November 30, 2012

My Job is Cooler Than Your Job!


My Job is Cooler Than Yours, and Here is Why
  I can write this blog and work, and it still fits under my job description
  I walked two minutes to get a fresh, pineapple, orange, apple today to add to my lunch and I paid less than $2.00.
My dog and I both get to walk to work together every morning.  Everyone in my office loves her, and she loves them.
  On an average day, you might hear up to four different languages spoken in my office, and I can understand enough of all of them to tell you what is going on.
There are three mango trees on our office property with tons of fresh mangos for the eating.
A few weeks ago I had a “business meeting” under the shade of a banana plantation.
Pretty much anywhere I go for a “business trip,” I come back with loads of free food; given to me because of the generosity of the people I work for.
I am at work.  Unlike you, I am not sitting inside an air-conditioned office with a tiny window to keep me from going insane.  I am sitting on an open-air porch.  The rains are thinking about rolling in later.  The breeze is causing my hair to tickle the back of my neck, and the sound of our rooster is keeping me grounded. 
 This morning, my job included sorting through Toy Story puzzles. 
I live in a world where a text message can make someone’s day.  It can change the mood of their whole week for the better. 
My co-workers do not bitch about “first world problems,” all we crave is a hand written note from a loved one at home.
I work as part of a team of three, and there appears to be some sort of unwritten goal that you need to make the team laugh, HARD, before one of the other ones does. 
Giving is a large part of my job.  I have to make sure that our office feels like a place that any one of my 61 fellow Volunteers would want to come recharge their worn down souls.  I know why good mom’s love makes a house a home so much now.  And I didn’t have to push a single one of them out of my vagina!
My co workers and I can talk about pooping, and shitting ourselves, and sex, and periods all together.  Male or female.  Friend or Foe.  We all love those discussions.  J 
 Last week, when I was away from my real, American family, and hanging out with these 61 assholes, it still felt like Thanksgiving.   
Sometimes I have to be up and ready by 6:00 on a Saturday morning to begin a work day that won't end until 8:00 at night, and it has never once actually felt like work.  

A Random Act of Kindness


Sometimes I like to wander through our vegetable market on Saturdays.  It brings a funny piece of mind being amongst all of that fresh fruit and veg.  I didn’t love markets before coming to Zambia, and I still don’t love clothing and/or random stuff markets, but I love the way I feel around a veg market. 
The women working the stands have displayed everything with such care and attention.  They stack four tomatoes, one on top of the other, in perfect balance hoping that the red balls appeal to the buyers eye more that way.  They have bagged perfect servings of green beans into many small bags so that all you need to do is grab and go.  Fast food never looked this good.  Today I bought, all fresh, a pineapple, green beans, four giant green peppers, a cucumber and one lemon all for under $2.00.  With a deal like that it is hard to leave the space not feeling pretty good about yourself. 
It is as if everyone is just working to take really good care of you.  The woman worked hard to provide the best fruits and vegetable available to keep you healthy and happy.  For a cheaper price and a better quality than the local supermarkets can provide.  You, the buyer, want to provide for the women in the same way.  Buyers are taking their time and going out of their way to get the best bang for their buck.  It is like the coolest cheapest Farmers’ Market you can imagine. 
Today, however, my favorite thing about my weekly veg shopping did not happen at or in the veg market.  It happened just outside. 
I was walking home with my fresh produce in my hands feeling pretty good about the breeze that was blowing and the pink sunset that was rolling in when it happened.  An older gentleman was sitting, stagnant, in his Zambian equivalent of a wheel chair trying to read the latest Jehovah Witness mailer; it appeared as if he was mostly just flipping through, looking at the pictures.  A child of maybe 12 or 13 years politely greeting the older man as the boy was walking by.  The man looked up and then bravely asked the young boy if he could read.  The boy replied that he could and was getting ready to continue walking when the persistent old man asked again, “Can you read English?”  It turned out this older man’s new friend did.  Immediately the younger boy asked what he wanted to know. 
I was out of ear shot after this but my heart was thoroughly warmed knowing that bravery and kindness like that still exist.  J


