I am a pasty Muzungu!

Hello All,

I just sent a long email to supplement this posting and if you didn't get it, contact my mom and she'll send it along.

So, yes. I am a pasty muzungu (a white person) and that means everyone in the village is intrigued by everything I do. Some of the kids in my village just like to watch me. Last night one iwe (ee-way - means child, it is also a way of addressing someone without the added respect of saying imwe) was instructing me to drink from my nalgene bottle so he could watch. I guess I'm crazy weird here or something. At least the kids in my host village have a decent respect for my personal space.

I went on site visit to Luapula province last week. (I saw Elliott Hoel!!! He is doing great, loves his village and project. He was in at the provincial house in Mansa because he had symptoms of malaria, but he tested negative for the malaria parasite.) I digress. The kids there were really into getting up in your space and trying to touch you without you noticing. I sat on the stoop and washed dishes in a bucket and the kids crept closer and closer until one was practically in the bucket.

Site visit in Luapula was amazing. We stayed with a HAP volunteer named Lauren. She has a really nice house (it took her a year to get it that nice, but it gave me some great ideas for work on my own house) and a garden. She is doing amazingly well in here community. She took us to the clinic to meet her counterparts and to the basic school to give a presentation on positive living and HIV prevention, she has made enormous progress in only a year. We danced with the bamaayos (mothers) and iwes in her neighborhood (they dance on the full moon because it is like extended daylight). And the bamaayos nextdoor taught us to pound toute (cassava) into mealie meal for making ubwale nshima. They also taught us to wash our clothes using our wrists as washboards (my wrist got sore and I couldn't write for a few hours). Lauren showed us how to make a lot of different foods over the imbobala (brasier, charcoal stove). We made granola, banana bread, faux chicken nuggets (they were so tasty), and like a million other things.

I am hoping to be posted to Luapula after training because the two HIV/AIDS Project sites there sound so cool. They are both right by a big lake with white sandy beaches, they'll be near another HAP neighbor and right on the tarmac (paved road). However, I will be happy here no matter where they place me.

For now I am staying with my host family in Kakolo village outside of Kitwe. I have language and technical training six days a week and will only be able to email on Sundays. I think I may have promised my family that I would join them for church next Sunday, so don't be startled if I do not write next week. My family is wonderful. They have a bunch of kids, not all their own, but some they just look after. Luckily for me most of them have Western names that are easy for me to remember. Ruthie the eldest daughter is helping me to practice my Bemba, and it is going very well. Their last Peace Corps trainee was the top Bemba speaker in his class and gave the Bemba speech at the Swearing In Ceremony (it gets televised on ZNBC) - so they are determined that I too will be at the top of my Bemba class!

This morning I was thinking that it is possible I might get scurvy. The only vegetable I have eaten since moving in with my family is cabbage and that was two days ago. Yesterday they packed me a "lunch" to take to the training center. Luckily this was the only time they would have to pack me a lunch, they sent me with about 4 cups of white rice and two hard boiled eggs. I ate the eggs, thankful for the protein and bummed a banana off another volunteer. We're in Kitwe today, so I'll buy some apples or something I can keep in my room so as not to offend them. The staples are easy to come by here and you find yourself eating a lot of starch. Zambian's eat ubwale (like the "pap" we ate in South Africa) with EVERYTHING. They do not understand why we don't eat it in America (or Amelika as they say in Bemba - there is no R in the Bemba alphabet and they use Ls in the place of Rs. In fact, my family first called me Ba Ribbya, until I sorted it out for them - I think Libby reminds them of Libya, the country . . . so be it. When in Lome . . . ).

So, I am taking Mefloquine, the malaria prophilaxis that makes you have vivid dreams. At the same time I am reading that book "A Million Little Pieces" about the guy in drug rehab. Also at the same time my host family told me I WOULD be going to church with them on Sunday. The night before last I dreamed that I was in drug rehab, and they made me go to church and I ran away from church. That's about the extent of that side effect.

Okay, this is starting to cost me a lot of Kwatcha. K3,500 is a dollar. So I'm sure if I live frugally I can be a millionaire. Sweet.

I hope this has been a sufficient update. I miss you all so much. Hugs and smooches to everybody.

Shalenipo! (stay well!)

Love,
LIBBY