bush baby: it's what's for dinner

As I've said before, I eat with my family rather often. And usually we eat pretty normal things like cabbage, eggs, or some other vegetable. But the other night, we had some sort of mystery meat. Bamayo told me what it was in Bemba, and of course I didn't understand, but asked her son to translate. He told me that we were eating "bush baby." At the time, I just went on and ate it. It was really good. The meat was tender, and took well to the way that Zambians cook the heck out of everything.

Later, though, I decided to do some research. They're really cute!! Bush babies, also called "galagos," look like a crazy cross between a squirrel and a lemur. They're nocturnal primates with ears similar to bats.' Their primary food source is insects, and they are master jumpers. They jump better than frogs, leaping from to tree to tree in the African bush.

After seeing some pictures of them, I realized that I've seen them before. My family has eaten them on nights that I haven't partaken. And then I made some connections. My little brothers, Savior and Licha, often walk around with slingshots around their necks, especially later in the day. And after I lock up my house to go to bed, I always hear kids screaming. So I'm pretty sure that the kids run around the trees hunting bush babies at night. And I ate some cute little primates. Here's the wikipedia link for anyone that's interested: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galago

it's a skirt...it's a towel...no, it's chitenge!

One of my favorite things about living in Zambia is ichitenge (ee-chee-tang-gay). Basically, chitenge is fabric. It usually comes in 2-meter lengths, but you can find it in 4- or 6-meter lengths as well. The combinations of colors, patterns, and pictures are endlessly fabulous. I've even seen one with Obama's face on it.

Chitenges (the plural in Bemba is ifitenge) are probably the most useful things that I have here in Zambia. And I don't even use them in all the possible ways. I wear mine as a skirt, that doubles as an apron. They make great potholders. I've used them as towels, for bathing and for the beach. I put them on the ground or on dirty seats or in truckbeds to sit on so I don't get my clothes dirty. I've gotten clothes made out of them. Chitenges make fantastic togas. Zambian women also use them to carry their babies on their backs. They wrap up bulky packages that they carry on their heads.

Tailors in Zambia are pretty great. They can make pretty much anything, and whether it's a dress or a suit jacket, they call it a "chitenge suit." I currently only have one, which I wore for swear-in, but I plan on getting more throughout my service. It's also possible to get chitenge scraps from the tailors. I use them for crafting, but Zambians make purses and all sorts of other goodies to sell to the musungus (white people). And they're all awesome.

So basically, I love chitenge. I definitely plan on bringing them all back to the US and wearing/using them. And I will love being able to just throw them in a washing machine when they're dirty!

just call me rachael ray... or maybe barefoot contessa

Something I've realized is that I have never appreciated kitchens. And I should have. Even the one in the basement of the Ross Street house with its limited counter space. But I will never again underappreciate a kitchen. And this is why.

In Zambia, I cook everything over charcoal in a metal brazier with a 10-inch diameter. So first, I have to light the fire. Then I have to wait until the coals get hot enough to even cook anything, which takes at least 20 minutes, but probably 30 or more. This process can be expedited by swinging the braizer back and forth to increase airflow to the coals. Then, once it's hot, I can start cooking things one at a time.

Breakfast is easy. I usually just have to boil water so I can make coffee and oatmeal. (I'm SOOOO glad I brought a French press.) For lunch and dinner, what I do depends on the day, and whether or not I'm going to eat with my host family.

On the days that I don't eat with them, I usually just cook one meal in the afternoon. I'll snack on something, like fruit or peanuts or popcorn, when I get home from school, then start something fancy for my lunch/dinner. I can only cook one thing at a time, so I cook my starch (rice, pasta, or potatoes) first, then whatever else I'm going to eat. My usual method is to just sautee a bunch of stuff and put some sort of sauce over it. But sometimes I get creative. I've made potstickers, stuffed cabbage leaves, orange-glazed soya pieces, refried beans (and tortillas, of course), sweet potato gnocci and garlic cream sauce, the village equivalent of eggplant parmesan, banana curry, and Thai peanut sauce. I also make a lot of soups. It's a one-pot meal, which is ideal for braizer cooking, and lasts for several meals. So I have my big meal around 4 or 5, depending on how long it takes to cook. And honestly, most of the reason I do it this way is so I can do dishes that night. Otherwise I wait until morning because I rely on the sun to dry my dishes.

