I've (barely) Passed the Rains Down in Africa

Oh man, my life has been pretty crazy these past two weeks!!!

Hope you all had a fabulous Halloween and are enjoying the beautiful fall-hopefully not too cold -weather back in America Land.

Things here, like I said, have been pretty interesting.
So let's start back at Halloween: For the weekend Mary Ellen, Carroll Anne, Laura and I decided to have a little party (by this I mean spend the night at a lodge in Mpika and make popcorn balls haha). Kate came down as well because she was on her way to Lusaka to get a retainer fitted (she lost her's) so it was so nice to see her! So we had a fun little party, I never realized how dangerous making popcorn balls could be but Mary Ellen certainly warned us haha. We also managed to get Cim's restaurant to make us a pizza (which they never do!!) so all was going well. Kate came down Friday, CA came down Saturday, and so the party was on Saturday night. On Sunday, Kate was going to hitch down to Lusaka. I had no work planned for the following week because my village is literally a ghost town-I never believed the villagers but they certainly do scatter during caterpillar season! So all of my work has been put on hold while my villagers are out and about collecting caterpillars. Because of this, I decided to go down with Kate to Lusaka to get my stubbed toe looked at by the medical staff. My toe nail has completely lifted on my big toe so I wanted them to decide whether to take it off or not, luckily they didn't cut it off :-) So Kate and I hitched early Sunday morning down to Lusaka. We got very lucky and had two fabulous hitches. We arrived in Lusaka as the sun was setting and stayed at Lynn & Les's--friends of my dad who work with Save the Children in Lusaka. They are so good to us, and it was super nice to take a hot shower, have a home cooked meal and sleep in a comfortable bed :-)

Monday, I saw the medical team and they doctored my toe and gave me some advice as to how to keep it clean. It was a brief visit. Kate got very sick so she had to see medical and they did all sorts of tests on her. I was told that a cruiser would be going up to Northern on Wednesday so I decided to go back to my site on Wednesday with them. Kate got worse on Tuesday and also I found out Tuesday that there was a fuel crisis so the scheduled cruiser trip was cancelled, leaving me on my own for transport. I decided to take the post bus (the bus that delivers the mail to all the provinces) but when I got to the station, the bus was all sold out and would not leave again until Friday. My only other options were to hitch or take the night bus...neither seemed appealing to do by myself and PC does not recommend either so I decided to take the post bus on Friday. So I had a week in Lusaka---a lot of time! Luckily, on Wednesday, I was sent to the National Convention on the Prevention on HIV/AIDs in Zambia to represent Peace Corps because none of the staff members could go! IT was such a big deal, and I was definitely under-dressed and the youngest person there! It was a three day convention on looking at the six drivers of HIV/AIDS and creating policy recommendations to help prevent the spread of it in Zambia. The President of Zambia, Rupiah Banda, gave the opening remarks on the first day, but I was not there so I missed it. I attended on the second day and I learned so much it was really amazing. I am glad I was sent and will be sharing the information I learned with my fellow PCVs at our In-Service Training (IST) in January because all of it is relevant to the work we are doing in the fields.

So I left Lusaka with Kate, who was feeling much better, on Friday early in the morning on the Post Bus. Everyone told us to take the post bus because it was very reliable and would get me to Mpika during the day...well, this was probably the worst bus ride I've ever taken! It was so slow and took all day just to get to Mpika! Kate was going to continue on to Kasama but by the time we got to Mpika, it was getting very dark and she would not make it to the Kasama House until very late so she got off and was going to stay at my site.

Well here's where the real craziness began....we got to my hut and it was a complete disaster! The day before we had had very heavy rains in Mpika so my poor house flooded and my bed was soaking wet! It was such a disappointment, especially because we had just been on that crazy bus all day and all we wanted to do was sleep...but there was not much I could do. I called Ba Jonathan who is the Northern Province Program Assistant, and he told me to stay the night in Mpika at Melodies' Lodge. So Kate and I had to hitch to Mpika in the dark...not a fun experience but luckily we got a good hitch and Melodies' had room so we just both crashed when we got there. Saturday morning, we went back to my site to assess the damage in the daylight. Luckily, nothing valuable was ruined although some of my pictures did get wet. I also realized that my walls are falling down...especially by my bed so this was not good either. I called my counterpart Gilbert and he said there was not much they could do because the villagers were gone.I called Ba Jonathan back and he told me to come to Kasama and stay at the house...so that's where I have been the past few days. Tomorrow, Ba Jonathan is coming to my house with me to see what has been done on my house since I've been gone. I really hope my bed is dry so I can stay there...it would be pretty terrible if I had to come back to Kasama!

So really no work has been done these past two weeks...it is a little frustrating because that's what I'm suppose to be doing now and I can't plan anything since no one is around. I think I'll focus my energy on the anti-aids club at school and helping out at the clinic.

So that's the happenings in my life now...it's always an adventure here in Zambia..nothing ever goes as expected but that's the exciting part of my life now!

I really hope all is well back home!! Miss you tons!