Saturday, February 25, 2012

A Year In Review

     Well trying to follow my resolution to blog once a month so here we are again. February 3rd or 4th was the official mark of living in Zambia for a year. The bigger benchmark will come end of April when I've been in the village for a year, the halfway point of my service. It's crazy how time passes.
     The month of March is full of programs.The new education volunteers are down in training right now. They're where I was a year ago. Next week I head down to Lusaka to help with the training. I'll be there for some exciting parts: when they find out where they'll be living the next two years, Supervisors workshop, and when they prepare for site visit to their village. From training I'll head to Central Province where there's the National meeting for Camp GLOW (Girls Leading Our World). I'm excited to hear about how the other provinces have done their camps and generally just love girl empowerment programs. Then I'll head back to my village where a couple of days later the four new Kaonde volunteers will come to visit for 5 days. So that's what my life for the next month or so looks like... 
     But according to the title of this blog post I should be reviewing some of the past year... So here are some tidbits from here and there: 
* Mwinilunga Visit: I live in Solwezi district of Northwest. About 200 km down the road to the west is Mwinilunga District. I've lived in the village for nine months and figured it was about time that I explore a bit more. I caught the big bus (think greyhound, take it down a couple of levels, and add 20 more people than legal capacity and there you have it) out to Mwinilunga on a Thursday afternoon. Met up with Deanna, one of the other education volunteers from my intake. We met up with some other volunteers and just caught up over a couple of beverages. The next morning we started off early walking to the Trade Center for a meeting with the Director about holding the next Camp GLOW on his campus. The training center was farther than planned... and then we got soaked in a rainstorm during our walk, and arrived later than planned soaked. The location and facility is amazing and too good to pass  by, so pending any issues we have our location for our camp in December! Then we walked more, through thick mud, pushing one bike with us. (We needed to pick up another bike from another volunteers house.. but 20 + km later all we managed to do that day was crash that his house after eating a little feast (didn't really plan food provisions during our adventure). The next morning after 12 wonderful hours of sleep (yes we were asleep by 7 pm...) then we started the biking part of our venture. We biked from around Mwinilunga town to the source of the Zambezi. The road's unpaved and often washes out during rainy season making it impassable. So it's actually better to travel by bike... but still tough going, not to mention the bike I was borrowing only had the gears 2-4 to 2-6... the rest you had to manually change and brakes that rubbed like crazy. It all added to the value of the adventure. We got to the source, which is really anti-climatic. They have a nice center/museum area with information about the Zambezi river, a really nice board walk that is slowly rotting and sinking into the swamp, and then the source itself was a little muddy puddle. But when you think about the fact that this is the origin of Victoria Falls it's absolutely amazing. Having seen Victoria Falls in August, the thundering of water pouring over the falls and then jump forward to this muddy little puddle - CRAZY. Then we started off again - my legs were dead, I was getting annoyed with this bike that seemed bent on moving only at a sludge pace. But luck was on our side and a truck passed by right when we joined the road again and we got a ride for 25 km.. Leaving only 30 km or so to Mwinilunga Boma (town). Would not have made it back to town that day if not for that truck ride. Total we biked 75 km (Deanna had just gotten a bike odometer). We had one of the best cold showers ever and an amazing plate of fries and eggs. The next morning I headed back on the bus, spent from the trip, but worth all the effort seeing Mwinilunga and Ikelenge Districts and experiencing the even greener side of Northwest Province.
* Girls Club: We started our girls club beginning of January and things have been going really great! We've covered different topics such as HIV/AIDS, assertiveness, goals/dreams, and have recently been working on preparing two songs to present at Women's Day on March 8th. The girls clubs from Luamvundu (my school) and Lumwana East (my closest school where Audra leads the club) will sing "If you wanna be somebody" together and then each club will sing a song with just their school for the celebration of Women's Day. This week we're going to sew chitenge pads, using the skills the teacher's were taught during the camp. I got 40 washcloths for the final step of the pads today in the market. Girls when they are on their period often do not attend school or other events as they do not have any way of keeping themselves clean or maintaining themselves during their period. This means girls after puberty miss can miss up to a week of school every month.
* Reading Hour: This term working in partnership with Robyn, the wife of a miner at Lumwana East, we have been traveling to Nyansowe, my farthest school that is 15 + km away and on a washed away dirt road in the bush, to do a reading program with the grades 1-4. The main focus is simply to encourage a culture of reading, teaching the youngest pupils that reading can be fun and an interesting way to learn about different things.
* Penpals: I am mailing 58 letters written by the Grade 8's at Lumwana East to Mr. Babich's Grade 5 class in my hometown Northville, Michigan (note the grade difference because of English literacy levels in the village). My pupils have been really excited to have penpals in America and despite the struggle with writing letters and their English levels it is a program they love.
* General village life: Recently in the evenings I've taken to wandering. (Don't worry parents by evenings I mean wandering around 17-18 or so.) When James is in town I meet up with him and we wander by the river, around the market, or down a trail we found. Otherwise I visit Grace at the market, wander by the school, or just here and there. It's my final evening exercise to make sure I'm good and tired for bed and it's nice to meet and greet everyone as they travel home after a day's work. Most of my days are spent at schools: Lumwana East, Luamvundu, or Nyansowe mainly. But when I'm not at school or working on the program I've been working with the children in my family with their English language skills. We hang out in general, but they also come over for coloring pages or reading books from my basket. They also enjoy the occasions when I break out chalk and they use the board I painted with chalkboard paint. It's absolutely precious to watch the older children (age 8 and older) teaching the younger children the alphabet, words in english, and how to count. Love them.
Think that this is where I will draw this blog post to a close. It's getting late here and need to pack up before heading back to the village tomorrow. Hope that all is well with everyone and remember I love to hear from you how life is going and what you're up to in America.
Love,
~Andrea