BAMM! April is Blog About Malaria Month

Malaria is a disease carried by mosquitoes. It is common in tropical areas including sub-Saharan Africa and Zambia. Symptoms are usually headache, fever and chills, but can be fatal if left untreated. 5. Malaria affects more than 4 million Zambians annually, accounting for approximately 30 percent of outpatient visits and resulting in almost 8,000 deaths each year. In Zambia, malaria is the biggest cause of death in children under  Under five-year-old children and pregnant women are the most vulnerable, especially those in more remote and impoverished areas, with 35-50 percent of under-five mortality and 20 percent of maternal mortality attributable to malaria.

Malaria is treatable. The most common problems run into here is the refusal to use mosquito net for its intended use. Instead it is used as a fish net, fence, or many other creative uses. The access to malaria tests and treatment. My village is 22km (13mi) from the nearest clinic and the form of transportation available to most of my villagers is riding a bike.

To prevent malaria in myself I take a weekly (some are daily) anti-malarial. Every Peace Corps Volunteer is required to take one, especially because we have no natural immunities. Another preventative is to sleep under a mosquito net. The type of mosquito that carries malaria is more active at night and it reduces risk of being bitten. Everyone in Zambia is recommended to sleep under one.



The mosquito net I sleep under every night.



Stomping Out Malaria in Africa is a Peace Corps initiative that uses strategic partnerships, targeted training Volunteers and intelligent use of information technology to support the local malaria prevention efforts of over 3,000 Volunteers in sub-Saharan Africa. For more information go to stompoutmalaria.org and follow Stomp activities at http://www.facebook.com/StompOutMalaria.



My cousin from my training family.
Malaria is especially dangerous to kids.



Questions:

???????

If you ever have questions or if you just want me to explain something better write a comment. I know I miss a lot in these blogs. There is so much going on here and it is often difficult to put it all in words, plus I'm not the greatest of writers. I'm struggling remembering English with all that Bemba getting in the way sometimes. So ask away- other people probably want to know too.

???????

Camp Glow!

Background: Camp GLOW is a girls empowerment program started by Peace Corps volunteers in Romania in 1995 to take girls from the villages to have a leadership camp. Currently as many as 60 countries have their own forms of Camp Glow. Each year 3 camps are held in just Northern Provence.

Who: 11 volunteers from Kasama, Luwingu, and Mungwi districts. Eight volunteers brought two girls each from their respective villages to come for the week and one counterpart or teacher to come in for two days of training.

Jenny, Kim, and the girls doing a dance as a cool down after games

What:  GLOW- Girls Leading Our World is a camp that brings girls for a week of women's empowerment sessions and lots of fun. We held sessions on assertiveness, motivation, careers, HIV/AIDs, boyfriends, peer pressure and lots of other things. We also had all the fun things a camp should have too. There were games, relays, arts & crafts,  a huge campfire with s'mores.

Mirriam and Blessings presenting their group's ideas

When:  I got to participate in my first Camp Glow December 3rd-8th.

Where: It was at Kasama Farmer's Institute so we all had nice little rooms to stay in and tons of room to run outside. It is a neat opportunity for girls to get away from their village for a whole week. And like many American children at camp, many had hardly been away from home before.



Games were awesome all week.



Why: The goal of the camp, other than educating the girls who come, is to bring the concepts back to the village. To do this the girls selected to come to camp are going to be responsible with the assistance of the counterpart and volunteer to start a Glow Club at their school or in their community. In the club what the girls learned in camp will be passed on to their friends and peers.



The girls were split into four prides for the activities all week. Jenna and I headed up the Red Hots with Mirriam, Babra, Mercy and Rachel.

Thanksgiving!

My first Thanksgiving in Zambia was surprisingly wonderful. Ok, maybe not so surprising with all the wonderful people up here in Northern Provence.

The week before Thanksgiving was spent in PEPFAR (President's Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief ) Training. Peace Corps Zambia receives about half their funding from PEPFAR money and the HIV rate in Zambia is about 17% nation wide, just under 5% in Northern Provence. Because of this all volunteers, not just health volunteers, are expected to incorporate HIV/AIDS awareness into their service. The week long training is to teach volunteers and their community counterparts about HIV and how to incorporate it into the work they do. Unfortunately my usually wonderful counterpart did not show. I might be able to get us into the next PEPFAR training this spring.

Over that following weekend I went with 9 other volunteers, that were in the training, with me to go out to Chishimba Falls. The weather was wonderful for our trip. We spent 3 days swimming, napping in the hammock, and hanging out before heading back into town for provincial meetings.

Provs- provincial meetings- are twice a year meetings that all volunteers in the provence show up at the Peace Corps provincial house in Kasama. We have a couple meetings discussing house changes and Peace Corps rule changes then we discuss concerns or problems we want relayed down to the Lusaka office. It gets a little hectic on the last part with 50 people voicing their concerns on our medical, bike, transport, money, etc. problems.



But after all the crazy long meetings we prepared for Thanksgiving! The cooking went much more smoothly than you would think. And we had more than enough food to go around for 50 people. Maybe we could have used a little more turkey. But turkey in Zambia is super expensive (it ran about $100 USD). We bought one giant turkey that the boys killed and cleaned the night before. I probably  had one of the easiest cooking jobs making one giant pot of mashed potatoes. I managed to spend a few hours washing dishes when the dish crew was not to be found.

