Hallo! I am now in Karonga -- the site of Malawi's intermittent earthquakes, sweating like a pig, and typing under a monkey calendar in the Karonga Museum (home of the Malawisaurus!).
I've been faithfully watering weeds for two months now. My garden is mostly useful -- some herbs, some vegetables, but then there are three four-foot green parasites.
It's kind of funny how I got my garden together. The soil in Chitimba is not very good -- it's overfarmed, and it started out sandy and thin anyway. So I thought that I would go looking for some healthy black soil, full of nutrients, to mix in with the sand in my courtyard. I took my blue plastic basin and my long-handled hoe (long-handled versus short-handled is an important distinction in Malawi; if you're Northern and you use a short-handled hoe, well, you might as well wear shorts all day long for the amount of respect you'll get) and I went to my borehole, where I thought I remembered seeing some promising-looking stuff.
There were two women getting water and gossiping (both popular borehole activities).
"Hello!" I shouted, in Chitumbuka. "How did you wake?"
They responded with the usual reply: "I woke. Thank you. And you?"
"I also woke!" I said. "Now I am looking for some bodies to put in my garden! Can you tell me where I can get some bodies for my garden?"
I should explain here that the Chitumbuka word for soil - "mathipa" - sounds a lot like the word for bodies - "mathupi." Anyway, after some confusion, during which they probably thought this crazy white person was going to drag them by the hair to my house and inter them in the courtyard, they figured out what I was looking for and led me to a well-dug place in one of tiny remnants of jungle around the borehole. So I got a bunch of dirt (both in my basin and all over my clothes, naturally) and lugged it back to the house. I did, however, draw the line at carrying the grimy thing on my head. Standards must be met somewhere.
Then I had a brilliant idea. I am always stepping in cow or goat poo on my way to school, or in fact anytime I set foot outside my back door. Why not make my garden EVEN AWESOMER with this abundant resource? Thus I set out once again with my basin and my hoe to collect some gen-u-wine manure.
Strangely, the cows must have all been taking Immodium or something because there was no poop to be found. I scrounged around for a while in the area just north of my neighbors' house without success. (They probably thought I was scoping out their house for a robbery, because I kept darting from tree to tree, thinking I saw something promising on the ground, only to discover the inevitable anthill -- on the other hand, they're pretty used to me doing weird American things, so maybe they weren't fazed.) Then I heard the clarion call of a Malawian bovine from across the tarmac -- of course! The cows had simply moved to greener pastures.
When I got to the swampy field beside my landlord's carpentry shop I found a whole cow family -- a papa cow, a mama cow, and a baby cow. I kept my distance for a little while, but I couldn't find anything, so I inched closer. It seems wrong, as a Texas child, to admit this, but I really have no experience with cows, and they always seem kind of mean. So I crept up with my hoe, cooing,
"Who's a nice cow? You're a nice, nice cow. Now, give me your poop."
Of course, what the cow saw was a deranged muttering person with some kind of skin disease that rendered her pale creeping around her calf with some kind of sharp metal implement. And so it should not have surprised me that the mama cow bleated frantically and came charging at me, figurative guns blazing. I was two seconds away from a hoof print on my face.
I ran. I dropped the hoe and kept running until I got to the edge of the field, and when I turned back I saw two things: one, that the cow had stopped some distance away - she had come to the end of a literal as well as an emotional tether - and two, there were six men, including my landlord and my headmaster, watching me. They were greatly amused -- not only was I collecting feces for no apparent reason, but I had just run twenty yards to get away from a cow on a five-foot rope. It was not a good day for my dignity.
Nevertheless, I did eventually get enough manure to stick in my garden, and needless to say, that basin will never be used to wash dishes again. As for the weeds --
I started all my seeds in a wide plastic pot. Having a definitively pink thumb, or whatever the color-wheel opposite of green is, when I looked at the tiny plants a few weeks later, I had no idea what they were. I had not marked the portions of the pot at all, and even if I had, I would never have been able to tell an eggplant seedling from a dandelion. I tramped around my house, looking for plants similar to the ones in my pot, but I couldn't make any positive diagnosis. Therefore, when the time came to replant these little stems into the actual dirt, I played it safe. I planted all of them. And I watered them, picked bugs off them, and mulched them.
They're not ugly. In fact, one of them is providing a lovely trellis for my bean plant, which had just laughed merrily at the very idea of growing on the seatless chair I had given it. At the very least, they will be food for the worms in my compost heap. And I haven't entirely given up hope; they don't look like tomatoes, tomatillos, broccoli, eggplant, basil, or jalapenos, but they'd probably have to actually strangle me before I'd pull them up. They were a lot of work.
That's my garden. Up next: flowers!
Also, my mom suggested that I write up some idea of my daily schedule. Ergo:
5.30ish -- Wake up. Lie in bed for a while thinking about what kind of day it will be. I don't know why I bother because it's always the same kind of day: hot. When I've taken care of that, I get up, make coffee in my French press with water heated last night and kept slightly warmer than room temperature by my Thermos, and get breakfast (either instant oatmeal, or a piece of bread with peanut butter). Read in bed until school.
6.45 -- shout, "Blazes! I'm late!" This happens literally every day. Put on Pilgrim-type clothes, fill my Nalgene, take my anti-malarials, wash my face, etc etc. Walk to school (it might be more accurate to say "hike." I go down a muddy slope, through some tall grasses, across a creek full of tadpoles, and finally, along a dirt path.)
