A Brick and Thatched Roofed Chalet For One, Please!

I have successfully finished my three months of community entry! This means that I am technically a full fledged Peace Corps Volunteer, for real this time! Now, I can actually begin working on projects in my community and with schools, utilize the Provincial House every month, and GO ON VACATION! This leads me to the title of my blog; as I begin going through my travel guide book to Zambia I’ve noticed that many of the lodges you can stay at offer local accommodations of a “brick and thatched roofed chalet!” Coincidently, I believe that I’m already living in a brick and thatched roofed chalet; however, I don’t yet feel that I am on vacation. For my first Zambian adventure, Mary, Leann and I will be travelling to Lake Kariba in Southern Province for some fun in the sun at the end of August, following our two week training in Lusaka.

My little village is much the same. My sister, Loveness, gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. It was maybe the fastest birth ever, I was sitting with her at about 10:00am the day of and she was not in labor but, the baby was born at 2:00pm! I’ve been occupying my time visiting other volunteers in my province. A couple weeks ago it was another volunteer’s birthday so a few of us headed to his site for a celebration. It was a good time complete with cheeseburgers! And this past week, I decided to bike 50 kilometers (about 30 miles) to visit my friend Leann at her site. It was quite the bike trip, I am very glad I decided to bring saddle bags for my bike. From Leann’s we travelled to our friends Mary’s site which was an adventure in itself. Mary lives about 25 kilometers off of the main road. So, we got transport to that point and then thought we would be able to get a ride the 25 kilometers; however, we were not able to and ended up walking the entire way! Needless to say it was a long day.

Other Zambian Factoids: I lied in my last post when I said that Zambia will be in the World Cup. Apparently they still had one game against Algeria, which they lost dismally. I watched the game at a ‘sports bar’ here in Mkushi. It’s still cold season, and I realize I write about the weather every blog; BUT, it is ridiculously cold many days and now it’s also cloudy and windy too! And preparations for the chief are still underway in my village, we have a house built. He’s on a three month tour of all his villages and at the end there will be a large harvest celebration to signify the end of the harvest.

Finally, thanks for all the mail and packages! I have been pleasantly surprised at all of the things I’ve been receiving! And I promise to try very hard to get pictures of my life here online soon!