A few entries from my journal

Below are a series of entries from my journal. I’ve made some additions and corrections after a little reflection, but here’s a taste of my thoughts.

July 4, 2010 Dedza, Malawi
I am laying here under the bulgy contours of my mosquito net. It’s rather surreal to pull down the mesh folds and tuck it into the bedspread around me. I’m sure I’ll adjust at some point; I suppose I should think of it like a little-princess-drapery-thing, not that I was ever into that.
I would say today was a great success. We climbed the mountain directly behind the college (the Dedza College of Forestry, where we’re staying for pre-service training, PST.) It was about a forty minute hike up to the summit of the closest face and oh my was it worth it. A 360 degree view of the surrounding valley and all the nearby mountains. I’ve never seen anything like it. Honest to goodness, it took the breath out of me. That was my first pang of “Holy Shit! I’m in Malawi.” [many more of these to come] You could see so far, the horizon seemed boundless. The valley was unobstructed from our gaze, the treeline converged upon the savannah-like shrubery, fires were visible as little puffy plumes and not a paved road was visible to the naked eye. I took it all in thinking this is it, this is my life for two years. And, I couldn’t be happier about it.

July 5, 2010 Dedza
Day 2 of training is now complete. I have to say, it’s not quite as intense as I initially expected. I did get another round of shots – now I have two sore shoulders, as opposed to one. [one of which resulted in a small scar on my right shoulder, stupid rabies shots]. Evelyn, the medical assistant, makes every effort possible to make you feel comfortable. She laughs merrily as she sticks you with a needle roughly 7in in length, followed by a big hug. It’s fairly reassuring, considering we’re to have about 14 shots in total.
The first medical session wasn’t too in depth, in terms of general medical advice we should heed in the next 2 years. However, we named every possible side effect of mefloquine, the anti-malarial medication prescribed to the majority of volunteers. Unfortunately, I’m on this particular anti-malarial. The side effects include: paranoia, heightened anxiety, hallucinations of things crawling on you, insomnia, etc. Being as this was day two in Malawi, this discussion only served to further my hypochondria and anxiety. I’m already having creepy-crawling feelings and I’m sure the lucid, weird dreams are soon to follow. [to clarify, the creepy hallucinations do happen and they are not pleasant, I’ve since switched to half doses].
The afternoon was reserved for interviews with the APCD, associate Peace Corps director (the Peace Corps is very very fond of acronyms). While we waited for our individual interviews, we got a tour of the chimbudzi, the pit latrines. So running water is rather rare here and only a quarter of the volunteers live at a site with indoor plumbing. Anyhow, the chimbudzi looks like fun .... It’s a small brick structure with either a concrete or dirt floor. There’s a small opening, roughly the size of a small bowl for the many sorts of trickles one might experience. I’ve gotten pretty good with my aim and in the event I miss, there’s a small twig-brush in the corner to sweep it in. [I had my fingers crossed that I wouldn’t get a chimbudzi, affectionately referred to as the “chim,” turns out I got a site with one, it’s not all that bad]. One of the current PCVs told us a horror story of finding a baby goat in the chim. Turns out it fell in sometime during the morning and when he was mid-drop he heard the bleats (do goats bleat? Or is that just sheep, I’m not really sure). They did everything they could to get it out, but they lost it to the stinking sinkhole. And that’s why you always cover your chim opening, let that be a lesson.
A current volunteer who is serving as our resource PCV (Peace Corps Volunteer) mentioned some guidelines for care packages. The story that sticks out in my mind is the care package she received from her parents for her birthday. Inside the package was a birthday card with a cutesy note, ending with, “And we hope you enjoy the chocolate.” All that was left was a piece of tape and a brown smear. So the advice she gave was label all packages: God is watching you wih abundant wrath. Evidently that will curb some of the package-content-confiscation incidences. In any event, it certainly wouldn’t hurt. Please heed this anyone who wants to send me packages .

July 7, 2010 Dedza
So being in PST kinda feels like I’m at summer camp. We have sessions in the morning, we break for snack, we played a soccer game in the afternoon between the health and the education sector. We each have our own little dorm room that we share with another PCT (Peace Corps Trainee, what did I tell you about acronyms), complete with a gift bag. It’s kinda fun in that kitschy summer camp sort of way. We even got to go to a local bar to watch the World Cup semi-finals. By American standards, it was a dive, but by Malawi standards it was pretty superb. The name of the bar, Ed’s Bar, quaint I know. I found that pretty amusing. It’s also great that your average beer here, the Carlsberg Green, is 160 Kwacha and roughly 150 Kwacha make a $1, talk about excellent. As for Malawi beers, the most popular brand is Kuche Kuche. Yep, read exactly as written. Laugh about that one, I certainly did.

