Sunday, March 23, 2008

23 March 2008

We talked with the kids this morning. They continue to do well. They go to language school and also are now doing Agricultural classes to help in their project. They thought they would be starting bee keeping this week and were excited about it. Their ag projects are sustainable projects, compost, gardening, preservation, etc. They are meeting the couple they are replacing this week but have apparently talked with them. They will have a 4 room house of brick with a metal roof and a toilet with a seat. They are in a compound with a family but will have the ability to cook for themselves. Mango trees are on their property. Their village is 8-9 km from Kasempa in the northwest providence. Apparently there are many good English speakers in their area, a good hospital in Kasempa with lots of European health care people rotating thru. I think Ashlee said they may be going to their site this week, not sure. They are happy and very busy. Andy is doing better at picking up the language and Ashlee is grateful for his help.

Sunday, March 16, 2008

16 March 2008

Muji Byeppi,
Or hello in our new launguage. As you all know we have been in Zambia for over 3 weeks now, and everyhting is going good. We are in PST which is pre service training, and that kind of sucks, because it is 8 hours of school everyday. It will all be worth it when wer get to our village. We talked to the couple that has been living in our future home and they told us all kinds of great things about our village. We will be living 7 K out side of a town called Kasempa (look it up on Google earth.) The other couple did education, but they said that there was a lot of interest in the agriculture programs that we will be doing. We are super excited. They started some projects which I hope to keep going. One of which is teaching the women to can and preserve food, Which helps both with food security and income generation. So if you have any canning recipies that use tropical fruit send them my way. Also they grow a lot of okra and I would love to teach them to pickle that so somebody do some reasearch and send it to me( if you have time,) I would greatly appreciate it. Mom,.If you have any resources on can that could be easily mailed could you send them. There are no books that I know of that the PC provides.
So much is going on, but I only have a few miniutes. So that is all I will write now. We should have email access every few weeks so you can email. Also we do have a phone that we turn on on sundays if any one would like to call the # is 0976614162 (you will have to look up the country code)
Peace,
Ashlee
PS Tina say hello to Katie for me I do not have her email address with me, and let her know that I am trying to find her a monkey.