2010 Year-End Highlights!
September
Visitors from Uganda: Shortly after returning from my Ethiopia/Tanzania adventure a PCV from Uganda (whom I met in South Africa on Medical Leave) came to visit me in Zambia! I got to show her my school, village, and Chisimba Falls!
Village-Style Birthday: Some other PCV’s came to my place and we killed some chickens with my family and had a small party with cake and wine! It was an awesome way to spend my b-day!
October
LCC Club: The kids were extremely busy fund-raising and preparing there drama performances for our VCT event. Every meeting was packed with 60+ kids all dancing and singing…I was so proud of them!
Computer Literacy: My grade 10 & 11 pupils spent time writing to their pen pals from St. James School in Stratford, CT. We also had a visit from Val Stokes (from Utah, USA) who came to donate a brand new printer with paper and ink to our class!! Val is the one who brought the desktop computers to the school originally in 2008. He has been so supportive and helpful and may be sponsoring a friend of mine from the school who wants to go to college.
Bembaland: We hosted our annual Provincial-Sporting Competitions at Chisimba Falls. PCV’s came from Luapula, Lusaka, Central, North West and Eastern Provinces to visit us and play some drinking games…followed by a beautiful trip up to Lake Tanganyika, where we climbed to the top of Kalombo Falls.
My proposal got approved: The Proposal I wrote for LCC’s VCT event got approved! They gave us about 6million Kwacha (+ our club raised close to 1million on their own!)
Peanut got new legs: Physical Therapy twice a week got interested when my favorite little first greater got a new set of prosthetic legs and could stand on his own and walk with a walker for the first time!!
November
Africa Map Project: For our last lesson, the children at the commuity school took a quiz to test their knowledge of Zambia! Catherine (my friend and Co-Teacher) and I awarded anyone who scored 60% or above on their quizzes with a Zambian Flag (thanks Mom!) The kids were really excited and had studied pretty hard.
Thanksgiving: I attended my last Provincial Peace Corps meeting! So sad…yet so nice. We were without water or electricity for most of the week at the Provincial Office…Imagine all 30 of us volunteers, under one roof, for an entire week, without showers, toilets, or TV! I’m convinced only Peace Corps Volunteers could handle that with finesse! We had a “Keepin it Classy Kasama” theme party and everyone got dressed up and had an awesome time. The power and water came back just in time to cook some turkey (Thanksgiving Miracle perhaps?!?)
VCT Event: The long awaited day came on the 27th of November! I can’t believe how well it played out. There was a great turn out, no rain, lots of performances (not only from my club but from the Kasama Arts group, a church choir, a positive-living group, a pre-school class, and my village’s women’s group!) Because a lot of volunteers were still in town for our provincial meeting at Thanksgiving, they also came out for my event, which was really nice, and a few of us performed for the masses as a new highly-acclaimed dance group “Musungu Madness!” We had a football (soccer) and netball tournament, raffle prizes, speeches and testimonies from invited guests, and about 300 people got tested! Everyone really did a great job. LCC’s co-advisors (the teachers who run the club with me and helped plan the event) worked so hard! I would not have been able to do it without them!
Decemeber
Housing Issues: After a whirl-wind of crazy events the owner of my house decided to break his contract with the village committee of Luyeye. I had to move out of the hut I’ve made a home rather quickly and moved to the Peace Corps office, cat in tow for 2 ½ weeks. Chileshe Chepela School and my family and counterparts all stepped up and helped me out a lot. I now have shifted to a dormitory at school and will be living there for the last 3 months… I’ll let you know how it goes!
World AIDS Day: I was invited again to be part of the WAD planning committee this year. The District AIDS Task Force and I went to Chilongoshi village (about 75 kilometers from Kasama) for the commemoration. I spent most of the day doing condom demonstrations and distributions. I felt guilty and honored at the same time when a friend of mine working the VCT said my event had a better turn out for testing.
Camp Glow: Me and 9 other volunteers held a week-long girls empowerment camp during the school break. Each of us brought a counterpart from our village and two grade 7-8 girls. The girls and counterparts learned about sex, peer pressure, drugs & alcohol, being assertive & confident and leadership. I was in charge of arts & crafts for the week. We made friendship bracelets, decorated journals, and sewed re-usable chitenge menstrual pads. The week, in whole, was long and hectic, but I think overall successful!
Xmas in Malawi: Because of lack of time and funds a small group of friends and I decided to head once again to Malawi for Christmas this year. We were able to hitch-hike to our destination, Nkhata Bay, in 2 days from Lusaka. The trip was relaxing, beautiful and fun. I plan to go back one more time after I finish my service, before returning to America, just because it’s so friendly and nice to be there!
Getting back from Malawi was not nearly as relaxing as being there. We had one transport issue after another…bus break-downs, lack of hitches, pouring rain, hitting a cow, running out of money…BUT the whole ordeal reminded me repeatedly how much I LOVE ZAMBIA and the AMAZING people of this country!! Everyone along the way home was so helpful and generous, us! I can’t believe that in this culture complete strangers will go out of their way to take care of you! Zambians have incredible hearts.
New Years in Lusaka: I finally reached Lusaka on the morning of the 31st… was expecting to be back up in Northern for New Years so it came as a bit of a surprise but we made the most out of it. Dressed up like we weren’t from the village and rung in the New Year dancing the night away.
January
The new year has been productive so far. I spent 1 week in Lusaka with the rest of my intake (we are now 25-coming into country we were 31?) attending our COS Conference (Close.Of.Service.) Each intake has the conference 3 months before they finish their service (I finish in April). The conference was nice, we talked a lot about how market ourselves after Peace Corps. It’s pretty hard to know exactly how to put what you’ve done here on your resume… so we discussed those things, recommendations, description of service reports and so on. Finally I am back in Kasama (and now living at school) and back to work. I have a lot to keep me busy in the next couple months…some loose ends to tie. I can’t believe how fast the time is going. I’m excited to see everyone from home, but I am not ready to say goodbye to Zambia!
Here’s hoping I can make the best of my last few months and the start of 2011!
You have done in a short time what I wish I could accomplish in a lifetime.
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