Pages

Sunday, December 26, 2010

Mwopeleni Mukwai! (Are you enjoying?)

I'm currently at the provincial house to spend Christmas. It's a little overwhelming and intense to step out of the bush that you've been living in for a few months and walk past a gate and into a house that's pretty much a miniature U.S. of A. However, it is nice to have running (hot) water for showers, toilets with seats, and a kitchen with appliances... especially when they work. Not to mention that it's always fun to spend hours playing board games, watching movies, and having dance parties well into the wee hours of the morning. Speaking of which, in the past 48 hours we've started a Settlers of Catan league and have been on a Mighty Ducks marathon. By the way, Settlers of Cattan is an absolutely phenomenal board game... why have I not known about this game? It has seriously changed my life.

It feels as if it was just the other day that I was sworn in as a volunteer and since then the days have flowed into the weeks and the weeks into months. I've been at my site for some three months now and I am slowly falling into the rhythm of life in the village and am beginning to appreciate living a life without all the bells and whistles of modern living. There's something about living a life where your water is drawn from a river, your food and bathing water is heated from an open fire, and your life is dictated by the change in the seasons. Each day has been a learning opportunity as I slowly learn the culture and customs of life in Zambia.

a day in the life.

I live on a compound with an amazing family who have taken me under their wing and have really taken care of me. Each morning I wake up between 5:30 and 6:30am only to find that my whole family have already gone to the fields to do farming. In Zambia it's probably safe to say that 80% of the population are subsistence farmers for if you don't farm you starve. It's hard to wrap your head around the fact that in the village people really do live on less than 5000 Kwacha a day, the equivalent of 1 US Dollar. That said, that's about the price of a beer in town just 40km away. It truly is an eye opening experience to find yourself in a culture where people are financially poor but they're lives are rich in so many ways.

The culture is so family orientated that trying to explain the idea of homelessness can prove to be all but impossible - for every aunt and uncle is a mother and father, every niece and nephew a daughter and son. I've been living with my family for some three months now and I'm still learning how everyone is related. I've since all but given up and have conceded to accept that everyone is related.

I often find myself hanging out in the village center where there's not only a basic school (up to grade 9) but also a market where I spend my days hanging out and chatting with the ladies selling tomatoes, onions, caterpillars, and the like. Before the rains I was spending most of my afternoons playing on the village football (soccer) team. However, it's the rainy season now and and schools out and my soccer ball has met it's end. It is during this time that people are out cultivating and working the land. It's amazing the beating the African bush will do to your soccer ball that you bought from Walmart.

Witch craft.

There's this guy, let's call him Bob. Bob is young in his early twenties and is married with two kids, a boy and a girl. I've played football with Bob and he is a phenomenal player and is great at playing in the midfield. Good ball control and never holds onto the ball for too long.

Anywho, Bob finds me and tells me that he has wants to build a fish pond and wants me to come see his home and farm. So we ride our bikes to visit his home. I arrive at his home shortly and find that he has a pretty small hut with a an even smaller hut to the side. However, something is a little amiss. There I am amazed to find that he not only has solar panels on his small hut but he's even got satellite dish adjacent to the smaller hut that's just about the same size as the smaller hut. This is about the time that I make this face: 0_o. So I think to myself that he's doing pretty well for himself. It turns out that the smaller hut is his "office" equipped with a TV and all. Yes, Bob watches satellite TV in the middle of the African bush that's run off car batteries that are charged by solar panels.

We sit for a little and then he proceeds to take me to see his maize/corn field. We walk down a small path behind the house and come to a clearing in the bush. There I find that Bob and his family have one hectare of maize that's all cultivated by hand a very impressive feat.

It is only the next day that when talking with my Zambian brother that I learn that Bob is actually very wealthy and has contemplated buying a canter truck but was discouraged by his brother. It appears that reason he hasn't bought a canter truck or expanded his home is that he's afraid that the village will accuse him of witch craft. It turns out that jealousy can be very powerful in the village and it can be very very difficult for an honest, hard working young person to become very successful.

I have since come realize that development in Africa is going to be a little more complicated than I thought.


Below you'll find some photos of the last few months. I apologize for the quality of the photos. I've had to sacrifice the quality just so that I can upload the pictures.

No longer a trainee but a Volunteer

Slash and burn


My brother Philip. What? You can't tell?

My younger brother Stanley.

Hitch hiking in Zambia.

I believe we're sitting on a bunch of wood.


Fish pond.


This guy was wearing an UCLA wind breaker. He had no clue what UCLA was.

It's a boat.

Throwing kids.

That's a really tall waterfall.

All kinds of awesome?

The theme for thanksgiving was "classy." Nailed it!

0_o

I believe this was taken around 2:30am the night before Turkey Day. We cooked through the night to meet the 7am deadline when the dessert crew came in.

Peace Corps Zambia: Northern Province


Christmas at the house. I believe this captures it all.

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

I accidently the internet.

It's hard to believe that it's almost Christmas already and the first time I'm going to be updating my blog... in months! Actually, this is pretty much the first time in about 3 months that I've really been able to get to a computer and get on the internet reliably. Man, do I miss the internets. In my defense, I attempted to update my blog during Thanksgiving when all the volunteers from the Northern Province gathered for our twice annual meeting and thanksgiving celebration (with Turkey and all it's fixings!). However, it was also during that time that we had about 33 people living under one roof for 4 days with most of the day and night being without power and water. As you can imagine life got very... interesting. Oh, did I mention that there's only 2 toilets? Ahh... TIA.


vlog2: This is from my home stay in Lusaka about 4 months ago.




vlog3. This is my permanent site taken about a week ago.