Happy b-day to me!

Thanks for all the b-day greetings!

I dreaded having to spend my birthday among the teeming masses at the mid-term conference, but it wound up being a surprisingly lovely day. It helps that we're staying at a swanky little guesthouse away from the crowds. The day's sessions were about gardening, so I got to dig and hang out under a shady tree. Friends took us out for all-you-can-eat Indian, and I glommed on to another friend's birthday carrot cake, inscribed in blue icing: "Happy Berefday!"

Flu-y

Yesterday's flu shot has me feeling a little flu-ish, but it's countered by my knitting high as I enter the home stretch of the second of May's sock pair.

There's lots of media-swapping going on here, so last night we watched the National Geo special of Guns Germs and Steel. I wish I knew the movie existed before I slogged through the book. I could have saved that reading time for some of my backlog.

Poke

For me, this morning's mid-term medicals meant a trip to the dentist, who works out of an office so swanky I would gladly live there (even in America!). Apparently they've switched dentists because of bad experiences with other ones. This lady was nice, though she sang along to the Abba soundtrack playing on the stereo.

The office had free (but sadly wretched) coffee. I found that more unsettling than the Abba, as I thought dentists were automatically programmed to warn you away from coffee. Maybe she just wanted to drum up business for bleach treatments.

This afternoon I get to pee in a cup. Bring on the coffee!

Dirt

Trevor and I are in Lusaka for midterm medical review and a
permaculture workshop that has us very fired up about intensive
gardening.

We are building a demonstration garden on the compound of the Peace
Corps office. It's extra motivating to hack up chunks of lawn,
property of the federal government. Michelle Obama would approve at
least. Heck, maybe that's where they got the idea.

Highway time

During my year in the village, I often went weeks without ever being in a car. My first week of learning the PCVL job, I spent at least four hours in a Land Cruiser with Clement (the PGSO) every single day.

One thing I learned is to always remember sunscreen on my window arm. The other thing I learned is that Zambians NEVER need to use the bathroom. Clement can drink Cokes and yogurt smoothies all day long and never ever go pee.

Hmmmmm.

Familiar

I rode out to Chadiza with Clement, the Provincial General Services Officer (PGSO), to help post the new volunteer at our friend Koh's site.

Clement and I wanted to visit a couple of people: Patrick the forestry agent, Elias our old host dad, and Benson the guy who helps with the women's coop. Patrick wasn't in his office, Elias wasn't at home, and I didn't even bother trying to call Benson.

We kinda gave up and resigned ourselves to meeting people next time. Then, after we ate some shima at my friend Mrs. Mbewe's restaurant, I ran into Benson and told him about the sewing machine I had brought out for the coop. We went to look for Elias at the tree by Mr. Daka's store where he usually hangs out. Right as we pulled up, he rode up on his bike. As we were driving out of town, we passed Patrick, who was walking down the road.

Ah, small town.

Development

Is such a tricky thing. Is it just a matter of making the whole world the same?

I spent Tuesday night in Petauke after helping post two volunteers there. The guesthouse was decent, by Zambia standards. I had a sink, a (bare) lightbulb and an intact mosquito net. At breakfast, I marveled that the dining room was furnished with the same chairs you'd find at any budget motel or conference room in America. Which got me ruminating about what exactly it means that Zambia is becoming more "developed." Chain restaurants on every corner? Will Zambia be developed when it no longer has a shred of its own traditions and culture? Already every kid is dressed in a 101 Dalmations or Manchester United t-shirt.

One thing that's not developed is the road to Chadiza. We posted the new kid to our friend Koh's old village. By the end of the drive back, I felt like my skull was rattling loose. The last of the rainy season washed every remaining speck of dirt away, so many sections of the road are big loose rock. Peace Corps Land Cruisers are the bare-bones models that apparently don't come with shocks. Ow.

Cooking

We head to Lusaka tomorrow for a couple of week-long meetings, and when we return we'll move into our new house. The new place doesn't have a stove, so we've been looking at options that are all painfully expensive. I had resigned myself to spending a crazy amount of money until the other day when Trevor was chatting up some missionaries who are headed back to Canada next week. I seized the opportunity to see if they were selling their stove. They were! They did! To us! We are the proud owners of a third-hand, German made, four-burner stove with an oven door that needs help staying shut. The owners threw in a collection of muffin tins and cake pans.

As a bonus, they used to live in the house we're moving into, so they know the landlord. And they have a van, so they agreed to deliver the stove over there for us. It will be waiting when we return from Lusaka. My mom is sending a mozzarella kit I ordered online, so I predict that the second half of 2009 will be known as the (Half) Year of the Pizza.

Posting

Today is a big day in peace corps life. We are dropping off new
volunteers in their villages where they will live for two years.

It's a big day for me too because it begins my on the job training.
Next posting cycle i will be the one running this show as the eastern
province volunteer leader. Frankly i find it overwhelming but i guess
I'll figure it all out. The crazy part is when we cruise down paths
seemingly unpassable by car to villages way out in the bush. And drop
people off for two years. I like being the one climbing back in the
cruiser to blast a bee gees tape.

Toilets

I grew up with plumbing, so I took toilets for granted until I hiked the Appalachian Trail.

Here in Zambia, porcelain furniture is rare. Tissue is even more unusual. Therefore, I wasn't all that surprised yesterday by the uproar among the teacher training participants. Apparently some of them have had trouble operating the commodes and have been using plastic sacks instead of tissue. There has been a lot of discussion about educating people not to stand on the rim of the toilet. I get the impression that there's a bit of class-warring going on among people who have used toilets extensively and village folks who saw their first one this week.

My Dinner with the Ambassador (sort of)

Dinner was excellent, though it wasn't an ambassador but the chief of mission or something. He was quite nice and we had lasagna, only with no noodles but mashed potatoes. Whatever, it had melted cheese on top so I'm not complaining.

Also in attendance was an administrative assistant from Oklahoma! And the CDC head in Zambia, who finally helped me figure out what happened last year when I had a mysterious and extremely scary brief illness, a blister on my eyeball. I don't even think I blogged about it because I was too freaked out. At the time nobody had any clue what had happened, but apparently I rubbed my eye after unknowingly touching a "blister beetle," and it's pretty common and scary but ultimately harmless, at least according to somebody who seems to know a lot about these things.

The deputy guy was supposed to meet with our friend Sydney this afternoon, but since his schedule of official visits and speeches and photo opportunities was rearranged, he had to cancel. So he gave us the treats they had brought for her, Double Stuff Oreo cookies. !!!

I should probably feel guilty.

Sorry, but I have to mention this

I know some readers are over the whole sock update, but 2009 is the year of the sock, so you're going to have to endure the occasional sock at least until December.

I finished the first sock of the May pair during the teacher training today! It took our students until I started the toe decrease to figure out what I was making.

