Easter Weekend

Happy Easter everyone-
My last couple of weeks have been pretty good and productive. After my committee meetings in Lusaka a few weeks ago, I went back up to my site for a week and got 4 good days of work in before returning back to Kasama for vacation. I speak more about that in the next couple of posts.
Things are still good though. I'm reading Catch-22 right now which I highly recommend to most people. I find it hilarious, but some may not. I wish I had some really exciting news to report on aside from the following, but I don't.
I suppose one exciting tidbit of information is that I'm going to be coming home in a few months to attend a few friends' weddings. I fly in to Des Moines on the 26th of July and leave for Zambia on the 15th of August.
I have posted some new pictures on my website so check those out if you do so desire. After I head back up to site after our In Service Training we're at now, I should be there until I come home in July. I'd like to go back to Livingstone before I come home so that I can get some presents to bring back, but other than that I'll probably be at site most of the time until the end of July. I've got a big meeting in a week or two to give a lesson on the benefits of, and how to implement successful agroforestry on my farmers' farms. I'll be handing out a variety of seeds of nitrogen fixing plants that are both good for the soil, and that produce leaves that are good fish food for their ponds.
Other than that, take care and thanks for the emails and letters.
Take care,
Brett

Mosi-oa-Tunya

For Easter, we had 4 free vacation days so a big group of volunteers and I headed down to Livingstone to see the sights and Victoria Falls. Vic Falls are the biggest water falls in the world. In local language it is Mosi-oa-Tunya, or "The Smoke that Thunders." The falls were an impressive sight, and since it is the rainy season they were in full force. As you approach the falls you can see the mist rising above the tree line from a long distance away. There is so much mist and such that you are literally getting rained on the whole time you're walking on the path along the falls. Apparently in the dry season, you can actually walk across the top of the falls where now millions of gallons of water are spilling over. I'm hoping to head back to Livingstone this summer so I'll let you know about it if I do that.

I had every intention in bungee jumping this time around, but decided to spend my money tiger fishing (see below) instead. I know I'll head back down south to Livingstone several more times during my time here though so I'll go bungeeing at sometime. Livingstone was a pretty cool town though with lots of good food and many opportunities to go on safaris and other various activities.

Tiger Fishing

So during the Easter weekend trip to Livingstone, several of us decided to go Tiger fishing in the Zambezi River. You should Google a picture of them because they're incredibly beautiful fish and argued to be, pound for pound, the best fresh water fighting fish.
Our spirits were initially dampened when we found out that the best time to fish for tigerfish is June/July, not April. But the scenery was nice and all that jazz so it was still pleasant. We went fishing in the morning, and Matt from Jersey landed a nice 18ish inch tiger and got it in the boat. That was all we saw that morning. We stopped for lunch after a few hours where we ate on a huge houseboat and had a few beers.
After an hour's rest, we set back out to go catch dinner. This time we decided to try our luck in the scary sounding rapids. I got a bite, the fish jumped a few feet out of the water, but I was unable to set the hook correctly and it ended up being the fish that got away. Quite unfortunate, but it was still exciting for me.
Of the ten of us that went fishing that day, Matt was the only one who got a fish in the boat. That's okay though because I have every intention of returning to fish before coming home this summer. Apparently once the river has gone down, numerous herds of elephants and other wildlife migrates up from Botswana and Namibia, and the fishing is second to none.

My Bubble

So like most Americans, I have a personal bubble that only a few select people can enter without making me uncomfortable. Zambians, on the other hand, do not. I'm not here to attempt to figure out what American's have against people being close to us, I'm just here to give you a few examples of how far over the line Zambian's go.

At the bank, we have orderly queues and very large bubbles. Zambians have neither of these. Not only will they skip the queue without a second thought, they'll do even worse. There have been many times that I've been at the counter withdrawing hundreds of thousands of kwacha, when some stranger will come and stand shoulder to shoulder with me in my window. Subtlety does not go far here, so you can turn and stare at them, and they'll kindly ask how you're doing. I continue to stare followed by, "Excuse me" and then they figure it out and move about 6 inches.

One day I was in Mporokoso conducting some business with Annie when we came upon this incredibly drunk guy. With my full beard he put the comparison together, despite his stupor, that I looked like Jesus. So he said, "This guy, my friend, he looks like Jesus. I like this guy, he looks like Jesus." At this poing he was about 6 inches from my face informing us that I look like Jesus. Then he posed the question, "You know who this guy looks like?" Annie answered correctly, "Ummm, Jesus?" So he was impressed and congratulated her on a correct answer. Then, as he started to inform us of my resemblence to the Son of God, he reached out and started stroking and pulling my beard. As we just started chuckling, Annie was saying, "Yep, that's his personal space." So we told him to have a good day and left. I don't remember ever having anyone touch my beard without permission back home.

The most offensive and blatant bubble violation that I've seen to date happened on my last ride into Kasama from Mporokoso. We were sitting in a flatbed truck with 2 foot walls all the way around the bed. In a front corner was sitting a young man relaxing and taking advantage of the right angle formed against the passenger side wall and the cab. After getting a ways out of Mporokoso, one of the other passengers decided he didn't want to sit where he was and spied the wall where the young man was sitting. Instead of sitting on the bed though, the guy wanted to sit on the 2 foot wall so he could look over the cab. In order to do that, he had to step over/on several of us, put his left foot on the left side of the young man, and his right foot on the otherside. So this poor kid had to go from comfortable, to having some random dude straddling his head. The course of action that followed was similar to the course I would have taken, he got up and changed seats because he didn't like having a strange man straddling him.

These are just to serve as warnings that if any of you come to visit Zambia, or another African country, that people's bubbles are far smaller here and you will be made uncomfortable once or twice.