The Merry Month of May in Malawi

First off, I would like to say that I am really really really sorry (mom) for not posting an update before now. I have had internet access but not enough time to do an update. I will also take this moment to say that after talking to several people they think the flash drive was removed from my letter home because of legal reasons. Apparently you can't put anything bulky in envelopes. So a few people here think it happened at a US post office. We may have to come up with a new way to get movies home, don't worry, I'm working on it.
Anyway, what has happened since I last spoke with you. Well quite a bit actually. My other post 'SITE VISIT' will fill in what happened in the end of April. So I'll pause for a minute while you all go catch up on April.

Read it all? Good, now onto May. Caution, it's a looooooong post!


Unlike May in Colorado, May in Malawi is nice and toasty, snow free and beautiful. For those of you planning on visiting I highly recommend May and June, which it slightly cooler, say 60^o-ish.

Over the last few days of April and the first week of May, I had an amazing visitor. I am the third PCV at my site. I am replacing a married couple, Karen and Carl, who replaced Susan. Now, the amazing thing is that Susan was actually in Malawi! She was back in Malawi doing work on her Master's thesis about farming and farming practices in Malawi. So almost everyday for a week she came to Mbewa from the Boma and I got the hang out, observe and pick her brain. This was amazing, at the most I was hoping to find email for the other PCVs and maybe say hi. Never in a million years would I have thought that I would be meeting one of them here in the village. It was so good to just watch interactions with the villagers and just talk. It really did a lot to put to rest many fears and questions I had during that first week. Another thing Susan did was to bring a bicycle taxi ambulance for Mbewa. Basically, it is a nice new bike with a stretcher on wheels that is pulled behind it. Doesn't sound like much, but it is a lot cooler in person, and because we are so far from the nearest hospital, has definite life saving properties to it.

While Susan and I were on our way to Grace Piri's house to do and interview, Benson came up and told us that he had heard on the radio that they had killed Osama Bin Laden. Wow, we had to get that repeated a few times to make sure we heard it right. It was definitely news here. Everyone I talked to had the opinion that he was a "bad man" and that is where the conversation stopped. It is hard to talk about those things when, according to Peace Corps, you are supposed to have all the political clout of a bowl of jell-o.



Anyway, a couple days later, on the 4th I got a phone call from PC about attending a training in Senga Bay. Senga is along the South West part of Lake Malawi not too far from the town of Salima. I was really excited, we were finally going to get the HIV/AIDS training that many of us felt was kind of slack at pre-service training. That, and it was a trip to the beach, and I would get reimbursed for travel, extra special cool! So, at 1am on the 9th, the day I am supposed to go, I wake up freezing cold. I go get my long pants, long sleeve shirt, extra blanket, and my hoodie. I felt sore and achey all over and couldn't get back to sleep for 2 hours. When I finally did wake up again I was burning up and now slightly nausious, things were not looking extra special cool. So I took my temperature (101oF) and sent a text to our wonderful Dr. Max and began packing to go.



Dr. Max called me back and I gave him a run down of the symptoms hoping he would tell me to take a very powerful medication making me feel better quickly. He didn't. Max decided it was viral and the only thing to do was take some Ibuprofen. So I began to eat those like skittles. And sat in my house trying to decide what to do. I didn't tell Max that I was supposed to be going to Senga for fear that the verdict would be "Stay home and sleep." So my first thought was, "what would mom and dad do?"

Mom would say, "eat crackers and take little sips of water."
I did, and it helped a lot. I also sucked the juice out of an orange and that perked me up considerably.
Dad's medical suggestions come in two forms, "Take two benedryl and a shot of Wild Turkey and go back to bed." or "Grit your teeth and bare it."

Well that first bit of advice was impractical for a number of reasons, I didn't have any alcohol and if I did, the resulting coma would definitely keep me from going to Senga, or showing sign of life for 8 hours. So I ignored the former and did the latter.