I realize that calendar purists might say I'm cheating by beginning the May socks while it's still, in fact, April. In my defense, since we're moving, all our crap is packed in bags and crammed atop a bunk bed, so it would be hard to dig out any other yarn right now. Plus this stuff was too gorgeous to wait (thanks, Lea!).

OK, sock report finished for now! (Trevor's fine, by the way. The newly sworn-in volunteers arrived today and he's already made a new best friend-- last time I looked, they were digging in the compost for avocado tree seedlings and drinking Castle beers.)

Millions, followup

This afternoon, the accountant paid me in a stack of twenties (twenty thousand kwacha, about $4) so thick it wouldn't fold in half. Yeah, baby!

Also, tonight we're having dinner with the deputy ambassador, who's in town to check up on some projects and wants to meet with some Real Live Peace Corps Volunteers. Suddenly I'm feeling very swanky. Better go comb my hair.

Schooled

This week's teacher training is giving me a deep understanding of how
flawed education is in zambia and how that contributes to lack of
development and poverty here. Critical thinking is not only not
encouraged but actively discouraged. My students would rather eat
their pencils than speak aloud if there is any chance they could be
wrong. I taught them to play hangman but they refused to guess words.

My fellow teachers are no better. We are ahead of schedule but instead
of moving subjects around they want to stall until we are back on
time. They are terrified of getting in trouble though we are the ones
who created the schedule ourselves.

I have gotten in a lot of trouble in my life for my irreverence. And i
have taught plenty of students who are not shy speaking their minds no
matter how little there may be contained there. Ultimately i think the
happy balance is closer to loud mouth innovation than scared silence.

Millions

The biggest bill in zambia is the 50000 kwacha note, currently worth
less than ten dollars. The ngo accountant has come from Lusaka to pay
travel money and allowances. He walks around with a briefcase full of
rubber banded stacks of bills looking like a gangster santa claus.

I enjoy being a millionaire, even if It's only temporary.

Training

Day two of the teacher training in full swing. I have no topic to
present today so i'm just here being supportive, soaking up the heat
from this tin.roofed classroom and the smell of thirty warm and
seemingly unwashed humans. That plus the queasy factor from drinking a
warm sprite and i'm barely hanging on.

Lord help me. It's only tuesday.

Trevor is busy being the housewife. I left him a grocery list but i
know him well enough to know there is no telling what he will actually
buy. Yesterday he came home with eggs and earrings.

Smart

I love it when people here tell me I'm smart, even though I know they mean that I look cleaner and/or more well-pressed than usual, rather than intelligent. (It's a British thing. They call the car's trunk the "boot" too.)

I'm the only Peace Corps volunteer who was able to attend the teacher training this time. Since I'm not mummified in the protective cluster of PCVs, my fellow teachers have been much freer with their knitting advice. Plus, with no whiteys to share my snacks with, I introduced Ceceila and Sarah to conversation hearts from Valentine's day. Words on sweeties! They had never seen anything so hilarious.

[One of the students in our workshop is named Smart. Appropriate, no?]

Cooking

I think of myself as being a halfway decent cook, but I think that's mostly because I only cook for myself and one other person, who is unfailingly enthusiastic about anything even remotely edible I turn out. And the occasional dog. Ditto.

One nice thing about living at the Peace Corps house is that there is always somebody around to cook for, and lately there has almost always been both running water and electricity, both of which make cooking so much more productive. Sadly, I have begun to wonder if I have been overestimated my talents in the kitchen. Tonight I whipped up a delicious-looking Indian kidney bean dish using a packet of spices and recipe sent by a lovely Americaland friend. Because this is the City of Plenty, I actually had every single thing the recipe called for, except fresh cilantro which has all gone to seed. And I actually followed the recipe. Still, something was off about the final dish.

Maybe it was because the called-for quarter cup of fresh ginger made my tongue go numb. Well, there are lots and lots of leftovers, so we can re-examine the situation for the next two days.

Happily, I am currently in the process of redeeming myself via a big pan of homemade granola bars that look like they might turn out ok. This would be a major step for us because granola bars have traditionally occupied prime real estate in the food pyramid of Trevor, yet are inexplicably absent in Zambia. Before I moved here, I would have no more thought to make homemade granola bars than comb my front lawn. But here we are.

Birthday

People who received Trevor's calendar have been emailing lately about his not-so-subtle reminder to start sending birthday gifts to me.

Especially after the past two weeks of shopping insanity, we really don't need anything. Of course, I always appreciate Kool-aid. But the best thing is just to hear from people and see the pictures, newspaper clippings, news from your own private Lake Wobegon. If you want to make us a mix CD or have the capacity to burn us a DVD of your favorite show or SNL, so much the better. But mostly we just want to know what's happening on your side of the planet, what's blooming in your yard, what you ate for dinner, what crazy thing your boss did, whatever. We want proof that you remember that we exist.

Is that pathetic? Well, it's my birthday. (Almost.)

Happy

We had the opportunity to stay this whole week in Lusaka in a friend's swanky little guesthouse, but Trevor agitated to get back to Chipata.

I was annoyed with him for tearing me away from the satellite TV and ginormous grocery store, but now I think it was the right choice. It doesn't take much to make Trevor happy: he just needs coffee, a beer at the end of the day, and a ton of stuff to do. We've only been back here one day and already people are stopping by the house to talk about their projects. This is exactly why he wanted to shift to Chipata in the first place.

I've been staying busy in my own way. I've made friends with our new house dog, Sophie, a big freckled baby who looks like a hunting dog my grandfather would have had. We took a big walk yesterday and scared lots of Zambians. Since Sophie's not allowed in the house (unless I'm the only human around), she's been sleeping on the chair just outside our door, or on the doormat, pressed against the screen, waiting for the next walk.

Back in Chipata

Despite a bus driver with a lead foot and a death wish, we made it back to Chipata from Lusaka last night.

We returned to the Peace Corps house to find that in the absence of the PCVL (volunteer leader), the toilet paper had run out, so Trevor's important morning project was to buy two 50-packs at the nearby wholesaler shop. We won't run out for a few days, though the water is off, which creates other issues. We only managed to wash half our laundry this morning before the water quit, so half our clothes are still soaking in a soapy tub.

I think the real reason Trevor wanted to hurry up and get back to Chipata was so he could load all his new Cape Town CDs on our laptop and reconfigure his MP3 player. New tunes!

Cheese (cake)

We made it back to Lusaka today in a marathon of 12 hours by cars and planes. Everything went smoothly-- we even managed to share a taxi from the airport with some very generous teachers from the American school who did the (half) marathon yesterday and paid most of the fare after helping us negotiate it down.

I had nearly forgotten it was Easter until the second plane ride, when the little box lunch/dinner came with cheesecake that I swear was made with my (late) Aunt Doris's recipe, which is the cheesecake my mom serves every Easter. It was the same bizarrely fluffy consistency, the same graham cracker crust. Honestly, I don't even really like it (and regular readers will be aware that I have a Bit of a Sweet Tooth; I don't turn down many desserts), but it made me nostalgic and sappy feeling all the same. It's possible my whole extended family was sitting down to a big Easter dinner at the moment I was eating my little plastic tub of cheesecake. Sniff.

