Down come the rains... for the next four months

My back yard in July...

... and December.

We planted about 200 trees around the school grounds at the end of the term. Above, a row of jatropha, and also papaya, guava, acacia, and more.

The primary school was under water for a few days.
Eunice and Shameem often come by in the evenings to hang out on my porch, draw, and tell stories.

We added a map of Malawi to the geography classroom in September.

Two items for your reading pleasure

Currently in bloom.

Bats escape the heat of the tin roof. Notice the one with vampire fangs.

But first, a weather update: November is the height of hot season in Salima. It is like living in a dog’s mouth.

My water consumption has quadrupled and still I barely ever have to pee. Every inch of my body is constantly slimy. Mangoes are in season, and I am up to six a day. I have taken up weekend residence at the lake with Sally. It is HOT.

***

Once again, I am typing exams for the end of term. Last week, one of the teachers submitted the following story as a Reading Comprehension passage:

Once upon a time there lived a woman named Mbereka-Miti (“mother of heads”), who was married to a man called Tate-Miti (“father of heads”). When Mbereka-Miti became pregnant for the first time she gave birth to a living head. Annoyed at this, she killed it and threw it into the bush. But the same thing happened over and over again, six times in all. On the seventh occasion she decided not to kill the head but to keep it, as she would probably never have a normal child.

Now the head possessed all the normal faculties: two eyes, two ears, a nose, and a mouth. It could see, hear, smell, eat and talk. The one thing it could not do, however, was walk, for it had no legs. When it came of age, Mbereka-Miti put it in a basket and, together, with her husband, set out on a journey to look for a girl who would be willing to become a wife.

They went from village to village and saw lots of girls, but no one of them wanted to marry the head. Here they were received with insults, there people chased them away or cruelly beat them. But they doggedly went on and in the end found a girl who said she would marry the head. Her name was Matola-tola, that is “she who picks up anything.”

The girl went along with them, together with her younger brother, and they and the head were given a house of their own. The boy and the head shared a room while the girl had one to herself.

It sounds incredible, but during the night the head would change into a European, who moved through the house suddenly ablaze with electric lights and furnished in the most lavish manner, the way Europeans like it. Now the little boy, waking up one night, happened to see this, and the next morning secretly told his sister. She would not believe him and told him he had been dreaming. But the boy said he would tie a string to his ear so that when it happened again he could wake her up by pulling it.

Night came and when the events repeated themselves the boy managed to wake up his sister, who was able to see everything for herself. The head was still in its basket, but as long as the European moved about, it looked lifeless like a wooden mask.

The girl and her brother now made a plan. They decided that, on the next occasion, the boy would get hold of the white man while the girl smashed the head to pieces. Night came and everything went according to plan. The white man could no longer change back into a head and everything in the house stayed as it had been during the night. There were lovely chairs and tables, a couch, a refrigerator, a TV set. The girl changed into a white woman, her brother into a white boy, and even Mbereka-Miti and her husband became white people.

At day break, the whole village flocked to the house, everybody exclaiming in surprise. The girls who had refused to marry the head and who had even mocked it were now green with envy. Some tried to undo their mistake by using witchcraft against the family, but failed, as whites cannot be bewitched.

(Adapted from: “An Anthology of Malawian Literature for Junior Secondary.”)

***

Lastly, a gem from a Peace Corps magazine’s “Achievements of Our Community” section a few months ago.

For the past nine years *** S*** has intentionally lived his life without using money. He has spiritual reasons for avoiding any form of currency, but he also does it as a statement against a system he believes is corrupt. S*** lives in a cave, which holds the few things he owns. He finds everything else he needs, including food and clothing, in trash receptacles in Moab, Utah.

I go to a funeral

I’ve been to two funerals in Malawi, both in the last month or so. This number is pretty low, another difference I can chalk up to living in town instead of the village. In the village, all business stops and everyone goes to a funeral. Here in town, life carries on.

In September a seven-year-old girl at the adjacent primary school crossed the road after school and was hit by the District Commissioner’s car. The next day, I went to the funeral. The men sat separately from the women on the dusty ground around the thatched-roof house of the little girl. Everyone was very quiet. Sometimes women would break out wailing, but mostly we just sat, cross-legged and hushed, baking in the sun, looking at the small coffin. Her little friends stared at it fidgeting in their pink and green school uniforms. Eventually, a sort of service began: a man stood and told what happened, a representative from the District Education Office offered his condolences, a representative from the District Commissioner’s office did the same. No one seemed angry when he spoke. A family member spoke again. Later, I asked what was said and was told: this is God’s will. Dressed in white, the men of the dead child’s family stood before the coffin, maybe they were facing Mecca, and chanted Allahu Akbar. They sang soft sad songs. And then we parted our sea, and the men carried Ayisha through the crowd, away to the graveyard.

I go to another funeral

The school watchman, Mr. Ngoma, passed away suddenly from pneumonia last week. He was, as you might remember, charged briefly with my own security after The Burglary Incident and we had a friendly relationship that mostly consisted of nodding, saying thank you repeatedly, and laughing. I was sad, but more in sympathy for my new watchman, Mr. Ngoma’s brother, Ernest.
Classes were cancelled and the entire staff piled onto the back of a large lorrie, along with a stack of firewood and maize sacks and buckets, for a bumpy ride to Khombedza, the watchman’s village a few miles north up the lakeshore road. We arrived to find men and women wailing outside of the widow’s house and, very briefly, we stepped inside to pay our respect. Groups had come from villages all around and established their day’s territory to cook and eat. The women teachers from my school did the same, setting a series of fires to begin preparing a vat of nsima and various ndiwo (relishes)—the usual suspects: cabbage, tomato, goat, usipa. The men disappeared somewhere (presumably to the funeral service) and reappeared only hours later to eat and head home. As it happened, none of the female teachers left to attend the service; they spent the whole day cooking and laughing at my efforts to help. “I don’t know if you noticed, but everyone was laughing at you when you carried water on your head,” one of the teachers told me the next day, sincerely thinking I might not have noticed two hundred people doubled over in laughter at my expense. Ha. Scorched by a day of sun and full of nsima, we loaded the lorrie and headed back to Salima.

Ups:

My Dad came to visit a few weeks ago, and despite one rough night in a hot, cramped hostel, he seemed to enjoy seeing my Malawi. We swam in the lake, staked out some wild animals, and stationed ourselves directly in front of the shiny oscillating fan he purchased after suffering one night of Salima’s stagnant and sultry air. I certainly enjoyed his company, though it has made the weeks since his departure something like post-Christmas blues. Fortunately, I have the fan for my solace.

Sally’s birthday was this weekend, on Halloween, so we enjoyed cake and good company at Senga Bay. It is good to have her in the neighborhood.

In September, with leftover supplies from the World Map Project, we painted a map of Malawi next to the bigger map, and it came out pretty well if I do say so.

I’m still teaching Life Skills and next week we’re showing the whole school a made-in-Malawi movie about decision-making that I think they’ll really like.

