Exciting times in Zambia

Its been an exciting few weeks here in Zambia with work and everything else. I did my first condom demonstration in the village and it went really well. There were 2 more villages on the schedule but when people found out what I was doing they also wanted me to come to their village to do the demonstration. My PEPFAR counterpart (also my best friend in the village) did a GREAT job with our village talks. In addition to condom demonstrations, we talked about HIV transmission, the importance of getting tested and also gave out condoms as well. I was surprised they responded to me so well due to the fact that I am young and a female but they were open to asking me questions and willing to learn. I felt really good at the end and so did my counterpart. The village also kept saying how good of a teacher I was. Since I am busy teaching their kids this was the first community event I was able to do, it wont be the last.
Also I had an interest meeting with the women at the Catholic Church. The meeting was initially supposed to be just with the priest to see how he felt about me using the Church but it ended up being a interest meeting about starting a Woman's Literacy Group at the Church. It slowly ended up being a empowerment meeting and all the women are really excited about this group. I told them if they raised the money to buy note books for themselves, I would buy the pens. They told me to get pencils to start. There are women who finished grade 10 as well as women who just finished grade 1 so it will be a multi-level class but I have a local woman helping me. We start our 1st class October 4th. They keep reminding me about the class when I see them around the village.
Our GLOW Camp has been officially funded! It got funded really quickly due to all our friends and families donating (THANKS GUYS). We have already started the planning for the week and its going to be great. Also my neighbor is going to be a peer mentor at the Camp. She wrote a great essay about why she wanted to help the girls and how she was an example to them because she was single and completed school/grade 12 (which is a big deal in a village where early marriage and pregnancy is on the rise for some reason) and how she believed that girls should have rights. I helped her get her thoughts together but she wrote the essay herself. I was really proud of her. Now I am submitting a grant for a World AIDS Day event my PCV neighbor and I are doing. I will also be doing a teacher training the same week on HIV and how to care/support orphans and vulnerable children in our Zone. The guidance and Counseling teachers as well as the Anti-AIDS club matron/patrons from each of the seven schools in the zone are invited. On World AIDS Day, people will be getting tested for HIV, school groups will perform, a person living with HIV will speak as well as several other activities. We will also be holding a raffle to encourage people to get tested. The prizes will be....local items but mainly shirts, hats and bags. If anyone sees any hats, bags or shirts with things/scenes/advertisements from America on them and want to send them my way...I would greatly appreciate it. Also I have been getting a lot of support for the resource center I am working on. THANKS AGAIN! Things are really coming together.
Last but not least the most exciting thing by far, were the elections held last week. Zambia has a new president, Michael Sata. Sata is actually from Mpika district so everyone in Northern Province was really excited that 'one of their own' is now the President. The elections were relatively calm and people were excited for change in their country. I went to the school on polling day and except for lines outside the door, it was exactly the same as home. I walked around the village encouraging people to vote and explaining why I myself couldn't vote. They didn't think my being an American was a good enough excuse. 2days later around 2am, I heard screaming and cheering in the village and knew that Sata had won. I was very proud of Zambia. The former president stepped down gracefully and showed the world that there can be free and fair elections in Africa. Zambia remained the peaceful nation that everyone claims it to be. I constantly find reasons to fall in love with this place, and this is one of them for sure. I am excited about how things are going in my life as a volunteer and in general and Zambians are excited about the route their new government is going to take!

