My favorite time of day

The sunsets this past week have been breath-taking. These are views from my house. I've never seen sky like this before. My family laughs at me when I get my camera out each night. They don't really understand why I find it so fasinating.

When it rains it pours

I'm no longer talking about the rainy season as it seems that the rains have finally dissappeared. However this past Wednesday i awoke to what i thought would be a nice restful day visiting the area schools and clinic. Well I was in for a surprise.

I rolled out of bed at my usual hour around 7am and started my brazier to make coffee and jungle oats. I look forward to this everyday because its usually the time I'm alone and no one is bothering. I'm able to read a good book and just relax before the craziness of village life begins. However on this day my sister Madise ran to my house saying that Grace (my 4 yr old sister) was sick. I asked what was wrong and she said she's shaking and her eyes are rolled back in her head. What? Without even thinking I ran over to their house, without realizing I never put my bowl of jungle oats down and was still holding it as I ran into the house. Grace was on the floor with one of the Amai's holding her head with a spoon in her mouth keeping her from biting her tongue. She was having a really bad seizure. I started asking Fanny, Grace's mom some questions. Apparently the "fits" as they call them started at 5am in the morning and it was now 7:30am. That wasn't good. And apparently Grace has had this happen before about two other times. I don't have any sort of medical background and I really didn't know what to do, but all the women were looking at me to save this little girl. I sort of freaked for a moment and knew I needed to hold it together for the sake of Fanny. So I ran to my house and checked in the PC Medical book....nothing on seizures. Right. So since I don't have cell phone service, I had to run to the tarmak and to my dismay still couldn't get service. I was definitely starting to get extremely irritated by now. This was my little sister that I play with everyday and there was no way I was going to let anything happen to her. So I decided I was taking her to the hospital.

By the time I got back to the house she had stopped the seizures, however she was completely unresponsive. I told Fanny we needed to go to the hospital and she said because they live in the village that they needed to go to the clinic first. Fine, however I really wanted her to see a doctor and the clinics only have nurses. So I decided we'd take a cab the 5k to the clinic. Grace is about 30 to 40lbs and Fanny is a fairly small and petite woman, so I offered to carry Grace on my back till we got a ride. Well, a ride never came, so we just started walking. We ended up walking the entire 5k in about 80 degree heat. Let me say it was quite the walk. I was exhausted and drenched in sweat by the time we arrived, but Fanny was quite thankful for not having to carry Grace.

To my surprise there were about 20 people waiting and no nurse. Great! I sent a message to the PC doctor and asked what I should do. At this point Grace was just moaning and awake. We gave her some water and she threw up on three people. Oops! Two hours later we were able to see the nurse. Of course, the diagnosis....Malaria! Okay, I'm no doctor, but the girl didn't have malaria. She may be epileptic, but I know she didn't have malaria. I was furious. She gave her some medicine and sent us home. I felt really bad for her. That's the way medical care works here. I think we would have gotten more help at the hospital, but thats not the procedure for people that live in the village.

My doctor ended up calling me back and gave me some good advice, however I was told in the future I should not be getting involved with these situations. Are you kidding me? This is my family! I'm not going to sit by and watch people die here. I couldn't live with myself for doing absolutely nothing.

So we were able to take a cab back to the village and I showed Fanny how to sponge bath Grace to get her fever to go down and then I went home and just sat and stared out my door. About two hours later I hear Madise my other sister yelling outside. I went out there and asked her what all the commotion was about. She explained that this woman came to her and accused her of buying a stolen chicken and how her grandmother told the woman that she did it. This woman was apparently really to call the police to have Madise put in the Madzimoyo jail over night. Okay. So I explained that she should calm down and that I didn't think she was going to jail over a chicken. She didn't buy a stolen chicken and we could prove that. End of story.

It was after dark and I was preparing for bed when I got a knock at the door. It was my brother Phillimon. I invited him in and he sat and looked at me and said, "Ah, Julie...I just lost my job." What do you mean you lost your job? "Ah, I got fired." What? Okay. Phillimon seemed like it was no big deal but I knew deep down he was freaking out. This was his families only source of income and its the season where no one has money to begin with. We started chatting about things he could do to make money. I also encouraged him to start farming again. Apparently he used to be a good farmer, but stopped several years ago because of some problems. He explained that he didn't have money for seed, so I told him that if he does some work for me that he could make enough money to buy seed to start farming again. He seemed very encouraged by this and really its his only option at this point. For now, his brothers will help him out, but in a few weeks he's going to need money.

After he left I was completely drained. It had been an extremely long and taxing day. I just sat in my dark house in the chair for a while trying to come to terms with all the crazy things that happened. I was truly scared that I was going to lose Grace and thank god she's going to be okay. She's been playing the last couple of days but seems really unsteady when she's walking around. Her mouth droops a bit too now. I don't know, it was a really rough day. But hey, I knew everyone was counting on me and thats what kept me going.

So I'm back in town today to say goodbye to some of my fellow pcv's. We have about 13 new people here now. Its an understatement to say that the house is a bit overcrowded. Tonight is the big party so I will be releasing a bit of stress from the week. Next week I'll be painting my signs for the field day and teaching my farmers about sustainable farming techniques. So I'm back in action and healed from last weeks infection and the work continues to pour in.

