Reilly in Zambia

6 Months Down, 21 to Go

This weekend, I hit a milestone. I have been in Zambia for 6 months now! Living in a country and culture with a very different understanding of time, I almost didn’t realize how long I had been here. When the days are longest I’ve ever felt and the months feel short, these 6 months feel like the longest 3 years of my life!

While yes, reaching the 6-month mark did feel like a cause for celebration, even moreso it felt like a time for reflection. The amount that I have learned (about myself and about others), the amount that I have gone through so far (hello, salmonella and a long-distance break-up), the relationships I have formed (with other Peace Corps volunteers, with my host family, and with people from Zambia), the conversations I’ve had (good, bad, confusing, inspiring), and everything else that I’ve experienced so far really made me stop and think about what it is I’ve done here so far. Here’s a couple of my biggest lessons learned so far:

How to be my own best friend
Building a relationship with yourself is a lifelong journey, but I’d argue most people don’t get dropped into it with no choice as young as I am. Being just 22, I hardly know which way is up, let alone how I plan to let my values lead my life or how to speak kindly to myself. But being here, being by myself most of the time, being in such a different culture that it forces me to reflect on mine, has really caused me to dive deeply into building that relationship with me. I have to be my own best friend! Which is hard and scary and frustrating sometimes! But if I wasn’t, I would go absolutely insane. My mindset has shifted from spending time “by myself” to spending time “with myself.” I have personal jokes, I speak kindly to myself and affirm myself (even though that is so dang hard sometimes), and without constant electricity or distractions, I have found ways to pass the time and entertain myself, too. Being your own best friend is hard, and I know that it is a lifelong journey, but I feel that building the foundation for that now will set me up for a kinder, softer relationship with myself throughout the rest of my life.
I can do hard things, and I can continue to do hard things
The past 6 months have been so full of challenges (rewarding challenges, but challenges nonetheless!), cultural blunders and differences, learning curves, frustrations, joys, that my resiliency has been stretched, and then stretched again. Luckily, thats’s exactly what resiliency is: the ability to stretch and not snap. I’ve had bad food poisoning, I’ve gone through a breakup back home, I’ve had meetings that no one shows up to, I’ve been the loneliest/most fed up/craziest I’ve ever felt, I’ve seen the direct effects of climate change and drought in my community, and all kinds of other things. But I’m here! And I find things to be grateful for and smile about every single day! Because ultimately, this beautiful, surprising, hopeful, enterprising country unfolds more of itself to me each day. And bearing witness to that is my greatest joy these days. So when things are hard, I know that I can do it, because I already have.
This is the right place for me to be right now
Was Zambia the place I thought I’d be coming to when I applied for the Peace Corps? NO! Not at all! Crazily enough, I considered applying for this position but decided on another post because I thought the living conditions would be too tough for me. But here I am! And yes, the living conditions are definitely an adjustment from our cushy American ways, but I have largely adjusted to them. This is the right place for me to be right now, because of the people I have met, the culture I am growing to love, the things I am learning about myself and about the world, and the lessons I am meant to be learning. Who knows, maybe another country or post would be just as fitting, but I’m here and it fits and I have no conceivable idea would my life would look like right now if I didn’t walk down this exact path. And these days, I’m feeling pretty good about the path I’ve chosen to walk down, the path I choose to walk each day.
You only have to open your eyes a little bit wider to see the beauty in the ordinary
After 6 months in Zambia and 3 months in my village, I feel largely accustomed to my daily life, and if I’m not paying attention, it can feel pretty mundane. But if I choose to open up my eyes, I can see where the beauty pours into my life. My 21-year-old sister has gone back to finish secondary school after a 3-year break to raise her baby (who’s my best friend, by the way). My family’s eyes light up after a good day of rain because they feel hopeful for the harvest. I had a simple conversation in Citonga more easily than I did a week ago. I finally found the spot between my walls and my roof where the lizards come through. My puppy gets bigger each day. My family shows me little cues that tell me they accept me and feel comfortable with me. If I just go through my day without paying attention, I would never see the beauty and grace of these small things, but if I open up my eyes just a little bit wider, I suddenly see that my life has so many incredible things to reveal to me.