July 10, 2010 Chikanda
Today we moved into the villages for the 5 weeks during homestay. I’m in Chikanda one of the four villages hosting all 36 of us PCTs. The idea of homestay is to acclimate yourself to living on the village level, without running water, electricity, cell phones, or much English. The places are fairly isolated and no one in the village owns any sort of transport. This is what I envisioned about Peace Corps, so here it goes.
After meeting my family, I have to say I’m looking forward to this. I think I’ll even enjoy it. I’m staying with the Masina family, with an amayi (the mother), an abambo (the father), and 5 iwes. I have my own small hut, a mud structure with a thatched roof. After a brief tour of the local amenities, the chimbudzi, the outdoor bafa (bafa under the stars), the kitcheni, another mud structure with a tall roof to allow for the escape of smoke from the open fire. We sat down to dinner, I was seated in my hut with my homestay sister, Molini. Today’s menu: nsima, soy pieces, mphangwe (greens), and natchez (oranges). Being vegan here is going to prove easier than I imagined. The soya pieces are pretty delicious, they look just like bits of chicken or something similar to that, and they are pretty widely available (surprising, I know). My amayi is quite the cook, the food is so much better than the food we had at the college. Chakulya chiwemi, the food is delicious.
Nsima is the national dish of Malawi. And to be up front, I’m not too wild about it. It’s made of twice processed corn flour, wufu, added to boiling water, stirred profusely, and then formed into patties. There’s not much taste to it and it has a texture I would liken to cream of wheat, if it were formed into small patties. The way you eat nsima is with your hand, which is one of the main reasons why I’m not so fond of it. The technique is to grab a bit of nsmia, about the size of a golf ball, maybe a little smaller, roll it around in your palm, and then dip it in the dende (the relish, like the greens or the soya). I’ve never been fond of eating with my hands, I just have a pet peeve about having dirty hands. Since this is a necessary part of eating nsima, I sort of suck at it. I ended the meal looking like a 3-year-old who just destroyed a plate of mashed potatoes. Turns out eating nsima is not something I can pride myself on [even two months in, I still haven’t mastered it, I’ve resorted to eating with a fork].

July 14, 2010 Chikanda
I shy away from calling it quaint, but I lack a better way to describe journaling by candle light. It really casts things in a whole different light. Ok that was an awful pun, but I couldn’t help myself. It certainly is something else though. The only thing to make this moment seem more complete would be if I was writing with a quill and ink well. Ok, enough of the channeling Jane Austen vibe.
I just finished playing Knock with my brothers and sisters. It’s a Malawian version of Uno. You play to get ride of the cards, by playing either like suits or numbers, the ace being the wild card. It’s good fun, I had to work on mastering the new vernacular for the suits: koner (diamond), falower (club), kaweenie (heart), and balaky (spade). If some of those words sound sort of like distorted English, it’s because they are. So many words here are English cognates but with Malawian flare, which means that every consonant is followed directly by a vowel and they stress every syllable. Take “carrot” for example, in Chitimbuka, it’s pronounced ka-ro-ti.
While I’m on the topic of Malawian speech patterns, let me reflect on some of their enunciation styles. So within many Bantu languages, of which Chitimbuka and Chichewa (one of the other languages found in Malawi), the “L” and “R” consonants are interchangeable in both speech and in writing. This serves as an endless source of amusement. I was discussing my interest in politics and when the topic of past elections came up, in the vernacular, they become “erections,” I could barely contain myself. Also, when we were commanded to applaud for a particular speaker, “Evelyone, prease crap your hands.” Pretty hilarious, oh how I adore the Malawians.
Some of the albums on my iPod have stricken some good chords with me while I’ve been in country. Some are far more appropriate than others and seem to really suit the moment. Simon & Garfunkle has really made the overall experience seem so lucid. And yesterday, when I wasn’t feeling well, Otis Redding made the night “feel” better. I plan to do some deep exploring in my music collection over these two years. I’m off to a great start.
As I just hinted, I was a tad sick yesterday. I apologize in advance for this paragraph, it is a little graphic. If you’re weak of stomach, I recommend you skip to the next one. Anyhow, I think it was the water, you have to be really on guard with it here. They pull it from the bore hole or the shallow well in the village, then it has to be boiled, then Water Guard (a chlorine solution) added, and then filtered. A lengthy process, but one to make sure we acclamate to the local water without liquid hesitation (yep, that was a diarrhea joke). Anyhow, I think one of the many steps was lopped off because I went from liquid lunch to liquid stool pretty quickly. My stomach was in knots for a near solid 24 hours; it was excruciating. At one point, as I lifted my fork to my mouth to down my lunch, my stomach interjected with what I interpreted as, “are you fucking serious? 4 times of shitting jenkem and you still haven’t learned your lesson. Well I’ll show you where this is going.” And it did, another few times. I’m glad they give us oral rehydration salts in our med kits, because that was what restored me, after trying to explain via gestures to my amayi why I wouldn’t be taking dinner.
We held a village meeting today to conduct our technical training session. Our technical trainer, Robin conducted the meeting. We each in turn introduced ourselves to the chiefs and other village heads and then addressed our objective. Robin led the village meeting as one of first PACA tool training sessions. The true purpose of the meeting was unbeknownst to them and worked as a technical session for us PCTs. PACA tools, Participartory Analysis for Community Action, are the village integration techniques advocated by Peace Corps. Our charge was to draw a community map, marking the available resources and assets of the village. We split the village members present into four groups: chiefs, men, young women, and older women. Each group began drawing in the rust-colored dirt, using bits of the surrounding landscape as points of interest. A piece of cow shit marked the cattle pen in the center of the village, charcoal demarcated the main roads, large rocks to symbolize the mountains, etc. It was quite the community event, everyone providing input. They conferred with one another, making suggestions to the group, seeking guidance for the general size of things, etc. It was pretty impressive, to see so many people actively engaged in the exercise.
More to come in the future, this is only a start.