We sat on an exit row, which ramps my crash paranoia into overdrive. On the plane I had a momentary image of our fiery demise, and my first thought was, well, then I don't have to go back to Zambia. It only lasted about a half a second before I realized it was an unacceptable line of thinking. Except for the bus ride back to Chipata, I'm actually kind of excited to get back: to move into our cute little house, to cook up all the delicious treats I bought in Cape Town (mint chocolate cupcakes! etc.), to make some new friends. 

But today I'm kinda homesick. 

Contrast

We spent our last day in Cape Town walking from our swanky hotel in the city center through an extremely sketchy, bombed-out, abandoned-buildings neighborhood to the hipster arts/ crafts/ organic food market so filled with white people we had to wade through the crowd. We ate some great food and didn't get robbed or killed on the way there or back, so the morning was a success. We whiled away most of the afternoon at a bookstore that had great knitting books but terrible carrot cake (lemon frosting instead of cream cheese-- WTF??).

We're about to go out for burgers at the little hipster place up the street, but first we stopped in at the internet cafe where the pregnant manager is currently standing outside smoking.

Happy Easter, peeps!

Sock

Did I mention that even though April is barely in the double digits, I am already on the gusset decrease, practically the foot, of number two of April's socks? (OK, I did cheat by starting a few days early, in March, and it is my thickest sock yarn, but hey! I'm on vacation!)

Also, I splurged at the gigantic music warehouse on the waterfront and bought season one of Grey's Anatomy. Yeah, baby.

City mice

We have switched hotels, from the slightly funky backpackers in the first-ring suburb at the edge of the hip neighborhood to a fancy corporate high-rise in the middle of the city. In doing so, we have reconfirmed about ourselves something we already knew; that we are more the slightly crusty type than the fancy financial district type. Specifically, we are opposed to windows that don't open, neighbors who don't speak except to ask for spare change, and elevators. We do like the cable TV and free shampoo (well, one of us has no opinion about shampoo).

One thing the St. Georges Hotel has going for it is the breakfast buffet. Eight types of fruit juice alone! Plus pastries, eggs, hash browns, cheeses, and a huge platter of stir-fried vegetables with noodles (for breakfast? Whatever! It was good).

Persistence

It pays off, doesn't it? We returned to both of the nearby thrifts today. At one, I found five magazines for 10 rand (about $1), including one that's still on the news stands.

The other one was even better: a two-story garden of delights, including hundreds of records (all crap, though, according to Trevor), and zillions of books so organized there was even a section on ballet.

I found a huge jar of knitting needles and dumped them out to find four sets of DPNs, including one that I believe to be the perfect replacement for the set I brought to Zambia and promptly broke one of. Thrift magic!

Thrift

After this morning's yoga class (and organic coffee!!), we headed to what seems to be Cape Town's ONLY thrift shop, housed in the church where Desmond Tutu was bishop. Unfortunately, we managed to arrive on its only day off.

Don't worry, we'll try again.

Vacation!

Cape Town makes America look like a developing country. Seriously. I had no idea how gorgeous and swanky this place is. We're camped out in a Victorian mansion with 12-foot ceilings, with our satellite office a block away, at a 100-year old theater showing this year's Oscar winners for $2.50 (another buck for popcorn). Trevor is currently watching Mos Def and Robert Glasper at a jazz festival down the street. Yesterday we hiked up Table Mountain, this morning I went to a rooftop yoga class.

As much as we're enjoying the sights and sounds, I'm most excited about the tastes. I think I've already hit my baggage capacity by loading up on cake mixes, chipotle Tabasco sauce, tahini, soy sauce, red chile paste, and a bunch of other things not available in Zambia's Shoprite.

And yes, I did enjoy some McDonald's french fries, though I've also sampled some delicious spring rolls, tofu, fresh seafood, and more. Ahhhhh, vacation.

To Lusaka

We made it here in good time, even though it took us four hitches from
chipata. We even abandoned one lift at a checkpoint when it became
obvious our whiteness had emboldened some cops in their shakedown of
our driver.

Even so we got here faster and easier than by bus, and were the first
customers at the indian place down the road from the folks We're
staying with. We had to restrain ourselves from eating the entire
Chutney tray. We counted (and petted) seven cats out front.

Vacation!

Tomorrow morning, Trevor and I are going to try our luck with hitching to Lusaka on the first leg of our journey to Cape Town. Our bags are packed, we have banana muffins, cheese sandwiches and Valentine candy to sustain us, and we're ready for adventure.

Seeing as how Cape Town has yoga and KFC, I'm guessing we'll be able to find internet. Still, who knows when we'll be able to update. So we'll see you in a few days or two weeks with lots of new stories.

Google earth

I have a techno-geek request for somebody out there with better internet access than mine. To assist us in learning our way around our new home and making a relatively accurate map, can somebody please print us out a few Google Earth views of Chipata, Zambia, and pop them in the mail?

Thank you in advance!

Big-city post office

Chadiza's post office is two guys in a one-room building. The year we lived there, they never managed to come up with a key to our box, though they tried to get us to pay for it several times, so whenever we wanted to check the mail we went inside and chatted for a few minutes. We had to make sure to ask if there were letters OR parcels, because it seemed they would only look for whatever we specifically requested.

Chipata's post office is huge. Today I took advantage of the relative emptiness to ask the guy at the package window if there was a problem with the Peace Corps box, since no package slips have shown up lately though many of the dozen people sharing the box have been expecting parcels.

It turns out there is a backlog of unlogged mail. A sunglass-wearing package underling showed up with THREE boxes for us, two from my mom and one from my pseudo-sister Heather. I am slightly ill from over-ingestion of conversation hearts and pop culture.

We paused on our way out to shuffle the load and for Trevor to snarf a meat pie. A guard took the opportunity to try and extract 5 pin from us for talk time. It's not easy to say no to somebody with a gun slung over his shoulder. I like to tell myself that they probably can't afford bullets.

Move over, Trevor

This morning I went back to the market, though I already had a full basket of vegetables at the house, because I knew they had eggplants and fresh peas.

I love, love, love, love, love the Chipata vegetable market. Love it.

Hunk o' burning garbage

Trevor and I couldn't scoop up all the ballast cast off by departing PCVs, so a good chunk of it went into the trash pit.

Bet you were wondering when they pick up the garbage here in Chipata, huh? Never. We tip the trash can into a hole behind the house. It's big enough for two coffins and has a ladder like you would use for climbing out of a swimming pool, though only the housekeeper uses that; the dog just climbs in on the trash itself and feasts.

Esther burns the trash when the hole gets fullish. Yesterday she lit it in the morning but since everything was damp, it smoldered all day, sending the smell of burning plastic drifting over our clothes drying on the line.

