October was back into the bush for me. I got to check in on my project to see how they were going.

Before I left for the trainings I did a long in depth lesson on how to stake a fish pond and why it needs to be staked a specific way. Then we went out as a group and staked a pond together. I left with them all the tools they would need for staking, directions and a drawing of exactly how a staked pond should look. I was a little nervous coming back in because sometimes nothing gets done with out you there. I was happy to come back to seeing the pond we staked was almost all the way dug. Also they staked eight ponds while I was gone. I went and checked to see how the ponds were staked and besides a few minor flaws, they were done very well. The group is going to dig them out working together one pond at a time. I’m

hoping to have fish in ponds by December, which is not the ideal time to stock a pond, but better then nothing.

My women’s micro loan group gave out their first two loans. Which was really exciting. Unfortunately meetings have dwindled the last couple weeks. I’m hoping they pick back up here soon.

Bee keeping us still going slow. The counterpart I took to the bee keeping training in September has been teaching people in the community how to make modern hives with local materials. He has already made three himself and has bees that have swarmed in them too.

The school is slowly slowly slowly going. Before I left for my workshops in September, I wrote out weekly learning objectives for grades 1-2 and 3-4. I based the learning objectives from Zambian government national learning standards. I gave the two teachers notebooks to write lesson plans in. I also wrote out tips for teaching different subjects. One of the community school teachers is actually writing out lesson plans now, which is great. The other is taking attendance which is good too. Now only if I can get both teachers to write lesson plans and take attendance (plus record children’s performances) then I’ll be pretty happy. Because the students often times don’t have paper and the teachers sometimes don’t even have chalk, I’ve been trying to collect bottle caps for the last couple months. I plan on writing individual letters on the caps, so then the students can take a pile of caps and spell out words. I also plan on doing this for numbers as well. If anyone has any ideas on how to make learning materials with no resources, I could use some ideas!

I did get to help my community with a work day were we fired bricks. Because the bricks are made from mud they have to be fired after they dried or else they won’t last through the rainy season. This was a lot of work and it took all day just to fire one stack of bricks. But hopefully we will get the remodel done on the school and the potential teachers house before the rainy season starts.

The rainy season in Zambian is from November until May. When it’s not the rainy season it literally does not rain a drop. It’s so weird, there will be obvious rain clouds in the sky, I’ll look up and ask if they think it will rain. Zambias always say “no it is dry season why would it rain?” (I don’t know the dark heavy looking clouds above us) “it does not rain until October 24th”. And they are right it doesn’t rain.

So far in my community I have only seen the dry season. Even though I’ve been in my community for basically six months I haven’t seen it rain once. The dry season is split up into two season. First is the cold season then it’s the hot season. I’m in the hot season right now and it’s bloody hot. It actually looks like fall because all the leaves in the trees have turned and fallen off (lack of water) and it’s fall back home. Except here I’m sweeting my ass off by ten and not drinking a pumpkin spice latte. Hot season takes its name seriously. When I’m walking through the bush I’m often just fantasizing about ice water. When you don’t have electricity or anyway to cool down, it can be a little rough.

One of the best things I did during October was a malaria bike tour. I helped organize some of my fellow volunteer and we biked to three different villages (where Peace Corps Volunteers are located) and taught about malaria and malaria prevention. It probably wasn’t the smartest to do four days of biking during the middle of hot season, but it was fun.