this post was written about a month ago

I wrote this a while ago but was unable to update it…so here you go

Oh lovely life in the village,
It’s been forever and a half since I updated this thing, but not a lot has happened lately. I was in the village a lot from January to March. I was actually getting work done and it was pretty great. I had a number of successful HIV/AIDS sessions and I started teaching about grant writing to a couple groups. There are a number of Community Based Organizations in my area that are ready and willing to do some health work, but the problem is that they have no money. Now you may think “Why do you need money to teach about health?” but you do. You need money to make handouts and to provide food. It’s true you can do these programs with no money, but a lot more people will come if food is offered and then a lot more people will obviously be reached. So I’m trying to help them get money.
I’m trying to teach some business basics so that they can earn money on their own and will not have to write a grant every time they want to do a program. For instance one group has applied for a grant to get a peanut butter making machine. This way they can sell the peanut butter and make money and then buy food for the programs. Also they can serve the peanut butter at their programs and the price of buying food will go down. And PB is really nutritious, mainly it’s fatty and these people need the fat. So that’s just one example. I’ll know in a month or so if that grant was approved.
In other news my house is absolutely amazing. I’ve painted it all white with a black trim. I finally feel like it is my home. I love being a home owner…even if it’s a mud hut that’s mine. I can personalize it and put nail holes in the walls and not have to worry about an angry landlord. I’ve also recently made my pit latrine fit for a king. (the pit latrine is a separate little building about 5feet x 5 feet that’s about 20 feet from my house in the back) Yes, it’s possible to make a hole in the ground grand. I built up a toilet seat out of cement and bricks and then cemented an actual toilet seat on top. I’ve painted the walls of my latrine white and once the ‘toilet’ dries (the cement is still curing) it will also be white. I also cemented the floor. I can’t wait to finish that project. Squatting every time I had to pee got old about 6 months ago.

I finally got a new bike! Well a kind of new bike. My old crappy bike finally completely died and has been retired. I hope Peace Corps has learned an important lesson….Don’t give new volunteers bikes that have been used for 2 years by other volunteers. My derailer got totally messed up and I couldn’t switch out of first gear. I dealt with it for about 10 weeks, because I didn’t feel like lugging it all the way to the Peace Corps house (220 k from my house). I got really good at pedaling really fast. Eventually the padding on the handle bars wore away, the seat ripped, the gear shift covers fell off (like I needed them… I knew I was in first gear), the back brake went out, and the front break was really weak (although I got really good at jumping off a moving bike and not dying. It’s a good thing there is not much to brake for on the paths here, but I did almost hit a herd of cattle once) and the chain was getting stuck. The damn bike was unrideable. It was also unfixable. So I got a new one and I love it. It’s black. It has a sweet seat. The brakes work. And most importantly third gear works like a charm.

I’m leaving for a little Easter vacation tomorrow. I’ll be traveling out to Northwest Province to visit another volunteer. It should be really fun. And there are pineapples there so I should be in heaven. Mango season is over and I’m craving fruit.

I hope all is well back home. The only news I’ve heard lately is that Brittany Spears went crazy and shaved her head, and that the new fashion is to wear really tight jeans that go way above your belly button. Can you tell I get all my news from People Magazine

vacation

January 4, 2007

David and I left Zambia on Dec. 19th with the intention of going to Mozambique, but there were a few flaws in our plan….the main one being that we didn’t have a visa to get into Mozambique. So after 3-4 days of travel to the border, a long drawn out conversation with a border guard, and the realization that Spanish was not so useful in Portuguese speaking Mozambique we did not make it to our Mozambican destination.
Instead we turned around and headed to Monkey Bay Malawi in the South of Lake Malawi. This was only after staying in the most disgusting, shady, scorpion infested, jail-cell-esque hotel room in the border town. I seriously would have rathered sleeping under a bridge on the South Side of Chicago.

We got to Monkey Bay/Cape Maclear and got a hotel room for about a week. We went scuba diving, rented a kayak and rowed out to a deserted island that had mango trees, climbed the mango trees on the deserted island, ate lots of mangoes, went to a reggae bar on the beach. On Christmas day at the reggae bar I met a drunk man who insisted to me that he in fact lived in a jewelry box on the beach with 2 windows.

