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!

Site Visit

When I last left you, gentle reader, I was in Lilongwe headed North to Nkhotakota, and my site at Mbewa village. Nkhotakota is the name of my district and Boma. The Boma is best dscribed at the "capital" of a district, where the government buildings are. Anyway, the PCV I was assigned to shadow was Jesi who lives a mear 13 kilometers or so from me and is my nearest PC neighbor.

We left Lilongwe in a mini-bus headed to the Salima turnoff then North on the M18 to Nkhotakota. All together I think it took about 4 hours. Once at the Boma (Nkhotakota), we dropped our stuff off with George at the internet cafe. The guys there are awesome and watched all our stuff while we were eating lunch, shopping for dinner and getting the tour. There are two flush toilets in Nkhotakota, one is at the internet cafe, the other is at the BP gas station. The guys there are nice too, and they have cold Cokes and Fanta.

After getting our stuff back we proceeded to walk to Jesi's house while ignoring the calls of, "what is your name?" "Where are you going?" "Give me your bottle." and "Give me 20 Kwacha." mostly from kids and teenagers.

Jesi has a nice house, she is an education volunteer and leaves Malawi in another 5 months I believe. We hung out at her place until Monday the 11th when we ventured to my house! I live a long way out and there are three ways to get there, hitch, ride a bike, or walk. Walking sucks as I later learned, but I digress. Anyway, hitches can be hard to find and we didn't have two bikes so we opted for a couple of bike taxis. Basically, there is a platform mounted on the back of a bike and you sit on it while someone pedels you around. Yes, mom, it's completely safe. So we got the taxies and made it to Mbewa. We were greeted by my neighbor, Benson, who speaks pretty good english, and he brought us to my house.

Folks, I am glad to say, my site is amazing! I have mango and papaya trees, flowers everywhere and two perfect spots for garden beds. The house has three rooms, living room/dining room, bed room, and storage. And, best of all, the room were full of stuff! Good stuff too! Beds, chairs, a cabinet, book shelves complete with books, spices, buckets, pots, pans, dishes, parafin, a tempermental stove, and on and on and on! I would like to give a shout out to Karen and Carl, the PCVs I am replacing, if you ever read this, thank you for leaving everything in such great shape. I was not expecting to get something this nice!

After hanging out for a couple hours we hitched a ride back to Jesi's house. On Tuesday we went to the Boma bright and early so I could get food to bring to site. We parted ways, me going to Mbewa and her, going to Tanzania for vacation. This is where Mary pulled a stupid. I decided to walk. Now I live 16 km (10 miles) out of the boma, maybe 3 km from Nkhotakota Game Reserve, it's a hike. My train of thought went something like, "walk a little ways and when you get tired just grab a bike taxi." Problem; the bike taxis are harder to find the farther you get from the Boma. By the time I realized this I think I had walked 12-13 km and my feet hurt, I was tired, sunburned, and the kids still wanted 20 kwacha. Finally I passed a funeral. Now, to signal that there is a funeral, the people place branches on the road near the house. If someone is on a bike they get off and walk past the funeral. I happed to find the one bike taxi in the area and rode for the last few km home. Once home, Benson stopped by to check on me and inform me that the Chief would be coming by to meet me tomorrow.

Wednesday, Benson and his brother, Chief Mbewa came over. Thankfully Benson could translate and we chatted for a while about where I was from, where I had been in Malawi, other trainees, how long I would be there for, what Karen and Carl did, and what they want to start on. After the meeting, Benson took me on a walk to see the local primary school and bridge put in by Karen and Carl. We kept walking and came to my local lake, Lake Chilingali, but the locals call it Lake Chikukutu. It has hippos (Bhoko) and crocodiles (Ng'ona), I didn't get a chance to see them but I think I will someday. After the super long walk, I went home and hung out for the rest of the day. A student in secondary school stopped by later in the afternoon. His name is Blessings, and he wants help with biology, and physics so we'll see what I can do.

