adventures and mishaps

ah, so i tried to update this yesterday and wrote up about a page and a half of what i had written and then somehow erased it. and the internet is so slow that i just gave up and came back in today!

things get better here each day; though they are still filled with so much up and down that it can really be exhausting at times. i feel like i am making friends and am at the same time lonely, i am starting to love cooking on my little brazier but get frustrated when i can't light it fast enough (i'm getting better at it!), i start to feel that i have ideas and/or plans for what i can do and offer here and then i go to a meeting in bemba and feel incompetent. all of it is, i know, a lesson in patience and i know that thigns are feeling better overall... but there re moments of such confusion and missing people that it definitely doesn't feel like home yet.

that said, i've had a bunch of adventures in the last couple weeks, one of which ended with me coming back to my village and feeling such relief that i was coming back to MY house... my bed, my dishes, my cats, my routines. so, that's nice. and, i now have furniture! which is amazing. sitting in a chair to read and listen to music is sooooo much better and makes it feel so much more settled.

so, adventures: two weeks ago i went down to visit another volunteer who lives about 25 km south of me, or so. she's a health volunteer who lvies near a mission hospital and i went down for the last week of the month when the hospital does outreach in far away villages for the under-5 clinics. we went to 4 villages and probably weighed over 300 babies! crazy. while we did that, there was a hospital nurse who was doing ante-natal and VCT (volunteer testing and counseling) for HIV counseling and results. it was all really interesting and also, at times, frustrating. sometimes it felt that the mothers have just created this monthly or bi-monthly routine, or which they don't understand much... go weigh baby, don't understand the graph or what to do if your baby is malnourished, and come back next month. maybe i'm wrong. i hope so because this is a very amateur observation... but it was def something i thought about a couple times over the three days.

who, you might ask, was the we in this situation? me and the other PC volunteer went with two hospital workers both days and then the first day also went with two dutch medical student volunteers who are doing a study on malnutrition and a zambian music/drama group that does outreach and education. watching them made me really really want to speak bemba better.

the last night that i was down there was actually one of the dutch volunteers birthdays, so we stayed in the hospital compound to celebrate. we made a yummy hamburger curry, took a warm bucket bath, watched a movie, charged our phones, and listened to music. amazing!

i got back to my house with a cemented floor in the front room, which is also amazing. it's so much easier to sweep and take care of and the house just feels much cleaner. unfortunately it was followed the next day by a random, fluke rainstorm (the rainy season is over!) which proved that my roof will, and does, leak. a lot. since then the windy season has also come in in full force and my roof now has a very clear hole in it. i think someone might fix it today, and i have plastic over my bed now, so i think my bed, at least, will be dry and junk free. that day though, my bed, my newly cemented floor, my clothes were all wet. and while attemping to nail some plastic to my walls to cover it all i stepped into a candle and my skirt caught on fire!! in retrospect, it was all pretty hilarious because i noticed right away and didn't get burned at all. but i know have one less skirt and i lespt in my sleeping bag that night so that my sheets could dry. :-)

another adventure, i went to a zambian wedding! which, in the midst of, i realized was either the same day or the day before (turns out the day before) my cousin aaron and denise's wedding in jamaica. it made me feel once again that the earth does little things to remind us of our many little connections. other examples were e-mails from friends literally the day after thinking of them... little, vivid memories of places and then a mention of that person somehow.

anyway, the wedding was interesting... it was at the pentecostal church and then the reception was at a restaurant in town. the wedding ceremony itself had a lot of familiar parts: rings, vows, white dress, veil... in some ways it felt TOO Familiar and reminded me that christianity was brought here and, in many ways, took over leaving little of the old traditions behind. people seem to feel a pressure to give up on the old "african" ways in order to prove their christianity... which seems sad to me. though, the women's clothes and yells and dacing and the beat of the music helped to remind us all that this was an African wedding.

the pastor made a lot of references to the bible and jesus which made me want to read the new testament. i'm putting it on my list. most seemed implausible. one example: he said that adam and eve were married in the garden of eden and that jesus officiated hence proving the divine sanctioning of marriage (old testament, i know) but, um really?! are you really saying that? oy.

the reception was also interseting. pretty structure with people dancing, the bride and groom feeding each other cake, some toasts... a bit bizarre in its structure. and they handed out packaged food because, as another volunteer said, otherwise people would take too much. so we sat and watched the whole thing and then maybe when we left there was dancing... not sure. i wanted to get home before dark.

ok, this is getting really long. since then it has been a bit quiet. this week the schools opened again, which is nice. i'll have more to do. i had several meetings in my village last week which made me feel like i have something to offer here, it was exciting. working with women's groups, doing business training, i'm starting a youth group tomorrow... though i got sick for the first time since being here really, which is frustrating. my stomach is very unhappy and yesterday and today i feel a bit yucky. i went to a meeting at the ministry of ed yesterday morning, then felt so yucky afterwards that i went to see a friend who runs an orphanage in town to see if she had a thermometer and if i could lie down. luckily she did, i didn't have a fever, and i feel asleep for two hours, waking up feeling, though not perfect, much better! so... hopefully tomorrow i'll be even better!

we have meetings in the provincial capital with all the peace corps volunteers in northern province next week, which i'm excited for. i'm excited to see the other people in my intake and here their stories and adventures. and it'll be nice to be somewhere else for a couple days.

anyway, i think i should stop. if you've read this far, amazing! people have been asking me if i need anything from america and i'm not sure what to say... i know it's expensive to send packages and i feel a bit silly asking for things. at the same time, mail is amazing! i've never felt so dependent on that little connection. so some simple ideas: boxed food (mac and cheese, cous cous), granola bars and snacks, chocolate, music, anything to read, anything that makes me feel pretty and clean (both very rare occurrences!), candles, things to give the kids to play with (games, balls, art supplies), batteries, pictures of you! but, really, letters are also just as good. i think if everyone reading this blog wrote a letter every two or three months i'd have a letter almost everyday! hehe, yay!

ok, i miss you all a lot. sooooo many kisses and some zambian love.