livingston-the falls and dance drama

i just got back from livingston, home of victoria falls. i went with the AB (as in abstinence, be faithful) group at UNZA who were going to do some workshops in various schools. (let’s not get me started on the lack of C-condoms-which is a constant battle). we left on sunday and after an eight hour bus ride we arrived in livingston. the bus ride included such informative statements from the students as:  -it is very difficult to get married as a women after you have a degree, it is important to have a very serious boyfriend by the time you are in third year so that at least you are more likely to get married -women with certificates are more attractive than women with degrees  - when i mentioned that i would very shortly have two degrees, the bus was particularly torn. the girls were happy, especially when i said that my idea of marriage includes sharing housework, childcare and bills. but the men were not as sold on my plan, and pointed out that i was in fact unmarried, therefore confirming their theory. ouch.  upon arriving in livingston we went to see the falls. this is apparently one of the fullest falls in awhile, given the intense rainy season. we were given raincoats that i might as well not have taken. the ‘rain’ came from all directions. i couldn’t even call it mist. the water was so intense that i had to keep my eyes closed at times and swallow a significant amount of it that somehow happened to find it’s way into my mouth. we crossed a bridge that must have had a foot of water running across it. it was beautiful if not a little overwhelming. and clearly not many photos were taken as most people feared for the safety of their cameras and other electronics.  the visits to the schools went well. the students are very creative in their approach to HIV prevention and education. their was a dance drama, where one girl danced to a drum while three different suitors approached her, gesturing their various gifts and/or attractive attributes. unfortunately, the girl goes for the sugar daddy (cars, cash, cell phones) and comes back on stage at the end with an std. this got a good laugh from the audience, but i think most people enjoyed it as an introduction.  as usual sexual health myths prevailed. particularly interesting was a completely new myth to me. one young man claimed that hiv positive people should not keep farm animals, as these animals will scratch the hiv positive individual, and than when people go to eat this animal they may contract hiv. my head was spinning after that one. i am pretty sure i failed to keep my ‘neutral’ face while this young man went on and on.  we also had a very nice braii the last night i was in livingston. three kinds of meat, very zambian. the last morning i gave a swimming lesson in the small hostel pool that provided a lot of laughs. all in all it was a great time, although i did get sick, probably from a combination of getting soaking wet at the falls, sleeplessness and too many hours on a bus.    

international women’s day

somehow i have given up my weekend and my ability to sleep in to help organize a sports event for international women’s day. tomorrow two ngo’s in lusaka are hosting a sporting event for women and myself and in’utu are involved. we will start out the day by marching, will hear an address by president mwanawasa, and will continue on to the national sports complex where many different sports and rec activities will be happening. i am looking forward to it, as usually i don’t do much in toronto to celebrate, and apparently the march is a really big deal with lots of women every year.

on the planning committee along with in’utu and i is this major who has provided a lot of amusement. he takes his military position to every facet of work and has both saluted and ‘roger’ed me, very funny and i am never quite sure how to respond. maybe if the event is successful he will give me honorary military status…

i am also going to hear winnie mandela (nelson mandela’s ex-wife) speak tonight. she is a bit of a controversial figure, so i am interested to see how people respond to her. i’m not entirely sure what she is speaking on, but it is somehow related to international women’s day as well i think…

zambian wedding

as i mentioned, i went to a zambian wedding on friday. it actually started on thursday, when, after a not-so-great day, i went out for a beer with two friends, kabanda and kabuswe. now, it being the day before the wedding, there was lots of work to be done and kabuswe (who’s cousin was getting married) asked me if i wanted to tag along to go check out the hall for the wedding. we arrived in a large sports complex, which had been rented for the reception. it was in the process of being decorated in a lot of orange (one of my favorite colours for formal-wear). the best part was that the wedding party was practicing a choreographed dance that would be performed during the reception. i was so excited, one because i love dancing and two because it was choreographed both with adults and children. i watched them practice and couldn’t wait for friday.friday came around and zoe, julianna and i got ready for the wedding at our house. unfortunately, i couldn’t make it to the actual wedding that day as it was during work, but the reception was going to be all evening, followed by dancing out somewhere (and by somewhere, i mean my new home away from home away from home, alpha bar). we arrived at the reception slightly late, as it was pouring and i had to hail a bus we convinced to take us straight to the wedding as-if-a-taxi, as really, we were the only crazy people on the road trying to catch anything in this downpour. needless to say, my hair was less than perfect upon arrival.as far as differences from canadian receptions there weren’t too many. it was really sweet of kabuswe to invite us, and in fact, he had about 6 guests. for a sit down dinner, this would clearly send most brides into a fit in canada. but we ate and listened to a very chatty mc and had a great time. some highlights include when the mc declared the ‘dance floor is open’ and everyone got up to dance, early in the evening, with a lot of lights. i danced with lots of people, including a cute little boy that was in the ‘line up’ aka the choreographed dance that i had chatted with the day before.the wedding ended at around midnight and about 10 or 15 of us headed to alpha in our formal wear to dance into the night. i must have danced from about 10pm to almost 3am in new shoes, shockingly not cutting my feet. (this has to be a record, especially for me).i would post pictures if my internet was not so slow. but for those of you on facebook i think some will be able to make it up soon, probably tagged from others. 

