In my first 3 months I visited with many of my surrounding villages and farmers. I did some work at my house too, making compost, gardening and tons of other little projects. I stay in the village Mabula. My house is in the middle of my village near the school so it is often noisey and I frequently have visitors stop by to greeet me (some stop just to stare, but that is happening less often now).
Soon I will start holding workshops to teach my community about composting, gardening, and planting trees. I will add and adjust depending on what people are interested in but they will all center around agriculture and the environment.
Day to day is hard to describe, it depends on who is busy or not, or if I have work of my own to do. Lately my dog, Charlie, does not let me sleep too late. The mornings are pretty cool (around 40F) so first I usually make coffee and a warm breakfast. My popcan stove works pretty well so the lack of electricity is not really a big deal. Having to go to the river to get water is a pain though. It's only about 500m from my house but 20L jugs are heavy. Other than that each day is different, sometimes I have meetings, sometimes I clean my house and garden, sometimes I visit with people in my community, and on nice quiet boring days I read a book.
Now that community entery is over I will be visiting the provincial house (where I can update this blog), doing trainings, visiting other volunteers, and going on vacation, so I will be in the village less often. That is why community entry is so important. It gives you time to establish a connection with your community so doing work is more effective. In a few weeks I'm off to a two wek in service training where any topics we missed in pre-service training will be taught. Then maybe a short vacation to Victoria Falls, I haven't decided.
