Work, Waterfalls, and Baboons

First, you should all check out my last entry- it would be fabulous if you could support camp GLOW. It's a fantastic opportunity for girls in my area!

Now, an update on Zambian life. I cannot believe how busy September has been and October looks just as crazy; but, I'm not complaining I love having things to finally work on. Every week I spend two days working at the Ministry of Education office here in Mkushi- this means I have to look semi-professional when I come into town which is no small feat when you're biking in the heat to work! I do a plethora of projects for whatever office needs extra assistance for the day. This can range from going out on school/ teacher monitoring visits to working in the records room filing things away. It's more of an office job then what you would think a Peace Corps Volunteer would be doing. I also am working with a teacher at an elementary school, we're having our first teacher workshop this Friday. I'm pretty excited, it's for all 20 schools in my area! I'll be talking about how to target struggles at their respective schools without focusing on things that require lots of money they don't have or wont be able to obtain. For example- how to improve teacher performance, student attendance, record organization, etc. These seem like small things but really are big issues for schools. This past term the school closest to me had more teacher absences during the term than students! Finally, I'm working with a community school 2 kilometers from my house that has a majority of orphan and vulnerable students result from parents who have HIV/AIDS in the area. The school is having problems raising money to pay their teacher and get books for the students. So, hopefully they'll be able to start an income generating activity such as selling vegetables from a garden, making honey, etc. It seems that most of the problems I find in the education system revolve around lack of training and funding. While Peace Corps can offer knowledge and training, there's no money that I can hand out- this makes my job hard since I am constantly trying to convey this to the people around me.

On a lighter note- I have also been continuing to explore around me. This past weekend a few volunteers and myself took a trip to a beautiful waterfalls about three hours from my site. It was amazing and we were able to swim in them, it was like a movie! We camped overnight and in the morning a pack of Baboons walked through our campsite! This was great to see since most of the wildlife in Africa has been hunted and killed so outside of game parks there's not too much to be seen.

In other news: It's definitely hot season! I can't believe how ridiculously hot it is during the afternoons- it's too hot to move, to eat, pretty much to function, I can't even concentrate enough to read a book. They tell me October will be worse then September but then in November it will start to rain! I'm not sure this will be much better! I've started to domesticate my little house- I have concrete to plaster my walls so then I can paint them and I've broken ground on my own little garden. I'm planning on planting some seeds from America such as green beans, cherry tomatoes and broccoli; but, if they don't work it's a good thing I live in the farming town so I can just buy seeds made for African soil. But, I'll keep you posted on my experiment!