar to where we'll all eventually be placed for two years. We on our way to site visit now, and it's a six hour drive so we'll get to see lots of scenery on the way. 

Packing

It's kind of hard to figure out what to bring when you're packing for over two years.  Of course even if I forget something super important, I can get it in Zambia or ask someone to ship it to me and I'll have it eventually, but there's still a lot to consider.  Peace Corps gave us a packing list, pretty much every Peace Corps blog ever has packing suggestions, and current PCVs and RPCVs have advice.  It's all very helpful, but also really overwhelming.  I think the hardest part for me is thinking about this in an I'm-moving-to-Zambia kind of way, not just packing for a trip.  The most helpful thing for me has been the advice about what people brought that turned out to be utterly useless, the things they're really glad they brought, and the things they left at home that they wish they had brought.  A lot of people have conflicting opinions on what is necessary and what isn't, but it seems like duct tape, ziploc bags, water bottles, a good knife, and a raincoat are the essentials.  Everything else is whatever.

Everything I'm bringing in one picture

Packing party!  Clearly Claire and Max are being very helpful.

All packed up.