Well, I've finally met all the other fabulous volunteers in Central Province! This past week we came together at our Provincial House to have our yearly Peace Corps meeting. The week was filled with many activities including roasting an entire pig in the ground, needless to say after months lacking meat protein it was delicious!(A note on Provincial Houses: Peace Corps is kind enough to provide a house complete with electricity and hot showers for every Province, we get four days a month to go and relax and clean ourselves.) There are 27 of us in Central(about 250 in all of Zambia), it's interesting to note the wide variety of people attracted to the Peace Corps.
Life in the village is much the same. However, teachers have been on strike these past few weeks, wanting more money from the Ministry of Education. Therefore, I don't have much actual Peace Corps work, in terms of visiting schools to be doing. Instead, I've been filling my days spending more time with my family and continuing my copious amounts of reading, I'm a bit embarrassed the amount of books I've read in the short time I've been here! Harvesting is almost complete, now farms are waiting for the government to set a price for the crops and start buying them. It's an interesting system, I don't know of any private companies that are buying the crops only the Zambian government. I believe the women in my village have started to become used to my daily jogs, in the beginning they would come out from their insakas (cooking huts) and tell me I look tired and try to show me the short-cut back to my home; either that or I look much less tired and out of shape! This past weekend, I attempted my own laundry, my sister who normally does it is very very pregnant, it went ok, and to my untrained eye my clothes look clean!
In other Zambian news:
The Zambian soccer team won the game this past week that will send them to the 2010 World Cup in South Africa! And in village news: The Chief (very important man) is coming to stay with us in August. The village is busy preparing everything for him, including building him a new home!
Here are a few books that I highly recommend(I am pretty much an expert by now!):
Empire Falls, Richard Russo
In the Lake of the Woods, Tim O'Brien
God's Pocket, Pete Dexter
Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier
Thursday, June 11, 2009
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