Update from Lusaka

"We finally made it to Lusaka. I found a place to access email. It costs us 9,000 kwatcha for one hour. This is less than one dollar.

Here is what has been happening. I may have said this before but if not you can share this on our blog.

Once we arrived to Zambia we were sent to visit a current Peace Corps volunteer to stay a few nights at their village so we could see what life as a PCV would be like. Bob and I went to different sites. I went to one in the Eastern Province and he went to one in the Copperbelt Province. Brittany was my host and there were 6 of us visiting with her, we brought our tents and slept outside her small hut. It was very cold at night and we all were very uncomfortable. The second night we placed straw under our sleeping bags and that helped a bit. We met the local villagers and on the first day one of the women brought over a rooster for us to kill. One of our trainees tried to kill it but the knife was pretty dull so the villager had to finish the job. Once killed it only took her about 3 - 5 minutes to take out all the feathers and cut it up. Guess what we had for dinner? The life in her village is very slow, if she had to attend a meeting once a week that was good. We did get to see the local health clinic and school. The clinic was in very bad shape. There was no nurse or trained person there. The ones who were the cleaners are now dispensing meds and taking care of those who come there. The nearest hospital is very far. It may be 100 - 250 KL away. This makes if very hard for the rural families to receive help. If someone does go to the hospital they have to hitch a ride there. I found out that there is usually only 1 doctor at the district hospitals. So someone may go there and the doctor is gone.

When we went to the school we found that the children need to purchase uniforms to attend. Sometimes there may be up to 70 children in one class. Children can attend local schools from 1st grade to 9 or 10th grade. For high school, they have to go to the capital city and reside there. Often girls do not make it through high school.

Currently, Bob and I are staying with our host family. In our compound is Ba Maama, her son Brave and daughter Rona, Rona has 3 daughters and two of them have children as well. Everyone has treated us very well. Ba Maama cooks all our meals, washes our clothes and prepares our daily hot water. We take evening outdoor showers (no running water of course) Ba Maama has to heat the water over the fire for us.

We begin our day at 8am with 4 hours of language study, we break for lunch and then technical training in the afternoon. Bob gets training with the fish ponds and I get training in health education. We are learning about HIV/Aids, Malaria, TB, etc. We will have many challenges once we get posted to our own village so we are trying to learn all we can especially the language. We had our first oral language test on Friday. We both did well. For awhile I was getting very frustrated because there was so much to learn but day by day it is getting better but I hear the next 2 weeks will be tough. Bob and I are learning Kaonde and will be posted in the Northwest Province. We will be close to Congo. We heard that we will be the first PCV's in the village they are sending us and they are buiding our residence as we speak. In two weeks we will be doing our second site visit. Hopefully, at that time we may be able to see our actual site.

So far neither of us has gotten sick, some of our PCT's have so we thank God for that. Maybe the garlic pills are helping. We have been getting a number of shots, TB, hepatitus and rabies. One of our training talks was all about rabies. One of the things that is very different here is how the rural people deal with dogs and cats. They do not keep them as pets as we do and many times they treat them very badly. It is very common for the them to kick, strike or throw stones at them. They don't understand why we Americans talk to our animals. They show no affection for them but keep them around for protection. It is very sad to see.

We have seen children selling mice and rats on the side of the road. Yes, they do eat them here. Sometimes you may find children putting them on the fire for their dinner. As for Bob and I we have been eating ok. Usually for breakfast we are served bread and peanut butter and jelly. For lunch we have had boiled eggs with tomotoes, rice, sometimes spaghetti, for dinner we always have Nshima (this is the main staple in Zambia). It is made from maize and it looks like a dumpling and has the consistency of play dough. You use Nshima to pick up the other foods on your plate. No forks for most meals. In addition to Nshima we have had cabbage, rape (vegetable that looks like spinach), chicken, fresh fish. We have also had sweet potatoes but only once so far.

We definitely stick out from the locals. All the children yell our "How are you" as we walk or bike by. They are always trying to get our attention. Probably the main thing we have to be cautious about are the drunks. There are many who over indulge drinking beer and they can be problematic at times. Peace corps makes sure to tell us not to go out after dark. The drivers around here can be a bit crazy. They drive on the left side of the road so that has been strange to get used to. Also, peace corps will not drive at night because of drunk drivers or cars/trucks driving without their headlights on.

Well I hope this will be good information for now."