7.00 -- first class of the day. On Mondays and Wednesdays I don't teach first period, so I just bum around in the staff room pretending to do lesson plans for a while. Sometimes I actually do them. They always get done at some point during the school day - I usually have a period between classes, or I do them after all my classes. This is also when I rearrange the encyclopedias that the other librarian has passive-aggressively reordered, and when I do things like make posters titled "Pronoun Mania!".
1.00 -- School is officially over. Sometimes I leave early, sometimes late. Go home and have a snack, usually leftovers from the night before, or, if it's been a bad morning, one of my jealously hoarded Clif Bars.
2.30 -- Tuesdays and Thursdays at this time I go to school for afternoon stuff (either library or Girl Guides). Otherwise I generally sit around, either at home or at my headmaster's house. I have gone to my school's sports practices before (boys play football, girls play netball) but it's pretty boring so I don't usually do that. Also could go to the roadblock to buy some comestibles: tomatoes, eggs, soya pieces, and bread are the options. Also, at some point during the afternoon I have to do dishes from the night before and this morning (I just leave them to sit in water overnight, because it's always dark by the time I finish eating). Also have to get water from the borehole, collect firewood from under the mango tree or my neighbor's yard, sweep the house if the floors are too gross to stand, and sit in my chair for a while to justify its presence in Africa.
4.30 -- Sit on my front porch in my chair, reading and greeting the 1,000 people who pass by on their way to the borehole. It's become a bit of a ritual. I always see the same women going to get water for their and their husbands' baths, the same children sent for cooking water, the same old men going up not to the borehole but to another kind of watering hole, my neighbor's house, where they play bao and drink moonshine.
5.30 -- Start lighting a fire.
6.30 -- Achieve flame. Start cooking dinner. I have about three meals in my very cosmopolitan repertoire: curried lentils with rice, pasta with tomato sauce, and tortillas with beans (if I remembered to start soaking the beans in the morning) or soya pieces (if I didn't). Sometimes there are variations if, for example, I was too lazy to go buy tomatoes, and also if weevils count as a variation.
7.00 -- Eat romantic candlelit dinner by myself.
7.15 -- Take a bath, or if it's raining and therefore I didn't go to get water, resign myself to being smelly. Read or watch TV on my iPod, a glorious invention if there ever was one, sliced bread notwithstanding.
8.00ish -- Slime myself with insect repellent and go to sleep.
This time on the internet is probably costing a mint, so I'm signing off now. Send me emails!
Friday, March 19, 2010
Saturday, March 6, 2010
There is, apparently, a reason you're not supposed to wear contacts here.
I am now in Lilongwe for a couple of days, on medical hold on account of conjunctivitis. Yay! But this gives me a LOT of time to do the stupid internet things that I do in the States, and to post on this blog.
Since my last post, a couple of us have traveled far into Malawi's southern region, to the mysterious lands of Mwanza and Blantyre. We saw a MOVIE. In a THEATER. We also saw huge vats of Carlsberg at their brewery, delicious Indian food on our plates, Jordan's site and his new house, the termite tunnels at Jordan's site in Jordan's new house, and my glasses at the bottom of his pit latrine. Yes. I dropped them down the chim. Actually, they fell off of my face, bounced off the side, and into a 12-foot hole full of poop.
Malawi is full of miracles, however, and Jordan has actually recovered them! I don't really understand how this happened (I hope it didn't involve spelunking of any kind) but soon they will be back with me, never to enter a chim again. For now, though, I am blind, since I can't put my contacts in (conjuntivitis) and my glasses are in Mwanza.... it's definitely a challenge leaping over the Azungu Traps (read: gutters full of trash) around Lilongwe. At least if I fall in, I can blame it on my vision, and not on sheer stupidity. Unless dropping my glasses in the chim in the first place counts.
So! Being in Lilongwe means I missed the northern GAD (Gender and Development) meeting last night in Mzuzu, which was a bummer. I'm excited though, that we've decided to produce a Malawian Rosie the Riveter shirt to sell at 4th of July with the aim of raising funds for various projects. Right now I think the goal will be on a weekend camp(s) for both boys and girls which will focus on gender roles in the village. I personally am brainstorming on a Take Our Daughters to Work Day situation -- assigning village girls mentors in the city and getting them lodging/food etc. for a couple of days so they can see a professional woman in her environment. Still, obviously, in the idea stage, but I think it would be a lot of fun. What we really want now is to get GAD going, so our projects will be more sustainable -- if every year, PCVs have a bank account and an email and bylaws and all that stuff - the infrastructure - then they won't have to be reinventing the wheel every time they want to do a region-wide project. Hopefully! We'll see.
My eyes hurt from looking at the computer... more later!
Since my last post, a couple of us have traveled far into Malawi's southern region, to the mysterious lands of Mwanza and Blantyre. We saw a MOVIE. In a THEATER. We also saw huge vats of Carlsberg at their brewery, delicious Indian food on our plates, Jordan's site and his new house, the termite tunnels at Jordan's site in Jordan's new house, and my glasses at the bottom of his pit latrine. Yes. I dropped them down the chim. Actually, they fell off of my face, bounced off the side, and into a 12-foot hole full of poop.