In October, Elisabeth and I visited Jerrod’s school in Ehehleni to lead a two-day literature workshop. His house is five miles down a dusty dirt road, sitting at the end of a path on a plateau looking out over Zambia. Serene. And quiet. I have to admit I had site envy. On the first morning, Elisabeth and I led a long and entertaining sexual health class with the Form 2 and 4 girls, who came up with some pretty creative questions for the Q and A session. The next day I woke up with a runny cold and hacked my way through the workshop; still it was better to be sick in good company. We ate delicious meals, baked lemon bread, and watched stars appear in the big big sky.

And Downs

At work, some of my projects feel like they are stagnating. Waiting on decisions. Going to unproductive meetings. Having an Action Plan meeting to schedule the next Action Plan meeting. Cancelling classes because of National Education Day. At the start of the term, I was excited to learn that my schools wanted to start organizing cluster teacher development activities (but wasn’t I already doing that?); somehow, though, we could afford only one one-day workshop this term since the bulk of the school-contributed funds was spent on Fanta refreshments during the five(!) planning meetings.

I keep waiting for the fog to lift, and if the past is any indication, it will eventually. So this week I am waiting for that Malawi magic.

A few photos:

Burgled! A Chicken’s Karmic Revenge Or...Fight or Flight II: Adrenaline, My B.F.F.

Gentle Reader, I must apologize for never leading you on a tour of my humble abode in Salima. Tucked away among the teachers’ houses at the secondary school, I am parked very much in the center of town, in close proximity to a community football pitch, a quick walk to the markets, just off the tarmac, and a short stone’s throw away from my nearest neighbors. Lest when I say town your mind conjures urban images of parking lots and sidewalks and convenience stores, I should note that my house is surrounded by fields of maize and the most common visitors to cross the threshold of my fence are goats and chickens. Last night at 3 a.m., however, I discovered a visitor of another sort lurking within my sanctuary: a man.

It started when I awoke to the sound of rustling and scraping within the house. Since I live with approximately 34 lizards, 3000 spiders, and who knows how many roaches, such sounds are not unusual, though this was slightly louder than normal. Presuming a rat, I stumbled out of my bedroom to check if I had left food out. Crossing the living room, I flipped on the light switch near the front door. It was while standing there that I could see, behind the door to the half-open spare room, a man’s arm.

Suddenly I heard a low, seemingly drugged, guttural voice screaming: “Get out of my house! GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HOUSE!” And then a few seconds later, I realized it was my own voice shouting, and I had crossed into the room, grabbed the man by his shoulders and was unlocking the door to shove him out. He was limp as liquid and moved dumbfounded as I screamed and screamed and screamed. I locked the door and kept on yelling… at him, the roaches, anybody else who might be hiding in the yard… it didn’t matter.

Then I called Hector. Hector is the Peace Corps security officer and a wonderful human being, who told me sensible things like: call your closest neighbor, drink some water, and you are okay now. He then called the police.

A whole troupe of neighbors, including my headmaster, came over and surveyed the scene, which included: one rattled Peace Corps Volunteer, three open windows, zero items of property missing, and on my front stoop a belt embossed with silver images of Mickey Mouse. (This afternoon a teacher told me he suspected this belt was a critical part of the intruder’s witchcraft, which was enlightening since I had imagined he merely forgot it there when he removed it to slide in through the window.) Of course I should mention all of my windows have burglar bars and it is not uncommon to leave some of them cracked during hot season. As it turns out, unfortunately, no one had noticed the burglar bars to the kitchen window were wide enough to fit the body of a man.

The school watchman was brought to stake a post at my house and, though I certainly didn’t sleep for the rest of the night, it was a comfort knowing he was there. My Dad chatted with me on the phone for a while, and calmed me down until I was able to convince myself that, despite my agitation, I was physically safe.

The day dawned, and I began to clean and purge. Only thinking back on it later, I realize my morning’s efforts began by sweeping outside under the kitchen window (where the intruder entered) and immediately next by attacking the space behind the spare room door where I found him. That room, mainly used for yoga, is also the home of my bicycle and an ever-growing pile of difficult to throwaway items that I had been storing, in vain, for the day when the recycling truck would show up to haul away used light bulbs, Priority Mail boxes, empty cartons of Jungle Oats, and yogurt containers. Separating the few things I thought I might actually use, I took the rest to the trash pit and set them ablaze in a bonfire of catharsis.

As for the culprit, I suspect I scared him as much as he scared me. He is still at large. I have spent no small amount of time puzzling about his intentions. Why was he in the mostly empty spare room, when he had passed my laptop, camera and wallet untouched? He was holding a white cloth in his left hand, which in my hysterics I assumed was covered in chloroform. Do criminals use chloroform in Malawi? Had he mistaken that room for mine, after tiptoeing past the open door of my own bedroom? What kind of criminal wears a white t-shirt and a Mickey Mouse belt? I did not recognize him. Since crime is more likely during the start and close of one’s service, why did he target me now, after so many months here? Last week he may have noticed me at the markets, some of which I rarely frequent, buying large quantities of food for the below-mentioned Permaculture Training, and maybe he thought I was loaded with cash. Or maybe he just liked my bike. Most of all, I wondered: Did I grossly miscalculate the karmic value of the chicken’s life I took last week? Was this my payment?

Anyhow, in the evening a day later, I have some new burglar bars, better hung curtains, and the comforting presence of the school’s watchman just outside the door. I have replaced the whistle next to my bed with a deafening personal alarm. This week I will get a reinforced door, hire a watchman just for my house and also hopefully have some lockable screens installed so that in the hot season I can breathe… safely.

Much gratitude to all of you folks for your love and concern. I was a bit shaken but am doing just fine.

Death of a Chicken (at my own hand)

Sorry, vegetarian readers.

It took a few years, but I have now accomplished my Michael Pollan-invoked duty: to kill and prepare my dinner. (Or, for the sake of accuracy, lunch.)

It all happened Thursday, the penultimate day of the permaculture training we’ve been holding all week for teachers of Msalura primary and secondary schools. The participants learned about water management, land design principles, nutrition security, and medicinal gardening, and additionally they enjoyed delicious lunches featuring a variety of local foods from all six of the Malawian food groups. Thus it was that I spent a large chunk of each day biking here and there for menu items: goat at Takumana market, three chickens at Kamuzu Road, bananas and fresh chambo near the bus depot. I spent a lot of time with the facilitator’s wife, Mrs. Chawawa, and her very competent assistants, Charity and Mrs. Chimpeni, who took pleasure in improving my Chichewa and teaching me how to kill and pluck a chicken.

At the start of each day, Mrs. Chawawa listed the foods Ieft to track down and bring back to the cooks. On Thursday, she sent me to the market for “nkhuku atatu” (three chickens). “Tambala!” she kept repeating to my confusion; tambala is the smallest denomination coin here, virtually worthless. I have since discovered one face of the coin features a cock, and we eventually established that she wanted three “amuna” (man) chickens. So, I peddled away to Kamuzu Road market, strapped three fat local tambala to my bike rack, and made my way warily back, finding it difficult to maneuver the bicycle very far without getting my skirt or the chickens’ heads caught in the rear-wheel spokes.