Home again

Ba Clement was scheduled to pick us up yesterday around 10. By 8, we had our crap packed and were sitting on the reed mat outside our empty hut, waiting. Perhaps not so patiently.

Zambian protocol requires lots of visiting and meetings, so by the time we stuffed our junk in the Land Cruiser, shook hands and said farewell at several offices, and cruised home by the less muddy and washed-out road (longer in kilometers but quicker in time), it was nearly dark.

We live in the big city now. Whoo-hoo!

The leaving group disgorged huge piles of junk, so we were welcomed to our new home with lots more groundscore. We'll move into our own wee house in May. Til then, we're couch surfing at the PC house, vacationing, and conferencing.

Trash part two

Trash is a matter of perspective. Elizabeth from the coop stopped by
to talk jelly and sewing (now they're making table cloths too, be
still my heart) and noticed the huge pile of cans by the fence. We
have collected them all year not sure what to do with them since they
won't burn. We had planned to lug them to town. She wants them to
start tree seedlings in.

I told her to come back whenever to collect them. She said she would
return this afternoon because otherwise somebody might steal them.

Our host mom came by to supervise the packing and advised me to wrap
our tin cups in cloth so they will be comfortable for the ride to
chipata.

Speaking of chipata, we were happy that nothing disappeared while we
were gone last week. Unless you count our outhouse, which appears to
have imploded due to its leaky roof plus monsoon rains. Glad i was
nowhere nearby when the floor caved in! Tomorrow It's flush plumbing
for us.

Score!

Among the things Trevor and I miss about America, friends and family are at the top of the list, but dumpster diving is right up there too.

Happily, I've managed to indulge my trash withdrawal here at the Peace Corps house, as there is a batch of people coming through who are finishing their service and cleaning out all the crap they no longer want. I've salvaged t-shirts, pajamas, and the best score yet: a bunch of awesome funky Chinese food from Diana.

It's come to this

I like to travel light. Also, I forget things. Thus, this morning I combed my hair with a plastic fork.

It works pretty well, in case you were wondering.

Cool things

This guesthouse is right across the street from one of Chipata's mosques, so every few hours the air fills with the ethereal sound of the call to prayers.

Also, the bartender remembered my asking for a Coke Light at tea break yesterday (they usually serve Sprite, regular Coke, an Fanta in both grape and orange; all bottles) and today sent a kitchen guy to fetch one just for me. Sweet! And last night the staff heated up leftovers for those of us too cheap to go out to eat.

Netting

Having lived in a malarial hotspot for over a year now, I have developed a strong preference for the type of mosquito net that hangs from four corners, like the ruffled canopies on the bed some of my childhood friends had (and I coveted).

Guesthouses seem to universally prefer the one-hook variety that radiate from a central ring. These are annoying because no matter how much you try to stuff the sides under the edges of your mattress, invariably the net (which invariably smells like secondhand hats) ends up sagging in your face or draped across your feet, allowing mosquitoes access to your delicious blood. It's like trying to pitch a non-freestanding tent in sand.

Still, our room here in the guesthouse has a fan, which whisks away the possibility of mold, whereas our hut in the village has mud walls reeking and rotting from being saturated with months of constant rain. And the beasties chowing on our roof beams and thatch shower a constant dusting of who-knows-what funkiness on our bed.

I am appreciating the relative luxury; I can live with a few more bites.

High point

The highest point of the day was finishing sock number one of the March pair. It's only the 16th, and I have three more long workshop days stretching out before me in which to finish sock two, which already has a half inch of ribbing from the afternoon.

The second high point of the day was holding the cutest, squishiest little Zambian boy I have ever seen, who was only a little soggy.

The third high point: an exercise in which I successfully translated a phrase for a somewhat unusual romantic act (this is an HIV workshop, so you can probably successfully use your imagination) into Chewa. (I would write it here, but god knows what web crazies that would attract.)

Mood

OK I'm better now. It helps that we're in Chipata for a conference, and since the Peace Corps house is beyond capacity, Trevor and I are staying at a hotel instead. It's clean, electrified, quiet. Bliss.

I should explain that behind my mood the other day was partly hidden sadness, in addition to anger and frustration. Last week my friend Hilda's little boy drowned in a well. Hilda is a volunteer literacy tutor in Chadiza. A month or so ago, the other tutor, Kistry (the one who taught me to make cowpea sausages), died too.

Zambians have a system for coping emotionally -- the ritual wailing, three days of funerals. They feel it and move on. I have a harder time dealing with it. Less practice, for one thing.

Motivation

For breakfast, we ate egg sandwiches with crunchy soy pieces (I didn't rehydrate them quite enough) and tomato slices that were almost as icky as American winter tomatoes, to the accompanying sounds of our family and some other guys loading a cow onto a flatbed truck headed to Zambeef to get carved up.

Yesterday at breakfast we discovered that the household children had been rifling through our dirty dishes to steal our spoons. (Mom found the missing spoons among the kids' stuff.) I thought there was just a silverware black hole in Chadiza, because we "lost" an entire set of forks and knives already.

Since we returned from Chipata last week, every article of clothing in our house has an inch-long bagworm attached to it. The other day I picked one off the seat of Trevor's shorts.

I am ready to move.

Sending

I am finally secure enough in my belief that we will survive in Zambia that I no longer have the desperate urge to ask people to send us food, coffee, Oprah magazines, and other necessities of life. Maybe it's just because we have a sufficient reserve of taco seasoning, or maybe I finally trust that even though what's available here is different (OK, I'll admit it: in some ways lacking), it's plenty.

So I don't need anybody to send us Gray's Anatomy DVDs or Girl Scout cookies. But if they did, I wouldn't complain. Whatever is the opposite of complaining, that's what I would do.

PS: Happy Youth Day! It's another holiday in Zambia (Women's Day was Monday). Which means, for us, no *$&#^*&#! mail. Again.

Peeps

The snowman Peeps were the first clue. Lea is usually more freshness-sensitive than, say, my mom, from whom I fully expect to receive last year's leftover Halloween chocolate only when she cleans out the candy bowl in preparation for Easter.

Also, the letter mentioned voting. For president.

So I finally checked the postmark on the package that arrived yesterday. It was mailed in November!

While I offer kudos to the world's postal efforts in getting this package halfway around the planet, I do have to wonder if the envelope spent a few months on a desert island or in a time warp.

Musalila

Last week I took our visitors on a field trip to meet the Musalila Women's Coop ladies.I was worried nobody would show up and we would have slogged through muddy fields and through a creek for nothing, but those ladies did me proud.

They were already assembled when we arrived (a first!), and had displayed their patchwork bags and about a dozen floor mats they've crocheted.

I had just showed them the basics of crocheting strips of rags using the wood hooks a guy carved for me. From that scrap of information, the Musalila ladies have carved a bunch more hooks and created rugs that would take a prize at the state fair. They took some samples into Chadiza and took orders for a bunch more.

