I Finally Saw Elephants

So I finally saw some elephants here.  9 of them to be exact.  I was on vacation in Livingstone, Zambia, when I looked out across the river and about 200 meters away were 9 big ol' rock shaped creatures.  Sure enough... elephants.  They were really far away so I wasn't all that excited, but it was good to see them and know that they do exist here (I was beginning to wonder).

The next day I went to Chobe National Park in Botswana (about 1 hour from Livingstone) for a 2-day safari and didn't see just 1, 9, 90, or even 200 elephants.  Nope.  I saw well over 300 elephants in just 48 hours.  For whatever reason, the elephants are like ants in Botswana - they crawl all over the place.

Elephants need to drink water at least once per day, so staying near the river guaranteed an easy sighting of these three.

We (myself and some other PCVs that I was on vacation with) saw elephants in the river, on the hill sides, in the road... you name it and there was an elephant there.  We even saw elephants at our campsite at night as we sat in the middle of the park enjoying the stars and listening to lions call in the distance.

I didn't get to track any elephants on foot, but I did get to juggle some dry elephant poop for a bit (sadly, no picture to show of that) and I practically filled an entire SD card with pictures of these big, gray beasts.  However, we saw much more than just elephants.  We saw huge herds of zebra, cape buffalo, impala, some sable and roan antelope, a lion, and even the always elusive leopard.

The always elusive leopard taking a mid-afternoon nap in a tree near the river.

Overall, Chobe National Park didn't disappoint in terms of being able to see tons of African wildlife.  It did make me sad though that this all lives across the river from Zambia.  I know the Zambian parks have wildlife but Botswana was teeming with it.  As soon as we entered the country, not even the park!, there were elephants crossing the road.  So what's the difference between Zambia and Botswana?  I have no idea, but it's really too bad they aren't in more places.

With that being said, after returning from my vacation to my village I was informed that a herd of 8 elephants were spotted just 4 miles from my house but had been chase away before I could see them.  So maybe I should've tracked them after all.  For me though, at this point, its just enough to know that there are a few left, and maybe they'll come by someday just to say hi to me.

This elephant crossed right in front of our boat.  Hopefully I'll be able to see something close like this in Zambia.

Appropriate Tech.

As I write this post I'm sitting in Solwezi (my provincial capital) and trying to unwind after a third straight day of training.  The training is focused on appropriate technology, which is an area of my work here in Peace Corps that I'm really starting to enjoy.

Appropriate technology (AT for short) is a program we have here in Zambia that promotes the idea of finding village solutions to some of problems that arise in the rural settings that we volunteers work in.  For instance, how to preserve and store food better, how to cook with less fuel (cooking fuel is a leading cause of deforestation), and even how to shell maize and peanuts more efficiently.

I love AT if for no other reason than we get to design, create, and test out a lot of cool machines - some fail, some are tinkered with further, and in the end some work well enough that they'll be used in a village setting sometime soon.

Working with two counterparts to design and test an irrigation system for tomato plants.

I'm one of 5 volunteers at this workshop and each of us brought a counterpart from our village to attend and learn side by side with us.  I brought my good friend Mr. Nshimbi.

At the workshop it isn't so much about sitting in a classroom and listening to someone yap on about this and that, but rather it is very much hands on and lots of sweating.  It's a great event and to make this even better we're paired into "design teams" for different "design challenges."  My design team consists of myself, one other volunteer, and two Zambians.

Mr. Nshimbi building a peanut sheller from common timber.  Peanuts are one of the more labor-intensive crops grown in Zambia and any means of separating them from their shells in a speedier fashion is great.

My team has been tasked with designing a stove that uses less charcoal than the traditional means, a solar drier for fruit and vegetable drying, and a way to irrigate a garden more efficiently during dry season.

This last one is my favorite - it's something I'm very interested and so far we've been really successful with our designs.  Today, we designed a system that uses a 20 liter bucket, two bicycle tire inner tubes, and some lollipop sticks.  It worked perfectly on the first try.  I felt even better when one of the counterparts said that he was going to build one as soon as he returns to his village.  He was so surprised at how simple and inexpensive the design was.  I completely agree and will be taking this design back to my village as well.

Making a frame for a solar drier to help in food preservation.

I've come to realize that appropriate technology is fun technology, useful technology, and also interesting technology - who knows... maybe I'll bring some of these ideas back to the USA at the end of my two years.

A Big Thanks to Tom

One of my favorite things about living here in Zambia and interacting with the children around my village is the thumbs up I get when I greet them.  At first I would just say "hello" and wave at them, then one day I got a thumbs up from a kid I passed on my bike.

From that day on I've decided that if the thumbs up was good enough for Tom Cruise as Maverick in Top Gun, well then, by all means, it's good enough for me... it's good enough for all of us.

Ah, thank you Tom.  Thank you very much.

Now I have no idea where or even when these kids learned the thumbs up greeting, but I like to think it came from Top Gun and Mr. Cruise, some time / somehow.

Although the thumbs up gesture has a very rich and varied past (ranging from Ancient Rome to World War II to contemporary times), I believe that its use here in rural Zambia now has added a new chapter to that history.  And without doing any real research or even trying to back this claim - I think a big thanks is owed to Tom Cruise for his advancement of this universal gesture.  So let me speak for all of us and say, "Thanks Tom.  Thanks."

It is worth noting that according to Wikipedia (the best website in the world) the thumbs up gesture in the Middle East has a derogatory meaning.  Tom must not be loved as much there.