Fiwila

So I realized that I didn't post much about my village other than about my family, or anything about my mud hut (pictures to follow hopefully soon!) so I figured I would indulge everyone with TWO blog posts in two days and tell you a little more about the place I now call home.

So I live in Mulomo Village, in Fiwila Mission Catchment Area, in Mkushi District, in Central Province, in Zambia, in Africa. Zambia is divided into 9 Provinces (Central (the best province obviously), Luapula, Northern, Eastern, Western, Northwestern, Southern, Copperbelt and Lusaka. Peace Corps places volunteers currently in Central, Luapula, Northern, Eastern, Northwestern and Lusaka. They have had volunteers in both Copperbelt and Southern in the past. There are none currently but in April they will be placing new volunteers back in Southern Province. Within these 9 provinces (which are equivalent to states in the US) there are 73 districts (I am not going to list all of them, one because I don't know all of them and two while Zambia may be making me a more patient person I am yet to become that patient). My district is Mkushi. Each district has a "BOMA" which is like the capital of each district. In the BOMA there are things like the bank, government offices, chocolate, the post office (a very important place for current PCV's) and other necessities that you can't get in the village. I like about 85-90 k from Mkushi (about 50 miles) on a long bumpy dirt road, however getting out of my village is not as hard as I anticipated. I can get transport Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning to Masansa, which is a "sub-BOMA" that is 30k (a little less than 20 miles) and from there can go all the way to Mkushi. Transport consists usually of riding in a canter, which is like a large flat bed truck that things like fertilizer, maize (corn), and building materials are transported on. \Masansa has everything I need though except for the bank and the post office so usually to get things like peanut butter, bread, talk time, cold soda I can just go there. It is also where my closest PC neighbor lives. I so far try and be in my village for 2 weeks and then out for the weekend. There is a lodge in Mkushi that we are able to stay in (ATB Lodge) that has good food, occasional hot showers, satellite TV, and PCV's have a great report with the staff, so on weekends that we go to the BOMA this is usually where we stay. Mkushi is one of the more rural BOMA's and it is an area where a lot of people pass through but there is not a huge population in the area, at least compared to other BOMA's. I live near the commercial farming block, so I live within a farming community. Most of the commercial farmers are white South Africans, Zambians, and Zimbabweans. A lot of volunteers have friendships with the farmers, I am yet to develop these, but I am still very new and I am so isolated. It does sometimes get hard to be out in the village day after day being so isolated, especially because right now there is very little work I am doing, as I said before I am in community entry so a lot of what I am doing in integrating into my community. I am looking forward to starting to do some work, but probably won't start anything major until February. The reason being that all this week I am in Serenje at the provincial house. On Decemeber 1st-6th I am attending Camp GLOW (Girls Leading Our World). It is a camp that Peace Corps puts on for girls every year through a grant. Two girls from volunteers villages in grade 7 or 8 and one community member attend the camp. There are informational/education sessions and then they will also be participating in fun activities like rock climbing, pottery, and canoeing. Usually volunteers don't have the opportunity to go due to funding, but I will be organizing the camp for next year so I will be attending with my girls. Then there will be Christmas and New Years (me and a bunch of friends from my intake are going to Malawi) and then we will have In-Service Training (IST) for two weeks in January, where we will be learning things like permagardening, composting, and other applicable skills to use in our village. I am really looking forward to this as a lot of the health training that I recieved I won't be using as much of but really want to learn about things like Income Generating Activities and composting. So then come February I will start doing some actual work and starting projects in my village, I am really excited!

I live right next to what I would consider a marsh, there are two in ground water holes that we usually get water from however since we are at the end of dry season right now they are almost out so lately I have been getting my water from faucets in Fiwila. The pipe water down from the mountains and there are various spikets in the main village (Fiwila) where the school, clinic, and church are. Due to the distance needed to drag water from Fiwila and the lack of water in the marsh, last week Paxina and I went out to a small stream the other day and washed our clothes in that. It was definitely a stereotypical Africa moment. I cook outside over charcoal every night and use candles for light. Zambia is also holding a national census this year and it includes foreigners in it, so I got to take two census's this year. It was very different from America's census! For one a person rides their bike out to your house to give you the survey. There are questions like "what mode of transport do you use: walk, bike, donkey, motorbike, car" "what heating method do you use?" (response: blankets and fire) "What type of light source do you have" (answer: candles). It's a whole different world here. But I love it, challenges and struggles included!