One Month Down

Hello from Lusaka everyone-
Well things here are quite great right now. We've come to Lusaka for a few days to receive our work permits and NRC cards. I have posted several new pictures for your viewing pleasure as well. (I'm having problems getting pictures up right now, but I'll do all I can to get some new pictures up for you.) Just to pre-explain one of the albums there....I new that several of you wanted to see what I do for washing dishes and other daily activities so I took a bunch of pictures which would allow you to see these activities as well as my house and other things. I will admit, it required me to take pictures of myself. I'm not too proud of that but it had to be done. To make things more entertaining for myself (and hopefully you) I made a Where's Waldo theme out of it. Instead of Waldo, I scoured my endless stacks of US Weekly, Rolling Stone, and Tiger Beat and found a few pictures of everyone's favorite pop star, Britney Spears. I have so cleverly hidden one of these pictures in every one of my Daily Activities pictures, so if you accept the challenge, feel free to try to find her. Some are more difficult than others. I'll have you know that I had to retake a few of them because I would start laughing at the ridiculousness of me taking a picture of myself in the middle of Africa doing different things.
I'm going to be adding 4 new posts today, and Curt recently added 5 before that so if it's been awhile since you've been here, there's a lot of reading to be done. I hope you enjoy it.

Mr. Bright Peterson

Well, that's my new name. When meeting villagers or other Zambians I'll introduce myself by saying, "Ishina lyandi nine Brett Pearson." Then they'll say, "Oh, Bright Peterson." I'll respond with, "No. Brett Pearson." That's followed by, "Ok. Bright. Very nice to meet you." Then I just give up and realize that there is nothing I can do about this.
The first time Annie and I met up in Mporokoso after our first week in the village we met with the Department of Fisheries officer because he wanted to introduce us to local big wigs. The first office we went to we sat down and exchanged a few pleasantries with whoever it was then the DOF officer introduced us. I saw that he had our names properly spelled on the sheet of paper he was reading from but when he said my name, it came out "Bright Peterson." The first time, Annie and I just kind of made eye contact and smirked a bit. By the fourth or fifth office we were in, we were to the point of fighting off laughter and I was having to put my thumb and fingers on my cheeks to literally wipe the smile off of my face.
In Zambia, Ba is like Mr. or Mrs. back home so I actually get called Ba Bright. Or, they add y on the end of many things so my favorite is Ba Brighty. Some of the Zambians will chuckle after hearing my name and quip, "So are you bright, Ba Brighty?" I'll respond with, "Of course I am, that's why they sent me." My new name doesn't bother me and there is really no use in fighting it, so I guess I'll just embrace and love it.

The Long, Strange Trip

Annie and I told ourselves that we were going to bike from Mporokoso to Kasama at one point in time. We had to come in for our provincial meetings that were January 6 and so we did just that. It is a total of 200 km (130 miles) to make that bike trip. This is just like most exercise that I do. I'll lead a relatively sedentary lifestyle for months, and then all at once think I can tackle the world.
So at 5:00 am I woke up to meet Annie in Mporokoso at 7:00. We were on our way at 7:30 on the nose. Our plan was to bike as far as Devin's site in Kaoma which is 80 miles away and sleep there for the night. At about mile 50 I was pretty sure I was done for but we kept on trucking. At about 15:00 we had the good fortune of having the rains start. We were running a bit late though and had to keep on trucking. Finally at 17:00 we got to a small market about 5 miles shy of Devin's house and decided to stop and wait out the rains so we could warm up and rest. It was one of the most uncomfortable times of my life. We were completely soaked and shivering uncontrollably. Thank God Zambians are great people because this woman that was there got some charcoal and started a fire for us to warm up by and gave us some food. She has definately won me over and I plan on being a loyal customer for the next two years whenever I'm at that market. So after the rains slowed down to a drizzle we were forced to get back on our bikes and get to Devin's because it was going to start getting dark soon. We plugged along for the last stretch and arrived at his house just at dusk. so that was a good 12 hour day of biking I put in there.
The next morning the four of us that stayed at Devin's that night got up and were hoping to bike the remainder of trip quickly enough to catch the Rose Bowl. We left in plenty of time, but no more than a mile into the trip I looked down and saw that my back tire was completely flat. Luckily Devin was still behind me so I had some help because the other two just kept on biking ahead. Devin and I took off the tire and patched it and then continued on our way. That had set us back about 30 minutes so we were trying to make up for lost time. Not more than two more miles down the road did I look down and see that again the tire had gone flat. We pumped up the tire and thought that perhaps the small leak would slow down. Another couple of minutes biking and again it was a pancake. So again we patched the hole, waited a few minutes for the glue to dry and started off again. This time we got a few miles before it was flat again. We failed at successfully patching the hole one last time, so we decided that Devin should bike ahead to another volunteer's site about 12 miles up the road and get a new bike tube while I continued walking my bike.
So here I was, walking my bike down the middle of a gravel road in Zambia for 6 miles while he was so generously pedaling away to get the tube. I know it was 6 because I was keeping a watchful eye on my odometer the whole time. Eventually I hailed a big truck that was driving by and got them to pick me up and take me to where Devin was going. I met up with him and replaced the tube. By now we were at the time of kickoff for the Rose Bowl and were just hoping to catch the second half because we were only a couple hour bike ride away at this time. I rode for about an hour before we were lucky enough to catch transport passing us and made it into Kasama in time to catch the last 6 minutes of USC blowing their lead to Texas.
So 17 hours, 6 liters of water, 3 flat tires, and 130 miles later....we were there. I'm really looking forward to the bike ride home. I figure it can't be much worse than the ride in so it should be a good time.

Working Man, Kind Of...

