Half way there, livin' on a prayer

Well it's been a while since I've written. Here's a quick synopsis of the last few months. I'm more than half way through this whole Peace Corps wonderfulness. I am starting to get my village ready for me leaving. I am really going to miss this place.

-My house was expanded. It took a long time. I had to move out but it is huge and wonderful now. I have an indoor shower, a pantry and a proper sitting room. All my furniture was delivered via ox-cart. I painted my house ridiculous colors.

- I have been working a lot. Biking 14ok a week and staking up a storm. I have tons of ponds and my farmers are a source of joy in my life- generally.

- I went to a terrible Bob Marley tribute concert and ended up playing a supporting role which resulted in infamy.

- Jen's parents came to visit and it was lovely.

- I had disastrous fish transfers that were demoralizing and extremely expensive. I traveled a thousands of kilometers, spend weeks planning and counted thousands of fish to have them die over and over again. It worked out in the end because of all the amazing help I got from Peace Corps and awesome volunteers.

- I had 5 boys stay at my house for a week for site visits. I biked them all into exhaustion and cooked a lot. We bought pigs from the Congo (it's a four hour ride both ways- probably longing when you have a huge pig tied to your bike). My Zam-dad was 2 days late coming home from this transaction. It turned out that one of them got loose and he spent 2 days tracking a pig through the jungles of the Congo and then gave up and bought another pig. All this extra trouble cost me about $5.

-I went to Lusaka for Jen's birthday. Lusaka is the only place to get ice cream and cheese and sandwiches or to see a movie etc. I came down with giardia and spent my entire time sleeping off my sickness in a fancy hotel. But I did manage to make a miraculous recovery for a few hours to eat a lot of sushi (see picture) and watch the transformers movie. In hindsight- it was probably a poor choice of cuisine but it was glorious at the time.

- We had a Camp GLOW (Girls Leading Our World) event where we took girls from the village to an outdoor activities camp and we had them do a rock climbing wall, canoe, make pottery, sew sanitary pads and we had a lot of girls empowerment, HIV education and whatnot. It was the first time a lot of these had ever used electricity or a fork. It was pretty great. Now I am forming a girl club at the local school with the two girls that went from my village.

- Kabwe

-I spent a week out of my village trying to fix my bike in Serenje (broken axle!) and it was horrible. I love my village too much.

-I finally made a lot of progress with my diary goat project. I'll go into that in more detail later.

- Now I'm back in Lusaka for Mid-term Meds. I've been here for more than a year so they are checking us out. They wait until we leave Zambia to check us for parasites because we are just going to get them again if they deworm us now anyway. While here I'm going to try and have some clothes made by a really great tailor in the big Lusaka market, upload tons of pictures and eat a lot of dairy products.

- So since there seems to be some confusion here is my address again:

Box 840038
Mkushi, Central Prov.

ZAMBIA

Packages are nice but I really do love getting letters. I am really out of the loop. Write me ten page letters and let me know what you are up to. I promise I'll do the same.