it's too hot to live in a village

so i'm in chipata. i've been here all week, partially because I'm lazy, partially because the allure of ice cubes is so great. it's really, really hot. Today is independence day. we are celebrating by watching prison break and baking cookies and pizza.

I'm feeling a little disillusioned with village life, probably because I've been away from it for 2 weeks and the distance makes me feel nostalgic for the developed world and also feel like "what the hell am I actually doing in the village anyways?" Hopefully I can get some things done come November, and get my garden ready for the rains, and have a couple meetings with health committees to start setting up some facilitation trainings. But mostly i'm feeling a little annoyed with people. My clinic staff is pissing me off, people keep hitting on me and it's annoying. The lack of respect that educated people here pay to villagers is incredibly frustrating. And my clinic staff thinks people aren't having sex and thus spreading HIV because they are too busy watching traditional dance, which is crap. The problems just feel daunting because they are so vast and the harvest/ weather schedule really dictates everything we do so you really have to work around/ within that. People also are very stuck in their ways, they have a very hard time trying to think creatively about problem solving. And there is no planning, or rationing of resources. The few people who do these things are doing well for themselves but the cycle of life here is just set in stone. Right now our water pump is running low, so the clinic ties it up all day so that the villagers won't use it, but I get to use it because i'm the white woman. Frustrating.

We always tend to feel guilty when we are out of the village, but the reality of this job is that we are out of the village almost 50% of the time between cultural days, vacation, required trainings and meetings, provincial house time, medical trips, and visiting friends. I'm starting to utilize these breaks from the village more too for my mental sanity. Once the rains come we can't work very much because all the farmers (so.... everyone) is really busy, so we tend to go on vacations. Otherwise we are just sitting at home watching the water come through our grass roof.

One of my neighbors just had a baby. It's her 5th boy and it was born a month premature. It's so cute and tiny. When the babies are really tiny their skin is a lot lighter so everyone says "ah, it's brown like kerry!" They might have me name this one. When you name a baby you are responsible for buying it lots of presents - a lot of volunteers end up naming a lot of babies.

books: Breaking Dawn - Stephenie Meyer, A Spot of Bother - Mark Haddon, Atonement - Ian McEwan, Faking It - Jennifer Crusie, When You Are Engulfed In Flames - David Sedaris, Adventure Divas - Holly Morris, Jesus Land - Julia Scheeres.

Learning My Lesson

So I'm in Lusaka. I was painting my house with my neighbor, and we make the paint out of ash or mud or charcoal. We pounded the charcoal, mixed it with water, boiled it and then I started splattering the kitchen and latrine with paint jackson pollock-style, and i got a big piece of charcoal lodged in my eye. 24 hours later the eye doctor in Lusaka was digging it out with a needle. Having needles near your eyeball is terrifying. But at least I have my vision back and I've gotten to spend some time in Lusaka not actually sick. So I saw a movie, explored public transport, i've been eating wondrous foods like bacon, coke light, feta cheese, pizza. These are things you take for granted in America. In fact yesterday I spent more than 20 minutes in the sauce/dressings aisle of Spar (grocery store). I was just dreaming about the balsamic vinegar, the thai red curry, the multitude of chutneys. I bought some mustard and it was a splurge on my budget.

But life back in the village has been good - we finally got girls club started and i'm coming up with some more ideas for programming at the school. I've been working a lot on my house - we put in cement on the floors, and I've been making artwork for the walls. I've mostly stopped being a creative cook because I'm getting lazy, and also it's too hot to care. But I still like to spice things up every once in awhile.

Lusaka is such a crazy place. There's such a huge disparity of wealth here. People are either really wealthy or really poor. We were leaving a ritzy bar yesterday and we saw 4 mercedes in a row. We proceeded to find an unlicensed taxi to take us to a 2 for 1 pizza joint. People dress in nice clothes too - heels, glitter, sequins. I tried to pack my clothes without holes in them.

I'll post again next week.