From Cape Maclear we went up to Nkhata Bay riding in the back of pick ups and hitching in semi trucks. We were in a bus, but of course it broke down and then about an hour later another bus came (by bus I mean large van filled to more than capacity with people, animals, and anything you can think of). We sat in the back and then were told to move because they needed to fill the back with luggage. So we moved and then lost our seats, to a mattress—I swear this family was relocating across the country with everything they owed on public transport. Then the driver told us to get in, but there were no actual seats and we didn’t feel like being that crammed, so we passed up the offer and just hitched for a while. Then we got in a truck that had a speedometer that topped off at 35 kilometers an hour, and I don’t think it ever went more than 20k an hour. I think I could have walked faster than it.

Finally we arrive in Nkhata Bay and this guy tells us he will take us to a hotel in a boat for free. We obviously agree and jump in the canoe with an engine. Then.., downpour… we get drenched and all our bags get soaked too. We arrive at the rocky edge to the hotel but the waves were too strong to pull in any further. We jump out of the boat into waist deep water with our bags in the rain storm and climb up the rocks to the ‘lobby/bar.’

Then we got a hotel room and stayed at that beach for almost a week. In Nkhata Bay one of my friends got attacked my a monkey while he was carrying a large chunk of bananas. The monkey jumped out onto the bananas and was trying to take them, until a bunch of village kids saved the day.


So now I’m heading back to my village in a couple days to attempt to get some work done.
I hope all is well back home

October...

Oh life in the bush….has been fun lately.

I’m having a kitchen built and then I’m going to cement the floor so when people visit me they wont have to sleep in tents. I’m also going to paint some neat stuff (like the outline of Indiana) on the outside of the kitchen).

I have a ton of pictures to upload, but it will take too long and this internet is slow, so I’ll update photos in Lusaka next month.

On my way down to Chipata from Lundazi I was catching a ride with the head Doctor, because he had to come to Chipata to get the body of his car ‘worked on because he smashed a pig.’ Well he definitely smashed a pig, and on the road the hood flew up cracking the windshield and making a noise so loud that I’m pretty sure I have some permanent hearing loss in my left ear. And I saw my life flash before my eyes on the road. So we get out of the car and he closes in hood and then gets back in the car to drive away. I comment… “Shouldn’t we try and secure the hood so that is doesn’t smash the windshield to bits next time it flies up?...”
“Ahh yes” he responds.

He grabs an old piece of Terry Cloth to tie the hood down as I desperately search my bags for anything stronger than terry cloth. I find my trusty REI carabineer and go outside. We secure the hood with the carabineer and reenter the (now dust filled) early 90’s Sedan with a red interior. We continue on the road and I watch the hood slightly jump up and down. up and down. The ‘your car is overheating’ light flickers on. The Doctor gets out of the car, removes the carabineer, and
“ahh, I had this welded yesterday. It should work”
He pours water into the valve and I watch it flow onto the ground just as fast as he is pouring it into the car. The leak is not fixed. It’s beginning to get hot. And I have to pee.

I decide to hitch with my friend Katey I am traveling with. We flag down one car and it is the head of the education department that I am working with on a program for the youth in the area. He looks professional and clean. I’m covered in dirt desperately trying to make a good impression. He’s just going down the road, not to Chipata.

We flag down another car and it’s a minibus going all the way to Chipata. We get in, leaving the Doctor and the Head of Education on the side of the road to deal with the ‘little leak.’

The minibus is driving through corn fields to avoid police checkpoints, because we clearly have too many people in the car. I am in the fetal position telling my self in my head ‘just don’t pee in the car.. you’ll be there soon’ We go over a large bump and the metal bar I’m hanging onto for some support rips off the interior of the car exposing sharp rusty metal. The metal slowly scraps away the skin on my right shoulder. And I still have to pee. We are almost in Chipata and I hear a CRACK. The seat has detached from the floor. The welding has literally cracked in half. I clutch the seat in front of me and lean to Katey
“Hold onto the seat in front of you. If for some reason the back flies open we are going to fall out.”

We eventually arrive in Chipata and I pee.

And now life is good.

I’ll be back in internet range in about a month

I love the letters… keep sending them

If you want to send more than letters here are some ideas…..