I'm heading to southern Malawi for Easter with Christi. We are going to be hiking Mt. Mulanje. Its the tallest mountain in southern Africa. It will be great to wake up on a beautiful mountain Easter sunday. Not sure I'm quite ready physically for the climb, but I have faith. We will be moving pangono, pangono. (slowly, slowly). I can't wait!

Releasing Some Pressure

Things have been going great in the village. I'm working on a big "Farmer's Field Day" with a fellow pcv that will take place at the end of the month. We will have a demonstration pond for about 500 rural farmers and teaching them a bit about fish farming. I've also taken on a side project of painting signs for the Department of Agriculture at Msekera. I thought I should put to use some of my talents and I'm happy that my services will save them a lot of money. However I have 12 signs to paint and 1 banner all before the end of March. And these are not small signs, about 3 meters by 1 meter. So lots to do in the next couple of weeks and I'll be biking there about 30km each day. I'm always thankful for the extra excercise.

However I find myself in Lusaka today after finding a rather large lump under my arm. Nothing to worry about, but they wanted me to come and get it checked out. It keeps getting bigger and more painful as the days go on so I thought it was time to see the doctor. Well I wasn't prepared to have an outpatient surgery of sorts, but I did. Lets just say without any anestetic, the small incision was quite painful. It hurts to type this blog entry right now. So I just had an abcess that my body couldn't fight and it needed to be drained. Imagine, me getting an infection.....unheard of ;) So I'm feeling much better now and I'm on some antibiotics for the next ten days. I'm hoping to get back to Chipata asap because I have a ton of work to do. I miss my village and my family. But for now I'm going to eat some great food, upload all my photos from the past two months and take in a good movie. I want to see Blood Diamond....heard its fantastic. Well thats it for now. I'll let everyone know how the big field day goes. Wish me luck!

The Chimwale Ceremony of the Ngoni Tribe

Last week was the annual Ngoni festival called Chimwale. The Ngoni's, which is the tribe that I belong to gather every year to celebrate their culture and traditions. The day was filled with dancing, singing and eating. Several volunteers came to stay with me since I was just a stone's throw away from where the festivities took place. The photos are of the Ngoni warriors holding Nkoli's and their traditional dress of many types of animal skins.

The ceremony lasted for two days. On the second day the Paramount Chief Mpezeni kills a bull and drinks from its blood. I didn't attend this part of the ceremony since there is an unbelievable amount of people and things can get out of hand. I was extremely pleased just to watch all the dancing.

We met some amazing people at the ceremony including a Swedish man passing through while cycling the last 20 months from Norway to Cape Town. He spent the night in my village and had the most amazing stories photos from his travels across Turkey, Egypt, the Sudan and just everywhere he has gone. He has about 5 more months to go before he reaches Cape Town. Talk about an adventure, but I felt so lucky to meet such an interesting person. He hopes to write a book about his journey.

While we were at the ceremony, we started chatting with the Ngoni warriors and I decided to buy a spear from one of them. Its a genuine Ngoni spear and I love it. Its been the talk of my village ever since I brought it home. They keep saying, "Ah, Juliette, you are a true Ngoni now." Yes, yes I am.

We also saw the cutest warrior at the ceremony. The little boy pictured below. And to our astonishment, this kid sure does know how to dance. He was quite shy, but so cute.

It was quite an amazing experience because these ceremonies are not for tourist at all. They are only for their tribes to celebrate their culture. It was definitely a once in a lifetime opportunity to be able to see something like this. As always we got plenty of attention, however since I lived nearby they were very happy that we came. Didn't hurt that I was willing to try their traditional dances with an Nkoli. Its difficult and I'm sure I looked like a fool. But hey, only in Africa, right? They just laughed and laughed.

My New Village

So I've been in my new village for about two weeks now and I just want to say how happy I am there. It is very different from my old village. Fisheni is home to about 200 households and over 1000 people. My headman is great and I've already had my community entry meeting and I've begun work with my fish farmers. They are very motivated here and I'm excited about all the potential this area may have. The only downside is that water is an issue in this community which could cause us some problems with the fish ponds. I'll cross that bridge when I need to.

The view above is walking towards my house. The village is right on the tarmak which is great. It only takes me about an hour to get to town as apposed to the three hour journey before and I'm actually 25km from Chipata. My family is wonderful. They've helped me so much in the past two weeks from building my drying rack to clearing my yard and fixing my latrine. My Ambuya makes me Mteteke (porridge with ground nuts) almost every day. She's a great cook. My families dog just had puppies so I'm hoping to adopt one. Its about time I have a puppy.

To the left is my house and my kids dancing around. I love this house. Its big, the roof doesn't leak and I don't have any mice!!!!

I've already met one of the three women's groups in the area and I'm going to be working with them soon. I'm also heading to the school, Chinghala next week to introduce myself and see if I can start teaching English there once a week. Many things planned. I'm starting over, but its definitely for the better. However I just ran into an old farmer of mine from Kapatamoyo as I was walking to the Internet Cafe today and I'm planning on going there the end of March to continue teaching about fish farming. He said many people are upset that I had to leave but its okay since I'll be able to continue some work there.

So thats whats going on in a nutshell. March 16th we'll be saying good-bye to five wonderful pcv's in my province. I'm sad to see them go home, but after two years of service they've all done a fabulous job here and I wish them all the best.

Livingstone Trip

Victoria Falls

Sunset Cruise on the Zambezi River