Calling Me & Transport

Hello all!

I have not been at the internet as much or as often as I anticipated this week. This has been mostly because I've been at the house on the phone a lot with all my friends and family back in the states and also with fellow PCVs talking about our upcoming vacation to Livingstone in July after a week of training in Lusaka. We discovered a great web site, www.zprepaid.com, which allows my friends to chat with me in Zambia for .10 or less per minute. I spent nearly all day Saturday chatting with one or the other of my family members and getting caught up with all the happenings at home. These conversations alone have picked me up and helped me focus on an exciting four weeks in my village. If you are interested in chatting with me, you can contact my mom at rfjbosslady@hotmail.com for the telephone numbers where you can reach me here as I'm not comfortable posting it online.

This blog update will have to be quite quick because I have to go to the grocery store and stock up on necessities like powdered milk, cereal, and sponges for my next stint mu muzhi (in village). We are catching transport back to site tomorrow and I will spend the longest uninterrupted period of time alone in my hut since arriving. I'll be back at the provincial house from June 21-June 26 to renew my visa again and to celebrate my 28th birthday! It's incredibly hard to believe that a whole year has passed since my birthday in the Fort Collins condo.

I'm not necessarily looking forward to getting transport again. Transport has been one of the single most frustrating aspects of living in Zambia as it's not at all reliable or consistant. Last week my PCV neighbor and I went to Kasempa to visit our fellow PCV for her birthday. Her location is very close to ours, but requires a round-about trip by road to get there. We had very little trouble hitching up to her site, but on the return I wore out my shoes walking 25 k from her house to town and then spent several more hours in a mini-bus with twenty other people and then in an oil rig, which was so tall that we had to climb a ladder to get in the cab.

My grocery shopping buddy has arrived, so I must be off. Some of you have asked what I am needing at site, and in brief, I have all the necessities. I'm always short on batteries and have the most need of AA batteries. Any luxury items are fabulous! Magazines, stationary, dried foods, snacks, anything that smells pretty, spices, funny articles. I have SO appreciated everything I have received and experienced so much serendipity with receiving exactly what I need when I need it: like a potato peeler the day after I realized I really needed one!

All my love to you and will write more again soon.

SJJ