tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-42350508376334807422024-02-07T22:16:05.795-05:00Landlocked on a Plateau in AfricaElisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17006699585362579524noreply@blogger.comBlogger31125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4235050837633480742.post-37907215232775324942014-01-14T13:16:00.001-05:002014-01-14T13:16:05.796-05:00Adventures in Readjustment: A Trip to the SupermarketA reflection on grocery stores in Zambia and the US that I started a few months ago, and just got around to finishing:<br />
<br />
<style>
<!--
/* Font Definitions */
@font-face
{font-family:Cambria;
panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4;
mso-font-alt:"Times New Roman";
mso-font-charset:77;
mso-generic-font-family:roman;
mso-font-format:other;
mso-font-pitch:auto;
mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;}
/* Style Definitions */
p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal
{mso-style-parent:"";
margin:0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria;
mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria;
mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria;
mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}
@page Section1
{size:8.5in 11.0in;
margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in;
mso-header-margin:.5in;
mso-footer-margin:.5in;
mso-paper-source:0;}
div.Section1
{page:Section1;}
-->
</style>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
What gets my attention about being home isn’t the milk
aisle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You know, that old
stereotype of encountering 10 brands of milk in 14 sizes and 23 flavors with
something like 47 different percentages of milkfat, comparing it to that
glorified mythical third-world country you used to live in, where you just
bought “milk” and things made sense and nothing was ever wrong, and then having
a breakdown right there on the tile floor you never even noticed the color of
before under florescent lights and then oh look, it’s that girl who used to
bully you in high school, and you swore you’d come back from Africa and,
amongst other things, impress all the hometowners with your international poise
and experience, but clearly that’s not going to happen because “Jenny” the
grocery stock girl who used to throw spit-balls at you is now watching you
hyperventilate on the floor because you held the fridge door open too long
staring at milk labels and now you’re worried about wasting the electricity and
making the power go out as the cold air rushes out into your face and then you
remember that this is America the power doesn’t usually randomly go out in the
grocery store like it did back home and good GOD is that air cold—</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
No, that hasn’t happened yet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mostly because I haven’t bought any milk yet.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
These days I’m more of a yogurt person.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So I went to the Hannaford supermarket the other day, to buy
the food my mother didn’t know to buy for me because she hasn’t been in any way
responsible for feeding me for a couple of years now, because I’ve been in
Africa.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s the same Hannaford
supermarket, minus a few renovations and re-organizations and name-changes,
that I’ve been going to since I was 10.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The fruit section hit me first with a cold wet blast, like always, fresh
Maine apples shoved in your face in front of the dwindling last dregs of the
slightly unfresh summer berries.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The vegetables were shoved against the wall where they couldn’t offend
anybody, and the more pricey fruits were brightly lit on tables in the center,
so that you could still feel confident that you were shopping in the “healthy”
section when it suddenly turned into the bakery, cheese, and precooked meals
area.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yes, I’m sure these donuts
are better for you, because they’re fresh and next to the pineapples.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The tempura sushi, rotisserie chickens,
and mozzarella sticks are all in line with the bananas, which are all green and
bizarrely huge, because they are easy foods to prepare, or not prepare,
compared to the spinach which I eventually found huddled in the corner next to
the kale and “organic” basil.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As I
would later remember, no one wants to buy food they have to cook.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But none of this got to me, because it’s all stuff I
remember from my childhood, even if it is a bit strange and tilted now from
this angle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What got to me was
this:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
None of this stuff was outside.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I mean, yes, Africa has an indoor supermarket, sometimes,
and sometimes even more than one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Not so much in the Zambian villages where you’re lucky to find food if
you actually go to a village tuck shop (like a city newspaper kiosk, except made
of grass or mud-brick and mostly selling sweets, biscuits, cell phone minutes
(called “talktime”), and little plastic bags of sugar to put in your opaque
local beer), but in the towns there were general stores and butcher shops that
occasionally had meat and cheese, and “specialty” general stores that sometimes
had tuna or Pringles or, on one memorable occasion, olive oil.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In towns with more than one paved road
and a stoplight (like Kasama, where I spent my 3<sup>rd</sup>-year assignment)
they actually have SHOPRITE, a South-African grocery store chain built in the style
of any large chain supermarket anywhere in the world, and, like in America,
these stores were very much inside.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Sure, the Kasama supermarket maybe wasn’t the grand
amusement park of all supermarkets, it wasn’t a Wholefoods knockoff (you had to
go to Lusaka for that) and it didn’t sell novelty items like nutella or Doritos
(again, Lusaka), the milk was often sour when you bought it, the freezer
section rarely sold anything but frozen whole fish, favorite items like icing
sugar or olive oil or sweet chili sauce would suddenly and randomly be out of
stock just when you needed them, and worst of all there were “novelty items,”
things like feta cheese that would show up quite by accident through a delivery
error and you’d be excited but no one else would know what to make of it so
when the cheese ran out or expired it would never show up again and all your
dreams of happiness would be dashed to smithereens…but it was still a
supermarket.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It still had aisles
and carts and cash registers, and a donut section and those same little fruit
islands cooling the entrance, and even florescent lighting when the electricity
was working.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But the point is, in Zambia, in addition to the regular
globalized supermarket model, there would be a more traditional market
sprawling from the entrance out into the parking lot and down the paved
streets.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The brick outer walls
would be lined with tables selling watches and second-hand shoes knock-off cell
phones.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Women with plastic baskets
on their heads would hustle between the eager crowd of smiling taxi drivers
loitering at the store entrance to show you their supply of carrots and
avocados.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Women would sit on mats
and tables at the parking lot gates selling tomatoes, onions, potatoes, cabbage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There were bananas inside the
supermarket, green and absurdly large on those familiar universal fruit
islands, but there were also small local-variety bananas in bunches on the side
of the road.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There was a bakery at
the back of the supermarket that never had any bread, because early every
morning bread-sellers would swarm the supermarket, buy everything they had, and
spend all day outside the supermarket door re-selling that same bread for 50
cents more.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The supermarket was
indoors, sure, but the food, the world, the people, the culture, was all
swarmed around the outside, waiting for you when you got outside.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The difference isn’t that American has supermarkets and the
African continent does not.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
difference isn’t even that the supermarkets are that different—walk into a
supermarket in Lusaka and you will not know what country you are in, it could
be anywhere in the whole world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The difference is that, in America, supermarkets generally tend to stay
inside the supermarket.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In Zambia,
the market stretches out the door, into a crowd of eager taxi drivers who
hustle every emerging shopper into their dilapidated cars, women carrying small
local bananas in baskets on their heads, teenagers selling cell phones from
their coat pockets, fresh enormous avocados and smiling faces and bootleg
copies of the latest films.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In
Zambia, there are people outside the supermarket; in Zambia, when you finish
buying your food, the world is out there waiting for you.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I didn’t freak out in the supermarket.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I didn’t do more than roll my eyes at
the lengthy and illegible ingredients list (how many cranberry juices actually
have cranberries in them?), was only slowed down marginally by the inundation
of brands and choices (when did Wheat Thins start carrying so many different flavors?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What is that about?), laughed at the
familiar 5 brands of milk and scoffed at the 20 overpriced types of yogurt,
cooed a little at the familiar characters on the breakfast cereals and actually
danced up and down a little in the potato chip aisle, and almost forgot to pay
because I was so busy gaping at the absurd headlines on the tabloids, and all
in all my first trip inside an American grocery store went off without a
hitch.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was actually very nice
to be in this familiar place again, with my familiar poptarts and
Ben&Jerry’s ice cream.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And
unlike in my Zambian supermarket, I knew here that I’d be able to find what I
was looking for, that there would be no empty space on the shelves where the
olive oil should be, that there was no need to walk into a grocery store
anxious that something would be missing or out of stock.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At least here I knew I’d be able to
find what I was looking for inside the grocery store.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And then I went outside, where in the huge paved arena the
honking chrome reigned supreme, and watched the people rushing between
headlights and yellow lines with their purchases, felt the heavy silence as a
black SUV communed in hand signals with a woman hurrying past with her
daughter, saw the absence of smiling faces and thought of the oversized bananas
and tiny avocados in my bag, looked at the American Supermarket Outdoors and
felt all that was missing.</div>
Elisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17006699585362579524noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4235050837633480742.post-27573937062825089792013-11-27T12:17:00.002-05:002013-11-27T12:17:54.506-05:00Some thoughts on forgetting (or, why this year I am thankful for journals and snow)
<style>
<!--
/* Font Definitions */
@font-face
{font-family:Cambria;
panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4;
mso-font-alt:"Times New Roman";
mso-font-charset:77;
mso-generic-font-family:roman;
mso-font-format:other;
mso-font-pitch:auto;
mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;}
/* Style Definitions */
p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal
{mso-style-parent:"";
margin:0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria;
mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria;
mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria;
mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}
@page Section1
{size:8.5in 11.0in;
margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in;
mso-header-margin:.5in;
mso-footer-margin:.5in;
mso-paper-source:0;}
div.Section1
{page:Section1;}
-->
</style>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Snow makes an odd crunching sound when you step on it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s weird the things you forget after
3½ years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s like something
breaking under your foot, a crunch or a slipping noise, like water splashing in
slow motion, like slush slowed down.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The snow on Kilimanjaro was glacial, slippery and hard, shiny when the
sun rose, dry and brittle with age where it struck out thin and jagged over
tourist-warn sandy paths along the ridge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But the snow today was soft, too wet and squishy to last more than a day
or so, and its wet crunching was surprisingly reminiscent of the drier crunch
of ice at 5,895 meters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I remember
seeing the snow up there that morning and thinking it looked different; what I
didn’t know until today was that snow is the same here or there, it’s just my
memory that has worn down.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I forgot about snow like I forgot about this skirt I found
in my closet, because a snow day is a good day to throw your clothes away, to
lay the shoes all out on the floor, try them on and think “why did I ever wear
these?” or “wow these make me feel tall.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I was wandering between the shoes on the floor and the shirts on the bed
and the closet hung with dresses and scarves and the cardboard box mixed with
summer clothes and winter hats and legwarmers, and suddenly like a blast from
the past I reached in to blindly grab a hanger and came out with that skirt.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You know the one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The one you bought and always swore you’d wear but you didn’t, the one
you thought you might aspire to fit into, the one you were going to build your
new wardrobe around when you grew up and your style changed, the one that was
going to be perfect for you someday when you were somebody else.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s like the pair of jeans a size too
small that you never throw away, the too-high heels you roll your eyes at
vaguely when reaching for your sneakers in the morning, the impractical lace-up
boots you can’t be bothered with, the absurdly fancy dress you bought abroad
and will never wear anywhere, the stiff cotton dress you had tailor-made for
you in Zambia out of cloth patterned in drums and water-carrying women and
masks, which doesn’t quite fit you right and where would you wear it anyway but
oh god you can’t throw that away what if you NEED it later?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This was that skirt.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In my case, an insanely royal purple skirt with stripes of gentle floral
linen and thick velvet and shiny satin, a hodgepodge of textured lines
patterning down past the knees; something I bought to wear someday on my
hypothetical future bohemian days when I would hypothetically own hippie-chic
clothes and hypothetically wear them with scarves and boots and bangles;
something that, of course, ultimately sat unused in my closet for years,
waiting patiently for some cold Halloween when I would begrudgingly dig it out
and wear it as part of a hastily-assembled gypsy-pirate costume. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I still kept it, because I was going
to be the type of bohemian girl who might wear flowy floral purple skirts of
various materials, one day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or so
I used to tell myself.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And there it was, four years later, some forgotten idea left
skeletal and cold in the back of my closet.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s funny the things you forget about.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Some clothes are dry-clean only.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That means you don’t dump them in a plastic bucket and slosh
them around in sticky blue soap and too-cold water until they are stretched
beyond all recognition and then hang them on the clothesline to dry and fade in
the sun, like you might do with your other clothes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Actually, you don’t do that with any of your clothes,
here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Too cold, for one thing, and
there isn’t the space for it—no sunlit outdoor clearing to do your laundry in,
just closed-in insulated rooms where doing the washing by hand means a mess on
the wood or tile floors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the
clothes that say “dry clean only” on the tags?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Those you have to watch for—you have to actually read the
care tags, rather then shoving them all in the bucket willy-nilly—and then you
have to take them to this store where they wash them without water using
chemicals or something, I don’t really understand it, but the point is it
exists and it’s expensive and environmentally horrifying and completely (or
mostly) necessary in order to successfully wear the clothes in public.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m used to a world where you can wear
what you want, sometimes two days in a row, and not worry about the state of
wear of the fabric or how difficult it will be to keep clean, not worry if it
pills or fades or stretches, not worry about the fashion or the
weather-appropriate status of the garment; that world does not exist here.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
People generally shower everyday, here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not just the clean-freak ones with the wet
wipes in their purses, not just the ones who work hard and need to shower
often, but everyone, even the ones who don’t have anywhere in particular to be
today, they’re still probably going to shower today.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Possibly twice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And there’s no need to rush, either—there’s no real danger that the
water is going to suddenly run out or turn cold, you can take a moment to just
feel the hot water pour down and though you may feel slightly guilty and wasteful,
you won’t actually make so much of a difference that you deprive someone else
in the household of their cleanliness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And if you do rush—or if you shower for what you have come to see as a
“normal” length of time—others will blink at you and say, “wow, that was
fast.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because daily showers can
take a whole ten minutes here, and that is somehow normal.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
New England is cold.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>You think you know cold when you’re sitting in your un-insulated mud hut
during a thunderstorm huddled around a lit brazier that you probably shouldn’t
have inside because of carbon monoxide but oh well it’s so windy through the
windows the fumes will blow right out, but no, actually, that cold only felt
cold because you were wearing sandals and linen pants.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In fact, cold is biting, cold is
red-faced and harsh, cold is slippery-white-salty ground and wet grass and dry
air, cold is aching and pinching and awful.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Cold is more than I remembered.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The American supermarket has approximately 80,000 different
brands, sizes, flavors, and types of yogurt.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The milk section has a minimum of four brands, plus at least
two organic brands, and comes in skim ½% 1% 1½% 2% full cream, and then there’s
rice milk and soymilk and creamers and whipping creams and sour creams and
shaving creams and also, sometimes eggs are bleached a disturbing white color
and come in white Styrofoam.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
vegetables are all inside the store, the greens water-dusted in the corner, the
fruits set up like altarpieces on pedestals, way too many types of berries and
only one kind of banana.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
avocados here are tiny; the apples here are huge.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The top drawer of the dresser in my room is a little
off-sized and gets stuck in the edges when you pull it out or push it in
one-handed; you have to use both hands and push/pull it straight or it will
stick to the side and no amount of one-handed tugging will jar it loose.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This has been the case for as long as
I’ve had this dresser, which predates my own existence and for all I know was
in my room waiting for me the first time my parents brought me home from the
hospital, and yet somehow, miraculously, I forgot that the drawer sticks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It took me about four tries of opening
it one-handed to realize that the drawer requires both hands and my complete
attention and is too proud to be opened one-handed and carelessly while I’m
getting dressed in the morning; it took me another seven tries to remember that
this has always been the case.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Somehow the muscle memory of always-opening-this-drawer-with-both-hands-no-matter-what
had gotten lost, forgotten somewhere.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Coming home has been a long list of remembering things I
have forgotten.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Opening drawers
and boxes that I packed in 2010 and thinking “oh, yeah, I remember that bowl”
or “oh, so that’s where that umbrella went” or “hey, since when do I own so
many winter hats?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Going out to
dinner with my family and hearing names dropped and having to stop the
conversation to go “wait, which work friend is this?” or “wait, have I met this
person?” or “when did that happen?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It’s not just stories I’ve missed being gone; it’s people and places and
events I’ve forgotten, how old someone’s son was when I left or where someone’s
boyfriend is from, where the movie theater is or which exit I should take to
get downtown.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This past week some relatives of mine had a pre-thanksgiving
thanksgiving meal, since we would not be together for the actual holiday.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was bombarded with questions, as was
to be expected, because this is what happens when you return from living in a
mudhut in Africa, people want to know what it was like, they want to know what
you did, what you saw, what it felt like to sit in a mudhut during a rainstorm.
