Kuno ku Chitimba...

I have now been living at site for one week and two days! And I have not yet starved to death, contracted cholera, been attacked by monkey(s), or eaten all of my Reese's Pieces. So far, so good. Chitimba is lovely. I'm going to try an upload a picture as proof:

And that's just the sign! If you were standing where I was when I took that picture, and turned left (east), you would see Lake Malawi, a freshwater lake so enormous that most days you can't see the mountains in Tanzania on the other side. If you walked south a bit and turned right, in about two hours you would reach Livingstonia, the original site of the missionaries in Malawi. And if you kept walking south, you'd be in Chitimba village proper, just over the Rumphi-Karonga border, and now my home for two years. YIKES.

We are now officially Peace Corps Volunteers! The day of swearing-in we kept joking about finally receiving our superpowers -- it is kind of funny how PC coddles us for 10 weeks and then drops us in the middle of nowhere. I am pretty excited about "defending the Constitution" -- as I swore to -- in Chitimba, though. I'm not really sure what that means, but by golly, I will make everyone here acknowledge that presidents must be over 35 years of age. Here's my amayi (host mom) with me at swearing-in:

The first week at site has been a challenge. My electricity hasn't come through yet -- my most optimistic guess is New Year's -- and so I've been cooking with charcoal. It's REALLY HARD to light charcoal without lighter fluid. There's a paraffin shortage in Malawi right now, so I've been consigning the environment to perdition and using plastic to light my stove. Essentially I've learned that I should start trying to light it about four hours before I actually want to eat. But! I'm looking forward to getting creative with the few ingredients Chitimba has to offer -- tomatoes, mangoes aplenty, rice, and a few onions. I bought wheat flour in Lilongwe, so tortillas are definitely in the offing. Meanwhile I've been embarking on some serious DIY projects: curtain sewing, shelf-building, path-paving. The workmanship isn't exactly exquisite, but nothing has fallen down yet. This is the beach that's about an 8-minute walk from my house.

And here's some pictures of the inside of my house. My bed used to be under the window with the blue curtain. Then it rained.

I tell you what, this rainy season means serious business. There is no glass in any of the windows in my house, so my books have their own little plastic shelter which will hopefully protect them. Everything else can just deal. On the plus side, rain means a couple fewer times I have to go to the borehole and carry water back on my head. I can carry about 15 liters now, but it sloshes everywhere. Yesterday I was trying to put a full bucket on top of a rolled-up chitenje (piece of fabric) on my head, and I kept knocking the chitenje off. My arms aren't quite long enough to lift the bucket from the top, but it didn't occur to me, because I am a dolt, that I could lift the bucket from the bottom. So instead what happened was that I made two iwes (children) who were laughing hysterically at my efforts come and help me. As they balanced the bucket on my head, though, the chitenje slipped, and they were instantly soaked. I felt bad about it, but it's so hot here that they probably enjoyed it. I know I spill so much water every time I carry a bucket that it's practically a bath.

School! Form 2 (sophomores) started this week, but Form 1s will have to wait until January, since we don't have their exam results yet and Christmas and New Year's are school holidays. I don't think anybody was prepared for the new school schedule, including the national exam people -- nobody can actually start on time because they don't know who has passed. So far my kids are learning poetic terms -- it's slow going, but it's on their exam, so hopefully now they can identify rhythm, rhyme, simile, metaphor, and alliteration. One of the best things about Chitumbuka (the language here) is that there's so much alliteration -- everything has to agree in a sentence, and the way you make things agree is by adding the same prefix. Everything's a tongue twister. It's kind of great.

On the whole, I am very excited to get going with the work I'm doing here. I'm sure that Chitimba will soon seem like home, and that one of these days I'll finish these stupid curtains. In the meantime, there's always swimming in the lake to keep me cool, and slightly less dirty.

Happy holidays! Keep me posted on your lives!