Day 4...

Things seem to be sinking into a deeper state of confusion with each passing day... Today was a good example. This morning we were all supposed to be picked up at 8am (here they say "zero eight") to go get our Alien Registration Cards. I was going to spend my time at the VSO office or wandering through town because I was told that those of us who still do not have our work permits would not be able to get our Registration Cards. In they end Eleanor, the woman in charge of payroll at VSO arrived at 9:10am, in a jeep that all 12 of us were expected to pile in. Apparently our days of private bus transport are over. We were supposed to have got our Cards by 9am and have moved onto the private clinic where we have to register ourselves, so we didn't really know where we were going, and our attempts to inquire were not clearly addressed. Anyway, we ended up at the Labour Office to get our Registration Cards. Those without work permits were told we should stay because they would try to get our cards as well. We sat around and waited for about half an hour because the man in charge had "stepped out." When he arrived they started calling us into an office one by one. I was the second one called, even though it was expected the missing work permit would be a problem. I walked into a small dingy office with a photo of president hanging off-kilter on the wall. The 'man in charge' was sitting behind a desk conversing with three other women who where in there, but I have no idea why. One other woman stood in front of the desk and periodically instructed me to sign here, print my thumb in three different places and then asked me to leave. Later we were all trucked into an even smaller room with about 10 other people waiting around. We joined in on the waiting around for a while, and then were asked to sit down in turn so that they could take a picture of us. It was quite a gong-show: between me forgetting to take of my jewellery and not being able to keep my eyes open when the camera flashed, Chris smiling too much, Natalie having to take out the braids in her hair, and two other girls having to cover up their shoulders (lucky I was wearing a blouse on top of my tank top), we were not the most popular crowd... But, at the end of the day, after 2 hours, we all got our Commonwealth Registration Cards (apparently you are only an Alien if you are not from the Commonwealth), complete with the names of our 'Chiefs' (secretly the cities we were born in).

We piled back into the jeep, again not knowing where we were headed - we ended up at the hotel, so apparently registering at the clinic was not a priority... The rest of the day we received training on Health Issues and on Zambian Culture. The latter session was extremely interesting, especially in the context of the work I will be doing in the HIV/AIDS sector here. Some of the biggest obstacles to preventing the spread of the disease have to do with two areas of Zambian culture that are very foreign to me: the tribal system, and witchcraft. The tribal system means that Chiefs basically can dictate how the members of their communities should behave, and many times the practices they encourage go against the efforts to prevent HIV/AIDS. The Cleansing Ceremony which is apparently still very prevelant requires a widow to have sex with a male member of her husbands family in order to be 'cleansed' and be able to return to society. She has no choice on who the person is, and it may even be a nephew whom she has brought up as a son. She may not ask that the man use a condom, as this is like "having a shower with a raincoat." Witchcraft is even more detrimental, as almost all deaths in Zambia are blamed on people being bewitched by others. Witchcraft also teaches that AIDS can be cured by having sex with a virgin... How one faces these deep rooted beliefs is beyond me at the moment.

Time is running out, so that's all for today. Sorry no photos yet, I'll work on that. I'm aware that reading all the things that seem interesting to ME may not be so interesting to others, so I'll try to make them more visually pleasing as soon as possible:)