hut sweet hut...and the village kids

Sunsets on the Savanna: All I want for Chirstmas...December

Camp GLOW Donation Site:

https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=611-071

All I want for Chirstmas...December

School is out and I am still running around the village like a mad woman. I went on a mini vacation to Eastern Province to visit friends (picture soon) before they finished their services. I got back to the village and had programs in the village scheduled but they got canceled due to 'lack of materials'. What materials? CONDOMS! I will be doing village talks on HIV, VCT (voluntary counseling and testing for HIV) as well as condom demonstrations. In conjunction with this I also want to do condom distribution in these villages. I searched everywhere for condoms. No one has them. I finally went to my provincial capital (where I have the luxury of typing this entry)and got more condoms than I can carry home. I'm excited to do these sensitization in the village. It will be interesting to see how people respond, especially to the condom demonstrations. Ive had more people recently asking me for and about condoms, especially the female condoms, so this is a great chance to educate my community. The topic is taboo in the sense that I am a women, HIV has a huge stigma and the people in my area are very traditional. They all think I'm crazy anyway essentially because I left America to live in a rural village in Zambia, but they do respect me and what I have to say. My PEPFAR counterpart/ best friend in the village will help me with translating and also discuss VCT. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it goes well! In addition to this little project I have 2 HUGE projects I'm still working on. Camp GLOW and books for the Resource Center.
Its time for Camp GLOW planning and fund raising again. This year the Camp will be held during the week of December 11-17 in my district of Mpika. GLOW stands for Girls Leading Our World. Camp GLOW is a week long girls empowerment camp where each volunteer brings two girls & a counterpart to learn life skills, increase their confidence, instill leadership and to begin developing girl groups at their perspective schools. There will be separate sessions for the counterparts and the girls and all the sessions for the girls are done in local language. Last year the sessions for the girls dealt with self-esteem, assertiveness, sexual violence, early marriage/pregnancy and establishing goals. All of the counterpart sessions were focused on how to facilitate these sessions in their school clubs. Along with the sessions there are a lot of games, songs and my personal favorite....CRAFTS! The Camp was very successful last year and has been one of my favorite projects so far. BUT all the money from the camp is donated. This is where you all come in. If you are interested in helping me, there is a link on the peace corps website where you are able to donate. All money that is donated for the camp will go through this website and we will receive it in one lump sum. If you want to send materials for the camp you can mail them to me. Last year Little Debbie donated snacks for our big party at the end of the week and several people donated art supplies for our crafts and balls/games for our activities. Please help us out. This camp is great for the girls. My girls are more confident since the camp and it really is something that is uplifting and empowering for everyone evolved! Here's the link to the donation page:

If the link doesn't work the project number to enter on the page is 611-071 and the volunteer name is SMITH.
Another BIG project I am doing is gathering books for our Resource Center. I have been trying for months to gather books locally and I have received a few but we need more. The Resource Center is still empty. This Center is in the middle of my zone that covers 5 government schools and 2 community schools. The center is open to everyone in the community so the books will be utilized by several people. I envision the resource center as a place to gather materials for the teachers developing lesson plans, for continuing professional development, possibly having a reading corner where teachers and parents can read to their pupils, where pupils can study and increase their reading interest. While the gathering of the books is "easy" in the sense that textbooks, resource books, fiction and non-fiction book and any other type of books are welcomed but the shipping of the books from America to Zambia will be costly. Maybe if any groups are wanting to do projects for Christmas/December or just want to take on any volunteering projects this would be something they are interested in. Everything is welcomed and helps in the stocking of this Center. Once the books start coming in, I will train teachers at the school where the center is located in how to catalog and store the books so they can even be checked out. If enough books get donated, there is even the opportunity to develop class libraries at the community schools which are several kilometers away from the cente

puppies and random village things

Puppies being born, friends coming to visit, meeting up with my favorite village kids and their parents. Things are going well on this end just busy with work. I am working at two schools and teaching grades 7,8,9 English. Hard to believe that I only have 9 months left in Zambia! Im not to happy about that. So much to get done and so little time. My next big projects will be a book drive (which everyone can help me by sending me books!) and writing a grant to get funding for a HIV/AIDs, Guidence and counselling workshop for te teachers in my Zone, and the planning of a World AIDS Day event. Ill keep everyone posted on these things because I will need help (and frequent pep talks) for sure. Love you all. Ill write soon I promise.

teaching and such (grade 8 comprehension lesson on HIV)

The pictures are mainly of my Grade 8 English Class at my main school Mpumba Basic. The lesson was a listening comprehension lesson covering HIV/AIDs. During the lesson we did a transmisson game to show how HIV is easily spread between partners, we did a KWL chart(know, want to know, learn) about what they already knew and wanted to know about HIV/AIDS, we read a composition about HIV and how it is transmited, I used class volunteers to show how the immune system is affected by HIV and we played a true/false game over the contents of the passage. This is how a typical lesson goes in my classes. Me running around, asking for volunteers, having them read to me and making each other laugh.