Seeds would be great. I have a big garden and I want more seeds… seeds of anything
I also would love some Brownie mix
Mix tapes
q-tips (for bike cleaning)
jolly ranchers
dum dums
Bungees (to strap stuff to my bike
Triscuits!!!
Flavored Quaker Oats packages (Maple syrup or Apple)

this is what september looked like

I’ve been in my village for about 3 weeks now and everything is amazing. I have my own little mud hut with a fence around it, an outdoor bathing shelter, and an outdoor ‘toilet.’ There is also a grass fence around my house, so I have some privacy which is really really really nice. There is a papaya tree in my yard and when I want a snack I simply knock one down. There is also a banana tree in my yard and the village is FULL of mango trees.

I wake up around 6 and then I fetch my water for the day (I can carry 30 liters of water on my bike!). Then I cook breakfast, weed my garden, water my garden, and then hang out in the village and practice my language for a while. Around 9:30 or 10 I usually leave on my bike for a while to go to either a meeting, the clinic (to talk with staff), or a school (to talk with teachers). I usually get something to eat in the market for lunch. I return home anywhere from 2-5 and then I hang out in my village some more. I eat dinner with my neighbors around 6 and then usually talk with them until 8ish. Around 8 I go into my little hut and read or write letters for a couple hours and then go to bed.

About my Peace Corps work…

The way my program is set up is that I need to meet with all the Neighborhood Health Committees in my area and then work with them. There are 12 Neighborhood Health Committees, but I probably will only work with 5 of them. After meeting with all the Neighborhood Health Committees they tell me what they want help with, and then we work together. I’m also doing work with the schools to either start up HIV/AIDS awareness clubs or to work with existing clubs. My work with the Neighborhood Health Committees has been quite slow to start, because it’s hard to schedule meetings and then have people show up at them. But my work with the schools has been really great so far.

By now I should have had 5 Neighborhood Health Committees meetings, but I have only had one. The system used to set up meetings is called the ‘bushnote’ system. It works like this.
I write down a message on a piece of paper.
I write the intended recipients name and village name on the outside of the paper
I walk out to the main road and wait until I see someone going in the direction of the intended recipient.
I give the note to the random person who is going in that direction.
That person drops off the note in the intended village (or a village nearby).
Someone in the village finds the intended recipient and gives them the paper.


Needless to say this is not the most reliable system and I’ve gone to 2 meetings who never got the bushnote. And 2 other meetings were cancelled because there was a funeral in the area. My one successful meeting was really amazing though.

Now I’m going to leave Chipata (Provincial Capitol) and go up to Lundazi (closest ‘city’ to my village) to meet with the local health workers. In Lundazi I’ll be able to check my mail and I get cell phone reception. My number is 260 996 98 996. If you want to try and call me that would be awesome. Then I’m going to ride my bike to my village. It’s about a 2 hour bike ride from Lundazi to my village, but I’ll probably be making that trip every couple weeks.

I’ll be back in Chipata in about a month and I can check my email then. I think I’ll have internet access somewhere around every 4-6 weeks, and phone reception every 2 weeks or so. (Apparently there is phone reception ‘near my village on the anthill that is near the water in the area of the clinic sometimes in the late afternoon’ but I have yet to successfully find this well described location.

I updated some pictures from the rest of training. I haven’t really taken pictures in my village yet, but next time I get to a computer I’ll have taken some. To check out the pictures use the link I've posted in the past.


I hope all is well

--liz

p.s. I love letters!

Liz Spector
P.O. Box 530 376
Lundazi, Eastern Province
Zambia, Africa


(If you send me some Triscuits I’ll be in debt to you forever)…

pictures and shitty computers

I'm having a hell of a time trying to load my pictures on the computer. I have about 170 pictures of differnt things, but I've been waiting 45 minutes and they just won't load. So, I picked out around 15 photos and loaded those. You can view them from the link below. The pictures are mainly of Katey, Josh, and I from the past week. Since the three of us are the only new PCV's learning Tumbuka we spend a lot of time with each other.


enjoy,

http://indiana.facebook.com/photos.php?id=6852085&l=c1bda

I've spent the last 2 nights on busses...