Malawi is full of miracles, however, and Jordan has actually recovered them! I don't really understand how this happened (I hope it didn't involve spelunking of any kind) but soon they will be back with me, never to enter a chim again. For now, though, I am blind, since I can't put my contacts in (conjuntivitis) and my glasses are in Mwanza.... it's definitely a challenge leaping over the Azungu Traps (read: gutters full of trash) around Lilongwe. At least if I fall in, I can blame it on my vision, and not on sheer stupidity. Unless dropping my glasses in the chim in the first place counts.
So! Being in Lilongwe means I missed the northern GAD (Gender and Development) meeting last night in Mzuzu, which was a bummer. I'm excited though, that we've decided to produce a Malawian Rosie the Riveter shirt to sell at 4th of July with the aim of raising funds for various projects. Right now I think the goal will be on a weekend camp(s) for both boys and girls which will focus on gender roles in the village. I personally am brainstorming on a Take Our Daughters to Work Day situation -- assigning village girls mentors in the city and getting them lodging/food etc. for a couple of days so they can see a professional woman in her environment. Still, obviously, in the idea stage, but I think it would be a lot of fun. What we really want now is to get GAD going, so our projects will be more sustainable -- if every year, PCVs have a bank account and an email and bylaws and all that stuff - the infrastructure - then they won't have to be reinventing the wheel every time they want to do a region-wide project. Hopefully! We'll see.
My eyes hurt from looking at the computer... more later!
Saturday, February 27, 2010
IST!
We are now at the five-month mark and just finished with our In-Service Training! Wow. Tomorrow we all go to the airport to greet a new crew of Environment Volunteers. Very exciting.
IST was a great time! It was really nice to see our whole group; there were a couple I hadn't seen since early December. And I was reminded of all the amazing things that people are already doing -- five months in and Melissa's got her women's group sewing purses to sell for school fees, Elisabeth's working with a youth group, Will's got grand designs on the World Bank, the Teacher Development Facilitators have held a couple workshops, and so on. On a more mean-spirited note, it was good remember how much worse some other people have it. Jen and Kris, our awesome and hilarious married couple, have over a hundred kids in one classroom for both Form 1 and Form 2. Sheesh! And Jerrod and Haakon are both hours from the main road and thus any kind of reliable communication or transportation. But, the stalwarts they are, all mentioned above are dealing with these situations with way better attitudes than I would have. 52 in one class is more than enough for me.
IST did make me a little nervous about secondary projects, though. The time has come to really get going with those, and I'm still at a bit of a loss for what to do. But! Meantime, I've got plenty of teaching to keep me busy, and now our Education group is starting to prepare for Camp Sky, a two-week academic camp for high-achieving kids that PC Education Volunteers put up every year. I'm in charge of extra-curriculars, which means there will be a lot of AWESOME camp games, and a couple of workshops about nutrition, income-generating activities, and the like. I'm excited about it -- it will definitely be a lot of work, but I think it'll be great to show these kids that they can be part of an intellectual community, and that if they work hard, they can get somewhere. They're all coming from PCVs' sites, which means that probably one or two students from their villages pass the MSCE each year (the MSCE is the national exam that you have to pass if you want to go to university, go into civil service, or anything other than be a farmer, essentially). So we're going to have lots of professional Malawians come speak, and lots of activities, assuming all comes together by August. Gah.
Since my last post, we've had exams, which was its own insanity. We all give hand-written exams to one teacher, and then he types them on a typewriter and takes them to Khwawa (Will's site) to have them put through a duplicating machine. It's a gigantic mess and I now bow down to anyone who had to teach/work before computers were in general use. My kids did pretty well -- the standard pass rate here is 40%, regardless of the difficulty of the test or the teacher's preference, and about half of mine passed, which sounds terrible but is actually pretty good. Only 5 out of 52 passed their physics exam, if that gives you an idea. But a lot of mine passed! Even though some of their compositions are pretty funny. But it was very encouraging to see some of them that I didn't expect to do well actually getting the right answers.
In other news, I got stung by a scorpion! It was actually pretty funny. It hurt pretty badly, but now I have definitely won some street cred (if anyone who uses the phrase "street cred" can actually possess it). And generally the scorpions are very afraid of me and run away at the slightest movement. The termites are not. They are intense and they have discovered my firewood pile. Termite heaven! I did not realize that the big ones bite until I came here, but they do. During a lull in the afternoon I was poking the termite mound outside school with a stick (I'm not proud, but it's necessary to reveal this for the story) and a bunch of the girls who sleep in the old Form 1 classroom, and thus were there in the afternoon, got a huge kick out of this. After a couple of minutes I was ready to go back to grading exams, so I went back to my desk. Three girls followed me, laughing hysterically and waving their arms: their hands were COVERED in termites that had clamped on with their little red pincers. I was, naturally, slightly upset, until I realized that they were tricking me. The skin on their palms and fingers is so thick and dry from years of hoeing, carrying firewood, and so on that they couldn't feel a thing. Then I laughed, too, but I still made them get away from my desk. Because it was gross.
I recently sent a list to my lovely sister of some potential baby names that I've heard in Malawi, either in my own classroom or from other Volunteers, and I think I should share it here. Enjoy.
Common Malawian names: Precious, Happy, Blessings (or Madalitso), and Problems (or Masuzgo, yes, it's terrible).
Less common names:
Don't Forget
Ask
Harvester Clever
Golden
Famous
Dinner
Alpha and Omega (one child, but not an only child)
We Were Happy
Lose, like the flower. Malawians often mix up R's and L's, and thus...