A spoonful of peanutbutter makes the Coartem go down

The Malaria finally got me! Coming to Zambia I had two expectations: 1) to live in a mud hut 2) to get malaria. It started out as the flu and I think my immune system just couldn't fight off two things at once and Malaria struck. Its weird to say but now I can relate to my village on a different level. Everyone in the village says they have a "bit" of malaria and at one point I thought I had a "bit" of the malaria myself but it was nothing compared to the main event. Now I can see how people die from it even though I was no where near that sick! It just takes a lot out of you and if you don't have the proper medical help and you don't catch it fast enough it can get bad really quickly. Puts things into perspective! Funny how a little mosquito can do so much damage!
A lot of things have been put into preservative lately. My village, my village life in particular has been hit with a series of unfortunate but eye opening events. My best friend at the school and my main co-teaching counterpart lost her husband last week suddenly. I talked to her the same morning about bringing her puppies to her and a few hours later she was a widow. While the husband was said to have died suddenly, I knew he was HIV positive. A few months ago(after a year of me being quiet and already knowing) my co-teacher FINALLY told me she was HIV positive and that she trusted me enough to tell me. It meant a lot to me for her to finally tell me. There is so much stigma around being positive that she isn't open with about her status to the teachers or the community. She told me that her husband recently found out he was positive but their 3 children were OK. She's very committed to taking her ARVs and living positively because of her 3 children, despite the fact that her viral load count is shockingly high.
The funeral was my first one here even though there seems to be one daily. Its sad to think that I wont see him anymore and its even sadder to see the fear in my teacher's eyes because now she's alone. I wish I could do something more for them but I can't. This is a reality that they face often and while I am not, they are very 'used'(use to it) as they say.
As volunteers want to be integrated into the community and live as much as we can like the locals .While its a noble idea, we're still so detached. The fact that I have a water filter to clean the water I drink sets me apart. The fact that while I had malaria I also have medical care readily available so I'm not nearly as sick as one could get makes me different. The fact that I have a bike and shoes to wear when traveling from one village to the next for projects makes me a rich person. At first I tried to explain that I wasn't rich but in reality I am. Not rich as in money but rich in things, simple things taken for granted that change lives drastically. Peace Corps has 3 main goals it tries to accomplish and 2 out of the 3 of those goals relate to cultural exchange. Its really hard to do development and skills transfer work (goal 1) when there are so many other dire needs. I cant do it all especially in 2 years and I am glad people realize that.We often times come into this thinking that in 2 years we're going to change the world and bring major change to our areas and its a hard pill to swallow when things don't go as planned. I don't want to build buildings (many PCVs do its just not my thing)or imply that the way of living is wrong and that is the common misconception with development and aid organizations. I want to give people skills, materials and confidence to change things on their own. I feel like to first step to doing that is by being connected with the village. After my malaria, the broken borehole, kids dying from diarrhea and my one of my best friends losing her husband, I feel like I get it. I feel like I know why I am here. Sure I cant change all these things in 2 yrs and 3 generations of PCVs may not be able to change things either but I do serve a purpose. I am here to listen. I am here as a link to connect people with local resources they don't know about. I am here to try. I love my village and the people in it and I am glad that(even through a series of unfortunate event) I understand more now. That also comes with being in the village for a year. My time is coming to an end, I have 8months left but there is so much I want to do. So much that needs to be done but all I can do is continue to build relationships and continue to try. That's enough and I'm finally OK with that because in a way it is changing the world. Their world.