For some reason, it was decided that I would dispatch one chicken and Mr. Simphire, a teacher participant, would kill the other two. The need for a halaal method was debated and eventually discarded, since no one in the group was Muslim. And so, Mrs. Chimpeni (whose name means “knife”) led us behind the back fence, apparently a more hygienic place to do the deed. Holding the wing of my bird, I felt it grow still as Mr. Simphire began on the first chicken, pinning its feet and then pulling back its neck so he could pluck away the throat feathers. He cut it quickly and yet the bird’s body shuddered for a few minutes as the blood seeped out of its throbbing neck. He wiped the red knife on the white feathers and handed it to me. Mrs. Chimpeni demonstrated how I could pin down the wings and feet, and then I pulled at the tufts of its neck feathers and severed the neck, holding the quivering body as the life ran out. After we placed the three beheaded chickens in a basin, they continued to jump and flutter for a moment.

Mrs. Chawawa led us to a pot of boiling water, in which we dangled each bird, the hot water loosening the feathers from the pimpled skin. She showed me the three kinds of chicken feathers, tufty white fluff under the joints, long black feathers on the wings, and smaller thin feathers underneath. We plucked and pulled, peeling away the extra layer of skin on the feet, dislodging the beak and tongue. To remove the last remnants of hair and feathers, we singed them in the fire, and finally they came away too. Behind the fence, neighborhood dogs snarled for a share of the spilled blood.

And that was how I killed and plucked a chicken. It was a surprisingly emotionless affair at the time, such an everyday and matter-of-fact event for Mrs. Chimpeni, the chickens, and the hungry dogs. After a few days of contemplation, I feel a little sad thinking about my conscious participation in the death of an animal, though I know I participate in that process every time I eat meat, and at some point or another I should come face to face with the extent of that act. I think, however, it will be my first and last experience in killing chickens, or anything else for that matter.

As for the permaculture training, it turned out to be a big success and a good sign of things to come. Though some teachers started off a little wary of some concepts (no sweeping, as you’ll remember, seems especially threatening to Malawians), they were all converts by Monday afternoon.

Mr. Chawawa, the facilitator, brought with him a huge collection of handouts and books, and designated a teacher as a librarian for the week to maintain these on a resource table every day. He began the week with the lesson that Malawi is rich in resources, but lacking in memory and imagination of how to use them. Participants went out and found items they consider useless and then they were shown that most “trash” can be put to some kind of good use. The first two days were spent discussing food and nutrition security, and how healthy living is achievable with locally available but often forgotten foods.

Mrs. Chawawa and her team, over the course of the week, prepared a series of delicious teas and juices: bwemba, malambe (baobob), papaya, lemongrass, chitimbe, chidede, and others, each with the ability to remedy some ailment or another. As I mentioned above, she also orchestrated the preparation of healthy and delicious lunches, with varied examples from each of the six food groups in Malawi. (I was playfully shamed a few times for having misgrouped certain menu items; soya is not a protein here, it is a legume). The teachers were delighted to rediscover certain foods and learn that wild basil, widely considered a useless weed, is in fact an edible, nutritious, and valuable herb. That last quality—value—really seemed to hit home with many of the teachers; Mr. Chawawa emphasized that they could improve family and student health and, at the same time, save money or even supplement their salaries with a year-round kitchen garden.

On Tuesday, my friend Kennie, a volunteer at the NdiMoyo Palliative Care Clinic in Salima, shared about the medicinal qualities of many common plants and herbs. He distributed recipes for the home treatment of a variety of maladies, and remained for the rest of the week to supplement Mr. Chawawa’s sessions with information about medicinal gardening. He has promised to visit the schools regularly and assist as we are planting the garden; he will be a big help.

On Wednesday, the group traveled to Mr. Chawawa’s home in Mchezi, to observe permaculture in action. “Your disorder is my order,” he laughed as we disembarked from the minibus and looked upon a bushy front yard, full of trees and brick-lined pathways that, not swept bare, were instead strewn with a mulch of thick green banana leaves. Although Malawi is in the height of dry season and the rest of the country is dusty and dead, Mr. Chawawa’s home was lush and plentiful with ripe foods. He introduced the teachers to the concept of “guilds,” plants grouped together to support and sustain one another: a guild can have diggers, supporters, climbers, and protectors. Behind the house, we found an immense plot of gardens dotted with a series of fish ponds, some of which drain in the dry season and serve as nutrient-packed soil for vegetable beds. For three hours we tromped through the maze of paths surrounding the Chawawa home, learning about plants and design, sampling stalks of sugarcane, and seeing how very possible it is for Malawians to grow enough to eat plentifully and thrive. Mrs. Chawawa then served the sun-worn group a feast of cassava, banana, ngaiwa nsima, beans, fried cabbage, eggs, and an assortment of other foods grown on the homestead.

The following day, after lunch, the group began the practicum aspect of the training at the primary school. They hauled bricks and rocks from around the campus and then constructed a mandala design with key-hole pathways around a young tree near the headmaster’s office, each path of the circle varying in height in order to catch and control water. After the paths were made, the teachers found leaves and ash and manure to feed the soil. On Friday, in the afternoon—it happened to be the first incredibly HOT day of the season—we visited the secondary school garden site and began preparing the soil and laying brick designs there too.

Afterward, we gathered for distribution of certificates of participation (Malawians LOVE certificates!), and for final comments on the training. We encouraged the teachers to implement what they learned, and to support one another like a guild as they bring these “new” ideas back to their homes and school communities. The teachers left inspired and very excited about the possibilities of permaculture at their respective schools. You can guess it was gratifying to see some of the same teachers that mocked our permaculture efforts a few months ago offer support and encouragement to the project. Envy can be such a hindrance to success here, and it seemed to be holding many of the secondary teachers back from getting involved. By opening the training to so many interested teachers, no one could be upset that they were not included from participating, and there was a real sense of camaraderie at the end. I am hoping it keeps up.

The training was sponsored by Biggin Hill school community in England, and especially through the help of Martin Pullen, a friend of Msalura primary school. He visited Salima a few months ago and helped spark interest in the school garden project when my own hope (because of the issues mentioned above) was flagging. So, a very big thank you to Biggin Hill.

In other news: on Thursday, Sally, my new health sector site mate, moved to town, and I stopped by her house to welcome her. The sun, which has been kindly mild for a few months, returned keenly to welcome her as well. Salima is hot again.

“I killed a chicken today,” I told her.

“Oh. I’m a vegetarian,” she responded. So much for my dreams of a Salima pork party.

She forgave my faux pas, however, and l’m looking forward to future fun and adventures with my new neighbor. Next weekend: a beach day at Senga Bay and then homemade dumplings!

Fire on the mountain, and other Sky anecdotes

When Jerrod, Elisabeth and I arrived five days early to prepare for Camp Sky at the venue in Kasungu, we naively imagined that they would remember we were coming. But on this continent nothing ever goes according to plan. We found the hostels roach-infested and matted with a thick layer of rubbish including popcorn, discarded hair weaves, and sanitary napkins. The 120 mattresses we planned to use were locked away. As it turned out, the keys to that room and to the rest of the dorm rooms were unlabelled in two giant plastic bags; sorting them became Jerrod’s personal hell for the next few days. Instead of prepping signage for camp and planning registration and all that jazz, we spent the next four days implementing a roach holocaust and making the campus hospitable to (hygienic) human life.