November 2, 2012

A Vacation WIthin a Vacation


A Vacation Within A Vacation
September was an awful month.  Awful.  The common theme: loss.  A volunteer trainee died.  He was an older trainee, 3 weeks away from swearing in as a Peace Corps volunteer, something that had been his life long dream.  At the time it sort of felt like it happened on my watch.  As the Peace Corps Volunteer Leader (My job in this third year) you are responsible for all of the PCVs and Peace Corps Trainees in your province.  I have been glued to my phone since I took the job, always telling my roommate that my greatest fear would be that one of my PCVs would be dying in the village and I would miss the call.  Well, even if you get the call that someone is having a heart attack, there still isn’t a lot you can do.
That same day, my Great Grandmother passed away.  She lived an awesome and strong life.  I was glad that she could finally rest after such a long journey.  I still hated that I didn’t get to be with my family during all of it.  After all, my brother had to wear a suit and I missed it.   
A week later my friend Andrew completed his Peace Corps service.  Andrew, Alex and I, in the 6 months preceding September, had become this inseparable trio that did everything together.  My favorite thing about Andrew was that we could just be together.  We are two people who are capable of sitting for hours and listen to music, quietly picking song after song apart, trying to figure out why it meant so much to us.  Or we could take Mesa out for long walks and giggle the whole time about nothing in particular. 
If Alex or I had a silly idea, Andrew would pull it all together just to see us happy.  If the three of us were together laughter was the only goal.  One day I was having a bad day at work.  Alex and Andrew left the office early, without me, to go to my house.  I knew they were up to something but I had no idea what.  When I got home they had built me an incredible and elaborate domino thing.  It was sort of in the shape of an “M”.  It started on top of a coffee table and went around a few different obstacles.  They worked all afternoon on it, waiting for me to get home and knock over the first domino to see if it would actually work.  It didn’t, but it was still so much fun and so thoughtful.  
If Andrew and I were flying solo for the day, we would talk and talk and talk about anything a everything.  He had my same drive for physical activity, push up contests, 400m races, mountain hikes.  There was always a song or two, or a band or two, that each one of us had been waiting to rediscover until the other was around.  I miss you Andrew. 
The week after Andrew left, we ran over the Peace Corps House dog, Boso, with the Land Cruiser.  It belonged to a past volunteer who was planning on coming back from America in a few months to take the dog back with her again.  As someone who also has a pet dog that I am planning on taking to America, I knew that felt that loss for her.  It was hard.  Our driver who ran Boso over was so upset.  For me it was the third death in 10 days. 
The following Monday, after dragging myself out of bed, something that was habit by this point in the month, I decided that there was nothing shitty in the forecast for the week and maybe this would be the week where I wouldn’t cry.  8:05 in the morning I am told that our driver, O’Bren, would be leaving at the end of the month.  O’Bren is not a co-worker to me.  He is a good friend who I get to work with everyday.  The idea of him not being there everyday with me devastated me.  I was crying by 8:10 and begging for an emotional break.
The next week I pulled my calf muscle during a run.  Running was the only thing keeping me on my center and The Universe just stripped me of that luxury.  I had a tearful two-mile walk home early in the morning to contemplate where I would go from there. 
Two weeks later I sprained my ankle in such a way that I will not be running until somewhere around Thanksgiving.  Then, somewhere in the middle of all of this I started getting anxiety attacks about silly things.  Minor things.  I believe all of these things to be minor life things, but they all happened within such a short span of a few days that I couldn’t do it any more.   
For a change in perspective, I decided to create that the ankle sprain was the Universe’s way of telling me to sit the fuck down and process.  I know that I had just been going and going.  Hoping that it would all just go way.  I didn’t listen when it pulled my calf, I kept plowing through.  Now there would be no more plowing through.  My ankle is black and blue all the way up my shin and my toes are Kansas State Fans.  As purple as Willie the Wildcat. 
It has been a week now since anything crappy happened.  No tears for a week.  Thank goodness.  I decided to hobble my way to a vacation.  I decided to get the hell out of Eastern Province for a week.  I am going to visit a friend in Western Province.  Literally as far from Eastern as I can get and still be in Zambia.  As I write I am at a friends house in Lusaka.  A pit stop in the middle of the journey.   Complete with a pool, laundry service (IN A WASHING MACHINE), air conditioning, and a spring mattress blanketed by a down comforter.  Last night I slept.  The whole night.  Comfortably.  I am in the shade under the canopy of a beautiful yard, music playing, ankle elevated with just as much ice around it as there is in my drink.  I would have to say that things are finally looking up.   

"At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person.  Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us."  ~ Albert Schweitzer