I'm here!

I arrived in Lusaka around 8PM Sunday evening--about eight hours later than planned and minus one bag, but arrived safe and sound. It had been a long weekend starting with my 5k race at Clemson Friday evening, which went really well. I owe my friend Kate a huge "thank you" for volunteering to drive me to the airport at 4am the next morning! There was a delay leaving from New York which set off a series of delays from then on out but the flights themselves were fine. I spent some quality time in the Johannesburg airport waiting on a new connection to Lusaka. The flight from Johannesburg to Lusaka was gorgeous; everything was different shades of green and the roads curved to outline the shape of a small mountain range.
Once I arrived at Lusaka I was greeted by Joseph Z, who works for Project Concern International in their Logistics and Transport department. It was a relief to finally arrive and be greeted with such a friendly smile and welcome. The weather felt wonderful: warm and slightly humid with a cool breeze. It felt great to be back in Africa again!
Joseph dropped me off at Jen's house in Kabulonga, who is a friend of a contact at Grassroots Soccer. She was wearing a Steelers tshirt when she greeted me at the door so I immediately thought Coach would be proud! I met her houseguest Meg who works for the Peace Corps and Jen's timid greyhound Millie. Jen works for World Vision and will promoted to Regional Director of the HIV/AIDs and Malaria prevention program in February/March. Jen has been working for World Vision for six years. She earned her Masters in Public Health from Boston University then worked in Eastern Europe for some time before coming to Zambia. She figured she would be helping with politics and policies of public health in her longterm career not necessarily in the healthcare field. Meg is on a third year extension for the Peace Corps and had moved to Lusaka after serving the past two years in a western province of Zambia. It was interesting to hear their progression into the nonprofit world and how they came to live in Lusaka.
Meg says she likes to run at 4:30AM before the neighborhood wakes up and "people start to get into the way". That sounded way too early, even for me who has had practice at 6am for quite some time, but I promised I would get up with her so I could learn the neighborhood. After a much needed shower and tucking in my mosquito net I slept until the sun woke me up at 6AM. (Meg had decided she wanted some sleep and thought I should too). With another two hours to kill until Joseph arrived I watched the British CNN, which I found fascinating and was grateful to be in warm weather instead covered in loads of snow.
I quickly learned that time is very relative around here. At 8:45 Musonda turned up to take me to the Project Concern International office, which was literally a few blocks around the corner. Inside the gate, the PCI office has pretty front yard with picnic tables and a small playset then a small parking lot crammed with PCI trucks. The office itself is two floors. There is a long entrance hallway to the waiting area and reception desk which is manned (literally MANned) by a rotation of the Logistics staff throughout the day. Adjacent to the reception desk is a large whiteboard of listing the names of the 40-something staff members that work out of the Lusaka office which indicators of who was "out" of the building. Just above the whiteboard is a picture of His Excellency Mr. Rupiah B Banda, President of the Republic of Zambia, a formidable looking big man. I have noticed that every building has a framed picture of him somewhere very high on the wall. I later learned that he has six wives. Well four now because he divorced one and another one died. He's engaged to a new wife now. Pule made a few jokes about it on the car ride later in the day. Just beneath the white board are two boxes of "unlabeled, nonbrand condoms". I thought "Welcome to Zambia!"
There is also a large kitchen and copy/mail room adjunct to the waiting area. Majority of the offices are upstairs with each department sharing a big room with separate desk areas for each employee.

Upon arrival I was quickly directed upstairs to meet Amy, Rajeesh, and Pule who have been coordinating plans. Rajeesh is the Country Director for PCI's work in Zambia. Amy is a more recent graduate from Boston University's School of Public Health. She has been working at PCI for two years (I believe) and actually stayed with Jen when she first moved to Zambia as well. Pule also works in the "Belong & Worth" department of PCI alongside Namonje, who has been my main contact during the planning process. Pule has been with PCI just over a year.
No one was surprised to hear I was missing a bag and they all shared their own version of "one time when I flew from Joburg, my bag turned up X days later". Musonda promised he would work on locating my bag but my contact Sydney at the airport didn't seem interested in answering his calls. Pule oriented me to the plans for the week with Project Concern International while we waited for Namonje.

Today I will be headed to Matero, a province of Lusaka, to meet with Home Based Care (HBC) caregivers. However we wouldn't head out until later because the caregivers are volunteers and often take care of personal matters before headed to the HBC sites. THe HBC site in Matero, Pule explained, is based out of a Catholic church and is completely community and volunteer run. I will be delivering one of the globalbikes sometime today to one of the caregivers (I take their time estimations with a grain of salt now; we were supposed to be there at 10am).
In the meantime, I talked with Amy about the Orphan and Vulnerable Children (OVC) program for children under the age of 6. She has worked with a child psychologist in PCI to develop a short curriculum guide for HBC workers called "Say and Play" to help caregivers understand the psychosocial issues those children are experiencing. Often children under six years of age are not counseled, Amy explained, because they have not developed the language and articulation of older children so this program has activities to get the children to open up during games. Just because the children are younger does not mean they are shielded from the harsh realities of a caregiver's death or terminal illness from tuberculosis or AIDS or even from sexual abuse. With such a high prevalence of HIV/AIDS in Zambia, often young children must take on the responsibilities of cooking and caring for a terminally ill parent. This also means the children have no form of income from their parents. Therefore the children must work during the day or be left at home since their caregiver cannot pay for the minimal school fees/uniforms much less ensure the children have means to get to school. Reading through the curriculum reminded me of the Girl Scout exercises on teamwork, caring for others in need, playing as a form of learning; except this time the exercises were training children to deal with their own family and current life or death situation not to simply to be more considerate of other troop members. A whole new meaning to the words psychosocial issues.

Namonje says it's time to head to Matero! Woohooo