My home in Kangaya

Update and "the bat cave"

Most of my energy in the past month has been focused on getting my house finished and preparing everything for the rains which supposedly come exactly on Zambian Independence day Oct. 24. My neighbor still needs to fix my roof because he thought a decoration was more important than keeping the rain off my head. In addition I've been having termite issues. They fall out of the grass in my roof, fall on to my insecticide treated mosquito net, die, and then using their last ounce of life, fit perfectly through the netting and fall dead on my bed. I'm not talking one or two either. I was sweeping the maggot-like corpses off of my bed by the hundreds. SO I'm thinking plastic sheeting may be a good idea before the rains come in full force. On other news- after a month of hanging out in my village trying to be a "good"volunteer I am in Solwezi trying to acquire my work permit as well as eating some good food / cold beer and taking antibiotics for my infected wounds. Not easy keeping things clean out here.

The Bat Cave...
Our original intention was to have a large group of volunteers visit the cave, complete with bike helmets, headlamps and full piece blue mining suits, but it turned out to be only three of us. The caving adventure began in Chibwika, a village 15km from my village Kangaya. We walked two hours in the bush with three Zambians who didn't wear shoes or bring water even though the three of us were dieing in the african heat.
The cave didn't look like much at first, just an opening in the bottom of a creek bottom. It reminded me lots of the caves on the smith river. The only difference I would say is that this cave was inhabited by thousands of bats. Our fearless guides cowered by the opening and said "they feared the bats" and would not enter. So while we walked over feet of bat guano and had bats hitting our faces our guides stayed near the entrance with pieces of bamboo which they swung blindly into the air killing bats by the dozens. I believe their final bat count was somewhere around 120 by the time we left. And yes they stuffed them in their pockets with huge grins and would have plenty of "relish" for dinner. We explored maybe 100 meters into the cave until the stench of ammonia and moist bat guano became too much. The bats were so thick in places that you couldn't hear anything except the flapping of wings and screeching of thousands of bats as they wizzed inches from your face. At first I huddled down like the bats were a bad dream, but after a while we decided if they hadn't bit us yet they weren't too interested, so no, fear was not a factor. On the walk back we saw a couple of owls and stopped along the way to harvest some honey out of a tree. The two hour walk back to the village turned out to be a little more than an hour because our guides conveniently remembered a shortcut. So we at fresh honey (although I think it was more pollen than honey based on my allergies) and walked our way back. Our guides tried to get money out of us for taking us to the caves, but like every other zambian that asks me for money. I simply say in Lunda "Nikweti mali wanyi" (i dont have money)

This weekend I was going to be watching zambia play angola in the qualifiers for the africa cup but it looks like I'll be watching the game in a bar instead. So yes my peace corps vacation is going quite well... I'm off to go eat a hot dog at a new restaurant in town. Yes a real American hotdog- it should be quite the treat.