LIFE brings mvula

Before we came to Lusaka province over 3 weeks ago, there had been about 3-4 weeks of drought. Zambia is right in the middle of rainy season, so there should be some rain almost every day. The day after the LIFE trainees arrived, the rain came. Mvula is the Chilunda word for rain. I have been living in Chalimbana in the Chongwe district for 2 weeks with a family of Lundas. My post in May will be to the Northwestern Province near Ikelenge and Mwinilunga at the source of the Zambezi river. The Lunda tribe traditionally lives in this area, so I have been learning the Lunda language, one of the 7 major languages in Zambia. Mwinilunga is famous as a pineapple producing region, which is funny because Chilunda sounds alot like a Polynesian language. It also one of the wettest places in Zambia (about 55 inches annually). I don't know much about it other than that right now.
I know everyone is anxious to see pictures. I will probably not be able to post pictures until May when I arrive in my province and can use the computers at my provincial house. Right now, I have to make do with the Internet cafes in Lusaka. It feels pretty weird to be using the Internet right now actually. I'm sleeping in a small mud house with a thatch roof and no electricity, eating nshima every day, and trying to teach my host family as many card games as possible. It has been a pretty amazing experience so far. We have a lot of people passing though our compound on their way to the borehole. My host grandmother has 8 kids and my host dad (her son) has two little daughters. Gloria, the youngest, cries at just about everything, but she is slowly getting used to me. Every day is very, very long, in a good way. Some days are fantastic, and some days not so much. Two days ago, we got flu shots and I felt like a corpse the next day. We spend half of our days in language, and the other half in technical training learning how to grow things in Zambia. We planted our first garden yesterday of cabbage, rape, and onions. I am surprising myself and am actually really enjoying learning this language. We had a game of football last weekend against the Education trainees. Sunday is my day off! We have our first language test on Monday, so I need to do some practice, but I'm going birding tomorrow morning. Birding is tough here now because the vegetation is so thick this time of year, but I'm seeing new birds every day. This week I saw some African Yellow White-eyes and a Common Fiscal. The ants here are incredible. I can't stop watching them. They rule over absolutely anything. They had a giant battle with the cockroaches in our toilet this week. I watched them shuttle cockroach parts out of the toilet one by one.
It looks like I will have some internet access pretty regularly, so you can send me an email if you like. I'm thinking of all of you back in the states. I really miss beer. I think I'm having withdrawls symptoms. So drink a good beer for me and for you. To your health! Much love, Larry.

Hello from Lusaka

I am in Zambia. Wow. This country is amazing. I am in a South African owned shopping mall at an internet cafe and have a few minutes to let everybody know that I'm here. Training has been very well organized so far. The people are incredibly nice here. I can't emphasize that enough. We are going out in the bush for 4 days tomorrow!! I won't have Internet access for a while after this, possibly a month. Anyway, things are great so far and I'm so happy and excited to be here. What a beautiful place. Haven't had time for much birding yet, but have seen some Pied Crows, Blue Waxbills, Masked Weavers, and Variable Sunbirds (look up a picture).  I am thinking of everyone back in the States. Much Love, Larry

It's time!

It’s finally time! I feel like I have waited so long for this time. I’m getting on the airplane in 3 days. I have been so happy to see so many friends and family in the last two months. Seeing all of you has really meant a lot to me, and has made me realize that it’s always worth making the effort to visit people you care about, even if it’s just for an hour. I’ll remember the times that I spent with everyone for a long time. I wish we could all be closer together. Keep up the good work everyone; that’s how we can stay close. If we all work toward the same thing, eventually, we’ll be back together again.

The best way to keep in touch with me while I’m in Zambia will be to write me. My mailing address will be:

Lawrence Maurin

Peace Corps

P.O. Box 50707

Lusaka, Zambia

Make sure you send letters via airmail. They should arrive in 2-4 weeks.

Right now I’m making final preparations: getting everything packed, getting my paperwork organized, getting anxious about travelling ( I don’t like airports for a lot of reasons), and trying to think of last minute things I need to bring. My bags are actually a lot lighter than I thought they might be. Plus, I can get almost everything I will need once I get to Zambia.

Yesterday, I got to go fishing with Scotty (the bro) and went out for some really good BBQ spare ribs at Robin’s in Pasadena. Tomorrow, I will have one last day of fun in the United States for a while! Birding in the AM, followed by beer and good, real Mexican food in the PM.

Thanks again for the support everyone. Make sure to become a follower of my blog, so you can be updated when a new post is up!

