Author: Arielle Kunitz

Panono, panono

Mwapoleni mukwai! Ishina lyandi nine Arielle. Ine ndi mwina America, ndi musambi wa icibemba, intambi shabena Zambia elyo na ubumi busuma.

“Nice to meet you! My name is Arielle. I am from America, and I’m a student learning Bemba, Zambian culture, and health.”

Hello from Zambia!! I’ve been waiting for this all summer, and I’m so glad I’m finally here! (ADPi’s and avid Twitter users will get the reference 😉 ) I’m currently writing to you from my hut, in bed, underneath my mosquito net. I’ve officially been in Zambia for 1 week, and a lot has happened since fly in. I cannot believe it has only been a week— it feels like at least one month, but in the best way possible. Buckle up for a long post, cuz I have a lot to say

The minute we got off the plane, we were greeted by excited staff and volunteers, ready to welcome us into the Peace Corps Zambia Family. They keep stressing that we are a family, and I’m feeling the love.

We stayed at a lodge for the first 3 days to do some initial training before we moved to our training village to stay with our host families. When we first arrived, we met the staff, went over the schedule for the next couple of days, had our first antimalarial pill, the first of many tea breaks, and our first Zambian meal for dinner!

Dinner consisted of boiled potatoes, sautéed spinach, other assorted vegetables (cauliflower, bell peppers, etc), an apple, and nshima. It seems like this is a pretty typical meal here considering I’ve had it (or some slight variation) just about every day. Again, not complaining! Nshima is a Zambian classic that I was excited to try, so it was nice that they served it with our first dinner! It looks like mashed potatoes, but has a thicker, more elastic texture, and is made with cornmeal. You pick up a piece with your hands, roll it into a ball, and use it to pick up food on your plate. Aka everything is finger food and you really don’t need any utensils.

There were at least 6 Peace a Corps Volunteer Leaders (PCVLs) with us at the lodge for the 3 days of initial training. They already complete their two years of service in Zambia, and are now extending to a third year to help incoming and current volunteers. They answered all of our nitty gritty questions (about snakes and spiders and biking, oh my!), shared stories of their time in service over dinner and sitting around the campfire. Major summer camp counselor vibes.

I sat with a PCVL at dinner who became vegetarian while in service, and assured me I shouldn’t have a problem while I’m here. That was super comforting, but I’m still going to stay flexible. So far though, it really hasn’t been a problem. I’m eating eggs, beans, and soya (yum!) for protein, and apparently it’s not culturally insensitive to not eat meat. Thank goodness, cuz I didn’t want to deal with that transition process when so many other things are transitioning right now.

These 3 days were essentially intended to set us up for the next 3 months of training. We got a new “brick” phone (just for calling and texting), our allowance (in Kwacha) for the next 10 days, got our vaccinations and medications, went over the CHEP project, and listened to our first of many diversity presentations.

If I haven’t said this already, the program I am in is called Community Health Empowerment Project (CHEP). It used to be called CHIP, which was a cuter acronym, but the meaning behind CHEP is powerful. Rather than an improvement project, it is an empowerment project. Our goals are centered around capacity building and sustainable development, aka helping others help themselves, rather than just providing quick solutions to problems. Specifically, my role is a Maternal and Child Health Promoter. I will be working with community members to help brainstorm and implement ideas to combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, maternal and child deaths, and many many more issues. I feel so honored to have been selected to be apart of something so much bigger than myself. It’s going to be really hard work, but it will be so rewarding.

In the diversity presentation, we watched Chimamandu Ngozi Adichie’s Ted Talk on “The Danger of a Single Story.” Of the few books I could fit in my luggage, her “We Should All Be Feminists” made the cut. Maybe I’ll write a summary of the book at some point. Or maybe I should just suggest you to read it for yourself since it’s only ~60 pages and really makes you think. I digress.