There’s many other things I have learned in the past 6 months, about myself, about Zambia, about other people, about the world, but you’re going to have to be content with this for now! Next month, I’ll be 1/4 done with my service here (YIKES!), and I’m not totally sure how that happened, but I’m here and I’m doing the best I can do each day, and sometimes that isn’t much, but I’m still trying. Here’s to 6 months of challenges and figuring things out, and here’s to 21 more months of the same.

The Beauty of Routines

Hi everyone! Happy new year!

My community entry period is coming to a close soon, which means, hopefully, I can start doing some work soon (key word there being “hopefully!”). These three months have afforded me (lots of) free time, and since I wasn’t supposed to work, this forced me to find meaningful ways to spend my time. Not doing any productive work in the traditional sense has been very challenging for me, and I knew pretty early on in CE that I was going to have to find ways to fill my time that would keep me from ripping my hair out.

Enter: routines. Throughout my life, I’ve always found meaning and peace in practicing intentional routines. You can ask my parents-I’ve always been a creature of habit! Here, time moves so slowly through the day, so leaning in to the rhythms of my routines lets me glide through the day.

In the mornings, I get up, take a B12 (if you don’t take B12, you should start!!), get dressed, and head outside. I load my brazier with charcoal and walk to my family’s home to see if they have hot coals; if they don’t, I continue to my grandma’s house just a minute’s walk away-she ALWAYS has hot coals. I come back, put the kettle on my hot brazier, then brush my teeth. Then I set up my French press with grounds and cinnamon, my mug with creamer and sugar, and, if I’m having oatmeal that morning, which I often do, I set up my bowl of instant oatmeal with oats, peanut butter and honey. If I’m having eggs or a hash for breakfast instead, I prep those ingredients while waiting for my kettle to heat up. Setting up each aspect of my breakfast is almost like a ritual, a meditation, a welcome, peaceful moment of mindfulness at the start of my day. Once everything is ready, I sit out on my porch to enjoy my breakfast. While I’m eating and savoring my coffee, I either read or listen to a podcast. I sip my coffee for quite a while, and let myself enjoy watching the community go about their lives. After breakfast, I often journal for a bit or continue to read. Then I’ll tidy up around my home.

I have other routines throughout my day, but my morning routine is probably most special to me. It is so nice to let my muscle memory take over and float throughout the day. A mentor of mine, Ann, and I used to talk often about the importance of routines and rituals in our lives, the weight that they hold and how they can anchor us in the day. I still feel this way, and perhaps feel that more deeply now! Even something seemingly small, like lighting incense, is a little ritual for me: focusing on the match on the striker-feeling, hearing, and smelling the ignition, holding it up to the stick of incense, and wafting up the first of the smoke to inhale the scent. These small practices are things that help to root me in the now.

With so much free time to fill in my days, and not much to do to fill my time, falling into meaningful routine has helped to keep me from going totally crazy in the village!

Do you have a special routine or a favorite daily ritual? Share it in the comments below!

Pizza!!!

Hi everyone! Happy holidays! I’ve had a huge surplus of free time these days, and have been stewing in boredom.

I decided to try something new today and made a pizza from scratch on my brazier. From start to finish, it took me about two hours, and was a lovely distraction.

First, I caramelized onions for this pizza.

After I finished those and set them aside, I made my cheese! Ricotta is fairly easy to make in the village; you just let milk come to a boil, add in a small splash of lemon juice or vinegar to cuddle it, strain it over a cheesecloth and bowl, and squeeze out the excess moisture.

I had never made pizza dough from scratch before (even though I used to work at a pizza shop!), and my attempt was alright. Once I made it, I put it into a pan and layered up the toppings: alfredo for the base, ricotta, caramelized onions and garlic.

Up until now, I hadn’t attempted baking anything in the village, but I had an idea of how to set up a brazier oven. Essentially, you start it as usual, take out some of the hot coals, set down an upside-down pot, set your baking pan on top of that (as baking directly on the coals would have been too extreme of heat), and then setting on top of the baking pan another upside-down pan, and putting hot coals on top of that, so it can bake from the top and the bottom.

