You are currently browsing the monthly archive for April 2012.
The internet cafe in Lusaka we keep going to in Lusaka hates WordPress. I promise to not use it again and apologize for all the weird things the pictures have been doing! You can’t win them all, can you?
It’s official – we’ve sworn in! There was a lovely ceremony this morning at the American embassador’s house in Lusaka. It was a ton of fun, there were many honored guests. I’d love to write more about it but I’m a bit crunched for time…we have just hopped online to say hello and share some pictures, and then we’re going to do some shopping in Lusaka for the things that are hard to find
up-country (fitted sheets, French press, bulk insecticide, and cast iron cookware). So I’ll leave you all with a few pictures!
Giving speeches at the Cultural Day ceremony
Our group in front of the mural we painted at the school in the town where we had our training
The Kaonde language group with our amazing instructor, Joyce
Sworn in as PCV's an elated about it!
We officially have less than a week of training left! On Friday, April 27 (Andrew’s 27th birthday, no less) we will swear in as official Peace Corps volunteers, and by this time in a week, we’ll be on our way to Solwezi.
I can’t say I have a ton of news from the past few weeks; training is pretty monotonous schedule-wise. We had our final Language Proficiency Interview a few days and we both passed (whoo hoo!). I am giving a speech in Kaonde on Wednesday for Cultural Day (when we thank our host families and host community for having us); I’m a little nervous because there’s supposed to be about 200 people there, but also not-so-nervous because less than 10 of them will understand a word I say (the problem with learning a very localized language is that when you’re not in that locale, nobody understands you). A trainee from each of the 6 language groups is giving a speech at Cultural Day, and separate trainee from each group will give one at Swearing In.
We’ve been learning a lot about beekeeping in the past week, which Andrew is really into. We also convienently had a swarm of bees trying to take over our house/latrine during the beekeeping-learning period. I think Andrew will be the master of honey production before our two years is up!
Keep writing to us!! We love mail. The Solwezi address listed below is the one to use from here on out. We should be online a bit more often from here on out (maybe once every 2-3 weeks), but mail is still awesome and reliable. It will go to our provincial house and we’ll pick it up whenever we are in town.
We’ll be in Solwezi for a few days doing all the shopping for our house before we post, so I’ll try to get online during that point and let you all know how swearing in went!
Take care, family and friends, and keep in touch.
Andrew and I have been in Northwestern province for the past week-plus and are totally elated!
We started our the trip with the 10 hour drive to Solwezi from Lusaka; we were driven by Patrick, the Peace Corps driver for Northwestern province. In Zambia, every province that has volunteers serving in it has a provincial house, a volunteer leader that lives at the provincial house, a driver with a Land Cruiser, and a staff person who helps pick out sites, maintain the sites and lots of other things. The provincial house structure is pretty unusual; it’s because Zambia is such a rural, spread out place.
Anyway, we spent the night at the provincial house (which, by the way, has a dog named Boss and a cat named Dumps, short for Dumpster Kitty) and then in the morning we went to site visit in Kasempa district. The volunteer we were visiting is headed out next week, and he had a lot of cool projects to show us. We built a permagarden at a new orphanage that is being built (once I have better Internet I will post the information about this amazing project). We visited a beekeeping project (and got some fabulous honey, some of which Andrew has been drinking straight from the bottle) and also visited some farms and went to the bome.
After a few days there, we went to our own site! Sandang’ombe is a gorgeous village. I’m so in love with it. I have never received such a warm welcome as we did when we arrived in the village. Our home is this sweet little bungalow, and then we have our own kinzanza (outdoor cooking shelter) and a bathing shelter and toilet.
It was a really relaxing couple of days at site. There us a LOT of work to be done on the house, and in the village. People are so excited we are going to be there. I cant wait!!
Thats all for now, we are back at the provincial house and are preparing for the long bus ride to Lusaka tomorrow.
annieandandrew 