A “single story” is told over and over like it is the only story. People often see only one aspect of a group of people or a place and then misconstrue that to mean that that one aspect is representative of everyone/everything in that place. In short, it’s stereotyping based on one experience. We talked about times when we were the subject of a single story and times that we perpetuated a single story. In context of my journey in the Peace Corps, this is a very important concept. This is my experience in my community during this time. The things that I share are not representative of all Zambians or everyone’s experience in Zambia. In addition, the things that I share are being filtered through my own biases and preexisting schemas. Just like I do not represent all Americans, the people I meet in Zambia do not represent all Zambians. Capiche? Capiche.

Saturday morning we found out what language we were assigned. Fun fact, Zambia has over 70 tribal languages! The Peace Corps only teaches us the major 7 or 8 though. The major implication of which language we got, considering none of us knew any Zambian languages, was that it determined which province we would be living in for the next 2 years (except for the Bembas). It surprisingly felt so much like sorority bid day! At the same time, everyone opened a piece of paper with a symbol on it and ran to find the rest of the people in their group. Lots of screaming and hugging. We were already attached to the people that we just met a few days ago. We were excited to find out who we would be spending time with learning the language during training and who we would be living (relatively) near to in our permanent village for the 2 years.

I was assigned Bemba, which is what I had hoped for! I believe it is the language spoken in the largest area of the country, so I figured it would be useful for travel. The only semi downside is that I do not know the specific province I will be living in until later in training (possibly just days before moving to my village!). There are 3 different ones that I could be in. But with everything else, I’m just going with the flow, and I’ll be happy with wherever I am placed.

After I received a bid from Bemba (lol), we all packed up our things and loaded into cars to take us to our village for the rest of training. We learned some “survival” language (greetings, “help”, etc) in Bemba and then each of us got dropped off at our new homes with our host families.

My Ba Maayo and Ba Taata (host mom and dad) have been angels. They are so welcoming and helpful. My Ba Maayo has been making me delicious vegetarian meals for breakfast, lunch, and dinner; she prepares my drinking and bathing water; she helped me hang my mosquito net and figure out the bathroom situation. Basically, she’s the best. My Ba Taata has been great at teaching me Bemba. We watch the news together during dinner and talk about our days. They have been hosting volunteers for a long time, so they’re pros at this by now.

I have 9 Bandumes and Bankashis (host brothers and sisters)! Only 6 of them live here, and I still haven’t met one because he leaves for work early and comes home late. I have a 1 year old baby brother now who constantly makes me giggle and smile. One of my host sisters is 15 and she speaks perfect English, so we’ve been chatting a lot. We eat breakfast together every morning and she’s been helping me learn how to do chores by myself. She laughs at me when I’m shocked by the chickens or fall off my bike. I think we’re gonna get real close real fast.

The general training schedule for the 11 weeks is Monday-Saturday 8am-5pm, plus bike time. It takes me about 25 minutes to bike each way to the center. The sun sets at 6pm, so there’s not a lot of time after training to do anything except bike home and shower before it gets dark. This is why I’m so grateful that my host family basically is treating me like a queen because it seems like there’s not enough time in the day to do everything.

I’ll go more into training details in my next post. It’s 9:30 pm and I’m pretty exhausted. But I wanted to end this with my favorite phrase I’ve learned in Bemba: panono, panono. “Little by little.” I’m taking this all one step at a time. The days are long, I’m not great at biking, I’m sweaty more than not, but I’m learning and growing and learning some more. One of the PCVLs said this to us before we left the lodge: “PST is hard, but you can do hard things.” The past week, while it is such a short amount of time in comparison to the grand scheme of things, has taught me so much about myself and my abilities. I am resilient. I am flexible. I am excited. I am doing my best. I am kind. I am me, and that’s pretty cool. I can already have a basic conversation in Bemba, I don’t get discouraged when I can’t bike up a hill, and I don’t doubt for a second why I am here. While things are constantly changing, everything feels so right. Panono, panono.

Goodnight, or sendamenipo mukwai, from your favorite Peace Corps Trainee 😉

It’s actually happening now!