My friends and I each bought a mat, and Elizabeth stopped by Sunday to say the group had used our money to buy (and already plant!) beans, which they'll sell in a few months. They'll use that money to buy more fabric. The men in the group are so impressed with their income that they asked the ladies to teach them something they can do to earn some, too.

Swoon.

Tick

I never thought much about ticks until I started picking them off the dogs by the dozen. The Belgian lady currently living in our future home is in Zambia collecting ticks for research. Imagine trying to clear customs with a suitcase jammed with ticks! (She says she will ship them separately. I still like to picture the scene at customs.)

Different types of ticks must have different seasons. Earlier we found a lot of fatties that congregated on the dogs' backs, but lately it's tiny ones in their ears. You have to be really quick to tweeze those suckers. Happily for us, none of the ticks seem to enjoy humans. Mosquitoes, on the other hand, have been dining on us like crazy.

Mysteries

Listening to the serene Irish priest recite the holy mysteries on Radio Maria has prompted me to meditate on my own private mystery: Why is it that I often end the afternoon exuding a faint odor of hot buttered popcorn?

House!

Well, I certainly freaked out too soon on the house thing. We decided to take the first place we looked at yesterday, though we looked at five more just to make sure. They were all ridiculously huge (five bedrooms!) with daunting yards, no security, no appliances and at the far edge of our price range.

Our new place is a tiny (bedroom, sitting room) guesthouse but comes with a shower that provides hot water! An indoor flush toilet! A fridge! Lights! The yard looks like a park. It reminds me of the Strode cabin where we lived in grad school, only without a cool/kooky poet living in the main house.

Housing

Now that we've seen off the last of our visitors, we're in Chipata looking for a house to move into at the end of the month.

In America, this would be a straightforward process of visiting a rental agent and setting up appointments. We could probably sign a lease by dinnertime. Here, house hunting requires talking to everybody we meet (mostly Indian shop owners) and asking if they know of anyplace, and if that place is in an area of town that PC will approve but small enough that we can afford it. Honestly, it's maddening, and thank god for Trevor because I'm coming down with a cold and this just makes me even more exhausted.

I imagine this is how American job hunters are feeling right now.

Gas

This morning Trevor and our visitor Andy took off on bikes to Chipata around 5:30. Havaca, Ashlee and I got picked up in a taxi around 6. As usual, the first stop was to buy just enough gas to get to Chipata. We stopped at the gas station-- itself a first, as for our first year in the village, the gas station didn't have gas; instead, drivers bought fuel from a guy behind a bar.

Alas, the power was out, so the pumps wouldn't pump. We sat for about an hour, waiting for the power to come back. Hava and I walked to the market for fritters. I ripped out the ribbing of my March sock and started again. Finally, a guy showed up with a plastic jug of gas, and we were off.

We passed the guys on their bikes about 10 minutes outside of town. We had just enough time to take hot showers before they arrived.

Deadline

I grafted the toe of the second February sock Saturday afternoon. Just under the wire!

I've already cast on March. They are manly-looking greens and browns and purples using yarn magically created from corn fibers, sent by Lea in Alabama. I'm making them for Trevor-- my first pair of socks for somebody else-- but thinking of Lea as I knit.

Correspondence

Daniel, who's been running Victor's store lately, is taking college courses from a school in the US. He just finished marketing and showed me the books for his current class: Freshman Composition! I've taught that class more times than I can count, and (except for grading mountains of essays) I always love it.

Ah, the hefty little book of grammar rules (misplaced modifiers! coordinating conjunctions!), the collection of classic essays (Hello, my friends! Annie Dillard! William Zinsser!), the packet of assignments (narrative! descriptive! persuasive!). Those familiar books make me homesick even more than a whiff of coconut suntan lotion or the taste of Twizzlers.

I told Daniel I'd help him with his homework. What I want to do is cozy up with that book of essays at the coffee shop.

Excitement at breakfast

We were feeding our new batch of guests scrambled eggs and delicious French press coffee when we heard something fall out of the tree and hit the tent where they had been sleeping.

It looked like a branch but when it reared up and grabbed a lizard, we realized it was a snake. We wanted to let it go but as most of the snakes around here are poisonous and we have visitors and pets sleeping in the yard, we decided to call the family for help. Elias is off building a coffin for a cousin so they sent the kids, who thwacked the snake with a stick and carried it away.

Good thing I had already had my first cup of coffee.

Money belt

One thing I noticed about the trainees is that a week after arriving in Zambia, they are, naturally, still in the money belt phase. I'm not sure when we went from "traveling" to "living," with the relaxation of various standards that accompany the shift. I do know that we introduced these folks as Visitors but told people our next batch of visitors Live Here.

Trainee

The cycle continues: we just hosted the first site visit of the new batch of education and forestry trainees. Just one year ago, we were the ones wide-eyed and freaked out to wake up every morning in Zambia. It was fun to show them around and introduce them to such delicacies as Shake-Shake, the chunky corn alcohol that smells like upchuck but doesn't taste as good.

I was worried that the visitors might go hungry, but between our efforts and the neighbors', I think we fed them at least double what a human actually needs to survive.

Milk

We read online that milk won oscars. Sadly we missed almost all this
year's contenders. But yesterday a farmer we visited gave us a jug of
fresh milk. By morning it was chunky so i may try to make butter. From
researching in my country living books i think cheese requires
cultures i don't have. And non aluminum pans. If butter doesn't work,
at least the dogs will get a good snack. I'm sure ancient people made
cheese without supplies found on the internet but i don't know where
to find good bacteria. Though i suspect there is plenty of bacteria to
be had here.

Bed

Our host family does not want us to move to chipata but if we do Elias
thinks we should take his youngest son with us, the main selling point
for this plan being that emmanuel does not urine the bed. So he says.
I have smelled the kids' sleeping room and somebody is doing something
funky in there.

Elias' suggestion is not as odd in zambia as it would be at home. Kids
here shift around in ways that mystify us. We still haven't figured
out where the seven year old who showed up around september came from.
And derisa recently went to live with a nurse while attending grade
nine. Somehow i doubt Trevor would sign off on taking a six year old
as a souvineer. But they don't sell records here so what else is he
supposed to collect?

Locusts

Taste like chicken, Trevor says. He was glad to eat them in the dark
because they are not pretty.

Very excited because we have visitors coming tomorrow. Maybe we will
feed them big bugs.

Year of the Sock

I have heard that announcing a goal makes you more likely to stick with it, so:

I've declared 2009 the Year of the Sock. I'm going to knit a pair for every month, partly inspired by a recent tour through my bulging sack of yarn stash that had me going, holy crap I'd better knit a LOT of socks before we leave Africa. January is done. I'm a half inch into the ribbing of sock two of this month's pair, and just realized the other day that February is shorter than most months so I'd better speed things up.

I was knitting while waiting for a meeting that didn't happen because the co-op chairperson had gone to town for three days (I knit for sanity, and boy does it help). The dude accompanying me while I waited asked if I had a machine for making socks. Um, doing it by hand is kind of the point of Doing It By Hand.

