Azungu, mu kupiti kuti?

One of a Malawian’s favorite things to ask is, “where are you going?” I hear them ask it of other Malawians but they love love love asking it of white people.  When you first get to country it drives you nuts.

Imagine, you have just come to a weird new place, your language skills have the same fluidity as cement, you’re living with a strange family who just stares at you all through dinner and every time you go out everyone wants to know where you going.  Even after 4 weeks of being in home stay and having the same routine, language class, lunch, technical training, maybe more language, people still yell it to you from the farthest reaches of a maize field, “Where are you going?!”

And your answers are always the same, “I’m going home” or “I’m going to school”, never is it “I’m going to water world!” or “To meet the president.” You know where we’re going, why are you asking?

But it doesn’t stop at home stay, once you get to your village it keeps up, “where are going?” Every time you walk outside with a bag, or your bike, “where are you going?”  Your answers are a little different now, “To the boma” “to chat with my friend” “to Lilongwe” “to Mzuzu” “to a meeting” but they still want to know.  And you know what; I have a guess about why.

In America, what is our favorite greeting? More than likely, you see someone you haven’t seen in a while and you open with “Hey! What’s up!” or “What’cha doing?” In our culture it is more common to ask what someone is doing.  Now, if I run into someone when I’m out at the mall or something I’ll as where they’re going but it will always be followed with a question about what they’re doing once they get there.  In our culture we want to know how busy you are, how are you occupying your time, what have you achieved lately?

Malawi? Not so much. In the village, they know what everyone is doing. You are probably going to your maize, cassava, or rice field.  If you live near the lake it’s probably fishing.  The women are getting water, making nsima or getting firewood. The kids, well, no one really cares what they’re doing.  The men? Probably in the field for a bit and then playing bow, a board game. We know what you’re doing out there, it’s no big mystery. What people here don’t do is go places and here is where I got my idea about why they like to ask “where are you going?”

A few days ago I was at Henery’s house and we were talking about the bridge that Karen and Carl made and the repairs that need to happen, some boards need replacing, and the kids need to stop digging at the foundation stones, when Margret, his wife walked by.  After a few minutes she commented on how she has never seen the bridge…..never seen the bridge….never seen the bridge. What? The bridge is maybe 300-400 meters from this house? How could you never see it? Not even out of curiosity! I guess I always knew that the villagers didn’t really go places, especially the women but that really threw it into focus, how little they move around. 

When someone asks me where I’m going it is so much more than just a question.  How could I possibly be going back to Lilongwe? Wasn’t I just there last month? How amazing it must be to go to so many different far off places.  What must it be like to go somewhere big like America? People are coming all the way from there for a just a few weeks and then turning around just to go back? It’s more than, “where are you going?” It’s almost like living vicariously through the Peace Corps volunteer.

Here puppy puppy puppy!

Some of you may recall back in September of last year I made a post about dogs, specifically why I did not need one and how despite all efforts one still fell in my lap.  Just a bit of an update, Dora is doing great, yes she did grow beyond 9" so no worries about that. 

Also, she has a blog, http://villagedog.blogspot.com/

Having a dog is one of the most amazing, frustrating, cross cultural experiences that I've ever had here.  Some days it's amazing and others it makes me just want to go home.  Basically it's just about what it's like to have a dog here and how it differes from owning a dog in America. So there you go, if you're into dogs then you may find it interesting reading.

Oh yeah...one more thing...this is my official statement, you can quell all the rumors, yes I am bringing her home with me.  Sorry mom, I know you think I'm nuts but I can't do it.  I can't leave her behind.  I was always taught to take care of my pets and I don't think it is right on many different levels to leave her here. You still love me right?

Edible Elephants

I have blogged about elephants in the past and am going to take a moment blog about them again.  For those of you who haven’t read those posts or don’t want to (stop being lazy) but here’s the background info again.

I live a few kilometers away from the edge of Nkhotakota game reserve which like most of the reserves/national parks here are unfenced.  Also, the villages here go right up to the edges of these places opening the door to massive human/wildlife conflict.  Right outside the reserve grows maize, peanuts, bananas, pigeon peas, etc which is better than the stuff in the reserve. So quite literally the grass is greener on the other side (get it? cause maize is in the grass family Hahaha!). 

As you have probably guessed the elephants come out to eat these goodies but also to get away from poachers.  Nkhotakota game reserve is pretty heavily poached and when the poachers are in the park the elephants are out.  Understandable, better food and no one is trying to kill you.  What do you do when an elephant has decided to make a snack of your field? Well not much but there are a few things that the villagers do. For starters they will beat drums or buckets to scare them away, during the dry season they light fires near where they are and the smoke and fire scares them away.  As a last resort, if they have been coming out a lot lately, the chief will call the Parks & Wildlife office and they will come out. Once they get there the standard procedure is to fire off some rounds, that will really scare them off. And it works,the last time Parks & Wildlife killed an elephant was back in the 70’s.

Until last Friday night.

