July 15, 2007
Singalongs and Environmental Education
Hello everyone,

I'm in Lusaka, at an internet cafe in a grocery store that will shortly provide me with ice cream and cheese. I'm splurging today, it's our amazing shopping day after weeks of intense training and not nearly enough free time! That will all change once I'm at my site after training is over; I'm told then you have many days with no clear direction or plan, and you wish you had hours of training to attend. I'm still very excited for training to be over and the real work to begin, even though I know it'll also be a lot harder.

Language training continues to be... interesting. We learned 18 noun classes all of which have different ways to format sentences, but I did pretty well at the first competency practice test, so there's hope. Tech training is way more interesting and enjoyable, we're planting/working in a garden, studying agroforestry tree species (my main interest, as it turns out) and last week we did Environmental Ed work. That was really exciting, we got to observe children at a basic school nearby, and then present a lesson on food webs and food chains. Unfortunately without having more time to develop a relationship with the teachers and students, we're more like tourist attractions, and I think the kids spent more time staring at the weird Americans at the front of the classroom than they did actually listening to what we were saying.

I'm making some amazing friends, which is good because my homestay family is kind of difficult to deal with. I'm immensely appreciative of my American family, who are far more cheerful and get along a lot better than they do. My ba mayo (mom) is a VERY good cook, at least with Zambian food, so that works out. Also, one of our chickens is sitting on about a dozen eggs so hopefully when I get back from our week-long visit to a current volunteer (week after next) there will be chicks running around!

I'll be able to check my e-mail again next weekend in Luapula so write me! We're staying for a week with a currentl volunteer. Also by the end of next week I'll know where my work site will actually be, which is INCREDIBLY exciting.

I tried to send a lot of response e-mails,but if you have questions I haven't answered yet definitely send them my way! Also snail-mail letters. I will probably end every e-mail with a plea for mail, it's amazing, and I'll write back to everyone!

Off to get ice cream,
Nan





July 1, 2007
Hey Look I found a computer!

Hi everyone,

I don't have enough cash on me to take the time to write back all those of you who e-mailed me, but thanks so much, and I love and miss those of you to whom it wouldn't be inappropriate to say that :-) (you know who you are!)

Zambia continues to be amazing. We're a week and a half into our training, which means I still don't know how to say very much in Bemba but I'm getting more and more excited as I realize how much there is to learn. Which also means of course, that there is a lot I don't know yet, but the trainers are wonderful and the rest of my group of Trainees is full of some amazing people who are rapidly becoming good friends.

A typical day of training:

Wake up around 230, because that's when the roosters start going off. Try to fall asleep again before I hear the rats in my room.
Repeat at 430 and 600; get up at 630.

Take a bucket bath in my outdoor bathing shelter; this is VERY cold some mornings but mostly a really refreshing way to wake up. My host mom makes me breakfast- instant coffee, and egg, and peanutbutter sandwhiches or fritters. Ride my (SUPER SWEET TREK) mountain bike to language class, which is outside, and is 3 other people and me with our Zambian cultural-and-language-facilitator. We learn Bemba until our brains hurt, then break for lunch.

Lunch is at home, usually around 1230. My host mom cooks more amazing food, this time usually nshima (the staple food here) and rape or tomatoes, and often fish, chicken, or soya pieces as well. Then at 1400 I go for technical treaining, which this week included some basic agricultural and tree nursery information as well as a background of the Zambian Forest Department and Ministry of Agriculture.

Training goes until around 1700, then I go home for dinner, which is similar to lunch, and then study for a while and generally go to bed by 2030. Once it gets dark, I realize how tired I am and I collapse :0)

It's hard to describe what it's like here... right now it's the dry-winter season, so there's very little green. Mostly there's dust, and dried grass. There are chickens and goats running around everywhere, and my one friend's host family has these crazy looking ducks- they have reddish feet, and are black and white speckles. Also small lizards, and big rats. ROUSes, if you will! All the "exciting" wildlife is confined to the national parks, which I will definitely visit. I will also be visiting Victoria Falls at some point, although I'm not very close to there right now, and I'll be working even further away once I go to my site.

The people are VERY friendly and helpful, as evidenced by the fact that we even found this out-of-the-way internet cafe. All the villagers we met when we went to visit a current volunteer were really excited to meet Americans and listen to us attempt to speak Bemba to them, which means probably the people in my village will respond to me similarly. I hope so, anyway!

Sorry this is kind of rushed, but hey, you're getting an e-mail from Africa! I would like to note that if you write me letters, you'll get detailed and lengthy responses back, because I always have paper and pen whereas computers are hard to come by.

Say Hello to the various parts of America for me,

Nan