Mwasha Diving Team

At the bottom of the stream I could see what I thought was a clay pot
half buried in the sand and gravel. I convinced Martin that we would
have to go swimming on a hot day and go treasure hunting. I told him
I would teach him how to do a cannonball. When the day came he invited
the best divers in the area, and the pool party began.
Below is hopefully the training video I took of them attempting to dive
headfirst. Good stuff.

 

Peace Corps poker game. We didn't have chips so we improvised.
imbalala (nuts) are worth 1, sweeties (candy) are worth 2, and impwa
(yellow eggplant) worth 5. Check out how much bigger of a pile of
impwa I had!

There's no grocery stores for about 100 miles. Instead, we have "tuck shops".
Here's one I like about 27 kilometers from my site. You can buy anything from
soap to candy, beans and rice, fresh rolls (when his wife makes them), and
citenge (the fabric used for everything here). This one also has electricity
and a fridge, making him a pretty awesome guy with orange Fanta!

  

Inside he's got even more random things. Some bike parts, kids toys, clothes,
talk time for your phone, cheap jewelry, tea, even some watercolors.

Soccer game between local villages Kasuba (red) and Mwita (zebra). About
half of the players were barefoot.

Without sidelines the kids kind roam the edges of the field playing their
own games.

Home team Kasuba scores. Kids and drunks storm the field.

Pond harvesting. Knotted net. Frustration.

Actually we weren't really harvesting, but first clearing out all the tadpoles
from the ponds, then redistributing the baby fish to new ponds.

Everyone gets in on it.

 

For a couple weeks our water pump broke. We found a guy
to come help fix it. Pretty interesting how you dismantle
a 9 meter long pipe with a slippery metal rod down the middle
without dropping anything along the way.

Fixed! The bottom 3 meter long pipe was rusted at the
joint. Could have been much worse.

From the archives. End of dry season vs. middle of rainy season.

Cleanup crew.

On the Ranch

Just got done with my longest stay between coming into town, 6 weeks, and a lot has happened since I was here.

Mama Gives Birth

Back sometime in December I noticed Mama was getting a bit fat. I knew she was probably old enough to get pregnant, so I assumed Mama would soon become a mama. Mama has begun a weird behavior when she is on my bed where she tries to burrow into my sheets. She will walk around a pile of sheets looking for the best place to push her way in and lay down. I've seen this behavior in cats before, but it's strange when that place is right under your leg that's propped up being used as a stand for your book. She started this behavior in early February, but began meowing strangely. Took me a second to realize she was in labor. Got her off the bed, blocked her path above my bed (where she likes to go chase rats and put hundreds of tiny holes in the plastic in my roof), and moved her pillow to the floor. About an hour later, we had 2 baby kittens squeaking about, both looking exactly like Mama, same gray patterning.

Mama being a mama.

The kittens are about a month old now and are very healthy. Still working out who they will be given to.

Mama's clones.

Malaria Again

About a week before the kittens were born I started getting headaches I couldn't get rid of without painkillers. I also had a bit of a cough, but didn't think much of it, just a dry irritating cough. This was a Sunday. Monday, despite feeling a bit icky I went over to Chris's and spent the morning and early afternoon at their place talking about their gardens and working on their piggery. I left feeling a bit worse but still functional. Tuesday I would meet Diana in Lubwe, 12 kilometers away to, get some dog food she was bringing up. Network failing because of extended power outages and rain all morning made this rendezvous a nightmare, not to mention a flat tire coming back from Chris's. Monday evening I felt a bit dizzy and noticed my forehead was hot. I definitely had a fever. Checked. 104.6. Text medical. Told me to give myself a malaria test. Checked. Expired. Perfect.

Used the self test anyway which consists of poking yourself in the end of the finger to get a drop of blood to put on a test strip that kinda looks like a pregnancy test. A few drops of solution from a bottle and you wait until the solution pushes your blood drop past a marker and wait for it to turn pink. Negative. But last time I had malaria I tested negative, but definitely had malaria. But I didn't have this cough, so maybe it's not malaria.

The night was terrible. Fever kept me awake, cold chills kept me sweating and tossing and turning, leaving not much dry bed/sheet to sleep on. What a night.