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Peace Corps actually provides a
few sessions toward the end of your service (in between bouts of end-of-service
paperwork) about readjusting to life in America, about the disorientation of
returning to a life that doesn’t quite fit the same way anymore, about freaking
out a little every time you see how many types of milk there are at a grocery
store, about the strange and sometimes awesome and often repetitive questions
people would ask (like, “do they speak African there?”), and about the
surprising number of people who actually wouldn’t be all that interested.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I have been very lucky; I have plenty of family and friends
who are genuinely interested in what I’ve been through these past few
years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And when they asked me
specific questions—how long were you there, where did you go to the bathroom,
were there spiders or snakes?—I was happy to answer, to ramble for as long as
was socially appropriate about black mambas and pit latrines and the time my
cat tried to take on a tarantula.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I had no trouble bringing up these memories when prompted.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But some of the questions—the general questions, which of
course were the most common questions, because who knows what to ask someone
who’s been in the Peace Corps for three years?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How can someone be expected to know where to start?—some of
those more general questions left me stumped, left me tongue-tied and a little
bit panicked, because in those moments I would get a chill up my back and
think: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I don’t remember</i>.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Memory is a funny thing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It doesn’t always work the way you expect it to, and it
isn’t some well-organized filing cabinet you can open at whim and comb through
by file name or category.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Things
get lost in there, things burst forth into your consciousness unexpectedly and
without reason, and the strangest moments can bring back a memory you didn’t
even remember you’d forgotten.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As
I understand it, our brain stores memories in synapses connected by electric
currents, and those currents wear down over time until the memory gets isolated
and abandoned, so that the memory is still there but unreachable, which is why
sometimes you can’t remember something no matter how hard you focus on it, and
then if you think about something else for awhile the memory will come to
you—your brain is finding a new way to the memory, because the old path is in
disrepair.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You might know vaguely
your destination, but when you don’t care for the roads, don’t watch them or
tend to them regularly, they become potholed and tree-fallen and steadily more
difficult to drive on.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So it’s not that I don’t remember what Zambia was like, the
taste and texture of nshima or the angle of the sun over my kitchen hut in the
morning—it’s just that those memories are becoming more and more unused the
further away they get, and like the forgotten dresser drawer the less I think
about it the more likely I am to forget it entirely.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When specifically prompted, I can describe the bamboo mat on
my kitchen floor, the folds of the mosquito net over my bed, the patterns on my
hand-sewn couch cushions, the black spots on my cat, because those memories are
still there, but since I’m not accessing them regularly I forget the way back
there, forget to even try.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sitting
around the table this weekend fielding questions from earnest and interested
family members, I was thrown by the number of questions I had to struggle to
answer, the memory muscles I hadn’t stretched lately.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I am lucky that I kept a daily journal for the majority of
my years abroad—that I wrote down what training was like, what my community was
like, anecdotes about chameleons and falls from my bike, the day the cat stole
my dinner while an inebriated neighbor was distracting me, the peanut butter
and honey sandwich I ate that first night by candlelight.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We think when we’re living something
that we’ll remember it; that if it is important it will stick, or as my mother
used to say, “if you can’t remember it then it can’t have been all that
important.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And maybe some of it isn’t that important, like that skirt,
some remnant of someone I thought I was going to be, which is now sitting in a
bag ready to be donated and forgotten once again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But there are other things I want to write down because I know
I will forget them, like a little girl’s smile or the early lettuce shoots in
my garden or the way snow sweet-crunches underfoot.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because the next day, like today, the weather may change,
the rain may pour and the snow may wash away as if it were never there in the
first place.</div>
Elisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17006699585362579524noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4235050837633480742.post-58400803736329763172013-11-13T16:29:00.000-05:002013-11-14T16:33:23.684-05:007 things I didn’t think I’d be/do/have done by 27My 27th birthday was on Tuesday, and as I was nearly freezing to death on my mid-morning wake-up run, I reflected on how unlikely this activity-- on my birthday, no less-- would have been 10 years ago. And so this post was born...<br />
<br />
<br />
<style>
<!--
/* Font Definitions */
@font-face
{font-family:Cambria;
panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4;
mso-font-alt:"Times New Roman";
mso-font-charset:77;
mso-generic-font-family:roman;
mso-font-format:other;
mso-font-pitch:auto;
mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;}
/* Style Definitions */
p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal
{mso-style-parent:"";
margin:0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria;
mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria;
mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria;
mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}
p.MsoListParagraph, li.MsoListParagraph, div.MsoListParagraph
{margin-top:0in;
margin-right:0in;
margin-bottom:0in;
margin-left:.5in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-add-space:auto;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria;
mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria;
mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria;
mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}
p.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst
{mso-style-type:export-only;
margin-top:0in;
margin-right:0in;
margin-bottom:0in;
margin-left:.5in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-add-space:auto;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria;
mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria;
mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria;
mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}
p.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle
{mso-style-type:export-only;
margin-top:0in;
margin-right:0in;
margin-bottom:0in;
margin-left:.5in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-add-space:auto;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria;
mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria;
mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria;
mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}
p.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast
{mso-style-type:export-only;
margin-top:0in;
margin-right:0in;
margin-bottom:0in;
margin-left:.5in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-add-space:auto;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria;
mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria;
mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria;
mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}
@page Section1
{size:8.5in 11.0in;
margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in;
mso-header-margin:.5in;
mso-footer-margin:.5in;
mso-paper-source:0;}
div.Section1
{page:Section1;}
/* List Definitions */
@list l0
{mso-list-id:337927226;
mso-list-type:hybrid;
mso-list-template-ids:2112013750 67698703 67698713 67698715 67698703 67698713 67698715 67698703 67698713 67698715;}
@list l0:level1
{mso-level-tab-stop:none;
mso-level-number-position:left;
text-indent:-.25in;}
ol
{margin-bottom:0in;}
ul
{margin-bottom:0in;}
-->
</style>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">1.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Go for a run in the morning when it’s below
freezing, and consider it fun</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I never thought, when I was that out-of-shape kid walking, not
because I didn’t want to run but because I couldn’t, with the outcasts in the
back during run-a-mile day in gym class, that I would find myself out here, on
my 27<sup>th</sup> birthday, running in freezing temperatures for over an hour,
my arms numb and my nose tingling, not out of loyalty to an exercise regimen or
because someone had forced me into it, but because I wanted to.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Out there on Keene’s green pedestrian
bike trail, I could feel the leaves frosted and crashing about my feet, the
wind harsh on my forehead, the sun dropping hints of warmth through dappled
pines.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the pauses between songs
I heard the trash of leaves and feet, my heavy breathing, and not much
else.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The occasional dog or biker
or jogger, the occasional thrum of a car nearby, empty off-season golf courses
and post-migration empty nests.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No
one needed to tell my younger self that there is magic in the world, or that a
walk outside can reveal it to you, let loose the thoughts in your head into
words and ideas to spew desperately on paper back inside the house before they
drift away on the wind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But you
could not have convinced that younger girl that running, that pounding the
knees and reddening the cheeks, that panting on frozen breaths and feeling hot
and cold and dizzy at the same time, would be a positive addition to the
equation.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Back when I was the young bookish introvert reading Harry
Potter in the corner of the library, back then when I was a few pounds
over-weight and under-confident, I viewed exercise with equal parts envy and
disdain, an activity for over-competitive jocks and shallow body-conscious
fools.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A fit body was something I
wanted but couldn’t have, not when my lack of coordination and inability to
psych myself up for something I knew was just a game made me an unpopular and
unenthusiastic teammate in any sport, not when a 90-second jog on the treadmill
left me breathless and unable to go on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I was the kid who pretended sports were un-cool because I didn’t get
them, wasn’t fast enough to follow the rules or competitive enough to care.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Whether it was middle-school softball or gym class, it was
immensely clear that sports just were not made for me, that exercise and I
simply didn’t fit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>College only
proved my point: halfway through a semester-long rock climbing class, I fell
from a very low height and, in a freak accident, snapped two bones in my right
leg.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I wasn’t just too lazy to get
into shape; for every instance of laziness there were more examples of me
trying and failing due to my own physical inadequacy, as if fate herself was
telling me not to bother.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As I
slowly worked my way up to sprinting and fast walking on the college treadmill
again, I came to accept that exercise would always be a chore, and one to which
I was ill-suited.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I learned to
respect fitness, to love yoga and fast walking and even dance (that’s a
sport.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Trust me), but could find
nothing fun nor un-embarrassing enough to hold my attention long enough to
start me up the mountain toward healthy living.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Sometimes when you refuse to go to the Mountain, the
Mountain comes to you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My Mountain
was a bicycle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was a heavy
thick-tired trek something-or-other, black and a little on the large side,
given to me by the Peace Corps upon my arrival in Zambia along with a shiny red
helmet, which other seasoned bike riders (read: just about everyone) disdained
but accepted as a useless precaution required by a liability-conscious US
government.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I clung to my helmet,
wished for helmets on my knees, my elbows, my flip-flop-wearing toes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Other volunteers lived close enough to
the training building to walk there, but I was staying with a host family a
couple of kilometers away, up and over dirt-road hills and through patches of
sand that turned to mud after the daily rains.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There wasn’t an option here—no stomachache to fake, no lower
setting on the treadmill, just me and the Mountain and an obligation to meet,
classes to go to and no option of going slower.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The heart rate would rise and my face would turn red and I
would not stop to rest and that was the end of it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Every day, there and back again, a half hour that slowly
turned into 20 minutes, a waistline that slowly shrunk.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I didn’t climb the Mountain because I wanted to.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had given up on dreams of fit and
thin, long abandoned any interest in sports and games, resigned myself to weak
muscles and yoga or pilates to keep me from sinking into a puddle of
nothing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I wasn’t trying to lose
weight or build muscle or teach my body endurance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was just trying to get to class every day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was trying to prove to myself that I
could survive here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Surviving
Peace Corps Zambia was the Mountain I aimed for; physical fitness and mad
skillz on a bicycle was a Mountain I climbed by accident, anecdotally.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So here I am 3 hears later, sweaty and cold from a run, my
muscles frozen but my brain clear and active, just like it was all though years
ago when I would “exercise” by walking around the block.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I still don’t run marathons, I’m lucky
to run 20 minutes without needing to walk for a second and get my breath back,
but I do run now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I still don’t
like sports, but I haven’t forgotten the day I gave into peer pressure and
joined some of my fellow volunteers for a game of volleyball—still not my
favorite pastime, but I was as shocked as anyone to discover I wasn’t as
horrible at it as I was in high school gym, that I wasn’t as hopeless as I had
thought, and boy did it feel good to be in a group, even if they did all seem
bizarrely intent on winning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m
not ashamed of myself for tripping over air, or embarrassed to be uncoordinated
and clumsy or red-faced and sweaty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And I still fall off my bike, just like I did in a patch of mud on that
very first day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I’m not afraid
of it anymore.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">2.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Speak a foreign language almost no one else
speaks, and do it well</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I was never all that good at languages.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I wasn’t awful at high school Spanish
and made a passing attempt at classical Greek when I thought I might be a
classics major, but my attempts to learn French for Peace Corps (back when they
thought they’d send me to West Africa instead of Southern) were an abject
failure, and despite my belief that other people should not be required to
learn English—that we should all make an effort to learn each other’s languages
in basic form, and that it isn’t fair to go into someone else’s country and
expect them to speak your language—I found it easier to talk the talk (or not)
than walk the walk, and relied on the ESL population to carry me through my own
linguistic ignorance.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So when I sat down in my 3-person Bemba-language-group class
for the first time in February 2010, I did not believe with any confidence that
I could become fluent in this Zambian tribal language only spoken by a couple
thousand people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I expected to
learn a few basics, hello and thank you just for the sake of courtesy, and then
have to rely on others to struggle through their basic-level English in order
for us to communicate or accomplish anything over the next 27 months.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Imagine my surprise when I did well in that class, to the
point where I was offering study hints and pneumonic devices to my classmates,
to the point where my teacher was nominating me to give a speech in Bemba at
our swearing-in ceremony.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My
friends from Peace Corps might think it absurd that I ever doubted my ability
to learn a foreign language.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It
was an ability I didn’t know I had, something for which I was sure I lacked the
attention-span and the dedication.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And it turned out to be one of the greatest gifts I received
in my time in Zambia.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There were
plenty of moments where I was befuddled by language, that I sat in a circle of
happily babbling ladies around a reed mat shelling maize and completely failed
to comprehend what they were saying, that I had to lean over to my counterpart
to have them translate a meeting for me (and I never led a meeting without a
counterpart there), that I confused the word for bag with the word for frog, or
the word for hair with the word for dirt.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But some of the best moments I had in Zambia came from this local
dialect being slowly edged out by the English-language globalization initiative.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like the times a Zambian woman would
address a question about me to my host mother, and I would jump in to answer
myself, or the times I would sit in a meeting and realize with a small smile
that I was following every word of it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>There was the time I argued indignantly in rapid-fire Bemba with a man
overcharging for the local bus fare, or the time my translator couldn’t think
how to translate “harvest a beehive” into Bemba and I did it for him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I could ramble in Bemba, explain
nuances of Bemba grammar and translation to my fellow volunteers (not that they
necessarily wanted to listen to it), and even kept lists of Bemba words that
sounded similar, for my own curiosity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And through all of it, I never stopped being pleasantly surprised that I
actually understood this, that this was a part of my mental processes now.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And maybe I should have known better, should have realized
that an English major with a musical background—someone who has grown
accustomed to picking up the rhythms and patterns of language, who navigates
grammar on instinct and memorizes lyrics through habit—would take to a foreign
language relatively easily, once forced into it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it honestly wasn’t something I ever expected to be good
at—speaking one language eloquently is hard enough!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This past summer I backpacked through a large portion of
Eastern and Southern Europe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
didn’t learn all the languages of all the people I visited, but I did make a
point of at least learning to say hello and thank you wherever I went—I had
always believed that it was only polite to learn a few key phrases in the
language of any country you are visiting, as a sign of good will toward your
hosts, and now I knew I could actually walk the walk as well as talk the talk.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">3.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Walk across the rim of Victoria Falls with
only hands to hold me</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You don’t always know you’re going to do something crazy
until you do it.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Sometimes you have a vague idea that you might do it,
someday.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This happened with Peace
Corps—a vague whispering in the back of my head that drew me to an information
session my freshman year, and an application 3 years later.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And there’s stuff you always knew you
would do, but never expected to actually happen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like riding an elephant.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or petting a cheetah.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Or singing the lead in your favorite musical on stage.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That last one never happened.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sometimes dreams don’t.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I think sometimes life isn’t always about fulfilling
dreams—some dreams, like being a broadway singer, you hang on to until you get
older and discover better dreams to reach for, like finding the courage to sing
and play guitar in a circle of friends around a campfire.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But some of those never-dreams happen,
like visiting an elephant orphanage and gently petting an extremely young baby
elephant.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Crazy dreams aren’t
impossible dreams.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But then there are the crazy not-dreams, the things you
never planned on doing, never dreamed of doing, until suddenly there you are
shuffling along a small cement waterfall lip in a line, holding hands with
friends and acquaintances while stumbling through rocky pools, all the time
feeling the ominously innocent pull of a current feet away from the drop of the
largest waterfall in the world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>There was no planning, here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I didn’t wake up that morning and say “well, it’s new years, time to
climb across the top of a waterfall.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But it wasn’t a matter of “all my friends are doing it,” either.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I think I went along with it because I
didn’t want to look back on that moment and think “this was the time I could
have done something amazing and crazy, but instead I stayed in the tourist trap
parking lot outside the greatest waterfall in the world, getting propositioned
by men selling tourist trinkets at tourist kiosks.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I made a split-second decision that that wasn’t what I
wanted my life to be.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Just like
you can let go of some dreams, you can suddenly discover unexpected ones, too.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And when we reached that pool, others diving in while I
waded and swam gently, almost reverently, across to the outcropping on the rim,
I looked over the rim of the falls and across the falling mist to where the
tourists stood in the safe part of the park and thought yes, this was worth it.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’m not an adventurous person.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m probably never going to jump out of an airplane or go
parasailing, and while one can never really say never, I can say with certainty
that I will never be the type to love an adrenaline rush so intently that I go
bungee jumping on a regular basis just to chase that feeling.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>An adventure for me will always be an
anomaly, something I do once just to know that I could.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Of course, one could argue that sitting somewhere watching
the clouds go by is its own sort of adventure, in the right context.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">4.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Wear a skirt. Swear. Get drunk.
Eat spinach.</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I know, this is small and a little bit silly, but did you
ever wake up one morning and suddenly decide that your whole outlook had
changed?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like you used to love
brussel sprouts and now you hate them, or you hated spinach and now you love it
(Has anyone actually tried spinach lately?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sautee it for about a minute in garlic, olive oil, and lemon
juice, and you have instant awesome green on your plate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why did no one ever tell me this
healthy thing was actually kinda easy?)?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Or when you’re seven you just decide tomboy jeans are so
much cooler than that puffy pink dress your grandmother made, and you change
your wardrobe and never look back unless absolutely necessary.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And then one day you’re 24 and browsing
through the second-hand racks at a consignment shop and you see this beautiful
old-fashioned skirt, and then another one at a thrift shop, and another and
another and suddenly you’re really into stockings and skirts and knee-high
boots?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sometimes these things just
happen, ok?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The point is, there’s a lot of stuff in the world and you
never know what’s going to appeal to you or when.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Forming an opinion on something trivial and clinging to it
can only limit you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I can’t
imagine what my stubborn seven-year-old self would say if she saw the way I
dress, the food I eat, the shows I watch, the books I read (well, maybe she’d
approve of that last one).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve
made it a habit too often in life deciding I did or didn’t like something and
staunchly announcing this opinion for the world, only just as genuinely to
change my mind 5 years later.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
never thought I’d come to regret some of my more obstinate moments (but not all
of them) and strive for a more open mind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>You never know how volleyball, or wine, or spinach, or skirts, are going
to look to you in a decade; I “knew” a lot when I was little, but I never knew
how much and how often I would come to change my mind.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-left: 0in; mso-para-margin-right: 0in; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">I've changed my mind about words.