The campers came, and it all went …dandy.

About six boys signed up for the creative writer’s workshop that Jerrod and I led. We started with Found Poems cut out of magazines, then tried some very structured exercises (mostly borrowed from Kenneth Koch), and finally moved into free writing guided by a few loose prompts. In general, Malawian classrooms promote rule-following and rarely encourage creative energy, so it was a challenge convincing them it is okay to play with words. One day, we wrote five-senses poems and had the students visit different “sense stations” and write about their sensory experience. Jerrod and I had a good laugh watching them try chocolate-covered espresso beans and writhe with disgust at the flavor. One boy licked it and tried to put it back in the bag. This exchange between two students in the middle of camp was heartening and made the whole week worthwhile for me:

Tisunge: Why did you choose to make the lion in your poem black?

Edward: Because I think of night as black, and night is fear.

On Friday night, to our mild concern, we noticed that Kasungu mountain, our field trip destination for Saturday, was ablaze orange with fire. Nonetheless, the next morning, we crammed 110 people on the back of a flatbed truck and drove singing and shouting through the heart of Kasungu toward the mountain, and climbed it anyway. Now, bear in mind that what Americans look forward to as a “wildlife hike” to Malawian schoolchildren (who are fit as a fiddle from working hard and don’t need to exercise for fun) sounds like a pointless march uphill. “Madame, I have never climbed a mountain before,” I was told more than a few times. Nonetheless, they did it and, even if a few didn’t really enjoy the experience, all of them expressed a sense of accomplishment when we arrived at the top. Jerrod told me one of his students journaled this at the summit: “Today we climbed Kasungu Mountain. Everyone is singing and laughing. We are even eating groundnuts!”

I was in charge of booking speakers and arranging the camp field trip to Lilongwe. First, we visited the new Parliament building (recently built by the Chinese), and were led on a tour of the chambers. Most memorable for me, however, was not the great hall but the bathrooms, where I was stationed when all 70 campers decided they had to go at one time, and I had to teach thirty-five girls how to use hand-pump soap, faucets that lift (instead of turn), and toilets with flush buttons.

After Parliament, we headed to the airport and watched a few arrivals and departures from the observation deck. If you have never flown on a plane, the airport is a mystical place; watching the campers react, I could understand why my neighbor described flight as magic. Airplanes and computers, he said, are your western witchcraft.

On the way home from the airport, Ruth, one of the girls in my hostel, said: “I saw a little boy at the airport and he spoke English so well. It made me sad. If he can speak so well when he is so small, I will never learn when I am so old. I wish I was rich and learned English when I was young.”

During the second week of camp, I taught computer classes. We talked about the capabilities of computers, played around with Word and Excel and, on the last day, took a brief tour of the internet. One girl googled “foccacia” since she’d made it the day before in Meg’s cooking class.

Running concurrently with camp was a four-day career development workshop called Teach Sky for motivated Malawian teachers. On Thursday night, I led a session on time management for Teach Sky, with the help of the TDF trainees. We put on a skit that mocked an oft-interrupted Malawian staff meeting; one teacher afterward described it as “stingingly true.”

And that was Sky.

To celebrate its close, everybody headed into Lilongwe for an evening of fun, debauchery, and a bank-breaking dinner bonanza. Esther made lasagna and chocolate fudge brownies, and I made bacon-wrapped dates and a spinach beet salad with goat cheese and strawberries and pineapple and cucumbers. Need I note it was a pleasant change after three weeks of rice and beans?

For the very few of you (probably none) who happen to be interested in my physical exercise regime: I ran almost every day in Kasungu, led some yoga sessions, and it was heavenly. Well, sort of. For a few days I ran with Elisabeth (the marathon runner) and Jerrod (six-feet tall), and they promptly left me in their dust. I’m usually a solo runner so this wouldn’t have bothered me, except for the hoots and hollers of every Malawian I passed. “Mwatopa! (You’re tired!) Muchedwa! (You’re slow!),” they called to me. A few large groups of women pumping water at the borehole burst out laughing when I ran by. As you can imagine, this kind of encouragement doesn’t motivate any part of me except a certain finger which twitched with temptation a few times. But really, I keep telling myself, being openly ridiculed is one of those cultural exchanges you should accept and embrace. I keep telling myself that, but it hasn’t happened yet. Anyhow, I found a solitary path in the maize fields and for the rest of camp enjoyed the red sunrise everyday… all by myself.

Camp Sky!

... is finished, and I am pooped. Stories later, but here are some pics:




Field trip!

A visit to the new Parliament building

... and the airport!

Cooking class: crepes

Foods of Malawi, thanks to Stacia Nordin and the Ministry of Education

Nditha Sports

Staff Room SHARK ATTACK!

Soon-to-be-PCVs!

Physical Science lab

Jerrod and I led a creative writer's workshop.

Goat dissection: heart.

Learning to make mud stoves

On a brighter note...

Fight or Flight

Apparently, when instinct kicks in, I opt for the former.

I'm in Lilongwe to shop for school supplies and tie up loose ends before Camp Sky starts next week in Kasungu, and the last 24 hours have been pretty weird.

Last night Elisabeth and I played ultimate frisbee and saw a man hit by a car on the way home. We were riding with a doctor, who tried to stop the growing mob from touching the man, but it was too late. They picked him up like a sack of maize and tossed him in the back of a car, his body twitching in his last breaths. Car accidents are fairly frequent here, but it doesn't lessen the shock of seeing them. No ambulances show up in 5 minutes, no EMTs with backboards, no policemen arrive on the scene to calm the crowd and take notes. A mob collects, surrounds the involved parties, tempers rise and then slowly dispel. There won't be a notice in the paper.

So we were contemplative this morning, crossing the bridge of last night's accident, as we embarked on a hellish three hours of market shopping. I have never been a shopper. Inevitably, my blood-sugar levels plummet an hour in and I morph into a impatient animal on a ravenous search for peanuts or sugar. Unfortunately, this morning that happened at the very moment we were accosted by a large crazy man who followed us around the streets of Lilongwe. We weaved in and out of stores, crossed the street, walked zigzag and still this man was a step behind, mouthing kisses and mumbling incoherently.

Well, Elisabeth booked it and I lost it, unleashing a loud and long slew of pointed directions as to where he should go and how he might arrive there. It was quite a scene we made there, in the electronics shop next to the bus depot. I think my reaction was a result of the stress of the night before, and of pent-up frustration at the barrage of unwanted negative attention that women receive here. Anyhow, after my rant, we ducked, ran, and dove behind an idling car, and (to the amusement of its passengers) waited and watched until our pursuer rambled away, and we escaped safely into the depths of the chaotic clothes market.

Some deep breaths and big lunch later, I'm writing off this trip to Lilongwe as a bad dream, and looking forward to better days ahead: a stop tomorrow at the health sector's Camp Glow where I'll be talking to the girls about writing, then a fondue-inclusive visit to Jen and Kris's site on the way north to Kasungu, and then 10 crazy (the good kind of crazy) fun-filled days of camp after that.

