Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Some things they never change...

So I've recently gotten the "I'm a Peace Corps. veteran" feeling a few times. Hitting my official one year anniversary at site, helping the new volunteers shop for their sites in Chipata (let me tell you, walking around with 15 white people in the city of Chipata is not the least stressful thing I've ever done) and also getting a neighbor within 10k who is full of new volunteer questions have all helped contribute to this experience. I also just had a PC grant come through and actually be deposited into my Barclay's account which I feel like is indicative of a volunteer who has been around for awhile. I'm also headed to my mid term conference in Lusaka this coming weekend which will officially enter me into my second year of service.

There are also some Zambian truths that I have picked up along the way as well. For one thing I've noticed that it is a known truth that almost all Zambian children (well those who aren't afraid of me anyway) are ticklish on the backs of their neck. I haven't tested this theory on non-Zambian kids yet so it may be a universal child truth but until I get back to America I think I'll have to settle on the fact that its just Zam kids right now. Another universal Zam truth is that something absolutely ridiculous will happen on most days of the week. The ridiculous can range from anything to stepping on a snake in the middle of your house in at night (I realized that happened when the floor started moving) to going for your morning run and being aggressively stopped by a women thrusting a large bunch of groundnuts she had just picked (leaves still on and everything) into your arms when you are at least a mile away from the village simply because you were passing by and might need breakfast when you got home (never mind that your run would be disturbed...). Most of the time the ridiculous is good and its probably one of the reasons that makes life so interesting here because it is almost never ever boring. I've also learned that chitenges hide baby bumps really really well. Its not culturally appropriate to ask about a woman's pregnancy- its just something thats generally not talked about. So for figuring out if someone is pregnant your pretty much relying on visual cues. But with baggly shirts and the layers of chitenge tied at the front of a woman you can't always see those baby bumps at first. Like when this past week I noticed one of my best friends was pregnant and I asked around about it - she's almost 7 months...I guess that explained why she kept getting sick in the morning a few months ago...

So as for the rest of my life...that grant I mentioned above is for a 6 month, 8 part farmer training workshop series. I'm going to train 8 coordinator farmers in different techniques in the fields of agroforestry, conservation farming,  nutrition, business skills and budgeting, and permagardening. Those 8 farmers will then be required to train their local farmers (each coordinator has about 20 farmers) on the same topics in order to officially train about 150 farmers in my catchment area. I'm excited for the project because it will be something tangible with set meetings to go to and goals to meet. Although structure doesn't always work out so well in Zambia its nice to have once and awhile we'll just see how it goes.