moving right along…

so work is starting to seriously pick up. this week i am teaching a lot and just received an email saying that my research proposal has officially been approved by u of t ethics! very exciting. for those who don’t know ethics submissions are painful and long and make you want to never do research… so it is very nice that that is all behind me.

teaching has been good. today i did the standard male and female condom demonstrations with my health communication class. we had a discussion about the myths of condoms etc. one particularly graphic example was told to me by a man claiming that the holes in condoms are so big, that the HI virus is like a tennis ball and the condom is like a doorway, obviously in his mind, condoms did not do the trick. i tried to dispel the myths… but there are a lot.

also i am working on a games festival for children with physical disabilities. it is going to take place at unza near the end of april. i am working with inutu, an amazing coworker of mine. she has so many things on the go and is all around great, so i am really lucky to be working with her.

i am trying to do other fun things. i am looking into french conversation classes and maybe some informal spanish classes as well. i met two bolivian ladies this week and they seemed keen to learn english. i figure we can try and trade language skills.

also, my random media encounters while abroad continue. i have been asked to appear on the unza radio station on friday. i will let you know how it goes, but i assume it will be quite funny.

outside of work things are also going well. power seems to be a bit more consistent. my roommie julianna and i are planning a holiday to zanzibar, an island off the coast of tanzania, so that is exciting. it won’t be until march, but it is nice to think about the beach!

alright, i’m off to cut keys to my office. i have been locked out three times now and i have had enough.

no power, no problem

so, every day for the last five days the power has gone off for significant amounts of time. i am quite impressed with the ability of the entire country (yes, these are mostly country wide power outages) continues relatively unaffected by what i deem to be a huge inconvenience. last night, the all africa cup was on and zambia was playing, but the power had been out for hours. we showed up at a pub wondering if it would be a problem to see the game, only to be greeted with over a hundred people drinking and watching the game in the dark. the bar was powered by a generator and was going about business as usual. zambia won in an unexpected upset over the sudan 3-0. very exciting.

personally, i would appreciate more consistent power…. but i suppose i should just go with it, drink some mosi (zambian beer) and cheer like crazy on saturday, when zambia faces egypt.

enjoy the snow and hockey. i’m happy with my sun and football.

my great weekend

so, it is monday morning and i am locked out of my office, so instead of using this time productively to do some work, i thought it would be far better spent updating my blog and letting you all know about my weekend… i think my priorities are where they should be.

so, i had a really nice weekend that was quite full. i suppose it makes most sense just to go day by day and try and remember all the different things that happened. so….

friday zoe and i ditched out of work early because she wanted to go buy some shoes and i went with her. we went to a part of town i hadn’t been to yet, and it was really interesting and busy. there were about five shoe shops in a row, and i somehow restrained myself and didn’t buy a single pair, although zoe bought two. we were also cornered by a perfume street vendor that easily sprayed me with 10 sprays of perfume before i escaped. needless to say, you could smell me coming. after shopping, i went home to my apartment and got ready with my roommates to go to a bbq. when we arrived at the bbq there was no power anywhere. so we ate in the dark and it came back on after three hours or so. from the bbq we went out dancing to an area of town called north mead. we went to three different dance clubs and i had a lot of fun. my dancing was complimented as ‘not too white’ which really, is all you can hope for.

on saturday i went out for coffee and croissant in the morning with my roomies and than we did a big grocery shop for the week. we planned on making a big dinner, but the power went out at around 7pm and didn’t come back on until 11am the next day! it was quite the event. apparently the power was off in the entire country. the rumor (circulated by many taxi drivers that we consulted that evening) was that a dam was having some sort of malfunction due to all the rain. so, instead of making dinner we went out to an indian restaurant that was somehow still open. there was no electricity or water, so it is a wonder that they weren’t shut, but we enjoyed a really wonderful, if not extremely long, dinner by candlelight.

sunday, when the power finally came back on we began making a sunday lunch for four extra people that were coming over. we made soup (which was lovely and mostly my creation), guacamole, tzaziki (sp?), bean patties, salad and fruit crumble. this is quite a feat considering we have only two pots, a fake oven that only goes to about 250 degrees celcius and can only fit a very small pan in it. also, we tried two blenders, both from our neighbours to no avail to puree the soup, so i managed to do a rough puree by hand.

