riveenema

i'm writing this eating a loaf of bread from the market as my breakfast in true backpacker style, just ripping off chunks. so i need to fill everyone in about what i did for christmas. you've seen a few of teh pictures, it was definitely not a traditional one! the friday before christmas kennedy and i got transport to mukuni village - that's the "main" village around livingstone - it's where the chief stays, cheif mukuni, and it has a few small stores, some bars, basically where other villages go to get staples like mealie meal (used to make nshima), oil, salt, sugar, beer... so we did a little shopping of our own, bought gifts for his grandmother and mom and a few other people. the lady behind the counter looked at me dubiously and wondered ... read more

okay, finally posted some new pics....it's taken me two hours to upload these so the stories will have to wait for another day, but at least you have proof that i'm alive :) hope everyone had a merry christmas, enjoy new years and be safe... read more

just wanted to let everyone know that i'm still alive in livingstone, i know i haven't written in ages... it's now the rainy season, which means lots of bottomless puddles to avoid and loads of delicious mangoes - i usually pick one each morning for my breakfast, i'm getting quite adept at peeling with my teeth. so i don't have time to write loads, i'm meeting a friend in town soon...but a few highlights... my birthday - bbq at a friends place with my roommates and friends (nshima and chicken), lots of dancing, good music, buckets of water being poured on me gorge swing - freefall for 50 meters, or 3.5 seconds, then huge swings until being lowered down. intensely scary, so much so that i went to the bathroom about 5 times before actually voluntarily ... read more

Another week in Livingstone….what have I done this week? A whole new crop of volunteers came, about ten of them, so it’s been a bit of an adjustment - 3 new girls at Mambo, a Scot and 2 Germans, the house is no longer the American house. One of my housemates had to flee the country - his visa expired and he had to cross over to Zimbabwe - probably the first white person to flee TO Zimbabwe in the past ten years. He just had to spend one night out of Zambia so he was back in the morning. I might have already written about this but I don’t think so. There was a pedestrian / taxi accident that I got to assist with at Maramba Clinic. The pedestrian went headfirst through the windshield of ... read more

i decided to voluntarily risk my life yesterday - and raft one of the biggest/baddest rivers in the world - the zambezi. okay, maybe it's not the baddest, but class 5 rapids classify as pretty scary for me. and when the guide (with 13 years experience on the river) warns you not to fall out on a certain rapid, you tend to listen and take him seriously. everyone in the house at mambo decided to raft yesterday, a few had gone the week before and loved it so much they were back for more punishment. so saturday was my potential date with death, and the two hours of sleep i had the night before upped the potential, nor did it inspire a lot of confidence to find a few of the guides drinking at the local ... read more

so here's the deal - i have a couple of incomplete blogs so i'm just going to combine them into one - some things might repeat or be boring...life here has settled into a routine so sometimes there's not too much to write about. partial blog 1 After nearly 2 weeks in Zambia, I finally made it to Victoria Falls - the primary reason why Livingstone exists. After horseback riding was canceled due to lack of transport, Gemma (project coordinator) took Karen and I to Vic Falls on her way to the Zambia/Zimbabwe border. So the plan was to walk into the Zambezi Sun, a very swank resort, and walk back to the private entrance to Mosi-u-tanya Park (the water that thunders) and avoid paying the enormous entrance fee. There are two price systems, local and ... read more

So to get along in Africa you have to have a really open mind and just go with the flow - my time in Europe was very beneficial for me in that nothing here bothers me - the bus that you're in just got stuck in the sand and you're 60 km out in the bush, no worries. Supposed to take blood pressure and don't know how, it's okay. Someone asking you to marry them, not today. Brave, one of the Zambians that I work with actually commented on that - I went with him and 17 others in a combi (which is really a stripped minivan, so it was a bit tight) out to a village to do community HIV education. Drive out 60 km, half of it over very bumpy/sandy ground, debate over the ... read more

The irony of writing this on a laptop while listening to music on an mp3 player is not lost on me, I'm using electronics worth more than most people here will earn this this decade. The unemployment rate is basically 100% - most people scrape by through creating their own enterprise - carpentry, roadside stands selling anything you could possibly imagine (the smell of freshly popped popcorn is one that I particularly enjoy), barbershops, etc. It's hard to describe what Zambia is like to someone who's never been here, much like it's hard to describe America to people here, there's just no frame of reference either way. So my typical day - I wake up early, 6:30 at the latest, slip out of my mosquito net and try not to wake my sleeping roommates. Off to ... read more

well, the europe part of my trip will be done in a little bit more than 12 hours. i'm off to zambia tomorrow, with a few stops inbetween. i fly out of dublin tomorrow around 11, get into heathrow 90 minutes later, then fly out at 5 to livingstone zambia via frankfurt and johannesburg. i get in sometime on thursday afternoon i believe. the only change, as far as blogging, will be that i'll be stationary and not writing, as opposed to moving and not writing. after a few days of orientation, i'll start working in the livingstone medical clinic and orphanage. i started my malaria medication today, no adverse effects, so hopefully no vivid hallucinations like i had when i took larium. prayers for a healthy trip will be much appreciated - livingstone has a ... read more

i just finished a short field trip in ireland - trained up to galway for a day, then down to killarney for two days where i did some hiking in the national park and food shopping in tesco. i'd advise against training anywhere in ireland - not quite as efficient as other EU countries. to get from galway to killarney, which is approximately 1.5 hours driving, took an amazing 8 hours on the train and 4 train changes. no matter where you are and want to go, dublin is the hub, but the travel was free as i still had my eurail pass. killarney was beautiful - a large national park at the city limits, i hiked to ross castle and a copper mine that was used in 2000 BC. the forest was very tropical and ... read more