I used to think words were significant for their meaning alone, that for every
statement there was a proper wording and grammatical structure, and that slang,
swears, and good heavens conjugations had no place there. People who used
words incorrectly, who followed the connotation or the tone instead of the
dictionary definition, who called their friends names and meant it in a
positive, affirming way, who said one thing and meant another or said nothing
and asked you to read their face, who treated "LOL" as a word that
could be used in conversation or said "like" without the accompanying
simile, were fools and grammatical heathens. I used to think swears were
always bad, and compliments always good.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-left: 0in; mso-para-margin-right: 0in; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-left: 0in; mso-para-margin-right: 0in; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">These days I cuss freely, mix GRE words
with "like" and "totally" and "kinda," spit out
terms like "desire lines" and "champagne rain" just for the
nonsensical way they fit the mood, not because I've gotten loose or forgotten
my English-language training, but because I've learned language isn't what we
write down in dictionaries. Language is fluid, not a lawbook but an oral
tradition, something that evolves and changes as we do. Each word and
sorta-word, from "kinda" to "ROTFLMAO" to
"@#%&#$%," has it's place in the universe, it's own sort of
conversation. And while I continue to be of the belief that LOL should be
left in the cyber-conversation where it belongs, and that "like"
should be an occasional conversational filler for poetic flow and not a nervous
verbal tick, I also believe in the split infinitive, the fragment, and the
well-timed curse. Because language is an art form, and like all art it
changes with the time, the culture, the person, the situation. It is more
than its rule-book.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-left: 0in; mso-para-margin-right: 0in; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-left: 0in; mso-para-margin-right: 0in; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">And sometimes swearing just feels so
damn good.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And then there’s alcohol.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I still can’t say I’m as fond of the stuff as some
people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some of it still tastes
like cough syrup, and I’ve spent more time drinking to be a part of the party
than out of any great love for the taste or its effects.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But like a curse word at the right
moment, sometimes a good beer or a glass of wine is the best thing at the end
of a long day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now how do I
explain that to my 5-year-old self?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">5.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Climb Mount Kilimanjaro</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Lion King was my favorite film as a child.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was young enough then that going to
see the same Disney cartoon in theaters 6 times in a row didn’t turn any
heads—this is what is expected of young kids.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ask my parents for my greatest hits, and they will likely
come out with Star Wars or Harry Potter, or if they’re confusing me with my
sister then The Sound of Music.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But my first love wasn’t fantasy or sci-fi or musicals or even
Disney.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My first love was lions on
an African plain.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This is the thought I reached back to when standing in the
desolate desert of Kilimanjaro’s fire-hill plains below the summit, searching
around scrub brush and red red boulders for a safe place to crouch and
piss.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Behind me as I stumbled
around I could see the glacial summit pouring through the crystal clouds, a
place I’d climbed to the very top of and back down to here again in 24
hours.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My feet were numb and my
legs were rubber, my neck was sunburned and my face was red, I had dust all
over my clothes and in my pores.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But there was that cloud-circled summit, those opening bars of my
favorite childhood film painted in front of me real and present and stuck to
the bottoms of my boots.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What had
just been a childhood dream was real and in front of me, wonderful and
unexpected.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s strange how you can not know how much or how long you’ve
wanted something until it’s there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I certainly didn’t sit in the audience of The Lion King on stage and
think “I want to climb Kilimanjaro,” or “I want to ride an elephant,” or “I
want to go live in rural Africa for 2 years.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it sure felt surprising and good to get there.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">6.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Live in a mud hut for 2 years without
electricity, running water, or indoor plumbing, surrounded by people who don’t speak
my language or understand my culture, with only a bicycle and the grocery </b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ok, anyone else here tired of hearing me brag about the mud
hut in Africa?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yeah, I’m just
gonna let this one speak for itself and move on…</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">7.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Still be friends with that girl from the
other end of the cafeteria table 17 years ago</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s strange to think about, being ten years old and meeting
someone I would know for longer than I’d been alive yet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If I told my younger self she wouldn’t
be able to fathom knowing someone that long, wouldn’t be able to fathom even
living that long.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s a long
time, seventeen years, and knowing it’s less than the extent of my lifetime can
only mean one thing:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’m getting old.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This is what I thought a few weeks ago, sitting under one of
those big white tents and watching a bride and groom sway across a grassy dance
floor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The bride had dried leaves
clinging up the hem of her dress, and this was how I knew her for who she was.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This was the same girl who used to
sleep on my living room floor, the same girl who I kept smacking from the
driver’s seat on the way back from our midnight bookstore raid because she was
getting a head start on the newest Harry Potter book when I couldn’t possibly
catch up without crashing and killing us all and it just wasn’t fair.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Her hair was a different color then,
her body shorter and her face younger and rounder, her whole self less solid
without this man here to hold her as she danced, but I still know this woman
was that girl.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No one else would
look so fairy-graceful in a dress doubling as a rake the way that she does;
that elf-in-the-garden dress wouldn’t ever suit anyone else but her.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s odd because you never know at the time what moments are
going to define you, what people are going to stick to you and stick around.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There were other people I knew better
then, people I still run into on facebook, people who will always be a part of
my formation—there in my graduation pictures, there at school dances and school
plays, there when I got my college acceptance letter, there to fight suddenly
with me in the hallway and make up by lunchtime, there for late night strolls
through target, for brownie day in the cafeteria.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>People I’ll see at some high school reunion and wonder where
the friendship goes when it’s gone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And when I was ten years old and sitting at the cafeteria table I had no
way of knowing that the only person at the table I would still know in 17 years
the friend-of-a-friend over there whose name I couldn’t quite remember.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Life moves funny, sometimes.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And here I was 17 years later at her wedding.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Isn’t it weird when your facebook
stalker-stream is suddenly littered with wedding photos, girls you know by a
different last name, houses and babies?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Where did the time go?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It
happens in real life too—showing up at a wedding, squinting at guests until
there’s a moment of recognition and oh how they’ve grown, there are boyfriends
and girlfriends and kids now, new jobs and new haircuts and we all look a
little more alive, don’t we, on the other side of high school?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And I know that this is nothing—if 27 years would have
seemed like an absurdly long time when I was ten, think how small 27 will look
from 54.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I keep blinking, at
weddings, at parties, standing on the lip of Victoria Falls looking down into
the abyss, and wondering “gee, how on earth did I get here?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I think of my own wedding, sometimes—a hypothetical wedding
I’m not even sure I ever really want to have—and re-evaluating my side of the
guest list.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The list grows longer,
and sometimes a little shorter, and as I get older I count the number of people
who might have a family of their own to bring along.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And then I think of the other side of the aisle—how many
parents, siblings, cousins, friends?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>There’s a person I haven’t met yet—actually, there are probably several
people—who will mean a lot to me, who right now are nothing more to me than a
little girl sitting at the other end of the cafeteria, some friend of a friend
whose name I am struggling to remember.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A lot of people are afraid of getting old, but I’m not
scared so much as I am bowled over by it; I look at where I’ve come in 27
years, in 17 years, in 5, and I can’t wait to see what’s next, and what unknown
people will be there.</div>
Elisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17006699585362579524noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4235050837633480742.post-48124061584416525812013-08-12T04:04:00.001-04:002013-08-12T04:04:03.913-04:00Searching for Viktor Krum: BulgariaMy very last day in Greece was very very long. I woke up at 5am to catch a 6am ride with a friend of the Monastery down from Anatoli to Larissa. I spent a few hours walking around Larissa completing a few errands, such as checking my e-mail and buying sunglasses to replace the ones I stepped on in the garden. I highly recommend Larissa if you're ever passing through-- it's a nice little town with lots of shops and stores, and on Tuesday they have an open-air market next to the train station. I left my bag at Park Hotel, who generously allowed me to do this without charge, so I could wander the city for a couple hours. I bought a sandwich at a bakery and ate it in a park by a fountain. It was a lovely morning.<br />
<br />
Thessaloniki I did not like as much, though to be fair I only covered the streets near the train station. What I saw looked like every other city, concrete and pavement and shops; you'd think they'd put something nice like a park near the train station to lure tourists. I stopped in a 1-euro shop and bought a hair clip just for fun, and then spent the rest of the evening at the train station's internet cafe. I did find a nice cafe across from the train station, where the guy at the counter smiled and sold me a really good turkey sandwich and let me sit there until midnight when my bus left, so that was nice.<br />
<br />
The bus from Thessaloniki, Greece, to Sofia, Bulgaria, left at midnight (well, 12:45) and reached Sofia around 5:30 in the morning. So that's 24 hours of uninterrupted travel and intermittent napping. I took a quick snooze in the bus station before walking down the road to Hostel Mostel, where I was immediately welcomed even though I probably looked and smelled rather bad at this point. I recommend Hostel Mostel because the people there are very nice, they let me doze on their couch since my room wasn't ready at 7am, and they let me use the shower while basically living out of reception, and then they stored my luggage for me so I could go into town.<br />
<br />
At their recommendation, I washed up after my nap and then walked to the Court House at 11am for a free 2.5-hour walking tour of Sofia. It's a very smart way to show tourists around Sofia, especially since most of the sights are in the same part of the city. We saw churches and mosques and parliament buildings, and our guide helpfully provided historical anecdotes (and some jokes) so that we actually knew what we were looking at. When the tour finished I was famished and walked off in search of some bulgarian food, but accidentally ended up in a nice sushi restaurant. Oops, these things happen.<br />
<br />
I spent the afternoon wandering around the archaelogy museum, looking at marble friezes and statues until I could barely stand up, because I'm a dork like that. The artifacts there were nicer than some I've seen, and the place earns brownie points for being small-- nothing overwhelming, just a taste of history. I had an intention of going on a hostel-led "free" pub crawl after dinner (Hostel Mostel provides free dinner with beer as well as breakfast (without beer), seriously I recommend it), but instead I fell asleep at like 8:30. Oops these things happen.<br />
<br />
Since I hadn't seen enough monasteries lately, on my 2nd day in Bulgaria I went on a day trip to Rila Monastery, 2 hours outside Sofia. It was quite a lot bigger than the monastery I stayed at in Greece, but it didn't have an organic garden or baby cows, so...<br />
<br />
Sofia is a nice city but a small one, and there isn't actually much to do, so on my 3rd day (at Hostel Mostel's recommendation. Seriously, go here) I took a bus north to Veliko Tarnovo, the old capital of Bulgaria. If I was going to find Durmstrang on this trip (Balkan Hogwarts), it would be here. The place has an actual fortress, which these days doubles as a gigantic stone playground for tourists. At night (not every night, but some) the fortress puts on a great big light show, red and blue and green, with laser beams from the tallest tower and flashes like paparazzi from the lower citadel. I had a great day and evening just wandering around the old city, down cobblestone streets and into towers.<br />
<br />
Had I unlimited time, my next detour might have been to a Bulgarian town on the Black Sea, but I have a schedule and Bucharest was calling me...Elisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17006699585362579524noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4235050837633480742.post-54408805256607562202013-07-31T13:32:00.003-04:002013-07-31T13:32:47.468-04:005 nuns walk into a barn...Thessaloniki train station has one of the last internet cafes in existence, a colorfully painted little room blocked by drop-claw machines and palm readers and fortune teller booths ala Big and similar artifacts; this is perhaps the room where old and antiquated things go, and the computers that were dumped here just decided to plug themselves in and start charging access through coin slot machines, because they are smart and capitalist like that. I found one other internet cafe on my short walk down the street today, and it wasn't working. I hear rumors that there are others around, but I haven't seen any-- only wifi hotspots, which is the sort of gibberish my phone from Zambia doesn't quite comprehend. I don't regret selling my laptop in Zambia, though-- it would have been a massive pain to carry (literally-- my poor back) and my co-worker was so glad to have it, so I'll just have to make the most of this computer while I have it (for 37 more minutes).<br />
<br />
I decided in advance that leaving Africa would be slightly traumatic, and that I needed some sort of buffer or rest period before I started backpacking around Europe like some college student (apparently I am officially too old for this-- official travel discounts in Europe are for backpackers "under 26"-- what, like I turn 26 and it's time for me to settle down with a white picket fence and a dog? Really? But I digress...). My very intelligent stepmother apparently decided the same thing, since she rallied the troops (which consisted of my father and my cousin Connie, who is having a fabulous time backpacking across Europe as well and actually is the proper age for it) and orchestrated a trip to Istanbul for which I had to do no planning beyond buying a plane ticket and deciding what to wear each morning, which was plenty of work for me. We had an amazing week of tours through mosques and markets, hummus and stuffed grape leaves and fish by the sea (and baklava with ice cream at least once a day-- I am my father's daughter and he is his father's son), and a trip to Ephesus so I could bounce around ancient ruins like they were playgrounds, which is one of my very favorite things. It was very hot and the days were bizarrely long-- I forgot what it's like to be this far away from the equator-- and there were plenty of rug salesmen handing out glasses of hot apple tea. A fun and restful week of course ended with a long bus ride at night from Istanbul to Thessaly, and then a train from Thessaloniki to Larissa and a taxi to Anatoli in the mountains, so when I finally arrived at my destination 30 hours after saying good-bye to my family I promptly fell asleep without dinner and stayed asleep until 6 the next morning. <br />
<br />
My own plan for a rest turned out to be more of a retreat than I realized-- I signed up online to WWOOF (world wide organization of organic farmers) in Greece, and the one place that wrote back was a monastery on Mount Ossa (or Mount Kissabos, depending on who you ask), on the outskirts of a mountain village called Anatoli, between Larissa and Mount Olympus and the Aegean Sea in Thessaly. At over 1000 meters, with one (working) truck and one laptop and no wifi split amongst a community of 30 nuns, novices, and guests, I had found the quietest and most peaceful place around. I had originally planned to stay for 2 weeks; in the end I stayed for 3.<br />
<br />
The original Prodromus Monastery was originally built by St. Damian about 500 years ago. You can still see the ruins of the old church next to the current monastery and church of St John the Foreigner (aka the Baptist), and a 40 minute walk through brambles will get you to the cave-church where St Damian lived several years in seclusion. Today the Monastery is a work of art: beautiful rooms and patios with beautiful views of the mountains and Larissa below, extensive organic gardens free of chemicals and loaded with fruit trees and beehives, apple orchards and pastures and a farm laden with goats and sheep and cows and horses. There is a quiet little church with a loft above, so volunteers like me could go observe service and enjoy the peaceful chanting of the nuns' prayers in the evenings if we wished (I went a few times-- it was very peaceful). The kitchen was well-stocked with fresh fruit and homemade jams, cheese and milk and yogurt and honey straight from the farm, and fresh bread and lunch every afternoon. It was one of the most relaxing places I have ever been, and though I was working on the farm every day (that's the deal: free labor in exchange for room and board), I didn't feel exhausted by it, only energized. Every day it was me in the garden with my ipod and my hands: just me, music, and nature, the perfect place for me.<br />
<br />
It is my own personal opinion, which of course no one is obligated to share or even acknowledge, that the world is full of evil deeds, and that human-run institutions such as organized religions, regardless of any possible good intentions, often become fronts for insidious and inexcusable behavior. However it is also my personal opinion that all things run in a balance, or a dichotomy, and that very few things in the universe are wholly good or bad. When it comes to religions in general, often it is the cruelest participants who are the loudest, while the nicest and sweetest and best are, by the very nature of being good and unobtrusive and not knocking on our doors to shove their doctrines down our throats, quiet, unseen, and unheard. It is reassuring and a relief to be reminded on occasion that, despite the outward appearances displayed by the loud and obnoxious, religion can also on occasion do something to make the world more beautiful.<br />
<br />
Also? Nuns on tractors, nuns driving like bats out of you-know-where down hairpin-turn-mountains, nuns popping their heads out of rows of bean plants? Awesome. Thank you super-nuns, for a fantastic 3 weeks.<br />
<br />