Tuesday morning comes and without knowing when Diana would reach Lubwe because of the network and rains, I take off loaded up with painkillers in the rain to Lubwe. As soon as I get to Lubwe the rains stop. I get some shopping done and wait a few hours until Diana comes to make the exchange. Since I still hadn't had a non-expired malaria test I head to Lubwe Mission Hospital to find a test. Never been to an African hospital before, especially alone. So I walked in and got vague directions from a guard looking guy and walked into a building with a kind of open square courtyard with a hallway around the outside and people sitting and standing everywhere. This is the line? This is impossible. I look around at the signs above the doors and see a few “Examination Rooms” a “Dispensary”, and “Laboratory”. I figure the laboratory might be able to give me directions. Just inside the door to the lab is a table with piles of malaria tests, and seemingly no line. I spoke with the lab tech and gave myself another test. Negative. A woman and child came in to get a test while I was waiting on my results. I glanced at their test. Positive.

Headed back home and got the only ride from Lubwe to my turnoff I have ever gotten, a huge cantor turned onto my road just as I reached it full of kids in uniform. I yelled if they were going to Nkulunga (the school nearby) and they said yes. They stopped the truck for me and hauled my bike up.

Medical says since malaria test came back negative then they would treat me for an upper respiratory tract infection. Start taking Erithromycin, it's in your medkit. No it's not. Double check. Still no. Great, not I have to go back to Lubwe again tomorrow. I met with my closest neighbors, a married couple Jim and Julie who dug through their medkits. They are newer volunteers than me so they must have the medicine that is supplied to us, right? Wrong. So I go into the market and find a shady looking pharmacy sandwiched between the shop I buy my peanuts from and a bike repair station and speak with a lady who speaks no English. I showed her the next of the name of the medicine I needed and she replies that, “we don't have”, grabbing a bottle with a bunch of bubblegum pink pills under some crazy Asian language with the only English on the bottle saying something about keeping out of reach of children. The pills would look tasty if the label said bubblegum, but I decide not to risk it and head back to the hospital.

I went back to the laboratory and said that doctors in Lusaka said I had an upper respiratory tract infection because of headache and cough and what they prescribed. I went to the dispensary and they gave me the erythromycin and panadol. I expected to have to pay or sign something. Nothing. It's free.

No free ride back home today, had to make the trip myself.

Thursday morning the pills have not broken my fever, which medical says “concerns them”. Awesome. They suggest I go to Mansa today to get another malaria test. I was just at a hospital two days ago getting a test. I told them I would take my second expired malaria test just in case, but since last time I had malaria I tested negative, maybe I should just start coartem now. They agreed. So now I'm taking 8 pills a day for the possible respiratory tract infection, and 8 more for possible malaria, plus painkillers, plus sore throat lozenges. At this point my body begins to ache. I have a hard time walking, all my joints hurt, even my fingers. That night my temperature dropped to 95. By the second dose of coartem I'm feeling better, fever leaving, appetite returning. I hadn't eaten much all week. By Monday I'm back to normal, but still stuffing my face with food.

Chicken Drama 

The Chicken Family

So when I left the village for Christmas and other holidays, I wasn't around to eat the eggs of my hen “Miss Johnny White” so she laid 8 eggs and started roosting. Eggs take 21 days to hatch, and when the first 2 hatched, she abandoned the nest with 6 eggs in it. So now I have 6 fertilized eggs mostly incubated, unhatched, mother gone. I get out my headlamp and “candle” the eggs. 5 have something inside, 1 undeveloped. Odi food. Now what about the others. I try hatching one on my own, carefully peeling the shell off. The chick is alive, but premature. It takes a few breaths, then falls still. So they still have a few days to go. I get out some candles and rig up an incubation setup to keep the eggs warm, give them oxygen, and I go in every few hours and give them a turn. The next morning one of them has begun to hatch. I help it out and for the rest of the day he lives. But what to do at night? Just before dusk I return the eggs to where the hen sleeps as well as the newborn chick in the hopes that she helps keep it warm at night with the other two. By morning it didn't make it. But another has begun hatching. This time, under the advice of Chris, I let it continue to hatch on it's own. By the morning of the third day it has hatched and following mom. Though alive and kicking, the grass it a bit too tall and it's quite a bit smaller than it's brother and sister, I had to rescue it a few times to help it find mom. By this time I give up on the remaining 3 eggs. Odi food again.

DIY egg incubator.

For a time I had up to 12 chickens. Miss Johnny White had 3 chicks, Eve had 2, Bambi had 2, then there was Shadow and Prince. Now I'm back down to 9. Miss Johnny White lost all her chicks, and Bambi lost one of hers. The remaining 3 chicks are growing fast and look healthy.

