I am finished with Community Entry and am about to head down to Lusaka for In Service Training (IST). I am so excited to be in Lusaka soon! There I will be reconnected with all the people I went through training with. After being separate for three months we are all planning on getting drinks and some good food.

Words do not explained to how happy I am to be eating non-village food soon. I literally have been dreaming about food, waking up every morning drooling (okay, I might normally do the drooling part). Last week I was reading a book based in Vegas and I had to stop reading it because it kept in talking about all the food and I just couldn’t handle it. I will say I’m not as in bad shape as some of my other Peace Corps friends. Another volunteer said she started crying when in a book she was reading the main character used an electric tea kettle. I’ve heard from multiple people who are so sick of having to start a fire for every meal they have resorted to just eating their food dry, like dry soya pieces. In the village there basically is no such thing as snack food or a quick meal. So Lusaka will be a needed break.

IST will be a total of two weeks. The first week we will be going over how our sites have been and program management. The second week will be more HIV training, and will be learning techniques on how to teach prevention. Because Peace Corps is all about sustainability we will bring a counterpart from the village to both the program management and the HIV training. That way, even after we leave Zambia someone in the village will be trained on these issues.

I believe I have setup a good foundation for my project in the community. The school committee and the community have been working tirelessly on building bricks to rebuild the school and a house for a teacher (communities are required to provide a government teacher with a house). The work we have done has slowly been paying off. The government said they were impressed with what has been done and announced the school as an primary school (this means it is officially a government school and not a community school). This opens the door to help get government funding and is the first step in getting a certified teacher in the school. I am hoping when I’m in Lusaka I can get more information about the learning standards for each grade so I can help make lesson plans with the community teacher. These standards have been very difficult for me to find, but will have a huge impact. I’m hoping by the beginning of next year, when the new Zambian school year starts, the government will place a certified teacher in the school.

Fish farming has been been a little bit slower. It is no surprise, I expected this. I did give a fish farming lesson in Bemba, which is painful and about the extent I have used Bemba in the village. So far I’ve helped farmers with site selection for new fish ponds, gave tips on how to improve the structure of existing ponds, and staked a fish pond and set up dates to do more staking (just call me Buffy the fish slayer). My main focus now is to try and find fingerlings (baby fish) for the farmers so they can stock their ponds during the start of the hot season in September.

The bee keeping has been another project I focused on. The last volunteer trained 100 people in the community on bee keeping, how to make bee hives and how to make wax products. He also found a company that would bring ten bee hives for every person and also buy the honey the hives produced (basically contract honey farming). Unfortunately this company pulled out of the deal. Which is really disappointing for the people in the community because it would have helped them immensely with financial security. However the bee keeping group has slowly been making and selling bee hives to people in other communities, so the group has been brining in a little income (not nearly at the same level). Now we are focusing on trying to make our own hives. The problem is not everyone can afford buying planks for the hives. Now, we are planning on try to and cut down our own trees to make our own wood planks for the hives. As you can imagine doing all this by hand is a ton of work. We’ve also been working on creating a business plan that fits the new direction of the bee keeping group. Hopefully we can get the bee hives made before swarming season, but this will be a difficult task.

One of my favorite things I’ve done during Community Entry is partake in the Under 5 weigh in. Once a month the the children under five get weighed, chart their growth and are given vacations (if needed). There is no clinic in my community and this is the only event where the clinic workers from the nearest clinic (1.5 hours walk away) come to the community. It is a packed event and the mothers usually get all dressed up to weigh in their kids. It’s is really funny to watch the little ones get weighed. They tie a hanging scale to a tree branch, then hook up sling that looks one of those swings for babies. About half of the kids cry when they are stuffed in the sling, and the other half just chill swinging under a tree branch while they get weighed. The babies really start crying when they see me the “musungu” (basically Zambians version of gringo). I seriously have never had so many babies cry at me than I have in Zambia. I guess stranger danger kicks in real hard when you see the musungu. One of my host sisters kids cannot even look at me with out crying, even if she sees me from a crossed the compound she starts running away crying.