Shout outs

Sammy is gone and I am back to the grindstone in Salima, which is not such a bad place to be. The winter weather here means it is a reasonably pleasant 85-degree afternoon, and, even though I'm stuck typing exams AGAIN, there are a lot of great things on the horizon: my dad is visiting in October, a brand-new Luckey-Sadler is on the way, and I got a pretty sweet early Christmas present (a ticket home for a visit) from the folks. In fact, life has been good for lots of reasons, and I want to give credit where credit is due:

After a long dry spell (4 months when all the Peace Corps mail was sitting unsorted at the Lilongwe Post Office), I received four packages at once! I am now a girl rich in crosswords. Father Ethan to Sister Alexis included all kinds of smelly and tasty stuff, as well as a very important clipping about how Love Saved Brittney. (But will it last?) Also, two packages arrived from my parents, with books and snack bars, shirts, pasta, and a tiny fan. (Dad will be needing that in October.) And most surprising of all, a package from April, still waiting for her PC invitation, with tea, chocolate-covered espresso beans, mac and cheese, sock-eye salmon, yahtzee, games, crystal light, and other great stuff. Sammy also brought gifts from Sarah and Damo, and my folks. So thoughtful! Thank you, everyone!!!

While I am giving shout-outs, congratulations to Kevin and Catherine, newly engaged! Yay! And Dave and Jen! And Jonathan and Emily! Is everyone getting married while I'm gone?

Grateful for the love, and missing you all!
Loo

Guest Blog Entry by a Liberal Commie Pinko Visitor to Malawi

I arrived in Malawi about a week ago, after a long and grueling bus ride from Lusaka, Zambia which left about 6 hours late. For those unfortunate 6 hours that Loo and I spent on the bus, in the parking lot, waiting for it to fill up, there was an annoying and intoxicated man who insisted that he was going to marry me – that I was “the one.” This was a couple hours after he introduced us to his wife and baby, sitting two rows back from us. Even though Loo is a year younger than me, he kept addressing her as his mother-in-law.

This story in many ways characterized the bulk of my trip in Malawi: awkward and entertaining miscommunication, long waits for buses, and lots of giggling between Loo and myself.

We arrived in Salima, Loo’s hometown and checked out some of her favorite spots: The Ice Cream Canoe Den (which only sometimes has ice cream), Chipiku (the grocery store with a very handsome man with whom Loo has shy and awkward verbal exchanges), and Senga Bay (a nearby beach accessible via the back of a pick-up truck). I met one of Loo’s Malawian friends Edward, who told me riddles – you know, the one about the hyena, the goat and the maize…. We also went out dancing with one of Loo’s coworkers, a teacher named Mr. Chipeta. He told us all about witchcraft, which is very real and alive in Malawi. He explained to us that witches who ride on broomsticks are only mythical. In reality, the witches turn into naked bears and ride on their private airplanes.

It was in Salima that I understood firsthand what Loo had been telling me about Malawian greetings. Basically, whenever you walk past anyone, you must stop to greet them. Loo told me about how she’d walk into a room full of her coworkers and she’d have to go around the room and greet each one individually. So much time is taken up with these greetings! At the same time, it is very polite and friendly and helps to make Malawi the so-called “warm heart of Africa.” One thing to note is that the children are also trained in this style of greeting. Usually, however, they conclude their greetings with “give me money” or “give me pen.” It makes one wonder about the societal ramifications of the decades of charity work and development in Africa.

We then ventured up the Lakeshore Road, one of the few major highways in Malawi. We stopped at the beautiful Nkhata Bay, which was filled with many other mizungus (foreigners/ gringos), specifically of the backpacker variety. We ate pizza! It was delicious! We also paddled for a bit out into the lake, though it was very rocky and we both felt a bit ill. For those of you who don’t know, Lake Malawi is giant – it appears to be an ocean, and has lovely beaches. It also seems to help create the country’s laid back island vibe, which makes it differ from its neighbor to the south, Zambia.

Continuing our trip northward up the lake, we stopped in Chitimba, which has a long sandy beach. We arrived to find a perfect, silent, private paradise. That was, until the “overlanders” arrived. Although this word had been thrown around by Loo and others before we arrived, I wasn’t sure what the overlanders were until I encountered them. Basically, the term refers to people who travel in giant groups in large armored bus-tanks. They bring their own food, cook for themselves and sleep in their own uniform tents. They don’t socialize with others. They do wear safari gear. Basically they travel through Africa at a distance, with limited interactions with locals (except of course to give the local children money and pens, which makes it really annoying for the rest of us). I am now preparing for my flight back to America (not “United States” – no one here knows what that is – only “America”). While I will be sad to leave my dear friend Loo, I will look forward to scheduled transport, shorts, Lebanese food and people ignoring me.

Week Zero

So, a whole new bunch of education and health trainees just arrived in Malawi, which is exciting for quite a few reasons:
1. I have 36 new friends. Yay.
2. This is a sign of time passing. I will soon be part of the Second Year Education group. While weeks fly by here, the months move like millenia, so it is nice to pass this landmark in my two years of service.
3. I got to spend a week back in Dedza at the College of Forestry orienting the brand new trainees and teaching them all sorts of fun things like how to use a pit latrine without messing up your skirt, accidently peeing on a goat, or being attacked by creatures of the night. I was pretty lucky to be selected as a week zero (orientation week) volunteer, and have the chance to get to know all the new arrivals right off the bat. It was a fun week, and also a time to reflect on my Peace Corps service and realize how far I've come, both with projects and with cultural assimmilation. I had fresh eyes and a heightened appreciation of my time in Malawi when I arrived back in Salima yesterday.

But... I couldn't stay there long because I'm meeting a very special visitor in Zambia on Wednesday, who just might be a guest blogger right here in the near future. One hint: she's a liberal commie pinko. And an English teacher at Annandale. That's all. No more hints.
Off to Lusaka via Chipata tomorrow morning!

Miss you all,
Loo

And then I hit you up for money

Peace Corps Education's Camp SKY is a month away and preparations are underway... If you're interested in helping support this awesome project, please read the fundraising letter below. I'm leading a creative writer's workshop, booking career speakers, and organizing field trips to Parliament and the airport. I'm also hoping to put together a publication of the best writing from the campers. If you don't want to/can't contribute, don't worry: there will be plenty of opportunities to support other projects in the future.

Dear Friends:

Since 2001 Peace Corps Education Volunteers in Malawi have hosted an annual summer school called Camp Sky. The camp offers students from rural community day secondary schools the opportunity to participate in a unique and challenging learning environment.

In their home schools, these students are often faced with overcrowded classrooms, limited learning materials, and overburdened teachers. Despite these obstacles, many have high academic performance and are strongly motivated. This year Camp Sky volunteers will select 100 female and male secondary school students from across the country. Many of these students have never traveled beyond their home villages. Camp Sky 2010 is an exciting opportunity for students from different regions to be able to come together at the Teacher Training College in Kasungu.