Frolence
Dolothy
Dollah
Werrington
and Flank.
I meant to bring my memory cards with me to Lilongwe to post some pictures of my site, but like an idiot, I forgot. Sorry! I won't make any promises about next time, because I am obviously unreliable, but I will try to remember!
Monday we are heading south to Blantyre, where there is a MOVIE THEATER, and, rumor has it, ice cream. Wish us luck in our quest.
IST was a great time! It was really nice to see our whole group; there were a couple I hadn't seen since early December. And I was reminded of all the amazing things that people are already doing -- five months in and Melissa's got her women's group sewing purses to sell for school fees, Elisabeth's working with a youth group, Will's got grand designs on the World Bank, the Teacher Development Facilitators have held a couple workshops, and so on. On a more mean-spirited note, it was good remember how much worse some other people have it. Jen and Kris, our awesome and hilarious married couple, have over a hundred kids in one classroom for both Form 1 and Form 2. Sheesh! And Jerrod and Haakon are both hours from the main road and thus any kind of reliable communication or transportation. But, the stalwarts they are, all mentioned above are dealing with these situations with way better attitudes than I would have. 52 in one class is more than enough for me.
IST did make me a little nervous about secondary projects, though. The time has come to really get going with those, and I'm still at a bit of a loss for what to do. But! Meantime, I've got plenty of teaching to keep me busy, and now our Education group is starting to prepare for Camp Sky, a two-week academic camp for high-achieving kids that PC Education Volunteers put up every year. I'm in charge of extra-curriculars, which means there will be a lot of AWESOME camp games, and a couple of workshops about nutrition, income-generating activities, and the like. I'm excited about it -- it will definitely be a lot of work, but I think it'll be great to show these kids that they can be part of an intellectual community, and that if they work hard, they can get somewhere. They're all coming from PCVs' sites, which means that probably one or two students from their villages pass the MSCE each year (the MSCE is the national exam that you have to pass if you want to go to university, go into civil service, or anything other than be a farmer, essentially). So we're going to have lots of professional Malawians come speak, and lots of activities, assuming all comes together by August. Gah.
Since my last post, we've had exams, which was its own insanity. We all give hand-written exams to one teacher, and then he types them on a typewriter and takes them to Khwawa (Will's site) to have them put through a duplicating machine. It's a gigantic mess and I now bow down to anyone who had to teach/work before computers were in general use. My kids did pretty well -- the standard pass rate here is 40%, regardless of the difficulty of the test or the teacher's preference, and about half of mine passed, which sounds terrible but is actually pretty good. Only 5 out of 52 passed their physics exam, if that gives you an idea. But a lot of mine passed! Even though some of their compositions are pretty funny. But it was very encouraging to see some of them that I didn't expect to do well actually getting the right answers.
In other news, I got stung by a scorpion! It was actually pretty funny. It hurt pretty badly, but now I have definitely won some street cred (if anyone who uses the phrase "street cred" can actually possess it). And generally the scorpions are very afraid of me and run away at the slightest movement. The termites are not. They are intense and they have discovered my firewood pile. Termite heaven! I did not realize that the big ones bite until I came here, but they do. During a lull in the afternoon I was poking the termite mound outside school with a stick (I'm not proud, but it's necessary to reveal this for the story) and a bunch of the girls who sleep in the old Form 1 classroom, and thus were there in the afternoon, got a huge kick out of this. After a couple of minutes I was ready to go back to grading exams, so I went back to my desk. Three girls followed me, laughing hysterically and waving their arms: their hands were COVERED in termites that had clamped on with their little red pincers. I was, naturally, slightly upset, until I realized that they were tricking me. The skin on their palms and fingers is so thick and dry from years of hoeing, carrying firewood, and so on that they couldn't feel a thing. Then I laughed, too, but I still made them get away from my desk. Because it was gross.
I recently sent a list to my lovely sister of some potential baby names that I've heard in Malawi, either in my own classroom or from other Volunteers, and I think I should share it here. Enjoy.
Common Malawian names: Precious, Happy, Blessings (or Madalitso), and Problems (or Masuzgo, yes, it's terrible).
Less common names:
Don't Forget
Ask
Harvester Clever
Golden
Famous
Dinner
Alpha and Omega (one child, but not an only child)
We Were Happy
Lose, like the flower. Malawians often mix up R's and L's, and thus...
Frolence
Dolothy
Dollah
Werrington
and Flank.
I meant to bring my memory cards with me to Lilongwe to post some pictures of my site, but like an idiot, I forgot. Sorry! I won't make any promises about next time, because I am obviously unreliable, but I will try to remember!
Monday we are heading south to Blantyre, where there is a MOVIE THEATER, and, rumor has it, ice cream. Wish us luck in our quest.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Buckets are the New Sinks
My training group has now been in Malawi for four months! It seems like much longer, because we've been so busy. I am in my sixth week of teaching, and settling in nicely, I think.
