13 weeks in Zambia :)

Okay, I think it’s time for me to give you guys an update from what has been going on here in Livingstone :) I’m sorry it took me so long time.

When I stopped my last post, we were celebrating the Independence Day here in Zambia and I was about to meet Johanne and Lina. We started the day with a lovely breakfast at the backpackers and were then ready to explore, how Zambians celebrate their independence day. Well, I have to admit that we were a bit disappointed or that we at least had expected more and wilder celebrations. 

Thus after having seen some of the dances at Vila Ground (a big sports ground in Livingstone), we decided to treat ourselves with a nice lunch at the Waterfront and with relaxing at the pool :) While us girls already were lying at the pool and were working on our tans, Vegard and Arnt arrived :) And then the busy but nice programme had started :)

Lina and Johanne with our lunch

Lina and Johanne in the pool :)

Vegard, Arnt and me at the pool :)

The following days were a good combination of good talks, a lot of fun, a bit work (in my case), a bit of action, lovely dinners and some beers and dancing at Fezbar :)

Here some impressions:

Independence day celebrations

Some traditional dancing

Lina, Arnt, Johanne, Vegard and me enjoying the sunset

Lina and Arnt

Vegard and me

Well, a cosmpolitan

 The sunset drink 

Friday we did a under the spray tour - we were swimming under the spray from the falls! it was amazing :)

Getting ready to swim :)

before jumping into the water

Swimming to the spray

Swimming under the spray

yeahhh, swimming :)

The Zambezi River

Our boat

Me jumping from the rocks

Yeahhhh, we all survived the bungee jumps :)

In the evening we treated ourselves with a sunset drink and a lovely dinner at the Royal Livingstone hotel :) We enjoyed it a lot, especially the Norwegian salmon :)

Lina, Johanne and me

Lina, Arnt, Johanne, Vegard and me with our amazing dinner :)

Saturday it was time for us seeing the falls from the top, so we thought the perfect place for that would be from the Devil’s pool :)

Yeahhh!!!

Happy Scandinavians in the Devil's Pool :)

close to the edge!

At the Devil's Pool

On the way back from the Devil's Pool

And how do you round off some amazing days with good friends and celebrate into Johannes birthday?

Well, you maybe can guess…

Yep, you are right! On a Sunset cruise and with some dancing afterwards :)

Lina and me

Open your eyes Vivi!!!

Happy birthday Johanne!

Sunday it was time for some more relaxing. When the boys had left for going back to Zimbabwe, us girls went to enjoy the sun and the pool at the Zambezi Sun Hotel :) 

Nice African feeling - lying at the pool with Zebras around you :)

Johanne enjoying her birthday

Zebras at the pool

We had some amazing days together and the fact that we are going to see each other in only 27 days in Cape Town (from today), made the goodbye not too difficult :)

Sunday evening I thought that I have to take it a bit more slowly the next week, since that week had been quite busy. Well, that didn’t work out so good :D

Monday I had a busy day at the office planning some tournaments and improvements we have to do in the sports department. After the office work I finally had my first Nyanja lesson :) It was great fun, even though I’ve to admit that it’s going to take me some efforts to learn the language properly :D However, I really want to learn it so the effort is worth it :)

After my language lesson I got invited to a live concert. That Monday the kayak festival had started, so the concerts was part of the festival, which was going on the whole week. Even though I was pretty tired, it was quite difficult to say no to that invitation :) I love live music and miss it a lot! 

It was amazing and definitely worth it, not getting that much sleep :D

Dancing to good music :)

After a rather calm Tuesday, I was ready for the Halloween Party Wednesday evening :) My outfit? Well, have a look:

Can you see what I am? A cheetah :)

Iris being a giraffe

The cheetah hunting the giraffe

Yep, Iris and I got painted :D Even though it took ages to paint the whole body, it was definitely worth it :) We had an amazing night and lot of fun!

Thursday I only had some meetings, work, Nyanja lessons and to catch up some sleep on my programme.

Friday it was time for another club competition. After doing some washing and cleaning the whole morning, I went to the club competition at 14 hours. Well, only one team showed up, so after two hours of waiting, we went home. T.I.A. I guess :D 

The early knock off from work did that I was able to do the happy hour tour :) It started with the amazing sunset at the Waterfront Hotel, followed by the happy hour at Livingstone Backpackers and ended with dancing at Fezbar :) 

Saturday it was time for some relaxing in the sun during the day, since it was time for the final party of the kayak festival in the evening :) Well, I had another good night with dancing!