I've been using the same sock recipe for all five Zambia pairs and it just occurred to me to ask if any of you knitters out there have a favorite (easy!) sock pattern that I should know about. ?Anyone?

Decoration

Now that the final expected Christmas package has arrived, it's probably time to take down the Christmas decorations. I'll miss the mini nativity scene and the tinsel and the cards with Curious George in a Santa hat, but it's time to move on.

Trevor had an excellent birthday. Mostly we celebrated by eating and drinking (so what else is new?). We started with leftover pizza from the brazier+ skillet experiment (best one yet!). Lunch was smoked salmon from America on crackers with cheese. Yowza! In the afternoon, Trevor finally located the elusive Guy Who Sells Castle Milk Stout. After he searches for a year, the guy appears on his birthday. Coincidence, or birthday miracle?

In the evening, the family called us over to see them cooking the Zambian gourmet delight of the day: stewed locusts the size of my thumb. Alas, we were too full of Trader Joe Indian food to sample any.

Happy Day!!

I've been many places with many people, but my man Trevor is by far the best companion I can imagine for my journey through life. I would go with him anywhere. Even a leaky, termite-munched , flies-in-the-outhouse hut in the middle of nowheresville Africa.

Happy birthday, friend.

The ride, part 2

I stopped by Victor's shop for a drink and talked to Daniel, who's been here running the shop for weeks. Daniel said the truck I was waiting for on Monday didn't even arrive in Chipata until after I'd given up and gone to bed. They left for Chadiza at 1 a.m.!! (Mind you, they're traveling on the bumpiest road on the planet, full of mudslides, gulleys, and potholes that are terrifying even in daylight.) So, so glad I chose sleep instead.

I'm waiting to go back to collect our mail. The post guy said to return at 2, but I've been stalling because I don't want to seem TOO EAGER, although it's making me chew off my arm. I remember feeling like this back when I dated. Waiting to call to avoid the appearance of desperation. I don't think it worked then, either.

Trevor!

Just a reminder that tomorrow is Trevor's birthday. I will try to position him near network so he can receive congratulatory phone calls, and I'm sure he will receive all psychic thoughts of good will. You could try email, too, just in case.

He's doing fine, by the way. He has started partnering up with a different NGO doing work that puts his considerable gray matter to good use. We'll be moving to Chipata to pursue said work more fully in the next month or so, so start using that Chipata mailing address, ok?

Home!

I finally made it back, around 3 yesterday afternoon (after waiting in the taxi since 7 a.m.).

Sadly, it's easy to bully people here, even Zambian men, so I bullied the taxi driver into refunding me 10 pin of the fare because he wasn't planning to drive me home (not that I had asked, but I did stupidly pay the white-lady rate, thinking that we would leave at a reasonable hour and maybe not as crowded as usual). I was grumpy and tired, but probably not as much as the guy who had spent the entire trip as the third person in the front seat, straddling the gear box with his arse on the emergency brake. We spent a lot of time between first and second gears (I couldn't help but notice), with several episodes of reverse.

Speaking of crazy African taxis, I also took TWO rides this weekend in which FOUR people shared the two bucket seats in front. Take that, HOV lane!

Waiting

Yesterday i sat at the peace corps house more than twelve hours,
waiting for one of two promised rides to materialize. Knitted most of
a sock and watched half a season of grey's anatomy before giving up
around midnight to crawl into bed still wearing my clothes.

Today i got proactive and called julius the taxi driver, to whom i
have promised double what it cost to get here for a ride home. Now we
wait for the car to fill.

For evan

Because i don't have your email with me as i sit at icy spicy waiting
for my veg pie and i can't remember when you fly.

No need for music on the plane because the in.flight entertainment
system comes with a million music channels. But alas there is no
laptop plug. But lots of movies! And snacks!

A correction

My niece is eleven, not twelve. Thanks for pointing that out, mom.

Trevor's birthday is coming up thursday. Mom says they're mailing a
card tomorrow. If it makes it here on time it will be a postal
miracle. We're still getting christmas presents, so whatever.

Look!

I often feel like the star of a magazine feature: look, white people
are like us! When i was waiting for a taxi just now eating roast corn
a guy called out, you are eating! I have had it pointed out that i am
walking, exercising, shopping, knitting.

This morning in another taxi i was shocked myself when a fellow
passenger puked out the window. I thought wow, this road makes
Zambians sick too?

Plans

I had arranged to meet the ladies of chickalipo village today at noon
to teach crazy quilting, but either they forgot or didn't believe i
would come because when i showed up everyone was working on the new
pig pen. Anyway zambia meetings start two hours late minimum so i was
crazy early. But they unleashed the zambia hospitality on me. I ate
Shima and beans and okra, and a daughter escorted me home. I will show
up again next week, but much later. Unless i'm hungry.

Laundry

Washing clothes has been on my to do list all week but it hasn't
stopped raining long enough until today. It has been too cold and wet
to bathe as well. One benefit is that dirty hair stays in a ponytail
better. And Trevor is not here to smell me, though i suspect he would
have told me about the big smudge of soot That's been on my face
probably all week.

Run run run

This morning I dragged myself out of bed for a run and was rewarded by the completely unexpected sight of another runner.!! This is the first time I have ever seen another person running in Zambia, besides people who are clearly just In A Hurry and the kids who sometimes romp alongside me for a few yards, laughing hysterically.

This other runner looked burly. I speculated that he's a famous athlete in town visiting family, like I read about sometimes in Runners World. I was just happy that the two times we passed each other I was not taking a walk break.

I'm still running my way through the Terry Gross interviews. Today, Michael Caine and the poet Billy Collins. Terry fawned over Collins like a teenage girl. It was very un-Terry Gross.

Anxiously awaiting

The next group of Zambia volunteers is in their last week of packing, preparing, saying goodbye to home, and generally freaking out. Even though it was a year ago for us, I remember that combination of excitement and terror all too well. If anybody out there reading this is in that group, don't worry! We have everything you need here and we can't wait to meet you!

Lately I've been thinking a lot about the passage of time and how un-busy I am here compared to how much I flailed in America. It's so pervasive in American culture that even my 12-year-old niece emailed recently to complain about how busy she is. When I wrote to ask her why, she responded with one word: HOMEWORK!

I miss many things about home, but busyness stress is one thing I would gladly do without forever

Wheat paste

I had planned to stay home anyway, but the rain made the decision that much easier. I took advantage by whipping up a craft that's been on my to-do list for a long time: wheat paste.

The paste is flour, sugar and water, cooked into a gelatinous goo. To test it out, I made a sample pinata (which refuses to dry out) and pasted a couple of magazine pictures and a charming letter from one of my third-grade pen pals on the wall. I'm waiting to see if the paste attracts more bugs than we already host. If it doesn't create a disaster, I'll collage every empty surface. I figure I should take advantage of having a house where I can glue random crap all over the walls, right?