School is going well! My Form 2s (sophomores) just finished a pretty gruesome Roald Dahl story -- it required explaining taxidermy (the story was 'The Landlady', if you're curious) which was definitely news to them, but I think they appreciated it. Nothing like blood and guts to get the kids reading. On Thursday all fifty or so of them checked out books from our library, my very first project at site! I'm pretty proud -- we have maybe 500 books, organized into Junior Fiction, Adult Fiction, Academic Textbooks, Academic Workbooks, Teacher Resources, Periodicals, Reference, Biography, Sociology, Poetry & Drama, Anthologies, and History. Whew! It was a lot of work getting it all cleaned, alphabetized, labeled, categorized, alphabetized, indexed, and listed, but it's almost completely done! Yay! I just hope the students use it as much as possible. We've had training sessions now on How to Use a Dictionary, How to Use and Encyclopedia (we have 2 incomplete sets - an incredible resource for a Malawian school), How to Use an Index and Please Don't Totally Screw Up the Books. My Form 2s now have 3 weeks to write a book report. Only one of them has ever read a novel before.
A couple of kids got Nancy Drews, or Babysitters Club-type series books, but I personally was most amused by the cadre of popular boys who all wanted love stories. They asked me to pull out some romances for them, and the first book officially checked out from our library was a pink-covered, heart-adorned, cherub-gamboling paperback called Forever Angels #4: Ashley's Love Angel, which was checked out by a very sturdy class monitor who the same day got in trouble for fighting (the fight was, surprisingly, unrelated to his book choice). It's nice that these kids really are free from some of the gender stereotypes we have in America, but it did make me laugh.
In Form 1 History, we've finished the Development of Man and spent a little bit of time on Ancient Egypt -- they had NEVER HEARD of the pyramids, thank goodness we have some old National Geographics so I could show them pictures -- and on Friday, for the unit on the ancient kingdom of Ghana, I had quite possibly my proudest moment as a teacher. Since they seemed to be having some trouble understanding exactly how the kingdom became wealthy with so few natural resources of its own, I made them have Trading Day. Half of the kids were Ghanians, half traders from the middle east, with one brave volunteer as King of Ghana standing in the middle of the class. They were each given seven dinars (pieces of paper), and materials to trade, depending on where they were from (gold, salt, ostrich feathers, gemstones, pottery, and silver, all represented by various trash from around my house, like foil). They had to pay export and import taxes to the king every time they crossed the 'border.' The kid with the most money at the end won some M&Ms -- they were very motivated by the promise of American candy. I expected this to all blow up in my face, to be unable to make the kids understand the rules, and even if they did understand the rules, for them to not understand the connection to Ghana. I expected a 40-minute period of free-for-all mayhem punctuated by foil missiles hurtling through the air and and 50 kids screaming in Chitumbuka. But... THEY GOT IT. I'm not sure anybody who is not in the education system in Malawi can understand how proud I am of this. THEY GOT IT! The girl who won had turned her 7 dinars and two pieces of salt into 43 dinars and one ostrich feather. It was the best imaginable use for those M&Ms, and I have never been so happy to give away chocolate.
At home, I am getting better and better at carrying water (the #1 most difficult thing in Malawi) and lighting a fire (the #2 most difficult thing in Malawi). I'm still not good -- I still, like the weenie American I am, use TWO HANDS to steady the bucket of water on my head, unlike most Malawian women -- but I'm getting better. In no time at all I fully expect to be jumping hurdles with 50 litres intact on my head. The water is even more necessary now than it has recently been, since Malawi is suffering a drought, especially in the south. This is now the rainy season, meaning typically the one time of year when everyone can eat regularly, but the drought means that soon a lot of Malawi will be starving. Officials are just hoping that it breaks soon, and unofficially I am hoping so too, both for my neighbors (excuse me, neighbours, this is a former British colony, after all) and my own garden, as well as an end to the RIDICULOUS HEAT. My garden is surviving okay though so far -- my beans are growing so fast I half expect a giant to climb down them any minute -- and though my cilantro has all passed on to the Great Garden In the Sky, my many squash plants are thriving. Just pray for the basil to make it through.
ALSO -- new environment people coming soon -- I don't know if anybody is reading this who wants packing advice, but before I left I definitely wished somebody had posted some on his/her blog, so here you are.
1. Tent and sleeping bag. Bring them! You will want them. Every time you travel and stay in a city, it's much, much cheaper to camp than to rent a bed (sometimes free since you're Peace Corps). Also, when you're visiting other volunteers, you'll want something to sleep on, especially if there's a lot of you in one place and there's not room for everybody in the house. I would also definitely consider a sleeping pad.
2. Bring as much as you want. A lot of PC people say, "don't bring much." I disagree. The only time you'll have to lug all your own stuff is when you're going to Staging. When you get to Malawi, there will be people at the airport to help you, and you'll never have to move it all again by yourself until you move to site, when you move it from the College Storage Room into the back of a truck (maybe 15 feet) and then into your front door. So don't be afraid to bring a lot. Also, I know the limit is technically 80 lbs, and who knows if you'll have the same situation at the airport, but my luggage was never weighed at any point in time. So if you want to live life on the edge it might be worth risking bringing an extra couple pounds.
3. Pillow. Peace Corps does not give you one, which is weird, since they give you a mattress and sheets. So I'm really happy I brought mine. Definitely worthwhile.
4. Camping chair. Likewise. Comfortable furniture is hard to come by and IMPOSSIBLE to transport. Obviously, not essential, but I sit in mine every day and everyone is jealous and threatens to steal it. Really.
5. First Aid stuff. You don't need it. Peace Corps gives you a LOT of stuff, and a LOT that is not on that official list on the website (including broad-spectrum antibiotics and other prescription business). I would, however, bring a hefty supply of any prescription drugs yu take regularly, because otherwise you have to rely on Peace Corps a)being willing to give you the same one you're taking now and b) having it in stock all the time.