The days that I do eat with my family are a bit different. I make something smallish for lunch, or just have a peanut butter sandwich or something. Then later I'll make a relish to take to dinner. We usually don't eat until after 7pm, because the family is busy until there's no light to see. So bamayo makes nshima and a relish, and I bring another one. When I go, I sit with bamayo and the kids, next to the fire. We all wash our hands in a dish of warm water. There's a big bowl of nshima in the middle and the smaller bowls of relish around it. Then we dig in, everyone's fingers in the communal bowls. There's lots of talking and laughing (especially at my Bemba mistakes) and it's overall a good time. The kids bicker and pick on each other as everyone tries to keep the dogs away from the food. After we're done eating, and they've fed the dogs their portion of the nshima, I stick around to chat for a bit. My two-year-old sister comes and sits on my lap, and we talk about the day and what we're doing tomorrow.

So, as you can see, cooking isn't really that different here. Except for the fact that I don't have an oven. I really miss baking. So about two weeks ago, I decided to just try it anyway. I decided that my first attempt at brazier baking would be a chocolate cake. I wanted to make bread, but I didn't want to waste yeast in case it was an epic failure. So I used one of my pots as a Dutch oven. I put the cake batter in the pot, then adjusted my coals. I put some soda cans on the brazier to lift the pot off the heat, and put coals on the lid to heat from the top. My cake venture was semi-successful. I ended up not having enough coals; they were spent before the center of the cake had fully cooked. It still tasted good, though. So after learning that I needed more coals, I decided to attempt bread the next day. It was fully cooked and tasted like, well, bread. My only other baking venture was a tomato bread with onions and garlic. (I needed to use up my tomatoes before they went bad.) It was SO GOOD. I haven't really tried to bake anything else, but I'm looking forward to experimenting with brazier baking. :)

I must reiterate, though, that I will never take a kitchen for granted again. Even though I've figured out how to cook all these things from scratch, and even bake over a fire, it takes forever. I could easily spend 3 hours cooking one meal, especially if I want to do something fancy like potstickers. Having a stove, oven, microwave, coffee pot, refrigerator, freezer, a sink with running water... these things are such a luxury, and I never realized it.

frost

Now I've been living in the village for two whole months, and the time has flown by.

The first few weeks were kind of slow, because school hadn't started yet. I would get up in the morning, woken by the sun and the roosters, and start my charcoal brazier for some breakfast. Then I'd do dishes, and have nothing to do til it was time to cook lunch. After lunch, there was nothing to do till dinner. And after that, I went to be not to long after it got dark. Wash, rinse, repeat. So I read A LOT of books. (I've read 15 books I hadn't previously read, plus a few I already had. Thinking about copying Musi Lisa and posting a list with ratings/reviews/recommendations.) I walked around and met some people, or hung out with my host sisters. I would have done work on my house, but there's only so much organizing you can do when all your stuff is in piles or bags on the floor and you have no furniture.

Then school started and things picked up. A very early morning was added to my routine--school starts at 7am. So I would go to observe classes for the morning, and do other things (similar to the earlier routine) in the afternoon. I went to planning meetings, hung out with the teachers in the deputy head's office (our spot since there's no teacher's lounge), and watched classes that I wouldn't be teaching (like math) just to see them. It was really nice to have somewhere to be besides my house.

I ordered furniture from a local carpenter in my first week, and it started rolling in a few weeks into the term. So as I've been getting each piece, I've slowly gotten things out of bags and off the floor. I got huge incentive to especially do the latter when I found a snake curled up under one of my bags. Yikes! I also made chitenge curtains and painted some things on my walls. My mud hut is slowly looking like a home!

