Chapter 2: Life After Swear In

On April 23, 2010, Joey and I completed Pre-Service Training and swore in as official Peace Corps Volunteers! Here is a re-cap of the past few days:



Wednesday, April 21:



We said farewell to our homestay families after 8 full weeks. We enjoyed a fantastic cultural day where we cooked up a feast of American food to feed over 300 Zambian family members! My favorite dish was definitely the homemade apple crisp. It made me think of the New England and Michigan apple orchards. We also had a very nice ceremony where we enjoyed speeches, dancing, drum music, and lots of chitenge outfits! (Chitenges are the local fabric that they sell everywhere. Basically it is just 2 meters of inexpensive cotton fabric the women wrap around their skirts or dresses to stay clean in the village. They are also used to make skirts, dresses, pants, and shirts). Over our 8 week homestay period our host family treated us very well. A few cultural misunderstandings, but we both learned a lot about one another’s culture. After we give big American hugs – - the hug is a new concept to Zambians, but those who know it love it - we piled all our stuff into the PC land cruiser and moved to a local college in Lusaka known as NRDC. On Thursday, we just had more sessions at the Lusaka Peace Corps office.



Friday, April 23:



Swear In Day!! The day finally arrived! We left NRDC (Natural Resources Development College) at 7:00am and all rode to the US Ambassador’s house for the official Peace Corps Swearing In ceremony. The first thing we noticed was that the coffee was not instant! (I think I had 3 cups). After a few hours of enjoying coffee and each other’s company, it was time to begin. At 10am we all came together under a tent with former Peace Corps Volunteers, Peace Corps Training Staff, local Zambian Headmen and Chiefs, US Embassy employees, and the PC country director. There were many wonderful speeches! Including one by Joy! Of the 46 volunteers in our group, Joy was chosen to give a speech about her RED project in the local language Bemba. She did great (thanks to many run-throughs with patient Joey). Immediately after the ceremony, Joey lost his nice shirt and found the basketball hoop! We had to pull him away as we needed to make it to the supermarket/hardware store to load up on essentials. It’s difficult being an American and trying to figure out what you might need in a mud hut for the next two years. We have also noticed that in Lusaka, prices for some items are comparable to American prices. For example, a box of cereal runs for 15,000 kwacha, or around $3.00. Although when we get to the village, we will mostly be living off tomatoes, onions, bananas, guavas, and nshima. Four tomatoes cost around 1,500 kwacha or around $0.25.



Saturday, April 24:



Moving Day! We left NRDC early morning and left for our new home in Central Province. It is about a 4 hour drive on the Tarmac (highway) from Lusaka. We loaded up the 2 cruisers and A LOT of stuff and took off. (I mean seriously, A LOT of stuff. See attached photo).



Sunday, April 25 – Tuesday, April 27



For the next 4 nights we stayed in Serenje District. Peace Corps is active in 5 of the 9 provinces in Zambia. Each active province has a “provincial house” where PCV’s can spend 3 nights a month stocking up on goods, seeing other volunteers, and conducting any PC business. Currently there are 11 PCV’s from our intake in February moving to the Central Province. For the next few days, we will finish last minute shopping and take a land cruiser one by one to our sites. Because Joey and I will be actually living in Mkushi District, we will be the last PCVs dropped. This also gives Joey a chance to work on his thesis.



Wednesday, April 28:



We will leave Serenje and spend one night in a guest house in Mkushi.



Thursday, April 29:



Posting Day!! The cruiser will drop us off, wave goodbye and say good luck!



It is all coming together now. We have what we think we will need, and we are preparing ourselves for what we think lies ahead. Unfortunately, our Peace Corps Manager of Central received a phone call this week saying none of the work needed on our house has been done. This just means we will have lots of time to get to know the community as we work together to cement the floor, add plastic to the thatch roof, add a brick wall to our insaka, and build a separate structure to store our bikes and dry goods. We are constantly reminded that life just simply moves slower here. Dad, you would be proud to know that I am “trying my darndest to go with the flow.”



You should all know that the two of us have also already made great American and Zambian friends. The other PCVs in our province are outgoing, friendly, and fun and the Zambians here are very kind and respectful. We can already tell we will be well taken care of by all the people around us.



Thank you for all the letters and packages we have received! Each one is so special! Also, on that note, our address in Serenje will be changed to a Mkushi address because the Mkushi post office is much closer to our site. We have also discovered that it normally only takes 2-3 weeks to receive mail in Mkushi. The Mkushi address is:



PO Box 840038

Mkushi, Zambia



To all our Kohahna/Leelanau friends who ever wanted to live on a Challenge/Flag Trip site; come visit! We bought a spool of twine to do some serious lashing, I will be cooking over fire/charcoal ALL the time, I really use bandanas for everything, my nalgene is my best friend, and I sleep in my sleeping bag cocoon every night (thanks, brother will). It is an awesome, quasi-permanent Challenge/FT site! I even have a special stick broom that I use to sweep (or de-grub) my yard.