At summer school these students will have a learning experience unlike any they have ever known: small class sizes, motivated teachers, and a chance to explore their artistic creativity. Additionally, they will have access to computers, a science laboratory, and a library.

The theme for this year’s camp is “Illuminating Our Worlds” and will be held from August 17th to August 27th. Camp Sky 2010 will offer advanced core classes to help prepare students for the national exams which determine their options after graduation. At summer school, students will also take field trips and listen to a program of guest speakers geared toward future career options.

Camp Sky is an independent initiative of Peace Corps Volunteers, and therefore is not funded by Peace Corps. Fundraising is a necessary to ensure the success of Camp Sky. Without support and financial assistance from friends and family members back home, summer school will not be able to pay for essential items such as school supplies, transport, facilities and food. All donations to Camp Sky are tax deductible.

To contribute, visit www.friendsofmalawi.org and click on the “Summer School 2010” link. You can donate with any major credit card via Paypal, or send a check to:

Friends of Malawi
c/o Lance Cole (FOM treasurer)
7940 SW 11th
Portland, OR 97219

If you decide to mail a check, please specify that you want your contribution to benefit the Peace Corps Summer School 2010 project. Friends of Malawi will provide documents necessary for tax purposes.

We greatly appreciate any help you are able to offer our program and our students. We look forward to sharing the success of Camp Sky 2010 with you!

Thank you,

Your Friends and Family at Camp Sky

Friendliness and Running in the Warm Heart of Africa

Before I came to Malawi, I considered myself a friendly person. Sure, I’m inarguably an “I” on the Myers-Briggs test, and I plug in my earphones immediately upon finding my airplane seat, and I always get a little embarrassed and irritated when my mother chitchats with random people in the grocery line. But I do like people. As evidence of my friendliness I point to a sizable number of friends, two years of bartending (job requirement: friendliness), and a generally affable disposition in the company of strangers.

Malawians, however, are friendly to an incomparably higher degree. It is a country full of people like my mom in the grocery store. Or I could say a country full of chatty airplane seatmates who don’t seem to notice the earplugs. Everyone, everywhere, all the time, stops each other to ask: “Where are you going? What is your name? How are you? How did you wake up?” Strangers I pass on my bike, children 60 meters away, travelers heading the opposite direction, bike taxi drivers, women selling fruit: everyone shouts a greeting or a question. People can greet each other three or four times a day and it never gets old. Not just “hello”, mind you, but the entirety of a greeting like this: “How did you wake?/I woke fine, and you?/I also woke fine, thank you!” Some days, I love this aspect of the Warm Heart of Africa. A friend compared the greeting ritual to Belle’s morning walk down the country lane in Beauty and the Beast, as the butcher and the baker (and the rest of the town) pop their heads out to shout “Bonjour!”

But the friendliness can be exhausting too. I limited myself to early morning runs to cut down on the number of people, especially shouting children, I pass and greet; even so, I counted sixty such encounters one recent morning. “Where are you going? Why are you running? Do you want a ride? Where do you live?” they’ll ask as I jog by. Though the greetings can be tiresome, by the end of many runs I come home smiling and encouraged by the enthusiastic hellos of the early-rising passersby. I find myself shouting good-mornings to women in the fields, bicycle passengers, and the man setting up his market stand. Accustomed to, though sometimes weary of, all this friendliness, it’s been very hard to deal with occasional but very real unfriendliness in the community. This has come in the form of steel-faced stares, mimicry from groups of women and children, or just insensitive laughter at the ridiculous sight of the crazy azungu out running again. To be fair, I can see how jogging is absurd in a country where most people are in peak physical condition from going about their daily activities to live and provide for their families. Still, laughter stings. A few weeks ago, a group of older teenage boys waited for me after I passed and began running next to me on my return route, not greeting, not talking, and not being friendly. I refused to stop running, but had to fight back tears. Thankfully my former home-stay running buddy, Elisabeth, visited overnight the next week and helped me summon the will to get back on the trail again. Running with someone else, I forgot about the stress of greeters (and non-greeters) and had the chance to notice the purple beauty of the sun rising over Salima, the receding green along the dusty path, and white herons resting on bare branches. Running wasn’t a chore, it was a pleasure again.

Whenever my Dad visits Charlottesville, Virginia, where I’ve lived off and on for the past 12 years, he makes a crack about the ubiquity of joggers on every corner. “I can say I’ve been in Cville now,” he’ll always say. “There’s a jogger!” To run alone, unharassed, in the quiet beauty of the landscape. To run up Monticello Avenue or Carter’s Mountain, and to see the Blue Ridge tipped with red sun. It’s a luxury just like fresh produce and good health care and clean air, something I appreciate every day here in the friendly Warm Heart of Africa.


*All above references to my parents are made with affection (and apologies).

World Map... finished!

For the past two weeks, twenty students stayed after school to paint a 2x4m world map in the geography classroom. It was the first time for many of them to paint, or to find Africa on a world map.

In Malawi, colors are not clearly differentiated linguistically; blue roughly translates to "color of sky", green is "color of trees", red is "color of fire", but the nuances of shade aren't labeled, which strikes me as strange considering the vibrant variety of colors in clothing here. In any case, the students were fascinated by the process of mixing paint to make new colors for the map. "What color is this?" they would ask everytime we made a new combination. At the end of painting one day, I thoughtlessly started to toss out a few unused tablespoons of mixed paint when the students stopped me in horror. "That is waste!" Rebecca said, and began scooping the different colors into a small piece of a bag. The others helped her salvage the rest, and began mixing it together, until it formed a dull brown mass. "What color is this?" they asked, and excitedly painted their nails with the paint, happy to add "light brown" to their new rainbow vocabulary.

The project was also a much-needed refresher course for me on world geography. "Madam," one of the kids told me when we finished a big day of painting, "I learned something." I asked him what he learned. "I learned where Baffin Bay is." And so did I.

April/May Highlights

Greetings from Malawi! Term 2 is over, and I am spending the last few days of our two-week school break at the Peace Corps office in Lilongwe attempting to make headway on a massive To-Do list; life in Salima has been busy busy. Some of the April/May highlights:

Work Projects:
Last week, I hosted a four-day Hope Kit training for twenty primary and secondary school teachers around Salima District. The Hope Kit, as I’ve mentioned before, is a set of resources for raising community awareness about HIV/AIDS prevention and care. Despite a rocky start, the workshop was a big success; the participants shared their personal struggles and life goals, and seemed eager to return to their communities with their new skills.
The program was jointly funded by Peace Corps and the local education office, and it was a … learning experience… in dealing with the bureaucratic stagnation of the latter group. My budget was slashed a few times, and I wondered if some palms were being greased in the process. Malawian trainings historically operate on an allowance system, where participants are *paid* a daily stipend to learn new skills that will improve their lives and work performance; thus people attend workshops with the expectation of financial profit. This term, the local education office offered to help with transport allowances for my workshop participants, but it turned into a logistical nightmare and still didn’t quell the disgruntled complaints of many teachers who expected larger sums. The first day of the Hope Kit training, one of these unhappy participants (who was paid the standard government-issued allowance for his paygrade) yelled at me that he was being treated like an animal, not a human being. I went into the bathroom and cried. Things brightened quickly, however, as the workshop got underway. In a particularly humbling moment, I discovered that one of the teachers, whom I had suspected might be drunk, was in fact blind. He stood up during a session called Future Island and shared that, despite his disability, he had become village headman, a preacher, and he had built the primary school where he teaches. Later that day, he performed a spontaneously written poem. “Disability is not inability,” he said. Right on.

