Here in Malawi, just like the rest of the world, there are seasons. As best as my memory can recall, in North America there are 4 advertized seasons; Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall. In Malawi we don’t have quite such dramatic changes, but we still have seasons. Currently we are entering the cool dry season, followed by the hot dry season which changes to the hot rainy season.

Those are seasons in a nutshell, but what about the seasons in between the seasons, the obscure seasons that are extremely localized and specific?What do I mean?

Well for example, in Colorado, March tends to be a useless month. It is warming up (a little) and the snow is melting, thus, mud season.

How about Malawi?

For starters we have the different fruit seasons, currently we are in what is probably my favorite fruit season, guava and avocado season. FYI, Malawi avocados are way better than American avocados. Depending on what part of the country you are in there are seasons you don’t get elsewhere. Fruits like Masuku come into season in October but you can’t get the really nice big ones in Nkhotakota, you have to go South for that. Through the whole country you get mangos from about November until about January. Again, it depends on the region, the last week of March I was in Dedza and I had a mango, weird.

Then there are seasons no one mentions but are kind of implied. Everyone knows that this time of year is the cool season but my first year here no one bothered to tell me that is doubled as the windy season. From now until maybe August it will be windy, lots of windy. At first I thought the windy season was great, it was cooler, no more rain, clothes were drying in one day on the line, and then I went for a bike ride. Biking in the wind sucks. A lot. There are a few hills on the ride in to Nkhotakota and while they were bad at first I’ve gotten used to them but biking up them in a head wind really adds a certain special something. Kind of like a shooting pain in my legs, that kind of special something. It wouldn’t be so bad if it would actually work with me, you know a little tail wind would be great, but this place does the opposite of a tail wind. Whenever I bike it is in a head wind. At first I thought, “ok, headwind on the way in but tail wind on the way home!” nope. Whenever I bike, anywhere I bike, it is in a headwind. The laws of nature will actively conspire against me to see to it that I bike in a head wind. Someone should call NASA, they may be interested in this. It may be affecting ocean currents as well so call NOAA while you’re at it.

And the unfair part is that I will adjust to biking in the wind and then the wind will stop. Then it will be time to bike in the heat, exactly when you actually want the wind. Go figure. Also, now is the start of elephant season. I believe we touched on this last year, the elephants situation here. Well they’re back. Two nights ago to be specific, a herd came out and ate a few maize fields. Because this time of the year is when maize is ready to be harvested the elephants come out and make a meal of a few fields in a night. So I’ll let you know how things progress with the elephants this year.

Other than all that I would like to announce that my group has hit the one year mark. That’s right ladies and gentlemen, I’ve survived intact in Africa for a whole year. The old group has left, they are all back in the states and the new health/environment group swears in on May 2ndso welcome to them and we’ll miss you to the old group! This time next year I’ll be seeing you all back in the States and wishing good luck to the group replacing mine.

That's right, it's March and once again my stalwart powers of procrastination have paid in dividens and you have not had a blog post in a while. Some people count this as good fortune.

When we last met, the new health/environment group had not yet arrived. They have since arrived and are currently starting week three of their homestay. I was there for week two of training as one of the resource volunteers of the week. And I really have to say I think the new group is pretty solid. They are doing well in language from what I saw and they are dealing with the changes in training well. Which I guess is to be expected because they don't know what the old system was.

Now, this is my second time in homestay. Truthfully, homestay is better the second time around. The food, you appreciate the food. Last time the food was about as exciting as getting a flu shot, but at least my arm didn't hurt after dinner. You don't appreciate the food at all, it is rice, greens and chicken or soya pieces. This time around it was rice, greens, chicken or soya pieces! WOOH! Reliable protein every night that I didn't have to cook! It was amazing!

Also, people heat your bafa water for you each morning. I don't have to heat my own water! The first time around you are thinking, "I am squatting next to a bucket dumping water on my head with a cup. When do bow and arrow making classes start?"

This time around you're thinking, "I can adjust the water temperature just by adding a scoop of hot or a schoop of cold! Oh the luxury! Bring me the head of a goat! I crave the head of a goat!"

And you are in a position of power, granted it is not much power, but you can leave when you want, talk to people and it doesn't matter because you are not under the oppressive thumb of the training day.

All in all I recommend living in a country for a year before going to training. It helped me! Hopefully picture will come soon, be patient please.

You are arriving in a little under a month. If you’re anything like me you will be really excited and then the night before you fly out you’ll be the equivalent of roughly one valium away from a nervous breakdown. Please don’t be like me, that was completely uncalled for. This is not a conmplete packing list just a few things that I came across while getting ready. So my hints for reducing you stress are as follows:

ClothesYou only have limited space and weight limits, and you are probably worried about what to bring as far as clothes go. Ladies bring a few t-shirts, some lightweight travel pants, some long skirts, swimsuit and underwear. Boys, same thing but you can skip the skirts. You can and will buy clothes here I promise! If it comes down to leaving something out so you can bring a pressure cooker or whatever, leave out the clothes. A hat is nice to have and I do advise bringing a brand new package of underwear and just holding on to it. You’ll thank me in about a year.

Med kit

Don’t even bother with this one unless you have some sort of medication or batman band-aid (which is really cool) then that you should bring. The Peace Corps medical office is amazing. Dr. Max and Dr. John and Nurse Evelyn have absolutely everything you need. I brought medical stuff when I came and I haven’t touched it. All I can suggest is maybe some ibuprofen and a handful of band aids to get you through home stay.

ShoesYou hear all kinds of things on this one. Bring tennis shoes, bring sandals, bring a hiking boot that stamps out waffle patterns in the mud, you know stuff like that. I brought tennis shoes, hiking boots, and a pair of Tevas. I live in my Tevas, ask anyone. I actually wore a pair out and had to get a new one. If you hate wearing sandals in the States you probably will here too. I think I can count on one hand the number of times I have worn my tennis shoes and I haven’t touched the hiking boots (sorry mom). Don’t worry about flip flops, Peace Corps gives you a pair, they’re not super nice or anything but they are great for the shower. So if you have a pair you can’t live without, bring it.