One other thing I've done to fill my time is work with the organization Safe Love. It's based in Lusaka, and I don't know if they're in every province (I think I remember them saying it was only in a few).  I've done a few presentations with the organization in my village and at a local college. My talking point was prevention of mother-to-child transmission, and it was really rewarding to know that the people I was talking to wouldn't have been able to get that info otherwise. Unsurprisingly, there aren't a lot of resources available to people in the rural areas on the topic. So it was good to be able to meet that need.

In other news, it gets REALLY cold here. It's gets to the point that you can see your breath in the morning, and that makes for an uncomfortable bike ride. I've been told that as it gets colder in July and August it may even frost in my area. I'm not gonna lie, I wasn't expecting frost in Africa. But we're in the equivalent of winter right now: cold season. It reminds me of late fall in the states actually. It's really cold at night, but still burning hot in the afternoon. Layers are key. :) It'll get colder in July, and then we'll transistion to "hot season," where it's unbearably hot all the time. And that's the other thing. It hasn't rained in the entire two months I've been at my site. I knew it was going to happen, but it's still crazy to try to wrap my mind around the fact that it won't rain again until November.

So I won't have blog-capable internet access for another month... I still have that much left of community entry, and then I'll be able to use the provincial house occasionally and blog more often (hopefully!). So it'll be a while before I update again.

bemba in space

Written on 4/6:

So once again we're all hanging out in the big insaka. This morning, we took our final language tests, the "Language Proficiency Interview." It's a thirty minute recorded interview with one of the testers. It's one of those tests that gets harder as you do better; the tester asks more advanced questions as you successfully answer the previous questions with as much vocab and as many complicated constructions as possible. Terrifying, right? So now we wait until Wednesday to see if we've done well enough to swear in as volunteers.

So to make the waiting easier, and to pass the time, we're watching Star Wars: A New Hope. (I love this group of people!) And there's a funny story to go with this. At the beginning when they've just recruited Han Solo and Jabba's representative finds him to hound him for money, the alien guy says, clear as day, "Muli shani." ("Muli shani" is Bemba for "how are you"). When we heard this we all cracked up, and rewound the movie to watch it again. So funny. Now I need to rewatch Star Wars to listen for more Bemba in the alien speech. :)

I'm moving to Lala-land

Written in my journal during second site visit, on 3/14:

So here I am at the end of my third full day in my new home. It's been a pretty eventful three days, too. I started my adventure here walking to see the school and visit my head teacher's home. After the crazy drive into the wilds to get to my house, it was a bit of a shock to see that he had electricity. The TV was on, two freezers were running, everything was modern, bright, and nice. I ate lunch there, even though I'd eaten just an hour and a half earlier at a rest stop in Kapiri. Ba Milton (the head teacher) called some of the other teachers over to meet me, walk me home, and fix the lock on my door. So they fixed my lock while I set up my borrowed tent and bathed. When they were finished, I fixed myself a grilled cheese and went to bed.
I started off Monday with a funeral. Since I'd never been to a Zambian funeral, I went to my bataata, who is the headman, to ask what I should wear. He told me that what I was wearing was fine, which surprised me since I was wearing a tshirt and a chitenge over my shorts - my wake-up-and-make-breakfast standard. So I finished my oatmeal, did the dishes, and we set off for the funeral. The walk was pretty impressive. It was long, first of all. We were walking along the train tracks for a good portion of it. My bataata was carrying a chicken under his arm and bamaayo had a bowl of mealie-meal on her head and a baby on her back. Other women walked with us, similarly laden. We walked through the market, which was abandoned in mourning for the dead chilolo [chief advisor]. We crossed the Mikunku River, which winds through a huge grassy field. As we were walking, I felt like I was really in Africa. When we got to the funeral, we went  straight into the house to it with the deceased's family. We sat in silence for a good ten minutes, then said our goodbyes and I'm-sorry-for-your-loss's and went outside. At this point, the men and women separated. I sat with the women (obviously) on mealie-meal sacks under some nice shady trees. There wasn't much talking, other than greetings and scolding of children. The kids were funny. One boy was climbing a tree, then all of a sudden dropped his pants and ran down the path. Too funny. My little sister sat on my lap for a bit, then ran off to play in the dirt. While we were sitting there watching the kids have fun, one of the women in front started this wailing song. Of course, I can understand it because it's in very fast Bemba, but I assume it's a song of loss. And it's eerie. Then the women inside the house began their own wailing. It created a dissonent counterpoint that was heartwrenching in the sincerity of feeling it represented.