I facilitated three other workshops this past term: teaching techniques, classroom management, and time management skills. Those familiar with African Time can probably imagine the hilarity of that last subject. Standing in a classroom talking about time-management systems, I felt like Elaine in Airplane, teaching about Tupperware; my Western value of time-usage seems irrelevant in a poly-chronic culture that tends to value relationships more than efficiency. Still, forty teachers showed up (partly because of the allowances, I’m afraid), and appeared genuinely interested in some of the ideas I threw around about goal-making and prioritization. Who knows, maybe they got something out of it.

At Msalura CDSS (also pronounced Msalula, Msarula, Msarura, Nsalura, Nsalula, and Nsarura—maybe by the end of two years people will understand me when I say where I work), my Form 3 Life Skills class went swimmingly. It’s been a great opportunity to get to know the kids at my school and learn about their lives and community. I helped the Edzi-Toto club sponsor an AIDS Awareness Week and put on a school-wide assembly with dramas and dances and songs and a condom demonstration by yours truly. The next week, the Permaculture Club also had a big assembly to celebrate the donation and subsequent planting of a ton of moringa and papaya trees. (The latter have since been devoured by goats, but the moringas are going strong.) I arranged a club field trip to visit the home of the Nordins (neverendingfood.org), a family that promotes permaculture around Malawi. For kids who have grown up sweeping dirt and burning trash every day, the Nordins’ lush and nutritious (and unswept) homestead was an eye-opener. Sweeping the dirt around the home is a ubiquitous daily practice in Malawi, and I have had a tough time convincing my neighbors of its detrimental effects on the soil; sometimes I come home and, to my exasperation (but also amusement), they have swept my yard in my absence. Our school garden project has stalled a little bit, partly because of water issues, but also because of resistance from school community members toward this vaguely threatening no-sweeping philosophy.

With the aid of a small PC grant, I bought some paint supplies and am working with two Geography teachers to host a World Map Project at our school this week. The students will use a grid system to draw and then paint a world map on one of the school block walls. So far, we’ve painted the ocean blue undercoat, and penciled in the grid (which, thanks to my remedial math skills, took a few tries to finally get the correct number of squares up there).

Future projects:
I have been meeting with an HIV/AIDS organization in Salima that targets at-risk groups, especially commercial sex workers and bike taxi drivers. We are looking into starting some kind of micro-loan project or income-generating activity for some of their beneficiaries, a group of widows who care for orphans, and a group of sex workers trained in peer-health education.
Also on the horizon, in August, is Camp SKY, a 10-day academic leadership camp for rising Form 4 students. I will be leading a creative writer’s workshop and helping out with Teach SKY, a concurrent smaller camp for Malawian teachers.

And also Good Times:
We celebrated Elisabeth’s birthday in May at the beautiful and secluded Kande Beach Lodge on the northern lake shore, and indulged in the requisite amounts of swimming, dancing, and cake-gorging (thanks to Meg). Last week, Jerrod visited Ken and me in Salima, and then a whole crew came down for a few days of beach camping at Senga Bay. I am mourning the imminent departure of my awesome site neighbor Ken, maker of delicious grilled cheese concoctions, who is finishing his service and heading to Columbia’s School of Public Health. It will be a sad day for Salima, but we wish him well.
For culinary-minded readers, the monotony of my diet here continues to be grueling. At this time of year, tomatoes and onions are the only regularly available veggies, although in Salima we sometimes see eggplants and green peppers too. (Unfortunately, my kitchen garden has mostly fed goats thus far, but I will keep trying.)

And that’s pretty much life in Salima these days. I’m really happy to be busy and to begin to see some results of working here. There are still incredibly frustrating moments every day, but really, life is good.

Miss you all!
Love, A

Mulanje

If my camera still existed, you would be looking at a photograph of a crayon-drawn AIDS awareness poster, a mountain valley painted with wildflowers, a brilliant blue butterfly wing, and a chalet tucked in the folds of Mount Mulanje's rolling plateau. Sadly, the camera and a number of other items were casualties* of an attempt to summit the third highest mountain in Africa during Easter break, so you will just have to imagine.

Mount Mulanje is in Malawi's southern region, near the city of Blantyre. After leading a teaching workshop last weekend, I met five friends in Blantyre and we embarked on a three day adventure on the mountain, along with our silent but trusty guide, Jonathan. If other people do this, I recommend they also hire porters. We did not. Also, I recommend they wait until someone introduces the concept of "switchbacks" here. Anyway, we arrived finally, sore and happy, above the clouds in a spectacular mountain pass overshadowed by the craggy grey rockface of Chambe peak, at a chalet where we passed our first night on the mountain.

The second day began pleasantly enough, with a three-hour hike around the plateau. We climbed through valleys of shaggy grass and brambles and wildflowers, and we danced over rocky plains. We were happy, we sang, we laughed, we felt like the Von Traps. Around 11, we arrived at a camping hut, dropped off our packs, and began the three-hour trek up to the mountain's summit, Sepitwa. The climb is what guidebooks would probably call a "rocky scramble." I would call it a "great way to break your ankle or fall quickly to your death." The trail, again, was straight uphill, but this time we had to search for footholds in smooth mossy rockface, and fling ourselves from boulder to boulder, clinging to whatever vines or clumps of grass might sustain our weight. The climbing was treacherous but exciting until the rain started, at which point it became scary. Forty minutes from the summit, Jonathan, in an exemplary display of Malawian understatement, gently suggested we turn around, considering the wet rocks, and the race with coming darkness. But the group pressed on. In an unusually lucid moment of clarity, as I slid three feet down a steep slab of rock above a craggy ledge and then watched my camera take its final great leap, I decided that continuing up the mountain would be a poor decision, and stayed behind to huddle in the cold rain below a rock with Elisabeth. It became colder and wetter. We were soaked through in the most literal sense. Our teeth chattered and hands began to lose feeling. I started thinking about John Krakauer disaster books, and all of the warnings we'd received about the Brazilian hiker who died last year of hypothermia on the mountain. Sepitwa is considered by Malawians to be a place of spirits; they do not generally climb to the summit. We started counting minutes, and discussing unfinished life business. Time slowed. It seemed silly, and inconvenient, to be dying on this mountain of all places.

The summiting group finally returned triumphant and we began the long descent down the mountain. But the mountain had turned into a series of waterfalls and the path was a stream, and our only means of fording it was by crabwalking slowly and carefully, downward, for three hours, in dusking light. We slid down on the seats of our pants, until I had no seat of my pants, or skin underneath that. Our hands were shredded by the rocks, ankles and knees pounded, and wetness prevailed. Darkness came finally, and we continued down slowly to the valley. The clouds cleared, and we saw the Big Dipper rising, Orion, the Southern Cross, a dotted sky. The hut appeared, and there was chocolate and brandy, a snapping fire, dinner… and Aleve.

