One year looks like my hair 6 inches longer and bleached by the African sun.
It looks like my ulusasa (Bathing shelter) collapsed from the wind, rain, and termites.
It looks like my bike rusting and muddy, and myself dragging it through thigh-high puddles, my long skirts mud-caked and getting caught in the breaks.
One year is 13 books (significantly less that my fellow volunteers who are on the 100-books-in-two-years kick, but my pen has flown through 3 full journals).
One year is 5kg of rice eaten, I-can't-even-count-how-many jars of peanut butter eaten, 6 bags of charcoal, and 55 pupils (now in grade nine) with an American pen-pal.
One year is Trust (the name of my baby neighbor) going from crawling, to walking, to screaming SHANANANANON every time I ride my bike past. Maybe in one more year he will stop crying when I get off my bike to get up close and say hi to him.
One year is one teacher who acquired a new set of teaching methods, 90 girls enrolled in GLOW club, and nine full months in my village.
It's a new year. And 2012 feels newer than any year has even felt before. After my long, sleepless, hilarious, rat race of a vacation, I used up all 4 of my allotted "house days" (at the Peace Corps provincial resource center house in town) for the month of January, forcing myself to stay put in the village until February, and landed in my village just in time for my 24th birthday. After three weeks of exploring, indulging, and socializing at maximum volume, with my party pants on the whole time, January 8th was quiet and calm- giving me an entire day to relax and reflect whilst January 9th, the first day of term 1, I had made the decision to hit the ground running, putting forth every effort to make this term productive and worthwhile.
I took the ideas from the community, planned programs, held meetings, and got to work. It's like all the sudden my steps have a direction and I'm no longer running around in circles, down bush paths, past trees, and uninterested teachers, hitting a wall, or and interruption, or collapsing from frustration or homesickness, or stepping carefully around people's authority or slowing down out of cultural sensitivity. I've found my steady footing, my own pace, and my direction. I finally feel like I am no longer a guest here, that I am a resident here and I can do what I want.
We've got the preschool up and running. 26 kids, and one very awesome dedicated teacher. I've taught her how to organize a daily schedule, what kinds of topics to cover, and all the songs from FRC that I remember singing right before coming here. I also cannot believe how much I've learned from my mother... I feel like I am teaching a teacher to teach like my mother teaches preschool. Fine by me!
I am teaching adults Tuesday/Thursday for 2 hours. Of the 25ish of them, I've got grade one level, grade three level, grade six, and nine levels. It's fast and busy and the people really appreciate it.
And perhaps my most successful program is the GLOW Club, where my two student leaders and counterpart teacher have truly impressed me with their efforts. After our confidence session, one of my student leaders, Gladys, nearly cried with happiness at how successful it went. Jumping up and down like she just won the lottery, she suddenly spit out fragments of English, something along the lines of: "I feel so good and confident inside! How can I say? Oh I'm just so happy!" She literally didn't have the words to express how she felt but it was communicated quite clearly. This club is her baby and she was more proud that day than ever in her life.
All this energy is making my service 10x more rewarding. It's not that I was unhappy last term- it's just that the work I was doing (co-teaching) was not incredibly effective or ideally working how Peace Corps had hoped. This kind of feedback, which most volunteers had expressed was partially contributing to the change in the education sector's focus altogether. Which is why this new intake of RED volunteers is being trained in TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) rather than co-teaching. Anyways- with the old program out and the new program in, here I am doing what my village needs, wants, and what I feel confident doing. Besides, I am co-teaching and co-planning with the preschool teacher --yet she is a villager--and way more easy to work with that a paid government teacher.
Other things are changing too. I am no longer using an 30-minute escapism method in my bedroom every day to cope with this life. I used to get overwhelmed more than I do now and would have to take a 30 minute break on my reedmat in my room, with my music, eat my food, in my own little world. I now realize that loneliness in a crowd in only temporary and although surrounding myself with a room full of simple pleasures for 30 minutes a day is certainly an acceptable coping mechanism, surrounding myself with new faces for thirty more minutes a day opens so many more doors; a 30 minute mini-lesson on HIV, more time to strengthen a friendship, a free meal of nshima and chibwabwa ukusashila, a spontaneous walk with a new friend to the waterfall, a spontaneous dance party--- all of which rarely happen when I am by myself in my hut (well, besides the dance party). A 30 minute solitude fix is still there if I need it...but I don't need it as much anymore. In short- Zambia is now my own little world. The people, the food, the sounds. There is no need to drown it out. Imagine- one year and I finally "get it."
