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, [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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