After 4 months, finally back with a blog post. So much has happened, and I'm not really sure where even to begin. I guess I should start with the biggest event of the past 4 months: in May, I was removed from my site in Northwest Province for Safety and Security issues and relocated to a new province. Everything is ok and I am ok, but it was decided that it would be best for my personal safety to not return to the site. So instead of completing my Community Entry, I spent about 7 weeks living in Lusaka while we figured out where I would move and to learn a new language. It was extremely difficult and challenging. I was only able to have two weeks of Bemba lessons, and my teacher pushed me through the entire curriculum that is normally taught over three months during PST because he knew that I had done well learning Kiikaonde. Luckily my teacher is a trainer for both Bemba and Kaonde so I could talk to him in Kaonde to better help me understand Bemba. Living in Lusaka for such a long time was also a big struggle. Lusaka is extremely expensive to live in and very overwhelming after being in the village, especially when you want nothing more than to be in the village. Spending so much time in Lusaka was a good opportunity to meet a lot of volunteers from around Zambia that I likely never would have met otherwise, however. Volunteers are always passing through Lusaka for Medical or program conferences, so there were always people around to do things with, if I wanted to spend the money. Even so, ironically, those 7 weeks were some of the loneliest I've spent in country. It was a relief to finally move to my new village and no longer feel like I was losing my mind.
I've had about a month now to settle in to my new home and develop my new routine. It is very different from my old site. Where there were always people to talk to moving about in my old village, my new site is very isolated. My only neighbors are my family that keeps an eye out for me. There actually isn't much of a village at all because the area is considered a forestry area, so people aren't allowed to live on most of the land because of the trees. So I spend a lot of time in my hut on my own trying to pass the time because there are so few people around and my family spends a lot of the day working at their farm. I occupy my time by doing a lot of reading, unpacking, and fantasizing about killing my family's goats, as goats are somebody's cruel, sick joke on humans and undeniably the worst thing on the planet. Otherwise, I spend as much time as I can at my school observing lessons and preparing to take over Grade 8 English when the next term starts in September. I've really enjoyed spending time with my teachers. They're a good group and they've been very welcoming.
After about a month in my new village, I had to travel back to Lusaka during the first week of August for my IST (In-service training) conference, which lasted 2 weeks. Everyone from my intake was there, and it was so great to see everyone after being 3 months apart. Apart from having to sit through 8 hours of sessions everyday, we had so much (too much?) fun. It's so strange that we won't all be together again for another 9 months, when we return to Lusaka for our Midterm conference. Now that IST is over, I will be heading straight back to the village because being gone for the past 2 weeks has been long enough when I've only been there for a month. I think I need as much time to myself to prepare lesson plans for the next term and learn more about the community.
It is after 23:00 here, and way past my bedtime (I'm usually in bed by 20:00 in the village). Until next time, which should be a lot sooner this time around.
No comments:
Post a Comment