Arrival

Monday 5/8-13

Arrival. Today we arrived Lusaka, after about 24 hours travelling from Oslo, the capital of Norway. It’s been a lot of waiting and long flights, so I’ve already managed to read through one of the books I brought with me. Less luggage.

All 11 volunteers travelled together to Lusaka, where we are going to stay for the next 10 days. Here we will be briefed more and have some courses at the University of Zambia. They days will be packed with activities, and we are sharing room with one other person, who is either from Zambia or Zimbabwe. They haven’t arrived yet, but I assume they will be here shortly.

It’s not too warm here. I guess around 25C, which is fine, but it’s still winter so in a couple of months it will get a lot warmer (around 40C).

The last week in Oslo was very eventful and fun. We had classes from 9AM to 3-4PM every day, and Anja, another volunteer, stayed with me and my Godmother, Sissel. We had a lot of fun from day one. We exercised, ate, barbecued, did some shopping etc after our classes. On Thursday I became an uncle for a second nephew! My older brother and his girlfriend had a baby boy at 1:13PM. I and Sissel went to visit them on Friday, and he was such a beautiful baby! I got to hold him, and he was so calm and loves to be cuddled with. I also went to see him on Saturday. It does make me sad to leave just when he came to the world, but at least I got to meet him. He was supposed to come mid-August, so he was early (and very small). I’m looking forward to meet him again next summer.

Now I’m in Zambia, in Lusaka, where I’m going to stay for 10 months! It’s exciting and I’m looking forward to it, but since I don’t know exactly what I am going to be doing and what sort of family I will be staying with, it’s hard to have expectations. It’s very hard to imagine how this year will be.
Most of the former volunteers say that the first six months are frustrating and it’s easy to feel home sick. Mainly because the culture is so different and it might be a new experience for volunteers to live so far away from their family for so long. But I’m determent that I will enjoy this stay. I’ve been living around the world for too long to hide and feel homesick. What does worry me is that the guys who come down here as volunteers usually loose about 10kg of muscles, something I really don’t want to happen. I’m just over 90kg at the moment. I’ll do some measuring when I get back in June and let you know how it went.