Hi! I’m currently on a 15 hour flight from JFK to Johannesburg and felt like dumping some thoughts. It’s hour 5 on this flight and I’ve slept a good amount already. We’re currently flying in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and that’s totally not terrifying me…

My sense of time is incredibly wonky right now. It’s 4:30pm east coast time, 1:30 pm west coast time, and 10:30 pm Zambian time. I’ve gotten probably 3 and a half hours of sleep already on this flight, but didn’t sleep for over 24 hours prior to the flight, but somehow feel awake enough to write this blog post. What would be logical is for me to take melatonin at midnight Zambian time so I sleep for a full 8 hours and can adjust to the time zone. But in reality, it’s gonna be hard regardless to adjust to a 9 hour time difference from my hometown, and I’m bound to have jet lag after this long travel day.

I’ve said it 100 times before and I’ll say it at least another 100 times: “TIME IS A SOCIAL CONSTRUCT.” As frustrating as that is at times (hah), it’s kind of incredible. My sense of time, the way people treat time, the time zone I’ll be adjusting to, the length of the day, and so on are all going to get shook up very quickly. However, this is because I’m assigning all this meaning to time! It doesn’t actually have meaning. The clock keeps ticking, but in terms that we as humans have decided (60 minutes in an hour, for example). Time doesn’t have to be an exclusive linear thing, but rather it can be the way we cluster different events in our lives (for example, my time in college doesn’t include everything that happened in those 4 years, just the events that I assigned meaning to). Idk I find social constructions so fascinating, but this might just seem like a delirious thought from a sleep-deprived gal. You’re definitely not not wrong. You might just be flat out right. …beep boop bop…

This flight is honestly one of the most comfortable ones I’ve ever been on. Getting here was not as comfortable, but it’s worth it now that I’m stretching out my little legs in my aisle seat with no one next to me.

I’m gonna backtrack a little. Staging in Philly ended on the 19th around 7:15pm. A group of my new buddies and I went out to dinner (our last dinner in the US for 27 months!) and got Chinese food. I had fried vegetable dumplings and they were incredible!

After dinner, a group of ~10 of us went to a brewery a couple blocks away to grab a quick drink before heading to the hotel to pack up. I shared the “hoptimus prime” beer flight with my new gal pal (some of the best IPAs I’ve ever had!) and had a raspberry vodka lemonade. Yum!!

I got back to the hotel around 10:30pm, called my parents and Connor, and then got to packing. No, I didn’t unpack all ~200 pounds of my luggage for my day and a half trip to Philly. But I was a couple of pounds over the weight limit, and the fee for going over was $200 per bag, so I started the first purge of items. Realized I didn’t need to bring 20 bags of oatmeal and 100 protein bars… after a few minor sacrifices (I’m kidding!!), I was within the weight limit, but I needed to move 3-4 outfits from my checked bags to my carry on just in case the bags got lost. This started a full on repacking session since all my bags were bursting at the seams at this point lol. I finished all of this around 1 am, and decided to just stay awake, because we had to check out of our room at 2:30 am! (Yes, am, not pm) I do better in situations like this when I just stay up rather than get a little bit of sleep. Plus, it felt like 10pm LA time, and I slept 10 hours the night before, so I really wasn’t that tired.

Here marks the beginning of the 30 hour travel day (days? time is weird, man) to Zambia. At 2:30 am on the 20th, in the lobby of the hotel, ~70 Peace Corps Trainees met with a dazed look on their faces, trying to manage all of their luggage before loading the bus.

Here’s a picture of my two checked bags and my duffle (carry-on). I also had my stuffed backpack on my back. Between the 4 of these pieces, I was definitely carrying at least 180 pounds of luggage, if not more. I managed a great little system to move everything around in one motion which was nice.

Around 3am, our bus arrived. There were separate buses for the two cohorts: education and health. Within the cohorts, we were split into 4 groups, each with a group leader who kinda acted like our camp counselor for the next 8 or so hours (thank you Valerie!!). My cohort finished loading the bus with our luggage (just think of how much ~30 people plus their luggage for 2+ years in Africa weighs!!) around 3:30 am, and we were off to JFK. Again, I didn’t sleep on the bus. I wanted to save up all my tiredness for the plane.

