Thursday, July 17, 2008

It's been a really long time. I haven't seen a computer in a while. Looking back my last post was kind of depressing. This one shouldn't be. As expected life in the village has gotten better and much more comfortable. I finally moved into my house two weeks ago, which alleviated the stress level significantly. I'm getting to know the people in my village, the clinic staff, the teachers, the people at the market I buy bread, fruits and veggies from everyday, the boys at the taverns who want to play the white man in pool. I'm meeting with a teacher from the school who is teaching me nyanja, the language most commonly spoken in my area, and we're becoming pretty good friends. I've amassed a fan club of little kids who seem to instinctively migrate to my front yard when the guitar comes out. I'm slowly getting less hygenic as the cold season makes it increasingly difficult to bathe outside. Lot's of strange things still happen. I had a kid bring me a bag with a dead rat in it a couple of weeks ago. Not sure why.
I'm still in community entry, which still means I'm not really working. I help out at the clinic on busy days, go to meetings and clinic outreaches when they have them. In Mid-August I go into Lusaka for In-Service-Training, which will be a week-long workshop that ends our community entry period.
After that, we can travel. The travel bug is killing me right now. There are so many places to go in southern Africa and I can't wait to see them. At the end of IST I'm going with a group of friends to Malawi, Zambia's eastern neighbor. The entire eastern border of Malawi is Lake Malawi, a beautiful freshwater lake with warm water and some of the best snorkeling in Africa. And it's really cheap. I'm also planning to go to Zanzibar, off the coast of Tanzania, around christmas time.
I think that's about it. love and miss all of you.

Some pics of my village and down along the Zambezi River: