Happy New Year!

And so the shortest (er, longest, as I'm in the southern hemisphere) day came, and the old year died. And what a year it was! Some of my more recent adventures include a train ride to Dar es Salaam (trains are the only way to travel), a week collecting shells off the beach in Zanzibar, and a new year's trip to Kundalila Falls-- a waterfall just 60 km from my village, where I spent the night in a tent. Thanksgiving featured real live turkeys, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie, while Christmas featured santa hats handed out at cement tuck shops in the boma and baby pine trees in little black planting bags. At the start of December I harvested my beehive for the very first time (with major assistance from my Zambian farmers, who thanks to the veils I sewed them sustained only 7 stings during the process-- an impressively small number for African bees), and dug and planted my own 1/4-lima field and garden. I had my last official workshop on December 9, where 30 farmers helped me plant soya in my field. I had wanted to have them plant tree seeds and transplant tree seedlings for me as well, both as a learning-by-doing teaching mechanism and to save me a great deal of time and labor, but there had not been rain in my village for two weeks and I worried the trees would not survive in the dry, unwaterable soil, so instead I drew a couple of flipcharts and gave a 2-hour lecture (at least it felt like 2 hours) on intercropping and agroforestry (intercropping with trees).

As predicted, the rains have been terribly poor and painfully disappointing this season, and I along with the farmers of my village have spent days staring at the clouds waiting for rain and then had to rush when the clouds burst to dig and plant and transplant before the soil dries up again, meaning the work of a week is compressed into a day or two on a regular basis. This is not a healthy way to farm, but we are at the mercy of the climate and the clouds. Maize wilts in the fields, but farmers who were lucky enough to be a part of the Zambian government's conservation farming program-- and smart enough to follow the directives of said program-- planted some of their maize early (end of November, as opposed to mid-December) and so at least some of the crop is enduring the drought with aplomb. However, these are only small plots for demonstration, and the majority of the maize is late-planted and a little sickly. I planted my maize early, conservation-farming-style, and it still doesn't look that great-- I tell the farmers to go easy on me, this is my first time ever planting a field of any kind, and just because I'm not having much luck doesn't mean my methods don't have merit. Luckily other farmers are having more luck and serving as role models where I cannot. Of course the other crops-- beans, soybeans, millet, sorgum, groundnuts, cassava, sweet potatoes-- seem to be doing fine, but they are not the moneymakers, they are not the chief source of food, and they are not the popular topic of conversation. Which is a shame, because African sweet potatoes may be the best thing ever, and nshima made from millet is waaaaay better than nshima made from maize. But that's just one muzungu's humble opinion and so is largely laughed at and ignored when expressed to Zambian villagers.

I have also planted trees in my field-- an old traditional practice revitalized by the conservation farming/sustainability/anti-slash-and-burn movement. These trees-- pidgeon pea, sesbania, tephrosia, luceana-- have nutrient-rich leaves and also have the capacity to fix nitrogen in the soil by hosting nitrogen-fixing bacteria in their roots. This is seen as an alternative to both fertilizer and compost manure, the latter being very labor-intensive and the former extremely costly. A few other farmers have caught on to the idea and agreed to try it in their own fields, and since they are eons more capable with a hoe than I am I imagine they will soon by practicing agroforestry better than I can teach it. My garden is coming along nicely-- I have lettuce, tomatoes, onions, pumpkins, green beans, and marigolds-- pretty, and a good pesticide-- and it is all run on natural organic manure. Since the minor December drought ruined my plans for my last workshop, I had to plant my trees and my garden pretty much by myself over the last month-- it was a lot of work, but I feel much stronger and my thumbs much greener on the other side of the experience.

And when I say last workshop, I do mean last-- it is January 2012 and we are now getting into the last 4 months of my Peace Corps service in an African village. It's hard to believe I've been in Africa 23 months already. Of course I'll still have meetings and visits with farmers and I'll still bring chitenges on my bicycle to my womens' group and make banana bread with my host family and talk to farmers about harvesting beehives without harvesting bee babies and digging fields without cutting down all the trees and planting gardens without fertilizer and all that good stuff. But for the next 4 months, my energy will be focused on packing up, wrapping up projects, saying good-bye. I've made a new year's resolution to sit by my host family's fire with my host-grandparents every night after dinner for the remainder of my stay in the village-- this is an old habit, one I relied on heavily for language and cultural training during those first crucial months in the village, but over the past year I've fallen out of the habit a little, and I want to get back into it. I want to savor every last moment I have with them.

While I will be saying good-bye to my village, I will not be saying good-bye to Zambia just yet. I was recently approved to stay for a 3rd year in PCZ as PCVL in Northern Province, Zambia, which means I'll be doing things like site prep and volunteer support for the 40 or so volunteers in that area for the next year. It will be exciting and challenging and very different from what I am doing now-- I will be in a city, for one thing. And I won't be living in a mudhut with no electricity or running water. I won't be cooking on an open fire or teaching a Zambian family how to make s'mores. I won't have a cat who pees on everything and constantly leaves ticks on my couch, and I won't be biking 20 km just to buy peanut butter. So these are the things I will have to say good-bye to in 2012. Thanks for all the memories 2011, it's been real.