creating routine

Things I miss:

-showerheads
-hot showers
-change in stores
-paved roads

Moments to remember:

- the fact that a complaint by the teachers at a school nearby were complaining of being “haunted” at night in their houses was taken seriously at the weekly staff meeting at the ministry of education

- I’m better at keeping up with “The New Yorker” here than I was when I was commuting in DC!

- I’ve started taking a survey each morning of how many people greet me: kids, adults, people I know, people I don’t know, in Bemba, in English, because I greet them first, because they greet me first. Haven’t gotten any numbers yet but let’s just say I’m never ignored. The last time I went to Kasama, where the PC house is, I got back and someone in town (not my village, the town, which is also the district capital) said “Oh, Ba Anna, you are back from Kasama!” oy.


ok, what i'm up too...
I find myself struggling with some of these blog entries. I know I’ve already written this, but I feel it’s hard to capture this reality in a way that will make any sense or be real. How do I capture what’s beautiful and what’s awful in a way that does justice to the people here and to my experience and my observations?

How do I capture the little kids screaming my name as I ride by on my bike? Or my neighbor waving to me in the morning with the traditional greeting “Oh, you’ve woken!”? (to which you reply, “yes, I have!” as if to just be grateful for that very fact). Or the sunsets that I get to watch from my house everyday? Or the teachers who ride over 20 km just to tell me they want me to come out to their schools and to set up a meeting? Or my neighbors who bring me food or teach me how to make Zambian food when they hardly have enough?

And then how do I capture the ironies and the pain… that the bank I go to doesn’t have a phone (let alone a computer or internet)? That the school one of my friends works with has 25 teachers for 1500 students? That one of the high schools near me had a 28% passing rate on last year’s grade 12 exams? That the women in one of my women’s groups estimated that their families live on an average of about $1000/year? I could easily pay that in rent per month when I come back to America and their entire families live on that in a year… That people want desperately to protect themselves against HIV but 1 in 5 people here is HIV+ and yet I haven’t met one person willing to say that they are in my village. 1 in 5 and I haven’t met one.

I think one of the most difficult things about being here is the up and down of each day. That I can have such successes: a neighbor asks for lit charcoal because I’ve successfully lit my fire, a meeting goes well, I say something correctly in Bemba. And they are also full of such questions and unknowns or struggles: how do I say something? Why won’t the kids listen to me? What can I teach a group of women who have nothing to start of with in terms of resources? Will a plan I have for a meeting work?

A friend a couple days ago said that the way she was looking at what we’re doing here is that it’s a learning process for everyone involved. That we’re learning: how to teach, how to organize, how to plan, how to communicate, what it means to develop or, I guess, fail in development. So, we’re coming in as educated individuals ready to work hard and that worst comes to worst we learn what doesn’t work and if nothing else our villages are no worse off then when we came, but we’re more equipped to move our projects/work further when we’re done here. That makes it sound like it’s all about me, us, the Peace Corps volunteers… which I don’t think is quite fair. We all fit ourselves into the “next step” in some way, shape, or form. The skills at facilitating, asking question, evaluating and adjusting seem to be things that we will just improve on, both throughout our time here and for wherever we head to next.

In other project news, the women’s group in my village came to a meeting and was huge! So, we’ve now divided them into 4 groups and are starting at the beginning… what they want to change about their community, what they want to learn in order to start that change, what they need in order to do it. I’m organizing a 3 hour business training workshop in two weeks. I often find myself asking if I really know enough to do these trainings, but then I often realize that I do; that what I come with in terms of skills and training and understanding of business just from living in the states is often more than the women in my village have the opportunity to experience. So, we’ll start with the basics and see where it goes.

Another project idea that recently came up was thinking about the deforestation here and the lack of big trees. I’d love to hear people’s thoughts on this idea… do you think we could partner up with hillels and synagogues to do a Tu B’Shevat campaign that would plant trees HERE? My idea is that we could plant fruit trees, so that people wouldn’t cut them down, in and around schools. The fruit could either be given to the kids or sold by the school as a form of income generation and they would combat the problem of shade and deforestation in the long run. It could also be combined with a series of lessons on environmentalism… Thoughts? Send them to me!

ok, i have to run. internet is getting expensive and i have to run to the grocery store before it closes. so i have lots more to say but it will have to wait. until then i LOVE personal e-mails, letters, questions, concerns, so send them on! and i even usually respond to them!! kisses to everyone.