My pizza baked for about 30 minutes, and for a first attempt, I was very pleased! The crust was crispy on the bottom and nice and chewy, and so flavorful!

This was a lovely, delicious way to spend my time this afternoon, and cooking is always cathartic and relaxing. Making this pizza may have dirtied almost all of my dishes, but it was absolutely worth it to have an indulgent, time-consuming lunch.

Cooking has been a really nice escape for me in the village, and it’s fun to figure out how to adapt recipes to limited ingredients or brazier cooking. Some of my personal favorite meals have been: gnocchi with garlic alfredo, breakfast hashes, and curries!

Masala veg/hash with garlic and herb flatbread

I’ve also made mango jam, and plan on attempting mango wine soon! Have a recipe you think I’d like to attempt in the village? Let me know in the comments below. Happy eating 🙂

For the Love of Reading

I hope everyone is doing well!

Community entry is tough, I’m not going to lie to you. I’ve told you from the start that I’m determined to share with you the whole experience, not just the happy parts of it. I’m bored out of my mind, since I’m not meant to be starting any programs right now. I’m living alone for the first time in my life, which is its own challenge. The language and cultural barrier is significant and isolating. And I feel that I’m not accomplishing anything significant, which is particularly hard because America deeply ingrains in us that our value is rooted in productivity, which is an incredibly difficult idea to un-learn.

That’s not to say that I hate being here, in fact it’s the opposite! Though this is the hardest thing I’ve done in my life, there are many bright spots to my days, such as my amazing host family (check out my last blog post to learn more about them), videochatting with my family and boyfriend at home, seeking solace in American treats brought from home and sent in care packages (though I have very little willpower in this regard!!), and settling into meaningful routines in my day.

One of my biggest comforts and favorite ways to pass the time has been reading. Anyone who knows me knows that I have loved to read since I was little, but similar to many bibliophiles as they grow up, I lost touch with reading to take care of responsibilities, studying, and other pastimes. Ever since coming to Zambia, I’ve had much more free time (one might argue too much free time {trust me, it’s possible}), and free mental space, and I have deeply enjoyed falling in love with reading all over again.

It feels like such a gift to be able to sit down and enter another world for a while, to let my imagination run free in the lives of the characters, and to relax into a quiet escape. Since arriving, I’ve also decided to make an effort to read books written by marginalized and minority authors, which is also enriching my experience. I am really enjoying reading books written from a perspective outside of my own. So if you have any suggestions, please let me know! (Better yet, send me your suggestions and a kindle gift card to get the book-my parents will thank you 😉)

I feel so grateful that I can sit down and read often more than once per day. Reading has become a deeply meaningful part of each day for me. Additionally, when I feel daunted by being social in my community (which is frequent, considering the not-insignificant language barrier), I can sit out on my porch reading and be “visible” while still being in my own world. My days are often bracketed with this escape-I read each morning while I eat my breakfast and savor my coffee, and before I go to bed.

I hope that telling you how meaningful it has been to bring reading back into my daily life, you feel inspired to bring it into yours! My goal is to read at least 100 books while serving in the Peace Corps, and you can check out my reading list here if you’re in need of a recommendation!

Just a Bunch of Photos

Here’s literally just a bunch of photos for you to peruse!

Myself and my fellow Tonga CHEPpers at our Swearing-In Ceremony

After swearing in, our new provincial leader took us to Victoria Falls! Both of those rock faces should be gushing water, but Zambia is in a bad drought.

The cruiser that took all my things to my new site!

My family is hard at work in the fields these days. This field is just to the left of my house!

One of my proudest dishes so far: soya and veg masala with homemade garlic and herb flatbreads!

Recently spent Thanksgiving in the provincial capital for a province wide meeting!! The food was so good, but we all got food poisoning afterwards

Photos of the inside to come after plastering and painting!

One Thing per Day

Hi everybody! Yes, I know, it’s been forever since I posted but it’s my blog and I’ll post when I want to!

I have lots to catch you up on, so I’ll just give you the headlines: since I last posted, I visited (and fell in love with) my new site, finished my vigorous Pre-Service Training, left Chongwe, swore in as an official Peace Corps Zambia volunteer and gave a speech in my local language while I was at it, and moved to my amazing village!

