Bits of info

7-31-10
Still have laptop battery, so I’ll type another story or 2.
(Still ignoring that my parents blog about me exists. So I don’t know what you may or may not have read about me there. Still think it’s a little creepy)
So July 29th was my 3 months in the village. Crazy. It has FLOWN by. I finally got 2 pieces of my furniture this week, a bookshelf and a food prep table-no such thing as kitchen counters in huts. Took 3 months but the table is fabulous. Never thought I’d be so happy to have a table. LOVE it. I cook sometimes but not much. Partly because I had to take outside, where I’m borrowing a small table from my family and where there’s fire, everything I wanted to use. Me cooking also = the musungu show. (what’s the white girl have today??) Ah, there a lots of other reasons why I don’t cook, too. Working on that. Pretty pumped to get my dining table too, hopefully this coming week. Also in love with my bookshelf. Now, if my house would just get built. My temporary house is fine, but I’m really excited to have a cement floor, and one which is remotely level. Hopefully by the time I get internet to post this, I’ll have a report on some construction progress. Supposed to happen next week. Now, all I have are some bricks, not even enough for the house. And they have to knock down another small house first, where mine will go. There’s some drama there because it’s currently housing 4 boys who have come here for school, grades 8 & 9, because they don‘t have teachers or something where they‘re from. I’m staying out of that one. I didn’t decided where the house would go or make the plan to keep boys there and then kick them out. I just came here to be a volunteer and hang out in Africa. Not cause drama.

(my temporary house below)

I think I’m the only volunteer waiting on a house to be built. Good thing it’s me and not some others. I’m really patient about it, perhaps too much so, in that I didn’t push for it’s construction early enough. My temporary house is round, a former kitchen/store house. Maybe I don’t mind staying in it because I can’t help but laugh every time my batata (host father) tells me I’m staying in his chicken. Never occurred to me that it might be easy to mix up the words chicken and kitchen, but say them, they‘re close.
People seem to want to know what my daily life looks like, a typical day. Don’t think there’s such a thing as a typical day, not yet anyway. I’ll just try to describe a few things. I get water for washing and bathing from a small stream nearby, but have to carry it uphill back to the house. My batata grows sugar cane, which all Zambians LOVE to eat, especially school kids. Batata tries to sell it but they don’t have money so they come a fetch water and do other chores for him and get paid in sugarcane. So lots of days I don’t have to fetch water, which is nice. Drinking water comes from a pump/bore hole at the school. Too far to carry all the water I need for bathing and laundry. Drinking water gets chlorine then filtered. Chlorine is prob not necessary since it’s from the bore hole and gets filtered and now that I’ve been here a while. But I have so many stomach issues I do it just in case. The chlorine is Clorin, special for drinking water, I think subsidized by USAID, but not for sure.
Ok laptop battery is dying, more next week when I get to electricity!