Games/Time killers

These you will want. I brought a deck of cards and a book of word search puzzles to country and I love them both. Other things we recommend are Uno, Apples to Apples and Bananagrams. Any kind of small puzzle game that can travel well is good to have. You will have some down time in home stay and these are good to have.

Electronics

I brought a net book to country and an external hard drive and my ipod. Insure things before you leave!!!! I cannot stress this enough, Malawi is hard on electronics. I have had to replace each of these, thankfully they were covered so that helped a lot. If it mattered to you in the states it will matter to you here even more. Having a computer is not a necessity but it is really nice and does help get stuff done. The external hard drive is good to have if you plan on keep yourself entertained. There are a ton of movies and tv shows floating around here but get a really good travel case. Bouncing around on a mini bus does nothing good for these things

US Dollars

I think the maximum you can put in the safe in Lilongwe is about 700 or 800. Do it if you can afford to. Sometimes things come up and you need some extra cash. Or if you are planning a trip somewhere it helps to be able to start off with USD, the Malawian Kwacha is worth nothing.

Lights/BatteriesBring a good head lamp, odds are good it’ll be your main source of light for a very long time. With that in mind get rechargeable batteries for it. It does you no good to run out of batteries and have to wait for them to come from America. Get a headlamp that takes rechargables and get extra batteries so you are never stuck.

SolarI have a solar panel that hooks up to a motorcycles battery and I can charge stuff off of that, in theory. It worked for a while but I think something is wrong with the battery since it is cheap junk but it worked for a while. A lot of people have a little solar charger that they stick in the sun all day and can charge their ipod or phone for a bit at night. That is a nice thing to have so bring one of those. I also have a small flashlight made by Coleman that has a solar panel and hand crank charger on it and I like it a lot. If it has been a cloudy rainy day you can still charge it and read at night.

At the moment that is all I can think of. If you happen to come up with any questions just ask and I’ll do what I can to answer them. Please remember, you’ll be ok! I had never been out of the States before coming here and I made it so you will too! Keep calm and keep breathing!

Also, don’t do all your packing the night before you leave. That won’t help you either. Otherwise, I look forward to seeing you all for your week two of training!

Not too far from my house is Lake Chilingali (aka Lake Chikukutu), it is a manmade lake and is pretty old, it was done back in the 1960’s from what I understand. It is one of the few large lakes in Malawi (aside from Lake Malawi) so a lot of the economy in the area is based on the lake. Irrigation agriculture, fishing and ecotourism hippo watching are all dependent on the lake.

From what the villagers have told me, about 5 years ago the dam broke. Now when I say dam don’t picture anything like a dam you would see in America. It was a concrete barrier with a spill way but not very big at all. The concrete has long since been blown out and all that is holding the lake back was a mud barrier. Until recently.

Riddle me this, if you have a business ferrying people across the river below the dam and the water flow slacks off how can you drum up more business……..

The answer is so simple it may shock you! Grab your khasu (hoe) and rip the mud wall apart! Problem solved!

Oh Malawi.

That is exactly what happened. Over two days, what is left of the lake has plummeted about 10 feet. The hippos have long since left but the crocodiles are supposed to still be there. The dropping water level only serves to concentrate them. So I expect to hear about more and more people having conflicts with the wildlife.

Today I stopped in at the Department of Irrigation and told them about it, because let’s face it; there is no way they knew this soon. They all looked pretty shocked, which was good. Apparently they had been out a week ago to do survey planning. They are starting on planning to put in a new dam. From what they told me the European Union is involved in some capacity so that might help.

All the people I have talked to are really upset about it they all say, “Ah he is a very foolish man”. Yup. The police came out to arrest him and before they took him away his punishment was to ferry people across for free. Kinda poetic justice that way.

Also, the African Cup of Nations was played on Sunday night. The contenders were Cote d’Ivory and Zambia. All the Malawians were cheering for Zambia because we are neighbors and it is right to do that. I watched the game, the first soccer game I ever watched all the way through. They tell me it was a really good game. I still don’t see it. No one scored the whole game so it went into overtime or whatever they call it. So basically they took shots at the goal until someone got one in and someone missed. That part was kinda exciting but otherwise it was a little over an hour of my life I want to get back.

It’s funny though that the logic behind cheering for Zambia was that we are neighbors. That doesn’t work in the States. Take the AFC West for instance. If the Oakland Raiders are playing the Steelers we don’t cheer for the Raiders because we are in the same division, you pray the Steelers beat them into the ground. That sort of thing only works here. But Zambia won so in the end everyone was happy.

The Traditional Authority (think like a few steps up from chief) of the goalie from Zambia gave him two cows and 250 hectares for doing such a good job. Superbowl victors get a ring and a parade. Both completely applicable in their own ways.

