December Happenings

Happy Holidays everyone! I can't believe it is December 16th already! Time is flying here...I can't believe I've been in Zambia for almost six months :-) Hope you all are enjoying the holiday cheer back home...it certainly doesn't feel like Christmas here but I'm still enjoying life here, so all is well!

Last week as Camp GLOW and I've mentioned camp in a previous blog post so if you aren't sure what it stands for, read the previous blog! So Camp Glow was held at the Zambian College of Agriculture-ZCA, and there were six peace corps volunteers involved-Katie, Danielle, Laura, Carroll Anne and Mary-Ellen and I. The camp was organized mostly by CA and Laura, but Dani and Katie did a lot of the proposal writing. Mary Ellen and I just observed since we are newbies. Well let's just say everything that could possibly go wrong, went wrong! It was definitely a learning experience for us all, and Mary-Ellen and I were able to see what needs to be done differently next year. The camp started on last Sunday, December 6th so the PCVs and our two facilitators went a day early to set up and organize. Originally, we were suppose to sleep the girls at a youth recreational center that a former PCV built, and we were going to sleep the teachers, facilitators and ourselves at a guest house nearby. Turns out, the rec center has turned out to be a popular hang out for creepy, drunk men that we in peace corps like to refer to as amaguys...and these amaguys were all over the pool table, tv and library in this rec center so that posed our first problem! How are we suppose to have a camp about girls empowerment for 14 year old girls at a place crawling with men...it was pretty frustrating because the guys did not want to leave so we had a to battle with them and finally, after our contact person with ZCA came, we were able to secure the place for our use only! The next problem came with the sleeping arrangements. Turns out the guest house only has three rooms with a double bed in each..so definitely not enough to sleep 12 of us. So we had to put mattresses in the rec center-in the TV room and the library and that's where we volunteers slept and the two facilitators. We gave the guest house to the teachers but they had to double up. Unfortunately, there were no mosquito nets and the rec center had really huge bugs all over the place so none of us slept really well there....oh well, we were troopers and really showed that peace corps volunteers can adapt to any situation, haha. So after the housing and the guy situation got resolved, we were finally ready to start camp and thought all our problems had been resolved. Not quite...when the teachers arrived, they wanted to be paid a sitting fee, which we can't do-it's a peace corps policy! It was so frustrating because we are volunteers who are donating two years of our lives to help Zambia and these teachers couldn't give up one week of their time to help empower girls at their schools! One of the teachers ended up leaving, so we were left with four of them, and they ended up being pretty good. The girls were absolutely great though and thoroughly enjoyed all the camp had to offer. The sessions were all about confidence building, staying motivated, goal setting and overall girls empowerment messages. It was sad because we had a session on rape and sexual abuse, and the girls felt comfortable enough to open up...and out of the nine girls we had, five admitted to having been a victim of rape or sexual abuse. Isn't that shocking and sad? More than half of them! Thankfully they felt comfortable opening up and we were able to give them good resources to seek help if they wanted. The girls all also went to the nearby clinic for VCT-Voluntary Counseling and Testing-for HIV. We did lots of arts and crafts with them and they were so sad when camp came to an end. I'm glad I got to attend and observe..I definitely have great ideas for next year's camp and we hope to open it up for all of Northern Province. If any of you want to help, let me know-either by this blog or in an email-and I'll let you know how you can! So yay for a successful camp Glow!

In other news, I finally got to know my neighbor who lives directly in front of me and he is amazing! He speaks excellent English and has done all sorts of home improvement things to my house. He is an amazing gardener and I asked him to help me start my garden, and since then, he has taken it upon himself to do all my home improvements like slashing all the grass, digging up six garden plots, building me a nursery, and clearing all my land! Really the surroundings around my house look great because of all his work! So I finally started a garden and it's already sprouting! I've planted green peas, green beans, pumpkin and he gave me maize seeds because of course, no garden is complete without maize for mealie meal to make nshima :-) In my nursery, I planted chili peppers, spinach and cilantro! I'm so excited, hopefully I have a green thumb! I have so much extra gardening space though so if any of you want to send me things, I'd love to have some seeds for flowers so I can make my last three plots flower beds! I love all flowers and would love anything you send!
My neighbor told me he was a former light weight boxing champion in Zambia and he likes to be called by his boxing name, Ba Billy Casper--his birth name is Christopher Musekanya so I call him Ba Billy. He is so smart, knows so much about politics and American pop culture. He is about 60 or so years old and has five children. He spent most of his life growing up in the copperbelt and returned to live in the village because his grandfather was the founder of my village and he wanted his family's presence back here. He has taught me so much about the Zambian political system, as well as the political systems of Africa. He also loves the Beatles, Rolling Stones and James Bond movies haha. We have some good conversations and I'm so glad I've finally gotten to know him because he is a great resource for me! So life's good in the village.

Next week, Christmas vacation! Yay I'm so excited. I'll let you know how it all goes! Hope you all have a happy, safe and wonderful holiday season! Miss you all and please please keep in touch, I love hearing from you all!!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year's!