6. Seeds! You can get tomatoes, beans, and a few other things here, but it's nice to have herbs and other vegetable seeds you can't get, like eggplant, carrots, or spinach.
7. Computer/external hard drive. We've all been trading music and TV shows -- sorry, International Copyright Laws -- and it's very nice to have some new things. Also, I am using my computer to do my school's registration, which is required to be computerized, despite the fact that most Malawian schools do not have electricity, much less computers. So you'll probably use it for other things too, besides mindless entertainment.
8. Other stuff I'm really glad I brought: a good kitchen knife, school supplies (markers especially), cards, my contacts (you're not supposed to wear them, but try watching your feet while carrying water on your head while wearing glasses, it's impossible), sunglasses, cheese packets from macaroni & cheese (pasta is widely available), Clif Bars, sports bras, good non-stick frying pan, headlamp (ESSENTIAL), Tupperware.
9. Stuff I wish I had brought: travel-size toiletries (you really want to lighten your load when you have to walk a couple miles to get to your campsite, plus shampoo, toothpaste and things are very easy to find -- but no contact solution in the entire country), more good knives, cumin, a spare headlamp, a solar charger.
10. Stuff I brought and probably should not have: socks (I never wear them, ever), silverware.
I'll try and keep thinking of helpful things. And about clothes, for girls -- really, they're serious about the skirt-length thing. I can wear skirts that go just below my knees, but no shorter, and I am actually at a pretty liberal-minded site. I do wear trousers at site, but not jeans, because they are too tight, and definitely not to school. Also, go for things that dry fast. I brought a long knit dress that I really like, but it takes so long to dry when I wash it that I just never wear it. I do wear tank tops, especially because my site is so hot, but I still can't wear them to school, and again, I live in a pretty liberal place, so I think maybe farther away from the lake even tank tops would be too much. All that aside, you can wear whatever you want in Lilongwe, Mzuzu or Blantyre! They are impervious to Azungu Shock in the cities.
That's all for now. Wish me luck with exams in two weeks, and keep on mailing me things! I'm sorry if I don't respond -- but I'm sending Positive Thought Waves in your direction(s).
School is going well! My Form 2s (sophomores) just finished a pretty gruesome Roald Dahl story -- it required explaining taxidermy (the story was 'The Landlady', if you're curious) which was definitely news to them, but I think they appreciated it. Nothing like blood and guts to get the kids reading. On Thursday all fifty or so of them checked out books from our library, my very first project at site! I'm pretty proud -- we have maybe 500 books, organized into Junior Fiction, Adult Fiction, Academic Textbooks, Academic Workbooks, Teacher Resources, Periodicals, Reference, Biography, Sociology, Poetry & Drama, Anthologies, and History. Whew! It was a lot of work getting it all cleaned, alphabetized, labeled, categorized, alphabetized, indexed, and listed, but it's almost completely done! Yay! I just hope the students use it as much as possible. We've had training sessions now on How to Use a Dictionary, How to Use and Encyclopedia (we have 2 incomplete sets - an incredible resource for a Malawian school), How to Use an Index and Please Don't Totally Screw Up the Books. My Form 2s now have 3 weeks to write a book report. Only one of them has ever read a novel before.
A couple of kids got Nancy Drews, or Babysitters Club-type series books, but I personally was most amused by the cadre of popular boys who all wanted love stories. They asked me to pull out some romances for them, and the first book officially checked out from our library was a pink-covered, heart-adorned, cherub-gamboling paperback called Forever Angels #4: Ashley's Love Angel, which was checked out by a very sturdy class monitor who the same day got in trouble for fighting (the fight was, surprisingly, unrelated to his book choice). It's nice that these kids really are free from some of the gender stereotypes we have in America, but it did make me laugh.
In Form 1 History, we've finished the Development of Man and spent a little bit of time on Ancient Egypt -- they had NEVER HEARD of the pyramids, thank goodness we have some old National Geographics so I could show them pictures -- and on Friday, for the unit on the ancient kingdom of Ghana, I had quite possibly my proudest moment as a teacher. Since they seemed to be having some trouble understanding exactly how the kingdom became wealthy with so few natural resources of its own, I made them have Trading Day. Half of the kids were Ghanians, half traders from the middle east, with one brave volunteer as King of Ghana standing in the middle of the class. They were each given seven dinars (pieces of paper), and materials to trade, depending on where they were from (gold, salt, ostrich feathers, gemstones, pottery, and silver, all represented by various trash from around my house, like foil). They had to pay export and import taxes to the king every time they crossed the 'border.' The kid with the most money at the end won some M&Ms -- they were very motivated by the promise of American candy. I expected this to all blow up in my face, to be unable to make the kids understand the rules, and even if they did understand the rules, for them to not understand the connection to Ghana. I expected a 40-minute period of free-for-all mayhem punctuated by foil missiles hurtling through the air and and 50 kids screaming in Chitumbuka. But... THEY GOT IT. I'm not sure anybody who is not in the education system in Malawi can understand how proud I am of this. THEY GOT IT! The girl who won had turned her 7 dinars and two pieces of salt into 43 dinars and one ostrich feather. It was the best imaginable use for those M&Ms, and I have never been so happy to give away chocolate.