I’m in Lusaka now after travelling for 2 days to get here. I have spent the last week visiting Sarah, a current HAP volunteer near Lundazi. I finally got to see what the area is going to look like where I will be living. And I’ve got 3 pieces of good news…
there are avocado trees! Which means I am never coming back to the states. I really hope there is an avocado tree near my actual house.
2. I also saw some HIPPOS swimming around, and they are so insanely huge.
Some crazy brit though it would be a good idea to build a castle in Lundazi, so now there is a European style castle/guest house overlooking the hippo pond.
……………………………………………….................................................................................

I saw 2 pictures of my actual site, and my house looks pretty sweet. Apparently a past volunteer let little kids draw all over the side of it and it looks like they drew brontosauruses all over it. I love it. Also, my shower has a roof, which is nice. My outside kitchen area looks small, but I heard the previous volunteer built a little stove in it.

Training is almost over and I’m really looking forward to moving out to my site in Kanyanga. I found out I will be living near and working closely with a well established mission hospital. This is going to be amazing, because there is already a working system I am going to be walking into. Although I am nervous about the fact that the hospital is Catholic, because I will be talking a lot about HIV/AIDS and I am definitely going to be talking about condoms. But I guess I’ll figure out that stuff once I get there.

I am going to be living about a 40k bike ride north of Lundazi. My closest Peace Corps Volunteer neighbour is Josh, and he’s 26k away from me. After Josh my closest PCV neighbour is either Katey or Sarah clocking in around 60-80k from me. I can’t wait to get to my site and explore the bush….and meet all my neighbours…and start a garden and…just get this whole adventure started.

I’m going to try and upload some pictures I hope it works. The link from my previous post should still bring you to my picture database.

Also I have a new address!!

From now on please send love letters, care packages, and hate mail to….

Liz Spector
P.O. Box 530 376
Lundazi, Eastern Province
Zambia
Africa

Also, if you do send me a package do not write the actual contents on the outside of it at the post office. If the people at the post office what is in the package say something like “religious material,” because if anything of value is declared on the outside of the package it will get stolen once it reaches Zambia.


For those of you that have been writing me… THANK YOU so much. Letters really are great especially when that is my main mode of contact with the outside world. I’m still in the process of writing everyone back and writing people who have recently sent me their address, so be patient!

Oh the lovely internet. I love it and hate it all at the same time. It's nice to check my email, but it's so slow it can be really frustrating. I think there might be a faster internet place, but this one is really cheap (100 kwacha a minute ---- 3400 kwacha = $1) you do the math.

Training is going well. I have a lot of class. Pretty much from when the sun rises to when the sun sets I am busy. But since it is winter here the sun is only out from about 6-6. I'm learning a lot about teaching HIV/AIDS education. I will be doing a lot of different types of teaching. Mainly I think I will be training future health teachers. This way after I leave the knowledge will stay. I really like the way PC has the HIV/AIDS program organized. Even though training is fun because I get to hang out with so many amazing people. I am also really looking forward to moving to my village so I can get started. I've heard that in the first couple months you just get to know the area and try and find Zambians in the area to work with. I really want my own little house, yard, and cooking area.

Next week I am going on a site visit to Lundazi. I'm really looking forward to this becuase I will be living in the Lundazi area for the next 2 years, and finally I will get to practice my Tumbuka.

alright... enough new for now


p.s. I ate a fried catapillar

in kitwe

So it turns out I can have internet maybe once a week, but I have to travel about 30 minutes and also pay by the minute for it.

I am currently living with a host family and they are really amazing. They have a ton of animals including an amazing cow named Rita. There are also puppies everywhere and I love them. I am learning Tumbuka and it's really hard. The language teacher has a hard time explaining the language so I spend a lot of time on my own memorizing words. I'm sure my sentance structure is awful. Since I decided to learn Tumbuka that means that I will live in the eastern province, near malawi. The area sounds really beautiful, and the HAP (HIV/AIDS Project) sites also sound like they would be a good place to live.

Since I am running out of time here at the internet I am going to stop writing and post some pictures.

Here is a link you can use to view some pictures

http://indiana.facebook.com/photos.php?id=6852085&l=c1bda

oh, and don't forget to write!