My thinking ended up being, "I'll probably feel better in a day and will hate myself if I ended up staying here just to feel better tomorrow. Also, if I am dying of malaria or some other tropical disease I will be that much closer to the doctors."

So I hauled myself to the road, and two hours later finally got a hitch to NKK (Nkhotakota). The mini-bus ride to Salima was slow, the driver only reached speeds of any real interest for a few brief minutes, in which we kit and killed a goat. I was sitting in the front seat. We were flying along, probably close to 60 mph, and we begin coming up, rather quickly, on three goats in the road. Two moved, one didn't. There was a very audible and palpable "SMACK" as the kid's head hit the bumper. I gasped, hands over my mouth, bug eyed as we continued down the road, the driver thought is was hilarous. Apparently, there was evidence of this occurance firmly entrenched in the grill, because at the police checkpoint people were pointing at the front of the mini-bus and saying "mbuzi" (goat). urgh.



So I finally got to Salima, found Peace Corps transport and headed to Carolina resort at Senga Bay. All told there were quite a few of us, maybe 13. I am not going to try and name everyone because I know I will leave someone out and it will come back to bite me in the butt. Anyway, training ended up being more of a meeting. We talked about what kind of HIV/AIDS training people didn't get that they felt they should have, and what should be improved. When were not in training we were in the water. Senga Bay was beautiful, and you know what, I did feel better the next day. The beach was great, nice sandy beaches, good waves, lots of sun and wind. Tragically however, training came to and end on the 11th of May and we were bused back to LLW (Lilongwe). Once in LLW a bunch of us had some things to find, I needed termite poision among other things. So some of us ended up spending the night at Mufasa's Lodge.



The next day I went to the dentist to have him look at a tooth that was really hurting. It ended up being a receeding gum line from brushing too hard, so I left with instructions on how to brush and not enough time to go home. So I spent another day in LLW with Alysia, Eric, Michael, and Adam, who came up from his site near Dedza to hang out. The next day I headed to the post office with Ellie because we both recieved package slips at the PC mail room. I got there at 8am, two hours later, we each walked out with 4 boxes. While contemplating how exactly to get all this home, we walked past a PC transport van that was actually headed to Ellie's site. She has been having trouble with bed bugs and they were headed up to do some work on it. So I got free transport half way home! After I got dropped off I condensed all the contents of one box into my backpack and carried the other three onto a mini-bus headed for NKK. Once there I paid too much for a ride to my village in a car, I didn't really care though, I was tired and wanted to get home. And since I didn't pay for half of the journey home I still came out ahead.

The boxes made it feel like Christmas, it was great! Books, short wave radio, speakers for the iPod, a frying pan, the Sunday funnies, magazines, my flute, protein powder, and salmon! Salmon, tuna, spam, and beef jerky, yay! Protein here is basically eggs, beans, or soy. Chicken and beef is expensive and hard to get back to site.
On Thursday the 19th I biked to Jesi's site (20 miles round trip! Ack! My butt bones hurt!) and set up my new mailing address with the secondary school here. So here you go folks:

Mary Emanuel, PCV
Kasamba CDSS
Private Bag 7
Nkhotakota, Malawi
Africa

While I was with Jesi, we went in to the Boma and did some shopping and had lunch. One of the things I picked up was battery acid. I bought a 12 volt motorcycle battery while I was in LLW, they come charged but they don't come with acid in them. After being very careful with a highly corrosive liquid, I got it all poured in and the little green light on the plug came on! So reason #642 and #643 why my site is awesome, 12 volt DC power and an American outlet! Dad, it is awesome and it actually works, thank you! Since it came fully charged I am going to use it until it runs out before I hook it up to the solar cell to find out how long I can go on a single charge.

The next day I headed off to the cluster meeting at Kamuzu Academy for the weekend with Collin, Tom, Eric, Alysia and Michael. I had heard good things about the Academy and was looking forward to go.

