Well hello there everyone!! Or should I say, kolane mwani! (a local greeting which means be strong) It has been two months now since I have left the good ole US of A and this is the first time I have at a) access to the Internet/ a real computer, and b) more importantly time to sit down and tell you tales from Zambia! This morning, I also with 50 others bid farewell to our home stay families and came to Lusaka for our official swearing-in which will take place tomorrow.
It seems that these two months have flown by! During this time I have learned how to eat all meals with my hands (the staple food in inshima, a corn-meal dough like starch, share my bed on 3 separate accounts with mice/rats (the last one nested in my hair in the middle of the night), how to bathe out of a bucket and relieve myself in a pit latrine (definitely miss American toilets and running water, but am now thankful whenever I am fortunate to have either!) and received many compliments on my dancing, where I have been told that I dance like a Zambian and yesterday was the only white person who danced in front of a crowd of 200 Zambians at our farewell program, which could quite possibly be on of the most embarrassing moments in Zambia to date, not to mention in my life!
I am excited and nervous to begin this next chapter of my Peace Corps journey! I have much work to do and my community has a long list and high hopes for what I am to accomplish over the next two years. As the last post by my dear sister Jennifer indicates, I am in a very awesome village/community which is in the far reaches of the Northwestern Provence. I am one of the furthest volunteers away from what is know as our provincial house, a home base of sorts for all of the Peace Corps volunteers in a given region. I am approximately 360km away (224 miles) but I am only 12k from my town of Ikelenge! As indicated I do have a post office box and would love any form of mail from home. (letters, postcards, care packages, etc.)
I have really enjoyed getting to know my fellow volunteers and am sad to leave them so soon, alas there is fish farming to promote! I am excited to settle into what will be my permanent home for the next two years and reestablish a routine (like running, which I have not done since the half marathon Jennifer and I did in June..its a little difficult to do that in a country where exercise is a foreign activity, and women cannot expose their thighs, i.e. wear shorts). It is beginning to get quite warm and soon the rainy season will be here! I am excited to start my garden and for everything to be in bloom, because it is currently the dry season and its quite arid.
Well that is all I have for now, I will try to keep the updates coming as I have more stories and adventures to rely!
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