Back with a Vengeance

I feel I should start off by apologizing. It's been a long time since I've posted anything. The only excuses I can offer is that I've been busy (which accounts for only have of the onus), the other is that I've now been here for 15 months and I've reached that cardinal point where so few things seem novel. It's all part and parcel of my daily activities, seldom do I feel the inspiration to write any longer. Well I vow to change that, I owe it to my loyal readers, my parents.

I do have a renewed motivation to write thanks to a package I received just this week from Jessie Garrett. Jessie sent me a package, full of New Yorkers (yay!), and with a letter introducing herself. She ran across my blog through facebook and started reading. I guess she appreciated and enjoyed what I had to write. I hope she sees this shout out! Her letter really made my week and made me remember that friends and family might not call as often anymore, but I'm not forgotten. But due to a mail system that could rival the Pony Express, I didn't receive it until Tuesday this week (September 6th) when it was mailed in April. So yeah. I'm working on a response letter as well. Because of her package I've made myself sit down and put my fingers to the keyboard to get back to writing. Allow me to give an update on my life:

So I spent July planning for Camp GLOW, which I wrote about in the post right after this one. We'd been prepping for the camp pretty actively since March. We being me and the other 4 coordinators. I served as the Programming Coordinator, so I was responsible for booking guest speakers, putting together the camp curriculum, finding people to lead sessions, and being the director of the camp while there. Oh yes, I was the one standing in front of a group of 80 adolescent girls and counselors leading camp songs and shhing them for speakers, and what not. I now understand why camp directors are a little kooky and have an ego. It's necessary in order to both keep people in line and to keep them interested. I'd say I did a pretty good job, but then again I was the one standing in front leading the group in “Make new friends, but keep the old, one is silver and the other gold.”

In August my two brothers came for a visit. If you know either of my brothers you know that we never really have a holiday or vacation, there is always some kind of agenda to it. Same goes for their visit to Malawi. We spent about half of their time here installing and working at the mission tenets of the Malawi Wifi Project, a non-profit established by my older brother G. Jason Schnellbacher. The Malawi Wifi Project holds as its mission to bring new, emerging technology to Malawi to extend internet capabilities to rural and hard to reach areas of Malawi. There visit was to establish the pilot project. That project is now underway in an area outside of Blantyre, located in the southern region of Malawi.

Giving the teachers the first go at how to use the computers.

In addition, my brothers brought computers donated to the project from Olathe Medical Center, located in Olathe, Kansas, and we distributed computers for use in my village. Several were given to my health centre, and several to youth leaders associated with the youth conference held at Mhalaunda and sponsored by the Church of Central African Presbyterian (CCAP), and several to my local secondary school where we also did a solar installation, a panel fixed to the roof, wiring, and the outlets, so that now the school has access to electricity.

Gabriel installing a solar panel at the secondary school.

My brothers visited my village to see where I live and work as well as to do the computer distribution and installation. But it wasn't all work, we shared several meals with my neighbors, forced them to eat nsima, the local “delicacy.” We took a hike around my village to see the local bush. And because there is no running water here, they were forced to use my chimbudzi, my outhouse. That was by far the most amusing as my little brother, Andrew, didn't adjust too well to the sticky, carb-y mass of nsima and was constipated for nearly a week. And then he was forced to squat over my glorified hole in the ground to squeeze it out. I suppose I didn't help matters by sneaking up on him and sticking a camera through the air vent to snap a picture. But then again what are sisters for? It was just too amusing to pass up. I promised him I wouldn't post it, but years down the road, if and when he gets married, that picture is making it into the slideshow.

For more information on the Malawi Wifi Project, please look us up on Facebook.

Well I have a new cat, the sister to Panda Banda, my other cat, in fact. Her name is Gizmo and she formally belonged to another volunteer that just COS-ed (Peace Corps is very keen on their acronyms, COS stands for close of service, the date our contract ends), Meg Watkins. I adopted the cat upon her departure to make my house feel a little less lonely. And I got a little more than I bargained for, besides Gizmo, I got her and her brood, 4 small kittens that upon delivery were only a week old. Right now, they're roaming my house. Well I suppose roaming isn't the right word, more like padding lightly in a 10ft radius of their bed. They are getting more active though, they don't sway like a drunkard when they walk any longer. And they're getting a little more playful and looking less like furry aliens. Which for me means they're both cute and starting to verge on obnoxious. I'm raising a household of kittens and a mother that's a tad crazy (her preferred meal is a piece of bread smeared with butter and sliced tomatoes). It's amusing as I go about my day, of course my whole village knows I have this new set of kittens, despite my attempts at privacy everyone knows about everything all the time. I have the same daily dialogue with people:
Me: Mwawuka uli? (How did you wake up?)
Villager: Tawuka makola, kwali imwe? (We woke well, and you?)
Me: Ah, nawuka makola. Ku nyumba wali makola? (Ah, I woke well also. And how is your house?)
Villager: Ah, wali makola. Na ku nyumba? (Ah, they are well. And your house? A play at the fact that I live alone)
Me: Ka chona wali makola chomene. (Oh my cats are doing very well)
Villager: laughs
And that's the end of the exchange, and I have it about 10 times a day, everyday, in its various forms, the morning, the afternoon, the evening, etc. But whatever evokes laughs and chortles from others is always good with me. Malawians are very genial, good-natured people and they love to laugh. So I make it my mission to crack them up whenever possible.

Ok, I'll end there. I think that's a decent return to writing. I plan to do more anecdotal posts in my coming entries, so that's something to look forward to! Any comments feel free to respond here or email me at chelsjaye@gmail.com. I have an iPhone in the village, so I do check my email everyday. With that, we're done.

Khalani makola, please stay well.