I was supposed to have a meeting with the bee keeping club on Saturday morning and no one was there.  And I don’t mean a couple people popped in and said hi, I mean most of the village was gone.  I’d never seen the village this quiet. I was waiting with my neighbor Agnes and mentioned that I was waiting for the meeting to start but no one had come.  Then she casually mentioned, oh, maybe they have gone to see the elephant.  I thought maybe the elephants were out of the reserve, no, that wasn’t it, this one was dead.

Well that did it, and a few seconds later I found someone to take me there.  Finally we got to a place to leave the bikes and walk.  My first clue was the number of bikes at this place.  My next clue was how many people we passed while walking to this cassava field. Coming around a clump of grass I saw a massive group of people all standing together. My first thought was “crap, this is a small elephant.” And she was, not very big at all, not over 5 years I’d guess.

After asking around I found out that the night before the elephants came out.  Not that unusual but they had been out every night for the past few weeks which is really high.  The chief had called the Parks & Wildlife office to have them come scare the elephants away.  Apparently after firing off the rounds this one charged them so they fired on her. Which brings us to Saturday morning in the cassava field.

Once I got closer I could see everything a little clearer. Everyone was standing around the carcass talking loudly, poking the bloated belly and standing on it.

Then I found my neighbor Benson, with his camera making bank! He has one of the only cameras for 12 kilometers and at 120 kwacha per shot people were lining up for pictures with the dead elephant. 

Try to think about this from a non-western stand point.  I know a lot of you would have been shocked and stunned to see someone posing in outlandish and rude ways on a dead animal. Think about it this way, you have seen elephants more than the vast majority of Malawians.  Elephants are confined to the reserve and unless you live near a reserve you will not see one, even then most people don’t see them.  Once news got out that one was dead people flocked to see it.  Explaining how the trunk works, that tusks are used for leverage to break branches, and their babies drink milk are all mind blowing to them. 

As far as pictures go Malawians pose weird for pictures.  The best way I can explain it is an attempt at imitating American images that are commonly seen in movies or magazines.  For them it isn’t weird.  They made poses that we would find very strange but here it is normal.  Even after living here for a year and seeing this I wasn’t ready to see it on a dead animal. I left after a few minutes.

Over the course of the day more and more people showed up.  In the evening Parks & Wildlife showed up to cut up the carcass.  Part of the meat was sold in the villages and the rest was taken to the boma to sell there.  The ivory was confiscated, don’t worry about that.

 The next day Benson and Agnes asked me over for lunch and yup, wouldn’t you know it, we had elephant.  And so help me it was good.  Elephant is tasty.  I know coming from a western point of view the words I have just typed are sacrilegious.  How dare you eat an elephant and like it! You should be ashamed of yourself! You know what? I was hungry, I hadn’t eaten yet  that day and I hadn’t seen animal protein in a long time.  Actually, you could have told me it was beef and I wouldn’t have believed you, it was too good to be beef.

For a lot of the villagers it was the first time they had eaten any serious protein in months.  Read that again and think about what it means; months.  The best American equivalent I could give you is eating pasta, forever.  Your diet is pasta, and mustard greens and that’s about it.  Every now and then you’ll have eggs, or maybe some fish that, I’m not kidding are the same size as goldfish. You jump at the chance for something else.  Now imagine something is taking away that pasta, you have greens to eat now.  That’s basically what the elephants do. Don’t you dare go blaming them or condemning them until you have lived like they do. 

Does it suck? Yes it sucks, human/wildlife conflict is a problem in America too, if you think it isn’t then you need to come out of your bubble.  Wolves, bears, mountain lions, bison and coyotes just to name a few.  How do we make it work? I don’t have the answers, I don’t know that anyone does.  But I will say this, don’t judge them for it.  I wish everything could be pink fluffy bunnies and strawberry fields forever.  Unfortunately pink fluffy bunnies eat the strawberry fields.  Wildlife and people will continue to create problems for each other until there are either no more people or no more animals.  All we ask is that you have patience and listen to all sides of the story before you step in and tell us you have a solution. 

July Fourth

Yeah, right now it’s about July 12^th but still, we had a July 4^th not too long ago here.  I think you had one in the States too, but a few hours after ours was. Hahaha, time changes, but I digress.

Our party also coincided with Renee’s birthday, well almost, but it was close enough that it was a joint birthday party for America and Renee. Cassie, Shira and I also decided to take a couple extra days off and do the hike in to Ruarwe, kind of a cool lodge along the lakeshore. To get to Ruarwe you have to either hike in or take a boat, we decided we were going to hike starting at Renee’s site.  Renee lives up north…way up north.  I know you guys look at a map of Malawi and think I live up north. No. Those of you who have your ‘at home edition’ of our game handy, look at your map of Malawi, find Nkhotakota, okay, now go north to Mzuzu, now find Rhumpi and go half way between Rhumpi and Karonga.  Yeah, it’s far and it’s even farther when you don’t have a car. 

