Kristina Denison

Psychology major, Gustavus Adolphus College

Arriving in Zambia, June 19 email.

Hi everyone! Just wanted to let you all know that I have arrived safe and sound in this wonderful country that is Zambia. We have been here for three days now and so far I LOVE it even though I've only seen the capital city! Tomorrow we are heading out to site visits so we will get to see what the sites we will be living at look like and I can't even begin to say how excited I am. Training has been intense but is going well so far. I will start language training tomorrow and I will be learning Nyanja which is spoken in the Eastern Province which is where my site will be located. It is a pretty big region so it is still up for grabs what kind of site I will be at but all of Zambia is wonderful and beautiful so I am not too worried about it. Other than that I don't have too much to report yet...I've been surrounded by other volunteers thus far but rumor around the mill is that Zambians are really friendly too.

15 July 2007

Things are going really well and training is about half over. We stowed away to Lusaka to get internet, chocolate, and cheese, all things that are pretty hard to come by in our homestays. I am staying with the Fundo family who are farmers and they have 7 kids ranging from ages 11-23. The youngest, Sandra, has taking quite a liking to me and my amai and atate (host mother and father) are now telling me that I can never leave because Sandra will be too sad. About that...But they are really great and I have my own little mud hut room and everything. It's pretty wonderful, just big enough for my mattress, bike, and suitcase, everything a girl could need! 

Three photos from a Master's International gathering at Jim Mihelcic's in May 2007.

Kristina is 5th from the left in the back row.

20 August 2007

I am all done with training and now an official volunteer. It has gone slow and fast at the same time. One of our trainers put it best, "The days go by slow but the months go by fast." I can't believe I will be heading to my village tomorrow! So I will try and recap what I have been up to as best as I can with out getting to boring.

 We went on our second site visit and I got to see my site. It is located about 30km from the eastern provincial capital (Chipata) and about eight hours from Lusaka. My house had walls but no roof, but my village says they will have it done by the time I arrive. I heard a rumor that they put up a roof but I guess I will find out for sure tomorrow! Good thing the rains won't start for at least another two months. The name of my village is Gone, and it has about 150 people. It is tucked behind a slightly larger village which has some good womens groups and a farmers cooperative that I may try and do some work with. I don't know too much else about it yet as I have only been there once and it was for about a half hour. We spent the rest of second site visit with a current PCV in Chadiza, a beautiful area with lots of rolling hills which is right near Mozambique and got another dose of village life.

 Training ended up nicely, they saved a lot of the hands on stuff till the end (building solar dryers, fuel efficient stoves, soya demonstrations) which was nice and helped keep our attentions a little more focused. I did really well on my final language exam as well, so that was promising, now I just need to get to my village and start learning the local dialect. I'm excited but also a bit nervous which I think is normal. It was sad saying goodbye to my host family, they told me they were going to follow me to Gone and live with me, I told them it would be a tight squeeze but we could make it work. They also said I didn't really need to do peace corps, i could just live with them and they would take care of me...tempting... but alas, after a long good bye I was on my way.

 For swearing in we stayed at a campground called Eureka just outside of Lusaka which was really cool. There were giraffes, zebras, impalas, monkeys, and wild buffalo just roaming around all over the place so we went on a mini safari to find them all. They aren't in enclosures or anything so you have to be kind of sneaky cuz if you are too loud they will hear you and run away but if you are careful you can get pretty close and it was really cool. With our excellent safari skills we were able to track all of them down except the zebras. Then the 7 of us headed east loaded into a land cruiser with all of our stuff for the next two years and it was a lot. The normally 8 hour drive to Chipata took11 hours because there was so much stuff on the truck and we lost a couple bags along the way that had to be retrieved. Oops, but we made it eventually and were relieved to have nice beds waiting for us to sleep in at the Chipata house. Of course the power and water in Chipata went out all day Sunday so we couldn’t really get much done in terms of preparing for site and so we spent all day yesterday at the bank, immigration and starting shopping for our homes which will be finished today.

I feel like I have so much more to write about but now that I finally have a chance to get on the computer I am a bit overwhelmed. Not gonna lie, not having access to the internet can actually be pretty nice.

Excerpts for September 2007 Quarterly Report

The training site was located near Chongwe about 40K outside of Lusaka. We stayed in smaller villages surrounding the training center based on which language we were learning (my village was Kapamongoma). Mornings consisted of language training in the village and in the afternoons we biked to the training center for technical training. The technical training we received covered a wide variety of topics including overviews of agriculture and forestry in Zambia, tree nurseries, plant and tree ID, composting, gardening, seed multiplication, food security and strategies, tree propagation, environmental education, permaculture, organic pesticides, manure tea, forest management, income generating activities, non-wood forest products, women’s clubs, groups and associations, agro-forestry, sustainable agriculture, beekeeping, animal husbandry, bamboo ecology and management, fruit and solar drying, grain storage, soya cooking, fuel efficient cook stoves, and action planning. We also had a garden in each village that we maintained throughout training within our language groups. Thursdays were devoted to cross cultural training and Saturday mornings were HIV/AIDS training.

