Hey everyone!
I hope this finds everyone well! I am now officially finished with community entry, which is the first 3 months in our village. Now that I am finished with that, I can take advantage of 4 days per month at the Peace Corps House, and take vacation days and cultural days. Normally, volunteers in community entry are not allowed to go on vacation or leave their site for the entire 3 months, but ours was unique since it landed over the holidays and that’s why we were allowed to take a vacation over X-mas/New Years. On Sunday, all the volunteers in my intake are heading to Lusaka for our in-service training, which is 2 weeks. I am eager to visit a big city! Mansa just doesn’t cut it compared to Lusaka, lol.
The past couple weeks I have been hanging out in my village, making a few finishing touches on my house, and getting into some work. I visited a community youth group which has a fish pond, and wants more. I gave them some suggestions on improving the one they have, and helped them with their plans for future ponds. We can’t start staking/digging ponds yet because we are still in rainy season. Come dry season, I’m sure I will be very busy!
Another thing I have been working on is getting a small market started in my village. There is literally no place to buy any kind of produce until you hit the pavement, which is 13K away. This means that to get vegetables and other farm grown foods, I pretty much have to always buy them in Mansa and haul them in. It seems ridiculous because most everyone in the village farms, and they grow all of the foods that I have to buy in Mansa. Some of the teachers at the school are frustrated as well, because they find themselves having to go 30K to Mansa to buy tomatoes. If the community had a place to sell their goods then people won’t have to trek all the way to Mansa to buy basic essentials, and it is also a huge opportunity for the villagers to make more money. I talked to some people in the community about it and people seemed to be really excited about the idea, so I held a community meeting last Wednesday and pitched the idea to them. It went really well, and I am hoping that when I get back to my village tomorrow I find that the area we chose for the market is cleared and ready. We chose a spot near the dirt road, so that any passing cars/motorcycles will be tempted to stop and purchase things as well. I hope it works out, because it would be so beneficial for everyone in the community!
I also am going to be helping out with a mosquito net/Malaria study over the next several months, and in April I am going to be helping put on a girl’s empowerment camp that will teach young girls about the importance of getting an education and not dropping out to get married at 15, safe sex, HIV/AIDS awareness, birth spacing, and other things that are important lessons for young girls to be exposed to. I am excited to have some other projects in the works in addition to my normal fish farming projects.
I am also posting a few pics from my trip to Lake Tanganyika! I will post these and a few more on Facebook, too. Enjoy 