Welcome to the second month of 2012. Who would have guessed it huh? This time last year I was on the verge of going nuts because the plane left in 27 days and as far as I could tell I was about as prepared for Africa as Hannibal was crossing the Alps. But unlike Hannibal, I have succeeded and haven’t had to deal with dead elephants, only live ones, which I promise are more interesting to watch.Lately though things have been a little slow in the village. The school project keeps going, pang’ono pang’ono, little by little. The biggest obstacle we have hit is the lack of cement . We need 26 bags to finish, the porch, waterways (they channel the rain water away), and plaster on the top of the exterior walls. But you’re thinking, “So what, it’s just a little cement. It’s like what, three bucks a bag?” Well, no. The currency here, the Malawian kwacha, is pretty much worthless. Currently, the bank’s exchange rate is 1 USD=174 MK and one bag of cement is roughly 4100 MK, so you do the math. 4100/174= 23.56, yup, that’s how many dollars one bag of cement here is. Whoopie. And at 26 bags of cement that comes out to a little over $600 just for cement. So I have been working on a SPA (Small Projects Assistance) grant, not fun, lots of paper work. Hopefully I’ll have it done at the end of the month and can turn it in then. If it wasn’t for the lack of foreign currency and the fuel shortage, Malawi would be fantastic. And don’t get me wrong, I love Malawi, the people are nice, the weather isn’t bad, the lake is fantastic and there is a bunch of cool stuff to see but living is getting too expensive. When I first got to country it cost me about 800MK to get from Nkhotakota to Lilongwe, and the same to go back. Now, only one year later, I will pay over 1000MK. I know it doesn’t sound like a lot but consider this; we don’t get paid in USD, we get paid in MK and prices for everything else keep going up too. Bread, eggs, everything. We got a 10% increase a few months ago but right afterwards the devalued the kwacha and priced jumped again. Hopefully we are getting another raise soon but they are talking about devaluing the kwacha again. Yay.It’s just a vicious loop. We can’t buy fuel because no one wants the Kwacha, we have to buy it with foreign currency, but there is no for-ex to buy fuel because no one wants to invest in a country with a fuel problem. It’s a real problem for us PCVs, prices shoot up way faster than our living allowance surveys can get our 10% raise. I know very few volunteers who haven’t had to dip into money back in the states. It kinda sucks, trying to eat, knowing you have to get to Lilongwe or somewhere else and pay for all kinds of things, before the end of the month. And if you are trying to get somewhere then good luck. Hitching out of my site to Nkhotakota boma has gone from rough to pretty much impossible. From there you might get a ride going south but there is very little that goes north along the lake shore. Mini buses still run but they’ll really give you a bad price now. But we do it, what else can you do. A lot of people have talked about how transport really takes it out of you now. We like being in Lilongwe (or where ever) and we like being at site but that in between bit is rough. There is a lot of mental preparation that goes into a transport day. It has always been like that but lately I think it is worse. If there are any trainees from the new group coming in March who are reading this, don’t freak out! I’m not trying to scare you, I know this post would not have helped me feel better but you’ll be ok. You need to realize something coming into this. It’s still just life, life in a new place and you will have a lot to learn but you’ll get the hang of it, I promise! Look forward to seeing you all next month! Now stop reading every blog you can find and go get some sleep.

Oh yeah...blogging........maybe I should start that up again......sorry.

So we've had bit going on lately. In early December we started working on the school finally. We got funding and began to getmoving. The problem with starting projects in December is that it is the begining on the rainy season. The roads may or may notbe good enough to get a truck down on. But we got lucky, the roads were good and we had great transport. Work started really well, the cement floors went in really fast. After the floors, the chalkboard went up. To my surprise they are just cement, smeared on the wall and painted black. Never would have guessed.

About this time in the construction I took a sabbatical. And by "sabbatical" I mean plane ride home. To those of you who assisted, and you know who you are, thank you for that. Everything was going well untill I hit the States. We landed in Washington an hour late and I only had a two hour lay over! Now, in Lilongwe when I got on the plane they told me my bags were checked all the way through and I wouldn't have to worry about it. In D.C. they said yeah, no, you need to go find it and drag it through customs.

Crap.

So I spent 30 minuets of my one hour waiting for my duffle to stop dragging it's feet and show up.

You always see those movie scenes where someone is running flat out through the airport. That was me. Women were grabbing small children out of my way. Luckily the people at security were super nice and moved me to the front of the line...yay!

Quick! More running!

So I finally made it to the gate, only to find out that they had sold my ticket cause I was about 30 seconds late. So 5 minutes and a few tears later I am sitting on the plane headed home! It really is amazing how far out you can see Pikes Peak.

Going home was amazing and let me just say that I want all of you to go to your local supermarket and take a look around the produce department. Be happy for what you see...very very happy. Do the same thing in the frozen food, dairy, and deli departments (ignore the rice and potatoes). Then go out to your car, do the doors open and not fall off? Hug it. Walk to you laundry room, find the washer and dryer. Kiss those. You have no idea how easy it is to laundry there. Never again do I want to hear that laundry is hard in America. Here, doing laundry takes all day, at least. During therainy season though, stuff won't dry for two days. In a dryer, it's what, 30 minutes? Gimmie a break.

It was not nearly long enough. For some reason I actually envisioned myself having a day to just sit and veg out. Did not happen. I actually think my feet didn't touch the ground the entire time I was home, we were so busy! Shopping, seeing family, friends, and animals. I also had about 150 hats to sell from my women's club. And to those of you who broke down and bought some, we say thank you! I'm actually impressed that almost all of them sold so thank you.

Coming back to Malawi was yet another long long plane ride. Just one thing about Ethiopian Airlines. They rock! Both of the airlines I rode on in the States felt like they should have been in another country, not America. Ethiopean was nice, you have a ton of movies and the food in actually really good, except the desserts, those were just bad. Otherwise, they were the best part of the trip. And all my luggage made it!

So now I'm back in Nkhotakota and I am happy to report that both the dog and cat survived me being gone and the house was only

slightly soaked. The tube of caulk I brought back really has gone a long way to fixing the holes in the roof. So far things have been quiet and I'll get back to you when I can!

Once a year in Liwonde National Park they hold a large mammal count, and Peace Corps gets to help. The count was supposed to happen back in October but due to funding it was pushed back to this past weekend. Transport was really bad getting to Liwonde boma, I was the last person to get there, but luckily there were still people around so we got a truck to drive us out to the camp.

There are two camps, the South camp and the North camp. The North camp is for people who did the count the previous year, it's nicer, they have a pool. So we were in the South camp, but we still had flushing toilets and showers so whatever, it's still a step up from my house. One of the other things our camp had was monkeys, Vervets and Baboons. If a monkey sees you put something down, they will pick it up, even if they don't see you put it down, they came in the buildings. They would steal food off the fire, countertops, out of the kitchen and from the dorms we were staying in. Case in point, I lost a pair of pants. That's right, monkeys took my pants.

