Still Alive!

Wow, has it really been almost 3 months since my last post?! I am so sorry that I've failed to keep up with this blog lately. Honestly, I've been traveling around like crazy, hardly in one place longer than a week. And it doesn't look like I'll be settling down any time soon...

I guess the holiday season came and went since I last wrote. My closest friends in the Peace Corps, 4 other girls from my intake and also in northern province, came to visit me at my site about a week before Thanksgiving. I met them at my turn-off on the great north road and we biked from there to my hut, where we spent two nights before biking about 5 hours through the bush to Danielle's site in Katibunga. It was white people on parade through the ancient african bush! With our peace corps sanctioned helmets we were probably quite a spectacle. We spent 3 nights in Danielle's village before biking across the mountains back to the Great North Road. From there we hitched a ride to Mpika, then up to Kasama for Thanksgiving. Rainy season was just getting started in November so of course we got completely drenched as we rode from my site to Danielle's, arriving at her village a muddy mess. We then attempted to bathe in her river...which was also full of mud. Luckily we were all able to stink up Danielle's hut together. :) I have to say though, the image of the ominous, dark thunderheads we were riding into coming up over the mountains as we biked through the valley will always be frozen in my mind.

Our Peace Corps provincial meetings happened to fall the day before Thanksgiving, and the two staff who travelled up from Lusaka came bearing gifts: 2 turkeys and multiple bottles of wine. God bless america and its huge eating sprees...all 25 of us volunteers in Northern Province helped created a delicious Thanksgiving feast, which we shared with the guards at the house, our house keeper, and also the provincial general service officer and his family. (All Zambian). I'm pretty sure they enjoyed the food immensely, even if it definitely did not include nshima.

Danielle and I were voted onto VAC at the provincial meetings, the PC Volunteer Advisory Committee. It's comparable to a student council, but for the Peace Corps. Every 6 months we travel down to Lusaka and meet with 3 volunteers from every other province along with Lusaka staff and discuss a variety of issues ranging from bike problems to provincial house rules to changes in vacation forms...etc. It's a way for Lusaka staff and volunteers to connect, so volunteers can better understand what goes on in Lusaka and Peace Corps staff can remember what it's like to be a volunteer living in the bush.

In the beginning of December I traveled to Lusaka for a week to participate in a training development workshop for the new health project in Zambia. I am a part of the CAHP health project right now, and the other health project in Zambia is called HAP and deals mainly with HIV/AIDS. Peace Corps has decided to combine the two health projects into one, more comprehensive project, and they wanted input from volunteers in the field on what the training for that new project should look like. It was arduous and, at times, very tedious work, but it was a great opportunity to work with the training officer and other staff to develop a cohesive project that hopes to be more effective than the separate projects as they currently are.

While down in the big city, I decided to take advantage of access to the PC Medical officers and had my stomach checked out. Turns out I was harboring a bacteria in my stomach from my river water...the consequences of which I'll spare you the details. :) They gave me antibiotics, told me to boil my water from now on, and sent me on my way. I finished the antibiotics and now boil, chlorinate, and filter all of my drinking water...and it's made a world of difference. Turns out boiling your water isn't too tough. The hardest part is just waiting for it to cool....which I'd take any day over spending quality time in my pit latrine. :(

Christmas creeped up on me, and at that point I was so ready for a break from this country. I was so tired of biking to meetings and one person showing up, and the cultural differences were frustrating me more than ever. I knew that I would either come back from south africa with a much better outlook on life here, or I would have a tough decision to make come January. Fortunately for me it was the former. It's taken me almost a year to get to the point where I come into my village and feel the familiarity of arriving home. People in my village welcomed me back with smiles, wishing me a merry xmas and a happy new year. I stayed almost 2 weeks in my village before traveling down to Mpika yesterday to watch the presidential inauguration, and they were 2 weeks where I felt more comfortable and more happy in general while in my village than I have in a long time. I'm still attempting to teach one of my neighbor's English, and the other day we broke out into "head, shoulders, knees, and toes" in my hut. Crazy how children in a rural village in Zambia sing the same tune most Americans learn in Kindergarten. I really have no idea what I'm doing, flying by the seat of my pants and making up lessons as I go...but it's all about the small victories, and she is helping me with my Bemba at the same time.

I also am working right now with some of my clinic staff, developing a Life Skills training which we hope to do the first week of February. We are training the youth anti-AIDS club in facilitation on subjects such as HIV transmission, HIV/AIDS and human rights, early pregnancy, alcohol abuse, living Positively with AIDS, etc. It's great to see one of the younger clinic staff specifically take ownership of the sessions he will facilitate during the training, and I'm happy to have the opportunity to work with him and other leaders of the anti-AIDS club.

I am also trying to collaborate with an NGO in Mpika called NZP+ (Network of Zambians Living Positively). They advocate living positively with HIV/AIDS and do a lot of community health education relating to HIV/AIDS. Their staff is really helpful and they do some great work out in the bush, so I'm really hoping to develop a good working relationship with them and ultimately try to form a support group for people who are positive in my community.

Some other volunteers and I are hoping to organize and implement a week-long camp for the empowerment of girls sometime in 2009. It's called camp GLOW (girls leading our world) and has been successfully organized by PC volunteers in the past. We are just in the beginning planning stages, but if we can pull it off I think it will be one of the best things we will have contributed to this country in our 2-year service.

I traveled to Cape Town, South Africa for Christmas and New Year's and had way too much fun. :) It's one of the most beautiful places I've ever been, and although the best way to spend the holidays is with family, I was lucky to be traveling with great company. Lots of wine, surf, sand, sun, mountain-climbing, shopping...we definitely took advantage of our time in a developed city. :) I'm off again to Zanzibar in February for the Sauti Za Busari music festival. It promises to be another crazy adventure!

So that's a 'brief' summary of my life for the past few months. Still Africa. Still a gong show. But I'm feeling more peace of mind about my role in all the craziness, and more mindful of the fact that I'm almost halfway done with my service. I promise to try and write again in the next 3 weeks! Until then: stay warm, be happy, love life. :)

Katie

p.s. YAY obama!

p.p.s. this is probably an unneccessary detail, but I haven't bathed in about 2 weeks. Crocodiles have been spotted in the river, and with the recent news that a villager was eaten by a croc while swiming 5 years ago, I'm staying away. Probably won't have a bathing shelter until March when the rains let up...thank God for wet wipes! :)