Muli shani bonse mukwai? (How are you all?)
First, I have to say thank you soooo much to all of those who have been sending me packages, letters, photos, emails, well-wishes, and to those of you who go out of your way to call me (and then put up with crappy reception, cutting out, and the 2-5 second delay that make those calls so magical). I love all of the warm support and love I get from home and without those elements of communication and generosity I don't know in what shape I would be.
Check out the new photos I posted yesterday on the flickr account. They're the others from my vacation that wouldn't load fast enough back in January (I spent 94,000 kwatcha at the Internet cafe that day and nearly fell over when I heard my total at the counter -- that's $23.50, but it is a ton of money when you consider my "living allowance" @ approximately $200 a month).
At present, I am in Lusaka on medical travel. I have had some issues with dizziness and low blood pressure lately and they wanted to evaluate me. In the meantime, during my travel to Lusaka I developed some "runny stomach" and was having feverish chills and body pains. My diagnosis . . . MALARIA!!!!???!!! The quick test said no and the Peace Corps doctor put me on an antibiotic I had blood work done on Tuesday and I am still waiting for the results. They'll supposedly be here in about 20 minutes, but I always have to factor in the reality that this is Zambia and nothing is ever back in 20 minutes. My first directive was to come back Tuesday afternoon, then Wednesday morning, then Wednesday afternoon, then this morning and now I am waiting for "12:30" I suspect that I'll still be waiting for some time to come.
In the meantime they've switched my malaria prophilaxis from Mefloquine (the one that is making my hair fall out and giving me a multitude of sleep "issues" inclusive of occasional insomnia and hallucinations [such as ants crawling all over my bed, bees burrowing into my walls and creating some crazy ooze dripping out, etc]) to Doxicycline. Surprisingly enough, I'm not excited about this switch. Hair grows back. Now I have a new handful of side effects to consider: potential yeast infections, extra sensitivity to the sun and sun rashes, and general concerns about being on an antibiotic for the next 18 months.
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Okay, I've just returned from receiving my test results. I take back everything I said about the "20 minutes" thing. Turns out I had giardia, but as it also turns out there's a magic pill for that too. So I just popped the 3rd antibiotic treatment of the day. Yeast infection here I come! My understanding of giardia is that it's a bacterial parasite that lives in your intestines and flares up in the form of intense diarrhea for three or four days before hybernating dormant in your intestines again, until it becomes stressed again and your symptoms return. Really glad I just killed it with four magic little pills.
So my blood pressure thing appears to have manifest itself as a result of the Mefloquine. My full blood count shows that in fact I am eating a propper diet (even as I've lost 55 pounds since coming to Zambia in June) and my hemoglobin is just fine. My doctor says that my body just isn't yet accustomed to "the new Libby."
Well, now all of you know me a lot better. I guess even the strangers who occasionally read this business know me pretty well now. There are no secrets in Peace Corps. My appologies to any prospective Peace Corps Zambia trainees who may be reading this, it is not a good indicator of my overall happiness and general well-being in Zambia.
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Okay, in other news. . .
Blessed and I are busy making plans for our July 2 wedding in Lusaka. People are rapidly finding out about this through the Peace Corps grapevine and I got a chance to sit with the Country Director yesterday to discuss issues of immigration and change of legal status, background checks, paperwork, Embassy, Consulate, Washington, 9/11, Patriot Act, what have you. As it turns out the process has just this past month become even more complex (and should I say limited?) As it also turns out, I'm not the only Peace Corps Volunteer in Zambia who will be marrying a Zambian National this year. So it's all very interesting for the Peace Corps office who gets to help us navigate this ever morphing, changing, expanding web of government beaurocracy.
Paperwork asside, we've booked the Lilayi Lodge for our wedding and we're really excited. They took us on a game drive while we finalized the menus and details. We saw a 7-day old girraffe with its mother, wildebeast, kudu (antelope), eland (the mother of all antelope; it can weigh up to 1-ton), a ton of little monkeys, impala (little antelope), bush pig and warthog. So, it was a lovely day and we accomplished a lot.