Monkeys aside, the animals were really neat. At the game count you do two things, sit and count whatever happens to walk by and walk a transect line and count what you happen to stumble across. The first day I did a hide count. We saw a lot of Impala, Kudu, Bushbuck, Warthhog, Buffalo, Elephants and Hippos. There were Elephants, a mother, a baby who looked to be about 3 years old and a much younger baby, maybe only a few months. They got really close, maybe within 50 yards and then walked across the Shire River, the baby swam.

That night some very nice PCV donated 16 chickens, 8 to each camp. We had 8 chickens to kill, I took one, and I am proud of how the girls stepped up to take them on, only one person got blood splattered on them. One of the chickens tried to buy her freedom by laying an egg at the last minuet but the blood lust (or protein defficency) of the PCVs would not be quelled. So yeah, we ate a lot of chicken, it was really really good.

Also, in Liwonde, it was hot. Really hot. And I think it was worse at night, you are in a little room with at least 4 other people, all hot, and no air is moving. A night time conversation with myself went a little something like this:

*ugh, it's hot, i wonder if anyone else is this hot. of course they are, how could anyone not be this hot, it's hot. tomorrow i have to go do a transect walk, i bet that is hot. they said they ran out of water, i'm glad i bought an extra bottle, i'll probaly need it. stupid monkey, i can't find those pants anywhere. why am i still wet, i took that shower hours ago.....oh.....the water has been replaced with sweat, maybe i could sleep outside. the mosquitos aren't too bad, no i can't sleep outside, stupid monkeys. maybe i can flip the pillow over, that usually helps, where is the cold spot?....okay, new mission, where is a spot not soaked in sweat. ew. i hate being hot*

And that would continue for a while until one of us gave up on the conversation and went to sleep. The next day I went and did a transect walk. For that one, you have a GPS and walk in a line marking points where you see animals. We saw about 19 Elephants, Impala, Sable antelope, Roan antelope, bushbuck, Hartebeest, Kudu, Buffalo and lion footprints. Whenever you come up on Buffalo you backtrack at least 50 yard and circle way around before you keep going. Just ask Andrew and Kate, they got chased and had to climb trees. Rhino are the same way and we had people get chased by them too.

After retrieving a few people who got lost in the bush, we got back to camp, packed up and headed out. I got a mini bus going to Lilongwe but I was kinda late so I stopped off at Cassie's house for the night. Tomorrow I should be home once more.

And that's the latest from Malawi. Just remember, watch out for wild animals, know how to use a GPS, don't use a flash around Elephants, and if someone finds a portable air conditioner let me know. I'll see you all in a month for Christmas!!!

I have heard it said that if you have nothing to talk about, then you are to stick to two subjects, the weather, and everybody’s health. (Extra points to those of you playing along at home who can guess that musical).So we’ll start with the weather. When I came to Malawi everyone said October was hot hot hot hot. I’m not so sure that is true. So far, October is a lot like June, it has been cloudy, windy, cool, and everywhere but Nkhotakota it has been raining. A lot. So some crazy weather front is pushing all rain out of the teeny tiny 16 km radius of my house. Why!! I don’t want to water the garden anymore! However, unseasonal rain causes problems. Some people think the rains are coming early this year and that can mean big trouble. For starters no one has planted corn yet, they normally don’t do that until November. Planting early won’t always mean a harvest, if the rain stays until normal (Dec-Jan) the corn will be ripe but it won’t dry. Rains this time of year can also mess up volunteer projects. Construction, tree planting, bore hole digging, etc, all have to happen in the dry season. So, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, hopefully the hot season kicks in and the rain holds off until the proper time.On to health, it’s much better thank you. My throat no longer hurts and I have been off antibiotics for a while now. The puppy (Dora) however has been a little off. I have been wanting to feed her dewormer for a while now but I have been waiting until I felt she could handle it. She has had a huge belly but you could still see her ribs and hips and she would eat anything, pretty good signs of worms. So at the end of last week I started feeding her the diotamicious earth that Megan sent. Nothing was changing until about two days ago. Basically over night I guess she passed all her worms, her belly is gone. Obviously this take quite a toll on a tiny system like hers so she has been taking it easy the past few days and finally ate some scrambled egg for me this morning. Pang’ono Pang’ono.The other volunteers also seem to be quite healthy. Some of us, Twila, Shawn, Erin, Annette and myself all got together at Nkhotakota Pottery to meet the new US Ambassador to Malawi. She and her husband are both very nice. They bought us all lunch. Ohmygosh, that was the first steak I have seen in ages and the most fat and protein I have consumed in a single sitting since Feburary 27th I think. My body may go into shock. Next week on Thursday I will be in Lilongwe, I have a report to file. I would be doing it from Nkhotakota but because I am the biggest idiot I know, I broke my computer and can’t do it from here…yay. On the Brightside though I get to have free internet access and get some work done. So until next time, tiwonana!

