Well it has been almost two weeks since I arrived in Zambia and without a doubt this has been the longest and most eventful almost two weeks that I have ever experienced. Although long, the first week was a breeze filled with new people, some free vaccines, and countless paperwork to help us get established here. Though still fun and exciting, the second week has proved rather difficult for me for reasons that I will explain later. (Bear with me because this post could have easily been 2-3 posts).

If you have never been to Zambia (like I hadn’t before), I think you might have considerable trouble accurately envisioning the diversity, intelligence, and compassion of its people and how that manifests in everyday life. I believe I will continue to learn new things until the day I depart from this country. I came into this thinking that I would be helping people or at least trying to support the people here in their efforts to learn and grow. I do believe that as I spend more time here I might get closer to this goal. However, as I am still in training and living with a host family, I have found that I am being helped and supported far more than I am helping or supporting. From boiling water for me to drink and to bathe (bucket showers with warm water are surprisingly pleasant), to preparing all my meals and doing my laundry (and much much more) my Bamama has literally kept me alive. Each day I try to glean a little knowledge from her and I try to get more involved with the daily activities.

Living the village life in Zambia has meant that I’ve had to do a lot of adjusting to new cultural norms and a new daily routine.

These adjustments have been difficult at times and in truth I’m nowhere near adjusted to certain things. As I write this post it is 3 AM and the roosters all over the village have been crowing for 2 hours already. Those who have lived with roosters probably know this but I was unaware that roosters do not only crow at the break of dawn but rather whenever they damn well please. And it seems that usually one of them starts from across the village and then other ones around the village follow suit until the one in the coop next to my hut is going at it. Luckily they only go on for a few minutes until the next hour rolls around. So far when they’ve woken me up I’ve learned to just laugh and close my eyes until I drift off to sleep again.

Aside from the roosters, I’ve had to adjust to some new kinds of insects that I am not so fond of. The first week I had a cockroach infestation but this was quickly resolved once I reported it and my house was sprayed. However, the one creature that I cannot stand so far is the camel spider. A google search for this thing will probably terrify you but even that will not do this terrible thing justice. Although not technically a spider, it has every quality of the most nightmarish spider I could imagine. They come out at night when you are using lights or lamps because they like the light but they are so fast that one moment they are on the wall and the next they are on you or somewhere else in the room. They can be as large as the palm of your hand and are almost as fast as a house fly, making them rather difficult to squash. They do bite on occasion apparently but luckily they are not poisonous. Despite this they are the definition of a nightmare. Living alongside these things will take some serious getting used to.

But as much as I hate camel spiders I can’t say that they have caused me the most grief of anything since I have arrived. As I mentioned before this second week has been extremely difficult for me as I’ve gotten sick with a pretty bad case of diarrhea and I have been constantly dehydrated. Comically, I got diarrhea the day after we had a training session about how to deal with diarrhea, so at least I was freshly well equipped with the knowledge of how to start recovery. I believe I’m finally starting to recover now at about the fifth day but it has been a loooong five days. The pit latrine and I are best friends now. The first couple days I was so weak that I could barely walk around without feeling like I would pass out. Also I was not prepared for the reality that everyone and their sister in the village would know that I had diarrhea (And now you all online know too). Back home I might be a bit embarrassed about this but it seems like here no one finds it embarrassing, rather they are just concerned for my health, which is nice. People have actually walked to my hut from across the village to pray for me and my recovery. If you told your neighbor in the U.S. that you had diarrhea they would probably look disgusted and perplexed and slam the door in your face. I’ve already learned to appreciate the fact that the people in this village are looking out for me and have my interests at heart.

Some things that have made all the struggles worthwhile are my language classes, and the time I get to spend with my host family and my fellow trainees. The language I am learning is called Kiikaonde and it is a Bantu language spoken in the Northwestern province of Zambia. I feel that I have been picking up this language rather quickly thanks to my teacher and my nightly conversations with my Bamama. I love the way the words are pronounced and I cannot wait to be fully immersed in it. However there are some difficult to pronounce combinations of letters such as “ng’a” which my host family tried to teach me over and over again. As I tried to pronounce it continuously they kept giggling at me, which is very reasonable. But I didn’t realize until the next day that it was also because I was repeatedly saying “nya” which is the word for poop. “Nya, nya, nya, nya, nya, nya,” and so on maybe 20-30 times. You get the idea. (I did not realize how poop themed this post would be when I started writing it). When I told my language teacher he and I shared some very hearty laughter. I am living for these moments though, the silly cross-cultural exchanges that make you laugh at yourself and humble you. There have been so many of these already that I could not possibly write them all here.

I need to sleep so I will wrap up this post but I hope you enjoyed learning a little bit about what life in Zambia has been like for me so far. I do feel the need to remind anyone reading this that this is only a microcosm of what Zambia is like. As I’m learning each day, with distinct regions, different tribes, 16 prominent languages (with somewhere around 72 total), this country is incredibly diverse and I am only beginning to scratch the surface of what life is like here. I don’t expect I will ever come to know or understand everything about this country. Nonetheless in a very short amount of time I have already grown to appreciate it and I cannot wait to get deeper into the culture. I’m excited to face what’s coming next head on and with a smile on my face.