Greetings from Zambia

Hello! I have been in Zambia now for three weeks and so far so good. As I imagined internet access is very limited, but I do have a phone here with internet, but the coverage areas are spotty.

We are 2 weeks into training (out of a total of 11) in Chipembi, a small town in Central Province. I have been learning to speak Mambwe (a Bantu language), which is a language spoken by the Mambwe people who live in the northernmost part of Northern Province (NoPro) near Lake Tanganika, and close to the Tanzanian border.  From what I have heard NoPro is beautiful and lush, which is hard to imagine since now we are in the end of winter and everything is dusty and dormant. The rains will come in a few month, just after a few months of hot weather.  I can't wait until the rainy season. Apparently things are so different that its easy to get lost on the bush paths because things look so different that time of year.
We have already had a small taste of what village life will be like. We (when I say we I mean my training group of 36 RAP Trainees - Rappers) were split up into groups and sent off to visit current Rappers in their villages.  I went to Eastern Province and we swept off to experience village life right away.  We were sitting around in our host Jonathan's insaka (outdoor kitchen pavilion) as all of the villagers were coming to meet the flock of muzungus (accurately translated as Europeans, but really just means foreigners or white people), and were invited to be initiated by a group of women.  Just a side note about greetings in Zambia: all people are greeted separately, which can make for very long hello's and goodbyes. The three women in my group were totally up for it, not really knowing what we were in for.  Nicole, who is a volunteer who lives in a village near Jonathan was with us, so translated for us and explained a bit about what was going down.
We followed the woman to a small hut nearby. As we were walking they were all calling out "ayai-yai-yai-yai" which is an expression of happiness or excitement. About twenty to twenty five women were in the hut, each with 2 chitenges (a piece of fabric used for everything from a skirt, to a towel, to a baby sling), one used as a skirt, and the other folded up and tied around the waist to accentuate the hips while dancing.
The drumming began, and we were taken into the circle one by one and taught the dance - little did we know that this was just practice for the real thing.  We ended up being in that hot hut for over two and a half hours.  The dance, we were told, was 'taught' to women entering puberty and then preformed again before a woman is married.  The ritual dance is taught not only for woman to know what to do as a wife, but also how to please herself.  Woman empowerment, Zambian style...
As we left the hut, our legs all feeling like jello, Nicole told us all that it took her at least 5 months to be invited into a ceremony like that one.  We had truly experienced something really special.
Our time visiting Jonathan was wonderful. He was fluent in Nyanja, another local Bantu language, and had made really good connections with his counterparts and villagers.  The women in the village would have probably never invited us into their inner-sanctum had it not been for Jonathan.
That's all for now, hope everyone is doing well.

T minus one week and counting...

Lately time has been quite peculiar. I thought these last few weeks would rush by too quickly for me to notice but in fact, just the opposite has occurred. It seems as though time slows with every day that passes. It might also have something to do with how unbearably hazy, hot, and humid it was last week. Or not...
The last few days have been filled with organizing and purging obsolete belongings, spending quality time with people, and entertaining myself with the utterly trashy television I love. It has been nice to not feel as though I am rushed for this eminent change.
Fear not my friends, for I will be in Zambia soon enough - just after a brief stop in Philadelphia for my staging event.  In Philly I will be filling out additional paperwork, getting some last minute vaccinations, and meeting my cohorts. We will spend a day in Philly together and then off to Lusaka by way of Johannesburg.

Stay tuned, because I think this blog is about to get way more interesting...

Preparing for Zambia

I have recently accepted an invitation to serve in the Peace Corps in Zambia! Phew!! The application process has been a long one requiring an immense amount of patience, flexibility, and persistence. I can only imagine that this is the first of many hurdles I am going to throw myself over during the next two years serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV). My placement officer emailed me a few weeks ago on a Friday afternoon to set up yet another interview, this time over the phone, to get a better idea of what position(s) would suit me. This emailed contained familiar language basically saying, "Don't get excited just yet, you have merely slivered up one more stair." I quickly wrote back to set up a time, and then scoured the 'inter-webs' to learn all that I could about what this interview was all about and what types of questions I would be asked. I soon found out that the questions were very similar to those presented to me in my recruiting interview way back in June of last year. I geared myself up for the interview early on the following Monday morning, and began getting nervous as my placement officer didn't call me precisely at 9:30 am as I had expected. The interview went well and before I knew it, my placement officer was telling me about a position she thought would be a great fit for me. About 15 minutes later I hung up the phone and took a deep breath...I think was I was just offered an invitation?! But, after a year of waiting and taking baby steps to get to this point, I didn't believe it was true until I received an email saying that I need to check my online application for a status update. This has been one of the silliest parts of this process - I get an email telling me to check my online application which then tells me that a letter is on the way. Go figure!

So, I depart for my program August 1st, 2011 and am really excited about what the next two years have in store for me.  I will be serving as a Fish Culture Extension Agent for Peace Corps/Zambia's Rural Aquaculture Promotion (RAP) Project. This program was created to fulfill the Zambian Department of Fisheries' (DoF) request for human resource assistance. Now the preparation begins for this crazy adventure I've signed myself up for, and I couldn't be happier.