I arrived in Demu, Southern Province in mid-November, and until February, my role here is to learn from the community, meet lots of new people, and learn how to live on my own in the rural setting. This 3-month period is referred to as Community Entry. Having CE before beginning any programs is amazing because it allows me to understand the needs, wants, and readiness of my community, and approach programming with wisdom, hard-working counterparts, and a willingness from the community.

Community Entry is a highly non-structured time. While there are certain things I am meant to do, such as conducting participatory learning analyses, meet my local traditional leadership, and build a relationship with my clinic staff, I am left to get to know Demu as I see fit. Each day is wildly different from the previous, but I am still finding ways to build routine, such as drinking a cup of coffee and reading in the morning and eating dinner with my incredible host family most nights. On any given day, I might: walk to the clinic to chat with my clinic staff or make a poster, work in the fields with my family, walk around and get slightly lost and ask a new friend for help (Two of the first phrases I learned in Tonga were “please help me” and “where do I live?”), attend community meetings and the meetings of NGOs in the area, visit different churches, and more!

During PST, the visiting Volunteers of the Week all told us to aim to do One Thing per day during CE. “Pshh, One Thing per day?! Come on, that sounds like NOTHING” I thought to myself. That advice is REAL. Going out to to one thing per day feels like a real accomplishment. And by One Thing, I can mean just helping my bamaama cook dinner. Sometimes I don’t even do my One Thing. And I get hard on myself. But I have to remember that even though I didn’t do my One Thing, I still cooked over coals that day, or had a great conversation with a family member, or did my laundry by hand, or just did what I could, and give myself some grace. Community Entry, though it looks a lot like me sitting around and not doing much, is challenging. Every day, I stumble through citonga, remembering (or often forgetting) people’s names, cultural faux pas, differences in understanding (of time, of my charades to get the point across, of a word I’ve definitely leaned but can’t remember), and over bush paths. Even if I haven’t done my One Thing, I go to bed dog-tired at the end of the day.

And my host family is there for me through it all. Without them, I would simply not be functioning here. They help me start my brazier every single time (often, there’s already hot one by my door in the mornings!), fetch my water for me (they do not allow me to do it!!), feed me the yummiest food, provide me with guidance and good company, and support me however I need it. My biggest ally here is my Bamaama. Not only is she incredibly compassionate, and making cook, and an inspiring matriarch to the family, but she is also deeply involved in the local health efforts AND speaks English fluently. I lean on her for everything. She invites me to meetings, takes me to the places I should know and introduces me to the people I should meet, and is just incredibly understanding and has a great sense of humor about all of my integration challenges! My Bataata is the headman, which opens many doors for me. His voice holds weight—what he says, goes, what he plans, happens. He is so kind and always makes sure to greet me in the morning, even if it means coming home from the fields to do it. I have many younger sisters and brothers that work so hard in school and at home. My sisters are the ones that keep me functioning here. I feel simply so grateful to have this incredible host family on my side and just outside my door. I couldn’t do this without them!

The biggest lessons I have learned so far in CE are to extend myself some grace, try to do that One Thing per day, always cover my food, a greeting goes a long way, and that going to bed early is a beautiful thing.

This post is getting a little long, but I promise to try a bit harder to post more often; I know I have many loved ones who want to know how I am doing, and I thank you all for that! I will post pictures of my new place once I have the walls plastered and painted, so hopefully in about one month. Tulobonana lino-lino (see you soon)!

I feel like I can see the whole sky out here!

Hot Season Made Me Do It

Hi everybody! I know it’s been a long time since I’ve posted, but hey, it’s my blog and I’ll post when I want!

Most of you now are enjoying the autumn (my favorite season), and that means cute sweaters, yummy pastries, and pretty leaves. Over here, however, we’ve been slogging through hot season. Hot season means preemptively starting your day with oral rehydration salts, too-warm early morning bike rides to the training center, getting irritated by the smallest things, sleeping on top of my bed instead of in it, and taking cool baths instead of warm ones, while being outside one hundred. Percent. Of. The. Time.