Until next time...Elisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17006699585362579524noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4235050837633480742.post-84824061396053319962013-07-31T12:48:00.002-04:002013-07-31T12:49:23.926-04:00I bless the rains down in Africa...So here it is nearly August already, and as usual I am abysmally behind on my blogging. This time I have a few semi-valid excuses, such as a dearth of internet cafes in most major cities (why didn't anyone tell me wifi had already driven internet cafes nearly to extinction? I figured they were at least still in the cretaceous period...), a lack of internet connection of any kind at all (sorry mom) while farming on a mountain in Thessaly (that's in Greece) for 3 weeks, or my personal favorite: "wishing to focus on enjoying the moment rather than capturing it," which is code for "I'm tired and my camera is out of batteries."<br />
<br />
So to sum up how I spent the rest of June:<br />
<br />
After I fell asleep in front of a hotel computer after my last blog post (you know, the one where I didn't have the energy to write about climbing Kilimanjaro because I'd just climbed Kilimanjaro?) I took a shuttle bus from Arusha to Nairobi, where I joined a tour group on a 2-week safari across Kenya and Northern Tanzania. Places and activities I can now cross off my list: Lake Nakuru and white rhinos (I'd seen one of the seven in Zambia, but in this fenced park there are actually more than seven!); walking with giraffes near Lake Naivasha; dancing with Maasai women in a cow pasture, and watching their men jump extremely high into the air; drinking a beer on the shores of Lake Victoria; endless driving through the Maasai Mara and Serengeti National Parks; visiting Kisii soapstone carving community and seeing how they make those little bowls and coasters and animal-shaped paperweights and candle-holders which I've been seeing strewn about from Nairobi to Livingstone for years without knowing what sort of material they were or where they came from; watching the sun rise as we descend into Ngorongoro crater, where the cloud blocks the sky like foggy icing on a cupcake; watched small groups of wildebeest give into their migratory instincts and RUN.<br />
<br />
Other things I can now cross off my list: living with 22 people on a bus for 2 weeks; driving through a game park packed into a massive truck like cattle; watching the driver replace tires on said truck, twice; putting up an unnecessarily tough and heavy tent every day; watching tourists lean out their gas-guzzling lane-hogging windows to take pictures of normal people going about their normal lives as if they were exhibits in a zoo (Maasai people going about their Maasai lives, but still); being dragged in a broken-down minibus by another minibus; not being able to use the bathroom because a couple of buffalo are standing between the campsite and the outhouse; sitting in a room of 25 people at dinner and being the only one eating my nshima properly, which is to say with my hands (even the 3 Kenyan crew members ate with forks...they called it "civilized," I call it poor ettiquette-- Miss Manners says: always eat a dish with the proper and intended utensil!). While I was very happy to see new parts of Africa and have new experiences, this safari doesn't really compare to the smaller groups in jeeps, the night drives, walks with cheetahs, elephant rides, horseback rides, etc. that I had in Zambia. Still, I can't complain (or, rather, I can and should-- roughing it in Africa and complaining about it is the best part--it's where all the stories come from). At least I didn't get attacked by a baboon (we kept stopping in the parks to look at the baboons...I'm just not that into it).<br />
<br />
When the 22 of us stumbled off the bus in Nairobi 14 days later, tired and dirty etc etc etc, I quickly found a lovely hostel so I could rest for a few days before my flight out of Africa. The hostel I stayed at is called Manyatta and it is a lovely little place with cheerfully painted walls (giraffes, sunsets, etc.), a friendly crew, and a bar/restaurant. When I get a chance I'll be writing them a very good review. I did my laundry, ate a cheeseburger, took a nap (I came here for a night between Kilimanjaro and my safari too, and it was the perfect place for a rest!), ran some errands in town (Nairobi is much nicer (and safer) than its reputation-- always be cautious, but don't let fear keep you away!) and paid a visit to the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust Elephant Orphanage. Yes you read that right: BABY ELEPHANTS! Some of them were so young their skin was still brown and fuzzy, and the bigger ones guzzled water and milk from bottles eagerly, and the keepers walked them all around the feeding paddock so we could photograph them and even TOUCH them. It was so cool! They were so sweet and so beautiful and so sad, and the people who killed their parents are just so heartless and foolish-- ivory just isn't worth this price. Someday when I have a job and stuff I'm going to "adopt" a baby elephant, which just means making a donation; for now I had to be satisfied with a little stuffed elephant ornament. I love elephants.<br />
<br />
Seeing baby elephants may have been the perfect final activity for my extended stay in Africa; while I have every intention of returning someday in the vague and undefined future, I also know that life works out in strange and surprising ways, and if this does turn out to be my last visit to Africa, I'm glad it was spent here.<br />
<br />
My flight out of Africa departed July 1st. I spent the last of my shillings on chocolate and postcards, checked my e-mail on my phone one last time (I tried to hook it up to the internet in Greece this morning, but after nearly an hour of valiant attempts the nice people at the Vodaphone store admitted defeat, so while I can make calls in Europe I apparently will not be using this phone to get online again anytime soon), and boarded the plane. I had an 8-hour layover in Dubai, where I thought about going into the city for a bit but ultimately decided to just take a nap in the lounge chairs at the Dubai airport and browse the airport bookstore-- Dubai must be pretty cool, considering how impressively nice the airport was-- and then another flight to Istanbul to meet my father, my stepmother, and my cousin for a week in Turkey. I spent most of the flight watching free episodes of Downton Abbey season 3-- omg when did that show get so sad???<br />
<br />
tbc...Elisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17006699585362579524noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4235050837633480742.post-31488837868244991962013-06-13T12:30:00.001-04:002013-06-13T12:30:17.266-04:00The horribleness of the morning after (but it ain't no walk of shame!)I would really dearly love to write you all a blog post about the past 6 days, which I spent climbing up (and down) Mt. Kilimanjaro, but it is now 7pm, 8 hours after I finally exited Marangu Gate, and I have to face the reality that it isn't going to happen tonight. The problem is that my hands are shaking from either exhaustion or cold and my eyes are drooping. The problem is that it hurts to lean over, stand up, walk, or generally move. The problem is that the keyboard at this hotel-internet-cafe-computer has several stuck letters including the shift key and also the letter I, which would probably show up several times in a blog post about me and Kilimanjaro and give me carpel tunnel. The problem is I think that mountain gave me a cold. <br />
<br />
The climbing of that mountain is currently feuding with 2 years in a mud-hut in Africa for the enviable position of Most Difficult Thing I Have Ever Done (that took 60 seconds to type, damn shift key), and in some ways the two experiences are remarkably similar: both take guts, both have the entrance requirement of being crazy and willing to become moreso, both involve crash-courses in local African languages (well...my guide and I needed something to talk about during those 6 days of walking...), both require a combination of endurance, patience, determination, and flexibility, and both are accomplished not in the way the hare takes on the racetrack but in the way the tortoise wins the race: panono panono, pole pole, slowly slowly, one aching impossible step at a time. The terrain may be slippery, may be rocky, may be coated in ice-frozen snow or so much sand you think you could fall straight through to the bottom of the mountain; you may have to wrap your toes in tissue under your socks to prevent blisters, may have to pop advil to get your legs to move, may have to wear all your clothes to bed, and you may at some point desperately have to pee when there are no outhouses or trees or even large enough rocks in sight; but you take another step, say hakuna matata, hakuna shida, tapali bwafya, no problem until you start to mean it, accept the world and move forward within it.<br />
<br />
And there's one more thing that climbing Kilimanjaro and living in a mud-hut for 2 years have in common: both breeze through you, quicker and harder than expected, and leave you changed and a bit confused at the end, trying to process that something big has come, happened, and ended. The morning after life's best and worst experiences is not something you can really write about; it is something that has to be lived. <br />
<br />
So I won't be writing about my adventures on Kilimanjaro today. Maybe someday soon I will-- I certainly hope so. For now I'm going to relax, repack (leaving for Nairobi in the morning), eat food drink water read a book, and attempt to process this sledgehammer hit my life has taken. When I have, I'll let you know.<br />
<br />
For now, I'll leave you with the following quotes, inspiring words of my fellow climbers, graffitied on the walls of dorm room 5 at Kibo Hut, elevation 4700 meters:<br />
<br />
"We made it to the summit. If we can you can too"<br />
"We did not make it to the summit, but we sure had a fun time trying"<br />
"Once more into the breach, my friends, once more..."<br />
"I am smelly sweaty gross, but now I know the way...{words blocked off}" <br />
"...Has anyone smelled the bathrooms?"Elisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17006699585362579524noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4235050837633480742.post-40942294683352482922013-05-28T03:36:00.000-04:002013-05-28T03:36:51.704-04:00And so on...My village still smells of grass and flowing water and burning charcoal. The roads are still brown and the paths are still white with sand, though some paths have been abandoned and new ones worn nearby to replace them, bridges have been rebuilt stronger, trees have been cut down. As I biked along the red dirt road and up around the hills I looked down into the valley and saw huge strips of white sand, large patches of savannah brush that had once been green and dark with growth, the hills across the way now sparsely planted, white sand showing through where once the slopes had been thick with green. I have left a legacy of a few farmers who know the danger of such reckless use of resources, and with luck these few will spread ideas to many before it is too late. In my week-long visit to my village I was told repeatedly how much work I had done, how many people were grateful for what I had taught them; I can only hope as I walked away that I have served not only my friends and family here but the people they will meet tomorrow.<br />
<br />
After a week of biking, cat-sitting, eating nshima, starting fires, sitting and reading (I finished 4 books in 7 days), I left the village rested and whole, something heavy trying to burst it's way out of my chest, like I was coming out the other side of a massive catharsis, a week of meditation and reflection. I found my village mostly unchanged, my family blooming-- my aunt is on her 8th baby now, 8 kids!-- one friend sick with a mysterious headache, another preparing a chicken farm, all of them still there, still striving, still trying. It hurts to think that I don't know when or if I will ever see them again. I learned a new word in Bemba that week: ukufuluka, to miss. I have missed you. We missed you. I will miss you when you're gone. I will be missing you again. Also mukushale bwino: remain well, but in the future tense instead of the present tense, as if to say: remain well permanently, remain well in the future, remain well for a very long time.<br />
<br />
A week in the village was followed by a jarringly different week in Lusaka, which kicked off with Iron Man 3 in 3-D followed by a 24-hour headache. Why do we do these things to ourselves? It was an odd juxtaposition to my week of books and breeze and quiet. I spent the week eating good things like hummus and pizza, saying good-bye to friends, and running around the office getting random people to sign and sometimes re-sign papers and forms to allow me to leave the country. My ring-out date was Friday, May 24, and consisted of me and the 7 people still left from my intake dressing up and banging an old tire rim with a piece of piping. It was very symbolic and meaningful and stuff. I honestly was more moved, felt more complete and satisfied with the conclusion of my service, after a half-hour conversation with the director of Peace Corps Zambia, where we discussed my service and work as PCVL. I walked away from that conversation feeling lighter, like the weight of being a Peace Corps Volunteer (and Leader) had been gently put aside, like I could finally say "Ok, I've done my part, I've done the best that I can, I'm ready now for whatever comes next."<br />
<br />
And what comes next is a trip through East Africa and Eastern Europe. I will be spending the month of June in Tanzania and Kenya and will of course attempt to keep this blog updated with my travels. My first stop is Zanzibar-- I am taking the train today and will spend the long weekend there before proceeding to Arusha to hike Kilimanjaro. Wish me luck!Elisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17006699585362579524noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4235050837633480742.post-68190660477997984322013-04-27T05:50:00.000-04:002013-04-27T07:54:16.309-04:00World Malaria DayA child dies of malaria every 60 seconds, which adds up to 1,400 children a day, and yet it only costs $1 to treat a child for malaria.<br />
<br />
This seems, on the surface, like a simple, cheap, and easy problem to solve-- only an additional $1,400 a day to the global aid budget-- and yet people have been dying of malaria since King Tut died at the tender age of 10 from a mosquito bite and the disease still infects over 200 million people every year. This is a disease we have been fighting for centuries, from quinine to coartem, from mefloquine to malarone, with mosquito nets and bug spray and chemical wall sprays and daily and weekly prophylaxis, and yet still 6 children die every hour.<br />
<br />
One of the main roadblocks, perhaps-- and this is a roadblock to many aid projects all ovr the world-- is that a project involving human lives is never as simple as numbers and cash. There is implementation-- who will deliver the mosquito nets? Where and when will they distribute them? Which clinics need how much coartem how often?-- and distribution-- what if the truck delivering coartem breaks down? Which roads will cause the least delays? How often must deliveries be made? How much does each clinic or community need? Should people be charged and how much should nets and medicine cost?-- and availabilty-- What happens if the clinic runs out of coartem or nets? Where and how soon can they get more? What if a sick patient walks 10km to a clinic for medicine and the clinic doesn't have any, can they survive another long walk to the next clinic?-- and education-- how can we be sure those mosquito nets we handed out won't be used for fishing or a wedding veil?-- and diagnosis-- does the clinic have malaria tests? Are they expired? How does a patient know if they need to go to the clinic or not?-- and treatment-- what if the woman with malaria is pregnant?-- and the list goes on and on.<br />
<br />
Diagnosis can be particularly difficult because malaria symptoms can resemble a very bad flu-- chills, vomiting, feever, muscle aches, etc.-- and if the clinic is 10km away and you are sick in bed with the flu, what are the chances you are going to walk to the clinic just to make sure the flu isn't actually malaria? This is especially a problem in rural areas where people don't always understand how serious malaria is-- I've known counterparts to say I have malaria if I sneeze or have food poisoning, and my host grandmother once got malaria and asked me to run to the nearest tuck shop to buy her painkiller. Even if someone knows for sure they have malaria (because when you really have it, you feel the pain of it deep in your bones) and that it is something too serious for advil to handle, there is no guarantee the clinic will be well-stocked when they get there. Malaria is spread by a certain type of mosquito that is most active at night, so it is crucial that people sleep under a mosquito net, and yet many people do not do so, either because a net is not available or because they do not know to ask for one or they are given one but are not told or do not understand what to do with it and why. While a child is cured by $1 medicine, a disease is cured by education and prevention.<br />
<br />
So the moral of the story, I suppose, is that it might cost $1 to treat a child, but it actually takes a lot more work than that. It takes education and awareness and committment to preventing and curing the disease. It takes supplies and skilled doctors and organized governments and aid groups prepared to provide those supplies efficiently. It takes well-stocked and well-staffed clinics and accessible community health workers-- Zambia is required to have a functioning and well-stocked health post every 10km, but this is not always the case in practice-- and roads that sick patients can easily navigate. And yes, it takes medicine for when you are sick, and prophylaxis and mosquito nets and bugsprays for when you are well. Stopping malaria is a constant struggle, and it is not something we can just throw a dollar at and walk away. It is something that takes committment from everyone from world leaders to doctors to clinic workers to the patients themselves to you and me.<br />
<br />
April 25th was World Malaria Day, and this month Peace Corps worldwide is spreading the word about the importance of STOMPing out malaria. To learn more about the malaria prevention and treatment effort, visit stompoutmalaria.org. Elisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17006699585362579524noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4235050837633480742.post-46634296864075204312012-12-12T07:11:00.001-05:002012-12-12T07:11:08.843-05:00x-mas cardsOMG MAKING CHRISTMAS CARDS IS SO MUCH FUN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!<br />
<br />
That is all.<br />
<br />
PS- if you don't get one before the end of December than that means I live in nowheresville, Africa and have been unable to keep track of your current address. Or it means my card for you was so awesome the postmaster in Kasama decided to keep it. Sorry 'bout that!Elisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17006699585362579524noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4235050837633480742.post-3966149313387922352012-11-08T10:07:00.001-05:002012-11-08T10:07:50.547-05:00November RamblingsToday is November 8th and in 4 days I will be 26 years old. It is an odd thought since in many ways time has stopped for me since coming to Zambia-- when you can wait 4 hours for a meeting to start or a whole day for the rains to stop so you can leave your house, you start to give up on paying attention to the clock as avidly as you would in the states. These days when someone asks my age I have to think about it before realizing I'm not a 23-year-old college graduate anymore.<br />
<br />
November is actually a big month in my family-- a large number of my relatives were born in this month. My grandmother celebrates a landmark year in a couple of weeks, and my grandfather reached the impressive age of 92 just a few days ago. It is in honor of him and his birthday that I am writing this post-- when your 90+ grandfather starts asking you to update your blog, you know you've been offline too long.<br />
<br />
Kasama is a very different place from Serenje, a larger and older town with darker soil and more streets. We have a traffic light and street trees and more than one paved road and a roundabout with a sculpture of a crocodile on it-- crocodiles have special significance in Bemba culture. The soil is reddish brown and the jacaranda trees blossom purple in September and the rain clouds roll in as early as October (we even had one storm back in August) and thunder darkly above us. This is an area of high rainfall and humidity, much closer to the heavy rainforest regions of Tanzania and the Congo. It is also a place of high altitudes and colder winds-- tree-starved Mpika two hours south of here is arguably the windiest place in the whole country. When I moved up here I was warned to bring my wool scarf and hat and gloves and legwarmers-- leftovers of the colder life I left behind in Philadelphia one February morning. I have not yet brought out the legwarmers, but hot season is melting in the early rains and I suppose it's only a matter of time.<br />
<br />
Time. Something I thought I'd have more of. It's a busy job and it keeps me busy, and the less-busy days provide television and computers and grocery stores and shopping sprees in town to keep me distracted, and before I know it it's November and it's been 6 months that I've been at this job. I've barely given thought to the next steps in my life-- some, but not enough. The blessing and curse of a job and a place you love is that you become engrossed in the moment of it, and forget that the moment will end. And while I don't love this job the way I loved waking up each morning to chortling turkeys and women sweeping outside my quiet little hut in the woods, I do love being in this town and living in this house with this ever-revolving cast of characters. There is nothing more entertaining than a room full of Peace Corps Volunteers-- whether they are drunk and dancing or crass and laughing or seriously brilliant and full of ideas or flowing with stories and thoughts and plans, they are a variety of moods and thoughts and different American cultures that one can easily get lost in. I have only 6 months left in this place with these people, and some days I think it just isn't enough.<br />
<br />
