Mwashibukeni Mukwai!
There's some more Bemba for you. That means good morning. So the last week has been pretty intense. I met the family I'll be staying with for the next 9 weeks on Saturday. They're extremely nice. They have 4 sons ranging from 16 to 7 years old. The food isn't too bad, surprisingly.
My typical day goes as follows; at 6:00 i get up and rush to my fish pond by 7:00. Then I have to feed my fish and any sort of maintenance needed. Then, language runs from 8:00 until 12:30. I go home and eat with my 'mother' (bamayo) and then head back to school for Technical training at 2:00. That lasts until 5:00 at which point in time I head back to my pond to do some more work. If I'm not going out with other Peace Corps people I'm in bed by 9:00 which is kind of nice. Other volunteers and I try to go out a few nights/week but the 2 bars here are out of beer most of the time which is pretty strange.
One thing that I've really gotten good at since I've been here is drinking warm beer. Most of the places around here don't have electricity so cold (or even cool) beer is a huge bonus. Just to put things into perspective...the current exchange rate is about 4300 kwacha / dollar. The beer here is between 2700 and 4200 kwacha. I can go into town here on the weekends and get a decent meal for 8000 kwacha. You can buy a whole, live chicken for about 10000. Everything is quite cheap as you can see.
This morning the volunteers and I had a practice pond harvest where we emptied two of the ponds at the training center and then harvested all of the fish and sold them. The going rate was 8000 kwacha for 1 kg. I brought my homestay family a kg for lunch and they were very appreciative.
Speaking of chickens a couple of paragraphs ago...here's a ridiculous little anecdote. So the smelly hippy I've spoken of, she is a 'vegan.' She calls herself this even though she eats fish. Anyways, we were talking the other day in our cross cultural training about receiving gifts. She asked about what to do if someone gives her a chicken because she wouldn't eat it. Fair enough. Then somebody questions what she would do with it and she responds with, "I would set the chicken free." That just shows you the caliber of individuals I have to put up with over here. What makes that even more ridiculous is that all of the farm animals here are free range, so they have pretty good lives. Anyways, I just wanted to pass that on because I laughed at her when she said that.
Hmmm...what else. Oh, if any of you would like to send a letter, make sure to write 'air mail' on it. Some people have been getting envelopes in less than two weeks. Oh yeah, we've had 2 people ET (early terminate). They couldn't handle the pressure or situations so they are both gone. We started with 24 and are now down to 22.
So far my language is coming along. I still have the vocabulary and grammar skills of a 5 year old which is quite humbling, but it's getting better. The best Bemba speaker at the end of training gets to give a speech which is broadcast on ZNBC, the national television station. I found that to be pretty funny.
Thank you all for the emails. They help a lot. I miss you all.
Go Hawks.
My typical day goes as follows; at 6:00 i get up and rush to my fish pond by 7:00. Then I have to feed my fish and any sort of maintenance needed. Then, language runs from 8:00 until 12:30. I go home and eat with my 'mother' (bamayo) and then head back to school for Technical training at 2:00. That lasts until 5:00 at which point in time I head back to my pond to do some more work. If I'm not going out with other Peace Corps people I'm in bed by 9:00 which is kind of nice. Other volunteers and I try to go out a few nights/week but the 2 bars here are out of beer most of the time which is pretty strange.
One thing that I've really gotten good at since I've been here is drinking warm beer. Most of the places around here don't have electricity so cold (or even cool) beer is a huge bonus. Just to put things into perspective...the current exchange rate is about 4300 kwacha / dollar. The beer here is between 2700 and 4200 kwacha. I can go into town here on the weekends and get a decent meal for 8000 kwacha. You can buy a whole, live chicken for about 10000. Everything is quite cheap as you can see.
This morning the volunteers and I had a practice pond harvest where we emptied two of the ponds at the training center and then harvested all of the fish and sold them. The going rate was 8000 kwacha for 1 kg. I brought my homestay family a kg for lunch and they were very appreciative.
Speaking of chickens a couple of paragraphs ago...here's a ridiculous little anecdote. So the smelly hippy I've spoken of, she is a 'vegan.' She calls herself this even though she eats fish. Anyways, we were talking the other day in our cross cultural training about receiving gifts. She asked about what to do if someone gives her a chicken because she wouldn't eat it. Fair enough. Then somebody questions what she would do with it and she responds with, "I would set the chicken free." That just shows you the caliber of individuals I have to put up with over here. What makes that even more ridiculous is that all of the farm animals here are free range, so they have pretty good lives. Anyways, I just wanted to pass that on because I laughed at her when she said that.
Hmmm...what else. Oh, if any of you would like to send a letter, make sure to write 'air mail' on it. Some people have been getting envelopes in less than two weeks. Oh yeah, we've had 2 people ET (early terminate). They couldn't handle the pressure or situations so they are both gone. We started with 24 and are now down to 22.
So far my language is coming along. I still have the vocabulary and grammar skills of a 5 year old which is quite humbling, but it's getting better. The best Bemba speaker at the end of training gets to give a speech which is broadcast on ZNBC, the national television station. I found that to be pretty funny.
Thank you all for the emails. They help a lot. I miss you all.
Go Hawks.
posted by Brett @ 7:38 AM
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