Friday, June 11, 2010

The Sound of Settling...

I must say the village is definitely starting to feel like home. My bed is definitely starting to feel like my bed, which is great because in America I LOVED my bed, so I take this as a concrete sign that I am beginning to really adapt to Zambia. This past week I had Provincials, which is where every province has a group meeting where you get to meet everyone in your province and address issues that are affecting you all. It was cool to finally meet everyone in Eastern and great to see some of the people from my intake again and compare stories and adjustment issues. But even though it was great to spend some time out of the village and meet some awesome new people I was ready to get back to my village after those four days and have some time to myself again. Its weird, because I thought the downtime would be a really big detriment to this experience and that I would go absolutely crazy with "nothing to do" but its actually the exact opposite- I love it. And there is ALWAYS something that I could do, like hoe my garden for instance or wash my sheets, or clean my bike.

Ive just started some serious work on my garden although the soil is crazy hard so its going to take a lot of work and a lot of love. My hands hurt pretty badly now from the blisters Ive given them over the past two days. I have blisters in places on my hands that I didnt even know got blistered and muscles in my hands that I didnt know got sore, are sore, but hopefully this will all lead to a beautiful and productive garden in my backyard (my village is pretty doubtful considering the soil quality but I am hoping to prove them wrong). Other than that Ive started to plan some meetings in my community as the harvest is beginning to wrap up and people are starting to have more time to spend on other activities. So Im excited to be doing a bit more with my community members and see what their ideas for our work together are, although Ive had a great time just hanging out and playing a lot of netball so far so I cant complain.

In other news its the first day of the World Cup, which is super exciting here. My hitch into town was coming from Lusaka and going to Malawi and they had South African decorations all over their car and were dressed from head to toe (literally hats to socks) in World Cup gear. I guess Lusaka is pretty loud with people blowing fan horns all over the streets. In Chipata, business as usual is taking place, but I'm sure that will change once the games actually start taking place, especially if its an African match. I'm hoping to be able to watch at least a few matches on TV but its hard considering, since I am in community entry, that I am not supposed to really leave my village so we'll see, maybe a tv hooked up to a car battery will make its way to the village....