Oh, that brings me to the not-so-perfect aspect of my life at present (as if the giardia wasn't enough). Blessed was transferred back to Lusaka to live and work from here now. So we are now a 12-hour bus ride apart (on a good day, if the bus runs on schedule). I'm trying to look at it with a positive attitude: He can do all the errands we need to do for the wedding! And, I can't think of the rest of the reasons why it's positive. He's going to be coordinating some mobile VCT (Voluntary Counselling and Testing for HIV) programs, so he should be coming to Luapula for three weeks sometime soon (hopefully March). He's also planning to come see me for Valentine's Day next week, and I'll be here in Lusaka for Easter, and again for some public holidays in May. I'll inevitably need to come to deal with immigration stuff in Lusaka at some point. My plan is to keep myself really busy between work and home improvements in the village. I just hope that the people in my village don't feel like I am abandoning them for all of these trips to Lusaka. Or that they will think I'm even more bwana (it means "boss" and is what you call people who have money) than they already know. (They just raised all of the bus fares in the country due to inflation. It was already unaffordable for the average Luapula resident to go to Mansa (their provincial capitol), let alone Lusaka.)
I digress. Blessed doesn't live in the BOMA anymore, so now Lea and I have few options for how to make ourselves feel comfortable there (we schlepped a bike and huge backpack around all day on Friday and ate ground nuts, fritters and Coke as our wholesome lunch). It's hard not to have a base in Nchelenge anymore, since I do a lot of my work from there. Kashikishi is 3km away and I can leave my bike with friends at their restaurant, and I can stay with Blessed's good friend and co-worker and his wife (I did this last Friday . . . he has a 1 1/2 year old little girl named Mwamba. She's really cute and Friday she called me "Uncle Mommy" I assume because she couldn't remember "Auntie").
My work is going . . . okay. Can't seem to get people very motivated. Still haven't found myself a village counterpart (someone to capacity build on virtually everything I know so that they can be "me" after I leave), which is basically a cardinal rule of Peace Corps (sustainability is our thing). On average my meetings start about 60 minutes late, if people show up at all. This is why I find my work in schools and in the BOMA more. The school is awesome because they're a captive audience and they still have to attend even though it is raining (yep, people own umbrellas and gumboots, but won't go outside in the rain -- I get a lot more privacy now that it's rainy season -- they also think that you get malaria from the rain and they won't let me go out in the rain either).
I guess my work is good, slow, frusterating, fun, awesome, or okay, based on the day or even the time of day you ask me. There are days I am so "busy" (it's a relative term for sure) that I totally exhaust myself and there are others where I can sit around and read the whole day. I get up between 6 and 7, weed in the garden, go have breakfast with my neighbors and wash dishes, go back home to sweep out my house, go draw water at the lagoon, come back and it is 9:30 or 10. I still have the entire day ahead of me. This is great on days where I have meetings all afternoon because it cuts my sitting around time down to about 2-3 hours as opposed to the whole day. I like Wednesdays because my neighbor and I will cycle to the bigger market (24km round trip - it's worth it to get veggies, fish, bread and bananas) at 6am and get back at about 9. Then every Wednesday afternoon I have Anti-AIDS Club. So Wednesdays are pretty consistently busy.
Anyway, in my "sitting around time" I am doing a lot of reading. So, if you want to send me some books I would love that. I decided I'm going to keep a list of all the titles I read in service, just because (I do a lot of things "just because" lately). Also because if I tell you what I've read, you won't send me duplicates. So far, of the books I've read since coming here, I can remember these:
A Million Little Pieces
Life of Pi
The Secret Life of Bees
The Da Vinci Code (finally)
Beyond the Sky and the Earth
um. . . I'm drawing a serious blank on the others. Cabipa (sorry).
Right now I'm reading My Pet Virus. I would recommend all of these. Especially Beyond the Sky and the Earth. It's about a Canadian woman who goes to volunteer teaching English in Bhutan (in the Himalayas) for two years. If you read it, you'll get an even more detailed vision of what I'm going through in Zambia, since almost everything she experiences parallells my life here. She writes beautifully. I'll be reading this one again before returning it to the PC library in Mansa.
Okay. I think I'm done for today. I've been writing this thing all day in between meetings and test results, etc. I'm thinking none of you in the States have enough time in your day to read all that I've written herein (is that a word? My English is getting bad over here). Sadly, since I'm in Lusaka at the office I have the same adequate supply of "sitting around time" as in the village. However, with free Internet, I can diversify what I do with said time.
Hugs and smooches to you all. Ndemifuluka SANA SANA bonse (I am missing you all a lot a lot). Nalimitemwa bonse (I love you all).
Much love,
LIBBY
This is the beach where we stayed on Christmas Day, before moving into our posh upscale beach resort place the following day. I love my options.
y on Lake Malawi on Christmas Day. We went through the most beautiful mountains and valleys.