Cypresses, Cacti, and Vorticies

On January 19th I got on the Amtrak at Union Station in Los Angeles. I was leaving for the first big train trip I'd ever taken in my life. I was going to visit Galen in New Orleans, a city I had never been to. I hadn't seen Galen since X-mas of 2009, just after I had moved to Portland. It was finally time for me to go visit people, and see some new sights along the way.

It took 2 days to get to New Orleans on the Sunset Limited. I was in coach and enjoyed the comforts of sleeping in my seat for 2 nights. I noticed that there were two types of people on the train ride. The grandpa in the sleeper car going to see his grandkids, and the guy who just got out of prison going to get his probation changed to a different state. I enjoyed talking to both, especially when the train was in west Texas. This is the second time I've crossed Texas, and now I remember how big it is. I also had lots of time to read, and I had Endgame by Derrick Jensen with me. I've heard so much about this book and finally decided I had to read it, especially because many of my motivations for going to Africa are discussed in the book. It's basically about how civilization is killing the planet, and what we need to do about it. It is a dark book. It made me realize how monumental our environmental problem is. I can't recommend this book enough. It really helps explain the psychology behind the widespread social and environmental abuses of our time.

I made it to New Orleans on Friday the 21st. Galen was kind enough to pick me up at the train station in his rental car. We ended up hanging out with Galen's friend, Khaled, who is a cab driver in New Orleans. He was nice enough to give us a tour of the city so to speak. We ended up going to Bourbon Street, the Bulldog Tavern, Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop, Cafe du Monde on Friday night. Saturday, Galen and I decided to rent a canoe and go on an alligator expedition. We learned later that alligators hibernate or are less active in the winter. Damn! Oh well, we still saw plenty of awesome creatures in the cypress swamps.

Galen and Larry prepare for the alligator expedition at Tickfaw SP

Stoked on cypress knees What the hell do the Confederacy and Largemouth Bass have to do with one another? 

We ended up paddling about two miles on the Blood River through some amazing cypress swamps. We saw a flock of about 600 Common Grackles fly around us. We had enough foresight to pack some beer for our lunch stop on a choice log.

On Monday, I got back on the train in New Orleans to head west back to Tucson, Arizona. There I was to meet up with Rose for a couple of days of birding in Cochise County, the birdiest inland county in the nation! There were bound to be tons of new birds for both of us and epic sparrow flocks. We stayed at my Aunt Sherri's friends Patty and Jim's place about 40 miles southeast of Tucson in St. David. Even Patty and Jim's yard had amazing birding including Inca Doves and Pyrrhuloxias in the yard, and Mississippi Kites and Green Kingfishers in the summer. We stayed in one of their guest houses. Jim and Patty were wonderful and extremely kind to us.



Rose and I at Karchner Caverns State Park near Sierra Vista

Larry looking for Rufous-winged Sparrows

Our guest house



Jim's man cave. Jim is a Packer fan at heart but he is also a Raider fan!

This was a Border Patrol Infra-red camera on Montezuma Pass overlooking the border. My theory was that there was a laser beam on this truck that could evaporate Mexicans instantly from a range of two miles. POOOOOOOFF! I never got to see the machine in action. The border patrol presence down there was ridiculous.



Scoping Sierra Vista Wetlands



Hundreds of Yellow-headed Blackbirds at Sierra Vista wetlands Venturing into Montezuma Cave at Coronado National Memorial

The whole trip had amazing birding. We visited some world famous spots including Ramsey Canyon and the San Pedro River House. I ended up with 21 life birds on this whole trip: White Ibis, Black-bellied Whistling Duck, Tricolored Heron, Black Vulture, Eastern Bluebird, Red-bellied Woodpecker, Pine Warbler, Common Grackle, Laughing Gull, Boat-tailed Grackle, Anhinga, Gilded Flicker, Pyrrhuloxia, Canyon Towhee, Curve-billed Thrasher, Rufous-winged Sparrow, Inca Dove, Bridled Titmouse, Yellow-eyed Junco, Arizona Woodpecker, and Lark Bunting.

On Friday afternoon, Rose and I drove up to Flagstaff to visit Lisa. Lisa and Derrick just moved into a new house and the got some chickens! On our way up, we stopped in Sedona to see the sunset and go to Oak Creek Brewery. Oak Creek Brewery has some really good beer, but the brewery is a little weird. For those of you who don't know anything about Sedona, it's a bit of a New Age capital of the world. Basically it's filled with rich white tourists looking for spiritual energies, a massage with many colors of red dirt, and a ride in a pink jeep. It was really odd to be in a brewery and be the only person resembling a beer nerd. Seriously, though their beer is really good.

