Ba Charity modeling THE HAT
Ba Christine modelling THE HAT
Christopher modelling THE HAT
Me modelling THE HAT
Ba Roida, Ba Charity, me
Parade of Mukanda boys
Me holding one of my fave kids
Inside view of my house
For balance, I’ll follow with a reason to not envy my life. The other day I co-facilitated a quite successful cooking demo with a counterpart and the women’s club. This was aimed at promoting better nutrution etc through new recipes. The soya milk recipe aimed especially to ‘plant’ the idea in some women’s heads of the advantages of planting soya beans. I’d love to see more farmers growing soya beans this year. Anyhow, by the tasting portion I mistook groundnut – peanut – milk for soya milk. So trust me when I say biking some 13 km after retching everything you ate that day to fulfill your promise of reaching town to see friends isn’t a fun activity. I made it to town, but my lunch stayed in the village. But I’ve recovered from my silly mistake so don’t worry my faithful audience!
Other Env/Agriculture programs this month have gone well. My Env. Education club is fledgling, but all are enjoying it, and it’s only suffering the normal setbacks. I received a postitive report on a farmer’s vegetables after I taught him and some others a natural fertilizer method. That was very exciting! I was also invited to a fellow PCVs community to co-faciliatate a meeting about soil fertility with some Zambians who also work with agriculture. Hopefully we’ll have some success and some farmers will plant the agroforestry tree species we gave. While visiting said lovely PCV, we saw the Kabompo river and the boats which cross it. The Lozis, a tribe mostly in Western Province, have some incredible skill and carve long solid canoes out of one tree. Check Carrie’s blog or FB eventually for pictures. Thed river flows closer to her house then mine, but soon I plan to bike there.
Two other highlights of my month were seeing the end of the Mukanda ceremony and an impromptu modelling show/photo shoot. My neighbors had a ball dressing up and posing for my camera. I channeled your skill Kristen and showed them how models ‘walk’ in America. I’m excited to print them as thank yous to my neighbors for watering my garden and taking care of Captain while I travel. Sure beats candy. Who’s Captain? My hen! Oh, Captain, my Captain. She’s laying eggs, so hopefully soon I’ll have some baby chicks and some extras to eat.
Mukanda was a great experience too. This is a ceremony where boys about 8 years old or so spend a month in the bush learning to be men and getting circumcised. Their return is an occasion for a huge party. We brewed monkoyo like there was no tomorrow and danced and sang all night long. Well some of us couldn’t keep our eyes open so we took a quick nap then got back out there. About 8 am the 5 boys were paraded in on shoulders, and hidden under kitenges. Some money had to be gifted to them before they were even uncovered. Everyone in turn gave the boys some congratulatory money, even me. This is a big point in a boys life and each seems to announce with pride the year they went. All were dressed in snazzy new dress shirts and enjoyed their special day. The general merrymaking continued until early afternoon and included a feast of nshima and a chicken yours truly killed. Whew! Exhausting, but I felt amazing to be able to have experienced it.
Ok so that’s it for now, keep those letters coming! Ok, I know the title is silly, but it’s true. I rode about 140 km one week this month, and have lost some weight according to the clinic scale, and my village can be abbrev’d KB. Promise a better title next time.
Working for Justice 