On day three, we descended, ate pizza, and showered.

*Our final casualty tally included: three pairs of trousers, two pairs of shoes (one pair burned, one gone missing), two pairs of underwear (one burned, one shredded), two cameras (one engulfed in the mountain, one waterlogged by rain), and some socks.

Kuno ku Malawi

This is the end of rainy season, when all is lush and grasses are waist high. I am receiving my karmic payment for torturing Catherine (my former, incredibly tolerant roommate), who endured three years of lawn mowing with only an electric weed whacker in the name, I insisted, of environmental responsibility. Well, here in Malawi, there are no weed whackers, or other machinated options for cutting grass, only brute strength and a dull metal tool like a hockey stick: the slasher. On Wednesdays, a few hours are set aside for general cleaning at school, and the students can be found slashing away at the seemingly endless expanse of green overgrowth. Truant or otherwise errant students risk hours of disciplinary action in this form. On my return Sunday, after two weeks away from site, I discovered a jungle of vines obscuring the long driveway that once served as a path to my house; in its current state, its passibility was in grave doubt, especially considering the serpentine wildlife that love this kind of habitat. Moreover, I had created an eyesore for my neighbors, whose culture expresses a strong distaste for such untidiness. So I had my first go at slashing. Thirty minutes later, hands blistered and ego bruised, I could at least claim success in entertaining the neighborhood. The driveway, though, showed no visible sign of my toil; at my current rate, I might expect to finish by the next rainy season. So, when a man called at my fence an hour later, eying the tangled yard and asking for piecework, I accepted his offer, and at the same time, the limits of my desire to prove self-sufficiency.

Busybusybusy. Things I have been doing.

This is the first week of Term 2! Hard to believe how fast the first term flew by, and with it my first three months at site. Much of the last term was spent visiting the eleven schools in my cluster, getting to know the teachers there, and conducting a teacher survey that will help me plan the next two years in Salima. Initial school visits took more time than one might imagine, since I had to cobble together third-hand directions to each school and then attempt to find my way there via foot, bicycle, cheetah, or the back of a pickup truck. Some of my best days, though, were spent winding through villages on bumpy dirt roads, trying to keep my skirt dry while biking through a river. At the end of the term, I hosted a very successful lesson-planning workshop, which was unfortunately followed by three hellish weeks of exam typing and printing, a task that had me briefly questioning my entire purpose in being here.

But new terms bring fresh starts and there are a lot of projects in the works that I am very excited about: This week we broke ground on a school garden that will be tended by Home Economics classes and any other students who are interested in participating. It is the kind of project I’ve been hoping will take off, but I was even more delighted when the plan was suggested by one of the teachers rather than by me, since it is more sustainable if the community has ownership of the project.

This term I will be teaching a Form 3 Life Skills class. Life Skills is sort of a mishmash of topics relating to sexual health and decision-making and career-planning. I have also been assisting a group of teachers completing their degree through a distance education program who convene weekly at my school to work on assignments; mostly I help them with improving their writing skills. Also, this term I am supposed to begin teaching computer classes, both to students and teachers (a result of overwhelming requests from the survey). This has been delayed by the fact that the computers have been locked away in a closet since they were donated, and they won’t be released until the school saves enough money for stronger burglar bars. A temporary solution may be implemented: storing the computers in a closet after every class and setting them up again the next day. Really.

I am also trying to create a writing club and reactivate the Edzi-Toto (AIDS) club but extra-curriculars like these mostly exist in name only; by the afternoon, students—justifiably—are more interested in going home for their first meal of the day, rather than sticking around another hour. This is the main reason I’m trying to raise community interest in a school feeding program. There are some permaculture groups in Malawi taking this on, mostly in primary schools, but I’m hoping to find a way to implement it in at least some of the secondary schools in the cluster. [Since I wrote this we had our first AIDS club meeting and it was awesome. So, yay for progress!]

What else? We are in the early stages of planning Camp SKY, to be held in August. Much more on this soon. And I am trying to put together a five-day training for thirty local primary and secondary teachers to learn how to use the Hope Kit, a resource for talking about HIV/AIDS in the community. The kit includes a manual of exercises, a lot of teaching tools and a wooden phallus for condom demonstrations. I think it will help the teachers broach difficult topics that come up in biology or Life Skills classes.

Other Stuff:

Thanks to everyone for all of the birthday greetings!! It means so much to hear from home. Birthday festivities included a yummy grilled cheese feast prepared by my awesome site neighbor Ken, and then a birthday party the following weekend at the lake in Senga Bay. The torrential rains let up long enough for us to soak in some sunshine and bonfire and eat S’mores (thanks, Sammy!) Saturday, and then the skies let loose and the next day we had to wade a river to get back to the road, where we shared a hitch in the back of a truck along with a few loosely secured barrels of formaldehyde and a very pungent catfish. I can’t wait to turn 29 again there next year.

The first week of term break was spent back in Dedza for In-Service Training, a workshop for sharing start-of-service experiences, discussing project ideas and grant possibilities, and that kind of thing. After IST, a lot of volunteers were in Lilongwe to greet the newest batch of environment trainees at the airport, which was a surprisingly exciting event. It feels like years, not five months, ago that we had to tromp our eighty pounds of luggage through the customs gate. When we arrived in September, I had been fast asleep on the plane and missed the distribution of yellow customs cards. So when everyone disembarked from the plane and pulled out their cards, my sheer adrenaline and excitement from the landing swung into a panicked fear that I had neglected to bring some important paperwork and wouldn’t be admitted in the country. At that moment, in my sleepy haze, I realized I had also lost an earring in flight and, as the Country Director was greeting us and gathering luggage and everyone was all smiles, I had this crestfallen feeling that I had already messed up in Malawi, and this was just a bad dream. Fortunately, all of the new arrivals seemed to have all of their cards and emotional states in order and we greeted them with perhaps more than appropriate gusto, and then they were swept off to Dedza, and I began the second week of my term break, heading up north with a few friends to see the illustrious historical township of Livingstonia, on the edge of the Nhika Plateau.

Although the whole trip north probably isn’t more than 300 kilometers, our journey was delayed a day because the bus Elisabeth and I were riding on ran out of gas (not an infrequent occurrence here), and the bus in which Jesi was riding to meeting us got stuck in the mud (Also, not infrequent. And was still stuck when we passed it on the return trip three days later.) In any case, we finally made it north to Karonga, which is pretty much paradise.

Historical Livingstonia, as it turns out, consists of about three 100-year-old buildings that house a hospital and a guesthouse (aptly named the Old Stone House). Although the final destination left something to be desired, it was the breathtaking 15-kilometer trek from the lake up to Livingstonia that made the trip worthwhile. We stopped overnight about 12 kilometers up at the Lukwe Permaculture Camp, a collection of chalets floating in the clouds of a mountain, a quick walk to the Manchewe Falls and to an incredible garden that feeds the camp’s guests. There were composting toilets and hot showers overlooking the blue blue lake and we had the whole place to ourselves. It was a nice little vacation.