Thursday, we went to see the other half of the village between me and the game reserve. Our first stop was the waterfall. Yup, I have waterfalls. They aren't really big or anything, but they have a lot of character. So we walked along the edge of the reserve and tried to find the baboons (Nyani), we could hear them but couldn't catch up. We did see where they had ripped a bunch of peanuts out of a woman's field and ate them. They also showed me where the elephants come out of the reserve and eat people's corn and casava. I really hope I get to see the elephants but I know I will see the baboons, they come sit in the trees near my house during mango season, yay! After this really long walk I once again proceeded to crash at home. After crashing I decided to feed myself. While eating, my attention turned to rustling in the grass near the fence. Nile Monitor lizard! Super cool! He was about 2 feet long and mad...but I took his picture anyway. The three dogs hanging out at my house went to see what I was looking at and began to fight it! You really only see stuff like that on National Geographic or Animal Planet. I was half expecting Steve Irwin to jump out of a tree and go, "Crikey! He's a might agitated!" But he got away from the dogs and climbed the fence and ran off. Interesting afternoon.

Friday I left Mbewa and headed for Mchinji and language intensive week. Language intensive for my group took place at the Kayesa Inn. We were there with a handfull of language instructors and we did Chichewa lessons everyday for a week. It was hard, but productive. At the end of the week we had to give a presentation on some topic related to our sector. So since I am an environment volunteer topics for me include building a mud stove, composting, tree planting, etc, anything to do with the environment really.
So I was preparing my presentation on tree planting when I realized that I really didn't want to to a presentation on trees, or stoves for that matter. So I found Chrissy, my language instructor, and got some help on a new presentation, about animals in Malawi. I actually liked it and thought there was potential to not suck. So I spent a ton of time memorizing and reciting by myself to make sure I knew the language. Come to find out that during the presentations everyone is clapping and cheering after almost every sentence. So what do I do, I panic. Normally, I get nervous during presentations and I talk really really fast, that is considerably harder when you have a tenuous grasp of the language in which you are speaking.

So instead of the adrenelin making me talk faster it all went to my stomache and I locked up and had the worst case of nerves I have ever had. As Alysia put it, "Could that have looked any more painful?" My train of thought was not just de-railed, it was straifed my enemy aircraft. It was really bad. But it did eventually end and my stomache stopped doing flip-flops an hour later. Everyone else did really well, I'm so proud of our group.

The last day of language intensive, a group of Ngoni traditional dancers came and gave a performance. It was really cool. The outfits were made entierly of animal skins. I think in the course of a few hours I was able to identify; baboon, vervet monkey, civit, savannah cat, bushbaby, rock hyrax, mongoose, sable antelope, cerval, hyena, small spotted genet, striped polecat, and possibly buffalo. It was so cool to see so much biodiversity in one location at the same time. Oh yeah, the dancing was really neat too, I have pictures and videos.

Once we got back to Dedza we took our final language exam. Really all you do is talk with a trainer for as long as you can in Chichewa before you start to talk in nonsense. I must have done something right or learned at least one thing new because I tested at Intermediate: High, exactly where we need to be. Weird.
On the 26th of April we went to Lilongwe to the US Ambassador's house for swearing in. That place is amazing, and I am looking forward to going back on the 4th of July. The next day we were back in Lilongwe to do shopping for our sites then back at Dedza to pack everything up. I got back to site on the 28th with all my stuff, and let me say that the prospect of not living out of a bag is thrilling!

And that closed out April.

Until next time, I love you all very much! (Megan thank you for the phone calls!)

Kuno Ku Malawi,
Mary

Homestay is Over

Yesterday homestay ended.  We had a huge farewell day and all for villages (Khankomba, Komako, Konkera, and Mbozi) came to our village.  We had displays with all the things we have done, jam making, peanut butter, permagardening, composting etc. There were a lot of speeches and then we to share an aspect of American culture so we had a baseball game. 

Granted the ball was a wiffle ball with tape on the outside for weight, and the bat was the handle for a hoe, but it worked out really well.  We staged a fight with the referee and our coach, second base was thrown around and coach was ejected from the game, dirt was kicked on shoes, it was great! 

Then the gule wankulu (I think I probably spelled that wrong) showed up.  I would post a video but it would take forever to load.  Basically people with masks and costumes come out and dance.  I get more details on the dances later, so more to come on that.