1) I am only here 18 more months2) Harder to get away for a few days3) Feeding them (I barely feed myself)4) Flea and tick meds, long way to get them and $$5) Housebreaking is never fun no matter what hemisphere you are in6) Less time for you7) I already have a cat (Squiggles and she is really really cute!!!)And on….And on……..And on…………....I have list at home that is a lot longer, I just didn’t bring it to the boma today. And I stand by it. Dogs are nice in the States. I know breeds, I know what to expect of these breeds. The village dogs are pretty feral and can be unpredictable. I know volunteers who, for the first time in their lives got a dog, I do not recommend that! You start out with a shelter dog or something that is already trained, preferably a Labrador. Something easy, you don’t walk into the math department and say, “I want to take advanced differential calculus because I saw someone else do it and it looked like fun!” (If you are doing that may I seriously suggest you have your head examined.) But they did it anyway and I have become the Dog Whisperer via text messaging. It’s fun though, you get to hear about what is going on, how the dogs are, you get a feel for what works and what doesn’t. I will say this, the dogs here are highly food motivated. People keep asking me why I don’t get a dog if I love them so much and I give them the list. Sometimes though, despite our best efforts things slip though the cracks.So I would like to introduce you all to my puppy. She doesn’t have a name yet. Benson (my neighbor) has a dog, Tiger and back in early August she had a litter of 5 puppies. Everything was going really well, 2 boys are on hold for Erin, until they hit about 6 weeks old. This little girl suddenly got sick, really sick. At first I thought she was blind, she would stumble around, walk into things, walk off of things (like a porch), wasn’t eating well, was extremely dehydrated, the whole smash. So I started giving her milk in a syringe, oral rehydration solution, antibiotics, and she did get a little better. Then I went off to IST, got back and found her a mess. Apparently she fell down a chim (pit toilet) for two days, eeeewwwwwww. So she got a bath, more fluids and more antibiotics. She still walks funny but not as bad as before. She holds her neck out straight, still wobbles and occasionally runs into things. I think she had a bacterial infection that went to her brain or inner ears. And here is the kicker, she stopped growing. At 9-10 weeks she is the same size she was at 7-6, her brothers are huge, maybe a foot at the shoulder and she is still a tiny 9”. Maybe the infection took out her pituitary gland and she stopped growing? I don’t know, I’m out of guesses for this dog. So long term diagnosis; who knows. I now have a kitten who barely leaves the house and a puppy who can hardly sit straight with little bladder control (name to consider; Puddles).Mary’s Home for Wayward Animals: Africa is now open, our newest branch office is located just outside Nkhotakota in rural Malawi, please no Mambas.

Well IST (Inter Service Training) is done with. We arrived on Sunday, two weeks ago and went to visit the Nordins at Never Ending Food, they are really nice people and have an amazing set up with perma culture gardening everywhere. It was really nice to see. Then for the next few days it was a lot of evaluations about previous trainings, things we would like to see improved for future groups, etc.

Counterparts arrived on Wednesday. I brought Ponsiano from the Parks and Wildlife office in Nkhotakota. He is an extension worker so since he is in multiple villages it seemed like a way to have the training benefit a lot of people beyond my reach.

On Sunday the Health volunteers arrived. IST is a total of 3 weeks long with the middle week being a combined training for both our sectors and the outlier weeks being individual sectors training. I think it worked well, the combined training week had a lot to do with administrative stuff so this way they don't have to repeat themselves.

While all this was going on people were dropping like flies. I don't know what happened but some horrible bug was going around. That first week, I ran out of stomach meds so many people were sick. There are two kinds of people, those who came prepared and those who know someone else came prepared and thus didn't even bring pain killers. So thats how I ran out of meds.

I took my turn with the bug for almost the entire second week. I was feeling pretty good by Wednesday morning when the medical office came out to do our final vaccinations, go figure. Thursday I was off, I went back to bed at about 11am and some nice volunteers brought me lunch. Friday I didn't even bother, it wasn't worth it to get up. I talked to the medical office and they were going to send Amoxicillin the next day. I kept feeling worse.

Later that day we actually looked in my throat...eeeeewwwwww, tonsils covered in pus, for those of you eating, I'm sorry, but you shouldn't have food at a computer anyway, so it serves you right. After that I was on transport for Lilongwe so fast, I think it actually did make my head spin. But considering how miserable I was, it is pretty amazing my head was still attached.

In Lilongewe I streched out on a table for a solid hour or so, and Dr. Max hooked me up to an IV drip;

Dr. Max- Pepani (sorry) Mary, this is gonna hurt

Me- uuuhhhhhh

Dr. Max- your gonna feel a pinch

Me- uuuhhhhhh

Long story short, I didn't feel much of that, thank goodness, I have a bad track record with needles.

So after that, Dr. Max drove me to Korea Garden Lodge where I have been staying. This morning he came over to do more IV antibiotics. I couldn't help but think about how it looked. I mean think about it, in a devloping country, IV bag hanging from a coat rack, little vials spread out on the bed, usually these stories end with someone waking up in a bathtub of ice with a note saying "Call a Doctor". But seriously, Dr. Max is awesome and is coming to check on me again tomorrow.

Malawi is funny, I have been sick more here in the past 6 months than I have in the last year living in the States and I've been on 2 IV drips in as many days, I don't think I have ever been on one. Africa is rough on you if you don't know what to expect.

(BTW- Mom the IV ABX is Ceftriaxone and they gave me 2 g yesterday and today)

I know, I know, it's been a while....again. I am not made for blogging. Well, mostly this country is not made for blogging. No electricity at my house and frequent power outtages mean that even if you do get to the boma to post an update there is always the chance you won't be able to do it anyway. But I digress, todays topic is; Bicycles a.k.a.- Jenga (in Chichewa)

When we get to site, Peace Corps gives us a bike on which to get around. For many volunteers it is the only method of getting to your nearest trading center, boma, or other volunteer. I am lucky, I have a short ride down a dirt path and then it is a quick, albeit hilly, 16 km to NKK boma on a paved road, the M 18. Some people are 16 km from the nearest paved road, I'm not complaining.

The bike provedes a means of transport not only for you but your kathundu (baggage), any mail you may have, groceries, fellow PCV's, and let me tell you, if I had a nickle for every time I saw a goat or pig or chicken lashed to the back of a bike, well I don't how many nickles it would exactly be but my guess is somewhere around $2.50. It is actually really funny to see and you would think the animals would put up a bigger fuss about it, but no. They seem quite resigned to their fate if for no other reason than, "Well as long as I'm on the bike, the kids don't throw rocks at me, humm, not bad."

I was biking to the boma one day and passed a man and a goat. The goat was tied insuch a fashion as to look like it was sitting side-saddle on the frame, with it's front legs tied and resting on the handle bars, a very dainty looking goat. Actually I thought it was dead, then as soon as I passed it the goat looked at me and went,

"MMMAAAAAHHHHHH!!!"

I think this loosely translates to,

"Look! They can't hit me with rocks! The kids don't know how to lead a target!" but I think it loses a little something in the translation, goat to Chichewa to English, you know, hard to keep up with it.

