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.

Staging was a lot of information at once. The information was mostly about, the history of Peace Corps, goals of Peace Corps and how to achieve them.  We had diversity training about how to adapt to a new culture and not judge it.  Also some basic safety tips.

For the training they separated us by project.  There were two programs going to Zambia on this trip, RAP and LIFE.  I am in RAP which is, rural aquaculture promotion. LIFE is about linking farming to income and environmental sustainability.  The trainings were long, and technical, the trainers did their best to be entertaining which was nice. The purpose of staging basically was to give us a better understanding of what the Peace Corps life was like before we left the country. There was a decent amount of talk about pooping, and how we all will become friends with Mr. D (diarrhea). I also found out that when you are puking and having diarrhea poops at the same time it’s called “the double dragon”. Which, apparently we will most likely have the pleasure of experiencing too, fun!

The Peace Corps must not have gotten the hint that I don’t like getting up early because our bus from staging to the airport left at 2:30 AM. To be honest I didn’t actually go to bed that night. Between the 3 hour time change to the east coast and the fact that some fellow volunteers and I had one or two maybe three “last night in America” beers, it was too difficult to sleep. Still, starting your day at 2:00 am in never acceptable.

We were put on two buses for our move from Philadelphia to JFK. It was so hard traveling with 4 bags! Especially when it’s 2 am and your body isn’t working. Once we got to JFK one of the other volunteers had so many bags she tipped over and her feet were up in the air and her body was squished between her bags. Being the kind Peace Corps members that we are, we laughed then helped her up. I was happy to have had enough time to talk on the phone with the people I love before boarding.  As I got on the plan I was crying thinking about everything being left behind and how much I’m going to miss everyone.  I felt really grateful for my fellow volunteers because we all were there to emotionally support one another.

Our flights were from JFK to Johannesburg then Johannesburg to Lusaka. The flight to Johannesburg was 14 hours long, the longest flight I have ever been on. They fed us well on the flight two meals and multiple snacks one of which was a sandwich. I didn’t watch any movies because I tried to sleep, but it was difficult to get. We had a tight connection in Johannesburg then a two hour flight to Zambia. To my surprise they gave us lunch on the flight even though it was short. All the food really helped with my Zambian weight. For those of you who don’t know Zambian weight is weight I gained since I got excepted this summer and (for good measure) some holiday weight gain.

Arriving in Zambia two things hit me at once. The heat and the fact that I was now in a developing nation.  The airport was very simple and a little ran down looking, especially for a capital city and the only international airport in the country. Just coming for 30 degree weather the heat was unbelievable, the volunteer couple from Florida was loving it because it  reminded them of home. I however was sweating in everyplace possible.

I expected that getting through customs was going to be chaotic, but it went smoothly. Peace Corps had extra people there to make sure we got through in a timely manner. Plus there was plenty of Peace Corps staff and even some current volunteers to make sure we all made it into the vans and to the hotel we were staying in. Amazing all of our bags made it safely. Unfortunately the devil himself, aka TSA, searched my bags and neglected to place my shampoo and conditioner back in the plastic bag I had them in. Naturally they exploded all over my bag, thanks TSA  you’re the best!

When we got to our hotel we got a run down of what the next couple days in Lusaka were going to look like. Before letting us leave for our room they took our individual pictures that will be used for our Peace Corps ID and Zambian ID. As you can imagine traveling for about 24 hours + extremely sweaty = magical picture.

On the last day of our quick training in Lusaka we were assigned our language. I, like majority of the RAP group, received Bemba. Bemba, behind English, is the second most spoken language in Zambia. This does not really help me narrow down what province I will be living in after training.  I’ll have to wait until week 5 of training to know my site.

After we are assigned our languages we have to say by to our LIFE friends, we get trained in different locations.  Then we board a couple large vans and he’d off to Pre Service Training (PST) and to meet our host families we’ll be staying with for the next couple months.  Exciting stuff!

Butch flying with me

It has only been a day into my Peace Corps adventure and it’s already been interesting. The night before my flight to the staging event in Philadelphia my parents hosted a “last supper” for me. It was a true Mercian meal consisting of steak, potatoes, beans and greens, followed by plenty of ice cream. After dinner I played with my nieces and drank some wine as I did one last rundown of what I packed (wine is a necessity when packing).

As I was getting ready for bed and thinking about what tomorrow initials I don’t know what was more difficult for me to imagine, leaving for 27 months or that I would be waking up at 4:00 AM to get ready for my flight. Even though I had been sick all weak and exhausted, nerves made it difficult for me to fall asleep. My parents wonderful snoring across the hall couldn’t even lull me to sleep.

In case you didn’t know 4 AM is never a good time to wake up, it just sucks. It’s cold, dark and your mind just keeps on asking WHY ME?! Good thing my parents are awesome and gave me words of encouragement like “keep your eyes open”.

After checking my bags I had some extra time to sit and talk with my family. Robby and Lauren were amazing enough to be there with the girls in hand to see me off. Saying bye to my family was impossibly difficult and I did not succeed in holding back my tears.

Trying to board my flight is where the fun begins. They overbooked my flight and because I was flying on a government rate I was the fist to go. However, they did not tell me this until after I was on the plane and there was more people than seats.  As the flight attendants were going seat by seat seeing how they got too many people on the plane I knew (they just assigned my seat at the gate) that it was going to be me to getting the boot. As they walked down the aisle, I could hear Jaws music playing in my head as they got closer. Ddduuuunnnn duun, ddddduuuuunnnnn duun “sorry ma’am we are going to have to put you on a different flight”. I offered to sit on someone’s lap, but there wasn’t any takers. The walk back into the airport seemed extra cold, but maybe I was just a little bitter.

They ended up getting me on a Delta flight an hour later. But because I was still marked as boarded on the earlier flight they had to call whatever magical person that controls the all flight itineraries and mark that I was not mile high and in fact still in Pasco. This takes awhile and is a big fiasco. This is extra confusing to my mind that was still shouting WHY AM I AWAKE. The attendants eventually get everything worked out, it does slightly delay the flight. I walked on to the plane as the jerk who held everyone up and an extra jerk because I was sick, sneezing and coughing. I ended up getting an exit row, so it worked out for me suckers.

The rest of my trip getting to Philly went pretty smoothly. Except for one flight where the man next to me decided to start singing, not exceptionally well or quiet. I was also entertained when the teenage girls behind me were enamored with the voice of the British pilot (it was very smooth).

I was very impressed with myself getting all my bags from the airport to my room.  I was so tired by this point I could have made a bed out of my bags and be okay with it. After checking in with the Peace Corps I grabbed a quick bite to eat with a couple other volunteers then I passed out hard my bed.