And what was on the programme for Sunday? Yep, some relaxing in the sun at the Zambezi Sun Hotel :)

Now you maybe think, is Vivian not supposed to work? Well, I am and I do ;) I think I’m just quite good at handle only few hours of sleep :D

But yeah, this week I’m going to take it more calm ;) Right now, there is only work, Nyanja lessons, work outs at the gym, writing my exam paper and one farewell party on the programme :)

So how is my African life going?

Well, I’m now 13 weeks here in Zambia and honestly, I kind of like it here :) Of course, there are still situations where I wish to have good friends and family around me, that the people here just sometimes would think in a bit more European way, I wish to have tap water, a fridge, a freezer, good shower, a real toilet and no power cuts, but somehow everything is just part of the charm :) You kind of get used to all and that everything just takes a bit more time here (for example, I'm still waiting for my bike) :D

However, one thing I don’t think is part of the charm, is the fact that you can’t even trust officers here and that there is a lot of corruption. My host dad is still in prison and I don’t know how many times he already was supposed to appear in court. They keep on adjourning the day! I think it’s really terrible…how are people in Zambia supposed to learn that corruption is a bad thing, when even officers and well educated people do it?!

Furthermore, I’m not a big fan of how most of the men perceive women. Even though some male Zambians are getting better in giving the woman more rights, in most cases the woman doesn’t have anything to say, especially not in a marriage. It’s for instance a woman’s own fault, when the husband cheats on or rapes her, when she refuses to have sex with him. It’s part of the culture that when a Zambian husband wants to have sex, the wife has to obey. Crazy, isn’t it? In addition to that, the role of women in the Zambian culture is also a bit of a challenge, when it for instance comes to sport. Women are often not allowed to do sports and they even don’t have time for it. They are supposed to clean, cook, wash, take care of the children, etc. Even though the man is not working. Sometimes you just feel like being back in time, or at least not as as living in year 2012.

Well, I think that was enough from the negative side ;)

I just wanted to give you some few illustrations of, what kind of aspects sometimes challenge my politeness and understanding. It’s just a bit difficult to understand that they really think and behave like that!

Right, back to the positive :)

Zambians are in general really friendly people and I have never talked to and been greeted from so many different people and strangers :) Furthermore, it’s lovely to see how happy they get, when you try to speak their language or try to dance the way they do :) They laugh a lot and laughing is a good sign here :) That means that they are happy, not that they are laughing at you ;)

In addition to that, I really feel at home in my family :) When I turn into the street where I’m living, all the children are coming running towards me and give me the biggest and warmest hugs :) The neighbours come to visit me and invite me to their places :) Furthermore, my family is really understanding and they show a lot of respect towards me and the culture I’m coming from. For instance they accept that I’m not a big fan of eating Nsima (it’s a cornmeal product and the stable food here in Zambia. It doesn’t taste of anything...) 3 times a day, so I get my oats and fruits in the morning :)

Some impressions from my life:

The amazing sunset

A new "friend" at home - well, it's a toxic scorpion...

My work - waiting for the other teams to arrive

The boys who are keeping me busy at home :) 

(in the middle it's Jonathan, my youngest host brother)

So all in all I’m doing quite fine down here :) However, I have to admit that I’m really looking forward to December, where I’m going to meet all the other volunteers and even see my family again :) And the facts that I’ll meet all of them in Cape Town and have a holiday and it’s going to be my birthday and Christmas, just makes it more amazing and exciting :)

Okay, I think this was all from me right now! I’m sending you all some warm greetings and big hugs :)

P.S.
For those who are able to see it (I can't), here is some entertainment from my work at home in Copenhagen :)
http://www.tv3play.dk/play/286846/?autostart=true

Sleepless in Livingstone

Let me start with explaining the title ;)

Listen to this:

Well, now you maybe understand why it has been difficult to get enough sleep :D I’ve taken this video in the night to Tuesday at 3:40 a.m. I was fast asleep, when I suddenly was woken up by heavy rain combined with crazy loud thunders. Even though we still are enjoying around 35-40 degrees and a lot of sun down here, rain has started to make the weather more interesting :D Well, I still prefer the sun though, since everybody keeps on telling me that this rain is nothing compared to the rain we are going to have in the rain season. I’m not sure how much I look forward to the rain season :D

