Last Days in T'Sou-ke

To all my favorite lovelys and fam jam!

Sad day here today knowing tonight is our last night in the T'Sou-ke Nation. We will be travelling to Victoria tomorrow to spend the remaining 15 days there prior to flying Africa. Most of the interns will be splitting up and living with homestays in the Victoria area and we will be working at the VIDEA office every day. We still have so much to get through before we go. Its going to start getting intense! I have enjoyed my time so much in the T'Souke community. I have never met a community with so much love and care for eachother. We've been treated so great here and I will always remember my short stay in T'Souke. I will definitely be returning in the summer for a promised camping trip :) Would like to thank every person I've met in T'Souke for welcoming us into your community to live and study.

Yesterday we travelled up the island to sombrio and had a Zero Mile Diet, which was to create a lunch out of items that we could gather from a zero mile radius. So for lunch we had a bunch of berries and mussels. There was some additional items we brought, but for the most part it was smoked salmon and vegetables. In the evening we had our Africa theme party which we had invited guests to our house to enjoy some Zambian Dinsky. We had invited the chief of the T'Sou-ke Nation, members of the VIDEA board, volunteers for VIDEA, Women for Change family, members who work for the T'Sou-ke nation, past presenters, and our friends. It was a great night!!

After all was said and done, I stayed up super later trying to finish my research project for conservation and sustainability. My specific topic was Traditonal beekeeping and how deforestation was interferring with Zambia's woodlands and detering poverty even more. Zambia is rated 165/177 on the Human Development Index. Zambia is in extreme poverty in relation to all other countries in the world.

We presented these conservation issues to our VIDEA Board of Directors. We got some amazing feedback and I learned about the cyclic relationship of how Oil, deforestation, mining, and biodiversity are all interconnected. Its like a web, each one indirectly affects the other. We talked about possible solutions to each of the issues and currently what positive changes are taking place.

Thats all for now! I need to catch up on my zzzz's. These past few days have been extremely long, and packed with so much information. I am so excited, so much to learn and so much to do! :) Just can't wait to get over there and make a difference!