My travel day started at 5:30am and ended at 7:00pm.  After getting a bike taxi to Nkhotakota boma I started walking north and got a ride to Dwangwa, from Dwangwa I again began walking and got picked up for a little ways and then got another ride all the way to Mzuzu.  Actually he took me all the way to Ekwendeni, a little out of Mzuzu.  From there I got a minibus to the Rhumpi turnoff where I ran into two more PCVs on their way to the party, Christian and Kathi. 

I don’t remember what time it was but it was getting dark and we wanted a ride.  After quite the wait we finally we able to find an extra shoehorn to use to squeeze us into a passing minibus.  Poor Kathi had a stack of buckets in her face and got a bad leg cramp and trust me there is no way to walk that sucker out while you’re in a mini bus.  Christian was perched on that little ledge behind the driver’s seat and the guy has really long legs so I’m not exactly sure how he origami-ed himself in there but he did. 

You know how when you read about old stone work at places like Machu Picchu they archeologists are all like, “the stones all fit so closely together you couldn’t fit a razorblade between them.” That was our ride, we were the stones at Machu Picchu.

I’m sitting between this woman on my right and these two guys on my left.  It’s kind of something you have to experience but I’ll give it a shot for you.  The guys on my left aren’t sitting, they can’t, that’s how many people are in here.  They are standing in that little space between where the door closes and me, in the seat.  Since they can’t stand up all the way and can’t sit they are bent in half with their heads right next to mine.  Meh, I don’t mind, I’ve had rides like that a lot, it’s normal.  The part that sucked was that these two guys decided they needed to talk to the woman just on the other side of me but to do it in a volume that indicated she was on the dark side of the moon.  Seriously, I may have hearing damage.

Luckily though, this momentary incarceration in the rolling loony bin lasted for just under 2 hours.  I easily had another 30 min left before I would have gone nuts and started trying to fit a razor blade in the neighboring stones…I mean between, between the neighboring stones.

But wouldn’t you know it we arrived at Maji Zuwa the lodge the party was held at! Yay! It was dark and there were already a bunch of people there so we grabbed some dinner, which was good, that day had consisted of two eggs, an ice cream cone in Dwangwa and an orange from Kathi, I was hungry.  So Cassie, my tent mate and I set up overlooking the lake and crashed. 

The next couple days were simply wonderful, food, friends, music and swimming.  The swimming was a bit of a challenge though, the beach at Maji Zuwa isn’t sand, it’s smooth rock covered in algae.  You get really good at learning how to grip with your toes, or just falling over.  Falling over was actually the preferred method for getting in, you walk out and when you can’t control your standing or your swimming partners have abandoned you, you just fall over and swim the rest of the way.  Getting out was interesting, you know what seals look like when they are trying to move on land…yeah…something like that.

Anyways, over the course of the 4^th we came to learn that the ferry that goes into Ruarwe was not working, not boat ride out is not good.  Hiking back out of Ruarwe adds a few days to your trip that we didn’t have.  So we cancelled Ruarwe and the three of us decided to just go lodge hopping for a few days.  First stop; Nkhata Bay, the lodge; Mayouka.

We stayed at Mayouka for three days then hit Kande beach for a night and home after that.  It all added up to just under a week and we had a blast, we spent waaaayyyy too much money much too quickly but we enjoyed every second of it.  I hope everyone back home had a fun Fourth of July, I know we did and I look forward to spending the next one with all of you back in America!  

Zounds! It's Zambia!

So for those of you playing with us at home please add a country to the checklist……Zambia!

That’s right Zambia! Home of the lovely and incomparable Victoria Falls!

And for a few days, home to me and Aunt Becky! Yay! So now a recap of the events leading up to it and the actual trip itself.
So May was a busy busy month.  My group had our Mid Service Training (MST) from the 15^th-17^th and Aunt Becky’s plane was slated to arrive around noon on the 17^th . However, prior to all this there was a Peace Corps prom/fund raiser for Gender and Development Camp being held at Clarissa’s site in North Nkhotakota district on the 12^th.  Cool! I thought I would have enough time to go to prom, get home and have a day or so to pack and clean the house before leaving for two weeks. 

So here is the plan, and you are thinking, “dang that is a sweet plan.”

WRONG

The prom/fund raiser was a ton of fun but I think May was a busy month for a lot of people because tun out was kinda low.  Lame Peace Corps, lame.  Anyway, I digress, morning of the 13^th Christian and Jay are talking about going to Lilongwe, I just thought they wanted an early start because they live so far away. But since we are all headed in the same direction we all start going south together  about 5 minutes into walking down the road it is conveyed to me that we are expected to actually be in Dedza for training on the 14^th, not the 15^th a fact that switches my squirrely little brain into overdrive.

Instead of having an extra day to feel confident that I wouldn’t be bringing my Aunt home to a mess, I had exactly 5 hours to wrap everything up, bring in everything outside, and finish packing.  GAH!!

 did help myself a little bit, instead of leaving everything to do until later I did most of the packing for Zambia before I left, to finish all that up I simply had to rearrange things from my overnight bag to the backpack.  However when I went to Clarissa’s site I had to camp…and it rained.  At the time it wasn’t a big deal, remember I still thought I had time to dry a tent and sleeping bag.  Nope. I ended up spreading it all out over my bedroom floor, anything to prevent it from mildewing while I was gone and said a silent prayer that the mice wouldn’t move in and decide to use it for nesting material while I was gone.  And I did take 10 minutes to wash dirty dishes, so kudos for that.

