At Least it's not Cricket

Happy begining of World Cup everyone!! I bet your not half as excited as I am. Ok, I'm not really excited at all. I feel like I'm missing something, like I should be more intersted. But even in what most sports fans would consider and ideal sport watching environment, (at the game being excluded) an Irish pub with about six TV's. I just couldn't get into it. The people on the screen are so small and it feels like they are moving really slow. I shouldn't complain though. I was eating a real salad and my drink had ice cubes in it and atleast it wasn't cricket we were watching.

So I'm hoping that today the doctor will tell me that I can go home to my site. I need to not be in the city anymore. I finished the half a book that I brought and then read the 2001 GRE study book and did all practice tests and then I started studying for the MCAT. I'm not taking the MCAT, ever. I was hoping to find the Foriegn Service Exam study book but none were around. There isn't a real selection of fun reading material at the office. And smutty American magagzines like Cosmo and Elle and Glamour are about 10$ a piece. Thats an expensive habit I don't want to get into to.

But at the same time of wanting to leave the city I have anxiety about going back because my house is going to be an absolute mess. My cat has been alone in the house for almost two weeks now and she is either dead in the house from no water or she has destroyed the entire place with her razor claws. And if shes dead that means that snakes could have come in to the house or mice..... I had produce (onions, eggs, tomatoes, potatoes, and lemons) that are now rotten and molding. I'm going to spend an entire day just cleaning and de-funking everything. Plus I've missed some mentoring that I was suppse to be doing for a creative HIV/AIDS education contest. Hopefully, as was rumored to me through the gossip lines of Zambia, the competition was pushed back. That would mean that I can still play an active role in this and my month of June won't feel like a giant waste.

Since I've gotten a cell phone I've been able to talk to people and feel not so out of the loop. It is so nice. I've talked to my friend in Dubai, my friends back home, and my parents. It turns out though that I'm not getting any text messages that are sent from the states to me. I think maybe that either they aren't putting in the country code right or maybe that US cell companies don't offer that as a service. Bummer.

I wish my life here in Lusaka was funnier, but in the city its just about the same. When I was in that Irish pub I felt like I could have been in the US. (Except for the fact that we were watching the World Cup which totally wouldn't have flown during the NBA play offs.) An Irish pub in Zambia, the more I think about it the more ridiculous the place seems.

Anywho, I'm off to get some good news about my leg. Have a great day and enjoy the summer for me, because it is getting cold here.

A tale two cities

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. I am in the city of tops with no bottoms. I am in a place where when a meal comes with a "Coke" in the picture you can't ask for a "Coke Light" and to even think of uttering the question is on the border of absolute idiocy--yet it taunts me sitting there so cool and smug in a silver can just out of my reach. Where the B-rated movies reign on the movie channels and Cricket is the king of sport television. I am in Lusaka.

I have been here laid up with a wicked nasty infection on my left leg that has left me hours to contemplate the juxtaposition of my life in the village to my squalor in a hotel in Lusaka. And what a squalor it is. For reasons beyond my control I've spent an entire day watching T.V. A task that causes a sharp mind to dull and rust. This was the first time in over five months that I actually watched T.V. It was neither good nor bad, but completely numbing. To compare this to the village; I have spent an entire day just sitting, however, I was thinking, so I wasn't exactly going brain dead.

Here, I haven't cooked anything in days --because I don't have a kitchen or fire handy--where as in the village I would have had to of cooked atleast 12 meals, requiring me to light 12 fires, cut vegetables 12 times, and most likely collect water from the well at least twice. No one expects anything of me here, no one on the street knows me, and although I'm still an ethnic minority, I'm not even a second thought to my other ethnic minority members or anyone else for that matter. This is different--a lot different. In the village and even in the Provincial Capital children yell after me (nothing horrible or mean), people notice my comings and goings with a almost religious intensity, and fellow foreigners make eye contact that insinuates our solidarity.

Well, considering that I'm going to be here for another few days and I'm feeling very lack luster about writing at the moment, I'm going to retreat back to my sanctuary of remote controls and hot water that I didn't have to heat.

Oh, and I got a cell phone. You can call my parents to get the number. I lost everyones numbers that I had in my old cell phone in the US. If you send me your number I'll send you text message of the lastest information of my life. It can be a little Emily ticker like on the bottom of news and sports stations, except it won't be streaming or possibly as convient. Either way, the option exists.