Directions

Not surprisingly, none of the dirt roads around here are signposted, so yesterday on my ride to Mangwe village, 22 km from home, I was flummoxed every time the road forked. The second time I took bad advice that led me down what turned out to be the wrong path, I remembered the cardinal rule of asking directions, which is: Never ask anybody under 20.

This rule was promptly broken when I finally arrived in Mangwe. After standing for a few minutes to marvel at the harmonies coming from the Catholic church, I stopped in at the first tuck shop and said I was looking for Helen Singogo. The shopkeeper called over a random 10-year-old strolling by with his friend, and they led me another kilometer through the village and behind the defunct tobacco factory, right up to Helen's door.

Candy

I just looked at my calendar and realized that it's nearly Valentine's Day. Naturally, this made me think about all the wonderful sweetness available in the USA around this time. (And every holiday; let's face it.)

If somebody wanted to pick up a bag of those conversation hearts on a post-Valentine's day closeout, they would find some very appreciative fans in Zambia.

I am not looking forward to a very sweet holiday here in Zambia-- not only are there no restaurants for a romantic night out, but Trevor will most likely still be en route from Lusaka. It will just be me and a couple of fleabag dogs. And no candy. Harumph.

About the weather

I know i have moaned about the weather too much lately but can i gloat
a little now? When It's not pissing rain or drizzling the sky is clear
blue, It's eighty degrees with a clean breeze. Feels like missouri
late summer. I just want to stand with my face to the sun.

Also Trevor's dad sent his new running shoes crammed full of delights
like peanut butter pretzal clif bar - who knew?- and cheese crackers.
I hope Trevor gets home while There's still some left..

Alone

Trevor left this morning for a week in Lusaka. To combat the lonesome
and boredom of a Trevor free week, i plan to stay busy. I just rode to
town for mail and fetched the shoes he has been awaiting. Luckily
before he left, i extracted permission to paw through all packages for
sweets.

Success

Days like today make up for the many frustrating ones.

This morning I had a visit from Elizabeth of the Musalila Women's Cooperative. She showed me the zippered crazy-quilt bags they have made and embroidered like mad. They're lumpy, funky and gorgeous. The women are so excited about sewing that they've already started on more projects, completely without me.

I also handed off a crammed Columbia blue bag of donated yarn to a villager who is teaching fellow HIV-positive women to crochet to earn money. She is excited about the animal patterns.
When we meet next week, I'll pass off patterns to her. Thrills!

Blue bag

I've been thinking about how nutty it probably sounds that I am in love with city of Columbia blue recycling bags. But honestly, they're the best bags in the world. They were my friend on the Appalachian Trail and I love them even more in Africa.

When we did laundry the other day, we used one to pre-soak our sheets while we scrubbed the other clothes. I ask you, what wimpy plastic bag could hold up?

They're good for storage, too. We live in a house with no closets but an abundance of moisture and termites. Our extra blanket lives in a blue bag, tied tight and shoved under the bed. The yarn for the HIV-positive group has spent the past few months awaiting handoff snug and dry in yet another blue bag, despite being dripped on by one of the many roof leaks. I love the bags so much that I briefly considered giving away the yarn but keeping the bag, but I realized that would be obnoxious.

Maybe I should start a Facebook group and see if anybody else out there is a fan.

Caterpillars

This morning we washed a record amount of laundry. If the rain holds a
few more hours it may actually dry. I hope so, because last week's
clothes, which stayed wet most of the week, smell like old cheese.

As we hung up the clothes, Amai came home with her morning harvest, a
huge squirming pot of caterpillars the size of my toes. I fear we will
be invited over later to partake. I can understand why she would eat
them. I too am growing tired of the market's slim pickings of tomato,
okra, green beans. Every day.

Oddments

Trevor received a birthday package (early!!) from his ex-step-mom Tanya. It was a wonderfully random assortment of things that show how well she knows us, including (among other things) coffee candy (I had forgotten how delicious that stuff is), pages from our hometown newspaper, giant plastic cups from one of the best pizza places on the planet, a PedNet t-shirt, sticky notes from the public library, a travel magazine from Minnesota that has me jonesing for the Boundary Waters.

We're like kids who are as excited about the cardboard box as the toy inside. One of my favorite items in Tanya's package was the recycling blue bag she wrapped everything in. Living in a grass-roofed house during the rainy season, we covet huge, thick plastic bag. Columbia makes the best ones. Thanks, Tanya!

Sewing

I visited the cooperative ladies of Musalila yesterday. We put zippers
into the small bags we've been sewing for the last month. Since there
was a funeral nearby, only a small part of the group showed up. The
ladies who were there had identified who was best at each part of the
process (one is good with arranging patches, another loves sewing
flowers and is studying my embroidery book), so they promised to teach
the others and have finished bags to show me next week.

I am thrilled at how quickly and enthusiastically they've taken
ownership of the project. I feel like I could disappear and they would
carry on. This was my intention all along.

While we waited for everybody to show up, I showed a couple of the
ladies how to knit in the round. They noticed that one of my sets of
needles is made from wood. I could see the wheels turning-- hey, we
have wood! We could make these!

Next week I'm bringing my giant wooden crochet hooks that a guy in
another village made for me. We're going to try making rag rugs.
Onward!

love, hate

Hate, hate, hate mosquitos. They come out at dusk and find my ears for
hours on end. We light mosquito coils, even in the living room while
watching movies, because they are everywhere, carrying their dreaded
medicine-proof malaria.

Love, love, love the sometimes odd movies our friend Janet sends us
from her video store. Tonight we watched a German one that made us all
want to hitchhike in Europe.

Also I love our friend Victor, who just called to say he's going to
send his bus by tomorrow to collect us and take us back to the
village. He wanted to know how many muzungus to expect. Muzungus=
white people. Yep, that's us. Victor loves Obama. His bus is the one
with the Obama sticker on it, scored by my mom on his behalf.

Facebook

Yeah. I finally figured it out. I think. Sort of. So, I think we could be friends. Yeah, you can send me one of those friend things. I'll write back to you. If I can figure out how.

Line

I am reminded yet again that i live in a developing, not developed,
country as i stand behind thirty people in line to use the atm at the
bank. Trevor has gone inside to try his luck with a teller, even
though that costs more. A guy just came out and greeted the man in
front of me in one language, the man behind in another.

Pizza and ice cream

We are in Chipata for our semi-regular R&R, which always includes lots
of movies, pizza and ice cream.

This time we're also planning our holiday in Cape Town and talking to
our bosses about big changes afoot in our work and living situation.
Stay tuned!

Meat

We live in a small town. There is a certain charm to how people act
because of this. The other day i asked lloyd if his cousin had made
meat pies, because Trevor loves them. Lloyd sent a kid to fetch her to
sell me some. Today when i stopped by for a drink, he pulled more meat
pies out of the fridge where he had stashed them for us.