As of my last block of posts, I really didn't have much in the way of work to report on. Not a whole lot has changes since them I'm sad to report. I did have a few outings into my village and those surrounding mine to meet the village people. It's hard to accomplish much though during the rainy season because all of the farmers spend most of the daylight hours in their fields planting, hoeing, weeding, harvesting, and whatever else is needed in a field so they don't have much time for me right now.
My goals for my first few months are these. First I hope to get a big fingerling transport taken care of. When Peace Corps first started the fish farming program I'm involved in years ago, they picked a hardy variety of fish that is native to the Nile River called tilapia niloticus. Well since then the World Wildlife Foundation has thrown a fuss about this non-native species escaping into the local waterways and becoming invasive. That is the kind of fish all of my farmers use so I'm planning on trying to bring a couple thousand finger-sized fish up to get a native species into their ponds. My second goal is to get beekeeping started with my farmers. Ba Mulenga, whose land I live on really wants to get started in that so I hope to learn how to beekeep and get started.
It's been hard for me to get much accomplished just because it seems like every other week we've had to come to Kasama or Lusaka for some kind of paperwork or meetings. I suppose that if nothing else I feel like a real adult being required to go to meetings and such.
Other than that, I've gotten my garden all planted and look forward to harvesting some of my various fruits and vegetables. I've also been reading a bunch. I think I finished 10 books in my first month at site now. I think that brings my grand total since I left the states to 15.

Not Home for the Holidays

Christmas and New Year's have both come and gone. I must admit it didn't feel like that time of year for two reasons. Foremost, I wasn't with friends and family, but secondly it was because there was no snow, or even any sort of coldness to deal with.
For Christmas, seven of us went up to Zambia's only port city, Mpulungu. Mpulungu lies right on Lake Tanganyika which is a pretty beautiful place. We spent four nights there at Nkupi Lodge. For the most part we just hung out in Mpulungu or right down by the lake. Unfortunately there are only a couple of places that have actual sand on their beaches, so most of the sitting on the shore was done on rocks and stones. We set up a sort of 'secret santa' thing with the group of us that went so we exchanged gifts on Christmas day. I gave Ned a stuffed brontasaurus that I got in the market, and from Jeremy I received a clay turtle canldle holder.
On Boxing day we hired a boat to take us to a cove on the opposite side of one of the islands in the lake. Once we got into the boat, we noticed a couple of red buckets inside. I thought nothing of it until we shoved off and the boat started slowly taking on water. As our two tour guides and I paddled away towards the island, a couple of my friends were charged with the task of bailing water from the boat. About 50 feet off shore we saw a little 4 or 5 foot crocodile hanging out in the water which was slightly disheartening due to the fact that a few of us had just gone swimming in that same area a day or two before. Oh well, he was a little guy and I'm sure we could have taken him. Once we got to the beach we just laid around and went swimming for awhile. We tossed a frisbee and just lounged for the most part. For the fourish hours that we were on the beach, the owners of the boat had rowed to a different area of the cove and spent the whole time working on the boat and bailing water out. It puts a real fuzzy feeling in your stomach seeing that.

For New Year's I was hanging out in the village. I cooked myself a big dinner and just watched the sunset off in the distance. I was considering having a few libations to kick off the new year, but ended up being too tired and went to bed by 21:00.

I definately missed being around you all for the holidays but hope that they were full of good memories for all of you.

Bats, Spiders, and Mice, Oh My!

I believe my last reports of the wildlife in my house had described a bat and some mice. Things have continued along the same path for sometime. My bat and I were getting along quite nicely for the first few weeks, but we've had a falling out. Count Chocula (his name) would come in my house at night through a crack between the walls and roof and just fly around my house eating insects. He'd wake me up from time to time, but I was good at ignorning him. Every morning I've noticed that there is a wet spot about 5 or 6 inches in diameter on my floor. I really thought nothing of it since it was always in the same spot. I thought perhaps the roof leaked dew there, or something. One night I was awoken by Count Chocula making his usually noises and got annoyed so I got up to check it out. I spied him hanging from a piece of string that hangs from my roof doing something or another. Then something clicked...that was roughly above the same area that the wet spot was showing up at. I walked over to that wing of my house to investigate and much to my chagrin my suspicions were confirmed. I was quite irate. I renamed Count Chocula to Woo and the next morning I began to practice my slingshot. That piece of cement really tied the room together and I am determined to have my revenge. Now everynight when I go to bed I set my slingshot and some clay bullets on my desk next to my bed. (I pay the neighbor boys with one piece of candy for every five clay bullets that they make me.) I'm brushing up on my skills and look forward to when I can knock Woo off of his piece of fabric some night.
So far the spiders haven't been too bad. I have several wall spiders that are about the size of the palm of your hand, but they just hang out and don't bother me. However, the other night as I was getting ready for bed I noticed a spider making a web about an arms reach from my pillow. I got out my headlamp to take a closer look and found that it was a black widow. It had the signature red hourglass shape on its abdomen and everything. I was weirded out and kept thinkiing, "Wow, this little thing could kill me if I let it bite me. " Well I quickly got over that concern and used my Iowa City Ultimate frisbee to squish it. Hopefully that was the end of those.
My biggest foe however is the mouse. These rodents have been driving me slightly insane. Every night I get up 4 or 6 times to check out some rustling or noise that they're making and rebait my mouse trap. I've killed 10 now and after every successful kill I think, "That must be the last one for awhile." But it never is. It seems like there is a never ending supply of mice in my floor. PETA better put me on their list of dangers to wildlife because I have every intention of eradicating every mouse in my area of Zambia. I used to be a proponent of the humane mouse traps back in the states, but those days are over. I am out for blood and get giddy every time I hear the mouse trap get set off because I know that I can make another notch on the wall.