Pond staking

I just got back from site visit, it was exhausting but really fun and I got a peek of what my life will be like for the next two years. I’m happy to say that I will be going to be working in Central Province of Zambia in a village called Nglande. The area speaks Lala, it is very close to Bemba. I think it is very appropriate that I’ll be spending the next two years in Lala Land because I’m pretty sure I already have spent majority of my life in my own lala world.

I’ll be the second Peace Corps volunteer (PCV) the village has had. I was really lucky to have already met the volunteer I’ll be replacing before site visit. Matt (the awesome current volunteer) was the PCV of the week a couple weeks back. Every week during training there is a current volunteer that comes and helps with the training.  As soon as Matt started talking about his site I knew I wanted it. The site is not as fish farming heavy and the projects that Matt has started is more business focused, which I like.  There is also lots of opportunities for improving youth development in the village. I’m hoping my past work experience will help me have a successful service.

Site visits took about a week and a half, the first 6 days were called a cluster site visit.  The 3 other future RAP Central Province volunteers and I went and stayed 6 nights with a current RAP Central volunteer. During the site visit we staked out a couple fish ponds, staked a dame and furrows, we also harvested a fish pond, told a local farmer how he could renovate his fish pond, gave a couple fish farming lessons to a women’s group in local language, met the local chief and had several language lessons.

It was great to see how a current volunteer is living out her service and talk to her and the two other volunteers that were helping her host. We had a great time joking around at night as we cooked our dinners. It was a nice change of pace to eat American style food.

During the cluster site visit they also ask if one of us would kill a chicken for dinner. Even though I decided I would start eating meat while I was in Zambia, I was not about to kill a chicken. Especially after the chicken killing horror stories I head from other volunteers at their training home stays. One of the other trainees said when his host family had him kill a chicken it did not go smoothly. When going in for the kill he unknowingly didn’t have the chickens full body properly secured. After he cut the neck the chicken got loose and was running around the yard spraying blood all over, it even ran into the house at one point. I think I’ll be okay if I leave, the chicken running around with its head cutoff experience to other volunteers.

After cluster site visit everyone went to our individual sites.  When I got to mine Matt unfortunately had fractured part of his wrist. He had to go into the city where the Peace Corps provincial house is located to get X-rays. The surprise of being by myself the first day made me very nervous. I’m pretty sure I just nervously laughed and and talked in a high pitched voice all day.

The next morning I was able to help a little with the cilemba (bean) harvest. Which is a lot of work. I was able to feel like a real Zambia and carry a (small) bag of bean pods on my head!

When Matt came back the second day of individual we had a great time.  He was able to introduce me to a bunch of people that I’m so excited to work with. Literally everywhere we went people were giving us food. At the head women’s house I was served the biggest lumps of nshima I have ever seen (don’t know how powerful that statement is considering I didn’t even know what nshima was a couple months ago). Everyone else had finished two lumps so, I decided to try and dabble in the two lump world. I immediately regretted  it. I ended up force feeding myself nshima and still did not succeed at leaving nothing on my plate. One day I will become a nshima eating champ.

During the visit it was cool to see (and a little intimidating) that everyone was sad too have Matt leave. I really hope I’ll be able to have as good of service as he did.  Matt also introduced me to a game called Skip-Bo and he kicked my ass about every game. I think I might get pretty good at games by the time I leave Zambia, when your living with no electricity you don’t have much else to do.

Now that site visit is over and I’m back in training I have mixed emotions. I’m happy to be back with all the other RAP volunteers and to be with my training host family again. On the other hand I am ready to be done with training and to be on my own. Make my own schedule and not have to worry about the big test I’ll have at the end of training.