11 Months and Counting

We are almost at the year-mark now -- on September 27th, I will have been in Peace Corps Malawi for a year (minus a few weeks in America). Yikes!

Many things have happened since my last post. The most notable is Camp SKY 2010, the biggest Education sector project in Malawi. We hosted 68 campers, 8 junior counselors, 7 teachers, and a whole colony of cockroaches at Kasungu Teacher Training College for ten days. I am still recovering.

Camp SKY was a great reminder of what we are trying to do here. It was so nice to see the kids getting to be creative, work with art supplies, play games, have class discussions -- all these things that are standard elementary education in America but are so devastatingly absent here. I think I hadn't realised how very important these elements are in education before coming here and seeing an entire population whose intellectual growth is stunted. It turns out pipe cleaners do have a purpose.

I taught English, Cooking, and Drama. It was awesome to teach to a class of ONLY SEVENTEEN! Woo! We mostly did vocabulary strategies like Latin and Greek roots, context clues, etc. It was fun, and these kids are so impressive. In one period, reading the prologue to Romeo and Juliet, I asked for a synonym for 'grudge'. I got 'antagonism', 'hostility', 'animosity' and 'emnity'. This from kids whose parents are cassava farmers, who attend secondary school with at least fifty kids in the classroom, whose families have never owned a book. Amazing. Of course there were still a lot of 'Malawi, GET IT TOGETHER!' moments, like when visiting the Parliament building. We got to take the kids on a field trip to Lilongwe to see the brand-new Parliament and the airport. The Parliament building is a truly surreal exercise in cross-cultural exchange, since it was built and paid for by the Chinese government. There are Chinese characters all over everything, and the guard posts at the corners of the parking lot have decorative scrolls on the corners. There's also a pagoda in the adjacent park. It's weird.

The kids had a great time, though. As we left the building I heard a number of kids say that their new aspiration is to become an MP. They'll have to figure out the bathrooms first, however -- they were befuddled by the indoor plumbing. As every parent or teacher knows, bathroom breaks are essential, but ours took longer than usual because we had to demonstrate to each kid how to use the faucets and the liquid soap dispensers. We did not demonstrate the toilets, but this might have been a mistake, because one kid reached into the urinal trying to flush it. Ick.

We also got the first female Attorney General of Malawi to come speak, the chief of police in Lilongwe, and a whole bunch of other folks. Great fun. The kids had salsa dancing lessons, made Chinese dumplings and French crepes, had to run their own booths during a Carnival, performed Shakespearean monologues, built solar ovens, made compost piles, and all other kinds of fun activities. It was a great time, and I am very happy now that it is DONE and I can SLEEP.

Heading back to site tomorrow to continue working with my women's group. Things are moving along -- trying to get a grant to fix the borehole so they can make some kind of irrigation scheme, etc. I was very proud to be approached by the HBC (Home-Based Care) group of the village, all people living with HIV/AIDS, who wanted to start their own garden project. I hope that means that people are talking about the project and excited about its possiblities.

Off to figure out lunch in the city.... the possibility of cheese is making me drool. Thank you so much for everyone who gave money to Camp SKY and the wonderful travelers from PHPC who sent supplies -- I hope you know how much we, and the students, appreciate it. Thank you!!