The power is out in town, so the main activity this afternoon is
watching the clouds and speculating when the rain will come. I can
live without power as long as we have network.

Resolute

Like many people the world over, Trevor and I set out a list of goals
at the beginning of each year. Unlike many people, we post them on the
wall where we can/ must look at them every day. This keeps us
motivated towards achievement.

This is why today I owe a big shout-out to Trevor for checking one
2009 goal off his list. As soon as I drop the envelope in the mail, he
will have contributed three new podcasts to his old radio home, KOPN.
If you're a Columbia listener, keep your ears open! Reports from
Trevor (complete with goat sound effects) are on their way to your
airwaves.

Hummingbird

Last night when we were eating some hot & delicious Vindaloo Curry
(thanks, Lea!!!!!), we watched about a dozen hummingbirds flutter
around the blooming papaya tree in our yard. They flew away when we
first sat down, but within a few minutes they returned to poke their
crooked little noses into the flowers.

Not so amazing: the thousands of flies and mosquitoes buzzing our ankles.

Ringworm

It seems that an epidemic of ringworm is going around the family. The kids in the household have been shaved nearly bald, starting with the littlest ones and going almost all the way up to the oldest, exposing the tell-tale white patches on their scalps. Also, there has been some vigorous blanket boiling going on. Apparently ringworm is highly contagious. I do not want to find out.

Accordingly, we've been doing all our entertaining out in the yard lately. I itch enough as it is.

What you can get

Zambia's secret seems to be to take things away for awhile so when it
comes back you're happy with the available scraps.

We are back to network that we have to find by walking around waving
the phone. And i am so grateful for it i would kiss the cell tower if
i knew where it was.

We felt the same about rain after months with none, but now that our
house and clothes smell like rot we are starting to miss the dry.

Also There's powdered cheese. You can imagine the level of need it
requires to crave that. We're there.

Facebook

For the record, it's not that I have anything against Facebook. It's
just that my computer won't let me sign up for it. I think it's the
crap internet connection. Or the rain. Or something. I could check it
on my cell phone! It would be great! But I can't. So I'm not snubbing
anybody. I just can't do it.

Can you tell how thrilled I am that we are connected to the greater
world again? Do you also get a sense of how annoying it must have been
to live with me when I worked at home and Trevor was the only Actual
Human I interacted with some days?

Ole!

We finally learned the secret to tortillas that don't crack when I
fold them around a ridiculous amount of guacamole and taco-flavored
soy pieces-- yeast! We used the same recipe as pizza crust, and this
seems to have finally made the difference between self-destructing
wads of cooked flour and something you might find wrapped around three
pounds of delicious at Chipotle.

We also discovered a new Zambian vegetable this week, though I can't
pronounce the name of it still. It looks like an extremely bloated
cucumber and tastes like one, only less so. The lady at the market who
first showed it to me mimed rubbing it on her body, so at first I
expected a loofah or something.

Admission

I think we are finally ready to admit that we are outnumbered by the
books on our shelves. At this point, I think our backlog is bigger
than what we can hope to read before we return to the land of the
public library in 2010. So unless you have an amazingly compelling
piece of nonfiction to send us, we probably don't need any more books.

Ouch. That hurt.

That said, we will always make time for magazines. Except that I think
we now own the complete set of People magazines from 2008.

I also have more yarn that I can hope to knit up, though I am always
willing to pass it along to needy knitters. If anybody has some
unwanted DPNs hanging around, that is one knitting supply that's
un-buyable here.

If you are still dying to send us a package, like for Trevor's
upcoming birthday (hint hint!), we could always use news from home and
snacks: seasoning packs (for example, taco and Chinese ones), any nuts
other than peanuts (the only nut available in Zambia!), those
water-bottle drink packs, any food that doesn't require cooking
(granola bars, etc). Surprise us! We are far from starving but we do
get sick of eating peanut butter sandwiches for lunch every day.

If you know Trevor, you remember how much he loves Wacky Packages,
Fritos, Emergen-C, and insightful analysis of Cardinals seasons past
and future. If you just send him a letter, he will be thrilled.

Back in bidness

People, sorry we have been silent lately. Apparently the cell tower in
Katete was hit by lightening a week or so ago, so we have had no
internet and no cell service until about 10 minutes ago. If you have
been trying to call or email, sorry! We are newly available so please
try again or wait for a moment for us to get caught up on our back log
of messages.

The good news is, the communication drought has enabled us to catch up
on our letter writing! So if you've written lately, watch your mailbox
for a response!

Partner

With Trevor in Chipata the other night, I started thinking about how
my experience here would be different if I were a single volunteer.

Without anybody to chat with in English, I'm sure my language skills
would be better, though I would also talk to myself much more. I would
be more connected with my host family and community. I would probably
get more reading done. I could sleep in the middle of the bed without
getting an elbow to the ribs.

But I wouldn't have anybody to cook for, to share in the glee of
packages with, to plan trips with, to lounge around with on the reed
mat watching the stars shift.

In Zambia, we rely on each other more than ever before. Every day
we're more grateful for each other. I know that the challenge of Peace
Corps service rips some relationships to shreds. For us, it has been a
gift.

Way to go, Reese

I want to publically how proud I am of my big brother. In earning his
MBA last month, he has completed what I can only imagine is a rare
triple-crown of higher education: a degree from each institute of
higher education in our hometown.

The MBA makes him co-alumni with my mother. When she attended,
Stephens College was strictly a women's school where the young ladies
wore pearls to dinner.

Unlike me, a school nerd who fondled my new notebooks while dying of
anticipation every September, played school on break, and nearly
fainted when I saw teachers in the supermarket (they were actual human
beings?!?!?), my brother's relationship with school has often been
contentious, uneasy and difficult. The fact that it didn't seem
effortless makes his accomplishment that much more impressive.

Congratulations bro! I'm proud of you.

Sew what

I finally taught the women's coop how to sew crazy quilt squares,
though i was never able to communicate the term crazy quilt. This was
probably the high point of my time in zambia so far. Sewing! What
could be better?

Fast food

In America, when you are unexpectedly away from home over a meal time,
you can duck into a Taco Bell or stop by the quick shop for a bag of
Fritos and a big, icy diet Dr. Pepper.

Ahhhhhh.

Here in Zambia, there are no quick shops. But there is usually
something to eat. The other day when Trevor & I ran out of snacks
after we rode our bikes to Teferensone, we bought fried soy flour
fritters (they were about as good as you're imagining right now;
though maybe more stale) and bananas from ladies sitting by the road.
Other times we have enjoyed buns, mangos, meat pies (Trevor does eat
them) or samosas (tiny triangles of fried dough filled with rice).
When the bus to Lusaka stops at a road block, ladies swarm up to the
windows proffering boiled eggs, bananas, and little bags of frozen
water or frozen "Jolly Juice," the local version of Kool-Aid that
comes in flavors of cola and pineapple.

So far we have not starved to death or been forced to resort to
cannibalism. Yet.