Unfortunately, I didn't get to stay for the whole funeral. My bamaayo took me home so I could have lunch before I had to go to school. There was a language breakdown and some confusion about a chicken, but after it was all over, I had bamaayo walk me to ba Milton's house so we could chat about community entry. They laughed over y nshima cooking skills, then we did my timeline. When we were done, bamaayo had gone home to cook, so ba Milton had one of his nephews walk me home. We had a nice chat about choir, church, books, and his dream of becoming an English teacher like me. Bamaayo offered me a bowl of mealie-meal when I got home, which I refused. I told her: "Nshaleipikila ubwali. Nalalya umupunga." [I'm not going to cook ubwali for myself. I will eat rice.] I couldn't tell if she was offended or not, but she seemed to understand, at least. So I made some fabulous stir fry with my leftover chicken. As I was finishing my meal, the ENTIRE FAMILY crowded into my insaka to chill with me. It was fun. I started to get to know some of the kids/nephews and talked with an uncle.

I had to be at school at 6:40 on Tuesday, so the morning was a scramble. I woke up at 5 and managed somehow to light my brazier all by myself. My bamaayo was surprised when she came to offer me coals. So I got myself all ready and was shoveling my breakfast of leftover rice with sugar and peanut butter into my mouth, straight from the pan, when ba Susan came by to say hi. Kind of embarrassing. But I told her I had to leave in 5 minutes, guzzled the rest of my coffee, and hopped on my bike. The assembies [where they introduced me to the students] were anticlimactic and the teacher briefing was boring and slightly unnecessary. Well, maybe not. Who's to say? Anyway. The grade 2 teacher here is FANTASTIC. She makes me think of my mom. The grade 9 teacher seemed to be putting on a show for me, though. I went home for lunch, and once again turned down the offer of mealie-meal, in favor of leftover stirfry and an apple with peanut butter. Went back to school for a hot second, then came pack to do some PACA stuff. I got Ronald and Susan's family tree and the seasonal calendar done. They were both a lot more complicated than they needed to be. Made some soya and lentil sloppy joes for dinner, which were actually supposed to be burgers. Failed attempt. Good anyway thought. Just the boys chilled with me last night.

Today was a good day. I started off right with some pancakes. Bamaayo brought me some peanuts, which I honey-roasted to take to school. I got there at 9, only to sit for an hour. Then the deputy head and I got into his truck to go and meet the headmen. I didn't find out until after he'd backed into a tree that he taught himself to drive last October, when he got the truck, and doesn't have a license. Safe, right? Add to that the condition of the village "roads" and you've got a fun ride. It really was good though. And the whole time I was having moments. I just kept lookig out the windows and seeing grasslands and crazy trees/fields/rivers/huts/thatched roofs and thinking to myself, "I can't believe I'm in effing Africa." It was so surreal. Came home to a sandwich on two leftover pancakes and just chilled for two hours. It was glorious. I finished "So Long and Thanks for All the Fish." Then another observation. 5th grade. The teacher taught entirely in Bemba, so I was lost. And becaue I wasn't actively notetaking, I started absentmindedly flipping my pen around my thumb. I look up, and a group of kids is watching me, pens at the ready to try it. Too funny. After class, I taught ba Milton about email and Facebook and the internet. He thought you had to go to the post office to set up email!

Happy Pi Day, me! :)

amafritter... but I thought you were a potato?