Hut Problems

Hooray for rainy season! Though my favorite time of the year here is by far rainy season where everything grows and I fall asleep to thunderstorms many of the nights, it isn't without it's problems. Since making my porch I have been fighting to keep the porch dry. Since the porch was added on after the construction of the hut, the grass that was put over the porch laid on top of the grass for the roof. So, the water draining from the top of the roof went underneath the porch. Imagine putting shingles on backward. So last year I had all new grass put on the front of the hut to fix this problem. A few weeks ago I got up in the morning to see the middle post of my porch had collapsed in the middle of the night. I let the chickens out of their house, took some pictures, and went back to bed.

Just go back to sleep...

Later that day after showing my neighbors what had happened, a group of guys came over to fix it, adding stronger, new poles and adjusting some. But now, after all the work of putting new grass on top, was kinda useless because all the grass moved around during the fall, plus the plastic I put up underneath the porch to catch any leaks was torn because of the movement and readjustment. 

The guys over to help fix my porch.

It's also fun after rainstorms because after putting a cement floor to my porch (which was constructed while I was gone and is now basically a ditch) it fills with water. So I have to bail out most days.

Snake I found in my shed.

Mpashi. Don't step on.

Positive Living Group's garden of soybeans (so far).

Mama and Odi trying to get along.

Some of the vegetables from my garden.

I put some leftover flour on the ground for the animals. Odi ended
up with a layer of flour on her tongue that she couldn't get off.

I'm going to do it again.

Couldn't help myself.

Rainy Season!

Sorry to take so long getting back to you. It's been a bit busy throughout the holidays and I got a bit lazy keeping up with the blog.

I guess the biggest news is that I finally got a dog. I had always wanted to get one here, but I never felt that it was a good time, or that I'd be able to take care of it well enough. Diana had 3 stray puppies that found their way into her house and just like the kitten I ended up with, she began feeding them, and of course we got attached to the little things. One ended up running off, leaving a white one with spots and a brown one that was obviously the runt. We named them “Odi” and “Kalibu”. In Bemba when you approach a house or something it's customary to begin with saying “Odi”, asking if you are welcome to come in. The reply, if it is in fact okay to approach, is “Kalibu”. We got a lot of laughs telling villagers their names. 

Odi posing in front of my herb garden.

I ended up taking Odi home with me in a basket, 43 kilometers, a marathon. On the way I stopped by a market and bought a goat's foot for 1 Kwacha, about 20 cents. I arranged my closest, Innocent, neighbor to help feed her, I'd give him extra food each month, to allow more leftovers for Odi. I supply the treats, kapenta and cisense (pronounced chi-cent-say), aka. baby fish. She's growing fast and learning sort of. She can play fetch with a tennis ball, but gets distracted easy. She steals things my neighbors leave around, including cups, hats, rags, and tools. I have to go return these throughout the day. Although she's beginning to understand that she's not allowed inside, she still likes to play with my cat, Mama. But, Mama does not want to play and groans and hisses and swats at Odi. In response, Odi thinks this is a fun game, and tries to play more. Mama gets treed a lot.

Odi "playing" with Mama

I've begun taking Odi on my bike rides around the villages, she's a bit slow, but can do 13 kilometers in a day, pretty good for a little puppy.

For a quick holiday vacation I went up to Kapishya Hot Springs, in Northern Province. A group of us almost went during our Easter vacation last year, but it didn't work out. The place was amazing. A small river runs along the lodge, feeding the river is a small hot spring. The land has been worked by the owner for the past decade or so. Almost anything will grow there, so I spent quite a while wandering their gardens. As a parting gift, the owner, Mark Harvey, gave me a ton of seeds and cuttings, as well as about 10 coffee seedlings to give to one of my farmers. 

Kapishya Hot Springs

Just a kilometer or so away from the lodge is a rocky hilly area. For thousands of years, the area was inhabited with hunter gatherers, who left behind, among stone tools and other artifacts, rock paintings. I was given directions, and ended up finding 3 sites nearby. The concentric circles and the circle with the lines radiating is supposed to represent weather. The other looks to be a tiger fish.

Tigerfish painting

No one has done real scientific research on these specific
paintings, but the estimates are something like 20,000 years old.