An Introduction to Malawi

If you speak to any Malawian and ask them to describe their country the response is all the same: Malawi is the warm heart of Africa. It only took a few short days in country to see just how warm it is. Every greeting is robust, mellifluous, and met with a smile. The kids, or as they’re known colloquially, the iwes, mob you, but in a good way. They just want to hold your hand or give you a thumbs up accompanied by a tittered Boo! or Shop!
Not only are the people friendly, inviting, and warm-hearted, the country itself is beyond beautiful. It’s amazing the vast degree of landscapes in a space roughly the size of Indiana. There are pine forests (filled with monkeys), granite mountains, cacti savannahs, baobob trees, and I even have a rose bush in my front flower garden. You have to love a place where mangoes are so bountiful you can simply pluck one from the nearest tree, regardless of the yard or property owner, there’s a tree nearly every 100 ft or so. Just ask the iwes for a mango and they’ll come back with a basketfull, it’s beautiful. Avocadoes and papaya are also quite similar, I’m in tropical fruit medley heaven.
It’s the sort of the place where people welcome you into their homes with an offer of food. It’s a tad rude to decline, Palije ntchindi, it shows no respect. This has been the source of some conflict, say when the offer includes an offer of meat (this is rarer than you think though). But I’ve got a fail-proof way of declining said offer, I say I’m buddhist. That way I can get out of eating meat and going to church. That aside, Malawi is a place where the second most common phrase behind hello, monile, is nawonga, I am grateful.
Sure, the iwes yell azungu at you quite often, but it’s more from their seeing so few white people, as we’ve visited many remote villages and all. You shouldn’t take offense though, I certainly don’t in any case. It’s pretty cute to hear the iwes practice their English: Good morning (it’s the middle of the afternoon), how are you? I am fine and how are you? It’s always so proper and said without inflection. It sort of makes me feel guilty to even say “y’all” around them for fear of corrupting their proper English. On the other hand, I don’t feel guilty at all about cussing, especially considering the kids have absolutely no grasp of what I’m saying. I’ve resorted to yelling “fuck” at any minor mishap just to exercise the privilege.
I can say without a doubt, I’m so grateful to be in such a beautiful place. Every day holds something new and I’m relishing every opportunity to embrace what it holds. I hope you like the real start of this blog, again my apologies for not writing more until now. Hopefully, I can post more frequently. In the meantime, enjoy these few pictures.

Sorry All!

I'm sure many of you are wondering why I haven't updated at all yet and many apologies are in order. This is my first internet access since I've been in country and unfortunately it's limited. Turns out Peace Corps pre-service training is similar to boot camp in that aspect, with the exception that I'm learning Chitimbuka, taking anti-malarials (that give me wicked creepy dreams), and getting more shots than I ever had in my entire life. So far the experience has been amazing. Without a doubt I can say I love Malawi. The country and people are truly beautiful and so welcoming, I feel right at home. We just moved out of homestay so now I'm off to visit my site in the Northern region of Malawi in Mzimba district. I'm at site I'll have a bit more time and I plan to write much more. So until then.

Lutani makola.