During Community Entry I have learned a lot. For example, someone telling you “I live near by” it can be anywhere between a twenty minute walk to a two hour walk over a freaking Zambian mountain. Also, I guess my biking has gotten better because my host father stopped asking me if I “learned to bike in Zambia”. However my bike maintenance has not improved, while cleaning my breaks recently I somehow completely disabled my front brake, so now I only have the back ones working. But hey, brakes are for crying babies!

When I was living/traveling in Ecuador I felt it a little bit, but I definitely feel it here in Zambia. The automatic connection to someone because they are an American. I don’t think it is due to speaking the same language (even though it probably plays a part) there are plenty of people who speak English in my village. I think it’s because of a shared culture. People I probably wouldn’t be friends with back in the States I have found myself becoming friends with them when I travel.

The conversation is more at ease when you are speaking with someone who you share the same cultural upbringing. You don’t have to worry about doing the proper greetings, they understand your bad jokes, they eat similar foods to you and wear the same style of cloths.

I have a better understanding why immigrant and refugee communities back home often stick together. It’s not about wanting to change the country that you are in. It’s that when you’re living in a different way than you’re used to, constantly sounded by that difference and trying to respect it, understand it, and fit in. It’s nice sometimes to be with people from the same culture, where you don’t always have to be trying. Zambian women, especially in the village, really wear pants and don’t wear dresses above their knees. It gets a little old feeling restricted by your clothing choices.

This is one of the reason why have a Peace Corps Provincial house (prov house) is so nice. When I’m at the prov house I’m real risqué and don’t wear leggings under my dresses the hits two inches ABOVE the knee (the whole room gasps). After I change into my fleewsy outfits I usually just chill with other volunteers. Never in the States while eating dinner, or watching tv, have I ever thought “I’m so glade to be sharing this culture right now” but that does cross my mind when at the prov house.

Every volunteer is allowed to spend 4 days a month at the prov house (volunteers are supposed to be working 24/7 we don’t get the weekends off to go places). We can use this time to do work on the house computers, do research online or in the little library, and/or just hangout. I was told that most other Peace Corps countries don’t have prov houses. Zambia gets them because it has one of the largest amount of volunteers and it’s volunteers live the most rural.

During the three months of Community Entry you don’t receive the 4 prov house days. However, my intake was lucky enough to be able to go to the house twice. Once for immigration (there was a mess up on our visas, this usually doesn’t happen) and another for what we call Provs. Provs is a semiannual meeting each provincial house holds in June and November.

Every volunteer in the Province makes the great migration to the house, and a staff person from Lusaka, for two days of meeting. On the last night there is always a themed party. Being in Central Province our theme this Provs naturally was Central Intelligence. We had a spy themed party where everyone dressed up and played a murder mystery game set in the Cold War Era. Everyone had a blast acting out their characters trying to find who the killer is while also complete the secret task we were given. I got too distracted (I know shocking) trying to sell missile plans to the Russians to figure out who the killer was. I know what you’re thinking, there is no way in 2017 that someone from the US government (technically volunteers are) would be colluding with Russia. Having Provs was such a nice break from the village life.

I think the shared culture thing in a different country is one reason why volunteer make fast friends. Even though I really enjoy all the volunteers I’ve meet in Central, it is kinda sad to be away from the people in my intake. The RAP people I came in with are spread out a crossed 5 of Zambias provinces, and Central received the least. Our intake became pretty close and is one of the only to make it through Pre-Service Training without having anyone ET (early terminate/leave). Unfortunately during Community Entry we have had our first person ET.

I would never judge someone for ETing. Things can be very difficult in the Peace Corps. You’re away from friends and family and all the comforts of home. You’re alone in a village in a different culture. You don’t have running water or electricity and everything takes forever to do with out it.