Actually, if someone would tell the livestock that if they would flop around a bit more they could very easily upset the bikes it may be a different story. And that is the amazing part, I bet getting them up is quite interesting (especially the pigs) but they just sit there! Weird. All my experience with American livestock suggests they would be adverse to such treatment. Humm, I think there is a selective breeding program for bike friendly animals, it's in the genes.

A select few of you already know this, for those of you who don't, this will help you through today's blog post. So here is the short version;

I was grabbed in my boma, twice.

There is a crazy homeless guy who hangs out and harasses people, locals, tourists, kids, anyone. Last Wednesday he was following me around the boma ranting and raving and ended up grabbing my ass. I got freaked out and left for Lilongwe for a few days, and he was arressted for a night. A week later, (Wednesday) I get back to Nkhotakota I get grabbed again, the police had given him a haircut and shaved his beard, I practically walked right into him! This time my site mate is with me and she gets grabbed as well.

One of the interesting things about Malawian culture is the apathy. Here are two people clearly in distress being harassed and visably grabbed and what do the tons of people around us do? Laugh. Because he is crazy it is funny.

Anyway, we pick up bricks to throw at him and walked to the police station, file a report, and are told to come back to be in court on Friday. So we get all the way here and are told that nothing is happening untill Tuesday, and even then it is just his day in court to state 'Guilty' or 'Innocent'. They will call when we are needed.

So what did we learn today? Walk around with bricks and the kids finally don't talk to you, and dealing with legal systems sucks globally. Wooh.

So, sorry I haven't been posting lately. Every now and then blogging goes to the bottom of the To-Do list and doesn't resurface for a while.

Anyway, currently I am at Kamuzu Academey in Kasungu district. It is really quiet here, on account of the fact that school is out. Nice and quiet, and the internet isn't all bogged down so things are moving pretty quickly.

I have been staying with a volunteer who lives nearby, Alysia, and yesterday we went into Kasungu to go see a wedding. The man getting married lives in Alysia's village and she was invited to go. From what I can gather, if you are invited, you invite other people too, so I went along.

We were dropped off in the wrong spot to we wandered around for a while before we gave up and just went to Kasungu to get to the bank. At 1pm we headed to the community center for the reception.

The program said that it started off with "soft" music. Let me tell you something, Malawians have amazing hearing but they can not play their music loud enough. They love to have it at ear drum piercing levels, don't know why. After the music the wedding party danced in followed by the bride and groom. Any of you remember seeing that viral video taken of a wedding in America where everyone danced down the isle? It was kinds like that, but African.

Then we had about a million "pelekani pelekani". A pelekani pelekani is basically where everyone gets up, dances around, and throws a ton of money in these buckets for the bride and groom. In America you get a toaster and 5 crock pots, in Malawi you get buckets of money, literally, buckets. But these families were a bit more bwana than most people here. I suspect that a village wedding would not result in so much cash, but the effect is the same, loads of money being thrown at you.

Alysia and I got up and participated, I don't know how much kwacha I threw in but each time you get up you walk back to your seat about 20-50 kwacha lighter.

After a little bit you look at the piles of money being counted and a thought crossed my mind, "Is it bad that I want to walk over there and make change?" Seriously though, we get paid with 500 kwacha bills and those are impossible to use in the village. Part of me wanted to go over and offer to condense it down for them a bit, that way they have fewer buckets of money to put on their truck, thus lightening the load and saving fuel. I was being economical.

Speaking of fuel, I know some of you (*cough cough* mom*cough cough*) have been reading about the riots that occured here a week or so ago. Let me tell you how it played out in Nkhotakota boma. They closed the People's grocery store.

No, that's all, just closed one store. Jesi and I ran into the manager at a lodge while we were having a cheeseburger, he had a coke.

When you hear that something is happening "nation wide" people usually envision mass panic, something absolutely every person is participating in. When they say "nation wide" in Malawi, they mean it was happening in the three biggest cities, Blayntre, Lilongwe, and Mzuzu, which happen to be located in the South, central, and North parts of the country, and thus it is nation wide.

So no worries. There are more demonstrations planned for the 17-18th of August but probably more of the same.

So to wrap up; weddings=lots of money, and things can get blown out of proportion here too. I love you all and hope to talk to you soon!