So in order to appreciate the time I spend more fully, I am going to make a greater attempt to update this blog more often. I still have a lot of ground to cover-- a trip to America, a walk with a cheetah, and an unpleasant encounter with a baboon, to name a few-- and plenty of events up ahead to write about. I can't make any promises, but I can make an attempt. I used to write in my journal every day-- I used to do yoga every morning, I used to ride my bike at least 30 km a week, I used to play the guitar, I used to read, I used to sew-- but these days the pace of life leaves little time for that, so I will try for an occasional blog post instead. Better than nothing.<br />
<br />
PS-- anyone have any ideas what I should do for Christmas holiday? Looking for suggestions...Elisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17006699585362579524noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4235050837633480742.post-72506565926399552632012-04-25T10:49:00.004-04:002012-04-25T10:49:45.871-04:00World Malaria DayToday is World Malaria Day, and Peace Corps Africa has been busy all month in preparation, with volunteers holding workshops, doing surveys, giving lessons on how to use a mosquito net (here's a hint: it's not for catching fish), and doing everything they can to educate both Zambians and Americans on the importance of fighting malaria in Africa. On top of working in our communities to promote malaria awaremess (which I can't do, since I no longer really have a local community), we are also encouraged to write blog posts (or facebook posts or tweets or texts or whatever) to spread the word about this issue to people back home (one of the lesser-known but major goals of Peace Corps is to teach Americans about the world outside its borders). It's certainly a noble goal and nothing to be scoffed at-- malaria is one of the top reasons so few African children reach their 5th birthdays, and for a disease that is so easily (and cheaply) treated and prevented the death toll is shockingly high-- but I'll be honest, I wasn't originally planning to do anything to acknowledge World Malaria Day. It's not that I don't care-- nothing could be further from the truth-- but this month I've been a little busy leaving my home of two years and moving 6 hours away and packing and unpacking and repacking my stuff and learning the ropes of a brand new job and planning my first trip home in 2 years, and I just didn't think I could find the time, not to mention the energy or clearheadedness, to make a blog post. But in Kasama the World Malaria Day packet had been cleverly pasted to every bathroom wall, and as I sat reading the information on the wall I realized malaria is not something to be overlooked for any reason-- it's been overlooked long enough.<br />
<br />
Malaria has an interesting distinction in rural Zambia: there may be no other disease in the world that is taken less seriously in the local population in proportion to its actual seriousness and the number of deaths it causes within that population. I have often heard Zambians in my village say they are suffering from a "touch of malaria" in the way an American might say they were catching a cold. Often, the sickness in question is not malaria at all-- the person merely has a headache, a stomachache, even a hangover. This may seem lucky-- at least the person isn't seriously ill-- but the mindset itself is troublesome. For every sickness called "malaria" that isn't, there are several cases of actual malaria that are casually dismissed and left untreated-- after all, the thinking goes, that cold I called malaria went away on its own, so surely this will too.<br />
<br />
And even when the patient knows (s)he has malaria, that does not guarantee that the patient gets proper treatment. About a year into my service, my own host grandmother was overtaken by the parasite-- at first I thought she may just be tired and overstating the issue, a habit I had become used to encountering amongst my fellow villagers, but after a day or two it was clear she was not getting better, and I insisted that she get some coartem. So she asked me to run down to the tuck shop and buy her a pill called "panado," which I found out later that evening was merely a type of aspirin. There ensued a very, very long conversation (in Bemba, hence its arduous length) in which I explained to her the difference between a painkiller and actual medicine-- and with malaria, you always need real, actual medicine.<br />
<br />
What is truly troubling about the ongoing malaria epidemic is that the problem-- in Zambia at least-- is not about the treatability/preventability of the disease, or even about the availability of coartem and mosquito nets. It is about education. Many Zambians don't know that they can get free mosquito nets from the government health facilities (assuming they are stocked), don't know that coartem costs only $2 (not cheap in Zambia, but much cheaper than seeds, fertilizer, or bags of maize meal), and most likely don't know how to use either one. This issue is emblematic of the idea that you can't solve a problem by throwing money at it-- more mosquito nets and drugs are not enough, what we need is education.<br />
<br />
And that's where Peace Corps comes in. Rich or resourceful we certainly are not, but when it comes to teaching people new things, sharing ideas and encouraging education and growth, no one does it better than a Peace Corps Volunteer. So this month (and hopefully every month), volunteers are working to teach Zambians in the village about malaria-- about putting mosquito nets over every sleeping man, woman, and child, about making sure everyone who needs to take coartem takes it in a timely manner, about avoiding mosquitoes and not leaving still, open water near the house where mosquitoes can breed. And when we come in from the rain, drenched and shivering, or wake up with a backache or a headache or a cold, and our Zambian counterparts say "ahh, you are catching the malaria," we say "no. You can not catch cold, malaria, or anything else from getting caught out in the rain. And malaria comes from mosquitoes." Happy World Malaria Day, everybody. And if you're in an infected country, sleep under a mosquito net, and don't forget to take your meds.Elisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17006699585362579524noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4235050837633480742.post-41567548904340665612012-04-06T10:24:00.009-04:002012-04-09T02:41:11.709-04:00Well, I'm backTurns out, 27 months goes by fast. It looks like a good long time from the front, but before you know it you're looking back on those 27 months and wondering what happened to them. Only 3.5 years ago I sat in front of my computer, alone in my enormous senior college dorm room, staring at the Peace Corps application button and wondering if I had the courage to press it. Turns out, pressing that button was the beginning of an enormous and life-changing adventure. <div><br /></div><div>As I sat in my mudhut in the African bush last week sorting objects and packing bags, I flashed back to my senior year at Smith, nearly 3 years ago now, sitting in my dorm room and crying in frustration because I couldn't get all my stuff (and God I had SO much STUFF!) to fit in my bags and boxes and bins-- sure, there was more going on than the pure stress of packing, I was sad to be leaving and nervous about the giant next step in my life (and the uncertainty of it-- I hadn't been given a Peace Corps assignment yet and wouldn't be for another 10 months) and absolutely terrified of change, but even without all that baggage (haha) packing is by itself a stressful experience. You never know what to pack and what to toss and what to give away, and what to put in which bag and what you'll need again before you leave and shouldn't pack at the bottom on a bag just yet. And it was 20x worse the following February as I stuffed obscure objects like clothes I didn't like and a tent that was hard to set up and a bag of white rice (turns out they sell rice in Zambia, who knew?) into my bags and then out and back in again, having never lived in a mudhut in Africa and having no idea what to pack. 2 years later I knew exactly what to pack, and my stress and neurotic anxiety stemmed not from nerves or fear or uncertainty or confusion, but from pure and unadulterated sadness. Because this ramshackle hut made of lime-coated mudbricks and thatching grass was my first "apartment," my first adult home, and it is hard to leave. 2 years ago I would have stressed neurotically about the hows of packing; this time around, all I could think about was the "why." Every object I packed, every item of worn clothing or small gift I gave away, every piece of cookware I put aside for my replacement, left a big lime-white hole in my hut, another reminder that this experience, improbably, is finally ending. 2 years ago I sat in this hut and thought "man, I've got 24 months here, that's all the time in the world!" Now I know better. No time is enough time, and I am always going to miss this place.</div><div><div><br /></div><div>I had hoped to make my last month in the village an awesome month: I was going to bike all over, take pictures of my beautiful mountains, visit all the farms I could, say good-bye to farmers, sit out in the sun with a good book, spend time with my host family, visit and sit with my counterparts, and just generally make the most of what little time I had left. But 2 years in Africa has taught me that things rarely if ever go as planned. First I was sick with a different fluke illness each week. Then in the last 2 weeks the rains-- the ones we were waiting for back during the drought in December-- arrived with avengeance. They wore holes in the road. They flooded roads and bridges. They washed away bridges. Bike paths became rivers, and rivers became floods. One day I biked an hour in the rain and then walked (with my bike) across a bridge 8" underwater. Another day I had to climb over a bridge that was really a series of tree branches draped carelessly over a river that was surging up over the dark, wet logs, and then I lost my shoe in the mud and had to chase it down the river. Every day I was splattered with mud and water, wet and cold and frizzy-haired. I joked with my host family that between the illnesses and the rain, Kashitu must be punishing me for having the gall to try to leave.</div><div><br /></div><div>On my last day it drizzled all day long, and though I started the day with a nice long bucket bath I was soon shivering cold and frizzy-haired. I alternated between shoving things into bags (and out of bags and back into bags-- old packing habits die hard) and sitting with my host family around their fire, shivering (the night before I had to walk home in the dark cold of an evening rain storm, through an ex-path-turned-river with a bike that kept stalling and sandals that kept falling off-- even with the hot bucket bath and nshima my grandmother prepared for me, I was still feeling sensitive to the cold). I wanted to go for a walk, harvest the last of my garden (lettuce! Big healthy leaves of lettuce, all wasted by the rain!), sit outside with my book, but none of these things were an option, because there was too much rain. Instead I smiled with my host family, helped them shell yellow maize and bake a chocolate cake (this was my "leaving cake," and it didn't turn out half bad), and occasionally hid in my dark, empty hut and watched it grow progressively emptier.</div><div><br /></div><div>But finally overnight the storm broke, and on my last morning (Tuesday) the sky was cloudy and grey, but there wasn't any rain. I packed the last few things (sleeping bag, mosquito net, etc.) as the sun was rising, ate a power bar from America (all my dishes were packed), took down the last items (a poster of an elephant in a game park I'd left on my wall to keep it from looking too barren; a pair of sandals I didn't want to bother taking with me; a pair of capris that had been attempting to dry on the line in my house since Sunday) and went out to sit with my host family and the counterparts who came to see me off. I brought out my guitar to keep my hands busy, and spent the next 2 hours watching my host family and dodging smoke from their fire. The cruiser came at 8:30 and loaded my stuff (there wasn't much, and it was over fast), I hugged everyone good-bye (hugging is a bit of a no-no in Zambian culture, they're more into handshakes, but on special occasions they will do a hug/cheek kiss that makes me think of Europe), got in the back of the cruiser and watched my house and family fade away. The cruiser brought me to Serenje and dropped me and my stuff at the house, I brought my bags in and unpacked (I have stuff to leave at the house and stuff to take from the house, like clothes and electronics and food, so now I'll have to pack all over again), and that was that. Now I can no longer say "I live in a mudhut in Africa with no electricity or running water." The end of my first hard-core African adventure, and the beginning of a new one.</div><div><br /></div><div>So now I'm in limbo: at the PC house in Serenje for Easter and waiting to head up to Kasama and begin the next stage of my PC experience. In case you're interested, my new mailing address will be:</div><div><br /></div><div>Elise Simons</div><div>PO Box 410374</div><div>Kasama, Zambia</div><div><br /></div><div>And since I'll be living in town, I'll have pretty reliable cell phone/internet reception, so keeping in touch will be much easier for me than it was before. And of course, I will soon be coming home on my month of homeleave. So stay tuned!</div></div>Elisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17006699585362579524noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4235050837633480742.post-24326882640230372542012-01-13T05:48:00.002-05:002012-01-13T07:08:35.618-05:00Happy 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).<div><br /></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div>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.</div>Elisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17006699585362579524noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4235050837633480742.post-13816676061962942472011-10-07T11:38:00.004-04:002012-04-25T10:49:55.465-04:00Storms in Africa<div><div>For the past week we in Serenje district have experienced a strange anomaly: rain and cold weather in October. This is strange for two reasons: for one thing, when it rains in Zambia, it RAINS. We're talking torrential downpours, skies darkening and grumbling for hours if not days in advance, clouds billowing and lightening bolts flashing, rain so thick you could take a shower in it, the type of rain that brings a complete transformation of the landscape, leaves the ground itself in a different shape from how it found it. A teacher in my village the other day complained about this "London weather," which was completely and bizarrely accurate; the weather has been cold and damp, muggy and drizzly, like a petulant rainstorm that can't decide whether it wants to precipitate or not. The other day it drizzled. Drizzled. In Zambia. Weird.</div><div> </div><div>The other, more obvious reason this week's rainy-cold weather has been so strange is this: October is the peak of Zambia's hot-dry season. Let me say that again: we have been having rainy cold weather this week, in the peak month of our hot dry season. Sooooo, something is clearly wrong here. I mean, two weeks ago I was visiting a farmer to help him plant a tree nursery, and when I went to stand up from planting some seeds I found that I had to sit down again, the heat and sun had made me too dizzy to stand properly. Now don't worry, Mom, I've been drinking plenty of fluids and carrying extra water when I go biking (and trying to avoid biking in the middle of the day, but this is harder than you might think, assuming you plan to go anywhere at all), but nonetheless during last year's hot-dry season and this past September I have been surprised at how easily I get dehydrated, especially since I don't usually require that much water to begin with.</div><div> </div><div>Yet this past week none of this has been a problem; instead, I have been forcibly reminded of the cold-dry season of May-July, when the sky stays cloudy and gray as though it's going to rain (or as if it's mourning the end of the rainy season, as it never actually does rain), when the women wear blankets around their midsections as if they were citenges and the babies are all dressed in the best knit woolens their mothers can find. Where a week ago I was hiding from the heat in my hut, sweating night and day, this past week I had to drag back out the winter blankets and fleece jacket, freshly laundered and put into temporary storage on a shelf, and now I huddle around fires and under blankets. Cleary the world is confused about what month it is.</div><div> </div><div>The difference between this past week and the actual cold-dry season is that the weather this week has not actually been dry. It has been humid, thundrous, and occasionally drizzly. I have woken up each morning to a yard of wet sand, and each evening find watering my garden and tree nursery largely unnecessary, as the clouds have not cleared long enough for last night's shower to sun-dry away. Each afternoon this week I have had conversations with the strong African thunder, my side boiling down to such statements as "I hear ya, I hear ya" and "oh shut up." Yesterday I faced a dilemma I was not expecting to experience for another month: the old "is it raining where the meeting is being held, and thus should I bother going?" question. If it is raining, no one will show up, which means there's no sense in my going and getting drenched for nothing. However, depending on the size and direction of the storm, it may be raining where I am and not where the meeting is taking place, in which case I should ride through and away from the rain to reach my meeting. That is not, you understand, a question I would usually expect myself to need to answer during the dry season. Yet here we are.</div><div> </div><div>This early rain could, potentially, have more serious of an impact beyond simply freaking out the muzungus. Traditionally the early rains start in November and become well-established in December, eventually tapering off in early April. Farmers, then, are advised to start planting their fields in late November/early December, and some plant even later than that (because they don't start digging until the rain loosens the soil, and digging with hoes takes a looooong time). So if these early rains are a premature start to the rainy season, that means many Zambian farmers are already a month behind. If the rains start early, they could also end early, and that could mean a crop-killing drought in March or even February. On the other hand, if the farmers attempt to plant their crops early and this turns out to be just a temporary fluke in the weather patterns, their crops won't make it to January. It is too risky to change the planting schedule and therefore much smarter to keep to the regular planting schedule. So essentially we have no choice but to keep our fingers crossed and hope for the best.</div><div> </div><div>All this is a long-winded way of saying: global warming is bad. Whether it's a massive cataclysmic event like the tsunami that hit japan or tornadoes and floods sweeping America or a subtle but noticeable and potentially harmful change in the weather, like the more-massive-than-usual amount of snowfall faced by New England last winter (followed by an unusually intense heatwave) or this early rain that could, potentially (and I don't mean to be an alarmist) be a sign of a drought, the bottom line is that our climate is changing, and at a more rapid pace than usual. We see signs of it every day. And while we can escape the cold fronts and heat waves with air conditioning and heaters, the developing world-- who rely on the current weather patterns to survive, whose daily actions are determined by the weather (no, really, they do not leave the house during rainstorms, ever), who have shaped their lives, their clothing and shelter, their sources and methods of obtaining food around the weather-- may not be so lucky.</div><div> </div><div>Today dawned bright and sunny, still cold and crisp but holding the promise of a sky willing to hold its bounty off a little longer. Let's hope, for the sake of these people who have taken me in, fed me and shared with me what little they have, taught me and cared for me and encouraged me and loved me, that there are nothing but clear skies ahead.</div></div>Elisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17006699585362579524noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4235050837633480742.post-23294077143947913222011-08-01T14:10:00.011-04:002012-04-25T10:49:55.469-04:00A good week for alternative energy<div><div>People, both Zambians and Americans, often ask me what I do in the village, and it's a difficult question to answer. Not just because what I do, primarily, is LIVE in the village, which means the list of things I "do" in the village is very long and prominently features such incredible accomplishments as sleeping, reading, and cooking on an open fire, but also because my program within Peace Corps, aptly named the LIFE program, is multi-faceted and immensely broad. LIFE is an acronym for Linking Income, Food, and Environment, which is an umbrella that covers all topics from income generation to environmental education, from food security to reforestation, from organic farming to nutrition education, from beekeeping to tree nurseries to energy efficiency to animal husbandry and so on.</div><div> </div><div>On top of this, the Peace Corps Volunteer experience itself is very broad and open-ended. Volunteers essentially write their own programs, tailor-made to suit the needs and interests of the village and the interests and abilities of the volunteer. So it is easy for a LIFE volunteer to branch out from the already-broad guidelines of their program and work in programs like fish farming, sanitation and health education, youth development, <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_0" class="blsp-spelling-error">womens</span>' empowerment, <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_1" class="blsp-spelling-error">schoolteaching</span>, etc. And, of course, when you work in Africa, just about every development program, directly or indirectly, relates back to the epidemic of HIV/AIDS.