Even with awesome supportive friends and family back home and a great host family it can be hard. I have had times where I have cried. Actually, I just had one the other day. I was trying to get my fire started to warm my water for my morning jungle oats (oatmeal) and coffee and the fire just wouldn’t start. I put more kindle in, fanned it, lit it again and again and nothing happened. I was so annoyed I stomped inside and made myself some cold jungle oats. Then I sat down and cried while eating them. I looked totally ridiculous being a grown woman crying into her jungle oat (my tears didn’t even warm the oats up, total BS). At this point I’m totally used to sucking at starting a fire, for whatever reason that day it got to me. I don’t even have room to complain, my family gets all my firewood and water, but still …(pause for dramatic effect) …. I cried.

Well, I’ve always heard it’s best to leave things nice and depressing. So I’ll end my post here, now go cry into some food!

Things are still going well during my time of Community Entry. There are a lot of different things to

adjust to even from Pre-Service Training. You go from having every second of your day planned to nothing at all. It is nice having more control over what you do, but it is a big adjustment. Especially because if frequent experiences with “Zam Time”.

Zam Time is what us volunteers call scheduling/timing (just time in general) in Zambia. This is definitely a cultural divide. Coming to Zambia I didn’t think I would care about this part of the culture because I’m pretty relaxed about time and can never seem to keep it. Surprisingly, it has bugged me. You set a meeting and people might show up an hour or two late for it, or you plan something out and it get canceled. Buses or drivers don’t show up on time to take you somewhere important. The Zambians don’t seem to mind, they just wait patiently. I think because so many things are done by hand, everything just takes so much longer to do, and time is not kept. Also, many people don’t have clocks. Some have phones, but they are the old brick phones where you have to go in and set the time yourself. People here often use the sun to help tell the time. My host father will look up in the sky point to the sun and be like “it’s 11:37”. I’m not sure why he always picks such an exact time … but he’s usually off.

A couple weeks ago I had a meeting with people on the schools committee, the meeting was supposed to be at 10. At 1 the meeting finally started with only half the committee present. The Zambians were totally unfazed, but I was hangry and tired and it took all my composure not to lose it. I don’t want to look like the crazy American lady just a couple months into my service, I’ll save that for later.

During training, we went to a museum where they had a Zambian professor talk about its history and culture. She described how Zambians view time like this: Zambia lives in a culture where time is seen as fluid. Because time is seen this way time can never be lost, there will always be more time. In America we live in a culture where time is fixed. Time can be seen as lost so it has more of a value put on it (the whole time is money thing). I thought this was an interesting way of describing the culture differences. It would explain why the Zambians are so patient when it comes to other people being late. I could probably work on that myself. I do think it’s a really pretty way of thinking about time.

I think one of the big contributors to Zam Time is that the Zambian culture is very polite and hospitable. Greetings are very important to Zambians. Walking along a path if you see someone you greet them, usually in several different ways. “Muli shani” is the standard “how are you”, then you can go further into greetings. How is your morning: mwashibuka shani. How is work: mwabomba shani. You can turn just about any action into a greeting. When biking you have more of a pass and can just do a quick hello. When you’re walking you are expected to stop, and talk, especially if you know the person.

Zambia has 72 different chiefdoms each with its own dialects. So across the country how you greet people is slightly different. Where I am is the Lala dialect which is part of the Bemba language so we greet people basically the same as the Bemba’s.

In Lala land when saying greetings males usually put their right hand over their heart and give a nod. Women usually do a soft clap (palms facing parallel to the ground) and do a little bend/curtesy. These are not always excluded to male/females often times people do both followed by a handshake. To show respect while you shake someone’s hand, you hold the elbow and give a little knee bend.

Another show of Zambian hospitality is if your stop by someone’s house they usually always offer you something to eat or to take home with you. The other week after I was helping a farming with site selection for fish ponds he gave me 4 heads of cabbage and about 20 “orange” (they taste more like lemons in my village, very sour). I always share these with my host father out of respect for helping with translation and it’s just way to much to eat. If you’re offered something to eat, you always have to say yes. Hints why people always being late. There has been times when I say “I should be going now” only to get protest saying I have to eat with them.

I always find this very heartwarming. People have to work so hard to grow/cook their food and often times they don’t have enough, yet they still share with me.