Well, I’m at the PC house to renew my visa and will stay until Friday afternoon when I’m probably getting a ride back with a priest my Zambian government counterpart knows. Last Friday I planted some pepper and broccoli seeds I got from a store in Chipata, the only thing is the seeds are from 2005, hopefully some will grow. A somewhat lazy weekend then Monday I went back to Chadiza and spent the morning trying to do some research on existing information technology programs in Sub Saharan Africa. I also was trying to update my antivirus software but since my connection is only something like 48kbits a second and in reality like 1kbit it was slow going and I didn’t achieve much. Tuesday my PC LIFE program director (or APCD) and Provincial Leader were coming in the afternoon. I pasted the time waiting for them to show up by replanting some cucumber seeds along the fence in my garden. When they came, my banja (family) gave us a late lunch of nshima and a relish I will have to try to make on my own as it was very good. After a while we went to my dimba and I showed them what I had planted and I watered a little bit, then we had to head back because it was about to get dark. It never did get dark as we had a full moon over our heads and spend a while chatting which felt good as it had been a long while since I had had people I could do this with and actually understand what everyone was saying. Then, although we were still full from the last meal, we got dinner of nshima and lepu. The atate from my host family drove up (one of the only people on my road other then the chief to have access to a vehicle) and talked to the APCD for a while. After a little bit we went to see some dancing and costume (feather headdresses that were very intricate) wear. We were all very tired but I still needed to pack for the next several days in Chipata so I didn’t get to sleep until close to 23:30.
Today I got up and we left around 9:00 which would have been sooner but my family gave us a big bowl of roasted groundnuts. We went to meet with my closest PCV’s and while the APCD and the LIFE PCV chatted, his wife took the Provincial leader and I by bike to their dimba where they had envious amounts of broccoli seedlings which I may try to get some of if mine do not come up. After we had biked back and loaded everything into the Landover we drove to meet briefly with our district forestry and tourism counterpart, then drove to Chipata. I went to the bank then we renewed our visas and went to Shopright to get some food, but they were all out of a lot of things like cereal. I hope they get more of the things I need and want before I leave. I had crackers dipped in tuna and ketchup and rice with moringa (the really healthy tree) leaves which took forever to pluck each little one from its stem.