T-Minus 3 Months

It's looking like my time here in Zambia will officially terminate on September 1. Right now I'm in Lusaka at some committee meetings, but will be heading back to Northern Province tomorrow evening then biking back to my village to spend all of June working. I pretty much have only 7 or 8 weeks left in the village because some of my 3 months will be spent travelling when my parents come to visit and attending a couple of other meetings along the way. Although I've thoroughly enjoyed a vast majority of my time here and feel incredibly lucky for the opportunities given to me and friendships made here, I'm looking forward to closing my service here and starting the next chapter of whatever I'm supposed to do with my life. I am still pursuing my attempts to extend my time in the PC somewhere else in the world, but it's mostly looking more and more like a long shot. I'm ok with that though.

Check my picture website because I'm trying to update it with more pictures, but the computer here is moving quite slowly. Anyways, take care of yourselves and keep in touch. My apologies for the lameness of these two posts, but I just downed two cups of coffee and my mind is racing so these don't have the usual charm and wit. I'll try harder next time.

brett

The Buzz in Chalabesa

Some of you may recall that I tried to teach a bee keeping session in my village (Chalabesa) around November but had a terrible turnout. People cited the rainy season as the reason for this because people had too much work to do in the fields. I believed this and decided to put these sessions on the back burner for a few months. About a month ago I gave it another try but had the meetings in a different village. Much to my surprise I had about 20 people attend which exceeded my expectations. It was a really great time and people seemed very interested and enjoyed themselves. I've even been told that a handful of attendees have already constructed hives and captured swarms so that the honey production in that particular village (Kabushi) is currently under way. Hooray!

Then, a week and a half later I again tried to host the same session in my village, but after waiting for 2.5 hours later than the original start time, only 5 people showed up. Everyone agreed that there was no sense in having the sessions if there weren't at least 10 people present, so the two-day workshop was cancelled. It's kind of a bummer, but cilifye bwino (it's ok).