So after a snatch n’ grab at my house I strolled outside and found myself once again wandering down the road, living out of a bag. My neighbors were all shocked, “didn’t she just get back?” but it was all cool when I explained I would be back in a week with family.  Family is big here. 

I got to the boma at about 3pm and started on a mini bus south at about  4pm.  Prior to this my rule had always been that 1pm was my cutoff time.  Anytime past `one and I don’t start travel to or from Lilongwe.  Yeah, so much for that rule.  I rolled into Lilongwe at about 7 at night.  On the bright side because it was night the mini bus driver pretty much dropped us where we needed to go.  I was about 5 seconds from getting into a taxi to go to the lodge when I spotted other PCVs, this was mostly thanks to the fact that the only person in a million miles, and two decades, who still has a mullet is one of our volunteers.  That’s right I recognized his hair. 

Anyway the next day we all got to Dedza for a few days of training, we’ll skip that, I think I rightly assume you don’t care about what we do at training.

The 17^th in Lilongwe I found none other than Aunt Becky at Kiboko Hotel! Yay! We had dinner at Bombay Palace. Holy cow that was good food. I had heard other PCVs talk about how good it was but wow, that was amazing Indian food.

The 18^th we kinda just ran around LLW getting stuff done, rental car sorted out, snack food bought, paying for safari, etc. but we also took a few hours to go to the Lilongwe Wildlife Sanctuary and that was cool. Lots of monkeys, a leopard, we missed the lion though, and a big snake!

The 19^th- We left early with Land and Lake Safari along with three other girls on holiday.  The border crossing was not as bad as I thought it would be. Getting into Zambia was a snap and now I have some new stamps to show for it! We passed through the town of Chipata not long after and wow, that town made Lilongwe look like not much.  Little depressing Malawi. We arrived at Thornicroft Lodge that evening. Cool place! Nice beds in the tents and we watched the Puku (small antelope) running around on the banks of the Zambezi river.

The 20^th- Morning drive in South Luangwa Natl Park (SL) saw…..animals. Seriously, lots of animals. The ones that stand out are the Thornicroft giraffe, impala, puku, elephants, hippo and probably a waterbuck or two.  Back to camp for lunch, yummy yummy lunch and then back out at 3pm for a night drive where we saw LIONS sweet! The lions would be popping up all the following day. Also seen were civets, porcupine and a few white tailed mongoose.

21^st- purely to save on space this will be shortened, more of the same animals new ones include Lilian’s Lovebirds, Leopard and  drumroll please……..African Wild Dogs! Wooh! That was amazing and completely lost on the other tourists. Gggrrrrrrr. Everyone and I do mean EVERYONE else in the truck was from northern Europe and all talking in their talk, very loudly.  I almost killed me the EU in Zambia.  Luckily, none of them understood the Chichewa the guides were saying. Speaking an obscure language is awesome.

The next couple days were driving, lots of driving, driving to Lusaka where they have Subway and KFC!!! AGH!!! And then to Victoria Falls.  The falls were amazing! There is a reason it is call the Smoke the Thunders.  We got all decked out in ponchos and started wandering around on the bridges, a very wet walk.  Then we milled around the curios market.  Those guys kill me.

“madam! It is nothing to look! Sunset price! Good Price!”

“Yeah I bet.”

I settled on a little box shaped like Africa, some earrings, and a hair clip.  The guy wanted 85 dollars for it!! Do the tourists really pay that?! So I laughed at him.

“Ah, madam, I need a little money for transportation.”

First off buddo, $85 would get you to Lusaka maybe 100 times and you probably live like 20 minuets away by a mini bus that cant cost more than 3 bucks.  Also, I see you have a bike.

Long story short, it was $15, probably not even worth that much.  Start bargaining at 1/3 their asking price and never ever ever ever pay more than half. 

The next day we got up bright an early and, oh Idon’t know, rode around on Elephants for an hour! Booh-Ya! It was so cool. The biggest elephant there was named Bob.  Don’t know if that is a correlation or a causation but someone should look into that.

That afternoon we went for a leisurely stroll in the bush……with Lions! What! I know! Yup, I totally petted one.  So all you people back home who were worried about Aunt Becky don’t. She was totally cool, although she almost chickened out and didn’t go on the walk.  We talked her into it. And have the pictures to prove it.

The next morning it was time to rise and shine……in a @&%$#!( HELICOPTER!!!!!! 8am at three thousand feet! I know how high we were because I sat up front, that’s right, the front seat! Wooh! That was amazing, Aunt Becky can really pick activities! I should travel by helicopter everywhere, it was amazing! We circled the falls for about 15 min and then spent time cruising through the canyon below the falls.  Wow! You know how when you see a National Geographic movie on the Imax screen there is always some really cool shot taken from a helicopter and you can feel your stomach moving as the picture moves? I felt just like that and then I realized, “Oh wait! This is real!” mwahahah! I have video to prove it.  Granted mine is not going to even be found on the cutting room floor of that National Geographic movie but still, there are videos.

