I miss the rain down in Africa...

Epic fail on blog posting in October. My excuse - it was hot? No, but really it got to the point where I didn't want to move anymore, let alone bike somewhere to do anything. I would sit and sweat it out on the daily in my hut. Cara can testify to that because she decided to use her vacation days and leave a beautiful DC fall and come visit me to make the month of October slightly more bearable. It was pretty great having her here with me for 11 days. She got to see the village, Chipata, and Livingstone (yeah, I went back...being a tour guide is a rough life). We hitched, took buses, and semi's so I really feel like she got the full Zambia experience. And now I am lucky enough to have someone from home understand some of the things that go on here- even if that one person works legit 60 hour weeks for the US government and has little to free time...but anyway is was awesome having her here and I hope that I can expect more visitors in the future.

So Cara came, I sweat (and apparently this hot season wasn't even that bad), and the US Ambassador came out to my site- because I'm probably the best volunteer that Peace Corps. has in Zambia...well that annnndddd my site is legitimately the easiest site to get to from Chipata boma. All Eastern PCVs were invited to have dinner with the Ambassador the night before at the best restaurant in town- the burrito place.  The funny thing about our dinner with the Ambassador is that somewhere, someone sent up a list of dos and donts in term s of meeting the him. We, as PCVs, were told to read this list because it was presumably sent up by his office. So we did...it was quite a comprehensive list that ranged from DO greet the Ambassador "Mr. Ambassador, Sir" at all times to DON'T wear flip flops or spaghetti strap tank tops (hello high school dress code) to if you MUST drink in the presence of the Ambassador limit yourself to ONE. Men were told to wear ties and women were encouraged to dress as professionally as possibly. Formalities are not always the biggest things of concern to a Peace Corps. Volunteer, mostly, because, well, we live in the village...and the overall feeling was that if we were meeting another American he should understand our complete and utter need to wear flip flops and drink beer. Needless to say we were a bit apprehensive about meeting this figurehead when our dinner finally came around. However, I think most of that apprehension vanished when we sat down and he, along with the other members of his entourage ordered a round of beers. So much to our dismay the Ambassador turned out be a pretty good guy. He encouraged us to ask a lot of questions (although I can't say we came up with too many hard hitting questions) and was overall pretty encouraging about the work that we are doing and receptive to the ideas that we had.

The following morning bright and early in a caravan 5 SUVs strong I headed back out to my village to show the Ambassador a typical Peace Corps site and model Peace Corps project- the carpentry project that was started in my village by the volunteer before me. I was a bit nervous bringing so many vehicles into my village because I don't know if there ever have been that many vehicles in the village at one time. Where would we put them all? Luckily, its just about planting season so the whole village, besides the carpenters, who we told to stay behind, were in the field and thus the chaos that could have ensued did not. The Ambassador also brought his two sons out with him which was pretty neat, because even though they have had the opportunity to live all over the world they had never been out to an African village before. They got to see my hut and where I live and also were able to ask me questions in a pretty casual setting about life in the village which I think is pretty cool. After taking the tour around my huts we walked up to my carpenters, who had set themselves up with some of their furniture and their tools in a corner of the village and they were able to give a short presentation about how the project came to the village and how they benefited from it. I think it was important for him to see how Peace Corps. can impact a community and mutual benefit both the volunteer and the community get from the program. Hopefully he will prove to be an ally to Peace Corps. Zambia.

After the Ambassador visit, I had some other PCVs come out to my site and hang out for a few days and then we all came back to Chipata for a Halloween celebration. Now I am just waiting for the rains to come to take some of this heat away. They look like they are coming everday but so far my village hasnt seen much action yet. Which I probably shouldnt be complaining about because my roof needs to be tarped and thatched but I would like it to cool down just a bit...