We have a lot of fun in Bemba class. Kylee and I get into giggle fits ALL THE TIME. Our teacher, Ba William, is very patient. And he sounds like Yoda. Seriously. It's awesome. We secretly call him Ba Yoda. (The "Ba" thing is like our "Mister." It's for respect. Everything is about respect here.) Anyway. One of the things that we laugh about is the "corruptible" words - the words that are stolen from English. For instance, the word for potatoes is "amapotato," which sounds like "I'm a potato." I can't even tell you how hard we laughed when we learned that. Then one day, we were working on verbs. We were doing causative and reflexive extensions, which are complicated. Kylee  inadvertently said, "I will fry you" in Bemba. To which Brett responded, "because I'm a fritter!" It was fantastic.

Since my last post, I found out where I'm going to be living and working for the next two years. I will be in Central Province, Mkushi District, in Mikunku. The name of my village is technically Kasamwa. Tomorrow I'm leaving to spend a week at my new home to see my house  and meet some people. Super excited to see my new hut! :)

nshima muscles

Written on 2/16/12:
For the last two days, I've had a song from Rent stuck in my head. It's my own fault, really. After a training session on HIV/AIDS, I went home and made flashcards and listened to Rent. So today I've been singing "Let's open up a restaurant in Santa Fe" to random people.

It's been a weird training day. We have interviews with some head honchos, a bike repair session, and some tech stuff, all on different schedules. Usually we have language and tech, alternating before and after lunch by day. So the change has been nice, and it's given us all a chance to just kinda chill. And it gave my language group a chance to study together for a bit.

We're all a bit loopy right after lunch (right now). Erin is walking circles around the insaka with her water bottle on her head. A few people are playing Uno. There's a lot of studying. People are exchanging music, especially Sharon's Zam Pop purchases, and ebooks. We're all charging our electronics, hoping the batteries will last most of the weekend, at least. And we're all chomping at the bit, ready to go to Lusaka on Saturday. Yay field trips!

Continued on Friday 2/17, after class:
For me, PST has been pretty uneventful so far. No crazy mefloquine dreams, no medical issues, no homestay problems. I'm enjoying language classes. My language is Bemba, which is spoken in Central, Northern, and Luapola provinces. After my last semester in college studying a Bantu language, this is SOO  FUN. I don't have to put together the language from scratch. It's conveniently laid out for me already in a  handy-dandy little grammar book. Loving it.

The technical training has been good too. I taught my first English lesson today! Granted, it was only to my fellow trainees, but it was good to get some practice. And I was terrified. But it was good to get that first go out of the way. We're learning all about the Zambian curriculum and how teachers are supposed to make their term, weekly, and daily lesson plans, and getting the basics of classroom management and teaching theory for EFL/ESL. It's definitely helpful for me to get those basics, since I don't have formal training. I hope the veteran teachers among us aren't bored, though.

My homestay family has been fantastic. I'm staying with the Mulenga family. My ba taata (host dad) is Alexander. He's a carpenter. My ba maayo (host mom) is Irene, and she's a stay-at-home mom. I have four bandume (brothers) and two bankashi (sisters), whose ages range from 2 to 18. All of the children speak both Bemba and Nyanje, which sometimes makes things confusing since I'm supposed to be learning Bemba here. The schools in this area are taught in Nyanje (in the lower grades, at least), so that's their default. Having them around forces me to practice, though. If I want to communicate with the adorable 4-year-old that follows me around EVERYWHERE, I have to either use charades or stumble through some rudimentary Bemba. I usually end up doing a combination of both, and it works out. The older ones like to practice English with me, but my host parents make me use Bemba, and talk to me in Bemba as much as they can, supplementing it with explanations in English. So it works.