My site is located in Chipata District in Eastern Province. The village is called Gone and it is about 30K away from Chipata to the west. Most of the villagers are farmers and also have a dry season garden. There are about 60 households and about 150 people that live in the village. My job is under the Forestry Department of Zambia but I have freedom to work on any of the projects described in technical training as well as with HIV/AIDS work.

Got used to bucket baths and reading by candle light pretty quickly.

[My host brother Junior and I] ... were playing soccer one night as the sun was setting and the bats started to come out. Junior (who is 14) started to freak out whenever they came near him and I asked him why he was freaking out so much. He asked me “Is it true what they say about bats?” Me, having no idea what he was talking about asked “What do they say about bats?” Junior: “They make you go blind.” He had misinterpreted the saying “blind as a bat” and was under the impression that if a bat gets too close to you it will make you go blind. After having a good laugh I explained the meaning and just like that he was no longer afraid of them. Now if only I can get Patrick to stop rotating his maize with his cotton…

13 September 2007

Well I survived my first 3 weeks in village. There have definitely been some ups and downs and pretty much I think in the first two days I experienced all of the emotions that a person can go through, maybe even some I didn't know existed. But overall it has been good, challenging but good and I really like it a lot.

So I've spent the first three weeks pretty much just settling in and getting situated in the village. It has proven to be a challenging task as the language difference is proving to be quite a barrier. Luckily some of the men speak English fairly well and my neighbor Patrick speaks English very well so he has been helping me learn Ngoni (the dialect of Nyanja that they speak in my village which is nothing like Chicewa, the language Peace Corps taught me). So that has been frustrating especially since hardly any of the women speak English because they either didn't go to school or stopped going at a very young age. 

I get laughed at a lot and have quickly learned that I can't take myself too seriously here. The women here love to dance and love to try to get me to dance with them. It usually ends with everyone laughing at me but its all in good fun. I also try to partake in all the random village activities and they were re-walling (putting a new layer of mud on the walls in one of the huts) and they asked me to come help so of course I did. Well what started as about 4 women slapping mud on a wall turned into an audience of pretty much every woman in the village coming to watch me get my hands dirty and spread mud on the wall. Again there was a lot of laughing involved. 

As far as I can tell the women pretty much do all the work in the village. I get up at 5:30 everyday and go for a run and the women are already out in the fields preparing the beds for the planting season which is coming up. Then they are home making food for the men, doing laundry, taking care of the kids, doing dishes, mending things on the house, cooking more food for the men, getting water, cleaning the house, pounding maize, shelling groundnuts, cooking food and bringing it to the men. And the men? By my close observations over the last three weeks I have determined that they sit around under a tree on an mphasa (reed mat) and listen to the crank radio. They literally won't move for hours at a time and their wives will bring them food at meal time (men and women don't eat together). So that has definitely been a frustrating cultural difference.

The kids in the village are great and they come by my house every morning to greet me and say "Mauka bwanji Amai Nyau?" (Good morning how are you Amai Nyau?)…my new name is Amai Nyau, Nyau is the surname of the headman and it stands for soldier or strong fighter, those of great strength, and Amai simply means mother or misses. So wherever I go, even in the surrounding villages people are always greeting me as Amai Nyau which is a nice change from being called mazungu (white-person or foreigner) all the time. When they ask for my English surname and I tell them it is Denison they try to say it (but can't) and then laugh and say that it is a very silly name and that Nyau fits me much better. So Amai Nyau it is.

Overall my village seems pretty motivated and I have already met with a lot of the Agriculture Extension officers that work in my area and they are excited to have me here and to start working on some projects with me. I've also been to some schools and have some other school meetings next week when I return to village so I am looking forward to that as well. I am also building a fuel-efficient stove this weekend, an experiment I am undertaking on my own first before presenting it to my community just in case the first one doesn't turn out exactly as I have expected. But I think it will be a good project and many of the women have complained about having to go further and further to collect firewood so I think it would definitely be a project they would embrace because not only would they not have to collect firewood as often but it would also slow the rate of deforestation which is obviously a plus as well. So I will keep you updated on how that goes once I get started.

15 October 2007

I got a chicken. I was visiting a village with the headman's wife Bupe and they gave me a chicken and a reed mat. Quite an honor. So now I have a chicken and I brought it home and Patrick told me that I had to keep it in my house for 3 days otherwise it would run away. So for three days I had a chicken in my house which was interesting. I made a little makeshift cage for it but was glad to finally let it out of the house. Then Patrick and I began building a chicken coop, it is almost finished except for the roof but my chicken is so wonderful she has already started laying eggs so we had to put up a temporary roof. Hopefully we will finish the actually roof this sometime this week but I'm getting quite busy with work!