After that we piled in the car and drove back to Lusaka. Lemme tell ya, after a helicopter ride a 6 hour trip in a Toyota corolla is really depressing.  Oh well we still made good time. 
The place we stayed at out of Lusaka was pretty nice and they had a game at the bar, basically Chinese checkers against yourself.  The point is to get one marble in the middle and all the others cleared off.  I got down to one marble, granted it wasn’t in the middle but they said they had never seen anyone do that before. I beat myself at marbles. Just thought you should know.

The 26^th we crossed the border and made it back to LLW by about 6 in the evening and finished getting the rental car

27^th, bright and early we hit the road for Nkhotakota but we went through Kasungu, I’m glad Aunt Becky got to see so much of the country but logistically that was really a not so awesome move. Oh well. We got to Nkhotakota, and had breakfast at Sitima Inn, really good breakfast too, stuffed French toast. Then to Mbewa village! Everyone was excited to see Aunt Becky! It’s funny, I go other places in Malawi and they all assume I don’t speak Chichewa but in my village they expect all white people to speak it.  Lots of translating very badly and answering of questions. ( And here I am going to apologize for the state of my house in those pictures, again, I was rushed. ) Then we went to my neighbor, Agnes’ house and she had a chicken going in the pot for lunch.  The chicken in question had been eating eggs so we made lunch out of her and ladies and gentlemen, Aunt Becky ate that lunch with her fingers.  Cause we ain’t got no silver ware for Nsima! After lunch we sat for some of the dances that the Eco-tourism club does for tourists that was fun too and they were all super excited to meet Aunt Becky. Then we went to meet Henery and his wife Margaret for a few minutes and then it was time to go again!

We spent the night at Nkhotakota Pottery on the lake shore because a trip here is not a trip if you don’t see the lake! The next day we got to the airport, had lunch and Aunt Becky jumped on a plane for a nice long flight home.  
I would like to say thank you to Aunt Becky for coming all the way out here just to see me and Africa! I loved every minute of it and everyone here wants to know when you are coming back! Love you!!!

After getting back to LLW I resumed the life of a PCV, basically where lunch is a gamble at the Silver Spoon in the market. Will this be the time I get sick? Who knows!

Getting home again was nice even if it took three days to clean the house and do laundry. Thank you to mom for giving Aunt Becky so much awesome stuff to bring over and thank you Aunt Becky for bringing it!

I love you all and miss you even more! Mom and Dad see you soon!

Another Year, Another Windy Season

Here in Malawi, just like the rest of the world, there are seasons.  As best as my memory can recall, in North America there are 4 advertized seasons; Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall.  In Malawi we don’t have quite such dramatic changes, but we still have seasons.  Currently we are entering the cool dry season, followed by the hot dry season which changes to the hot rainy season. 

Those are seasons in a nutshell, but what about the seasons in between the seasons, the obscure seasons that are extremely localized and specific?

What do I mean?

Well for example, in Colorado, March tends to be a useless month.  It is warming up (a little) and the snow is melting, thus, mud season. 
How about Malawi?

For starters we have the different fruit seasons, currently we are in what is probably my favorite fruit season, guava and avocado season.  FYI, Malawi avocados are way better than American avocados. Depending on what part of the country you are in there are seasons you don’t get elsewhere.  Fruits like Masuku come into season in October but you can’t get the really nice big ones in Nkhotakota, you have to go South for that.  Through the whole country you get mangos from about November until about January.  Again, it depends on the region, the last week of March I was in Dedza and I had a mango, weird. 

Then there are seasons no one mentions but are kind of implied.  Everyone knows that this time of year is the cool season but my first year here no one bothered to tell me that is doubled as the windy season.  From now until maybe August it will be windy, lots of windy.  At first I thought the windy season was great, it was cooler, no more rain, clothes were drying in one day on the line, and then I went for a bike ride. Biking in the wind sucks.  A lot. There are a few hills on the ride in to Nkhotakota and while they were bad at first I’ve gotten used to them but biking up them in a head wind really adds a certain special something.  Kind of like a shooting pain in my legs, that kind of special something.  It wouldn’t be so bad if it would actually work with me, you know a little tail wind would be great, but this place does the opposite of a tail wind.  Whenever I bike it is in a head wind. 

At first I thought, “ok, headwind on the way in but tail wind on the way home!” nope. Whenever I bike, anywhere I bike, it is in a headwind.  The laws of nature will actively conspire against me to see to it that I bike in a head wind.  Someone should call NASA, they may be interested in this.  It may be affecting ocean currents as well so call NOAA while you’re at it. 

And the unfair part is that I will adjust to biking in the wind and then the wind will stop.  Then it will be time to bike in the heat, exactly when you actually want the wind.  Go figure.

