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