The school is big and makes you feel like you stepped into England, but with weird trees. This is where the rich kids of Malawi go to school, they all wear skinny jeans, carry iPods, and take manditory latin and ancient greek. A little shocking coming from village life. Alysia and I were invited on an educational tree walk with one of the classes. The kids were roughly equivalent to middle schoolers, I think, and therefore were completely disintrested in anything the teacher, Andrew, was talking about. He actually asked my opinion of one of the students. A girl who had demanded to be allowed to change shoes half way through the lecture, ("But sir I just want to put on my pumps!") and presented herself with a very standoffish, aloof demeanor. I flat out told him in front of the class that she had an attitude, the kids were stunned! I think I embarassed her. Serves her right, she should pay more attention.

Later, the two of us were invited to Andrew's place for dinner and we were not disapointed at all. Dinner consisted of, a really good mystery soup, rice, chicken, green beans, boiled greens, feta cheese, real butter, and a really good Chardonnay, all rounded out with peppermint tea afterwards. It was one of the best dinners I've had since getting here. Andrew was nice, he is from England and has been teaching in Malawi for 8 years. We all chatted for a while. Just a nice calm evening.
Later, back at our rooms we tried to watch a movie on Michael's laptop but, due to the horrible movie choice, by a certain someone who shall remain nameless, that killed the evening in a big way, we all went to bed. You know who you are and you will never live that down...ever. Not unless you make us more mandazi (really awesome sweet batter with banana fried in oil).

Saturday we went swimming and saw more of the school and did some shopping so we could feed ourselves and ended up making a soup like substance which we put over pasta and had with salad, mandazi, and some of my Thin Mints from home. Otherwise a quiet evening, went to bed.

Sunday, I had to get up early and leave for two reasons. One, I had to get back to Mbewa for my welcoming ceremony,and two, traveling on Sunday is a pain and takes forever, most everyone is in church. In the words of Murphy's Law, however, if something can go wrong, it will. I got on a mini-bus at 8am, 5 hours later I completed the 80 or so kilometers to get home, ouch. Also, I come to find out that it rained, for almost a whole day here, kinda weird for this time of year. So the party was cancelled. ARGH!!!

This time of year everyone is harvesting rice, and saving a crop comes before my party, so that has been pushed back until who knows when. Everyone felt bad about it too. They knew traveling on Sunday is a pain and I had things at Kamuzu going on, but oh well. Plan for the worst, hope for the best. And I learned something new, never do anything that requires travel on Sunday.

On Monday the 23rd I got to name a baby! Grace Piri, one of Benson's wives, had a baby girl Friday night while I was at Kamuzu Academy. I named her Hannah. Then, Benson decided he wanted a middle name too. Well there I was stuck, I hadn't given that any thought at all. The only name I could come up with that worked was Jo. So the newest member of Mbewa village is Hannah Jo Piri. Takulandirani Hannah! (You are most welcome) Hopefully pictures will make it to facebook soon.

After naming Hannah, the next few days were heavy with activity at home. Benson and I patched the cracks in my cement floor and did the fence for my garden to keep out kids (both human and goat), dogs and chickens. Hopefully pictures will follow soon but probably not until some time in July when I may be back in Lilongwe.

Anyway, we had a meeting with Total Land Care, one of the NGO's here in Malawi, on Tuesday the 31st in Malomo. It was mostly just a meet and greet, what projects they do, how Peace Corps can work with them, different goals etc. I plan on talking with them more later in the week but we'll see how it all plays out.

So that wraps up the merry month of May. If you actually read all of that then you probably have too much time on your hands or are procrastinating something. But congratulations anyways, I know it is a lot to read, but you wanted details and you got 'em so next time be careful what you wish for. Hopefully things will settle down more and I can get to posting more regularly. In the mean time, my door is always open if you ever happen to find yourself in Africa.

Love you all lots and miss you!

Mary
P.S.- Currently it is the first day of June and guess what! I saw my first Green Mamba! Wooh! He climed my fence and went up into the mango tree. Yes I got pictures!