Coming back to the village next week I'll be working on a few projects. I bought some seeds to begin a Positive Living Group. I forget if I've mentioned this before, but I hope to create a group of about 10 people who are motivated only by the idea that a group will get together once a week and talk about HIV/AIDS, creating a place for anyone (infected or not) to learn about HIV. The group will meet at their garden, weeding, digging, and talking. The gardens will create a bit of income for the members, and I have a few books that can help guide our meetings. I don't want to plan out too much of how the group will be months from now. Here, you can never predict exactly what will happen, so we as a group will figure out how we want to continue.

I've also begun a project for myself. As I travel I'm always looking for unique carvings and statues. A lot of what you can find here in Zambia was not made here. Finding locally made things is difficult. So, I decided I'd make them myself. I bought some chisels and sandpaper from a hardware store, and found some wood around my house that should work nicely. My first project is an African wild dog. I thought I was going to get a good one in Tanzania. I found a carver at a small shop. He said he already had a dog carving, but it wasn't quite right. I showed him a few pictures I had taken of wild dogs in Botswana, and he said he could do it. I came back a few days later, and all he had done was paint over it, saying he had sold the other and made a new one. Hah.

I believe my fish farming group is also about to begin redistributing fish throughout their ponds. When the fingerlings were delivered earlier last year, not all that were supposed to be delivered were given, many died, and some probably escaped. The surviving fish now have grown and begun breeding. So now we can start moving the babies to new ponds to let them grow. The group was supposed to be building a housing structure for their pigs, but that has fallen through. We will have to wait until the rainy season ends to start construction.

This year I was finally ready for my garden and the rainy season. I have been having trouble getting pepper and tomato seeds to germinate, so I bought a pack for a few of my good gardeners, who gave me back a few of the ones they got to grow. I transplanted those to my garden and they seem to be growing well. I also have pumpkin, watermelon, pole beans, green/spring onion, garlic, coriander, hot pepper, maize, sunflower, and mint. A friend gave me some poly pots to grow tree seedlings in. I've planted some mango, avocado, red mahogany, moringa, and citrus. I had some pawpaw seeds I planted several months ago, but forgot about them. About 20 of them have sprouted, so I've moved those to poly pots as well. Hopefully I will have enough trees to give each family in my village a few by the time I leave in September.

Mabote, from the water pump. The trail going straight forward leads to my hut.

Although the rains can mess up your day because you never know when they might come or for how long, rainy season is by far my favorite season. I love falling asleep to the sound of rain, and on the nights it isn't raining there is a symphony of insects and frogs all around. Some nights it's storming all around me, but the sky is perfectly clear above my hut, so I can watch the stars and flashes of lightning off in the distance. Everything grows in the rainy season, so the village has turned lush and green. A wall of grass is slowly surrounding my site, a blanket of green covers what was dead dry earth. Mangoes still drop throughout the night, giving me breakfast for the cool morning. 

Lightning over Lake Bangweulu

Kasanka Bat Migration!

Cattle Egret in Kasanka National Park

Puku and Baboons grazing

Kasanka is known for it's Sitatunga, tough to see them anywhere else

Weaver bird

Elephants. We saw 17 one evening. 3 of those had poaching injuries.

Bat forest in Kasanka. The fruit bats, or flying foxes, migrate around central
Africa and congregate in Kasanka during the end of the year. They sleep
in about 1 hectare of swamp. 8 million 1 pound fruit bats.

Went during a full moon.

Which was gorgeous.

Each night they come to feed on local fruit trees.

Kwanga and Village Life

Early in the morning people line the fences for a good place to watch the ceremony.

Groups of dancers come and go, drumming on drums|
and showing off their skills. Sometimes the dancers
are quite young.

Here comes the Chief!

Senior Chief Mwewa
Kwanga is a ceremony of thanksgiving, unity, and all those other buzz
words for big parties. But what you won't normally hear is the story of
how Kwanga began. A long time ago there was this old chief, and in
typical powerful old chief fashion he wanted more power, even to the point
ordering newborn boys to be killed. The villages in the surrounding
communities didn't like this idea too much, so they planned the murder
of the chief. His servants and helpers drilled and plugged a hole in one
of his boats. They arranged the strongest swimmers to be his boatsmen
for the day. When they got out to the middle of the lake, they unplugged
the hole and bailed ship. The old chief was left to drown in the lake.

Mama found a chameleon

Welcome to the hot season.

Martin's rocking garden.