Another bit disturbing factor during the nights is all the noise my neighbours make, to scare of the elephants when they come to close ;) However, I have to admit that I kind of like the factor having elephants in the garden :D “It’s just the elephants” :) After considering going out and see the elephants, I always just smile and try to fall a sleep again. However, it’s actually quite dangerous. Last week someone just got killed from an elephant in one of the compounds…So yeah, I should probably stay in bed and just try to go back to sleep instead of going out :D

 Right, back to where I stopped in my last post, the Kicking Aids Out workshop :) The Kicking Aids Out workshop was a great success and the sport captains loved it! It was a huge pleasure for me, seeing the girls/women participating with high motivation and having so much fun, while learning :) The biggest satisfaction was though, to work together with a facilitator who really was driven and good :) However, this meant less work for me. 

So what was my job? Well, basically I just participated in the workshop and did some energizers. Even though it wasn’t that much work for me, it has been a good week :) I really enjoyed spending so much time together with the girls/women and getting to know them better. Especially, when they slowly started open up towards me. They shared some of their stories with me, showed me pictures of their children or just wanted to dance with me :) However, it wasn’t just enjoyment all the time. Their stories are quite tough and even the youngest sport captain (19 years old) has already a three years old child. And you don’t want to know why…I was even more shocked about, what kind of believes they had about HIV and STI’s (sexual transmitted infections) in terms of curing, treatment and symptoms. No wonder that HIV is such a big issue here in Zambia, when they for instance believe that you can go from HIV positive to HIV negative just with taking a shower after having had sex with a HIV positive person. However, the even worse believe is that many men think that sex with a virgin can cure them from HIV. It’s really sad and horrible… So yeah, it was a very needed workshop for the sport captains and also the communities they are going to share their new knowledge with.

Here some pictures from the workshop:

Sandra and Martha playing netball

playing "Mee me"

Mercy cooking lunch

Lunch

Untie the knot

Doreen bringing the scones

Mukendwa (my colleague) eating the scone

Untie the knot

Playing fruit salad

P.S. Fruit salad, untie the knot and "Mee me" are energizer games :)

Thursday I attended two meetings instead of being at the workshop. The first one was together with many other representatives from sport NGO´s (non-governmental organization) in Livingstone. We are all part of the Livingstone Sport and Development Network. Meetings like that are always very interesting but also a bit exhausting, and this is not just because of the "not on time" aspect (I'm quite used to that now :D). No, I just don’t think they have been told that mobile phones actually can be switched of or just be on silence, or even that you actually can wait with replying to a call or message :D T.I.A ;)

The second meeting was in one of the compounds, Mwandi. Right now only children are showing up to the trainings in all the different compounds, so we have to find out, why the women don’t participate in sports anymore. During the next weeks, we (Doreen and me) are going to visit and having meetings with all the women to see what we can change. It was a good meeting :) However, issues like lack of food and the factor that the women in the African culture have to take care of the household, children, food etc., are difficult to change. We’ll see how we can adjust the trainings, so they are able to participate again :)

Here some pictures from the club competition, when Bela was here. 

Climbing up at me

Nice sunglasses :D

I always wanted to try carrying a baby like African women do :)

The weekend was quite calm for me :) Saturday I stayed at home in the compound all the day and spent some time with my family. 

How does that look like?

Look:

Playing with my brothers

Watching Miriam doing the fake hair

Cooking 

Relaxing in the evening

Sleeping in this position, because of the heat

Sunday I just relaxed at the backpackers and visited Mukuni village with the Norwegians in the afternoon. Mukuni Village is a village with 7000 habitants placed a bit out of Livingstone. It was quite interesting to see how the live. However, it was a bit too touristic for me. I prefer seeing the authentic way of living and don’t be bothered with all the souvenir sellers. 

Some pictures of the village:

One community

One of the family houses

The prison

Monday it was back to the office :) It’s always a pleasure sitting in the staff meeting Monday morning, discussing what to do with the sick chicken from the chicken run in Mwandi :D Okay, we are talking about other things as well ;)
Here a taste of, what I have to listen to, when I'm working at the office :D

What is going on this week?

Well, today it’s Independence Day! This means, no work, enjoying how they celebrate it here and having fun with friends :) Juhhuuuu, in few minutes I’m going to see Lina, Johanne, Arnt and Vegard :) They have taken some days off and are playing tourists until Sunday here in Livingstone :) I really look forward to see them again :)

So yeah, the rest of the week is going to be a good combination of work, fun and nice people :)