I finished building my stove and the villagers are excited to start building their own as well. I haven't been able to use it yet because me being the brilliant person that I am used a piece of wood that doesn't burn to be a support and now it's stuck, so once I get a hatchet I will be able to get it out and start up the stove, but I will let you know how it works once I get that little problem worked out.

I taught the headman's wife to ride a bike which was very exciting. She borrowed some of my pants to wear as she didn't have any and had never worn buluku (pants) before so she was quite excited about that as well. We went out to an open area past the village and she actually learned pretty fast. It was a fun day and everyone that passed by got a kick out of watching me try to teach her to ride while running alongside the bike. And of course there was an audience of children who planted themselves under the big mango tree to watch the show. 

As far as work goes I have been busy meeting with schools and groups and with the forestry department in Chipata. I helped a women's group bait some bee hives last Saturday and I am meeting with another group next week to do the same. Also getting some trainings set up with some schools to start some tree nurseries so I am looking forward to those as well. I've been doing some soya demonstrations with women in my village and they've really enjoyed it and they keep telling me that I make it better then them so they keep wanting to come over and make different soya dishes with me.

The headman gave me a field so I am going to start working on that next week. I haven't seen it yet, but I am looking forward to having my own little piece of land to work on instead of just visiting the others.

I've also learned the meaning of "there's always room for one more." After many rides to and from different villages I've learned that you can always fit more people in a vehicle than you think you can. I caught a ride into Chipata today and the land cruiser that pulled over was jam packed with Zambians. I didn't think it was possible that I would fit in but sure enough they made room. And we picked up 3 more along the way! Definitely not the most comfortable ride but if it gets you from A to B...

One of my new favorite hobbies is making goat noises at the goats (B. Satterlee I think of you every time I do this.) I decided that goats are worthless in the village as nobody ever kills them to eat them because they save them as "currency" but then they end up dying before they ever sell them and then they don't eat them anyway because they usually die of a disease. So I think it's quite silly to keep them around since all they do is eat EVERYTHING in the gardens, fields, house, etc… but they love their goats here so I guess I will just have to put up with them. And at least the kids get a good kick out of the mazungu making goat noises.

Last story. I got a puppy! Her name is Mabvuto (means trouble) and she is your typical little African dog. She was pretty much terrified of me for the first couple days because people are not very nice to the village dogs and I am sure she had her fair share of rocks thrown at her. But she is getting much better now and the villagers like to joke that she is my "first born." So she keeps me company and the villagers like to laugh at me as I trot her around the village on a rope. They also know they aren't allowed to throw rocks at her or I will be very upset.

20 November 2007

 It rained inside my house! Even though the rains still haven't technically started we've gotten a couple downpours and one night while I was peacefully sleeping in my mud hut with its grass thatched roof I started to feel drips of water on my face. Needless to say grass isn't exactly waterproof. So that was a long night spent awake waiting for the rains to stop and an urgent meeting with my headman the next day to get them to put up the plastic they were supposed to put up weeks ago. Now I am all rain proofed but it is definitely a night I won't forget!

Speaking of rain, everyone here is afraid of it! I haven't quite figured out why yet but whenever it starts raining people panic and run into their houses and refuse to come out (even to cook—unless they are in the kitchen when it starts raining) until it stops. It's crazy. You would think that since the rainy season is so long here people would have gotten used to it but I guess not. They think I am crazy when I go out in the rain and if I am at someone's house when it starts they won't let me leave until it's over. I don't even want to think about what this means for when the rains really start and I am trying to hold meetings and have people attend. Oh well 

I've started doing a lot of work on my field. It is a bit larger than I had expected but so far I am managing ok. Haven't started planting yet but I spend my mornings with my villagers clearing the plot and preparing the rows. Have to say I haven't found a more rewarding feeling then working in the field all morning and walking back to my hut through the fields with the hills of Chipata in the background and a hoe over my shoulder and a puppy at my heels.

My chicken had chicks! My hen had 10 chicks about a week ago which I was very happy about. I only got to be around them for three days though as I spent this last week in Lusaka for our In Service Training. Hard to believe I have already been here for 5 months! So I left Bupe in charge of the puppy and the chicks and I am keeping my fingers crossed that they will all still be alive when I go back to village later today!

We had our In Service Training last week and it was great to see all my friends from training that aren't in my province and I haven't seen in three months. It was sad to leave but I think we were all ready to get back to our villages and the places we now consider home.

I've become an excellent bike mechanic. Before coming if you asked me to tighten the brake pads or fix a flat I would have laughed at you. I guess the fear of getting a flat tire when I am 20K away from my village forced me to learn and now, after 3 flat tires, multiple loose chains, and a loose brake pad I am starting to really get the hang of it. The villagers are very surprised to see me fixing my bike as well because women very rarely ever ride bikes let alone fix them when something breaks.