I don’t mean to complain, but man, it’s HOT. So hot, in fact, that I was a little impulsive last weekend. I was suffering through the heat, and I convinced (begged) my friends to cut my hair. Niether of them had ever cut hair before, so after convincing them that they could do it, we chopped off about 5 inches of hair in the hopes of helping me stay cooler in this heat. We all learned as we went, and defintely learned what (not) to do next time a PCV wants their hair cut! It turned out pretty well, and most importantly, it can still go into a pony tail! (I’ll attatch a picture at the bottom of this post)

In addition to giving in to hot season impulses (like cutting my hair, running to the market across the street at lunch for an ice cold Coca Cola, and laying on top of my bed in clothes that would be immodest here instead of being social with my host family) I’ve also been working on my Tonga skills, getting (marginally) better on my bike, and starting to think about what kinds of programs I might be able to do at my permanent site. Last week, we had round-robin interviews where we met with our Director of Programming and Training, our Program Manager, and our Program Trainer to discuss how training is going, any challenges, our host families, and any preferences or concerns regarding site placement we may have. Next week, we all find out exactly where we’ll be placed. For someone like me, who’s learning a langauge that’s largely only spoken in one province, it’s not nearly as nerve-wracking as it is for someone who’s language is spoken throughout the country and doesn’t know which province they’re headed to yet.

Nevertheless, it’s exciting and nerve-wracking and every emotion in between.
It brings up so many question marks for me…Will they like me? Will they even want me? How close will I be to my friends? Will I get along with my host family? How will I set effective and appropriate boundaries? When can I get started? Can I go already?!

Also next week, we depart for two-week site visits, wherein we’ll stay with a current PCV already living in our province, do a workshop with a member of our host family, and then go to our actual site to check it out!! (I’ll provide a more detailed description when I come home and share my experience with you!) Our lovely site host has shared the menu with us, and let me just say, I’m so excited for some amazing American food after almost 6 weeks of mostly nsima and chicken (amongst a few other things)

Last week, we gave our first health talks in training! I got to give a health talk on why it’s important to take your child to the clinic early if they’re sick, as well as gave a nutritious cooking demo, to 17 moms at a local Under-5 Growth Monitoring Clinic. I also got to give one at a local secondary girl’s school about peer pressure and how to avoid it. These young women really opened up to us, got VERY into their skits, and showed us so much wisdom. Giving these talks has made me SO excited to get to site and start doing some health education!
I don’t have to much else to share with you at the moment, but here’s a few pictures to enjoy:

My new haircut! (Ignore the toothpaste on my collar)

Us and some of the girls we did our peer pressure talk with

Me and my friends Valerie and Kiran, sitting under the mango trees and out of the heat at our friend Monica’s house. Photo taken by her host brother! My feet are, unfortunately, almost always this dirty.

House Tour

Hi friends! It just occurred to me that I’ve barely shared any pictures of my host home, so I figured I’d give you all a mini-tour today! Please your hands and feet inside the vehicle at all times, and please no flash photography.

First up: My house

This is the small, two-roomed house I share with a fellow trainee. My room is on the left! My room has a concrete-clay floor, a tin roof, two teeny (screened) windows, and is built from plastered-over mud bricks. It gets VERY hot inside during the day, but the walls hold in the heat nicely for our colder evenings and nights.

Moving right along to my room now:

Obviously, my bed is covered by a mosquito net to prevent malaria, as well as creepy-crawlers that inevitably end up in my room. Being inside my mosquito net almost feels like a sanctuary; nothing bad can happen as long as I’m tucked inside! I keep my bike indoors while at home, as it can make our compound a target for thieves if kept outside (even locked). Of course, keeping it inside tracks in lots of dust. I have a small table and stool (that I am sitting at right now as I type this), where I keep my water filter, notebooks, toiletries, and odds-and-ends. Beneath my table is my rucksack, which holds only occasionally-used gear (my two suitcases are kept in storage at our training center, because as you can see, there’s not exactly room for them here!) Next to my table is my bucket of water to be filtered, my “dresser” with some clothes inside, and my wash basin. This wash basin is used when I bathe (twice per day, as is usual in Zambia) and also for laundry. Tucked into the corner is my little broom, which gets used 2-3 times per day to sweep out the ever-accumulating dust.

