the last month

Wow, it’s been a long time since I last wrote. And it’s been an up and down time. We’ll start with the down, but I promise that because this is really long, that if you read further you’ll get to the up part!

Starting about a month ago I had a very challenging two weeks at site. It started with thinking that maybe someone got into my house. This wasn’t really that big a deal because the only thing that seemed to be missing were biscuits (cookies, sorry for the British speak!). But it just made me feel violated in a similar way to when my ipod was taken… that my house is my one safe space in some ways, when I want to ignore people, when I need to listen to music or write, when I cook, it’s my space and the only person that really comes in is Christen, the girl who gets my water and takes care of the house and cats when I’m gone… so when it seemed like someone had gotten in I just felt like I didn’t have a space in quite the same way. It didn’t happen again so I’ve tried to stop worrying.

That was followed by a pretty crazy bike accident. I was fine and it happened because me and another guy collided (I don’t really know whose fault it was… there seems to be no rhyme or reason to the side of the road you ride your bike on here, so who knows?!). I was fine, he was fine, but my bike was bent. Luckily for me I was getting a site visit from one of my supervisors in Lusaka and one in Kasama and the guy from Kasama was able to fix my bike the next day!

But, before they came and the bike was fixed I had a crazy man come to my house and scream and threaten me. This, Peace Corps decided, was serious enough that I should take it to the police. So, along with fixing my bike, my two supervisors and I spent a day at the police station arresting the guy. It seems that he was crazy and possibly also high, not sure. He was very crazy at my house, very crazy at the police station, and then on day 2 at the police station he was much more sane and apologetic and, seemingly, aware. So, I decided not to prosecute and not to go to court if he signed a statement saying he wouldn’t come back to my house and that he understood if he did I would go back to the police. I also haven’t seen him again and am, again, trying not to worry! The whole thing was kind of scary but also really encouraging. So many of my neighbors came to me to say that they hoped I was ok and that he was crazy and that they wanted me to stay and that they knew he shouldn’t come back and would keep him away if he tried to! So, women in the market and the man who runs a guesthouse on the other side of town and my neighbors and teachers all told me I shouldn’t worry and they would keep me safe, which is nice to know.

The two weeks culminated with a fire at my house. This is particularly scary because I have thatch roofing on my hut, so hypothetically it could just all go up in flames, which happens fairly frequently, especially while they burn the bush. Luckily the kids, who are always at my house, saw smoke coming from the house and quickly got my neighbors who literally broke down my door and put the fire out. It seems that the fire started from left over coals that the cats knocked a bag of charcoal onto. Everything was fine but this may have been the scariest part of the two weeks… just feeling like in some many ways I am incompetent and that I can loose that one safe space I have. It was the first time that feeling here just felt soooo out of control. I had several tearful conversations with my mom and the phone about feeling helpless. I also had three of the women who I’m closest to in my village come into my house and hug me as I cried just about being scared right as I ran into the house after the fire had been put out. It was scary to let them in like that in some ways, but also good, to let myself be loved by them I think. Good to realize that there are people who are getting to the point that they can also take care of me emotionally, which is so hard to do when you’re just getting to know each other and have, at times, a lot of difficulty communicating.

But, in some ways, if I was going to feel unsettled and lonely and in need of other volunteers it couldn’t have been better timed because I got to leave right after that. Two days later I headed down to Lusaka for the next set of our PC trainings. It’s called In Service Training (or IST) and it’s the people from your group (for me the health and education volunteers who came in January) and then the same programs from the year before (health and ed from 2006). I came down a day early on a bus where I spent a third of the ride on a box in the aisle and then the next third squished into the back corner with all of the luggage people STUFFED onto the bus and then, finally, the last third I got some space and some sleep.

Then, when I finally got to Lusaka, I went to visit my host family from training. It was really fun to see them and I gave them some of the pics I took when I was with them… of my mom and dad and of my sisters dancing and my adorable little nephew. They loved them and just passed them around and around. We got to meet a bunch of the new trainees which was also fun. It’s crazy to think how much I’ve learned and how comfortable I feel with even just 4 more months than them… language, ability to negotiate, ability to get places by myself on transport, images and ideas I have about my job and my routine and life… I spent the night at the training site and then headed into Lusaka the next day.

IST was really pretty good. I was anticipating being frustrated by it; but mostly, I think, it was good to see people again and now that we have a much better idea of what we’re doing and what we WANT to do we can look at each other as resources in a new and more constructive way. So even though the week was overwhelming and I finished it feeling like I still have A LOT of organizing to do before I can get anything done with any of my projects I felt more excited about actually getting some of that work done.

So, some of the projects I’m working on, both limited to my head and already going with Zambian counterparts, are a zonal resource center at my head school, a library at another school, a writing contest to help open the library another volunteer is starting, linking up with micro-loan programs to get some of my women’s groups loans, a tree-planting project (people at Hillels or synagogues, I’d LOVE to hear from you!), continued IGA trainings with schools in my area, and a youth group. It seems like A LOT and I might go nuts, but, we’ll see!

