Last week of training

Training is finally ending next week, and we will be officially swearing in on May 7th. Today, we had our Final Language Proficiency interview. I had a role playing situation for my interview in which I had to explain to a village headman what I was going to do in the village and why I was there. The good thing was, when I visited my village a few weeks ago, I was faced with that exact situation in real life. I am very anxious about getting to my village. It's the situation I have been thinking about since I decided to apply for Peace Corps; getting dropped off in a village and being there for 3 months until you can return to civilization. I'm very excited about getting used to being there. I have been selected to give a speech in Lunda at the swearing in ceremony next week in Lusaka. I will be thanking everyone involved in training us. Here's the speech I have written...

Budidi mwani. Atwimushi mwani.
Ijina dami yami Larry Maurin. Kwimenaku mabwamu jami akashikola mu Peace Corps, tunazang'alali kwikala kunu.

Tunakukeng'a kusakilila mfulumendi ya United States of America hakututemesha kwinza nakuzatila mu Zambia.

Chamuchiyedi, tunakukeng'a kusakilila mfulumendi ya Zambia ha kutwiteja kwinza na kuzatila kunu.

Chamuchisatu, tunakukeng'a kusakilila ankong'i ejima amu Peace Corps, swejee antang'ishi a madimi, chisemwa, na Technical ha kuwunda kwanyichima yawu hadetu.

A Lunda ahoshang'a nawu: Winu wambachi wekala mukachi.
(This means: The dance of the tortoise is within)

Nasakilili mwani.

I will be getting to the provincial house next week, so I will be able to post some more pictures. I have photos of my house from my visit to my village. My house is not quite a hut; it has 5 rooms and glass windows, something not common in villages in Zambia. It's the nicest volunteer house I have seen in this country. My host is a pineapple farmer with 8 acres.

I have a new address effective now:

Larry Maurin
Peace Corps
P.O. Box 13
Ikelenge, Northwestern Province
Zambia, Africa

Some pictures, and hello from Solwezi

 
I have made it to the Northwestern provincial house in Solwezi. Here are a few pictures finally.

My homestay family in Chishiko. In front Gloria and Grace. In back, Mary, Ataata Ozwell, and Amaama Jessica.

My itala

This chameleon was going as fast as I've ever seen a chameleon go to get away from me. Chameleons are bad juju in Zambia, so people often kill them.

Visitors from our villages in Northwestern Provice. From left to right: Me, Kelly, Bozwell from Kawiko, John, and Dominic from Kelondu. Dominic is a shop owner and a pineapple farmer.

During technical training on this day we were learning about some of the agroforestry trees being used in Zambia. This big tree is a musang'u or acacia. It's very useful for farmers because it fixes nitrogen.

 

Cattle x-ing



This is one of the basic schools in Chalimbana we went to for world forestry day. A really big storm was rolling in when I took this picture.

Heading out to Kelondu

Hello everyone, tomorrow is a day I have anxiously been awaiting for what seems like a very long time. We are driving out to see our post villages for the first time. The name of my village is Kelondu. The name is derived from the word Kelong'a which is Lunda for river or stream, but not a big river. Last week, Peace Corps sent a representative from Kelondu down to Lusaka for a two day session with us. His name was Dominic Kashimoto, and he runs a shop and grows pineapples. We talked a little bit about expectations from both sides. The idea is that he will go back to the village for a few days and talk to people before I get there on Thursday. The drive from Lusaka to Kelondu is about 17 hours, so we will stop and stay in Solwezi tomorrow night. Solwezi I'm told is an interesting town in the heart of the mining areas of Zambia. Northwestern province will be one of the fastest changing regions in Zambia in the next two years because of the mining industry. There is talk of a Chinese uranium mine opening in Mwinilunga district and the building of a new railroad from the Copperbelt to Luanda, Angola for export of copper and minerals to the Atlantic. I have heard a story about villagers in Mwinilunga finding diamonds and rubies on their land.
I was very excited to finally get some details about my village. I will be about 500 meters from a middle school, and about 1500 meters from the source of the Zambezi River. There is a lot of beekeeping going on in the village, as the region is famous for its honey. You can buy honey for about 10 cents a pound there! I expect I will be doing some teaching and working with farmers a lot. I am so excited to get there. The education volunteers who returned from their site visits to their villages had giant smiles on their faces.
Training has seemed very long. My homestay family has been great, but I am very ready to be done with training and get to my village. The endless power point and flipchart presentations are numbing me. The hardest thing has been that nobody in Chalimbana, where I'm staying, speaks Lunda. Nyanja and Bemba are the languages here, so it's very difficult to practice Lunda. Another thing that has frustrated me is that I haven't seen any wild mammals in Zambia other than rats. Really, they should take us to a game park the first week of training. I am excited to have Nchila reserve near my village because it has some of the only true forest in Zambia and the richest bird life of anywhere in the country. I heard there are a lot of bush babies around there. I can't wait to see those big eyes! So awesome! I got lucky a couple of weeks ago and saw a Schalow's Turaco in Chalimbana. The rain is definitely dying down and the first signs of the cold season are here. We have crystal clear, windy weather, and you can see your breath sometimes in the morning. I am going to try to post some pictures here tomorrow. We'll see how it goes because the internet is pretty slow. Until then, keep sending letters and postcards, even if you have nothing to say. Postage is 50 cents for postcards and a dollar for letters. I promise to write back. Much Love.
Larry Maurin
Peace Corps
P.O. Box 50707
Lusaka, Zambia

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.