Anyways. On to more exciting news. As I mentioned, the RED (Rural Education Development) Project has completely changed from co-teaching to TEFL. The new intake of volunteers are already here in Chongwe for their 3-moth training- just as I was my first three months. Training involves so many people behind the scenes including an entire tech team. There are current volunteers who help design the training program--they are trainers (one volunteer will teach the newbies for one month each) and there are 10 resource volunteers (one volunteer to come down and assist in facilitating sessions and working with the trainees per week). I have been selected as a resource volunteer for week 3 of training. This means that next week I'll hitch down to Chongwe and help out, meet the newbies, and even get to go visit my old family from training. I cannot believe I was in their shoes one year ago--- and those volunteers who trained me are now getting ready to go back to America land. Time flies.
Hmm what else... I started baking bread at my site! Also- no I did not bungee jump while I was in Livingstone for vacation. I was at the falls the day that girl's cord broke. The view from the top was breathtaking enough. We swam right at the top of the falls (where we found a poached elephant that washed down stream) and took lots of pictures. Livingstone was a LOT of fun- yet very expensive. It certainty did not feel like Zambia. It reminded me if Florida, or what I know of Florida, which is the tourist spots. Large buildings, extravagant landscaping, even Italian food. At the falls there were people from all walks of life, all colors, languages, sizes. I saw a sign at the falls advertising that for only 50 dollars you can go visit a real-life village to experience the real Zambia! For only 20 more dollars you can stay the night and eat with the family, and if you wanted to you could even volunteer for the day! I wondered how 'real' of an experience it could be if the villagers get any percentage of that 50 dollars. It reminded me of when went to Thailand with an NGO and how we visited a "real village" near Chiang Mai. I understand what people think they want to see, but if there is a village next door to a tourist capital, development is undoubtedly already there.
On New Years Eve we went to a fancy party on the Zambeezi River. It was nice, about half of Peace Corps/Zambia was there- I got to meet a lot of volunteers I've never even met before. Again, it was weird to be a tourist, surrounded by 500 white people. When they served us dinner they even put a scoop on nshima on there, I guess for novelty. But the weirdest thing: they put gravy over the nshima like it was mashed potatoes!!! I stared at it like a kid in the lunch line. I asked the server (a Zambian) how I was supposed to eat Nshima with GRAVY on top!? Typically you roll nshima in your hand and dip it into a relish (and if the relish is gravy then fine, but it's supposed to be on the side of the plate)! He smiled politely and gave me a spoon. Anyways, I sat and ate next to couple of Canadians. I went ahead and rolled my nshima anyways. The Canadians were on an Afri-tour hitting all the hot spots in Sub-Sahara Africa. In Zambia they were going to Livingstone only. For their sake, I tried to sell the rest of Zambia, because it's so drastically different from Livingstone. They did not seem interested really, although they tried out of politeness. They said no thank you to anything "more rural than this" (this air conditioned lodge with a DJ, bar, pool, and electricity). And seemed put off by any sort of actual contact with Zambians...you know, the people who live here. And they especially did not want to have to eat any of this "cream of wheat stuff" everyday ... "with your hands??"
Anyways, I am not trashing Livingstone or saying I did not enjoy vacation- I loved it, it was beautiful, and I definitely was a tourist for a week. And there's nothing wrong with that. The tourism industry does a lot for this country. We went on a cruise, saw hippos, went dancing at night, indulged like crazy. But that conversation I had with the Canadians, and my overall defensiveness for the country reminded me of how I felt before I ever came here regarding Africa. I did not want to go to a country with Peace Corps unless is was Africa. And I only wanted to come to Africa if I had some sort of job like this. I suppose it's with any country, anywhere, but I don't think you can actually understand Africa or it's people, or it's problems, or it's successes until you live here. Any hey, these Canadian guys did not care to know of Zambia- which breaks my heart, but then they'll go home and tell their friends of their travels, take out their bag full of souvenirs, and say that they went to Zambia. And .... how can you say you've been to Zambia if you've only been to the small bubble of Livingstone? Most Zambians in my village have never been outside Kasama District, let alone Northern Province. To them, Victoria Falls is just as foreign as the United States.
Check out the two new videos I uploaded on the video link on the side. 5 more months until mom and Meaghan come woooot!
And Zambia vs. Ivory Coast in the Africa Cup championship finals tonight. The whole country is wearing green and orange and it is LOUD! Go Chipolopolo Boys!
Merry Christmas!
Rafting Ride at the Hot Springs
Victoria Falls for Christmas. Heathers purse got stolen by a monkey.
Mosi o tunya!
Zambian hitching We spend a lot of time on the side of the road depending on the kindness of others
PRESCHOOL PICTURES
" Good morning to you, good morning to you!"
My AWESOME teacher teaching letter A
GLOW Club. Meeting #3: Girls soccer and.... well I tried to teach them ultimate Frisbee.
Donchi Kubeba
The smallest one is my neighbor whose first words were: Okay, bye, and Shananananan