Mabvuto is doing well. My new name in the village is Amaka Mabvuto (Mother of Mabvuto) because women are called by their firstborn. (Bupe is called Amaka Brian.) The villagers are really taking a liking to her and even Bupe who when we first went to catch Mabvuto picked her up by one leg and held her out at arms length to give her to me now loves to pet her and even lets her inside the house! She also spoils her rotten and feeds her tons of nshima all the time so sometimes Mabvuto likes to be at her house more than mine! Which I guess is a good thing because now when I am away from the village I know there is someone watching out for her. They also think that the flea collar my mom sent is just the most amazing thing in the world. They can't believe there is a collar that can get rid of all the bugs. 

My mbuya is still doing well too. The other day she was trying to catch a chicken all by herself. I couldn't believe it, I don't know how old she is but I know she's one of the oldest people in the village and here she is running around trying to catch a chicken. I tried to help but to be honest my chicken catching skills need some improvement and after the chicken left my property I left it up to her. Well, two nights later she is still running around trying to catch this chicken and finally gets it! Not sure why she didn't ask someone to help but she finally got that chicken and I am sure it was mighty tasty.

Work has slowed down a bit as the rainy season approaches and people are preparing their fields to start planting. I facilitated a couple trainings at the schools with the forestry department on how to establish tree nurseries which went really well and they have decided where they want to put them and are getting started on those so that is good. It is always nice to have something you can actually see to let you know that you are getting work done and actually doing something to help out. Also had some meetings on conservation farming but we will see if anyone actually adapts any of the techniques after this next planting season. Going to do some business trainings in December which I am looking forward to and at the end of this month I am working with my nearest volunteer to do an HIV/AIDS education training.

I have come to find that in certain circumstances I definitely agree with the saying "Ignorance is bliss." I mean this in the sense that if there are creepy crawlers or mice running around my hut I would rather just not know about them and as long as I don't see them it doesn't bother me. However, when they do make an appearance, like the giant furry red spider that runs a million miles an hour, or the cockroaches that fall from the roof, I very briefly reconsider everything that I am doing and wonder what time the next flight to America is. Ok not really, but kind of.

So all in all things are going well. I am going to visit a friend in the Lundazi region of Eastern for Thanksgiving so I am looking forward to that as well. Hope all is well with everyone back home and Happy Thanksgiving!!

19 December 2007

Even though it's almost Christmas I am going to start this email by telling about my Thanksgiving. I had an amazing Thanksgiving at my friend Michelle's site at Mwase Mphangwe. I went with my closest neighbor Julie and the transport on the way there was an adventure itself. Michelle lives on Lundazi Road, which is one of the main roads running north of Chipata. However, you spend more of the time off the road than on it because the road itself is so bad it is easier to ride on the dirt shoulder. We left Chipata midday and hitched in the back of a pickup truck that was going about half way to where we needed to be and then got dropped in some little village to wait around for a ride going farther. After spending 2 and a half hours waiting around and eating Mangoes until we were sick, getting nervous that we might have to pitch the tent and camp for the night, a vehicle finally came along and we made our way sitting on top of suitcases in the back of another pick up. Michelle was waiting patiently for us (for about 3 hours) and took us the final 5K to her site by foot.

Thanksgiving day we spent the entire day cooking and had a proper village feast. We bought two guinea fowl from the next village over and killed them ourselves (ok, Michelle did the actual killing, I did the holding and Julie did the picture taking). We got her neighbor to show us how to boil them so we could pluck the feathers and once the plucking was done we finally handed them over so they could be cut into edible pieces and then we gave all the "edible" pieces that we weren't going to eat (i.e. liver, feet, head—which surprisingly are also considered the "best" pieces) to the woman that prepared them for us as a thank you. Then we seasoned and prepared. We also made garlic mashed potatoes, green beans, skillet fried corn bread, brownies (with three types of frosting: sugar, chocolate-peanut butter and coconut), and had a bottle of wine that we brought from town. So we were very thankful to have each other since we couldn't be with our families but could still partake in the holidays festivities. And it was definitely a Thanksgiving I will never forget.

I finished preparing my field with the help of Bupe and Pilila and I definitely would not have been able to do it without them. Clearing the land was tough work but I could manage mostly on my own, but preparing the rows was way tougher than I had expected! And they do it like its nothing! Bupe and Pilila ran circles around me and could do about four rows in the time it took me to do one! These women are AMAZING! I would go out to the fields with them at 5 and by 9 I would be exhausted and head home. They wouldn't come back from their fields until around 1 or 2! I've planted cowpea and ground nuts and will plant my soy beans when I get back from vacation.

The rains are in full force now and everything looks very different. I am amazed how quickly the landscape can change, now everything is lush and green and absolutely beautiful. There are wildflowers popping up all over my yard and I just love it. Granted sitting in my hut alone for 3 hour stretches while it's downpouring gets old pretty fast but it's a good excuse for training Mabvuto since there aren't really a ton of other things to do. The villagers are also very impressed when I give her a command and she obeys because they obviously don't train the dogs here. So they think it is just the funniest thing when I tell her to sit and she actually sits. I also taught her to shake which they just can't get enough of.