Currently I am in Lilongew at Peace Corps headquarters en route to Nkhotakota, the nearest city to my new village.  I am going to be in a village called Mbewa in Nkhotakota Wildlife Reserve where we have big ants, green mambas, and sleeping sickness.......but I am close to the lake! Yay! I think SCUBA diving makes up for all that.  I love you all and will get you more details on my site in a week or two!

Birds Bugs and Hugs

Moni from Malawi!
Oh my goodness where to start, it does not feel like I have been here for a mere 4 weeks! Well the flight from JFK airport to Jo-Berg in South Africa was the longest 15 hours of my life. But I will give the airlines props for trying to make it suck less than a black hole. You get your own personal tv loaded with movies and some tv shows. They keep you in total darkness almost the whole time. I think it helps with jet lag a little but honestly we were so stressed out that I didn't notice any jet lag. Watching the sunrise over Botswana was beautiful. That was the first time I have seen a sunrise from above the clouds and I think it is infinately better that way. From Jo-Berg we flew to Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi. At the airport you get off the plane directly on the tarmac and from all the way over at the terminal we could hear yelling and cheering and see a Peace Corps flag. They came to meet us! I was expecting someone with a bus but we got maybe 2 dozen PCVs (Peace Corps Volunteers) who all come down to welcome us to country.
From there we drove maybe an hour to the College of Forestry in Dedza, which was to be our home for the next week. That first week was a lot of cultural stuff, more vaccines, how Malawians view Americans, and survival Chichewa (the main language here, and the one I will be speaking). Each week, PC brings in 4 new PCVs to help with training. The first week the PCVs took all our pictures and left notes about us for the next PCVs. My note: "Likes birds, bugs, and hugs". Yup! Coolest bird so far, Pintailed Whydah.
Anyways, After week one we found out which village and which family would be our home for the next 6 weeks. Because our group is so large we were split among 4 villages. Mine is Kankhomba and my family is great. My amayi (mother) is Emily my abambo (father) works in South Africa most of the year so I won't get to meet him. I have 4 siblings my achemweli (sisters) are Dunia, Lahem, and Isha, my chemwene (brother) is Amadu. Ages go from 15 to 5. I'm pretty sure the kids thought I was a joke for the first two weeks but I showed them some oragami, pictures from home, tic-tac-toe, the hokey pokey, and head, shoulders, knees and toes. They really like head, shoulders, knees and toes. Like a lot! And they taught it to their friends. So I'll be walking past my house and 3 or 4 kids will all go, "Headie, shouldar, knee, ndi toe!"I impressed they got it so I'm not gonna sweat pronunciation.

Overall the people are super nice and really facinated by us. I kept hearing that it would be like living in a fish bowl but I didn't think it would be like this. Great example: one Sunday, my village met up with the health trainees in the next village. We met halfway at the church and just hung out. We had about 50 men women and mostly childen standing or sitting but just watching us. Really? I don't have an extra head, we aren't that interesting! I have known me for 23 years and if I didn't have to hang out with me all the time, I wouldn't. Anything we do as a group is watched intently. Particularly anything physical, digging, laundry, getting water, etc. We were building a mud stove and people were gathered to watch. They didn't think we could do it because, "Azungus don't work." Well ha! We made a mud stove! At first you think whatever, they'll move on. But they don't! And then you get frustrated because back in the States, staring at someone like that would be extremely rude. Whenever you walk somewhere you have to say, "hi" to everyone and they always want to know where you are going. Big slow breaths. American culture, you say hi and keep going. Not here, and you have to keep that in mind. It is a big deal that you are staying with a family and for some of the kids it is the first time they have ever seen a white person. We joke that it is like living in a zoo, "I like that one, he's moving around!" If you don't want to be looked at the best place to go is home.
Home is nice. I have my own room and people don't state at me. My family hosted a British girl back in 2005 I think, so mom understands to speak slowly because my language skills are retarded. (I am nowhere near the gifted end of the spectrum when it comes to language, it's hard for me.) I showed her the photo album Megan gave me before I left and they loved it, a million thanks for that btw, Meggers. They got the biggest kick out of the animals, Cheyenne, Cody, Lance, Nali, Zebbie and Ev, being in there and having names. People here don't keep pets. All the dogs are strays and I have seen only 2 cats since getting here. The bugs are great though. Tons of cool moths and beetles. The spiders haven't been bad, I have seen only one trantula and it was dead at the time. Ants are another story. Just like back in Colorado, rain forces ants inside. I have an anthill under my reed mat that my mattress is on. I have already gone through one can of Raid and the fumes may kill me too. There are a million little holes and getting all of them is tough. Luckily though they are the little black ants, not big red ants of death and bites. The ants are also flying off to make new colonies. This provides food for a lot of things. I was sitting outside the other day and watched a couple falcons (no, Catie, I don't know what kind they were) circling above where the ants were emerging, snatching them out of the air, eating and flying off. Pretty cool. The Malawians also eat the ants. They fry them, and pull the wings off. Luckily though I haven't been around when they make them, no bugs for Mary. However I did eat half an eel the other night for dinner.