</div><div> </div><div>But at its heart the LIFE program is about improved forestry practices. Zambia currently boasts one of the highest deforestation rates of all the countries in the world. The LIFE program was originally begun in conjunction with and to support Zambia's forestry department in reforestation and environmental preservation. We build fruit tree nurseries and woodlots for food and timber, teach farmers to plant nitrogen-fixing trees in their fields (<span id="SPELLING_ERROR_2" class="blsp-spelling-error">agroforestry</span>), discourage the slash-and-burn technique called <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_3" class="blsp-spelling-error">chitimene</span> and encourage "early burning" (burning in May-June before the tree seeds begin to germinate), teach in schools about the importance of forests and ecosystems, teach farmers to keep bees so they will have a vested interest in flowering trees to increase honey production, and explore alternative fuel sources to reduce the rate of deforestation caused by firewood-harvesting and charcoal-burning.</div><div> </div><div>Encouraging forest conservation through the promotion of alternative fuel sources is a topic I find greatly interesting because it relates to the field of "appropriate technology"-- the idea that people at the local level should be able to use local materials and their own skills and creativity to find inventive ways to improve their own lives, rather than sitting around waiting for aid agencies to come drop expensive machines and solutions in their laps. Of course appropriate technology is not applicable to every circumstance-- certainly there are situations where people are sick or hungry and simply need to be helped as quickly as possible-- but they are also a plethora of situations where the best way to help a group of people is to empower them to take control of their own lives and solve problems themselves. This concept has led to the invention of products such as locally-built <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_4" class="blsp-spelling-error">handwashing</span> stations, maize <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_5" class="blsp-spelling-error">shellers</span>, honey presses, and ways to preserve food through drying, smoking, and <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_6" class="blsp-spelling-corrected">refrigeration</span>. It has also led to the invention of two popular methods of using fuel without chopping down trees: corn cob charcoal and the fuel-efficient stove. These two inventions tie into my program-- the reforestation and environmental sustainability part-- perfectly, and they're a lot of fun.</div><div> </div><div>A fuel-efficient stove runs on the idea that a cooking fire in a tightly-enclosed, insulated space (as opposed to an open fire) creates a concentrated supply of heat, allowing a person to cook using only deadwood found around the yard. This not only saves trees but also significantly reduces time and labor spent searching for firewood-- an especially large problem for women and young ladies who should be in school. The stove is built from a brick-clay-mud-sand-ash-straw mixture (the proportions and ingredients vary based on what's available), leaving a hollow area inside for the fire and a hole in the top and one side for wind flow. After it's built you must wait 2 weeks for the mud to dry before you can use it for cooking; the fire and heat exits the top hole and heats the pot that you place over said hole.</div><div> </div><div>I built my first stove-- my own-- one year ago, about 3 months after I was posted at site. I built it on a platform so that I could stand while cooking, and I was really happy with the way it turned out. I built two more stoves with two different women in October, and then in January I built a stove with a women's group. Then this past Saturday I built a large two-burner stove on a raised platform with two young teachers in my age group. It was wonderful to work with someone who showed genuine interest in the work I was doing. They were very excited by the idea of having a stove to cook on. The building process took the entire day-- the platform took most of the morning, but the stove itself only took a little over an hour to make. Carrying soil and water and mixing the mortar took a large portion of our time and energy. We had to carry water in large buckets from a river nearby, carry bricks one by one, shovel sand into bags and carry it to the building site on my bicycle, and then use shovels and hoes to mix the ingredients as thoroughly as possible, or until our arms began to hurt from the weight of the water-logged soil, whatever came first. By the time we finished we were exhausted and sweating under the weight of mud and dust, and I had dirt all over my clothes, face, and arms, but it was the type of exhaustion that comes from a long day's work, so it didn't bother me. I took pictures and exchanged hugs and smiled all the way home. It was a good day.</div><div> </div><div>As a general rule it is wise to only initiate programs in your village if there is interest amongst your villagers; otherwise you are likely to be working alone. However, when I first read about corn cob charcoal in a training manual I was so enamored by the idea that I ran to one of my counterparts, Mr. <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_7" class="blsp-spelling-error">Chola</span>, and began talking so excitedly about the topic that he was inspired by my enthusiasm to try and make some with me, though he no doubt thought his volunteer had gone insane. It was very nice of him to humor me.</div><div> </div><div>Corn cob charcoal is usually made by cutting a hole in an oil drum, filling the drum with corn cobs, lighting a fire underneath the drum, and then, once the cobs are lit, sealing the drum tightly closed with soil to start the <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_8" class="blsp-spelling-error">carbonization</span> process. My counterpart, however, was only willing to indulge my insanity to a certain point; while he's not an avid drinker himself, people in my village are very fond of the cultural practice of brewing beer and wine in oil drums, and cutting a hole in the very expensive drum to light a fire underneath struck him as ridiculous. So I agreed to try it his way, or the Zambian way: arrange the cobs in a large mound, surround the cobs with thick, fibrous soil and grass, light the cobs and burn them a little, then cover them with fibrous lumps of soil to make a large soil kiln that traps the oxygen inside and allows the cobs to carbonize. This is how charcoal from trees is made in Zambia, and Mr. <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_9" class="blsp-spelling-error">Chola</span> saw no reason why it wouldn't work with corn cobs as well. So we tried it, and I was shocked to find that it worked quite effectively: within 30 hours we had a large pile of cob-shaped charcoal.</div><div> </div><div>All this took place one year ago, and then the maize-harvesting season ended and the supply of cobs fell, so we decided to wait until the next harvest season to start sharing the idea with others. Which leads us to this past Friday, when we called a workshop to show people our idea of an easy, cheap, environmentally friendly(er) source of fuel-- one that would not only save trees and money and labor but would also amend the soil (the <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_10" class="blsp-spelling-error">carbonization</span> process makes the soil fertile) and reduce the amount of harmful woodsmoke people are breathing, thereby improving the village's overall health. It sounded like a win-win situation, but unfortunately attendance at the workshop was frustratingly low-- of the dozen people in attendance, 7 were family members who already lived on the compound with me and were only present because I was holding the workshop in their front yard. Still, while this sort of low turnout is discouraging, it is also quite common. And as my mother keeps telling me, making a difference in just one person's life is more than enough.</div><div> </div><div>So I took a deep breath and held the workshop anyway-- we built a mound of soil, lit it, and sealed it so the cobs would carbonize. Then we took charcoal cobs from another pile we had prepared the week before and began the second part of the charcoal-making process: turning the cobs into charcoal briquettes. This is done so the charcoal will last longer-- cobs on their own burn very fast. What you do is pound the charcoal into small pieces, then mix it with a glue made by soaking cassava flour in hot water and then straining it. This creates a sort of black paste, which you then pack into tin cans with the bottoms missing and pound down with a hammer. This creates strong, tightly compressed briquettes which, after they dry for a couple of days, will burn about as long as regular wood charcoal. Everyone at the workshop got the chance to make a briquette, and then we got to burn some dry ones (we boiled some water, which I used to wash up later).</div><div> </div><div>So to sum up: you get to dig up a lot of earth and then light a pile of corn cobs on FIRE and then ATTACK the <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_11" class="blsp-spelling-error">dirtkiln</span> with hoes to get the charcoal out and then POUND the charcoal and get your hands all dirty mixing it and then HAMMER it into little briquettes for drying. Seriously, who wouldn't want to do this all day every day? My guests ultimately agreed that the entire process is a lot of fun. I'm tempted to say getting my hands covered in gross black stuff was the highlight of the experience for me. I personally can't fathom why I didn't have hundreds of people at my workshop; CLEARLY this is the coolest thing ever, right? They must not have fully understood the awesomeness of the process.</div><div> </div><div>And that's my week of adventures in alternative energy sources. Who knew saving trees could be so much fun? When I biked to <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_12" class="blsp-spelling-error">Serenje</span> on Sunday I was 3 times dirtier than normal-- as I showered I found dust and bits in my hair (my hair is like <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_13" class="blsp-spelling-error">velcro</span>, so I wasn't <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_14" class="blsp-spelling-corrected">surprised). But it's fun to get your hands (and chitenge) dirty-- that's why I'm here in Peace Corps, to spend time with nature, and if I can help nature in the process, well that's just a bonus.</span></div></div>Elisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17006699585362579524noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4235050837633480742.post-59169468010062136902011-07-05T02:15:00.005-04:002012-04-25T10:49:55.472-04:00Happy 3rd of July!<div><font face="Times New Roman"><br /><br /></font><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; line-height: normal;" class="MsoNormal"><span>In Zambia,<br />independence day falls on a hot day in late October, and a random July date in<br />the middle of Zambia's southern-hemispheric winter doesn't have much meaning or<br />significance here, so I think the Zambian people can be excused for<br />accidentally celebrating America's independence on the wrong day. And to be<br />more fair, it wasn't even America's independence we were celebrating-- it was a<br />festival for Zambian commercial farmers, complete with booths and tractors and<br />cricket games, but there were burgers and fries and cotton candy and fireworks,<br />so in the name of self-centered American patriotism we Peace Corps Volunteers<br />just assumed the party was for us and our home across the sea. So happy 3rd of July, everyone! I guess Zambia<br />was so excited about America's independence, they just had to celebrate a day early-- understandable.</span></p><font face="Times New Roman"><br /><br /></font><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; line-height: normal;" class="MsoNormal"><span><?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p> </o:p></span></p><font face="Times New Roman"><br /><br /></font><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; line-height: normal;" class="MsoNormal"><span>The fireworks were<br />not the most incredible I've ever seen, but they were certainly the most<br />exciting: several of them went sideways instead of up, and we were very lucky<br />the field didn't catch fire. We all had to stay alert, just in case. It was a<br />chilly night-- like I said, it's winter here in July, not frostbite-cold but<br />certainly uncomfortable, especially in a world of uninsulated houses with grass<br />roofs and ill-fitted doors, where 40 degrees can feel extremely unpleasant--<br />but the sun set at 6pm so we were done with the fireworks by 8 and able to<br />retreat to our sleeping bags. It was a nice party-- good food, sports to watch,<br />people to talk with, etc. It was nice to get out of the village for a little<br />while-- in Peace Corps we get the 4th, Thanksgiving, and all Zambian holidays<br />off, and since the 4th and 5th are both Zambian holidays I get to have a nice<br />long weekend, meet with Peace Corps friends, eat good food, etc.<o:p></o:p></span></p><font face="Times New Roman"><br /><br /></font><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; line-height: normal;" class="MsoNormal"><span><o:p> </o:p></span></p><font face="Times New Roman"><br /><br /></font><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; line-height: normal;" class="MsoNormal"><span>I'll head back to the<br />village tomorrow-- I have a program each Wednesday at the school working with<br />the students during their "farming period" to teach them organic<br />gardening (and hypothetically I'm also working with the school's enivironmental<br />education and HIV/AIDS clubs, though in 2 terms the school clubs have yet to<br />have a single meeting), and then Thursday I'm making compost with a farmer on<br />the other side of my village. I feel like getting in and out of my village gets<br />easier the longer I'm here-- not just because I'm a better bike rider and in<br />better shape, but because I’m much more integrated in my community now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A year or even 6 months ago I’d leave my<br />village for a day and come back feeling like I’d missed something important,<br />like I was out of the loop again, a visitor in a strange land; now I know my<br />village well enough that I can go away for a week and I’ll still be a part of<br />the community when I get back.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ll have<br />programs and projects and meetings, and time spent outside my village is not<br />the interruption it once was.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Life in<br />the village is hard for a lot of reasons, but it gets progressively easier.<o:p></o:p></span></p><font face="Times New Roman"><br /><br /></font><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; line-height: normal;" class="MsoNormal"><span><o:p> </o:p></span></p><font face="Times New Roman"><br /><br /></font><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; line-height: normal;" class="MsoNormal"><span>I’d like to wish you<br />all a very happy anniversary of our nation’s independence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If it weren’t for the US I wouldn’t be here,<br />in this amazing place having this life-changing experience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thank you Peace Corps, and thank you USA.<o:p></o:p></span></p><font face="Times New Roman"><br /><br /></font><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; line-height: normal;" class="MsoNormal"><span><o:p> </o:p></span></p><font face="Times New Roman"><br /><br /></font><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; line-height: normal;" class="MsoNormal"><span>Whatever your plans<br />for this holiday, I hope you’ll comment and share them with me—I love hearing<br />from all of you, in letters or online or however you prefer, and just because I’m<br />far away doesn’t mean I’m not thinking of my loved ones back home.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I recently (thanks dad!) got a new laptop<br />with skyping abilities, so if you’re interested in chatting face-to-face my<br />brand new skype name is elise.j.simons and I’d love to catch up with you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I hope you had a memorable 4<sup>th</sup> of<br />July, and 3<sup>rd</sup> and 5<sup>th</sup> and all the rest.<o:p></o:p></span></p><font face="Times New Roman"><br /><br /></font><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; line-height: normal;" class="MsoNormal"><span><o:p> </o:p></span></p><font face="Times New Roman"><br /><br /></font><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; line-height: normal;" class="MsoNormal"><span>And I hope your<br />fireworks didn’t set anything on fire.<o:p></o:p></span></p><font face="Times New Roman"><br /><br /></font></div>Elisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17006699585362579524noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4235050837633480742.post-12348513541041898762011-06-07T07:10:00.000-04:002012-04-25T10:49:55.475-04:00My Second Zambian Vacation<div><div>I apologize for the length of time between blog postings-- my laptop caught a virus and imploded back in February, and using the one office computer for the length of time necessary to write a blog post is depressing (the computer is all by itself in a dark, tiny office at the end of the compound, far from the living room where the majority of the population dwell with their laptops), so I haven't been able to bring myself to write. However, thanks to a generous donation from the Simons foundation (my father), I now have a brand new laptop from which to check e-mails, write blog posts, and talk to all my friends on skype (so if you're looking for a face-to-face discussion, drop me a line), so hopefully I'll be posting on this blog more often now. If not, blame YouTube.</div><div> </div><div>I have not been in my village much this past month-- I was in Lusaka in mid-May with the other 40+ volunteers from my intake for a week-long midterm conference, where our Peace Corps bosses had several meetings with us in groups and individually to make sure we were all still happy and healthy after a year in rural Africa. There was a medical exam and a dental exam, and lots of sitting in the waiting room waiting for the dental exam. What I remember most from the experience was Lusaka food-- pizza, subway, chocolate milkshakes, cake, pumpkin ravioli, french fries, etc. Not that I don't love nshima in the village, but it was nice to indulge a little. One evening a bunch of us were on a bus heading toward a restaurant-- 20+ young foreigners on a nice, touristy-looking bus-- when one cab driver at a gas station shouted "WELCOME TO ZAMBIA" at us, which would have been a lovely welcome if it hadn't been 16 months late. We had a lot of fun.</div><div> </div><div>After a week in Lusaka, a bunch of us traveled to Central Province for a luncheon to celebrate Peace Corps' 50th anniversary. We invited volunteers, staff, and local Zambian officials and counterparts. It was a lot of work to put it all together but I think the end result was rather pleasing, though between that and the trip to Lusaka we were all exhausted. The food, again, was the best part. It's a good thing I have a 20km bike ride to my site or I'd gain 50 pounds.</div><div> </div><div>Next I got to take a 4-day detour to my village, make a beehive with my beekeeping group, get stung 3 times around the eyes, read a book, go to a meeting at school that turned out to be canceled, and then it was back to Serenje and then Lusaka again for a vacation with my mother and my sister.</div><div> </div><div>They arrived Saturday evening, jetlagged and sore and without their checked luggage, which luckily we were able to retrieve completely intact by Monday. We checked out the Sunday market at Arcades for some souveniers, visited my training host family in Chongwe on Monday, and drove up to see my village on Tuesday. We rented a car and driver from Benmak and I highly recommend it, the whole process was much less stressful with someone else in charge of transit. They really enjoyed meeting both my families-- my Chongwe family, whom I haven't seen since September, were overjoyed to see us, and I got to meet two young, adorable additions to the family (3 if you count the new dog, but he had fleas and wasn't very cute). At my site they got the tour of my house, garden, watering hole, kitchen, stove, dish-drying rack, outdoor shower, pit latrine, and cat (my grandmother brought him out like some sort of sacrificial offering to the muzungus, which terrified him so much that he ran off and didn't come back before we left). My grandmother also demonstrated nshima-cooking for my mom and sister, and then we all got to try local Zambian food. It was awesome, my families were wonderful hosts and guests respectively, and I was really happy with the whole experience.</div><div> </div><div>The second half of our vacation involved a trip to Livingstone to see Victoria Falls. The lodge where we stayed, Fawlty Towers, was really nice-- and cheap!-- and had a pool, good food, comfy beds, etc. They also offered free bus rides to the falls every morning, so we went to the falls our first day (Friday). I had been to the falls back in December and I wasn't expecting this visit to be much different, but boy was I wrong! The waterfall was engorged with the past 6 months of violent rain storms, and the mist was so high you could see it miles away. Walking inside the park felt like walking through a rainforest during a storm-- water from the falls dripped down on us through the trees, flooded the pathways and and obscured the waterfall itself with fog that occassionally parted to reveal glimpses of the water behind. We had to rent raincoats (a dollar each) from vendors at the park entrance, and even so we got pretty drenched. It was truly a memorable experience. Who knew there was a place in Zambia where it rained during the dry season?