Joey’s take…

The combination of bureaucracy and an afro-centric sense of time made Peace Corps training a serious challenge. But… it’s OVER!!! Hallelujah! Now we get to go to our site – where we will definitely encounter other challenges, but at least we will be on our own schedule.

My thesis is 99.7% done. I’m doing some last minute edits and will send it to my professor within the next few days. My partnership with MSU and the Food Security Research Project (FSRP) will continue for my stay in Zambia. They have set me up with the capacity to do some real work even when I’m in the village. They have given us a computer (the same laptop that I used to do write my thesis), a solar panel (the real deal, a big one), a huge battery (to store the charge), an inverter (so I can have electricity to charge the computer/cellphone/etc.), and an internet plug for the computer so I can get internet access wherever there is cell service – we don’t have it all yet, but we will be getting it over the next few months. What’s more, they’ve even set me up with a few meetings with the man in charge of Conservation Farming Unit (CFU) in Zambia – they have a pretty cool website which gives the gist of what they do/are – who is excited to have someone do some statistical analysis of their methods and I might even be able to run farm trial or two. Needless to say, I’m very grateful to have such a strong relationship and such solid support. The opportunity to continue my econ work while living and working with smallholders on food security issues is almost too good to be true.

In other news, Joy bought me my first African flannel shirt yesterday, which further proves my point that men everywhere need flannel. And… I caught my first 2 fish in Africa…with my bare hands! – so what if their combined length was 8 inches, I still caught them and gave them to my friend’s Bataata to eat.





Phew! This was a long one. If you are still reading, you are the best.



Also, thank you for all your comments. There are wonderful, supportive, and fun to read. (Ed, you made Joey laugh for a good 45 minutes.)



Get in where you fit in,



Jo(e)y



1. All of our stuff (and other people's too) packed and ready to move to Central

2. Cultural Day with our central friends Blair and Missy

3. Swear In Day with the Country Director and US Foreign Affairs Rep

Two weeks left to go! On April 23, 2010 we will no longer be PCT (Peace Corps Trainees) but PCV (Peace Corps Volunteers)! For the next 2 weeks we will wrapping up our Bemba language classes, sharing our final cultural presentations, and celebrating with our host families with some good old American cooking! We are planning on making French toast with homemade banana syrup.

As you can see, we have also uploaded a few photos! The one of the two of us was taken just outside our homestay porch. The other one was taken by Joey from a rocky hill just behind our new house in Central Province (where we go for cell service). You have to look very closely, but you will see our tiny hut just in the middle of the photo. We wanted you to see how rural we are and how beautiful our backyard is!  The hills in the distance are the D.R.C. and the maize field towards the bottom is our host family's. 

As a final note here are some highlights that have happened to us recently:

1. In our bedroom, we noticed that our curtains are actually Looney Toons bedsheets made in 1993.
2. Our Bataata wears a Jo-Ann Fabric uniform (circa 1990)
3. We’ve seen 2 Chicago Bears Superbowl Champions shirts from 2007 (when they sadly lost to the Colts)
4. Yesterday Joey and I raced across the yard. Our Bamayo proudly said, “On your mark, success, go!” (Joey won)
5. We eat PBandJ's everyday for breakfast.
   

Joey just returned from visiting our home and he could not be more excited. Our site is beautiful! We stay about 20 meters (yes, we’ve gone metric) from a well respected family that has taken good care of us on our visits. They don’t talk much so we studied each other in silence. Our house consists of two small rooms, but the double bed we ordered would not have fit in the bedroom, so I asked them to knock down the interior wall so we will just have one room (approx. 4m x 5m). We also have an insaka for cooking and hanging out outside, a cimbusu, and a temporary bathing shelter. We get water from a spring fed waterhole about 500m away.

Here’s a picture of our crib taken from our insaka. You can see the cimbusu just left of the house and the temporary bathing shelter to the right.  We have a bit of landscaping to do and improvements to make, but it’s a great set up and the scenery is beautiful.

Also, Joey was able to watch the MSU vs. Butler final 4 game last night. It started here at 0:30 (yes, we're doing military time too) and ended around 3:00. He talked to a bartender who happily left the TV on ESPN when he closed the bar. He was let in by the security guard and he watched the game by himself. The game had the all the potential, agony, excitement and disappointment that he could handle. Although MSU lost, it was still a great experience and he's glad he got to do it.