Also, now is the start of elephant season.  I believe we touched on this last year, the elephants situation here.  Well they’re back.  Two nights ago to be specific, a herd came out and ate a few maize fields. Because this time of the year is when maize is ready to be harvested the elephants come out and make a meal of a few fields in a night.  So I’ll let you know how things progress with the elephants this year. 

Other than all that I would like to announce that my group has hit the one year mark.  That’s right ladies and gentlemen, I’ve survived intact in Africa for a whole year.  The old group has left, they are all back in the states and the new health/environment group swears in on May 2^nd so welcome to them and we’ll miss you to the old group! This time next year I’ll be seeing you all back in the States and wishing good luck to the group replacing mine.  

Pre-service Training, Take Two

That's right, it's March and once again my stalwart powers of procrastination have paid in dividens and you have not had a blog post in a while. Some people count this as good fortune.

When we last met, the new health/environment group had not yet arrived. They have since arrived and are currently starting week three of their homestay.  I was there for week two of training as one of the resource volunteers of the week. And I really have to say I think the new group is pretty solid. They are doing well in language from what I saw and they are dealing with the changes in training well. Which I guess is to be expected because they don't know what the old system was.

Now, this is my second time in homestay. Truthfully, homestay is better the second time around. The food, you appreciate the food. Last time the food was about as exciting as getting a flu shot, but at least my arm didn't hurt after dinner. You don't appreciate the food at all, it is rice, greens and chicken or soya pieces. This time around it was rice, greens, chicken or soya pieces! WOOH! Reliable protein every night that I didn't have to cook! It was amazing!

Also, people heat your bafa water for you each morning. I don't have to heat my own water! The first time around you are thinking, "I am squatting next to a bucket dumping water on my head with a cup. When do bow and arrow making classes start?"
This time around you're thinking, "I can adjust the water temperature just by adding a scoop of hot or a schoop of cold! Oh the luxury! Bring me the head of a goat! I crave the head of a goat!"

And you are in a position of power, granted it is not much power, but you can leave when you want, talk to people and it doesn't matter because you are not under the oppressive thumb of the training day.

All in all I recommend living in a country for a year before going to training. It helped me! Hopefully picture will come soon, be patient please.

To The New Group

You are arriving in a little under a month. If you’re anything like me you will be really excited and then the night before you fly out you’ll be the equivalent of roughly one valium away from a nervous breakdown.  Please don’t be like me, that was completely uncalled for. This is not a conmplete packing list just a few things that I came across while getting ready. So my hints for reducing you stress are as follows:

Clothes

You only have limited space and weight limits, and you are probably worried about what to bring as far as clothes go. Ladies bring a few t-shirts, some lightweight travel pants, some long skirts, swimsuit and underwear.  Boys, same thing but you can skip the skirts.  You can and will buy clothes here I promise! If it comes down to leaving something out so you can bring a pressure cooker or whatever, leave out the clothes. A hat is nice to have and I do advise bringing a brand new package of underwear and just holding on to it. You’ll thank me in about a year.
Med kit
Don’t even bother with this one unless you have some sort of medication or batman band-aid (which is really cool) then that you should bring. The Peace Corps medical office is amazing. Dr. Max and Dr. John and Nurse Evelyn have absolutely everything you need. I brought medical stuff when I came and I haven’t touched it.  All I can suggest is maybe some ibuprofen and a handful of band aids to get you through home stay.  

Shoes

You hear all kinds of things on this one.  Bring tennis shoes, bring sandals, bring a hiking boot that stamps out waffle patterns in the mud, you know stuff like that.  I brought tennis shoes, hiking boots, and a pair of Tevas.  I live in my Tevas, ask anyone. I actually wore a pair out and had to get a new one.  If you hate wearing sandals in the States you probably will here too.  I think I can count on one hand the number of times I have worn my tennis shoes and I haven’t touched the hiking boots (sorry mom). Don’t worry about flip flops, Peace Corps gives you a pair, they’re not super nice or anything but they are great for the shower. So if you have a pair you can’t live without, bring it.
Games/Time killers

These you will want. I brought a deck of cards and a book of word search puzzles to country and I love them both. Other things we recommend are Uno, Apples to Apples and Bananagrams. Any kind of small puzzle game that can travel well is good to have.  You will have some down time in home stay and these are good to have.
Electronics

I brought a net book to country and an external hard drive and my ipod. Insure things before you leave!!!! I cannot stress this enough, Malawi is hard on electronics. I have had to replace each of these, thankfully they were covered so that helped a lot. If it mattered to you in the states it will matter to you here even more.  Having a computer is not a necessity but it is really nice and does help get stuff done. The external hard drive is good to have if you plan on keep yourself entertained. There are a ton of movies and tv shows floating around here but get a really good travel case. Bouncing around on a mini bus does nothing good for these things
US Dollars
I think the maximum you can put in the safe in Lilongwe is about 700 or 800. Do it if you can afford to.  Sometimes things come up and you need some extra cash.  Or if you are planning a trip somewhere it helps to be able to start off with USD, the Malawian Kwacha is worth nothing.