We arrived just before 6am. Driving into New York was very reminiscent for me since I was just there back in March for spring break, just shortly after I accepted my invitation to serve the Peace Corps. Now, just 5 months later, I was back again, ready to leave the country for many months. We saw the Brooklyn bridge, the skyline, and the most beautiful sunset driving in.

We got to JFK at 6 am, and our flight wasn’t until 11:15. At first I thought this was a pretty excessive buffer to get on the plane in time, but I get it now. One, if we left any later, we would’ve hit NYC morning rush hour traffic. After unloading the bus, we waited for the ticketing office to open around 7:15. All 70 of us from the two cohorts got into the checked baggage line and slowly scooted our way along, all praying we weren’t going over in weight for our luggage.

I was very grateful for my rolling suitcases that could hold my duffle bag on top while waiting in this line!

Everything went smoothly from here on out. My bags were both underweight (!!) and I didn’t get anything taken from TSA (they did scan my dried edamame many many times though lol). It just was slow. Traveling in a big group takes a long time for everyone to get through and no man gets left behind. Security at an international terminal in JFK had a very long line, but we all made it through with few to no breakdowns. So by this point, it’s around 9:30 and our flight boards at 10:30. It was just enough time to grab a burger (vegetarian, don’t worry) and fries from shake shack (breakfast of champions!!), a bag of hot cheetos for the plane or for saving for a rainy day, a coffee, go to the bathroom, and call my mom and cry for the last time in the United States. Ouch.

So, what I originally thought was a kind of excessive amount of time to get to my flight ended up being the perfect amount. If you’re ever traveling with a group of 70 people who are all moving to a foreign country for 27 months, keep that in mind! 😉

The rest has been very pleasant. I was a little apprehensive about a 15 hour flight. I think the longest I’ve done before was 9 or 10 hours to London, and that was when I was younger with a larger bladder capacity and could sleep like it was nobodies business. Now, I’m a little more subpar in each of these categories lol. The plane is set up with 2 people on each side of the plane, and 4 people in the middle row. I’m in the aisle of the middle row, and no one is sitting next to me! So I was able to put my backpack underneath that seat and stretch my legs out. With my seat reclined, I’m super close to being completely horizontal. Oh yeah baby.

I immediately napped for an hour, and woke up to the flight staff serving lunch (?). I had just had breakfast (which was lunch food) not too long ago, so my body was a little confused, but I figured I should eat what I could since I wasn’t sure the next meal we would get on the flight.

I had some rice with veggies and a yummy tomato sauce, some pasta salad, and a little nibble of the blueberry dessert. I saved the KitKat and bread roll for later. Not letting those puppies go to waste!

After this, I fell asleep for another 2 or 3 hours. I’ve been awake since, and writing this for about an hour now.

The flight map shows that we’re getting pretty close to Africa now, which is more comforting to me than being in the middle of the ocean for hours and hours. It’s now 11:45pm Zambian time, aka close to when I said I should take that melatonin. I’m currently almost done with the Taylor Swift album, listening to “Teardrops on my Guitar” and getting a little emo, so I guess it’s a good time for me to wrap this up. Once we get to South Africa, we have a 5 hour layover, and then a 2 hour flight to Lusaka, Zambia. We land on the 21st around 3:30pm in Zambia. We’ll be staying in a hostel-like lodging situation for a couple nights before meeting our host family and moving to our hut for 3 months of training. I think once this plane lands in Zambia, things are going to be happening so quickly and so much will be changing all the time, and I’m so ready to embrace this change with an open mind and an open heart, ready to give and receive so much love.

Thanks for bearing with my jumbled, sleep-deprived thoughts,

Arielle Fullilove

The beginning (?)

Today is August 20, 2019. Today is the day I fly to Lusaka, Zambia.

I guess you could say today marks the beginning of my Peace Corps experience. Or maybe it began when I received my acceptance letter. Maybe it was when I applied. Maybe it was when my grandpa told me about the Peace Corps when I was in middle school. Maybe the beginning hasn’t started yet. But what I know for sure is that the past couple of days have been flying by quickly and a lot of my anticipation has gone away, but a lot is still to come. Again, I’m going with the ~flow~.