Sterling Pass Trail in Sedona

Larry and Lisa wait for it.

Rose and Larry have captured the vortex at Snoopy Rock. If you look very carefully, you can actually see it!

Lisa's chickens

After lots of beer drinking, cooking, and hiking in Flagstaff, Rose and I made one final stop on the way back to Los Angeles. We drove out into the desert to a place I've been only one before, about 4 years ago. The place is informally called Dante's Descent. It's a 400-foot deep sinkhole in the middle of the desert. I couldn't believe I remembered how to get there because there are absolutely no signs telling you how to get there.

Me at the sinkhole

Rose was brave enough to get a photo of the bottom of the sinkhole. This picture does it no justice!

A Mountain Bluebird that was in a huge flock near the sinkhole

It's now two weeks until I am off to Zambia. I booked my flight for February 14th. I'm so happy that I can have adventures like this with my best friends. This was absolutely one of the best vacations I have ever taken.

7 weeks until departure

My February 14th departure is 7 weeks away. I can't wait to get to Africa and start seeing, hearing, and smelling a new landscape and meeting new people. At this point, I'm concerned mostly about getting all of the paperwork done, figuring out what I'm going to bring with me, and getting rid of stuff. Now that I'm in Los Angeles instead of Portland, it is a lot harder to get rid of things. In LA, you just have to throw everything in the trash and hope it gets reused or recycled. It's insane.

For those interested, my timeline for applying to Peace Corps looks roughly like this...


April 2009 - Started an application on the Peace Corps website. I had been thinking for a long time about traveling to the developing world before this. I didn't want to go for a short time because I wanted to do something useful and attempt to integrate myself into the place I went. Peace Corps seemed like a great way to do some environmental work, help some people out, learn, and see some new birds.

September 2009 - Submitted my application after working on it all summer. I kept getting warnings that the application website was going to be updated and all outstanding applications would be in danger of being deleted. This was the bug in my ear that encouraged me to finally get my application in. The application requires three written references. It took a long time for my references to write for me, so I was glad that I started as early as I did.

Late October 2009 - Received a phone call from the Seattle Peace Corps Office. They were impressed by my application and wanted me to schedule an interview with a recruiter.

November 1, 2009 - I drove to Seattle to interview with the recruiter. It was well worth the drive from Portland to do an in-person interview. The interview was actually fun. I didn't prepare much ahead of time because I had been thinking about Peace Corps for so long.

January 15, 2010 - I received a phone call from my recruiter in Seattle. She wanted to place me in the Peace Corps Mexico program. Programs in Mexico are designed for people with more professional experience. Volunteers usually commute daily to sites. I was very surprised to get recommended to the Mexico program because I have no Spanish background other than growing up in Southern California.

January 19, 2010 - I interviewed over the phone with two representatives from the Peace Corps Mexico office in Queretaro. I must say that I hate phone interviews. This interview was productive, but we realized on both ends of the line that this was not the placement that I was looking for. Besides, this placement was to begin in August. I was looking for something that began in January or later. I called my recruiter and told her that this placement wasn't quite what I was looking for and that my departure date should be pushed back to January due to my Americorps term ending in December.

March 3, 2010 - I received a call from my recruiter. I was nominated to a program in Water Resources in the Caribbean, leaving March 2011.

April, 2010 - Went to get my physical and lab tests. Received results a month later.

June, 2010 - Dental Exam, x-rays and cleaning.

July 22, 2010 - Mailed Medical and dental packet to Peace Corps office.

November 2, 2010 - Received word from D.C. that my program in the Caribbean had been cancelled.

November 3, 2010 - Received a suitability screening call from my Placement Officer in D.C. She told me that there was a new placement for me in Sub-Saharan Africa in the Agroforestry/Environment sector.

November 13, 2010 - My invitation kit arrived in the mail. I was invited to Zambia to be a Forestry Extension Agent in the Linking Income, Food, and the Environment Program.


November 17, 2010 - I accepted my invitation to Zambia.

I'm starting to get a better idea of what my living arrangements will probably be like. Most houses in rural Zambia are made of mud bricks with a thatch roof. Living room and bedroom areas are inside the houses. Kitchen and bathroom areas are outside the houses. I may even get my own building. It seems like most villages are made up of small houses with one to three rooms. Most of my cooking will be outside over a wood fire. I will get better at cooking nshima quickly without a nice gas stove.