</div><div> </div><div>That afternoon we went on a game drive in Mosi-oa-tunya National Park. We saw giraffes, elephants, wildebeast, impala, waterbuck, warthogs, and several birds. The real highlight, however, was getting out of the vehicle and following one of the full-time "rhino guards" to see the oldest of the only 7 white rhinos remaining in Zambia. We got to stand pretty close to him-- he was busy eating and not much interested in us-- and I took lots of pictures (which were on Emily's camera, so I'll have to get the pictures back from her). He looked a bit like an elephant mated with a warthog. Really cool that we got to get so close to him!</div><div> </div><div>On Saturday Emily and I took a canoe trip on the Zambezi and saw some hippos, and then in the evening Mom joined us to watch the sunset on the water and we got to see some crocodiles, hippos, and birds. Sunday we had a quiet final day, walked around Livingstone, and bought a few souveniers. It was sad and painful to leave them yesterday morning-- and not just because I was looking at 12+ hours on a bus from Livingstone to Serenje. I already miss them both and I really enjoyed their visit.</div><div> </div><div>So that's May in a nutshell. Rainy season has ended, as I mentioned, and harvest season has begun. It is also "cold" season-- never lower than 40 degrees, but that feels pretty cold in an uninsulated house. This is not peak work-in-the-fields season, so hypothetically people will be more available to work with me, but of course they'll also be less interested in working because it's (relatively) cold and dark. So we'll see-- I'm heading back to the village now, ready to get back into the swing of things. I'll write again soon. Wish me luck!</div><div> </div><div> </div></div>Elisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17006699585362579524noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4235050837633480742.post-28110507369919508152011-02-20T02:58:00.000-05:002011-02-20T03:00:10.928-05:00One Year InA year and a week ago today, I was cold, stressed, and panicked. The cold was a normal consequence of living in New England in February; the panicked was because I couldn’t strike the right weight balance between my two checked bags and my carry-on and my stupid ipod wouldn’t load the two years worth of music and movies and tv shows I was attempting to bring with me; the stressed was because, well, what else would you feel when embarking on a two-year commitment to live in a foreign country?<br /><br />Last weekend I talked to my mother on the one-year anniversary of speaking to her in person. On a Saturday afternoon one year ago she put me on a bus in Portland and stood outside the tinted windows waving and trying to guess what seat I was in (I eventually pushed my hand to the window to give her smile a general direction) until the bus pulled out of the station. A year ago Sunday I was eating Valentine’s Day brunch with my grandparents and extended family; a year ago Monday I was so nervous I lost my first breakfast and had to eat a second one (waffles. They were really good. Thanks, Dad). A year ago Tuesday I said good-bye to my college roommate (who just happens to live in Philly where we had staging), and with her the last familiar remnants of my American life, and gave her the winter jacket I had been wearing, as I wouldn’t be needing it where I was going.<br /><br />A year ago Thursday I was exhausted, overheated, out-of-shape and carrying my weight in luggage, staring at the bright African sunlight outside the international airport in Lusaka, Zambia. I had been awake (mostly) since Tuesday morning. My arms were sore from the first round of vaccinations. My back was sore from the midnight bus ride to JFK, the hours-long wait in the terminal, and the excruciatingly long plane ride to South Africa (about 12 hours, but when you add in the time difference it’s nearly an entire day). That afternoon I had my first of many lessons in patience: due to a miscommunication, our welcoming committee was a few hours late, so we just sat, 48 young Americans not quite dressed for the climate surrounded by a ridiculously large amount of luggage, exhausted and still essentially strangers (we had only know each other a couple days, though it felt much longer), waiting. It was a beautiful sunny day; across from the shaded sidewalk where we stood, a large billboard loomed over a manicured lawn, announcing that Africa’s time was coming: “let’s show the world what we can do!”<br /><br />Today, a year later, the weather is warm— these days I put on a fleece jacket in 50-degree weather and try to remember what real cold, what snow, feels like. Today if I had to pack a bag for a two-year adventure it would be half as heavy as the one I packed a year ago, and even if it wasn’t my bike-and-garden-worn body would be much more equipped to carry it. Today I am shocked at marvels such as being able to print a document from a computer in a different room (seriously, I just did this. The computer and the printer were on different sides of the compound. It’s amazing. Why didn’t I notice how cool this was when I did it all the time in college and high school?), and when my little laptop computer inexplicably stopped working yesterday it barely fazed me (I mean, it’s frustrating, but as we say in Zambia, “at least there’s still nshima”).<br /><br />In the past year I have learned to speak a foreign language; I have learned to ride a bike (yes, I’m 24, shut up); I’ve planted and grown vegetables, cash crops, and trees; taught farmers to build a compost pile; opened a beehive without getting stung; ridden an elephant and pet a lion in the same day; walked on the rim of the biggest waterfall in the world; eaten a caterpillar; lost over 10 kilos; learned to use the metric system; learned to make a fire in a woodstove; and eaten mangoes and guavas fresh off of trees. It has been an absolutely awesome journey, full of adventure, self-discovery, frustration, challenges, and life lessons. If I could talk to my one-year-younger self, I’d tell her this: take a deep breath. Don’t worry about the packing or the ipod. This isn’t the end of the world; on the contrary, it’s the beginning.<br /><br />Here’s to a second year in Zambia as crazy and surprising and difficult and wonderful as the first. Cheers!Elisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17006699585362579524noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4235050837633480742.post-23043495249406406832011-01-05T02:54:00.002-05:002011-01-05T02:58:36.382-05:00The end of 2010Happy new year everyone! It’s been a great year for me, as I hope it has been for you. This past month I have been very busy-- so much to write about and so little time to write it.<br /><br />The first half of the month planting season was in full swing, so I was busy in my village planting my garden and working with various farmers in their fields. I distributed legume seeds to help crops with varying levels of success; no one likes change, and it takes a very special type of farmer to try new things or accept strange ideas. The same can be said for the basin-digging method promoted by the Zambian government: it saves time and labor and increases yield, but many farmers find it stressful and challenging to use this new, more mathematical and methodical style of tilling. They aren’t used to having to measure their fields and basin spacings, they’re used to just digging the whole field in one fell swoop, which is a lot of labor for them and increases erosion and weed germination. Some farmers were so tired from over-digging their other fields that they didn’t want to spend much time practicing the simpler digging method with me. As for the legumes: intercropping legumes with cash crops like maize helps increase nitrogen levels in the soil and increase the overall health of the land and the plants, but very few people are familiar with these plants and trees and are reluctant to plant them in case they do so incorrectly and harm their cash crops, their livelihood, the thing on which their entire family depends. I did manage to get a few farmers on board, and I’ve made it a goal to spend this next year talking to more farmers to prepare for the next planting season.<br /><br />Around mid-December I bid farewell to my village and traveled by bus (about 12-14 hours) to Chipata in Eastern Province to attend a workshop on appropriate technologies run by an MIT program called D-Lab. The workshop lasted only 4 days; I could have happily worked for longer, especially since the shortness of the workshop meant many of our projects were left unfinished. Some of our projects included maize shellers, fuel-efficient stoves, corn cob charcoal, hand washers, and mango pickers, juicers, and slicers. While the technology itself was cool-- effective but still simple enough to be easily accessible to villagers-- what was more important was the inventive mindset we were practicing. In a country where schools teach through route memorization and standardized tests, it’s great to give creative minds an opportunity to think outside the box, to encourage them to find solutions to problems and not wait for the solution to be dropped into their laps. By thinking creatively, our Zambian counterparts may invent even better contraptions than the ones that already exist. My own counterpart started out asking me what we were doing and how we were doing it, but by the end of the workshop he had stopped following my lead and <em>he</em> was bossing <em>me</em> around. ;-)<br /><br />After Chipata I returned to Lusaka and then traveled south to spend the holidays in Livingstone. On Christmas Eve I crossed the border into Botswana and entered Chobe National Park, the Elephant Capital of the World. We went on a boat tour and saw elephants swimming right by us, which was pretty cool. We also saw a leopard out in broad daylight, surprisingly. We spent the night in the camp, sleeping in huge canvas tents and drinking wine at table-clothed tables. It was an interesting merger of English colonial influence and the African bush-- it was a very classy sort of camping experience. I just hoped Santa didn’t get mauled by lions on his way through our camp…<br /><br />Christmas day was more elephants and some lions, plus Christmas brunch in the camp with mimosas. In the afternoon it rained so hard it hailed and I got soaked! Despite the soaking and the lack of wrapped gifts or snow or pine trees, it was still a really great way to spend Christmas.<br />Christmas day we returned to Livingstone and stayed through the new year. I got to ride an elephant and pet a lion-- that was quite an eventful day! The elephants were part of an elephant sanctuary; the lions were young cubs raised in captivity but taught to follow their instincts so they could one day be reintegrated into the wild. The lion program faces a strange paradox: funding for the program comes from tourists wanting to walk with and pet the lions, but the presence of the tourists must make the lions used to people and slightly more tame, which it against the intent of the program. So the tourist industry helps and hinders the program’s ambitions simultaneously.<br /><br />On new years ever I visited Victoria Falls. It is truly a site to behold. A bunch of us walked along the top of the falls to a pool where we could look down over the edge to where the water fell into mist. It sounds dangerous but was actually pretty safe-- the current was not very strong, so it was a bit like wading through water back home, except if you fell and didn’t get back up right away you might be swept the 50 ft. downriver and over the edge. The pool itself was right at the edge of the falls, so that was quite a sight to see. Overall it was an invigorating experience; a great way to start the new year! That evening I went on a sunset cruise and watched the African sun set over the last day of the year. Good-bye 2010, it’s been real.<br /><br />So that’s my very busy December in a nutshell. While I missed being in my village, it was nice to get out for awhile and see other things. I feel rejuvenated, energized, ready to go. Of course I also feel sick because I spent 10 days sharing a hostel room with 16 other germ-carrying people, one of whom stole my cell phone, but I’m not gonna let this cold bring me down. I think 2011 is going to be a very good year.Elisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17006699585362579524noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4235050837633480742.post-29240395681394324822010-11-24T15:36:00.000-05:002010-11-24T15:41:49.096-05:00Wireless at the Provincial HouseMy wireless won’t hook up.<br /><br />This is a familiar problem in an unfamiliar time and place. It’s something I came to expect in college, huddled in one of the campus’ brightly-colored common rooms, fighting over 2,000 other students for valuable airspace before the onset of exams (half of us trying to do actual last-minute work, the rest simply refreshing facebook for the gazillionth time in a rush of desperate escapism), and it’s a familiar sort of general technologically-induced frustration I learned to cope with at an early age, huddled around a massive beige desktop in a closet-turned-computer-room and begging the antiquated AOL phone line to open up and let me in. Despite the impressive and constant leaps and bounds of technological progress, we all still seem to spend an inordinate amount of time trying to get the stuff to actually work in the first place.<br /><br />But this is a frustration I have been mostly liberated from these last 8 months. These days my biggest technological concerns involve finding enough dry wood (and it is raining nearly every day now) to light my woodstove and keeping my glass-coke-bottle-candle-holders from being knocked over by the cat. When I visited the Peace Corps Provincial House in Serenje in June, my first time there since being dropped off in front of a mudhut at the end of April, my fellow volunteers and I made a big joke of fawning over the oven and jumping in surprise at the brightening of a light bulb. Carrying nothing but a camera, ipod, flashlight, cell phone, and portable solar panel with me into the bush, I have been living relatively tech-free…by American standards, at least.<br /><br />Don’t think this means I’ve been free from technical frustrations-- the cell phone, bought my first day in Lusaka, did not successfully connect to the internet like it was supposed to until nearly two months and thousands of failed attempts later (and unproductive phone calls to the Zambian network administrators), and while my ipod has been my saving grace, all the earphones I brought have broken, and I am currently reduced to holding a too-small plug at the right angle in the too-large socket so I can hear out of the left side of my last set of partially-working earphones that aren’t intended for an ipod at all-- but mostly my goal of freeing myself from my technological addiction has been successful.<br /><br />Now, however, circumstances have changed. When my father and stepmother departed from Serenje in September, they left me a portable DVD player and very small, almost-no-memory e-series computer. And to make matters more bizarrely American, the provincial house finally (after a typical 6 month delay-- typical of Zambia, technological development in general, and technological development in Zambia) got a wireless internet satellite dish installed this week.<br />It couldn’t have arrived a moment too soon; this week is provincials, a Peace Corps general meeting that takes place twice per year. This is one of Central Province’s few opportunities to all be together at the same time, and it is also an opportunity to meet a fresh intake of new volunteers (“new” being relative-- they arrived in July and were posted in their villages in September). So, of course, being the 21st century Americans we are, we celebrated our newfound social opportunities by immediately staking out outlets and plugging in our computers. Oh the joys of wireless internet-- for a minute, sitting in a grungy room surrounded by unwashed 20-somethings and the sound of clacking keys, I felt like I was back in college. Then the power flickered off for 15 minutes and I remembered exactly where I was.<br /><br />But while other people seem to have managed, despite the intermittent flickering of network power, to make some semblance of an internet connection, I am having some difficulty. One minute the little doo-hickey will say it’s working, and then the thingamajig won’t load and the whatsit says it can’t find the server. I suppose it’s partially due to the number of people trying to connect at once-- the line must be very busy right now-- and partially due to me not knowing this computer very well yet-- I did just get it two months ago, and haven’t had very many chances to use it since I don’t have electricity.<br /><br />So I’m basically sitting at the dining room table fiddling around with my new computer-- turns out I have skype, which could be great if I can get enough internet connection to set it up and a strong enough connection to actually use it. Also, this computer has spider solitaire, which may be the only advantage of getting a PC instead of a Mac. I have a few more pictures from my safari trip, which I’ll post here eventually, though that means posting will take an eon. They’re very pretty-- South Luangwa is a beautiful place, beautiful animals, beautiful trees, beautiful skies. The sky everywhere in Zambia is amazing, actually, and if the moon is more than ¼ full it illuminates the entire landscape with silver light.<br /><br /><br />The week so far has been interesting-- in addition to the traditional meetings, we’ve also had a small appropriate technology workshop, where we’ve been finding creative (and cheap) ways to encourage health, fuel efficiency, and food security. We built a stove, the smoke from which feeds a meat smoker, and learned to make charcoal from corn cobs, which is a good idea because Zambians use a lot of corn to make nshima, their favorite staple food. But I think the real excitement will be Thanksgiving dinner-- we have two live turkeys, going to slaughter and cook them ourselves, good times. Peace Corps is hard core. We unfortunately could not find a pumpkin-- they’re out of season-- but I will be spending a good deal of quality time cutting apples for pies tonight!<br /><br />Not much more to report-- I’m going to attempt a Zambian x-mas card this year, so if you think you’re entitled to one make sure I have your address right. One more good thing about Zambia: not too many x-mas carols on the radio starting this Friday. Not that I’ll notice, since my radio doesn’t get reception at my site…<br /><br />UPDATE: Figured it out, I had accidentally mistyped the password when signing in, which begs the question of why the network claimed I had signed in correctly…anyway, good news, now I can post this!Elisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17006699585362579524noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4235050837633480742.post-17227521865289760262010-11-07T07:45:00.002-05:002010-11-07T07:51:55.094-05:00What I've Been Up To LatelyHappy Zambian Independence Day!<br /><br />Well, actually, the day itself was October 24, about 2 weeks ago, but unfortunately I was sick last week and wasn’t able to write about it until today. I celebrated my host nation’s 46th year of independence with a little trip to Northern Province.<br /><br />In fact, I ended up seeing a little bit more of Northern Province than expected-- my friend Allison and I were traveling together, got a nice ride in a Tanzanian freight truck, but no one told us that we had to turn at Mpika to get to Kasama so we ended up going several hours in the wrong direction on a bumpy road full of car-sized potholes. Oops. We were eventually redirected by a lovely lady selling bananas at a police security checkpoint, and we managed to get a ride with a nice group coming from Tanzania…until they hit a pothole and busted two tires. Oops. Luckily we got another hitch relatively quickly, and this guy was going all the way to Kasama! Well, that was his original plan…until he got a call from a work colleague and discovered he was needed in Mpika for the night. By this time Allison and I were worried as well as exhausted and stressed-- was this guy going to abandon us in a strange city in Africa at night, just two little white girls? Nope-- he spent an hour in Mpika with us trying to get us a hitch (it was nighttime and most of the cars had left the area by this point) and then, when no alternative ride was forthcoming, he sighed, got back in his car, and drove us to Kasama. Because sometimes people really do come through for each other. Thank you Mr. Nice Guy, wherever you are.<br /><br />The trip turned out to be worth the Ride Through Hell. The Peace Corps office in Northern Province is a cool place-- they have a bright yellow-orange kitchen, which I love, but apparently they’re planning to paint it a different color, which is too bad-- and it was great to see my Northern Peace Corps buddies again! We took a trip to Chishimba Falls-- there were more than 20 of us, don’t know how we all fit into that little bus but we managed it. The falls were absolutely beautiful, and I got right down on the rocks at the bottom of it-- really cool. It was nice to go swimming since it’s been so hot here, and the view was great.<br /><br />From there we took a bus up north to Lang Tanganyika, which I believe is the longest and deepest lake in Africa, or something. We took a boat to a beach resort where we set up camp-- it was really beautiful, and the lake looked like a real ocean. I guess Zambia isn’t as landlocked as I thought it was. I may have to rethink the title of this blog. Here’s the link: <a href="http://www.isangabay.com/">http://www.isangabay.com/</a> anybody jealous? It was fun camping out on a beach. We took a really invigorating hike to Kalambo Falls, the second-tallest waterfall in Africa. It was quite a trek but I was surprised at my own endurance level-- Zambia has been good for me, I guess. And we’re entering mango season. Nothing like eating mangoes on the beach!