Midway through training

Hello Everyone! So that last post was really typed out about three weeks ago but did not publish for some reason until just right now so I'm sorry about the lack of correspondence!

Things are pretty good here for the most part. I have been at my host family for three weeks now and have adapted quite well to living in a mud hut, using a pit latrine, taking a bucket bath even though washing my hair is still difficult-a solar shower might become a necessity that I'll need sent to me-and overall my host family is great. It is a small family for Zambia but I like it. My bataata-father in bemba language-is a house builder so he is gone quite often. His name is caifus and he is forty. My bamaayo-mother in bemba-is great. She really wants me to learn bemba so works with me everyday to practice. She speaks pretty good english. She is only thirty! They have a fifteen year old daughter named Joyce who is also great. She always picks me up from school and we walk home even though I have my bike! She also really wants me to learn bemba so i am slowly getting better. It is kind of difficult but my language trainer says my group is learning the best. We actually had our first simulation test yesterday and our group scored the highest, and I got a 4.9/5.0 so not bad! My language group only has three people in it so it is perfect. It is myself and then a married couple named Ryan and Ashley. They are great and we work well together. They are also my closest neighbor at my home stay family so that is nice. We all think we will be placed in Luapula province but I will not know for sure until the end of August. Luapula is supposedly a beautiful province with lots of water and fish so we will see. It is quite far from Lusaka though.

Training is pretty intense and very interactive. We spend all day everyday in training. I wake every
morning at 6 to the wonderful choir of roosters! They sound like broken records and are so annoying! So I am awake early and have breakfast in the main house at 7 then gather my stuff before heading out on my bike to my language class which is held at the womens club-a mud hut in the middle of the bush-luckily it is only five mins away from my house. The bike riding is slowly improving-I am very out of shape but also it is really hard to ride on unpaved, rocky and sandy roads! By the end of two years I will be the most fit I have ever been :) my language training lasts for four long hours! Luckily with just three of us we manage to go a little faster so we get out early. I bike back to home, have some lunch usually rice and soya and then bike to chilimbana school where we have tech sessions. The trainers for the health tech part are great and give some really good advice. After tech we get home around five thirty at which point the sun is setting so we take our bucket baths, eat dinner and practice language with the family. I am not too fond of the zambian food so am looking forward to cooking for myself! The food is very plain so can't wait to spice it up.

The pc staff are great, especially the local zambian staff. They all have great insights and give some great tools for us to have a good two years. We have been talking a lot about sustainable development and I really dont understand why we are talking so extensively about this considering we all signed up for the job so whether we agree of sustainable development practices we are here so how can we make the most of it. For the past few days we have had so many talks about development in general and some people have some really negative attitudes about how development doesnt work. I just always want to ask then why did you chose to do pc? I hope we move on from this topic because whether or not we think it is sustainable we are here doing development work so how can we work within our communities to help them better their lives in a
sustainable way. That is what i hope we start talking about! The debate is important but not in our training seminars.

So that is a look at my life right now...I am sorry for the delayed updates on these blogs, access to a reliable computer is really hard! Please please write to me, we all look forward to mail call on thursdays :-)
Hope all is well in the states!!
Love and miss you all!

Mwapoleni Mwaki

Hello everyone!

I am sitting in an internet cafe in Lusaka and have been in Zambia almost two weeks now! I am having a great time...Zambia is a beautiful country and the people are so welcoming. We arrived in Lusaka on the evening of the 23rd a few days after orientation in D.C. I met my entire group in D.C.--it is an interesting group of people. it is cool to see why people are doing this...a lot are world travelers but some have never been overseas which is so crazy!!

I am settled in my homestay family now...for the first week, we were staying at a government hostel which was nice but definitely not what I'll be staying in for the next two years. Last weekend, we all went to different provinces to see what life was really like for volunteers. I went to Southern Province which was nice to see because they will not be placing any of us down there...it is where Victoria Falls is and is a very developed part of Zambia so peace corps, because of cut backs on funding, is pulling out of that province for now. I stayed with a health volunteer named Brittany...she is a great person and gave us tons of helpful information. She speaks Tonga and we met all of her local village neighbors. She is in a very remote part of Zambia though...about a two hour bike road to the tarmac which is what Zambians call the paved road and then another four hour bike ride to the nearest town. I hope I will have a placement that will not be so remote!

After returning to Lusaka, we got split up into language groups. I found out that I will be learning Bemba so that means I will be placed in either Central, Northern or Luapula province. I have a feeling I will be in Luapula but will not know for sure until closer to the end of training. I am staying with a Bemba speaking host family...they are great and my family loves having a volunteer. It is the first time they have had a volunteer stay with them so it is a really big deal in the community. They are jehovah's witnesses so I declined to go to church but hopefully I'll be able to go to a catholic one with another volunteer's family.

Training is so intense but it will be great I hope I master the language but man, it is very different from English so that is kinda of hard. They can't say R's and have trouble with my name so i am referred to as Ba Sarah--oh well by the end, hopefully they can say Sarita. The PC staff seem nice and I have met some other volunteers who have been really great about giving us hints.

Life in Zambia is very different than in the states, but so far I'm loving it. It is a beautiful country and there is so much to learn. I hope I am able to be a good volunteer but I guess that will come in time! Two years is so long but doesn't seem long enough for the amount of health work that these rural villages need. I hope I do leave some sort of impact...

Anyways, this is turning into rambling, I'm sorry! I must close for now becuase I am sharing this internet time with a few other trainees so they need to get on now.

Please please write to me as I'd love to hear from you all!! I have posted letters so please be looking for them!

If you do send letters, please write AIR MAIL on the envelope and if you send packages, please put religious materials enclosed on the outside so that no one tampers with it!

I hope to hear from you all soon and I hope you are all well!!

Miss you tons and tons.