Lights/Batteries

Bring a good head lamp, odds are good it’ll be your main source of light for a very long time. With that in mind get rechargeable batteries for it. It does you no good to run out of batteries and have to wait for them to come from America. Get a headlamp that takes rechargables and get extra batteries so you are never stuck. 

Solar

I have a solar panel that hooks up to a motorcycles battery and I can charge stuff off of that, in theory. It worked for a while but I think something is wrong with the battery since it is cheap junk but it worked for a while.  A lot of people have a little solar charger that they stick in the sun all day and can charge their ipod or phone for a bit at night. That is a nice thing to have so bring one of those. I also have a small flashlight made by Coleman that has a solar panel and hand crank charger on it and I like it a lot.  If it has been a cloudy rainy day you can still charge it and read at night.
At the moment that is all I can think of. If you happen to come up with any questions just ask and I’ll do what I can to answer them.  Please remember, you’ll be ok! I had never been out of the States before coming here and I made it so you will too! Keep calm and keep breathing!

Also, don’t do all your packing the night before you leave. That won’t help you either.  Otherwise, I look forward to seeing you all for your week two of training!

Dam! But Zambia won the Cup of Nations!

Not too far from my house is Lake Chilingali (aka Lake Chikukutu), it is a manmade lake and is pretty old, it was done back in the 1960’s from what I understand. It is one of the few large lakes in Malawi (aside from Lake Malawi) so a lot of the economy in the area is based on the lake.  Irrigation agriculture, fishing and ecotourism hippo watching are all dependent on the lake.

From what the villagers have told me, about 5 years ago the dam broke.  Now when I say dam don’t picture anything like a dam you would see in America. It was a concrete barrier with a spill way but not very big at all. The concrete has long since been blown out and all that is holding the lake back was a mud barrier. Until recently.

Riddle me this, if you have a business ferrying people across the river below the dam and the water flow slacks off how can you drum up more business……..

The answer is so simple it may shock you! Grab your khasu (hoe) and rip the mud wall apart! Problem solved!

Oh Malawi.                                                                 

That is exactly what happened. Over two days, what is left of the lake has plummeted about 10 feet.  The hippos have long since left but the crocodiles are supposed to still be there. The dropping water level only serves to concentrate them. So I expect to hear about more and more people having conflicts with the wildlife.

Today I stopped in at the Department of Irrigation and told them about it, because let’s face it; there is no way they knew this soon. They all looked pretty shocked, which was good. Apparently they had been out a week ago to do survey planning.   They are starting on planning to put in a new dam. From what they told me the European Union is involved in some capacity so that might help.

All the people I have talked to are really upset about it they all say, “Ah he is a very foolish man”. Yup. The police came out to arrest him and before they took him away his punishment was to ferry people across for free. Kinda poetic justice that way.

Also, the African Cup of Nations was played on Sunday night. The contenders were Cote d’Ivory and Zambia. All the Malawians were cheering for Zambia because we are neighbors and it is right to do that. I watched the game, the first soccer game I ever watched all the way through. They tell me it was a really good game. I still don’t see it. No one scored the whole game so it went into overtime or whatever they call it. So basically they took shots at the goal until someone got one in and someone missed. That part was kinda exciting but otherwise it was a little over an hour of my life I want to get back.

It’s funny though that the logic behind cheering for Zambia was that we are neighbors. That doesn’t work in the States. Take the AFC West for instance. If the Oakland Raiders are playing the Steelers we don’t cheer for the Raiders because we are in the same division, you pray the Steelers beat them into the ground. That sort of thing only works here. But Zambia won so in the end everyone was happy.

The Traditional Authority (think like a few steps up from chief) of the goalie from Zambia gave him two cows and 250 hectares for doing such a good job.  Superbowl victors get a ring and a parade.  Both completely applicable in their own ways.

February and Finances

Welcome to the second month of 2012. Who would have guessed it huh? This time last year I was on the verge of going nuts because the plane left in 27 days and as far as I could tell I was about as prepared for Africa as Hannibal was crossing the Alps.  But unlike Hannibal, I have succeeded and haven’t had to deal with dead elephants, only live ones, which I promise are more interesting to watch.

Lately though things have been a little slow in the village.  The school project keeps going, pang’ono pang’ono, little by little. The biggest obstacle we have hit is the lack of cement .  We need 26 bags to finish, the porch, waterways (they channel the rain water away), and plaster on the top of the exterior walls.  But you’re thinking, “So what, it’s just a little cement. It’s like what, three bucks a bag?” Well, no. The currency here, the Malawian kwacha, is pretty much worthless. Currently, the bank’s exchange rate is 1 USD=174 MK and one bag of cement is roughly 4100 MK, so you do the math. 4100/174= 23.56, yup, that’s how many dollars one bag of cement here is. Whoopie. And at 26 bags of cement that comes out to a little over $600 just for cement. So I have been working on a SPA (Small Projects Assistance) grant, not fun, lots of paper work. Hopefully I’ll have it done at the end of the month and can turn it in then.