I got sick for a bit which wasn't very exciting but I am fully recovered now. Seems to be the season here as I am definitely not the only one that has gotten ill in the past few weeks but Peace Corps is really good about taking care of us when we are ill so I am thankful for that.

The other week I was in town to meet with one of the Forestry Department officials and surprisingly our meeting lasted just one hour. I could hardly believe it. Usually they are at least 3 or 4. So I stopped at the post office to check my mail and I had a package slip. I went to the counter to pick it up and my friend Mwape (the post man) told me that he couldn't give it to me because it had to be checked by the customs official. I've heard horror stories of other volunteers waiting hours and hours for this guy who says he is on his way and never shows or is a complete jerk and tries to charge them lots of extra money to pick up their package. Mwape tried to call him for me but couldn't get through so he told me I could either come back later or go to the customs office and get him myself. So I headed off to customs to find the officer and of course he wasn't there. As I was debating whether I should wait around or just go he came in. So I put on my best Kristina smile and my best Zambian manners and we chatted for a bit and I learned the reason the phone calls weren't going through was because the night before he was burning grass at his home and he dropped his phone in the fire. Oops. So he had to get a new one. So after about ½ hour of friendly chit chat (you don't want to upset officials so you move on their time) he finally says lets go to the post office and get your parcel. Just as we are headed out the door a woman comes in to see him. She had been smuggling sprite in from Malawi (yes, sprite) because it is much cheaper there and she got caught and she had come to pay the fine and collect her goods. So we all hop in his truck and instead of going to the post office (which is on the way and would be a very quick stop) he takes me along to the customs warehouse so this woman can claim her goods. Of course there is some misunderstanding and her sprite is not there so she has to leave and come back later. So after my tour of confiscated goods and an hour and a half of my life I can never get back we finally get to the post office and I get my package (with the pick up fee waived) and the customs officer still has a smile on his face. But in the end it all worked out well because we are "friends" now and exchanged phone numbers and today sure enough when I went to the post office there was yet another package that needed to be checked by customs. So I dialed the officer and not ten minutes later he arrived and I was on my way out the door with my package. So I guess the one day of polite manners even if it was a slight inconvenience will surely make up for the times that I need him in the future right?

Ok, this is already getting long but so much happens in a month I just never know which things to write about. Last story. The other day I crossed the river to go to Malume village to meet with a group there. We left around 1 to get there and the river was about a foot deep. Just after we arrived at the program it began to rain. And then it rained some more and a bit harder until it was a full out torrential downpour. This went on for about 3 hours and finally stopped around 5 o'clock. So we start to head back and get to the river crossing just before six. Well, the river is no longer a foot deep. So its about to get dark, and the only way home unless we want to back track and head to the bridge that is 10K away and then another 7K from my village once you cross is to go across the river. There is woman there just about to cross that we meet. My counterpart can't fathom me crossing the river and is telling me that I must wait while he and this woman go on. But wait for what? Camp on the side of the river with the snakes and hyenas while they cross and go home to their huts? I think not! So the woman and I begin our cross while Mr. Lungu (one of my counterparts) goes off a ways so as to be culturally appropriate because we will be hiking up our pants past our knees (it is not appropriate for women to show their thighs here). I must also mention that there were a bunch of kids on the other side of the river that came to watch but also got shooed away as the woman and I prepared to cross. So we cross and at first it isn't too bad. My pants and her chitenje are hiked up pretty much as far as they can go and then we hit the middle and the hiking up of clothes was pointless. The water is up to our chests as we wade the rest of the way across. So much for trying to stay dry. We yell across to Mr. Lungu that he is clear to cross and head up around the bend to give him privacy as he crosses. I'm not sure how he did it, he must have stripped down and carried all his clothes across on his head because when he finally met up with us on the other side his clothes were much drier than ours except for the occasional wet spots here and there. Oh well, just another adventure never to forget I suppose. And the villagers are still talking about it…

14 January 2008 (from an email)

I ended up going to Malawi for Christmas and had a wonderful time. We spent two days in Lilongwe spoiling ourselves at fancy restaurants and enjoying some more American like "city life" and then went to a lodge in Nkhotakota to enjoy the lake for 3 days. So it was busy but also relaxing and I had a great time. For New Years I went with some other PCVs from my intake to Livingstone and we stayed with a third year extension volunteer who has a nice place in the city. It was less touristy than I had anticipated but it was good fun and I enjoyed spending time at Victoria Falls. After spending 13 days away at places with running water and electricity it was back to village…

 I had mixed feelings going back to village. It was hard to part from my friends and the comforts that are so easy to get used to and to go back to the mud hut, candles and a bucket bath. But alas, I arrived to open arms and my village was very excited to have me back. Everyone was happy to tell me how fat I had gotten since they last saw me, which would normally upset an American girl but to be quite honest I was pretty happy with how fat I had gotten myself and the things I had eaten in the last two weeks that made me that way. So there it is, I am sure it won't be long until I am back to my pre holiday looks as we are approaching the time of year when everyone one runs out of food and the only things available for eating are deleileh and pumpkin leaves. And since I refuse to eat any more deleileh (its made with ocra, ash, cooking oil and costic soda all boiled up together), which to me tastes and looks like eating snot, I guess I will going the next two months on pumpkin leaves and the food that I bring from town. Such is life.

