Vistors, Field Work and Stevie Update

Since my last post, we had settled into our new home and had a lovely visit from Tom and Laura Ann. They were the very last people to get through immigration at the airport and Joey and I almost thought they had missed the plane! Luckily, they didn’t and we had a terrific visit together. Tom and LAJ took a mini adventure to Livingstone and had the complete safari experience in Botswana. All of us also enjoyed some nice adventures together in Lusaka.

In other news: hot season is here. October has brought very high temperatures, warm winds and a single rain to Zambia. It has also taken Joey to the field for 5 weeks. While Stevie and I are enjoying our beautiful little Lusaka cottage, Joey is renting a small house in Mkushi while he is overseeing round 2 of his data collection. During the first round, he stayed with his team of 8 enumerators in the local schools where interviews were conducted. It was a good experience, but this time, he is holding it down in the town of Mkushi where he has more access to electricity and is able to work on his computer more. Although he only has 2 hours of running water a day, the new arrangement seems to be fine. For the second round of data collection, Joey was able to introduce nine tablets to the project. The tablets have been a huge upgrade from the last data collection, which was all done on paper. Stephen and I went to visit Joey a few weeks ago and the three of us stayed at our friends Jan and Jeremys’ house. As always, we had a wonderful time reuniting as a family and catching up with old friends. It is never easy being apart, but there is a job that needs to done, and it is a team effort over here! Joey will be back to Lusaka in a few days and then only a week left of field work.

As for our little man, Stephen is now 13 months old (holy smokes!) and he is very busy! He loves to “talk” about and show us everything he sees, all day long. He crawls faster than I can run these days, and he likes to walk around the house while we hold his hands. He also really loves trucks and anything that goes “vroom”. Balls, books and toy cars are favorites these days. He also loves to eat peanut butter toast, cheese, tacos, and peas.