Site Placements

26/11/2008
Well today I found out where I will be living for the next two years starting December 15th. Apparently I will be in the province of Zambezia somewhat near Malawi. I will be living in a very rural town that does not have electricity so needless to say my house will not have electricity, but I will learn to live without it I suppose. I’m really glad that I brought my guitar as I was planning on using my electronic devices for my primary entertainment but I guess I will switch over to guitar playing, reading and solely use my iPod. Thank the gods for my solar charger.
I was told my house is large (2 bedrooms and a large living room, with a nice outdoor brick latrine/casa de banho and a small porch) so that’s cool, though if it’s large it will require twice as many candles to light it up. I think I will be going to bed early and getting up around 5 once it is light outside because dim light, whether it be by candle, or by a light bulb with an extremely weak electric current, makes me feel very tired.
I will be working for a branch of a larger American development organization so I’m excited to be working for an organization with some resources behind it. As all Peace Corps volunteers do I will be able to do some secondary programs but I guess I will be working a lot with water sanitation issues, which is not something I anticipated doing, but should be interesting.
Also as far as I can tell now… if I want to visit the closest PCV to me I will need to travel at least 3 hours, which is close here. I shall have lots of alone time.
Needless to say today all of us PCT’s were very excited to find out our sites and I was also pleased with the abundance of meat provided for us at the Peace Corps Thanksgiving meal. My family does not eat a lot of meat here at homestay and I think my brothers were a little shocked when I told them normally in the United States I ate some sort of meat with every meal. I’m a huge carnivore, so if meat isn’t readily available at my site I think I will have to raise some chickens. I am also interested in finding a scale so I can weight myself, since Iºve now had more than one person comment on my weight or clothes being baggy. I was on my first belt notch when I left the states and now Iºve had to move up 3 notches. I can no longer wear my cargo shorts without tying the draw string very tight, but itºs okay I feel fine and still have energy so Iºm not concerned at all!