Hi Friends!
Well since my last post I celebrated my one-year anniversary of arrriving here in Zambia. In a lot of ways I can't be;ieve thats its already been a year because the time has gone so fast! I feel like just yesterday I was ringing in the New Year and somehow its already August. My friend Denise and I reached the conclusion that the only way tot really categorize that last year of our lives is crazy. I've had a blast and definately learned a lot about myself, my limitations (which are ever decreasing), and Zambia. I just hope that the next year here in Zambia is just as much of an adventure.
My year mark also saw the new intake of health and fisheries volunteers arrive and I had the "honor" of hosting 4 of the new health volunteers for their first dtay in the village. It was a lot of fun but my village is a little intense sometimes so we had a few extra special moments. The first night about 20 kids surrounded their tents as they were trying to go to bed but they soon learned that if you try to talk to the kids they will never leave. They got to experience drawing water (and we used a lot of water), shulking corn, and one of them even made peanut butter by hand. The last night was definately the most special as about 200 people from my village gathered in my front yard to show us traditional female dancing. Then, of course, they made us do it and after 10 months of saying no I had to dance in front my village. As most of you know I can't dance at all and since this is all very intense hip momnets I mostly looked like a fool but they were all very happy. Site visit went well but it was nice to have my house back to myself again.
My village has been busy getting the last of their cotton to market and now preparing their maize. To get the maize ready they place it in a bag and whack off most of the kernals and then hand remove those that remain. After that they use a winnowing basket to remove hulls and any broked kernals, it takes a long time and they only take about 10 dollars for 50 kg of kernals!
I've been finishing up the last of VCT sensitization meetings which I think went really well overall. The next step will be for us to actually go out to the villages and conduct the testing and I hoping to finish up before I go to Lusaka for my mid-term conference in October but of course it all depends on when we can schedule everything.
This year Zambia has been experiencin a outbreak of measles, mainly because it spread from Malawi. But don't worry all PCV's have to reiecve a booster before coming so I still have full antibody protection. Its been interesting for me to see how they respond to the epidemic. The main message, besides an ad campigan, has been to reaccinate all the children under 4 during their recent child health week. Its really frustrating to see an epidemic of a disease that we have a vaccine for and Zambian children are supposed to recieve the vaccine at the age of 9 months. So now Zambia will need to determine what has gone wrong and while the vaccine hasn't been effective. Its made me think a lot about a country's ability to respond, especially in a rural setting and I'm sure that this experience will effect my thinking about epidemics when I go back to school.
Camp GLOW starts on Monday and we are in the final detail and logistics stage. We are here in Chipata getting everything ready and hoping that nothing major goes wrong. After a few budget freak-outs we fianlly have all the transport organized and have faith that all the partipants will make it to the conference center. I just want it to be a really great week for the girls and other partipants but I know that I will be very relieved come the 14. So please keep us in your thoughts and prayers next week so that everything goes well! We now have free, high-speed internet at our house in Chipata so I will try to post after the camp to let you all know how it went.
Love,
Allie
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