21 September 2008

Andy and Ashlee celebrated their two year wedding anniversary on 17 September. They had to go to Solwezi to write their quarterly report so they decided to stay at a hotel for the night. Ashlee said they had plans to some things, but after they got in their room they found out their AC has a remote control so they jumped in bed, cranked up the AC and watched ESPN all night. She said they watched PTI, Around the Horn and several other shows as well as a bunch of stuff about baseball that they didn’t really care about but watched anyway. Andy found some nori when he was in Lusaka getting a tooth fixed the week before so they had some sushi for their anniversary. That has been their tradition. I had sent two sets of the chopsticks from their wedding that they also used. That was a special reminder for them. The next day they stayed at the provincial house. They ran into a man selling strawberries so they bought a bunch and ended up making all kinds of strawberry dishes. Andy also fried some chicken which was delicious.

They had just had a meeting with their village that was very well attended so they were thrilled with that when we talked to them. Sometimes they don’t get very good turn outs and that is frustrating. They had 13 women, 4 men and several children. They were teaching about conservation farming. They gave them seeds as a part of a project where they give them seeds one time and then they have to learn how to glean them from their crop for the next year.

They are already planning for our family for visit next April and Ashlee has been talking with the village women about preparing us a Zambian meal when we are there. I think we are all getting excited about it!

7 September 2008

As a follow up to Ashlee’s letter about the language she said that another one she is having trouble with is tomorrow = yesterday. How do you figure out when you are doing something when there is no difference between yesterday and tomorrow? Curious. Ashlee asked that we send gum in their care packages because what they have tastes terrible! They now have an internet phone and can receive emails, but still can only respond when they are at the provincial house.

Andy and I are going to work on a Western house design for the village. They are going to start raising and processing pine trees in the region and he would like to show them how to build a wood framed house. This would help to reduce the amount of wood needed for construction as currently it takes a lot of wood to burn to fire the bricks that they use to build. There will be challenges as they do not have the other traditional building materials that we have including treated lumber for sill plates, house wrap and exterior sheathing that we use to protect the wood from rotting. A girl from my office, Charmalee, who is from Sri Lanka, has some experience in this type of work and she and I are teaming up to design and detail a house for them. Andy said that getting a set of metric blueprints would mean the world to the village. He has been working with a local contractor on the bridge projects and with Andy’s extensive construction experience he feels that he could guide them through the construction process. I have already been thinking up ways to make that process smoother by maybe laminating the plans as they do not have a way to reproduce them. We are starting this week to research construction techniques that may be applicable. Maybe by the time we go the Zambia next spring they will be underway.