At home, I am getting better and better at carrying water (the #1 most difficult thing in Malawi) and lighting a fire (the #2 most difficult thing in Malawi). I'm still not good -- I still, like the weenie American I am, use TWO HANDS to steady the bucket of water on my head, unlike most Malawian women -- but I'm getting better. In no time at all I fully expect to be jumping hurdles with 50 litres intact on my head. The water is even more necessary now than it has recently been, since Malawi is suffering a drought, especially in the south. This is now the rainy season, meaning typically the one time of year when everyone can eat regularly, but the drought means that soon a lot of Malawi will be starving. Officials are just hoping that it breaks soon, and unofficially I am hoping so too, both for my neighbors (excuse me, neighbours, this is a former British colony, after all) and my own garden, as well as an end to the RIDICULOUS HEAT. My garden is surviving okay though so far -- my beans are growing so fast I half expect a giant to climb down them any minute -- and though my cilantro has all passed on to the Great Garden In the Sky, my many squash plants are thriving. Just pray for the basil to make it through.
ALSO -- new environment people coming soon -- I don't know if anybody is reading this who wants packing advice, but before I left I definitely wished somebody had posted some on his/her blog, so here you are.
1. Tent and sleeping bag. Bring them! You will want them. Every time you travel and stay in a city, it's much, much cheaper to camp than to rent a bed (sometimes free since you're Peace Corps). Also, when you're visiting other volunteers, you'll want something to sleep on, especially if there's a lot of you in one place and there's not room for everybody in the house. I would also definitely consider a sleeping pad.
2. Bring as much as you want. A lot of PC people say, "don't bring much." I disagree. The only time you'll have to lug all your own stuff is when you're going to Staging. When you get to Malawi, there will be people at the airport to help you, and you'll never have to move it all again by yourself until you move to site, when you move it from the College Storage Room into the back of a truck (maybe 15 feet) and then into your front door. So don't be afraid to bring a lot. Also, I know the limit is technically 80 lbs, and who knows if you'll have the same situation at the airport, but my luggage was never weighed at any point in time. So if you want to live life on the edge it might be worth risking bringing an extra couple pounds.
3. Pillow. Peace Corps does not give you one, which is weird, since they give you a mattress and sheets. So I'm really happy I brought mine. Definitely worthwhile.
4. Camping chair. Likewise. Comfortable furniture is hard to come by and IMPOSSIBLE to transport. Obviously, not essential, but I sit in mine every day and everyone is jealous and threatens to steal it. Really.
5. First Aid stuff. You don't need it. Peace Corps gives you a LOT of stuff, and a LOT that is not on that official list on the website (including broad-spectrum antibiotics and other prescription business). I would, however, bring a hefty supply of any prescription drugs yu take regularly, because otherwise you have to rely on Peace Corps a)being willing to give you the same one you're taking now and b) having it in stock all the time.
6. Seeds! You can get tomatoes, beans, and a few other things here, but it's nice to have herbs and other vegetable seeds you can't get, like eggplant, carrots, or spinach.
7. Computer/external hard drive. We've all been trading music and TV shows -- sorry, International Copyright Laws -- and it's very nice to have some new things. Also, I am using my computer to do my school's registration, which is required to be computerized, despite the fact that most Malawian schools do not have electricity, much less computers. So you'll probably use it for other things too, besides mindless entertainment.
8. Other stuff I'm really glad I brought: a good kitchen knife, school supplies (markers especially), cards, my contacts (you're not supposed to wear them, but try watching your feet while carrying water on your head while wearing glasses, it's impossible), sunglasses, cheese packets from macaroni & cheese (pasta is widely available), Clif Bars, sports bras, good non-stick frying pan, headlamp (ESSENTIAL), Tupperware.
9. Stuff I wish I had brought: travel-size toiletries (you really want to lighten your load when you have to walk a couple miles to get to your campsite, plus shampoo, toothpaste and things are very easy to find -- but no contact solution in the entire country), more good knives, cumin, a spare headlamp, a solar charger.
10. Stuff I brought and probably should not have: socks (I never wear them, ever), silverware.
I'll try and keep thinking of helpful things. And about clothes, for girls -- really, they're serious about the skirt-length thing. I can wear skirts that go just below my knees, but no shorter, and I am actually at a pretty liberal-minded site. I do wear trousers at site, but not jeans, because they are too tight, and definitely not to school. Also, go for things that dry fast. I brought a long knit dress that I really like, but it takes so long to dry when I wash it that I just never wear it. I do wear tank tops, especially because my site is so hot, but I still can't wear them to school, and again, I live in a pretty liberal place, so I think maybe farther away from the lake even tank tops would be too much. All that aside, you can wear whatever you want in Lilongwe, Mzuzu or Blantyre! They are impervious to Azungu Shock in the cities.
That's all for now. Wish me luck with exams in two weeks, and keep on mailing me things! I'm sorry if I don't respond -- but I'm sending Positive Thought Waves in your direction(s).
Saturday, December 19, 2009
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!
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!
Friday, November 27, 2009
At long last...
