Where the streets have no names

So I’m back from the electronic silence of living in the village. It took 80 kilometers of biking and cost me the feeling in my rear and in my fingers. Even that first sentence was as struggle to type out, my finger aren’t “used” to the precise movement of the keyboard. I can turn out a four page letter in 45 minutes but this is a challenge.

In fact I’m writing this post not even on a computer with internet capabilities—a concept that is fairly foreign to me considering that in the U.S. that doesn’t exist. I’m hoping that tomorrow I will be able to find the computer in Serenje that has dial-up and that it will be working. Its pretty pricey to spend a lot of time on the computer so I/we had the bright idea of pre-typing the post or emails we were planning on doing.

I’ve been in the village for about six weeks now and have been able to meet with the chairmen of the Neighborhood Health Committees in the catchment area that I am working with, the Clinic Officer, and community health workers like traditional birth attendants, home based care givers, peer educators and the Chief. The first three months of our service are dedicated to “sensitizing the area to my presence” and getting to know the community. Then we can start doing actual development work like education, training, and mentoring.

I’ve been biking around and wandering around so that people are “sensitized” to seeing a tall white girl and I ask a lot of questions of everyone I talk to. In other words I’m doing an awesome job socializing. I think we all know that that is a strong point of mine, but feel free to give me a gold star anyway. My favorite conversations are the ones where they are laughing at me as I stutter through the conjugation and tenses of verbs to say that I am going this way or coming from this place.

They think a lot of what I do is funny though. The fact that I ride a bike for pleasure or go for a 20k hike or climb a certain rock face sends them into a state of shock. “Ahh, but why Ba Emily? You will be very tired, that is so far.” (Zambians walk slower and ride their bikes slower than is fathomable which leads them to believe that 10k is a great distance.) In the same instance they tell me that I am fat too so … I should qualify that actually. In Zambia it’s a compliment to say that you look fat. And its not really “fat” in the American sense—I certainly haven’t bulked up since getting here—its that you look healthy in the context that there have been times in Zambia when people have starved to death and that children still suffer from malnutrition.

I’ve written about nine letters in the past few weeks and so I am a little low on material for the blog. Every letter has been unique because it is no fun writing letters that are all the same and I don’t want to have repeat stories. But maybe you can all get together and share your letters with everyone. Then maybe you can light candles together until I return.

We've been at the Peace Corps house in Serenje for meetings and such and so we've also been eating all sorts of amazing food that we can't get or make in the village. There are only two toilets in the houses for about 20 people and they are not enough to manage the digestive issues that extreme diet change create. But even with the hind-sight of knowing what is going to happen when you eat four desserts, potatoe salad, and chili, we all still take another helping. I'm begining to feel like some people are masochistic.

I should be back around June 15 and will hopefully have something hilarious to say. You can always ask my parents though if your desperate because they have gotten most of the good material in their letters. I hope that all is well in the home front! Twalamonana! ("Seeyou later" in Bemba and Lala)