 Mango season is over but caterpillar season is on (a third relish that is available now but wont be for much longer, thankfully). I was trying to avoid it but of course when you eat with a family and they pretty much only have three options at dinner caterpillars are bound to come up sometime. So the dreaded day arrived when Bupe prepared caterpillars for dinner. They fry them up until they are crunchy and hard and blackend and then they eat them. Luckily for me I have been eating long enough with Bupe that if I don't like something I know I can tell her and she wont be offended. But for the sake of giving everything a fair chance, I tried a caterpillar, bit of the head or the butt (not sure which, and not sure I really want to know either way) and decided that was enough of that. No more caterpillars for Kristina. And as you can see since I have spent the last two paragraphs talking about food, you can imagine the conversations that I have with other volunteers when we are together and the foods that we cant wait to have again when we go back to America. In 19 months (but whose really counting anyway?).

 So I was concerned about the dog and chicken inventory upon arriving back and thankfully the dog count was still the same (although a bit skinner) but the chicken count was down to one hen and 3 chicks. Bupe wasn't sure what happened, she fed them everyday so they may have gotten eaten by dogs or whatnot, hard to say when no one is around for two weeks to ward off the animals but others told me they were probably stolen because the 3 that were left were the darkest colored ones and the 5 that were "missing" were fairly light in color. The lighter the chicken the more you can sell it for. So coincidence? I don't know but I am glad that at least I still have some and quite frankly I don't really care what color my chickens are.

 I also now have a cow that has decided my yard is its home. I have no idea who it belongs to or what crawl it is supposed to be in, but it likes to just hang out in my yard and nobody ever comes to shoo it along with their herd or anything. So I'm not really sure what to do about it but for now I don't mind except for being occasionally startled by it every now and then.

 Mabvuto is getting fat again after my return and although right away she was mad at me for leaving her she is now always at my side and follows me pretty much wherever I go (to the borehole, Bupes, etc.) The only way I can get her to stay behind is to leave when she is not looking or is off in the woods searching for who knows what. So the other day I needed to go to town for a meeting but I didn't want her to follow because the walk to the road was quite far and once I got on transport I wasn't sure she would be able to find her way back. So I took the path to the road that crosses a small stream, knowing that it's a bit high and she wouldn't try and follow. Well I was wrong. I crossed the stream and looked back and waved goodbye as she ran back and forth trying to find a place to cross. I turned around to start walking and hear a big splash. Turn back and sure enough there is my drenched puppy crawling up onto my side of the stream to come along. I picked her up and carried her back across and she didn't make a second attempt but she sure made me feel guilty for leaving her behind.

There is also a bit of drama going on in my village with the second headman at the moment. At the end of February thare is a big cultural ceremony in a village nearyby for the Ngoni Tribe. People from all over Zambia come and all of the villages under our cheif are supposed to donate and certain amount of food and money to the cheif which goes towards teh festival. Well Emanual who is the vice headman of my village and technically the one who is supposed to be looking after me as he signed the agreement with Peace Corps was in charge of collecting all the money for the festival. After he had collected the money he was supposed to bring it to the chief. Instead he took the money and left and no one has seen him for three weeks. hmmm, so I am not really sure what to make of that. He left his wife and kids behind with no food or money and just took off and no one is sure if he will come back. Guess we will just have to wait and see what happens...

Not too much else to mention at this point as I've only been back in village for about a week so I am still getting resettled and have been slowly getting back to work. My field is doing well. It actually has things growing in it so that is good. I need to do a major weeding job very soon so that will keep me busy for a morning or two.  Getting back to work has been tough but its going ok and have some projects I am pretty excited about. I am starting a project building a chicken house with one of my clubs which I am really looking forward to. Also will be giving my first beekeeping lesson all in Nyanja on Tuesday so it will be interesting to see how that goes. Now if I can just figure out what I want to do for my research... Ok, I am going to wrap it up here, I hope everyone is doing well in the New Year, when did it get to be 2008?