Finally, after that week in Lusaka several other volunteers and I headed to Malawi for a few days. We went to Nkata Bay, which is quite possibly one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been. Lake Malawi is one of the Rift Valley lakes and so the mountains of the escarpment just come shooting straight down into the lake. Apparently the deepest part of the lake is near where we were and does down 700 meters! We stayed at this beautiful little place called Myoka Village which is just chalets built on to the cliffs. They serve food and you can swim (schisto here I come!) and just sit in the sun or hammock and look out at the beautiful lake. I miss water and I miss swimming and it was warm and just sooooo incredibly beautiful. I felt so at peace being there.

Mostly my friend Keli and I did our planning together even though we were there with other people. SO, we went back together while other people stayed for a bit longer and our ride back was pretty eventful. We tried to hitch for a couple hours and right when we finally decided to give up and go pay for a slow, crowded mini-bus another muzungu (white person) pulled over. He was going to Lilongwe and would, of course, take us! We were super excited, got in the car, chatted with him. He’s a visiting American professor teaching at a Malawian university about computer security and his brother was a PCVolunteer in Latin America. Amazing! Unfortunately about half an hour into our ride, his car broke down. He hitched a ride back to town while we decided to stay there and try to catch another ride at least heading in the direction of Lilongwe. Someone pulled over pretty quickly but in the process of the 6 hour drive south said he had a quick “20 minute” stop at a bank. It turned into half an hour there and half an hour back and an hour at the bank and then he forgot something and had to go back.

So we left Nkata Bay at 6:30 and arrived in Lilongwe around 7 at night with a lot of waiting, some riding in the back of a truck, and some being squished in the cab together as part of those 12 hours. Our plan had been to make it back to Zambia but we couldn’t really after it got dark and so we stayed at the Lilongwe Peace Corps house instead, which ended up being really nice. It was really interesting to meet some of the Malawi volunteers and we got to meet some of the new ones who swore in two days ago and were posted today!

I feel like since so much has happened in the last month I’m skimming over a lot… so maybe I’ll put some of the undeveloped thoughts that have come up in that month here and let you let your minds wander over them. Send e-mails or letters for more depth or questions!

As we were heading to the Malawi border it was a gray day and the clouds were floating in between the mountains at the border. It was Sunday so traffic was quiet but there were still a lot of people riding their bikes into town… the quiet peacefulness of these men riding their bicycles up and down the hills made me feel calm and that I life in a beautiful place. Bikes are so important here. They are a symbol of some wealth since they aren’t cheap and they are literal means of connection. People ride them miles and miles with all sorts of things on them. My favorite of the last two weeks was a door frame. But it’s wood and goal and people and food. One of the girls in my training group commented during training about how the US is full of cars that only one person drives while bikes in Zambia transport whole families and livelihoods.

When we were in Malawi I started to realize how much I’ve started to notice little things about Zambia. My first response to the houses on the side of the road in Malawi was that they seemed to be better structures than in Zambia. One might think this means bigger or not huts or something but for me it meant that I noticed there were more tin roofs and that often the thatch was done different or what looked like better or that there were many many more structures made out of brick (as opposed to mud) and that many more people seemed to have real doors and glass windows. Glass windows, tin roofs, and bricks now seem to be my categorization of a much better living structure… something I probably wouldn’t have even noticed 6 months ago when I first got here.

When we got back to the Zambia-Malawi border there were a couple other Americans who were having trouble with some of the border officials. They weren’t communicating well with each other and the fact that it now costs Americans $100 to get Zambian visas was surprising to them… Keli and I quickly became the in-betweens. All I had to do was start my conversation with a bit of Bemba and then ask about the problem and suddenly people were happy. This feeling that I could effectively communicate with the Zambian officials (mostly in English) because of how I’ve learned to speak “Zambian” kind of, felt very empowering… The immigration officer noticed that I bowed a bit at the knees when another Zambian handed me something and he laughed and said “We will have to give you honorary Zambian citizenship! You even know to bow when you give and receive! You are becoming a Zambian!” Since much of the time I feel that all I do here is stand out and act as the receiving end to people wanting to ask me for money joking with him and some of the police officers felt amazing.

One of the other volunteers here has her sister visiting and she’s been able to be here for a couple months, which seems so wonderful. But, she and I were talking about writing home and how her images from her sister’s letters and e-mails and conversations were SO different than what she’s seeing here, now… so I can only imagine the pictures I am creating in all of your minds. I feel I do some of it justice and then just misrepresent, or maybe just incompletely represent, so much… the invitation is open to anyone to come and visit. This country is so vibrant and beautiful and also lacking so much that is so hard to describe as opposed to just see and soak in. The same goes for Malawi… but even if you can’t come visit I hope anyone reading this feels welcome to push me to answer specifics. Ask me what you want and I’ll try to be as fair and direct as possible!