How do you hide a dozen elephants?Simple, put them in a densely vegitated river bottom at 2 am, poof! No more elephants! But I'm getting ahead of myself.After a few days of being informed that the elephants were out and about over the previous night, I informed Benson that, regardless of the time I wanted to know about it the next time it happened! I didn't really realize that what I had been said would be taken quite so literally until just a few nights ago. At about 1am on Saturday I was awakened by the neighbor's dog barking, insert ear plugs and continue sleeping. The next thing I know there are muffled voices coming from outside my house, right next to the window. Groggily, remove ear plugs;"Mary! Are you hearing the drums? They are beating them to scare the elephants!""Uh...maybe...hang on..."I look at my watch, 2:30!?!? I only recognize one 2:30 per day and this is not it. There had better be elephants singing and dancing somewhere. I get dressed, which really only consisted of grabbing pants and getting my camera, and head outside. Benson is there and true to his word, he came to get me for the elephants, so off we go. Luckily there is a full moon so we can see pretty well and finally get to the paved road (the M18) and start walking towards the river that drains into Lake Chikukutu not too far away. Once we get a little closer we realize the elephants are back further and reverse directions looking for a way to cut into the bush on various little paths winding in and out of fields of corn, cassava, rice, bananas, and just plain grass.Fast forward to about 4am. The group of elephants has split up, half are going back to the reserve with half still milling around in the river bottom and we have yet to see them. We hear them quite well. Out here the only time you hear a tree crashing down is if people are behind it, so knowing that some really massive animals are out there just knocking them over, and at night they look completely black, is more than a cure for any attention defficits one may posess at the moment due to lack of sleep. You are wide awake!We are now standing on the edge of a rice field in the river bottom, we have lost all height from the surrounding hills and are at the same level as the elephants. They are about 200 yards, by my guessing, in the bush and we can hear them happily muching on anything they please. Every now and then you hear an almost rubbery, squeaky sound, kinda like the sound two pickels make when you rub them together, that is the sound banana trees make when their stalks are ripped in two. But the elephants move further back. We double back up the hill and cut down on to the sandy part of the river bank where we can cross over to the side the elephants are on. Both us and the elephants are now moving East paralell to the river. It is 5:30 and the sky is just barely starting to lighten, we come up the sandy bank and into a large open area. There they are! Just vaguly you can make out the shapes as your eyes try to focus. There are about a dozen of them, a small group, 30-40 is more normal. Photo op! Kinda. The first picture didn't turn out, no flash and it was too dark. Okay, I think, one flash photo won't scare them, right? Well...... The camera goes off, and one of the largest of the dark masses turns and faces us, you can make out the big ears fully extended trying to asses us from a distance of maybe 75-100 yards.Benson: "Oh we should be turning back. He doesn't like it."Me: "What, he's coming this way???"Benson: "We are turning back now!"So we back off and the elephants melt into the forest. It was amazing, you have been folowing elephants all night! Walking in their footprints, listening to them execute their complete and total mastery of their environment, as they cut a swath through the forest. Then to glimpse them for so brief a moment almost isn't fair. After this, the sun is up and of course we don't see the elephants any more so we turn to go home. When we do, I realize what a highway we were in. There are tracks and dung everywhere, some tracks from a very young baby. Also, you realize why exactly they are all over the place. Down in the river bottem there are no houses due to seasonal flooding, only crops, lots of corn and rice which the elephants have decimated in the course of one night. As we are walking out of the fields towards the settelments, we pass a farmer on his way to what used to be a corn field. This field was planted later and well watered and would have acted as a cushion during the hungry season for his family. It is gone. As we pass he is speaking to me and Benson translates, "he wants you to, please, kill an elephant."And what else is there to do. All the people can do is bang drums to try and scare them off but we all know a full grown African elephant pretty much does what he wants. So we come to the amazing reality we are faced with. We are failed wildlife managers, we have failed here. Everywhere else, every other species of game here is managed, albeit certain tecniques aren't that great, but they have plans. Hippo, crocodile, leopard, lion, all dangerous animals, have different policies. But elephants, the true King of the Jungle, possibly the most unpredictable animal you can run into out in the bush, is untouched.There is no mamagment technique, nothing. And not having a plan, or any sort of direction, equals failure in my book.And there is nothing villagers can do but sit back, bang some drums and watch their livelihood disappear overnight. It is easy to have an opinion on something, very easy, to throw out advice, condem those who's ideas clash with out own, we hold the noble stance, the high ground, "these people don't realize how important and wonderful the elephants are. How sad." Believe me, they realize it, at 2:30 am we passed other women who were outside hoping to see the elephants, people were asking me if we really saw them. I was taken out in the African bush by someone who wanted to share these amazing animals with someone who had never seen them in their natural habitat before. They fully understand them and what they are capable of, never think they don't get it, they see it and they are frustrated by it. What they are lacking in is solutions, real solutions, to the largest attractive, nusiance of an animal on this planet. And let me just say that someone had better come up with one fast. Growing populations of elephants and people will result in only more conflict, and a peaceful resolution is, as far as I can see, nothing but a dream.