We got home late from class and I didn't get to help with dinner. After taking my bafa (bucket bath, and not as bad as you might think) I went inside for dinner. My amayi motioned to a plate with some dark things on it and asked if I wanted one. I didn't think it was chicken so I said I wanted just one. While sitting in the dark, eating my nsima and pumpkin leaves, it dawned on me that the smell coming from my plate had a fishy aroma, but the thing wasn't shaped like a fish and maybe I should find out what exactly I had gotten myself into. I flicked on my flashlight, yup, dead eel. Thank goodness my amayi has delt with azungus before and Peace Corps told them we are weird. I sat there slack-jawed saying, "I can't eat that! How do I eat that?!" my amayi was saying "It's fresh, it's fresh, British eat." my brilliant comeback was "I'm not British!"Then I had a moment of clarity. Peace Corps gives food to our families and I know eel is not on that list. It has probably come all the way from Lake Malawi and is probably expensive and a rare treat. Then, that little voice came on and said, "man up and eat the damn eel, Mary." So I did. I'm not as hard core as the Malawians so I did pull the skin off and left the bones and head. Not much meat and it had a really strong flavor but over all not bad. I would eat it again, I didn't get sick.

Otherwise the food isn't anything fancy. Corn is the staple food and after it is dried they grind it into a flour. The flour is added to boiling water to make something like really really thick mashed potatoes, called Nsima. And they eat a ton of nsima! Otherwise I eat a lot of pumpkin and bean leaves, rice, pumpkin, squash, chicken, goat or cow (we think), tomatoes, potatoes, tea, sugar, oil, and salt. I wish I got more fruit. Guava are just coming into season so I hope for that. But we missed mangos and pineapples, nuts.
What else might you find amusing, probably the bathroom. The toilet is the chimbudzi or chim. The chim is a glorified hole in the ground and aim is critical. Getting yourself in the correct position, adjusting your pants or skirt, and avoiding the corners of the room where the spiders hang out requires a mastery of chim-nastics. So far so good. The Malawians are shocked by how open we are about using the chim. We don't care if you know we went to the bathroom or not. They care. Malawians are super sneaky about going. Legend has it, that if you see a Malawian come out of the chim, they have to give you a pot of gold. Or something like that. Right next door to the chim is the bafa, just a room with a rock floor and a small hole for drainage. You bring in a bucket of water with a temperature about 3 degrees below that of lava ( I think Malawians have no nerve endings) and boil the dirt and germs off your skin. You have a big cup and pour water over yourself. Yeah it's not the fanciest method but I like it. You get dirty and tired, go home and amayi says "kusamba!" and you get to wash it all off in the dark while listening to the bats come out. It's a nice way to unwind actually.

I wish I could say more but time has it limits. So until next time, I love you all and miss you even more!
Kuno Ku Malawi-
Mary

P.S.- I just wanna give a shout out to my Gunnison peeps! What up! Coming from freezing Gunni to sub-tropical Africa was awesome. I'm warm, hee hee! Let me know when you want to visit.
Chelsea do me a favor, pass this on to Magee- "Nthawi yakwana" (The time is now) You don't pronounce the "h" it sounds like: "N-taaw-whee Ya-k-wana"

Breathe Deep the Scent of Philadelphia

Finally made it!  After saying goodbye to Mom, Dad, Catie, Robert and Megan at Denver International Airport I wound my way through security.  Thank goodness they didn't make me unpack everything in my backpack.  If they had, I think I would have started crying, packing sucks.  Once I got to the terminal, I was found by Mary Hansen, a fellow Malawi PCV who is also from Denver.  Thankfully we were flying on Southwest, so we didn't have assigned seats and I had some company on the flight. 

