The End is Near...

....of training that is...only about three more weeks until I swear in as an official volunteer! Very exciting! I am currently in Solwezi, on my way back from my second site visit, which was outside of Mwinilunga. We were able to see how a volunteer was working in his community, and it definitely reaffirmed my decision to stay here--so yay! but sorry again mom! The past two weeks have been kind of crazy though. It is the middle of I guess what could be called "slash and burn" season here (although there is not always enough slashing, and it is not always for agricultural reasons), so there are fires everywhere. It is very frightening at first, but you get used to just walking or riding your bike by them. They are usually fairly controlled, since people usually chop all of the tall grass by their houses and the like. However, two weeks there was a bushfire by my compound, which my family had not started themselves. I had just gotten back from morning training sessions and was getting ready to eat lunch when everyone noticed it. It was close enough for me to be freaked out, but my family was just watching it for a little bit, assessing the situation. However, it happened to be a particularly windy day and the fire moved pretty quickly, so my family soon ran out towards the fire with hoes and started whacking all of the grass down. It kept coming though, so we started to move all of our stuff out of our houses. I went in just to get my passport, but my family started to grab everything--even my mosquito net! I tried to resist, but it was pretty useless--they are very protective of me. Anyway, they also started some firelines around the compound to keep the fire at bay, which worked pretty well. However, there was a big tree behind one of the houses that a fellow trainee was living in, which caught fire and subsequently caught her house on fire, as well as her bathing shelter and pit latrine. Luckily, we had gotten everything out of there except for a couple of pictures on her wall. She even realized later that her family pulled out the disposable razor that had been in the shower! We are all safe, and nothing irreplaceable was really lost, but it was such a crazy experience. My family worked so fast and knew exactly what to do to control it, but it is just one of those things that I don't really quite grasp the concept of. I am not a big fan of bushfires though...

Also, a note on public transportation...it is crazy. We took a bus in today from Mwinilunga, and the bus itself was very nice. It was the same as any bus in the US...plush seats and storage for bags underneath. However, they load that thing up like there is no tomorrow (although it is the only bus running that day, so people are willing to ride like that). People stand in the aisles and other people's kids often end up in your lap so that they are not standing in the aisles. Someone also brought a chicken on the bus, which was pretty well behaved until they tried to put it on the upper shelf above the seats. The chicken would have none of that. Anyway, we made it safely, and I actually met a couple of people that live in the village that I am going to, so that was pretty cool.

Okay, a couple more logistics things...I don't cook a whole lot while I am with my family during training. I do stir the food, but my mom does most of the work. While we are on site visits though and when I get to the village I will be cooking more. It takes a LONG time! You can actually cook just about anything over a campfire or charcoal brazier. While on site we made guacamole and tapioka pudding and all sorts of good stuff. Apparently they will be giving me a cookbook when we go to site, which will be nice, but I will be sure to write down any obscure recipes that I learn in the village. I think it will be awhile until I get down the art of making nshima though, but I suppose I have two years to perfect it. I do my own laundry maybe every week or two, but everything gets dirty as soon as I put it on anyway. But we just rub a little soap from a bar onto the clothes, put a side of the cloth on the knuckles of each hand and use a little elbow grease. Patch by patch. It takes a while, and my knuckles are currently rubbed raw. But it gets very clean and I hope I will build up some callouses on my knuckles. And about motherhood...it is pretty common for women to have children pretty constantly for about twenty years or so. I can't even imagine. Girls often start having kids around the age of 16 or so. A 20 year old without kids is uncommon. I am a big mystery, but have gotten several proposals since I have been here....I told them I go for more than 400 cows in the US though, so there have not been any acceptances.