The view from my doorway shows both of our cooking structures:

The fact that I somehow managed to take this picture without the menagerie of chickens (nkuku), goats (npongo), and kids (bana) running about is a miracle (My host mom is a grandmother, and as everybody knows, Grandma’s house is always the place to be). The chickens love the structure on the left, and is where many of them lay their eggs. Most of the cooking happens inside and just outside of the structure on the right, which holds the cooking supplies and all of our water.

I did manage to snap a picture of some of the chickens sniffing around by my stoop! (Note the makeshift threshold, which does an ok-job of preventing dust from swirling in to my room). I often sit out on this stoop to study or journal.

The yard:

The first picture shows the yard to the right of the right cook structure. Underneath those mango trees is where we for our laundry, as well as where we lay out the museme (reed mat) when its too hot to sit in the sun. In the back, you can see my Bamaama’s home. The second picture is taken behind my home, which from left to right shows: bricks for a soon-to-be-built house, the goat house, my brother Ba Patmore’s house, my bathing structure (cisambilo) (my roommate has her own, too), the laundry, our toilet (cimbuzi) (you can just see it’s thatched roof here), and my sister Ba Benita’s house nestled into a small grove of mango trees.

Well, I hope you enjoyed the tour! Please remember to tip your tour guide 😉

I’m doing my best to take pictures, but I’m spending most of my time in the present. I’ll leave you with this picture of one of the many beautiful sunsets from this week.

(Very Early) Realizations After Two Weeks in Zambia

Can you all believe that it’s already been two weeks since I arrived? For me, it’s been a non-stop flurry of new experiences, new food, new people, new languages, and a new landscape. Being here has given me a lot of time to think on a lot of things, so here are 10 of my (very early) realizations:

1. As Americans, we are shockingly disconnected from the systems which serve us. Transportation, sanitation, food supply, waste management, water…You name it, we’re disconnected from it. I’ll share an example regarding food supply: My bamaama (host mom) raises chickens on our compound, and it’s lovely to regularly eat their free-range eggs. Last week, we were sitting together planning my day off from PST, and she said that I’ll be killing a chicken for our lunch. Hold up—what?!! I did my best to respond as graciously as possible, but clearly conveyed that that was way out of my comfort zone. It gave me a chance to think on how many steps removed with are from the food we’d normally buy at the grocery store, and it just spiraled from there. I’ve become very conscious of just how much trash I produce, because I throw it into a pit behind my hut—even though that’s pretty similar to how it is back home (though on a much larger scale), it prompts me to think about what kind of impact it would have if everybody’s trash just stayed in their backyard.

2. Biking is terrible. It just is. I don’t understand why people willingly roll themselves down rocky, narrow paths as fast as possible. This is an issue, seeing as how biking is my main mode of transportation these days!

3. You haven’t seen the sky properly until you’ve come to Zambia. Most mornings, I manage to time brushing my teeth with looking out over the horizon at the bright red sun rising over the mountains. I bike home as the amber sun lazily begins to drop further and further. At night, I can see the MILKY WAY. The stars are so bright and so densely packed into the night sky; it’s truly one of the most beautiful things I’ve seen in my life. I haven’t seen the full moon out yet, but I have a feeling I may just cry. After just a week or so at my homestay, I’m beginning to feel very connected to the sky and it’s rhythms.

4. Zambians are huge on greetings. There’s greetings for different times of the day, different activities, all kinds of things. You simply don’t walk past someone without greeting them. At first this felt overwhelming, but then I realized how beautiful it was that their culture ritualizes being excited to see one another. It always makes me smile. We barely even make eye contact or smile at people we walk past, let alone have a full-on exchange. Next time you walk past a stranger, I challenge you to smile and say hi to them—you’ll probably both love it.

5. I thought I was really going to miss showers, but being able to bathe outdoors at sunset every day is pretty nice.

6. I love the slower pace of life here in the village compared to home. Even though PST is busy and cram-packed, the rest of life…just isn’t. I can feel my body’s tempos slowing down to a really nice equilibrium. Slower pace=time for mindfulness and thoughtfulness in almost all tasks.

