grapevine fires

I don’t know how many people are friendly with the song by Death Cab for Cutie “Grapevine Fire’s” (you will be transfered to the YouTube video if you click on the title of today's blog, which is really a link, so look up and click), but I find myself singing it to myself while biking at least once a day. My bike ride to my classes, although only a little over 4km, is what I like to call extreme mountain biking. It’s through two streams, a 2 foot down/up hill gap (mini valley) in the earth and down and then up a big hill or small mountain. See this time of year in Zambia is very windy, dry, all while it is getting warmer each day. It is the time of year that farmers begin to get their fields ready before the rainy season. With these points in mind, along with the fact that no one is really quite sure why, it’s also the time of the year that every house hold in the country loves to burn the grasses around their houses, fields, or anywhere really. Some people say that they do it so in case there really was a fire their houses would be safe. Mud walls + Grass roof + fire = no house (bad news). Others say that the grasses are burned as a kind of fertilizer for the earth, and lastly to find, kill, catch to eat the mice that are in the fields. But alas, as I bike to and from the training center over looking the beautiful countryside that was just burnt or is still smoking; I cannot help but put the images I see to the music that I can most relate to this time.

Little Elishaba was really sick with the flu last week. Just today (Tuesday 8/25) after a full week of not being able to hold anything down (or in (Oh and no diapers are used here, not even the cloth kind, that’s a luxury that can not be afforded. If you are thinking messy, you are right)). As most of you know who are reading this, it’s really scary when a baby’s sick. They can’t tell you what’s wrong, it’s hard to relive them from any pain that they are in, and its hard not to feel helpless when they cannot keep anything down!

But even scarier for me, was the fact that we have been covering Under-5 care the past week, and have been preached to by Peace Corps, how the greatest cause of mortality in U-5 is diarrhea leading to dehydration. Needless to say watching her become weaker and weaker was hard for me. My host parents kept asking me questions about what they should do, or what I thought might be the issue since I am a health volunteer. But I had no idea what to do seeing that I have never had a child before and Bamaayo and Batata have had four. I couldn’t help thinking that I have only babysat for families of four, so it was a bit different, and they knew a bit more about what to do than me. It was also kind of hard not to say or tell them to just give her some children’s Tylenol, which does not exist here. Woops.

I was able to offer dehydration salts, but they had their own, and were in the process of using them. I hate feeling helpless and always try to be as proactive as I can be, so you can assume that this was a hard experience for me, however I couldn’t help looking at it as a valuable learning experience since I am going to be coming across situations like this more times than not in the next few years. There are going to be many times that I am not going to be able to act in the helpful manor I may think best because of a lack of education, clauses in my Peace Corps contract, and the fact that helping one family in a special way in the village would be equivalent to opening Pandora’s box. So since this story has a happy ending, and I am still in training, I am taking this baby sickness as a good thing; because it is one thing to be told that I must be hands off as a volunteer, or feeling helpless at times, but a totally different thing to experience it.

Did you know that I am a hair dresser? Me either, but I am now the July 2009 RAP/CHIP intake official go to hair cutter. Today marked my fourth successful hair cut (I am getting better with each one)! I have given one girl with hair the length to her mid-back a smashing fo-hawk (mini Mohawk), another girl with shoulder length hair a peter-pan-ish hair cut, a boring dude hair cut to a dude, and a cute angled bobb to another girl with shoulder length hair. Please don’t worry, each person asked for the style they received, there have been no tears, and I have gotten many requests to other people’s hair once we get back from out second site visit. Oh and I found out that I am going to Central Prov! Bordering the Northern Prov, and the DRC. See you all in a week!