We Moved!!!

So, just a quick update from the last post...

WE MOVED!

We are now spending our days in the provincial capital of Choma. My NGO suddenly moved to Choma in a mass exodus with all other southern province NGOs to be in the capital (Scott's NGO was already partly based here) and in order to avoid a troublesome and expensive commute, we moved too.

The mailing address is still the same for now although we might get our own box at the post office now that we are so close but for now we'll continue sharing the box at the provincial house.

So far the move has been for the better. We have running water now!

To give you an idea of what this means to us I will regail you with our previous water situation in Kalomo:

We lived in a house with plumbing but no water. The water came on at a random point every other day but almost invariably around 3 in the morning. Luckily it made a demon coming up from hell sound so we never had to wonder whether it was on or not. Once the guttural Tibetan throat singing began, we would spend the next 2 hours until dawn outside at the tap (because the pressure was so low it couldn't make it to the inside of the house) filling as many buckets as possible from a thread sized trickle. During the height of dry season we went a couple of weeks without water entirely. Remember when I said we had plumbing- that means we have flush toilets so imagine not flushing your toilets for two weeks... yep. During the final week we were there the rains started coming- thank god so we started catching rain water.

But now all that's behind us :) Honestly, I can live without running water if there is a well nearby or a latrine instead of a flush toilet. That was how we lived during training and it worked out just fine. But the factors that went into this water situation were fairly untenable. Not to mention that I smelled like cheese most of the time because we rarely had enough water for a bucket bath- sorry coworkers. Another plus for our new place is I live by two co workers who like to garden so we now have space to make a garden happen. Also our landlord is a Bemba woman about my age who just lost her husband in road accident, while that is terrible, she's been looking for friends. So she hung out with me while I unpacked (Scott was away for work) so now I've got a Zambian friend who's not a co worker- SUCCESS!

Anywho, more updates to come!