my life in pictures

They say pictures are worth a thousand words. Here's a few thousand words to help you get a snapshot of my life in Zambia so far.

Life in Peace Corps is rough I tell ya.

One of the many group dinners that happens at the Northern house.

Playing the harmonica.

Hanging out at one of Peace Corps Zambia's training facilities.

Ben.

My cat. His name is Bishop.

Mumbi. Fellow football player and aspiring carpenter.

My brother Shadrick.

A new year, a new post

The hardest thing about keeping a blog in Peace Corps Zambia is that in order to
update you not only need a computer but electricity as well as internet - and in
Zambia those are all hard to come by. NOt to mention that everytime you come out of
the village there's a period of adjustment that happens as you get acquainted to the
wonders of modern living. The last thing one wants to do is sit infront of the
computer so instead we sit around watching movies, cooking meals that'll give you a
hard attack, and playing board games. And then you wonder how you just wasted three
days at the house ("provincial resource center"). That said, the beauty of the provincial houses is that it gives us volunteers an opportunity to really take a break from living in the bush without having to spend two days travelling to the capital. I'm told this is unique to Peace Corps Zambia. I arrived to country and swore in with 50 or so volunteers but am only in the northern provence (the largest province) with 10 of my intake. For the most part I'll only see the other members of my intake when we have trainings in Lusaka about every 6 months, sometimes longer. The other way is to go on vacation or actually purposefully travel out of provence and use vacation days.

I've currently been out of the village for the past three weeks and am itching to get back to site. I was in Lusaka for two weeks attending our In Service Training where we basically learn the dos and don'ts Peace Corps Zambia after our three months of community entry. It is now that we should be equipped with all the necessary tools to begin our work in the village. As for the past week i've been at the provincial house in Kasama attending PEPFAR (President's Emergency Plan For Aids Relief) training where we bring counterparts from our villages and together we get trained to put on workshops geared towards fighting the HIV/AIDS virus.

I'd like to take this opportunity to back track a little a talk about Christmas and New Years. I decided that I would spend Christmas and New Years in my province rather than plan an epic trip to a neighboring country or some large tourist destination. I figure I'd save my traveling for a later time in my service and wanted to really get a good footing of my our province in Zambia. For Christmas I spent it at the house with a few other volunteers and had a deep fried mexican christmas (everything was deep fried, including bacon and butter). A few days before new years I traveled with two friends James and Scott to Mpulungu (a small town on the shore of Lake Tanganyika). It was there at Mpulungu that I somehow ended being front stage dancers for one of the movers and shakers of the Zambian Pop Music (what?) scene, Dali Sol. I'll have you know that all this went down at some back alley stage - if I can even call it that. What i CAN say is that dancing with Zambian prostitutes is actually pretty and is definitely considered as an activity like "hey, you want to go dancing with hookers tonight?" Don't worry, I haven't gone home with any...yet. The following day we ended up embarking on the Zambian commercial fishing vessel that turned out to be 19 hours on one of the largest lakes in the world (please see previous post).

Hanging with one of the movers and shakers of the Zambian Pop Music scene.

After getting off the 19 hour boat ride we crashed for a few hours at the lodge we were staying at before heading towards the site of another volunteer from our intake to spend new years. It was at Babs' site that a few chickens were killed and fire works were set off. It's probably safe to say that most villagers in Mbala have never seen fire works and boy was it quite a site to have a little taste of home in the Real Africa. I believe we barely made it to midnight and had to start setting off fireworks around 10pm just to keep ourselves awake. As you can imagine, there's not much to do in the village when the sun sets - especially when bed time is around 8pm. Needless to say, I had a pretty mellow new years and birthday. Thank you for all the birthday wishes.

Below you'll find some photos from Mpulungu and Lake Tanganyika:

Nkupi Lodge: The very chalet we stayed in.

Swimming on the shores of Lake Tanganyika

View from the lake side bar.

Lake side bar. A 5 minutes walk from Nkupi Lodge.

Photo essay: Fishing the Tanganyika

The following is taken from Wikipedia:

Lake Tanganyika is an African Great Lake. It is estimated to be the second largest freshwater lake in the world by volume, and the second deepest, after Lake Baikal in Siberia; it is also the world's longest lake. The lake is divided among four countries – Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Tanzania and Zambia, with the DRC (45%) and Tanzania (41%) possessing the majority of the lake.

It is estimated that 25–40% of the protein in the diet of the approximately one million people living around the lake comes from lake fish.Currently, there are around 100,000 people directly involved in the fisheries operating from almost 800 sites. The lake is also vital to the estimated 10 million people living in the basin.

Lake Tanganyika fish can be found exported throughout East Africa. Commercial fishing began in the mid-1950s and has had an extremely heavy impact on the pelagic fish species; in 1995 the total catch was around 180,000 tonnes. Former industrial fisheries, which boomed in the 1980s, have subsequently collapsed.

The Zambian fishing crew. This is one of two commercial fishing companies left in Zambia on Lake Tanganyika. According to the captain it is estimated that there were 11 commercial fishing companies in the 60s. However, due to over fishing only 2 commercial fishing companies operate today.

Riding into the open waters. The fishing will not begin for another 5 hours.

Other fisherman delivering not one but three boats.

When the sun sets the work begins. The crew essentially drink sugar water for energy.

On the lookout for Buca fish. Full spectrum lights are used to spot and draw fish to the surface.

Looking for buca fish on the surface.

Light boats. The full spectrum lights are used to attract fish to the surface. These boats wait up to three hours for the return of the fishing vessel with the nets. The system appears to be purse seine fishing.

Ship engineer.

Pulling in and securing the anchor.

The real work begins around midnight.

Pulling in the lead lines.

Victory salute as the sun begins to come up on the horizon.

Zambian fisherman.

The rising sun is reflected in the li

Pulling in the nets before beginning to 4 hour journey home.

Fishing crew at work. This is around 5 am.

The light boats being towed.

Captain.

Ready for the journey home.

Another day at the office driving home.

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.

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.