LUSAKA = Culture Shock

Um. . . Lusaka has far too many cars. It is totally a little slice of America. I'm feeling extreme culture shock after having been in the village and Nchelenge for all this time. I just had a cheeseburger and a milkshake for dinner and I bought cous cous at the grocery store to be cooked in my mud hut. So that's fun. It's a good thing Blessed likes "Muzungu food" so much. Lea and I made him guacomole the other night and he was really excited (even me, it was real tasty). If only I had a mojito to go with it. . . (that's a shout out to you Meks).

So, Lusaka is fun. I'm pretty excited that I got to go shopping today and buy a pair of jeans that fit (one of my only missions in Lusaka). Manual labor is the way to drop a few pounds. My water is about 1km away down hill to the lagoon, that's the toughest part of my daily routine. The bamaayos are concerned that I'm not carrying 20 litres of water on my head yet. I think I'll start small with 10 and see what I can accomplish. Blessed took a video of me drawing water so you can see the process, but we haven't figured out yet how to get it off of his phone and onto the Internet yet.

Right, so I only have a few minutes mpaka this place closes for the night. So, this might be choppy. . .

stories. . .

Independence Day (October 24th) -- I gave a health talk on the importance of VCT (Voluntary Counselling and Testing for HIV) muciBemba in the morning and was promptly invited to play netball in the afternoon. I declined by saying I'd never even seen a netball game before, so I didn't know how to play. So they asked if I could play football. Why yes. I enjoy playing soccer, or rather I did in my early teens. Anyway. Nine years had passed since I last set foot on the soccer pitch. They asked what number I wanted to play. I thought they meant what jersey did I want to wear (which was confusing because I thought they didn't have jerseys). No, in the rest of the world they number the positions instead of calling them midfield, striker, stopper, etc. I was assigned to play 4 or 5 after telling them I prefer defense. I don't know what I was doing, I was just trying to mark my man -- #7 Bekham. I knew they were all wearing Man U jerseys on the other team. I didn't realize they were all wearing #7 Bekham. Except for the 3 guys who wore #11 Giggs. Sweet. I did a crappy job defending and even totally missed the ball the first time it came to me. All this for an audience much much much larger than ever came to see me play at Brattleboro Area Middle School. Sweet. So, that's just a little story.

I have to go. They're closing
love you all,
LIBBY