After we landed in Philly we heard someone a few rows back say, "yeah, 2 years is a long time."  Now, when you are in the Peace Corps, "2 years" is a magic number so we perked up but didn't see anyone, and wouldn't meet them until later.  So we hauled ourselves to the baggage area and forced our way out to where the shuttles pick you up to go to different hotels.  In a world of black rolling luggage, PCVs have a tendancy to stand out.  You see a small group of 20-something year olds wandering through an airport weighted down under about 80 lbs wirth of stuff and you put two and two together.  So that is how we found, Ross (the mystery person on our flight), Robert, Cassie, and Katie while waiting for a bus.

During our check in we found out that the PC gives all the volunteers $120 to get them through the weekend.  Wooh!! So several of us went and walked around near the hotel to find a place for dinner.  It's interesting here, to the left of the hotel you are in the Asian district of Philly, but if you go right you are surrounded by Irish pubs.  I bet St. Patrick's Day is pretty interesting around here, the jokes probably all start with, "A priest and a buddhist walk into a bar...".  Anyway, we found a pub not too far away and had steak, really good steak too.  The last decent steak I am likely to have in two years, let us have a moment of silence for our dear friend. *sniff*

Today we got up bright and early and went to get our Yellow Fever vaccination.  Let me tell you, there is no early morning eye opener quite like a shot of live virus in the back of the arm, forget espresso.  Which brings me to now.  It is about 11am and we are having a break before going back to pre-service training until 6:30 tonight.  Then it is going to be a mad frenzy of stealing as much toilet paper and tiny soap bars from the hotel as we can and packing for a 15 hour flight...yay.

So, until 2am I am in the City of Brotherly Love where it is rainy and windy.  Don't expect a whole lot in the way of blog posts or email until mid April. Want to get a letter? Then I need your address, unless you already gave it to me. If you come across someone who was not aware of my departure make sure they know that rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated.  

Love you all very much!

Packing Defeated (Pack All The Things!!)

I have defeated packing. Long live the Eagle Creek Packing Cube.

I can't believe no one has mentioned these before! They are perfect! Ever wondered why Hannable couldn't conquer the Roman Empire? He didn't have packing cubes.  If he did, he could have loaded all his elephants in one or two, chucked them over the Alps and picked them up on the other side.  Ever wondered how Lewis and Clark were able to send so much stuff back to President Jefferson? They HAD packing cubes.  Someone has been holding out on me.

Anyone remember the computer game Oregon Trail? You could go hunting for extremely pixilated deer and buffalo, shoot as much as you want, but you could only bring back 50 lbs of meat.  That is like packing for Peace Corps.  Look over every posession in your life and bring only those most needed.

Seriously though, if you are in the PC and are getting ready to go, then you undoubtedly know about the packing limitations and are losing sleep over it. We have very specific size and weight limits and they make a difficult task seem impossible.  To me, packing just about everything you will need for 2 years is tantamount to summoning up a miracle, (i.e.- Mary! Go to the moon and back before supper!) I just can't think under that kind of stress. 

I have been packing, unpacking, and repacking for the past couple of days trying to decide how best to roll, fold, or stuff my clothes so as to allow for as much room as possible for other things.  No matter how I arranged all the clothes they took up a heck of lot of space in both the duffle and backpack.  Then my sister came home for a visit. She has a couple of the cubes and boasted the claim that they would solve all my packing problems, bring about world peace, stop global hunger, and begin instituting harsher punishment for parole violaters (kudos if you understand that reference).  To me it sounded something like this:

"Excuse me little girl!"
"Yes?"
"I understand you need to get to the moon and back before supper."
"Uuuhhhh....."
"Well this tiny little bag of canvas will solve all your problems!"

