Four Years Later...

...And I am still in Zambia.

Four years ago I touched down in Zambia to start the “toughest job I’ll ever love” aka Peace Corps. I had just turned twenty-two years old and had also just graduated from college and was beyond excited for the adventure of a lifetime. I knew it was exactly where I was supposed to be at the time, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t also a little (or maybe even a lot) scared.

Me with Kasoko and Mutukangi

When I left home people would ask me what I would be doing in my role as a Community Health Improvement Project Volunteer and I had very few answers to provide because before leaving Peace Corps really doesn’t tell you much. I knew I’d cover topics such as HIV, malaria, and nutrition based off the small blurb that was written about Zambia specifically in our packet included in our invitation. And I also knew I would live in a grass thatch mud hut with no power, no water, and I’d be given a bicycle to travel around.

My host mom and dad and my host brother

So I began my journey in Atlanta for a day to learn a whole lot of information about where I was headed to, get some last minute shots, and have a chance to meet the other Peace Corps Volunteers in my intake. From there it was a 2 month intense training period with four hour language lessons, cultural lessons, and technical training all while leaving with a host family in my very own mud hut.

My host mom eating the Zambian staple food nshima, and my host sister photo bombing

Then I was sent to Misengo village in the Northern Province of Zambia and called it home for the next two years. I worked all around the community with different groups of women, men, football teams, school groups to educate about nutrition, prevention of HIV, malaria, and safe water and sanitation. To say I loved it would be an understatement. I loved my hut (which to me seemed like a mansion), I loved my community, and I especially loved the children I interacted with on a daily basis. Yes at times there were not so fun moments like getting malaria in February in 2012 and having my house become almost flooded during rainy season due to the poor thatching of grass in some areas, but I would say my highs outweighed my lows. And maybe I am just saying that because it has been about 2 years since I lived there and I am romanticizing my time there, but I am totally fine with that. While life was hard and nothing was really convenient about fetching my own water, walking over an hour at times to get to the main road and hitchhike into town, washing my own clothes by hand, or starting my own fire everyday to make food I learned to do it, or as they say here, I got used.

My fabulous hut!

In front of the school sign with Mutukangi and my loyal dog, Finn

The kids killed this puff adder snake behind my house. 

I met some of the most amazing, generous people I have ever met in my entire life. Even if I just stopped by a stranger’s house to get out of a down pour that I found myself in on a bike ride to or from a group meeting, they would offer me a stool or imbalala (groundnuts) with no questions asked. Even if to me the people didn’t have very much they would still share with me. It was a very humbling experience to say the least and saying goodbye to my village is still one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.

After coming from a nearby village they sent me home with plenty of bananas and sugar cane

Then I moved to the big city of Kitwe on the Copperbelt for my third-year extension assignment with Peace Corps. I was assigned to a non-governmental organization funded by USAID and other private donors called Society for Family Health (SFH) as a Communications Assistant. My role was basically to educate people and encourage them to come for HIV testing, family planning services and male circumcision. It was a fun job that allowed me to travel all over the province and go to different schools, work places, markets, and everywhere in-between in order to achieve SFH’s vision of serving under served populations. I was also put up in a nice 2-bedroom apartment that featured such luxuries as a flushing toilet, running water, a stove, a fridge, and a real roof!

With two of my workmates

I completed my Peace Corps service in October 2013 and officially became a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (RPCV), but I wasn’t exactly ready to return to the US. I decided to stay longer to wait for my fiance to finish up school the following year, and thankfully I was able to be hired on by SFH as a full time staff member so I wouldn’t go hungry, homeless, or bored while I waited for him to finish. This time I was hired on as a Monitoring and Evaluation Assistant. My job entails entering in data for our various programs and then creating the reports. It’s not the most exciting of jobs, but it pays the bills and I am very grateful for it!

My desk at SFH as an M&E Assistant

So that’s where I am today as I ring in my fourth year. Man just re-capping all of that has brought back so many memories and I almost forgot about!

I have learned a lot and also changed in many ways over these last four years. Some of the changes are positive, but I think some are also negative. For instance I would say I have become more patient than I was initially because here I have to live on African time, which to me equals being late for everything and not caring at all. I still show up on time or even early which is the Skurla way of life. While I am not perfect in the patience department I also have learned to go into situations prepared to wait sometimes hours for people or meetings.  I don’t enjoy this endless waiting game, but I’ve gotten used.

One thing I didn’t really anticipate having to deal with as much as I have is the celebrity status I have just because I am white. In the village I was known by everyone and wherever I went I was watched, especially in the beginning, but as time went on that went down. Actually one of my favorite memories was when my favorite child, Mutukangi, helped me out by calling someone out on starting at me. We were at the soccer field and some other kid was just staring at me and Mutukangi just goes up to the kid and says in local language, “What are you watching? Ba Emily is not a television!” It was hilarious and I wish he could handle all those awkward encounters for me.

My fiance and I at the fish ponds in Miengo

In Kitwe this celeb status went to another level which is weird because you would think living in town where you have access to TV and a lot of different people you would be used to seeing white people. I mean even the Vice President is white! But still I am always referred to as mzungu or booga which is just the name for white person even when they are just passing me on the street. I don’t know what exactly how they want me to respond. It also goes beyond that as well. It seems like can’t walk anywhere without being harassed by men who want to call me baby or sweetie or comment on how I look. And they even do this when I am with my fiance or worse they insult him for being with me. It even at times goes so far as people insulting me when I try and ignore them and just do what I am doing. It’s exhausting and probably one of things I am more looking forward to about returning to America (besides being reunited with friends and family) is to just be invisible and not have people watch and comment on every normal thing that I do. I don’t know how celebrities do it! 

Mutukangi and I going to fetch water

If all goes as planned, this will be my last Zambian anniversary. Just how I knew when I came four years ago this is where I was supposed to be, I know it is time to go, and maybe the time to go is overdue. Things like spending hours waiting for a ride on the side of the road were at first an exciting part of the adventure, but now I just find them an annoying inconvenience. It’s almost like after having been dealing with the same annoyance for so many years I feel like those annoyances should have been fixed by now, which is just silly. My fiancé is constantly reminding me that while I am no longer in the village, I am still a long way from the ever efficient America.

Since coming to Zambia I have missed out on a majority of my friends getting married and starting their grown-up after college lives and I am eager to join them before everyone starts having babies! And like I said before I am ready to just blend in. I am ready to go jogging, go for a walk, and go shopping in peace! And I am ready to be back in the English speaking place where I don’t have to exhaust my mind trying to keep up with conversations in local language.  Basically I am ready to go back home, and I just hope home is ready for me! And then it’ll be my Zambian fiancé’s turn to learn to adapt into American culture! 

I hope you'll be seeing us in America in 2015!