Provs is a wonderful time of year. Because of our schedules there are some people that you hardly or never see. It is great to have a chance to spend time with everyone. There was lots of talking, cooking, dancing, eating, and movie watching- it was definitely something to be grateful for when we are away from all you wonderful people back home during the holidays.

After all the crazy of the last couple weeks I'm headed home today. I'll almost be there a week before I'm headed out again for Camp GLOW (Girls Leading Our World).

Zamcation Part 1 & 2

Part 1:

To begin my vacation I went to visit a volunteer friend, Jesse, near Kasanka National Park who was having a bee workshop. Aside from the basics of beekeeping that I learned in training the workshop showed us how to make a hive from mud bricks. Using bricks makes the hive less mobile but much much more affordable to make in the village. The workshop was interesting although geared more towards the villagers than the volunteers who went.
A Dutch farmer and Jesse's friend invited us to his farm for an Independence Day Braii. About 12 volunteers, a few people who work at Kasanka, and a couple Sweedish med students came out. We camped out in his yard, swam in the picturesque river that runs through his back yard and ate tons of good food.

Part 2:

A group of us from the Braii were going up to Mpulugu (with stops in Kasama and Mbala) to celebrate the October birthdays and Halloween. Mpulungu is right on Lake Tanganyika the 2nd deepest lake in the world. The second day there 20 of us took an hour long boat ride up near the Tanzanian border for a couple hour hike up to Colombo Falls. The hike was hot and long but the views were worth the trip. Colombo Falls is the 2nd tallest waterfall in Africa at about 750 feet. We relaxed in the water at the top of the falls, had some snacks, took some photo ops, then made our way down the mountain. The next two days were spent by the lakeside pool recovering.
Our Halloween party was an example in creativity and the ridiculous things you can find in an African market. I managed to find a tri-cornered pirate hat. Everyone managed a ridiculously wonderful  costume. We had a banana, a trucker, Minnie Mouse, a Greek, a couple pirates, a bird, and Nick looked like a woman going out to the derby. It was our last night and it ended with a bang- of thunder and pouring rain- it was a good night all the same.

Back home to the village tonight. I will hopefully get some work done this month between the trainings and programs. I have a week long PEPFAR (HIV/AIDS) training and then we have provincial meetings and Thanksgiving. The rest of my year here is looking pretty busy.

Working for a living

Community entry is over. In-service training was a blast down in Lusaka. We spent a week catching up as an intake group, telling each other about our different sites and what we have been up to so far. Several days were also spent with more specialized training in topics that we did not get to in our initial training. That included lectures on bee keeping, livestock rearing (rabbits and chickens), the non-existent Jatropha market, mushroom growing and much more.

Back in my village I have continued working with my local women's group. I gave a demonstration on how to make bread on a brazier. We made regular bread with white flour and one with maize flour. Both turned out wonderful! I usually end up burning my bread a little, so I was thrilled when I got it right in front of a group. Only problem was there was barely enough bread to pass around the big group. I think everyone left happy though.

My work with Mabula Upper Basic School has started this week too. Last week I went to outline my program with them. As much as the school would love to give me a few classes to teach I have declined. Not only do I not feel qualified to be a teacher but more practically I will be gone too often to be of much use as a teacher. Different programs and obligations will have me away from the village at least two weeks each of the next three months. I also have many other groups and individuals that I work with while I am at site. Although I am not available to be a teacher I still think it's important to work with the students. My plan with the school then is to work with their agriculture science class doing a project once or twice a month.




My class and their trees.



This week our first school project was to start a tree nursery. We planted some quick growing agroforestry trees that we can the leaves use later for making compost, and a few lemon trees that later we will graft into oranges. Next up for projects will be teaching conservation farming in the school field and composting. Gardening, solar drying foods/nutrition, alternate technology and environmental conservation are topics I am looking at for later.

My newly furnished house.



I have also spent the last couple weeks biking back and forth from Kasama trying to finish furnishing my house. It took several trips but now I have some shelves for my 'kitchen' area (corner really) and a small table with an awesome little shelf for keeping all my books off the floor. I'm really happy with how homey my little hut is getting to be! This week I'm planning on building a nice little adobe oven at my house too. It should make baking bread easier and more fuel efficient (not to mention cookies, cake and pizza). I'm really enjoying cooking now that I have lots of time on my hands. Lunch yesterday was soya tacos with fresh handmade tortillas. Yum!!!

Soya tacos!!!!

Charlie is great too. He has really taken to village life, chasing chickens and children and hanging out with his BFF and neighbour Bullet.

Chasing chickens.

Charlie and Bullet

 

More later. Be well.

Communtiy Entry

Communtiy entry is the first 3 months of service in the village. It is a time we get as volunteers to introduce ourselves to our village and determine the types of programs that are needed most. It's also a time for us to adjust to living in a village by ourselves. We are incouraged to stay in our village for the full 3 months and can't use our vacation or house (the Peace Corps house in our provincial capital) days. We can go visit our peace corps neighbors in our district. I did visit my two closest, Ross, 10km away, and Aniella, 25km.

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.