Peace Corps is 50!

Hi Friends!

First Happy 50th Anniversary of Peace Corps! Today is the offical 50th anniversary and I'm celebrating by hanging out in Lusaka. Sorry its been so long since my last post but I've been mostly in the village and thus have no internet.

I just got back from a national meeting on GLOW(Girl's Leading Our World), where we discussed what we learned from ourn experiences in the last year conducting camps and passed our knowledge on to the coordinators. It was a bit of a trek, two days travel, to attend what was a one day meeting but I think that I was able to share a lot of really good information and its always nice to see friends from different parts of Zambia.

I've been mostly in the village the last few months trying to avoid the rain, luckily they fixed my roof and no leaks. Since it is rainy season and all my neighbors are at the fields its been very quiet so a lot of my projects are on hiatus. But its been a good time for me to hang out with my nieghbors and assist with the day to day work at my clinic. They are very busy this time of year since the rains also bring malaria.

We've had some heavy rain this year and I have ended up very wet a couple of times. One day after a torrential downpour I needed assistance crossing a very flooded stream with my bike. But both my bike and I made it across just fine with a little help. The rains started out strong but we have also had a drought for the last few weeks which has made my farmers very nervous about the maize crop. But it appears the rains have returned that the maize will be just ok.

The HIV/AIDS support group that I work with just planted a sunflower plot. They can take the sunflower seeds to be pressed into cooking oil. Ideally the money will be used to purcahse bicycles so that they can more easily travel to town to collect their ARVs. My next step with them is to get them to save either seed or money so that they can plant again next year and maybe even expand into food crops as well.

I had a good holiday season but it was not as planned. I had to cancel my vacation to Northern Zambia after one of my very good friends was bitten by a spider. We ended up spending Christmas in Chipata which was very nice and included a lot of baking and even a murder mystery dinner. But things went downhill from there when my friend was medevaced to South Africa after the swelling in her foot wouldn't go down. She is totally fine now and back in the village but it was a tense week for me with her in South.

I'm making up for my lack of Christmas vacation with a trip to Zanzibar in two weeks. My very exciting news is that my mom is coming May 3! I'm so excited and have been busy booking safari and our trip to Victoria Falls. I can't wait for her to come and see my village and meet all my friends here.

The grop of volunteers who arrived int he intake before mine are now getting ready to COS (Close of Service or go home basically). I can't believe how fast the time has gone! I have now been in Zambia for over 19 months and have less then 7 to go! Of course this means I need to start getting serious about grad school as my mom reminded me by talking about fafsa. But its not over yet and I really want to make the most out of the rest of my time here.

Love,
Allie