I’ll go into depth about the application process and my experiences pre-service in a later post. Here, I’ll talk about my Staging Event, which was held in Philadelphia on August 19, 2019. I’m about to board my flight so I’m gonna make this quick!

I flew into Philly on the 18th around 5pm. I grabbed dinner with my Staging roommate at a cute vegan restaurant downtown (check out Vedge if you’re in the area!!). Afterwards, I went to the hotel lobby to do some work on my laptop and talk on the phone with my best friend till I was nodding off. I took my last bath for a longggg time and slept for at least 10 hours. These are things I used to take for granted but I know this is going to seem like a huge luxury very very soon.

Once I finally woke up at 10:30 the next morning, I got ready for the Staging event. It was about a 5 and a half hour event filled with logistic information, safety presentations, identity mapping workshops, and icebreakers (not the lame ones though — things like “share your name, hometown, and the strangest item you packed with you”. Mine was a bop it. But I could’ve also said my tiny hands. The bop it just seemed right.)

At this event, I met 34 other members in my cohort: Maternal and Child Health Promoter. We bonded over our shared anxieties and aspirations, the snacks we brought with us, the last moments we had with our families, our college experiences, and the reasons why we decided to join the Peace Corps. Let me tell you, there’s nothing quite like spending the day with a group of 22 year old Peace Corps volunteers. They’re some of the most non-judgmental, caring, and driven people you’ll ever meet. It kind of blew me away.

I expected the Staging Event to be a lot more different than it was. I was expecting PowerPoint presentations and paperwork. Maybe a “remember everyone’s name in the room”-type icebreakers. I was pleasantly surprised with how meaningful this day was. Rather than focusing on all the what-ifs for the next 27 months, I was reflecting on my reasoning for joining the Peace Corps.

Cutting this short because my flight is about to take off. The next time I’ll write to you, I’ll be in Zambia!

Love, your newest Peace Corps Trainee!

Hey MTV, welcome to my blog

Hey what’s up hello! I’m currently writing my first ever blog post from a charter bus with about 35 other Peace Corps Trainees at 4:30 am. I have a lot to explain just with that statement alone, but we’ll get to that later. For now, this is just the intro to my blog which I hope to update often with pictures and stories, but realistically it may get overlooked for months at a time or I might spam this with all my thoughts when I get a lick of WiFi. We’ll see. If I had to pick one phrase to sum up my attitude about all of this, it’s “go with the flow.” There’s so many unknowns and I would get quite the headache attempting to think through a million scenarios. So I’m going with the flow, enjoying my naivety, and getting excited to arrive in Zambia. But until then, I need food and a lot of sleep. (*update: I got a shake shack mushroom burger and fries as my last meal and I’m very pleased with my choice. I also got an iced dunkin donuts coffee. And a bag of hot cheetos 😉 )

  • Here are some basic intro questions that WordPress suggested I answer:
  • Why are you blogging publicly, rather than keeping a personal journal? I decided to blog publicly *in addition to keeping a personal journal* to update my friends and family back home of my experiences living in rural Zambia for 27 months. I don’t know anyone else who has been there, so I’m hoping to bridge some of the gap and share some of the beauty of the country with you all! Also hoping that if you read my blog, you might feel more inclined to send me a care package with peanut butter and hot Cheetos in it. Not a bribe at all. Wink wink.
  • What topics do you think you’ll write about? My day-to-day work, what I like to do for fun, where I travel, the food I eat, the new friendships I make, and generally how I’m adjusting to life in Zambia.
  • Who would you love to connect with via your blog? Friends, family, prospective peace corps volunteers, and returned volunteers (RPCVs)
  • If you blog successfully throughout the next year, what would you hope to have accomplished? A thoughtful reflection of my first year serving in the Peace Corps. This is a dream I’ve had since I was a teenager, and it will be great to have a copy of my memories to cherish forever. Maybe I’ll write a book or two about it someday like my grandpa did. Stay tuned!

I’ll end this first post here. More to come in a couple of hours. I have a 30 hour travel day ahead of me, so hopefully I can squeeze some time in to write down my thoughts. See you on the flip side!