a little bit longer…

it seems i may be hanging around lusaka  little bit longer. i have been offered a position from cih (center for international health) at the u of t to stay on in lusaka and be the student exchange summer coordinator. this will consist of working for an extra three months (may, june & july). i will be coordinating the research projects of 5 students from u of t and 2 students from tanzania. i think it will be a good opportunity and i am looking forward to it. in addition, i will be able to continue my research at the chelstone clinic (well start it, and than continue… ha). as well as do some more teaching. considering i don’t have a job to come back to in canada, this has all worked out quite well to give me more time to build the ever changing cv.obviously it means i will be away from wonderful toronto for the summer, which is quite sad. i do love toronto in the summer. but with promises from friends to extend summer into fall, i will be staying. i will also have to spend some time out west in august… maybe even attending some weddings while i am at it!work is going well at unza. two of our proposals/projects are starting to take off. i submitted an amendment to the u of t ethics board so hopefully i will be able to start my slightly modified research in the next couple of weeks.i have been invited to a zambian wedding on friday which i am very much looking forward to. that means i also get to do something else that i love… dress and shoe shopping. i will be sure to take pictures, although my internet is so slow i am finding it difficult to post them. 

delays

not shockingly i have been delayed in starting my research. after what has seemed like relatively good luck, the arv drug i am waiting for in canada is not going to be shipped until possibly april, which means i will not have enough time to interview the patients on the drug and see how they are adhering. so, i am going to have to submit an amendment to u of t ethics, something i should be working on right now, but am wanting to delay because of the head ache it will probably cause. basically i will probably look at a sample of all patients at the same clinic as in my original protocol, and not just on this one specific drug. it shouldn’t be too big of a deal, but i am just wishing i didn’t have to make any changes at all.

my work at unza continues to go well. i am now working on a kicking aids out project (which i was trained in while in st lucia) and continuing with the festival for children with physical disabilities.

i am also looking for a job once i graduate, a daunting task that sometimes sends me into panic mode. i have found a few things that look interesting but all in all it seems early to start applying given that i wouldn’t be available to start until june.

if anyone comes across a perfect, well paid job in sexual health promotion, please send it my way!

zambianisms

so, instead of doing a boring weekend recap (although my weekend was fun, but i don’t feel the need to talk about dancing in every entry…) i thought i would make a list of things that are interesting about lusaka or zambians. little isms for those of you who have never been here might find interesting…

so, in no particular order, my list is:

-bus drivers yelling ‘mommy’ at you when they want to get your attention

- also, to get your attention, kind of hissing at you, although not in an intimidating way (kind of like taking the ‘p’ off psst)

-people saying ’sorry sorry’ to you when you do something stupid, like knock something over in a store or get full of mud while walking through a field

-long handshakes, including kind of holding hands afterward

-the shocked look when you say you will walk anywhere

-being constantly called a ‘mzungu’ or white person (again, not a mean comment, just stating the obvious)

- the variety of ways nshima (the staple food made out of corn) can taste, even though it seems like it should always taste the exact same

-how quickly a rain storm can come on and be truly pouring for sometimes only 15 minutes, followed by sunshine again

-how many people can fit on a bus and how small personal space becomes

-being asked where i’m from constantly… with guesses including the US, russia and the sudan (????)

-bartering for taxi fair, or anything for that matter, with a smile on your face

my weekend minus sleep

the lack of sleep has begun, and early on in my placement. this past weekend was a fun celebration to finish off a very productive week. i tried to branch out a little, as opposed to doing too much of the same old same old….

friday i ‘knocked off’ (a weird british saying that is prevalent in zambia) early from work and went home to get ready to go to a fashion show with my roommate julianna. the dress code was ‘romantic.’ since we had no idea what that meant, we did cute tops with jeans and hoped for the best. when we arrived at the show (a french school called alliance francaise) there was a beautiful room all decorated in reds with a runway down the middle. some people were very dressed up, but we weren’t too out of place. the show itself was a bit of a disappointment, as the clothes weren’t as nice as i had expected, but the event was interesting and fun. miss zambia was there, and we decided that other models in the show were much better looking. although, she did strut her stuff and flip her hair a lot…. so maybe she deserved the title.

after the fashion show we headed to meet some friends at a bar with live music and we danced a little to such songs as ‘hotel california’,  some abba and some zambian music. a random mixture that was quite funny. after the music was winding down we thought, hey, why not just continue our night…. and so we ended up going to two other clubs and dancing into the very early morning, getting home just before 6am. obviously a lot of fun, but my dancing muscles were sore and the phone call from dee in the morning didn’t help my headache (although, i wouldn’t have it any other way!)

saturday julianna and i did our usual coffee and grocery shopping. when we got home three of our little neighbour girls knocked on our door and we hung out with them all afternoon. the highlight was an impromptu photo shoot with my digital camera and our sunglasses. the girls wanted to see how the camera worked and look at themselves in the photos, by the end, they were posing like professionals.

as oppose to resting, julianna and i went out for indian food with friends (my coworker inutu and some american friends of ours) followed by drinks and salsa dancing. the salsa dancers were amazing and definetely made you feel completely inadequate. although one of inutu’s friends did try and teach me some moves, and i wasn’t horrible. i may start attending some drop in salsa classes on wednesdays, so that next time i am less pathetic. so, for the second night in a row, we stayed out dancing until late.

sunday i met up with a zambian woman who is friends with someone i grew up with in canmore (alison casey…. for those from canmore) and had a lovely afternoon playing with her young baby and eating lunch. when i returned home, julianna was babysitting our upstairs neighbours’ little girl, tapiwa, who  stayed with us for a few hours while we got ready for a dinner party with zoe and her mom, christine. we had them over and had a lovely evening chatting and eating. tapiwa behaved very well and i got a taste of what it is like to try to cook dinner and eat with a baby on your hip/lap. i think i will wait awhile before that becomes an everyday reality….

so, there is my abbreviated weekend, with the highlights. i am keeping up my love of rom coms by going to see 27 dresses tonight. work may be slow this week because the students are studying for final exams… but hopefully other things start to fill my time. if not, there is always coffees and cakes in the afternoon and watching the riches on my computer in the evening.

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.