7. Going to bed early (generally before 21:00/9:00) and getting up early is AWESOME.

8. We discount water as a resource in the US in a gross way. If we wanted to, we could run the tap or the shower all day. Here in the village, we don’t have plumbing. Which means that my bacizyi (sisters) walk to the borehole to fetch water almost every day (Yes, they carry buckets of water on their heads, and YES, it is the most incredible thing to behold…the power of a woman.) Except right now, the borehole that my family pays to use is broken. And the next closest borehole’s water isn’t very clean. So they have to walk even further and spend even more time to bring home this resource. We have to use it very mindfully. Here in rural Zambia, there’s just not water to waste. I’m going to be placed in the Southern province for my service, which is currently experiencing extreme drought…which means that farmers can’t irrigate their fields to buy food for their family, boreholes and wells are drying up, and the landscape is dying. I’m never taking the embarrassingly long showers that I used to take again. Here, water is worth it’s weight in gold.

9. Zambia has some of the best-flavored potato chips I’ve ever had: Sweet Thai chili, Caribbean onion and balsamic vinegar, and spring onion and cheese. Dangerously good.

10. I’m falling in love with this country. Am I homesick? Obviously. Am I finding a new home in the friends that I’m making, my host family, and the common experiences we all share? Yes

My Life for the Next Ten Weeks

Mwapona buti, everybody! I’ve been in Zambia now for just over a week, and I figured that it’s time to give you all an update on my life.

When I arrived in Zambia, we were greeted warmly at the airport by Peace Corps staff and whisked away to a lodge, where we received a three-day orientation. Since then, we’re moved to our training sites.

Right now, and for the next ten weeks, myself and 34 other CHEP trainees are living in villages outside of a town near Lusaka while we complete our 11-week Pre-Service Training (PST) program. We all have host families that we are living with during this time to help us fully immerse into the Zambian culture. PST covers topics such as language (I’m learning Tonga, which means I’ll be placed in the Southern province, the land of Victoria Falls), technical skills, medical, safety and security, and cross-cultural exchange. The days are long, and feel like a mix between summer camp and boot camp.

Let me give you an idea of what my day looks like:

5:45: Wake up with the rooster’s crows (there’s a really fun word for that in Tonga, comment below to learn it 🙂 ) and crawl out of bed from underneath my mosquito net

6:15: Brush my teeth outdoors while watching the sun rise over the mountains, get ready for the day, and journal for a little bit

6:45: Wash my face in my bathing structure, after my Bamaama (host mom) heats up water for me

7:00: Breakfast of bread, peanut butter, coffee, and fruit, before our next-compound neighbors (and fellow trainees) meet us to bike to training. The ride is rough, and probably about 2 miles each way.

8:00: PST starts for the day. We’ll have one session until 10, then a break for tea time, another session from 10:30 to 12:30.

12:30: Lunch, packed by Bamaama! We get an hour for lunch, to socialize, speak with our language teachers, and meet with our mentor.

13:30: Sessions begin again, and go until 15:00, where we break for tea time again. (We LOVE our tea time! Zambian snacks, tea, and coffee are put out for us to enjoy)

15:30: We come together for one last session of the day, and conclude around 17:00. People from the same villages/neighborhoods typically group together to bike home during the sunset.

17:30: We arrive home, and Bamaama heats water for us to bathe with (and I definitely need to, it is HOT these days and the ride is hard!). I study after bathing until it is time to eat.

19:00: Time for dinner! In Zambian culture, men, women, and children eat separately, so we just eat with Bamaama. Dinner usually consists of nsima, chicken or another kind of meat, a vegetable dish, a delicious tomato and onion relish, and often another starch. We speak in Tonglish (Tonga+English) for a while, before I feel the need to wind down for the night.

20:00: I return back to my room for a bit to do a bit more studying and then I lay in bed to read for a bit before going to bed.

21:00: Lights out! Time to get some rest before doing this again the next day.

If that sounds like a lot, IT IS! I’m always exhausted, always challenged, always learning, always smiling, always crying. Heading into hot season, days often climb up to 90+ degrees, and the days and the heat drain you. I’m making lovely new like-hearted friends and constantly pushing myself outside of my comfort zone.

There’s so much more to tell you all, but for now, I’ll just leave you with a few pictures!