Fresh Starts

Since I've been back, I think I've seen more rain than sun. It’s finally the heart of the rainy season, with storms lasting throughout the day now. When it really comes down hard you have to watch for the huge puddles that form on the roads and hope that your wipers can keep up with the deluge. On the plus side, everything is green, fresh, and alive, and it helps keep the dust and temperature at more reasonable levels. Also, sopping wet fields allow for painless (though muddy) dives during frisbee games.

Things are fresh and new at work as well. During the holiday break, KF decided to form some new school partnerships. Our newest partner, Pestalozzi, is a school that’s expanding on the southern edge of town. Its profile is different than our past partners as it recruits students mainly from rural areas. We moved half our students there beginning this term while the other half are at Chalo Trust School, a partner of ours for many years. Limiting our students to two schools, and the fact that our new office is at Pestalozzi, means it should be easier to see the students. However, both schools have jam-packed schedules this term and I’m still trying to figure out the best way to keep the tutoring program alive and effective.

Since returning from the states, the gap year program has been making progress on all fronts. The majority of the graduates have finalized plans for their community service projects and about half are already underway. We had our first meeting between our students planning to apply to American universities and the education advisor from the US Embassy who’s going to help us do so. We’re also pursuing volunteer positions for some students at impressive organisations like Restless Development and CIDRZ. There’s a long way to go but it’s good to see things moving forward.

Outside of work, I’m working some fresh traditions into my weeks. One has been poetry readings put on by the university students. They are always impressive and entertaining; maybe someday I’ll find the guts to read one of my own. I’ve also started going to the Hash run. It’s a “fun run” that was started by British expats in Malaysia in the ‘30s and has spread to over a hundred countries since then. It’s a chance for expats to meet each other as you run courses set in the forests around Lusaka. It’s yet another fun way to stay active here, something I love about this city. I brought my mandolin back with me; it's really nice to have music back in my life. There's a lot of people with instruments here so hopefully we can start playing together soon. I also plan to start language lessons this weekend, we'll be learning Nyanja. It's something I’ve wanted to do for a long time and I look forward to finally getting started. Of course, old traditions are still going strong. We kept Tuesday dinners alive with a taco night last week that featured homemade guacamole and margaritas (both delicious).

(Guacamole preparations)

This week was the busiest since my return. On Tuesday we welcomed two visitors to Lusaka: Frank, on the board of Princeton in Africa, and Oliver, the President and founder of Kucetekela Foundation. It was good they were here at the same time but it meant a whirlwind of activities. The highlight was sitting down to a Zambian lunch with both of them, our recent graduates and one of our mentors. It must be pretty incredible for Oliver to observe how much these students, the first KF class, have changed over the past 5 years. Frank left for Livingstone early this morning on his way to visit Erin. While his visit was brief, I feel like I gained a great deal from his advice and encouragement.

(Oliver, Mrs. Kashoki and Mwila with the recent graduates)

There are many reasons I’m happy to be back. Something that’s really made my week though was a very generous friend. As I’m sure I’ve expressed to you at one point or another, the car I drive here can be, at times, somewhat unreliable. Luckily, Cecile, sympathetic to my case, is allowing me to use her Rav4 while she’s out of town for a couple weeks. It’s zippy, good on gas and best of all, doesn’t trail a cloud of black smoke behind it. I can’t thank her enough for making my life so much easier for a while. Hopefully a long term solution will be organised soon.

(The KF staff)

On a High Note

In the rush of preparing to leave and the anticipation to return home for the holidays, some exciting and deserving events in December didn't make it to the blog. Better a month late than not at all!

At the beginning of the month, we reached the culmination of our new student selection process which began way back in July. It started with reviewing applications and narrowing them down to forty students to sit our exam. We interviewed the fifteen who received the highest marks on the exam and ultimately chose three recipients. In the 2012 academic year we’ll be adding two girls and one boy, Karen, Jessy and Andrew, to the KF family. We are all thrilled to be welcoming them to Grade 8 at their new schools next week and I know the older students will be quick to take them under their wings.

In the second week of December I received my first visitor in Lusaka. Fittingly, it was Jane, the Princeton in Africa Fellow in Nairobi, who has probably heard more than anyone about the day to day details, frustrations and successes of my first six months in Zambia. It was great to be able to show her everything in person, and she was in town for an ideal weekend. On Saturday she accompanied me to the KF Mentor’s Luncheon (more on that later) which I had been planning for some time. She was indispensably helpful, setting up projectors, taking pictures and entertaining the guests. She may have been on vacation, but she was more than willing to work and I sure was grateful. She saw other aspects of my work, as well, including working all day at coffee shops and sorting out the occasional car breakdown. We also squeezed some fun non-work activities into her visit such as a night of slam poetry, Sunday morning Frisbee and a projector movie night. It was a great way to spend the last days before returning home for the holidays.

The Mentor Luncheon is an annual event put on by KF to thank the individuals who volunteer their time to mentor our students. Event planning is always a little hectic because nothing seems to ever get fully sorted until the event is underway. This was a particularly special luncheon as it was an opportunity to congratulate our first class of recent graduates. While we might not have had time for all the activities planned, I think overall it went really well. The mentors caught up with one another and their students and we all enjoyed the presentations from the three schools honoring the graduates and from the graduates themselves. It was also a chance to look back and marvel at how much this first class had grown, how mature they are now, and how KF has impacted their lives. I couldn’t shake a sense of envy of the KF staff members who have been here since the beginning and watched this process firsthand. Between all these exciting goings-on and the fact that I had a car again, I felt like the first six months of the fellowship really ended on a high note.

(KF Students at the Mentor's Luncheon)

Home and Back Again

A little over 6 months after leaving for Zambia and I’m sitting in the exact same spot at the same airport gate in DC ready to head back. It all seems very neat and planned. Nearly three weeks at home was a perfect half-way marker; an opportunity to reflect and recollect. More than anything though, it was a chance to catch up with all the people I miss having in my life. Unsurprisingly, it was not the most relaxing vacation with all the running and driving around. Happily though, I managed to see almost everyone I intended to. Between a really nice open house my parents threw my first weekend back to a trip to New York (the only place that gave me culture shock) to an annual holiday party with old friends and much more, it was a very full and happy holidays. The only thing missing? Snow. A year without snow is a really strange thought.

While the plane rides have been long, and doing the trip twice within a month is certainly daunting, there have been many bright spots. Navigating the airport systems is becoming easier and that helps cut down on the stress that often comes with air travel. The airborne vistas have been particularly beautiful during these trips as well, from crackling thunderheads on the Joburg horizon to yellow orange dawn breaking like the yolk of an egg over DC to watching meteors flash and fizzle like flares around our plane high above the ocean.

There were many things I looked forward to about coming back home. I probably ate my weight in home cooked meals and holiday feasting and of course I had to get my fill of favorites like greasy pizza and good old American Chinese food. I definitely filled up on the holidays as well; I felt like I was on a crash course to catch up on the spirit from the minute I stepped off the plane. I never realized how much Christmas and the holidays permeate almost all aspects of our lives during those months. The inner warmth of it all certainly goes a long way toward redeeming the literal cold that I felt all the more sharply this time around.

There are, of course, many things I also look forward to about heading back. I look forward to replacing the pale white light of the weak winter sun with the rich gold radiance that lasts late into the evening. I am excited to see friends and run around outdoors and even to get back to work. I'm ready to switch sides of the road, eat off a braai and, most surprisingly, begin to sort out what the next year is going to bring.