21 February 2008

I can't believe it has been over a month since I last had a chance to write. I will celebrate my six month anniversary in village tomorrow which is crazy and I have lots going on to keep me busy which is good. Here are some of the "highlights" over the last month:

Lots of chicken related updates…My friend Maggie came to stay with me and in the middle of the night we were awoken to squawking and all sorts of different chicken noises. Neither of us were willing to go out side the hut and so we waited till morning to discover now I was down to my hen and 2 chicks. Such is life. My villagers said it was most likely a wild cat. Exciting right? My chicken hutch also fell over due to the rain and because the goats liked to jump up on the roof of it to get to the leaves on the trees that hang above it. Luckily my chickens don't sleep in it but sleep in the kitchen (however if they slept in the hutch wild cats wouldn't be able to get them…) Lastly, my hen is laying again. So hopefully I will have a higher survival rate this time. She laid 8 eggs and is now sitting on them and they should be hatching by the end of this month. I am excited to have little chicks again and I am in the process of wild cat proofing the kitchen.

Kids, chickens, and ducks.

My field is doing great. Everything is growing and looking good. I made the mistake of waiting way to long to do the weeding (I am embarrassed to even say how long I waited) but when I finally got around to doing it everyone in my village said I wouldn't be able to manage and that I should hire some villagers to do it. Too stubborn to pay for the work and wanting to do it myself, three days and 15 hours later it was done. Bupe came by just as I was finishing up and had a look of astonishment on her face. She said "Amai Nyau, who helped you?" When I told her no one she could hardly believe it. But it felt good to do it and not have to rely on others for a change. But I learned my lesson and next year I will be weeding early and often…

I visited the Chipungo Rural Health Clinic which is the clinic my villagers go to and I am going to start working with them on a proposal to build a maternity wing. It was one of those eye opening experiences because the facilities are so poor and there was only one nurse to care for all of the patients. It breaks your heart to see the suffering and lack of care that people are getting. It really makes you realize how lucky we are and how lucky I am even as a volunteer that when I have a problem I am able to get immediate help from our Peace Corps medical officers.

Michelle and Kristina.

I spent a few days in Lusaka to meet with my APCD about some projects and for some other meetings. The day we were supposed to head back one of the bridges along the Great East Road collapsed due to the heavy rains that we've been having (they are heavier than usual) so 8 of us trying to get back to Eastern ended up having to stay 2 extra days in Lusaka while they made a temporary bridge. It was a nice to spend the extra days in the city on Peace Corps but by the time the temporary bridge was up I think we were all tired of city life and ready to get back.

Lately I have been having an uninvited visitor in my house every evening around 7pm. It's a frog, and he sneaks into my hut (ok, the door is always open so its not that hard,) and Mabvuto goes crazy barking like a mad dog until I catch it and put it back outside. But every evening, no matter how far away from my house I put it, it always shows up the next night! I don't know what the deal is. All I know is that I happy its a frog problem and not a mouse problem anymore because a frog every night is much less of an inconvenience then when I was having mouse issues.

Work is going well and keeping me busy. Still doing lots of work with beekeeping with various groups and also with some schools now. I am also doing some gardening with one of my schools and lessons on composting and manure tea. I am having a lot of fun working with the schools and find that they are a bit more organized and willing to do work than some of the communities in the villages. I do have a group of 4 farmers in the next village over and we have started a tree nursery and planted lemon seeds to grow lemon seedlings. We are going to turn them into orange trees by budding them and they want to start orange orchards. So we are just getting started but they are very motivated and I think it will turn out. I am really excited about it even though I most likely won’t be around to see the orchard at its full potential.

I am making some home improvements in my hut and had some benches made so I don't have to sit on the floor anymore. I convinced my PC neighbor Julie to come with me to pick them up yesterday (I didn't tell here they were being made in a village 18K away) and so we rode out to get them. When we got there and got them tied up on the back of our bikes we must have been quite a site to everyone passing as we biked on the great east road. Everyone kept staring at us it was quite funny. Imagine two white girls biking with long wooden benches strapped to the back of their bikes, we are true Zambians now.

I spent last weekend in Malawi visiting some friends that I met over Christmas. It was really nice as Lilongwe is a really nice city (comparable to Lusaka) that has a lot more to offer than Chipata but is much closer than going all the way to Lusaka (its less than 2 hours away.) We planned on going to the lake for a day but the rain got the better of us so we just spent time in the city going out to eat and hopping around town. My friends stay in Lilongwe but they are going to come out to my village for my birthday at the end of this month so I think they will be surprised to see where I live since they haven't been over here yet!

9 April 2008

I upgraded my hut. And by upgraded I mean I bought some nice benches with soft cushions for my "living room" so now I don't have to sit on a reed mat on the floor all the time. (Funny thing is that I still find myself on the floor more often than not even though I have the benches! Oh well, at least they look nice!)

The big N'cwala ceremony was at the end of February and it was lots of fun. Three of my Peace Corps friends came and stayed with me for it and we spent the days watching the dancing and singing of the Ngoni tribe (same tribe my village belongs to.) They wear animal furs and skins and it was really cool but there were tons and tons of people around (the main arena where they hold the ceremony is just 7 kilometers from my village!) Even the President of Zambia made it out for the festivities. And on the last day as is tradition the senior chief killed a bull and drank the blood. Yum yum!