all in all, a great weekend full of surprises. i didn’t get a chance to email because of all the power problems, but that is a pretty good recap of the last three days.

i hope everyone else had an equally interesting weekend, but perhaps with power and water.

unza=meetings and teaching

well, you will be all happy to know that i have started to settle into my job at unza (university of zambia). yesterday, i attended a six hour meeting yesterday! kind of brutal in terms of length and pain… i swear i could have taken the minutes in literally 1/4 of the time, but i tried to bite my tongue. although, i must admit, there were times were everyone was so exasperated that laughter broke out. which is a nice break from stuffy canadian meetings.

today i met two classes of students in the physical education program. i was met with a surprise when i went to introduce myself to the third year students and my boss, mr. kakuwa, decided that instead of introducing me he would just have me teach the class. so there i am, completely unprepared, not even with any chalk in front of 15 students that are all much older than me. so, needless to say, it was kind of ridiculous. however, i ended up talking about the u of t/unza student exchange program and graduate studies at u of t, which everyone was really interested in. now next week i am meant to bring a whole bunch of material for the students regarding the application process. who knows what was supposed to have been taught for that hour, but it doesn’t seem to matter!

arrival in lusaka

after a very long trip, i am safely in lusaka. there was no need to worry, all airports (including the 12 hour layover in kenya) were safe and my flights were relatively on time. i even got my luggage, despite my concerns that three layovers would lead to problems.

the trip was fairly uneventful. i found a sleepers lounge in the kenyan airport where i spent about 7 hours sleeping and could take a hot shower in the morning before my flight to zambia. that helped a lot with my level of grumpiness and alertness upon arriving in lusaka. i recommend anyone having to go through the kenyan airport to rent one of these sleeping ‘rooms’ (aka i could touch all four walls at once).

upon arrival in lusaka, my coworker zoe, and my boss mr. kakuwa, picked me up and dropped me off at my apartment. i am staying in a two bedroom apartment with two other girls, adela and julianna. they are both really nice and we had a fun weekend together. they were excellent tour guides, showing me the bus routes, the grocery store, the local market. and even showing me a little place to sit out on a patio and have a sunday afternoon mosi (the zambian beer).

today was my first day at work at unza (the university of zambia). not a terribly productive day, but a very friendly first day nonetheless. i have my own desk in a shared office but currently there is no internet, so i am at zoe’s office stealing some internet time. tomorrow i have a meeting scheduled for most of the day about sports/intramurals on campus, which i will be helping out with. no laughing, i am very capable of playing sports and intramurals for all you skeptics!

besides that not too much to update you on. there are a ton of canadians in zambia, lots of cida interns and they all seem very lovely. my roommates and i have been cooking a lot, and although the quality of the meals does not compare to the toronto ladies i am enjoying it. i have a hot shower with lots of pressure, which is really amazing. i have my own room and sleep under a mosquito net, which doesn’t really bother me.

okay, i’m going to brave the rain and my long bus ride home! keep writing and hope things are well in canada or wherever else in the world you are! please write!

bye bye

well, i am officially leaving my apartment in two hours. shockingly, everything on my list has been accomplished and i am currently packing my last few things. i am happy to be leaving the wind storm that is toronto right now and trade it in for serious downpours for a couple of hours a day.

i have had so many amazing send offs, i feel quite spoiled. i am going to miss everyone but know that my time away will fly by and i’ll be back before i can catch my breath.

alright, next post will be from lusaka. and i promise, they will get more interesting when i actually have something to say besides ‘i checked everything off my list.’

one day left….

so i am still flying through kenya, it appears that will be fine. i am not looking forward to two days of flying. however, today i bought some plane pants which seem very comfy, so that will help.

my flight leaves wednesday and i fly through amsterdam and nairobi, finally ending up in lusaka on friday. i am being picked up at the airport by my boss and coworker and will be going to my apartment that i will be sharing with two girls.

i am looking forward to getting out of toronto and on with everything… the waiting is kind of killing me. however the oyster shucking party tomorrow will help things, thanks girls!

leaving for zambia

as of now, i am leaving on wednesday (9th) … but we will see if i need to change my flight as right now i am flying through kenya.