Home Sweet Hut

I moved into my new house a little over a week ago, and since then I've spent a lot of time getting it cleaned, organized, and decorated. Aside from a little flea problem, I really love my house. Now that it's a bit more set up it's starting to feel more like home.

This is the view from the front. The piles of brick are there because there used to be a puppy pen (full of fleas) on the front porch and it was recently demolished.

This is the view from sitting on the front porch. The thing on the left is my dish rack, and the thing on the right is my insaka, which can be used for cooking or chatting with guests or hanging out. Brad (the volunteer before me) left a hammock in there, but it was torn apart by some dogs so you can't sit in it.

To the right of my house you can see my neighbor, Ba Justina's house, and my mango tree.  To the left you can see my icimbusu (latrine) and my ulusasa (bathing shelter). Behind the house there is a clothesline.

Next we have the living room, which is nice and sunny during the daytime if I leave the door open. It's even big enough to store my bike inside. I have a couch, a bookshelf, and a chair that I bought from Brad. I hung maps of the world, Zambia, and the U.S. on the wall for decoration. My candle holders are empty beer and wine bottles, but I covered them in chitenge in an effort to make them look more like decorative candle holders and less like I just have empty beer bottles lying around.

Across from the couch you can see my awesome hut warming present from Mom and the space where I'll hang more pictures once I buy some more paper clips. The door on the right with the blue curtain leads to my bedroom and the door on the left is to the kitchen.

My bed takes up most of the space in my bedroom. It has a mosquito net of course, with a sheet over the top of the net to block dust that falls from the ceiling.

I have a hanging pocket thing where I store some of the things I use every day, and some shelves for other storage. My clothes are currently living in bags, but I went to see the carpenter the other day and he is going to make me a dresser. I also hung up all my shoes on the wall so critters don't climb in them as much, but it's still a good idea to shake them out before you stick your feet in them.

I cook over coals outside so the kitchen is really more of a storage room. I have a table, some shelves for food storage, and a bunch of other stuff that just didn't really fit anywhere else. The yellow containers are how I store my water.

Most of my food is inside of the black plastic bucket at the bottom of the picture, and on the green shelves I have some condiments, tea, canned goods, and cooking utensils. 

My table has a nice shelf underneath for storing dishes, and on top I keep my water filter. Above the table I have some hanging baskets for more storage.

I keep my spices on another shelf, and I have a bunch of other things like  laundry soap and extra plastic bags stored in bags hanging from the wall.

Last you can see my pots and pans hanging from hooks on a rope.  I also hung my empty suitcases up on the wall. Basically anything that can be off the ground should be to keep it safe from critters.

Officially a Peace Corps Volunteer!

On August 29th the CHIPs and REDs from my intake had our swearing in ceremony and officially became Peace Corps Volunteers! The swearing in ceremony was at the ambassador's house, which was super fancy and had a pool and a tennis court and a lot of flags and eagles everywhere.  There were a lot of speeches, a couple groups did their performances from cultural day, and we took a lot of pictures. It was fun (and weird) to see everyone dressed up and wearing makeup and chitenge outfits and looking fancy. The oath that we take is usually administered by the ambassador, but for us it was some guy named Tim.  He has a job title, but I forget what it is.  After the ceremony was over we ate probably the best food we've had so far in Zambia, which included chocolate chip cookies and beef that wasn't all chewy and gross. Then we took a million more pictures and that was that.  It was a really good day and I enjoyed it a lot but I have to say it was a little anticlimactic. After swearing in we were all rushed off to the mall to shop for being posted, so it was just a really hectic day. On to the next adventure-- moving in to my new home!

Cultural Day

One of the final events during PST is cultural day, which is a chance for us to show what we've learned about Zambian culture and share some American culture with our Zambian trainers and homestay families. It went really well and it was a ton of fun.  Unfortunately most of my pictures were taken on my real camera and not my phone, so I can't post them until I have wifi, but I'll try to describe everything as best I can.

One of the most exciting parts of cultural day is that the trainees make American food for lunch.  Theresa, Beth and I volunteered to help organize the meal preparations, which it turns out is rather challenging when you're planning to feed 120 people.  We shopped for food on Monday afternoon and spent Monday evening chopping and preparing with several people, then all morning on Tuesday everyone helped prepare the food and decorate the insaka for the festivities. We made burgers, hot dogs, fried chicken, pasta salad, potato salad, napa cabbage salad, rice, vegetarian chili, grilled cheese, rice krispy treats, and apple cinnamon topping for vanilla ice cream.  The cooking part was fun and generally went far better than it could have, especially considering we had only one working burner on the stove, no ovens, and not nearly enough knives and bowls.

We started the ceremony by singing the Zambian national anthem, then ate lunch.  There were a couple speeches by the Peace Corps Zambia country director and the health program director, then speeches from one person in each language group.  I only understood the Bemba speech, and even that one not all the way, but they were all great.  I had to give a speech in Soli thanking the chieftainess, which also went well despite the fact that my Soli ability is limited to reading what was on the paper they gave me.  Then each language group did either a song or a dance in their language. They were all really fun to watch. The Bembas sang a song written by one of our language teachers, which if you translated it into English probably sounds a lot like a song you might expect preschoolers to sing.  I guess that isn't too surprising since we all speak Bemba at approximately three year old level.  After all the local language songs we did an unrehearsed version of the macarena dance because none of us realized we were going to be expected to perform an American song and dance as well.  It was a good last minute choice because all of us know it, but I thought it was a little funny that that's the one piece of American culture we presented during cultural day.

The last thing on the agenda was saying goodbye to our host families. We all exchanged gifts with our bamayos and hugged and took lots of pictures, and then they all left and we all went back to the kitchen to finish what was left of the ice cream from lunch. It was a really good day and a great way to spend my last day in Chongwe before we headed off to Lusaka for swearing in.