If it wasn’t for the lack of foreign currency and the fuel shortage, Malawi would be fantastic. And don’t get me wrong, I love Malawi, the people are nice, the weather isn’t bad, the lake is fantastic and there is a bunch of cool stuff to see but living is getting too expensive.  When I first got to country it cost me about 800MK to get from Nkhotakota to Lilongwe, and the same to go back. Now, only one year later, I will pay over 1000MK.  I know it doesn’t sound like a lot but consider this; we don’t get paid in USD, we get paid in MK and prices for everything else keep going up too. Bread, eggs, everything. We got a 10% increase a few months ago but right afterwards the devalued the kwacha and priced jumped again.  Hopefully we are getting another raise soon but they are talking about devaluing the kwacha again. Yay.

It’s just a vicious loop. We can’t buy fuel because no one wants the Kwacha, we have to buy it with foreign currency, but there is no for-ex to buy fuel because no one wants to invest in a country with a fuel problem. 

It’s a real problem for us PCVs, prices shoot up way faster than our living allowance surveys can get our 10% raise.  I know very few volunteers who haven’t had to dip into money back in the states.  It kinda sucks, trying to eat, knowing you have to get to Lilongwe or somewhere else and pay for all kinds of things, before the end of the month.  And if you are trying to get somewhere then good luck. Hitching out of my site to Nkhotakota boma has gone from rough to pretty much impossible.  From there you might get a ride going south but there is very little that goes north along the lake shore. Mini buses still run but they’ll really give you a bad price now. But we do it, what else can you do. 

A lot of people have talked about how transport really takes it out of you now. We like being in Lilongwe (or where ever) and we like being at site but that in between bit is rough. There is a lot of mental preparation that goes into a transport day. It has always been like that but lately I think it is worse.

If there are any trainees from the new group coming in March who are reading this, don’t freak out! I’m not trying to scare you, I know this post would not have helped me feel better but you’ll be ok.  You need to realize something coming into this. It’s still just life, life in a new place and you will have a lot to learn but you’ll get the hang of it, I promise! Look forward to seeing you all next month! Now stop reading every blog you can find and go get some sleep.

New Year!

Oh yeah...blogging........maybe I should start that up again......sorry.

So we've had bit going on lately. In early December we started working on the school finally. We got funding and began to getmoving. The problem with starting projects in December is that it is the begining on the rainy season. The roads may or may notbe good enough to get a truck down on. But we got lucky, the roads were good and we had great transport.  Work started really well, the cement floors went in really fast.  After the floors, the chalkboard went up. To my surprise they are just cement, smeared on the wall and painted black. Never would have guessed.

About this time in the construction I took a sabbatical.  And by "sabbatical" I mean plane ride home. To those of you who assisted, and you know who you are, thank you for that. Everything was going well untill I hit the States.  We landed in Washington an hour late and I only had a two hour lay over! Now, in Lilongwe when I got on the plane they told me my bags were checked all the way through and I wouldn't have to worry about it. In D.C. they said yeah, no, you need to go find it and drag it through customs.
Crap.

So I spent 30 minuets of my one hour waiting for my duffle to stop dragging it's feet and show up.
You always see those movie scenes where someone is running flat out through the airport. That was me. Women were grabbing small children out of my way.  Luckily the people at security were super nice and moved me to the front of the line...yay!
Quick! More running!
So I finally made it to the gate, only to find out that they had sold my ticket cause I was about 30 seconds late. So 5 minutes and a few tears later I am sitting on the plane headed home! It really is amazing how far out you can see Pikes Peak.

Going home was amazing and let me just say that I want all of you to go to your local supermarket and take a look around the produce department. Be happy for what you see...very very happy. Do the same thing in the frozen food, dairy, and deli departments (ignore the rice and potatoes). Then go out to your car, do the doors open and not fall off? Hug it. Walk to you laundry room, find the washer and dryer. Kiss those.  You have no idea how easy it is to laundry there. Never again do I want to hear that laundry is hard in America.  Here, doing laundry takes all day, at least. During therainy season though, stuff won't dry for two days. In a dryer, it's what, 30 minutes? Gimmie a break.

It was not nearly long enough.  For some reason I actually envisioned myself having a day to just sit and veg out. Did not happen. I actually think my feet didn't touch the ground the entire time I was home, we were so busy! Shopping, seeing family, friends, and animals.  I also had about 150 hats to sell from my women's club. And to those of you who broke down and bought some, we say thank you! I'm actually impressed that almost all of them sold so thank you.
Coming back to Malawi was yet another long long plane ride.  Just one thing about Ethiopian Airlines. They rock! Both of the airlines I rode on in the States felt like they should have been in another country, not America.  Ethiopean was nice, you have a ton of movies and the food in actually really good, except the desserts, those were just bad. Otherwise, they were the best part of the trip. And all my luggage made it!

So now I'm back in Nkhotakota and I am happy to report that both the dog and cat survived me being gone and the house was only
slightly soaked. The tube of caulk I brought back really has gone a long way to fixing the holes in the roof. So far things have been quiet and I'll get back to you when I can!