Right after the ceremony finished I hosted 5 new volunteers for their first site visit. They had been in country for 3 days and then came to my place for 4 days to get a taste of village life. I think they had a good time (none of them went home afterwards!). I took them to my field and they helped with a bit of weeding, we went to the school and the kids did some dancing and singing for them, went to the market, and did pretty much all the village type things. On my birthday I had them catch 2 of my chickens (it only took 3 hours!!!) And then with Bupe we prepared them and had a big birthday feast and the whole village came out for some dancing and a "party" that night, Lots of fun. Was sad to see them go but also a bit of a relief because when you are used to living alone and all of a sudden you have 6 mouths to feed instead of one it can be a lot of work!

I harvested the cowpea from my field and ended up with a huge mealy meal sack full of beans which I was excited about. Then I spent half a day shelling the pods to get the beans out (luckily I got help from about 6 village kids on payment of sweeties otherwise I think it would have taken me a week!) Still waiting for my soy beans and ground nuts to be ready but it should be anytime from now!

Kristina's cowpeas.

Spent Easter holiday in Malawi at a beautiful part of the lake just south of Nkhata Bay with 5 other volunteers and we had a great time. The lodge we stayed at had a private beach and wasn't very busy so it was nice to just be able to relax and hang out and not think about much for a week cuz I knew when I got back it would be work work work!

Lake Malawi

Work is going well; I am super busy with lots of different projects ranging from HIV/AIDS workshops to teaching business skills in one of my women's groups and then the usual environment related stuff (orange orchards, beekeeping, intercropping, working with a farmer to plant some glyricidia, composting etc…) I also went to the Forestry Research Centers Field Day (about 10k outside of Chipata) and learned lots of new things that I am excited to start trying myself and with my farmers. The one I am most excited about is clay pot irrigation. You use clay pots in your garden and only have to water once a week instead of everyday. I am gonna build a small garden in my back yard on Saturday and try out some of the techniques (clay pots included) and some other things that I wanted try as well. Some friends from another village are coming to help me build a fence to keep all the critters out and I am really excited to get started on it. We'll see how it goes!

I had a snake in my kitchen! The other day I was going into my kitchen to get some water and as I opened the door I saw a tail stuck and wiggling underneath it. I thought I was one of my little lizard friends but as I pulled the door back to release it and looked behind the door to see it wasn't a lizard at all!! It was a snake! So I jumped back, shrieked like a little girl and closed the door. Took a couple deep breaths and ran to my neighbors. Of course NO ONE was around except for two little kids, which was weird cuz there are ALWAYS people around but apparently not when I need help killing a snake. So I tell the kids "Njolka! Njolka!" (Snake! Snake!) and they run and find some one and she asks what's wrong and again "Njolka! Njolka!" and then she runs and finds the men with the machetes. So in a matter of about 5 minutes the entire village is crowded around the door of my kitchen (now everyone decides to appear!) as the two men are inside looking for the snake. It takes them a while to find it cuz I have a lot of stuff in there and as we are waiting I am thinking to myself "great, now I screamed snake and there is no snake so now they are going to think I am crazy and next time there really is a snake they won't come and I will have to kill it myself!" But luckily they found it and killed it and when they brought it out dead it sure seemed a lot smaller then when I saw it alive behind the door. Maybe when snakes die they shrink…but probably not. Anyway, now every time I see a stick or a thick piece of grass my heart starts to beat a bit faster.

Time spent in town has pretty much been like time in the village. The power has been on and off for some time and will stay off for hours(days) at a time. So when ever we come to the house to enjoy the luxury of electricity we have more often than not been utterly disappointed. And we found out that these "issues" have to do with the Kariba Dam where the main power grid is but not to worry, ZESCO, the power company, has assured us the issue will be resolved by 2010. Lucky us. Water has also been an issue. I just got to the house today and jumped for joy when I realized there was power, just to find out that there is no water and there hasn't been for 3 days! So much for a nice long shower after my 30k bike ride through the hills of Chipata to get to town! Guess I'll just have to wait till I'm back at village and I can take a nice long bucket bath!

Caterpillars.

Posted on 24 April 2008

I make a big deal out of meetings starting “on time” (no later than an hour after they are supposed to start) so many of my groups have been telling the members for example to meet at 8 and they tell me to come at 10 which has been working out great.  The other day I had a meeting in the afternoon and as I was walking up the road to the village there was a woman at the house on the edge of the village doing laundry who saw me and immediately stopped what she was doing, ran inside her house, grabbed a whistle and started running around the village blowing the whistle to let everyone know that I had arrived and the meeting would start soon.  And sure enough as I arrived to the meeting place so was everyone else!  Granted this is one of my most motivated groups but I was still impressed and couldn’t hold back my laughter.  They wanted to prove to me and show me that they were serious about working with me and prepared to work hard.  They definitely got the point across to me!