It did, savor this moment Catie; you were right. We were shoe shopping, and passed a display of Eagle Creek packing cubes, on sale.  I stopped, looked and ended up buying one. After we got home, Catie began shoving all kinds of clothes into this itty bitty thing.  So yeah, that one physics law that says no two things can occupy the same space at the same time, totally broke it.

In that first cube went, 2 skirts, a dress, 4 shirts, one pair of leggings, one pair of bike shorts and three pairs of underwear.  And it all came out to this 9"x13"x5" little package:

It takes up way less space than just throwing clothes in a duffle and hoping you can press them down really tight.  You do all your squashing here and then these fit in the bigger bag and you pack around them.

Anyway, I promptly went back and bought two more cubes of this size and one smaller double sided cube. Then I went from all of this taking up loads of space:

 To this:

Now, I am not saying packing is now 100% worry free.  You still have to find a way to get in the rest of the stuff which, when combined, is about the size and shape of a dead yak, and roughly as cooperative.  However! Having 99% of all your clothes in nice, neat, easy to move around, cubes makes things tons easier.  I still need to rearrange what is in the cubes, I want it all split as evenly as possible.  Once everything is situated all you have to do is pack around the cubes.

I know how it sounds, an entire post devoted to the idea of putting a bag in a bag, but trust me on this one.  They will ease the hurt. I know it is last minute too, we leave in 6 days.  I was blessed enough to find mine on sale at a store.  However, since PCV do get really good discounts through the Eagle Creek website it would probably be worth it to get some and have them rushed.  I promise you will not regret it. 

Packing before the cubes is like riding a tricycle, getting cubes is like being upgraded to a space shuttle.  You still can't get to the moon and back by supper but you will eventually.

Elves and Farewells

You know the story about the shoemaker and the elves? He can't finish the shoes so the elves come in at night and do it. I have a similar problem with a different twist. I can't organize all my Malawi gear without the elves wreking it. My elves are destructive.

When I first started buying things for Malawi everything was simply contained to two boxes. Nothing was spreading out or cluttering up the rest of my living space. As time has gone on I have obtained more and more things for the boxes, and because only so many things can occupy the same space at the same time, I was forced to spread out. I think this is what attracted the elves. As the boxes were abandoned, I had a few well organized piles. One was for things that were definitely going, another for electronics, one for clothes, etc. and this seemed to work.

Gradually, almost imperceptivly, things started to shift. Piles had been moving and spreading out, invading the surrounding spaces of other piles. War crimes were being committed, the bed sheets had taken the socks hostage and would only release them if the water bottles promised not to harm the solar charger. Why exactly the sheets and solar charger had a treaty, I have no idea. In fact, none of it made sense. I couldn't explain how everything was becoming so disorganized, there could only be one logical explaination...elves.

They were sneaking in and making eveything a mess. Mom suggested it was my lack of organization skills. Shows what she knows, she put a table in my room for everything to go on. The elves saw this as a challenge and, as a result, the mess is now a couple feet up in the air. So far, all attempts to stop them have met with failure. My final option is to coat the legs of the table with, either, glue or vasaline. Then again, elves are supposed to be good, maybe I am dealing with Gremlins. Regardless, my only hope of escape is to pack it all and leave the country. 9 Days to go.

On a different note, over the last month or so I have been going about the business of saying goodbye to many people. It's weird saying goodbye and you really haven't left yet. It seems like goodbyes should always be said in an airport or parking lot, right before someone leaves. Otherwise it feels like you really aren't going anywhere. For instance, you know you aren't going to see someone from now until you leave in 2 weeks. Your only option is to say your farewells for 2 years..and then you drive 20 minutes home. Kinda anti-climatic, or like you don't mean it. I didn't realize that there are still people who don't know I am leaving. That is alway interesting, you have to fill them in and say bye all at once.  If you happen to be one of those people, I am really sorry! I'm also getting everythying together for my horse, Lance, so mom and dad know what to do and who to call. It feels like I am handing over the keys to my car. I have never been more than a few hours from him since he was 2 and he is almost 8 now. I am gonna miss him. Otherwise things are running smoothly, I'm still waiting for a few things to get here but it's almost time for wheels up!