Hello. I'm currently at my provincial house in Mansa, Luapula right now. (Every province has a Peace Corps provincial house and Peace Corps volunteers go there for trainings or just to get away. A volunteer can stay for a few days every month.) It's nice because it has internet, electricity, movies, and comfortable beds. I'm here because I just finished my 2nd site visit and we're waiting for transport to Lusaka which will get here tomorrow morning. I will be living with my host family again, finishing training, and going to my site mid October.
My second site visit was extremely helpful because it allowed me to see the hut I'll be living in (mud, 3 rooms, grass roof) and meet the people in my community. I met my Ba Mayo, who's land I'm living on and who made me meals and heated my bath water on a brazier every morning. I spent most of my time just being with the people in my village. Zambians think that being alone is a bad thing, so when one group would leave another would come. Privacy is pretty limited. They asked me what my name and surname is so I told them Kelly DeVore....From this they call me Ba Deborah. Zambians tell their family name first and their personal name second, so they think DeVore is my individual name, but they have an accent so it comes out to be Deborah. "Ba" shows respect, like "Mr." or "Mrs." I might have to start introducing myself as DeVore Kelly. I was even given a Bemba name :Mwensa (m-when-zah). My neighbor that gave it to me said it means "one who is active", but others say that there is no meaning in the name, it's simply a name.
The first couple days were interesting. They mostly consisted of me sitting on my porch surrounded by about 30 children and 10 adults asking me questions in a language I don't understand very well. I mostly would just greet them and tell them I'm learning Bemba so I don't know how to effectively communicate yet. My Ba Mayo and host know English (but they won't talk to me in English very often). Translating and learning Bemba for four days straight can be exhausting! Finally, on my third day I took out my Bemba dictionary and it helped a lot. I could communicate and understand what people were saying to me, for the most part. I'm the first white person most of the people in my village have seen. This leads to them being very confused as to why I would ever leave America (the land of plenty), the purpose of me being there, and babies are scared of me. My day is unusual if I don't make a baby cry by saying hello.
During my stay, I went to a Zambian wedding. It was great. The wedding party spends about an hour and a half slowly dancing a rehearsed dance down the aisle. The people who are attending the wedding dance up to them as they're dancing give them money. Pops and food are handed out to everyone in attendance after the dancing. Then, there's more dancing done by the bridal party. It's extremely difficult to explain, so I highly suggest looking at this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HM2qliw-CXQ&feature=related or going to youTube and searching for Zambian Wedding. Part way through, there was a power outage (which they say happens quite often) so the music stopped. But, they kept dancing as if the music was still playing because it was being video taped.
I also ended up going to a church service, because Zambians are very religious so I wanted to see what it was like. It was basically 3 hours of people staring at me and reading scripture. It was a Jehovah's Witness service. I made sure to tell them that I'm attending to see what it's like and to learn more Bemba. I've been told that other services have a lot of instruments playing music and dancing, so I'm going to attend a service like that. But, Sundays will be my day of rest because everyone will be at church.
As I was leaving my Ba Mayo was sad ("They're taking my daughter!") and the villagers kept telling me they were worried that I wouldn't come back. It was confusing to them that I came and then left. Approximately 90% of Zambians never leave their village and have no desire to travel, so when they see/hear of others traveling, they don't understand the purpose. (I talked to a man and asked him if he'd ever been to a national park to see the African animals, and he said he'd seen a giraffe once, so he sees no reason to go to a park.)
I'm looking forward to getting back to training where I'll see the other Peace Corps trainees and my host family.
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