Happy belated Thanksgiving everyone/anyone who reads this! I am in Lilongwe, waiting for PC transport back to Dedza, about an hour south of here. Yesterday I arrived in the capital from site visit, which means I have spent about 30 hours on a bus in the past 6 days. So far, it seems worth it -- my site is gorgeous. It's at Chitimba, on the border of Rumphi and Karonga district. I traveled there with my headmaster, Chance, who was gracious enough to let me stay in his house during my visit. And then I got to see my new house and explore around Chitimba. The house is enormous. Visitors are always welcome. AND I have electricity! So I lucked out. No running water though. But the electricity is especially welcome, because it means I can have a fan. It's really really hot. It's about a 5 minute walk to the beach, and I have plans for some beachside ukulele-ing.
Funny story: so I was wondering what Malawians wear to go swimming, and I asked my headmaster. He said, simply, "Pants." Naturally I thought, that makes sense. Malawi is a very conservative country (I'm supposed to wear skirts below the knee at all times), and I don't think people have the income to buy scuba suits. I was forgetting, however, that this Malawian conservatism doesn't always follow my American logic, and that, more importantly, "pants" in Malawi means underpants. The next day I wanted to go into the lake, so my headmaster's lovely wife went with me. We got to the sand and I took off my wrap, revealing my "sturdy one-piece" that the packing list had instructed us to bring. The headmaster's wife looked at me, laughed, and promptly stripped down to her undies. Malawi is a confusing place sometimes.
So for a quick sum-up of the two months I've been here:
We've been in PST, or Pre-Service Training, which means we are not officially Volunteers yet. We will become Volunteers on Dec. 9th. So my training class of 20 has been having a lot of language classes, a lot of technical preparation, and a lot of excitement when the mail arrives. Speaking of which, I have a new mailing address! It's on the sidebar. So we had homestay for 6 weeks, where we stayed with village families and taught at the local school. It was an adventure, mostly because of the lack of communication ability. My family spoke nearly no English, and my Chichewa is not quite up to par, so there were some funny moments. I taught Form 1 (freshman) English at the Katsekaminga Community Day Secondary School -- their essays were, at times, hilarious, and at times, very impressive for kids who have never owned a book. [Sidebar: I'm definitely looking forward to working on the library in Chitimba -- there's a bunch of books that a previous Volunteer got sent to the school, but right now the kids can't access them because they're not organized and they're all in the staff room, where the students are not allowed to go. It is strange to be allowed in the staff room, actually -- a lot of my students will be my age or possibly older, since often they break off in the middle of the school year to help with the farming or other work, and then finish the following year.]
After homestay was over, which was both sad and relief -- it was hard to never decide what was happening to me, but my family was incredible -- we had a week back at the College of Forestry. We got our bikes (they are hardcore), went to Ed's, the bar down the street, hung out a lot, and forgot a lot of the language we'd learned in homestay. It was a good week. Up next: language intensive, which for us Chitumbuka speakers is in Rumphi boma (boma = city). Then, we're back in Dedza for a few more technical wrap-up things, and then it's off to site! Then I'll start teaching English to freshmen, sophomores, and juniors, in classes of about 50. Yikes.
It's definitely exciting.
Should roll out now, but I hope I can post again soon, and I miss you all!
Funny story: so I was wondering what Malawians wear to go swimming, and I asked my headmaster. He said, simply, "Pants." Naturally I thought, that makes sense. Malawi is a very conservative country (I'm supposed to wear skirts below the knee at all times), and I don't think people have the income to buy scuba suits. I was forgetting, however, that this Malawian conservatism doesn't always follow my American logic, and that, more importantly, "pants" in Malawi means underpants. The next day I wanted to go into the lake, so my headmaster's lovely wife went with me. We got to the sand and I took off my wrap, revealing my "sturdy one-piece" that the packing list had instructed us to bring. The headmaster's wife looked at me, laughed, and promptly stripped down to her undies. Malawi is a confusing place sometimes.
So for a quick sum-up of the two months I've been here:
We've been in PST, or Pre-Service Training, which means we are not officially Volunteers yet. We will become Volunteers on Dec. 9th. So my training class of 20 has been having a lot of language classes, a lot of technical preparation, and a lot of excitement when the mail arrives. Speaking of which, I have a new mailing address! It's on the sidebar. So we had homestay for 6 weeks, where we stayed with village families and taught at the local school. It was an adventure, mostly because of the lack of communication ability. My family spoke nearly no English, and my Chichewa is not quite up to par, so there were some funny moments. I taught Form 1 (freshman) English at the Katsekaminga Community Day Secondary School -- their essays were, at times, hilarious, and at times, very impressive for kids who have never owned a book. [Sidebar: I'm definitely looking forward to working on the library in Chitimba -- there's a bunch of books that a previous Volunteer got sent to the school, but right now the kids can't access them because they're not organized and they're all in the staff room, where the students are not allowed to go. It is strange to be allowed in the staff room, actually -- a lot of my students will be my age or possibly older, since often they break off in the middle of the school year to help with the farming or other work, and then finish the following year.]
After homestay was over, which was both sad and relief -- it was hard to never decide what was happening to me, but my family was incredible -- we had a week back at the College of Forestry. We got our bikes (they are hardcore), went to Ed's, the bar down the street, hung out a lot, and forgot a lot of the language we'd learned in homestay. It was a good week. Up next: language intensive, which for us Chitumbuka speakers is in Rumphi boma (boma = city). Then, we're back in Dedza for a few more technical wrap-up things, and then it's off to site! Then I'll start teaching English to freshmen, sophomores, and juniors, in classes of about 50. Yikes.
It's definitely exciting.
Should roll out now, but I hope I can post again soon, and I miss you all!
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