transportation madness

Okay, I'm going to try to make this quick. The lights were just flickering and I'm not sure this will post at all.

So, yes Mom, I told you I wouldn't have Internet access until Tuesday, but alas there was transportation madness. This morning my friend Lea and I got up to meet out transport from Kawambwa to Kitwe. We got to the bus and were loading our stuff and the amaguy (in Bemba you put ama- before corruptable nouns to make Bemba words, i.e. amaguys, amacookies, etc.) asked if we knew the route. We must have looked confused. But there are only like four roads in Zambia, how could we possibly go? Turns out the bus we had pre-booked was going to Kitwe via Dr. Congo (as Sean likes to call it - DRC to the rest of the world). I immediately demanded a refund. As Peace Corps volunteers we are not allowed to leave the country without letting the Country Director know, also DRC is a place to be avoided at the moment, by which I mean for the last several decades. (Yes, for those of you who are paying attention, I will be living very close to DRC. However, you would have to swim there from my site. Not to worry.) So. We took the bus to Mansa and are staying tonight in the Provincial Peace Corps Volunteer house, which is always a good time. Tomorrow morning we will head off to Kapiri and hitch from there back to Kitwe.

We had some wild transportation issues on our way from Mansa to Kawambwa last week on our way to Kim's site (where I stayed in the village for the last week - it was awesome, more on that later). We took a bus called "Peace Soldier" - on the front it says "Peace Soldier: Wrongfully Accused". My friend Shannon made up a Peace Soldier jingle: "Peace Soldier, you may be risking your life."

We were lucky that they came to the house to pick us up because we had 13 people and seven bikes to get up to Kawambwa. They had a trailer to carry all of our stuff. We pulled out of Mansa house and heard a thud. I thought we had a flat tire (which would only be natural after having had one in each direction on first site visit). I turned around . . . no trailer. It had fallen off not 200 meters from the house. It worked its way into a ditch. They had to get it out of the ditch and hitch it back up. It immediately fell off again 20 feet later. So they put some huge bags of salt on top of the trailer hitch. It did the trick. Then we got about three hours into our drive and stopped at a police checkpoint and I looked back. No salt bags had made it to that point. About 3k later we heard another thud. Again, my diagnosis was a flat tire. Nope, the trailer was fishtailing. I turned around to yell STOP! in the direction of the driver and when I turned back around there was no trailer. It took off into the village. I saw it as it came around the side of someone's icimbuusu (pit latrine). I am surprised it didn't take out any small children or goats. The impact screwed up at least four of the seven bikes. The gear sprokets were bent perpendicular to the chain. Shoot. Well, my bike was not in question it remains safely locked away in Mwekera where I will hopefully find it tomorrow night.

Right, so aside from our crazy adventures in Zambian public transportation, site visit was amazing!!! I love Luapula. Everyone is awesome. We stayed with Kim, an HIV/AIDS Volunteer who has been here for one year now. Her village was awesome. Lea and I facilitated sessions on three afternoons. We did a gender session with the grade nine at her school, an action planning session with her Health Center Committee, and a Mother-to-Child-Transmission / Gender and HIV session with her Traditional Birth Attendants and Community Health Workers. All three went pretty well. The gender session was my favorite. We had a lot of fun. We also went to meet Chief Kabilla, the sub-chief who is Kim's neighbor. This was a major to do. We had to bring him a financial contribution (because we didn't have a live chicken to spare) and kneel with both knees on the ground to greet him. It was majorly formal. We asked him a lot of questions and two hours later when we ran out of questions he informed us that he had cleared his entire day for our visit. So we took some photos and he invited us inside the palace, which is unheard of. No one goes into the palace. So, it was pretty awesome. Now I know what to do when I go to greet my chief.

We also went around Kawambwa to all of Kim's district officials to greet them and learn about what they do. Apparently her District AIDS Task Force people weren't there, because they were up in Nchelenge learning from my District AIDS Task Force, who are aparently amazing. So that's awesome. I'm really psyched to work with them. Also, Lea and I had a lesson in roof thatching, which we will present in Mwekera on Thursday. It's interesting stuff.

Anyway, we ate like queens the whole time. I made my faux-chicken nuggets twice. We made tortillas and had an attempt at Mexican food (the guacomole was amazing). Back to nshima tomorrow.

Oh yeah, we went to Ntumba Falls yesterday. AMAZING. So gorgeous. We saw three sets of waterfalls, each feeding into the next. And we swam in our clothes. Cold season is a joke - we dried off in like two hours.

Okay. Time to go. I love and miss you all. Thank you soooo much for the mail. I'll send my new address ASAP.

Lots of love and hugs and smooches.

LIBBY