One more post while I have internet

The Office on my iPod makes me so happy. If anyone at the guest house can hear me laughing, they're probably creeped out because my room is otherwise silent.

It's hard to write about Zambia after 12 days in this nice part of Pretoria, basically = America. So, I decided I'd just try to remember things I thought were worth sharing.

The super sweet nurse in Zambia (who was taking care of me the Thursday I was in the clinic there, waiting to fly to SA on Friday) told me I had a beautiful abdomen when she was cleaning me up from the ultrasound. She seemed really disappointed that it would soon be blemished by an appendectomy scar.

Zambians used "corrupted" English words a lot, mostly for things that there wasn't a word for in the local language, also for telling time. They use a 24 hr clock, military time, so I get home from training at seventeen thirty or eighteen hours. Often things get Bembalized. (Bemba is the language I'm learning. Not sure, but I think it's probably similar in the other languages, too.) For example: spoon=supuni, clinic=kiliniki, wheelbarrow=wilubala, cabbage=kabeji. It seems that no one uses numbers past 3 in local languages. I tried to practice counting in Bemba with the little girls in my host family, 5 and 9 yrs old. They started counting with me in Bemba but... "chimo, fibili, fitatu, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten"
People also sometimes have strange names, seems like their parents just picked English words that sounded cool. My host uncle is named Try Well, my language instructor is named Golden, another is named Rave. Now, I just heard these from another volunteer, but there are kids named: Talktime, Computer, Suitcase, and my fave, Made In Usa (pronounced made in oosa).

Also, people tend to mix up L and R sounds, so strange for us english speakers who think that L and R sound completely different. I think it's because they don't seem to have a hard R sound, it's more of a rolled R, which I guess can kind of sound like L. "Kerry, Kelly, what's the difference?" they say to my fellow trainee friend, Kerry. But Blair? Yeah, right, try pronouncing that one if you don't distinguish between L and R. Needless to say, no one can pronounce my name. Sometimes it comes out Blah, but I think my host mom has settled into something like Bryah. I'm looking forward to being given a Bemba name.

Oh, when I was in the clinic in Lusaka, I watched Zambian tv, which from the little I've seen, not so great. All the commercials are like bad local ones in the US. The most crazy show I saw was called Ready for Marriage. This tv personality guy interviewed several young women about themselves, I think advertising themselves as "ready for marriage" but I'm not exactly sure. He was asking very probing moral questions and all the women seemed very shy and uncomfortable. One woman had a child as the result of being raped and the host was like, aren't you lying about that? People sent text messages in about another girl who was shy and quiet on tv, but they said she was really loud and cheeky in real life. They were outting her for presenting herself falsely on tv. I also watched American music videos but I'd never seen or heard of any of them.

I had a follow up appointment with my surgeon on Friday and we were running late because of bad traffic. My South African Peace Corps driver says, don't worry, we will not be late. I thought, ok, but how's he going to do that? Silly me, he just put on his flashers and treated red lights like rolling stop signs.

I'm going back to Zambia tomorrow! I leave the guest house at 6am, fly out of JoBurg at 10:30am and get into Lusaka at 12:30. Not sure what happens after that, but I think I'll first go to the PC office, then see what they say. I'll probably be pretty busy after I get back, catching up with training and such. I'm excited to be going back; though it's been nice and relaxing here, it's been tough to make myself study Bemba on my own. I can't exactly make up farm visit field trips, and I miss my training group.
And I'm still really excited about being a Peace Corps Volunteer in Zambia. (but I have enjoyed 2 weeks of pizza and ice cream :)