checking in from Zambia

Alright, I can't quite recall if I've posted on here before or not, but I just spent about an hour reading everyone's posts. I would have been a more frequent visitor, but the internet went down for 2 months here and there is rarely electricity so I haven't had the chance until now. BUT I would like to update on some of the highlights/lowlights of time here:

Living Situation: I spent my first month and a half here living in a whorehouse (it was a guesthouse but run by women who well....you can finish this on your own). Then I moved in with a friend who works at the hospital named Mukuka (MukAka means "stupid" or "lacking knowledge" and I accidently called him this for about a month until I found out I was pronouncing his name wrong) and our other buddy named Alick. There were 3 grown ass men living in a place about the size of the cinema at 421, not cool. ALick is a farmer and half the week would stay at the farm, the other half when he was with us, he and I shared a bed. Now I am in another guest house that is letting me live here for free because of the work I do. You may wonder why I dont get a house of my own. I have wondered this as well, but the community refuses to allow me to live in one of the clay mud huts with the thatched roof. Apparently putting guests up at the whorehouse is a much more respectable option.

Unintentional Consequences of Development: Just before Christmas we celebrated Alick's birthday and had some drinks. Alick is a big fan of the shitty, awful, terrible way to sugary wine called Autumn Harvest that makes its way to our village from South Africa. However as far as getting people drunk it does the trick. Well after a glass or two I couldn't take it anymore so I poured some of the very strong orange juice concentrate into the wine. They were of course appalled at my action for ruining the alcohol. I objected and encouraged them to try. Predictably they loved the improvement and asked what we called this magical elixir back in the states. I thought about it for a moment and went with "Mimosa..I guess" Then everyone raised their glasses and shouted "Mimosa." I thought nothing of this. A few days later I'm walking through the center of town/village and a few guys stumble out of the bar (this being around 9 or 10 am, and when I say bar, I mean empty falling over building with a few benches that looks like a place where child abductors take their prey tie them up and molest them) and shout "mimosa" at me. I laugh at the hilarity of it, but now everyone is drinking Mimosa's and raising their glasses to me most days.

Encounters: The other night the power was off (naturally) and I woke up at about 2 am and really had to pee so I stumbled in the dark without my headlamp down to the bathroom and started to relieve myself when I heard a noise behind me. Now it's completely pitch black, but judging from the sound of the movement I already know that there is a snake behind me and I start to freak a bit. I decide to cut the pee short ( a painful process I'm sure you all know) and decide, because I am trapped inside this small room with nowhere to go, that my only option is to jump over where I think the snake is and then run like a school girl back to my room. I managed to do this but decided that it would be cowardly and not nice to leave the snake there for the next victim. So I throw on my headlamp, alert the guard grab a log from outside and head back in. The snake, once illuminated, proves only to be a foot and a half long, and really not all that intimidating, but since it could be poisonous and all the guard and I beat the shit out of it with our logs well past the point that this snake could possibly be alive. That's right I beat a snake to death.

I think this is enough for now, but other notes of significance are that I have lost 30 pounds, blinded myself for a week (i thought it was permanent) while trying to clean my drinking water with chlorine, and that I am running a trade school, which is ridiculous but fulfills my white man's need to assert authority over these dark skinned savages..........kidding