Well Friday I waited… and waited… and waited for my ride to show up. Finally, as the sun was beginning to go down, I texted him and he said would be there shortly I don’t think it was until 1800 hours that we actually left in the pickup truck that I had been told was a van. When we got to the Chadiza BOMA the priest dropped me off at my Forestry counterpart’s house. I waited for a bit, watching one of the Euro 2008 football games on satellite (kind of weird, I think it’s the first time I’ve watched anything but staticy antenna TV since I’ve been in Zambia) as the only people there were the government official’s progeny. When he finally came I made a decision to call someone with a vehicle which I somewhat regret. I think he was going to have me stay the night and when I made the decision all I wanted to do was get home but now I wish I had taken his offer and spent more time with him. Oh well, what’s done is done.
I spent Saturday and Sunday working in my dimba. I found some plum tomato seeds which I planted two rows of and also planted some more cucumbers. Cuc’s are very sensitive to the kind of dirt they are grown in; only a few of the ones I planted in my fenced in area around my house came up because the dirt is very clayey but I have had more success in my dimba because there is one area that is more loamy I think as a result of it being one big ant colony. The ants don’t seem to be affecting the plants though… I’ll have to wait till they start producing to see how true this holds up. I also planted some more cucumbers and hot peppers in my yard, this time adding compost. Hopefully I have more success. Just before I left on Friday I dug up some strawberry plants from the front of the PCPH and I also planted them in my yard.
While I’ve been “dimbanizing” I’ve also been listening to probably, no almost definitely, the best book I’ve ever listened to. The way you can gauge how good a book is is by how much you talk about it to others. If it’s awful you tell everyone not to read/listen to it – the last book I listened to, “The Lion’s Game,” was such a book. If it’s ok, but just ok, you kind of forget about it and don’t really mention it to anyone – incidentally I can’t think of a book that falls into this category. If it’s good, you tell everyone to read/listen to it – the book I read before “The Lion’s Game,” “The Eight,” a book about chess, would fall into this category if it were not for the end which is so bad it makes the rest of the story, which is really good, not worth it. But the book I’m reading now falls into a category few ever achieve. Its descriptions are so vivid, its plot is so well established and the person telling the tale does such a good job at giving just the right accent to the characters that you want to keep it a secret from all but you very closest friends. You want to be able to use it as a secret weapon. If this book falls down the same path that “The Eight” did – and this would be next to impossible – I may have to ET and go into rehab… well maybe not something that drastic but you get the picture.
Dzulu (yesterday) I bought some “Zumba” (probably doesn’t have a “correct” spelling so I just wrote it somewhat phonetically) leaves (from red hemp I think although I don’t remember for sure). Last Tuesday my Zambian banja (family) made this relish that was really, really good out of it. So the next time I went to the market I decided to see whether I could find some, then go to my amae and ask her to show me how to make the relish. After that I gave my internet proposal to the district resource coordinator and added the last segment of my exquisite audio book and some more music from the gigabytes I copied from the PCPH. Then I left in a hurry to try to post all this to my blog that day before I needed to go back, however I forgot to pick up my cell phone. Well there was no one at the Agriculture Support Programee (I think it’s a Dutch program and that’s why there’s the “e’s” at the end) where there is internet access and those two reasons are why I am posting today. I also met with the district education, I think, project director about my internet idea and we set up a meeting time for next Monday. Well that’s all for now.