In the last two weeks, I have eaten with silverware a grand total of three times. All three times were during lunch at the training center on the days we're there all day. The rest of the time, I've been eating with my hands. The quintessential Zambian food is something called nshima (pronounced nn-shee-muh). It's maize meal which is cooked and vigorously stirred into a thick paste, and served in "lumps." It's the main food in any meal; protein and veggie dishes are called relishes, and are cooked in small quantities. Nshima is a cool food though. (Well, not really... it's actually pretty hot. Every time I get a lump out of the serving dish, I burn my hand. And when I break it apart, the inside is like lava - burning and super sticky.) Basically, I consider nshima an edible spoon. To eat it, you take a piece off of your lump and knead it with one hand. Then you shape it with a slight depression on one side, put your relish in it, and eat. Silverware is present at meals, but only for serving.  It's a good system, really, and pretty practical. And Zambians make nshima twice every day. It takes some major muscles to stir that stuff. So don't ever mess with a Zambian woman, or she'll beat you up with her nshima muscles. (Not kidding. Zambia just became the world champs in women's boxing. And on a related note, if you didn't know, Zambia won the Africa Cup of Nations in football! Go Chipolopolo!)

feels like...

So far, training has felt like vacation. I got to the hotel in Philadelphia late because of flight scheduling, and went straight into introductions and ice breakers. (So maybe that part felt like reslife, but whatevs.) Then there were fun times in Philly, and a bus ride at 2am so we could get to the airport SIX HOURS EARLY. I slept there, which was nice. At least, as nice as sleeping on a tile floor can be. That was the longest I slept at one time until yesterday.

Not sleeping on planes sucks. I even came prepared with meds to knock me out. They only worked for 2 hours. I went in and out of sleep after that, which made the 15 hour flight feel like it lasted forever. The airport in South Africa was neat, and full of shops that sold all kinds of thongs that I wanted. When we got to Lusaka, it was the middle of the day. We had a medical session and something else I can't remember because I was almost falling asleep. Not only that, but the entire back row was almost falling asleep.

But anyway. This feels like vacation because right now we're staying in a nice hotel. We have running (hot!) water, flushing toilets, and good food. We've all been getting together at the hotel bar at night to chill and get to know each other, which is fun. The weather is fantastic. It's 70-80 degrees during the day, and cools off enough at night that sleeping with the windows open is fantastic. And it's the wet season, so it's humid, but i get to fall asleep to rain! Sounds like vacation, right?

Tomorrow we go on our first 'site visit.' We'll stay with a current volunteer so we can see what it's going to be like once we're not in the (very modern) capital. I mean, I'm sitting in an Internet cafe in the mall. Speaking of which... This will probably be my last post for a while. We won't have Internet during for the next 11 weeks, and my computer will be locked up at the Peace Corps office. So, send me letters and things! Miss everyone, and can't wait to hear from you!

leaving on a jet plane

I'm leaving tomorrow! AHHHHH!

I had some tearful goodbyes yesterday, and will have more today, I'm sure. I'll miss everyone back here in Missouri. So let's talk communication. Email me! I'm sure this will end up being the quickest way to get a hold of me... but not till training is over. So in the meantime, you should send me letters! It will be slow, but again, I won't have email until April. I promise to send letters back, too. :) My address will be:

Kara Oberkrom/PCT

Peace Corps

P.O. Box 50707

Lusaka, Zambia

I'll be moving to somewhere else in April, but I have no clue where that is yet. I'll let you know when I find out. If you want me to send you something, and you haven't given me your address, you should either email it to me or send me a Facebook message, and I'll find it eventually. Or, you can just send something to me first so I can get the address from your letter!

3 Weeks and Counting

I'm sitting in my nice warm living room while it's freezing outside in Columbia, MO. There is so much mess around me as I try to get all of my stuff packed away. It's tough, because I'm packing away things I might need in the next three weeks (read: cold weather clothes). But when I stop to think about it, it's only three weeks. And that's scary! 

I am so excited to go to Zambia and learn to be a part of another culture. It seems a daunting task. Many of the people I've talked to have balked at the idea of learning a language in just a few months, but I look forward to the challenge. :) It's part of the reason I wanted to do this. 

So what am I doing to prepare? I just took the online safety and security quiz (which I had been putting off). I've mailed off all things I need to. I still need some passport pictures, and other pictures to show the Zambians. I need to decide on a few clothes to bring from the growing pile in my living room. And instead of going through that pile, I'm finishing books, watching Doctor Who, and talking to my friends. Fantastic preparation, right?