<br /><br />Got safely back to site with only a minor case of food poisoning. Ick. It was a great little vacation-- I loved seeing more of Zambia, it’s so beautiful and awesome here!<br /><br />Last week on Tuesday it rained for the first time since April-- I’ve never gone so long without rain before, it was strange. It was a really great storm-- I’m sure I’ll get sick of rain quickly, but for now I’m enjoying it. It’s also nice because since the rains started it’s cooled off a little-- I can now actually leave my hut in the middle of the day, which is great. Unfortunately this also means all the wildlife is waking up-- the other night a tarantula waltzed in to my hut! Yikes! Rainy season here I come!Elisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17006699585362579524noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4235050837633480742.post-5980420022725529852010-09-22T14:22:00.004-04:002010-09-22T14:50:10.407-04:00My First Zambian VacationIt’s always a bizarre experience to leave your village. First of all, in my case, the process begins with a grueling 2-3 hour bike ride through sand and over rivers and up mountains, so by the time I arrive in the relatively urban town of Serenje I am tired, dirty, and sweaty in addition to the culture shock of re-encountering electricity and indoor plumbing. In Serenje, which is the location of the Peace Corps Provincial Office in addition to being the market where I do all my grocery shopping, I find a very different world from the quiet peace of my village. Many more people speak much more English (and quite a few don’t speak much Bemba, having moved to Serenje from one of the other tribal regions of the country), it is possible to buy things like cornflakes, green beans, and cheese (and refrigerate it) whereas in the village you’re limited to oil and sugar (and occasionally bananas), and your bathroom experience involves sitting instead of squatting. But stranger than all of this is the experience of leaving Serenje for a larger city like Lusaka or a vacation resort like South Luangwa, especially when you are going there to meet family visiting from America.<br /><div><br />It is 5 hours direct from Serenje to Lusaka, but of course the journey is made much longer by traffic, rest stops, government checkpoints, and the overall fluidic pace of public transportation. I left Serenje at 7:30am and walked to the Serenje Junction at the Great North Road, where for only $12USD I was able to pay for a ride on a little blue bus from point A to point B. Unfortunately it took some time to get started, and then we made several stops in the major towns on the way south, including a bus change in Kabwe (which actually involved several bus changes-- the drivers couldn’t decide who was going to Lusaka and who wasn’t, I guess-- so I arrived in Lusaka a little after 4pm, after 8+ hours on a bus. I spent most of the time writing letters and watching the purple-blossomed Jacaranda trees, which have just come in to bloom.<br /></div><br /><div>Lusaka is not by any means the tourist capital of Zambia. In fact, before this trip I didn’t know there were hotels in Lusaka outside the $20USD price range. The city is as loud and dirty as any other modern city, though it has a markedly large number of roundabouts, and its main draw to me is the shopping center complete with fast food, a grocery store, and a movie theater. The people are relatively friendly, and when they put an arm around your shoulder 9 times out of 10 they are actually not going for your purse (though I kept my hand on mine anyway, just in case). I felt overwhelmed by the noise and activity but didn’t feel out of my element until I arrived at the hotel my father and stepmother had reserved just after sunset. At this point I had been traveling the entire day and had biked from my village the day before, so I was dirty and sweaty and gross, and walking into this hotel was like entering a completely different universe. It was like a quiet oasis from the bustle of the city, but nothing like the quiet of my village. This was the quiet of cleanliness and organized luxury. Desperate to fit in, I pasted on the biggest, most Zambian smile I could muster, checked in while throwing around a couple of Bemba terms to distract from my rugged village appearance, and rushed upstairs where I spent over an hour in the shower-- most of that time was spent scrubbing just my feet. Turns out they aren’t as tan as I thought they were. When Dad and Laurie finally arrived, I was about as clean as I had been when I left them 7 months ago, or at least the cleanest I’d been since February.</div><div><br />The hotel was so luxurious it didn’t seem to know it was located in a “developing“ country-- the food was excellent, the beds were pristine and comfortable, the shower always had hot water and the toilet flushed with minimal fuss, all the staff were friendly and helpful, and there were real live miniature crocodiles in the pond by the restaurant, no joke. 4 of them and a little baby one, all sunning themselves like statues and moving only to go for a swim. My father was more interested in the vibrant yellow weavers in the process of building their nests in the tall grass, but either way it was quite a show at breakfast. It felt a bit ridiculous to be here after being in my village-- this sharp an economic imbalance within one country is almost painfully ludicrous, though unfortunately not at all uncommon. The good news is a place like this, and the tourist industry in general, creates jobs for Zambians and helps the economy of the entire country. So you can have a great vacation and donate money to a country that needs it at the same time (though I doubt that will fly on your tax forms). I personally must have looked a right fool saying things like “wow, placemats and cloth napkins, that’s so cute” and “look Dad, the water faucet works, isn’t that awesome?” I guess Zambia has made me easy to please, which must be a good thing.</div><div><br />Dad, Laurie, and I spent two full days in Lusaka. On Sunday we went to the Arcades Shopping Center where the weekly Sunday market was in full swing, selling overpriced but often lovely crafts to tourists. Again, it’s hard to feel bad about spending money when it goes directly to support a Zambian craftsman/woman and his/her family. I bought lots of stuff, mostly gifts for Dad and Laurie to carry home for me, but also a lovely stone-carved leopard for myself. Since I had just been in Lusaka in August for IST, I didn’t go crazy buying stuff as I normally would have-- in August I bought a stone open-mouthed hippo, a red tie-dye dress, and a patchwork purse for myself (the last was from a woman who calls me her daughter because she lives in Chongwe where I had my training back in March. Apparently that’s all it takes to be adopted in this country). In addition to the stuff I bought in Lusaka I also got a bunch of gifts Dad and Laurie brought me from various relatives, including books, games, stationary, wind-up flashlights (my old one got stolen back in July-- oops), bathing suits, DVDs and a player, and a very small laptop. It was a bit like Christmas.</div><div><br />But the best Christmas gift of all came on Monday, and you can’t put a price on it (well, the company we rented the car from did, but that’s a different thing). The three of us drove east to Chongwe, about 45 minutes outside of Lusaka, and visited my host family from training. I had not heard from them in months and had been trying to contact them to plan a visit, and right at noon on Monday they called me and told me to bring my family over! It was great to be back in my red-earthed home, to see my Bamaayo and Bataata and sisters (who all ran to hug me) and brothers, my old one-room hut which is now housing another Peace Corps Volunteer from the new intake, and then it was bizarre to turn around and see Dad and Laurie standing there with me. Worlds merging. They had their first taste of nshima, the cornmeal-based staple food of Zambia, and got to see their first Zambian village. I tried for the first of many times to teach them some Bemba, but without much luck-- Dad was just getting the hang of “good morning” on his last day here. Luckily my Chongwe family speaks mostly Nyanja anyway, so we were all in the same boat.</div><div><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5519809077537375938" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 200px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 150px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXdhLoaPWZISv6ravXkpyOW31ceo2wseXKS_iY2C25SWJa6Xp-AdhfHhAz2LSlAJbsdts8NeZ3xPmm5me9XVc6lrSx5zMf7jTcu3jaK0yigty6-lyCyguNcTHgwlRTbBbVL5S-lTnK5lE/s200/Chongwe+03.JPG" border="0" />Here is a picture of me, my American father, and my Zambian mother. Thanks for the laptop so I can upload pictures, Mom!</div><div><br />The majority of our vacation was spent in South Luangwa National Park in a place called Flatdogs (another word for crocodiles). We went on 8 4-hour safari drives-- perhaps more than was necessary since we were exhausted by the end, but I don’t know which ride I would take back as they were all fantastic. Flatdogs itself was lovely, with great people and beautiful chalets and tents and a pool and a restaurant with great food (and not just by my standards-- the parents approved as well, especially during dessert) and a place you could sit and watch hippos lounge in the water. We were so close to the park boundary we had night guards to make sure no animals caused trouble in camp (well actually it would be the people who caused the trouble, but they probably wouldn’t be considered the guilty party), and one day I was woken from a midday nap (it was too hot to do anything midday, so our drives were in the mornings and evenings) by a bunch of baboons and monkeys patrolling the grounds outside my window. Elephants, giraffes, and hippos were also known to wander through, and one herd of elephants spent the afternoon at the restaurant when their baby decided that would be a good time and place for a nap. Talk about non-interference parenting.</div><div><br />Our tour guide, a Zambian man named Malama, was also fantastic, informative and knowledgeable and unbelievably adept at finding animals-- in the evenings we went on night drives (which I think are only allowed in Zambian parks) and he could spot a crocodile hidden in the grass several meters away while driving on treacherous roads. We got within 15 ft. of a pack of napping lions, spent an entire evening hunting for leopards (picture safari of course, not armed safari), saw another lion climb a tree and nearly witnessed a stand-off between some lions and hyenas over a dead buffalo (it wasn’t nearly as dramatic as in The Lion King), got very close to several giraffes and zebras, spent 20 minutes waiting for a huge herd of buffalo to cross the road, and got so into the bird watching (and it isn’t even peak bird season yet) that Dad eventually caved and bought a Southern Africa Bird Book. We were joined on most of our drives by a lovely couple from California, and the five of us had great fun playing the best version of “I Spy” possible-- the constant, informal, exciting, rewarding, entertaining, educational kind. On our last morning we had a walking tour-- it’s actually easier to walk in the park than in my village because there are fewer tree roots and the hippos clear very good paths-- and we got very close to some birds, zebras, and ant lions (they build ant traps like craters in the sand). But far and away the best part about the safari was the elephants. I love elephants, love to spot them emerging from the brush, to sit and watch them eat or sleep or bathe or walk, to take pictures of them or just look at them. The worst thing is an angry elephant charging-- more destructive than just about anything, and elephants actually cause multiple deaths per year-- but an elephant at peace is more peaceful than any other animal except perhaps a giraffe. I may have to go on safari again just for the elephants.</div><div><br />Traveling from South Luangwa to Serenje and then to my village was a long, stressful, painful process. My becoming very nauseous on the small plane from South Luangwa to Lusaka didn’t help matters, and I very nearly lost my cool before we finally checked in at the Hotel Zen-- well, actually, it was a hotel in Kabwe called Tuskers, but it was very relaxing so I‘m renaming it. We proceeded to Serenje on Monday and visited my favorite lunch spot, the town market, and a few small stores. It was interesting to see these places-- the parts of Africa I know best-- through the eyes of newcomers. Things that never fazed me, like live goats or chickens tied to the back rack of a one-gear bicycle or bags of charcoal and piles upon piles of tomatoes being sold by brightly dressed women on the side of the road, were of great interest to them. We drove to my village (only got lost twice-- the car route is different from the bike route so I haven’t been on it much) but I didn’t really feel like I had returned home at all because I was seeing old familiar things for the first time. Even my own Bemba language skills and ability to banter with my neighbors seemed less like a familiar routine and more like a successful attempt to impress my guests.</div><div><br />My village family generously provided my parents with beer (which I had to pay for) and a live chicken-- which they somehow expected could be killed, dressed, cooked, and eaten on the road to Lusaka. Instead my grandmother cooked it with nshima for them. She also prepared a warm Zambian bucket bath for them (and for me-- yay!). We walked around, visited a few people, rested during the heat of the day, saw the school and the place where I go to get cell phone reception, and witnessed a great deal of bush burning-- it is much better for the environment (and safer) to do annual burning/land clearing early in the year, like in May/June, but to protect the July-harvested crops (and provide new fresh leaves to increase caterpillar growth for the caterpillar-harvesting season in October-November) most people here let their forests burn in September. It is beautiful during and devastating after, a black charred landscape full of dead leaves on blackened trees, though pink and purple flowers grow out of the ashes almost instantly. Though I would like them to see my village in greener seasons, I think they really enjoyed their stay.</div><div><br />Unfortunately they were only able to stay two nights and one day in my village before I helped them navigate the rental car back to Serenje. They left me here at the Central Province Peace Corps House/Office in Serenje and proceeded down the Great North Road to Lusaka. From there they will travel to Livingstone and Victoria Falls and then home. I will be here, slowly preparing myself to hop on my bike and return to my village, readjust to life there and become accustomed again to the pace of life and lack of electricity. It’s always a bizarre experience to return to your village</div>Elisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17006699585362579524noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4235050837633480742.post-52125916291154715922010-08-21T05:12:00.003-04:002010-08-21T06:00:25.421-04:00Six Months InLast night I had a dream. I was sitting on my home-sewn-cushioned couch in my little red-brick mudhut, listening to the wind shift the black plastic lining of my thatched roof, when suddenly a big white Peace Corps cruiser pulls up, tells me to pack up my shit because my site has been deemed "innappropriate" and I have been reassigned. The cruiser drops me off in front of a concrete mansion, tin roof, polished cement floors, electricity, running water, and an indoor kitchen with a stove and refrigerator. The soil around my house is perfect, deep and black with plenty of water, and I already have a massive, well-tended garden in my backyard. All my neighbors have kitchen gardens, and not five minutes away is a wide, flat, well-paved road lined by large shops and houses. A few of my Peace Corps friends are there, working in the state-of-the-art, well-attended school or the fully-stocked clinic. My neighbors speak perfect English and know all there is to know about farming, beekeeping, animal husbandry, fish farming, and agroforestry. Everything looks perfect, and by the end of it all my dream-self is in tears.<br /><br />Two weeks ago I left my village for a two-week In-Service Training Workshop in Lusaka, and I'll admit I was thrilled to get away for awhile. I spent time with American friends, ate out almost every night, saw my first movie in 6 months (Inception-- wow, now that's a movie. Unbelieveable), ate chocolate cake and drank cold beer. In spite of these luxuries I found that I missed my simple village life. Though I love my village 98% of the time, at the beginning of August the stress got so bad that I seriously considered going home for the first time since I arrived in February. For a brief period I wasn't sure I'd be able to bring myself to go back at all. After two weeks of getting as close to a taste of home as I could without leaving the country, I was not only relieved to return to Serenje but relieved to find that I was relieved. It feels good to once again have confidence in myself and what I am doing-- taking two weeks to recharge in Lusaka was, it turns out, exactly what I needed. I woke up from the above nightmare this morning with a renewed sense that I am, for now at least, exactly where I am supposed to be.<br /><br />It isn't easy to live in a place and situation so different from the one I am used to. When I was sick at the end of July (and yes, I have lost a lot of weight, thank you) I couldn't even find the energy to feed myself because I didn't have the strength to fetch water or light my brazier, and when I needed to call the Peace Corps Medical Officer I practically had to crawl to cell phone service (I have found a second place in my village where I can access the network-- now I get to choose between walking half an hour to cross a huge river and climb a tiny hill or walking 15 minutes (and chatting with the neighbors for 10) to cross a small river and climb a very tall and steep hill). Luckily I had neighbors to help me cook, clean, etc.-- but even that lack of self-sufficiency is unfamiliar. (I am fully healed, btw-- have to be more careful what I eat!) For me, just surviving is a challenge most days.<br /><br />At the same time, I can't help but be grateful to the US government for providing me with an opportunity to live so far outside my comfort zone. Life shouldn't always be easy. In the last three months I have learned to light a charcoal brazier, start a fire (ok, that one still gives me trouble, but I have had some successes!), wash laundry and dishes by hand, ask for directions in a foreign language, kill household pests (ding dong the rat is dead), and ride a bike. I taught a Zambian woman to bake a cake, learned from a Zambian woman how to crochet, worked with a farmer to build a beehive, and helped a teacher hold an HIV-education workshop at a school. This certainly isn't the most fun adventure I could be on, but I definitely think its the most interesting.<br /><br />My two-week Lusaka workshop marked the end of my community entry period. From now on I'm expected to not just observe but participate in the world around me. I have learned more about beekeeping, animal husbandry, tree propogation, and gardening, and am returning to my village today with blisters on my hands, dirt on my clothes, and lots of ideas in my head. It's time for me to get to work. I think I'm ready.Elisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17006699585362579524noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4235050837633480742.post-54751023345462136762010-06-14T07:09:00.003-04:002010-06-14T07:31:26.184-04:00Rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated...Dear Everyone,<br /><br />I am sorry to have neglected you so long. I have not had access to a computer since the end of April-- so much has happened since then! I was officially sworn-in as a Peace Corps Volunteer on the 23rd; I wore a Zambian-made dress suit, white and brown with drums and drummers on it, and I gave a small speech in Bemba. It was sad saying good-bye to my host family, they have been so good to me, but I was also excited to embark on this next adventure. From there it was several days of intense shopping-- I've never bought so much in such a short period, not even while I was packing to come here! It was a real whirlwind experience, but I arrived safely in my village the last Tuesday in April.<br /><br />Since then I have had various small adventures, like learning to light a charcoal brazier, or biking 20k to meet the chief (who was not at home, so I biked another 20k back...), or trying to cook banana bread on a brazier (should have greased the pot...whoops...), or tearing apart my mattress (with a butcher's knife...oh boy) to make it fit the bed (my predecessor tore apart the bed to make it fit the bedroom). Last week was my village's annual agricultural show, there were about 6 stands each displaying various crops (and various varieties of maize), except for the student stall, where the school HIV coordinator and I put out some HIV-education pamphlets. There was much drinking and dancing and merrymaking-- it was a great party! And it's banana season, so I stocked up. Yum.<br /><br />I don't have cell phone service at my site-- I have to walk 1/2 an hour and cross an intimidating bridge over a roaring river to get it-- and the Boma (marketplace) is a 2-hour bike ride away, so I am quite isolated here. I like it, though-- it is very peaceful. Each night I sit with my neighbors around their fire and practice talking to them in Bemba. I have visited many people and farms and am getting to know my community very well. So far things are going great.<br /><br />I am sorry this post is rather short-- internet is as expensive as it is rare here-- but I'd be happy to send you more details of my life here in Zambia! You can write me at my new Serenje address:<br /><br />Elise Simons/PCV<br />PO Box 850010<br />Serenje, Zambia<br /><br />Signing off for now-- Mushale bwino! (Remain well!)Elisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17006699585362579524noreply@blogger.com2