All hail the power of puppies. Did you ever know a creature capable of infusing the life around them with so much drama as to rival daytime soap operas? On top of that, they are amazingly resiliant creatures, despite being small and easy to burn. The puppy is doing beautifuly. The day after my last blog post, she stopped drooling all the time, the first sign she was able to swallow again. Then that evening she promptly, and with great enthusiasm, ate 4 coconut cookies, despite them being stale. I am also happy to say she has put on weight really quickly and is almost back to where she was.Most of the neighbors all knew what happened, I think, and have been watching her to see when she would start eating again, other people are feeding her too. And, Thursday morning she got an extra special treat....a dead rat! Wooh! And I can hear you thinking, "how did the puppy happen upon an already dead rat first thing in the morning without the other dogs eating it first." Well forge on gentle reader and learn of the consequences of living in Mouse Village.The first consequence; Mbewa means 'Mouse' and it lives up to its name. For the past week I have been trying everything in my power to kill a certain mouse (more like a small rat). At first I was just setting the trap but after a couple unsucessful nights, I decided the trap wasn't sensitive enough and tried different ways of leaving it so it would snap easily. Still nothing. This was one smart rat, she even had some attitude. One morning I woke up and saw her sitting on the chair next to my bed! As is the case with rats and mice, they climb on things and leave little 'gifts' everywhere for you to find. On the table, dishes, etc. ugh, lots of washing in lots of hot water.Then, Thursday morning, we hit the final straw. I was laying in bed at about 6:30 and I hear something making tons of noise with a plastic bag. At first I thought it was a toad. They live in here too and if there is a bag on the ground they will sit in it, I don't know why. But the bag was, instead, being pulled under the cabnet! This cupboard/bureau/closet/cabnet, holds, probably, a good 80% of all things deemed valuable that I brought from the US. I do not need a rat getting in it.Needless to say, I was angry. Not only was this the same animal who had given me so much grief over the past week, but she had the audacity to sleep in the same room as me! I was being mocked by this creature who had evaded capture for so long she was now daring to come out when the sun was up! That was the last straw. I got up out of bed and went to the living/dining room and proceeded to get my Panga knife (read: Machette) and a 4 foot section of bamboo (read: Friggin' Big Stick or FBS). I now believed myself ready to do battle. This was to be a no-holds-barred, winner takes all, steel cage judo death match. I closed the door. Only one of us was getting out alive and it wasn't going to be the rat. I jammed the FBS under the cabnet and the rat came running out, towards me. I dropped the knife and stick. These guys are a lot bigger up close. Then, for a few minutes we proceeded to play a strange game of Whack a Rat. I think there is a similar version of this played in video arcades and ChuckeCheese through out America. This one is different. The rules are simple, winner gets the house, and is played something like this;Stick is shoved under cabnet, rat runs toward you (and the door), realizes the door is closed, turns and runs back under the cabnet. While the rat is engaged in all this moving about, and quick calculations in basic physics, I am busy swinging my panga knife at the spot exactly where she was 2 seconds ago. The rat was winning. Which sucks beacuse I like my house.After a few minutes of this, she decided to try running the opposite direction where the panga knife couldn't reach. The panga couldn't, the FBS could. She jumped on the top my backpack and the stick found its target. A couple swift cracks and I was sans a roommate. Do I feel bad about beating something to death, kinda, am I more glad to not have a rat, definitely! So I took the carcass outside where Puppy was sitting, waiting for her morning coconut cookies. Imagine her shock to see a nice fresh pile of meat! Forget the Wheaties, this is way to start your day! And that is how I killed my first thing like the Malawian's do. You want a really good story, go talk to Jay, he chopped the head off a Black Mamba he found in his house, but I'm still proud. Killed the rat and fed a starving puppy, good day. Other things that puppies are good at is inspiring high tensity situations. Henery's dog had 6 puppies about a week ago, and she is a good mother, very very protective. She has to be, a monitor lizard would eat a puppy if it found them, kids are mean too, it isn't a very safe place here for a tiny little thing. So the other day I was at Henery's and the goats came running in the yard. As I have said before, goats are one of the most destructive natural forces on this planet and I didn't want them tearing up the garden we have been working on. So I went around to get them back out. The children followed and ended up watching from beside the den the mother dog was using, bad idea, as Henery says, "she is hot tempered". I come walking around the house, pulling a goat, just in time to see the dog leap at one of the kids. The little girl hits the ground screaming and the dog is tearing at her shirt. I am now dragging the goat as fast as I can, get to the dog and the kid, thwack the dog on the side, with another FBS, and she runs off. The kid gets up, unhurt, just scared, and momma goes back to her babies a hour later. Don't freak out, I have hit my brothers harder than I hit the dog. They get chased and hit so much here that really all you have to do is tap them and they know the next one will be serious. You should have seen how the Malawians reacted! Margret, Henery's wife, told everyone who visited that I hit the dog and saved the kid. Typically, the PCVs are telling people to stop hitting the dogs, not the other way around. But you know what, I wouldn't have tolerated that from a dog in America either. The line is biting, you go to attack someone and there will be consequences, it doesn't matter where the dog is from. So yeah, all that aside, things have been pretty quiet here. Maybe I need a cat, then I don't have to worry about puppies and all the drama they bring with them.

A great many books and articles are written with similar titles; Where there is no...road, hotel, toilet paper, doctor, dentist etc. but to my knowledge, the kitchen has been left out. Which I find to be strange at best and a dissapointment at worst. One of the favortie questions asked by friends and family is, "But what do you eat?!"A typical reply is usually, "Whatever slows down long enough." Which isn't exactly true and probably warrents further consideration. If you think about it, from an American perspective, it is a logical question. There is no refrigeration, freezers, crisper drawers, tap water, or shelves and shelves of canned food. Think about that next time you open the fridge, "There's nothing to eat!" I bet you that, unless you are a college student, in which case there very well may be nothing, I can make probably 4-5 decent meals out of "nothing". So what do I eat. Well thanks to the fact that I am not the first volunteer at my site, I came to a house with lots of great stuff left behind. It's the little things that make all the difference, a few bags of pasta, some rice, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, honey, powdered cream, spices galore, actual ketchup, and believe it or not, 3 packets of Kraft Ranch dressing which I am itching to use. So, to all who came before and left little goodies along the way, I say thank you.That being taken into account, all that is missing are the veggies, fruit and various forms of protein. Almost all of which must by bought in the boma. What exactly does this entail?Veggies: Eggplant, carrots, green peppers, onions, tomatos, mustard greens, chinese cabbage, green beans, potatoes, sweet potatoes, squash. Currently I have to buy all these, everything in the garden is still under 3 inches tall.Fruit: This catagory is extremly season dependent, Avocado and Guava season just ended (booooo!, I could eat those forever), Papayas are ripe, mangos are starting to flower now, pineapple in December-ish, Topito is starting (which I am looking forward to trying), Oranges and lemons are still going strong, bananas are a year round food and cheapProtein: eggs (can be bought in the village sporadically and are a little more expensive), beans (still haven't tried, too long to cook on paraffin during a fuel shortage), soya 'meat' (not bad, not that great, cheap, easy), fish (easy to get, fresh, dried, canned, buy in the village, boma or open a packet of tuna from mommy!), chicken (haven't bought yet, can be bought frozen in boma), goat/beef (expensive and a little sketchy to be honest), peanut butter (I go through about a jar a week), last but not least at all is the protein powder sent from home All right, now what? What is a typical day like? Breakfast- usually this consists of bananas and peanut butter and a cup of tea with cream and sugar. For the full effect, best eaten outdoors while watching the Sunbirds in the nearby trees. On Boma days it's oatmeal with a spoonful of peanut butter and Nutella, really good. If I happen to plan things and have eggs left, I may have eggs and spam (thanks dad!).Lunch- More often than not this is the protein powder mixed with some powdered milk. Unless I am out and about, then lunch is whatever. On boma days it is chicken, rice, and greens. If I am at a neighbors house it will be nsima and any one of the following, fish boiled or fried, gutted but eaten whole, beans, greens, maybe chicken if you are lucky. Dinner- This is the most open to change. For instance last night was mac'n'chese a la Malawi. For the Malawians, if you haven't eaten nsima you haven't eaten, for me if I haven't eaten a tomato I haven't eaten. Veggies are for dinner! More often than not there is a tomato, and half a green pepper and half an onion in some form, these are usually the basis for dinner and it is built around them. Usually they are sauteed and set aside to be mixed in with something later. The "something" usually goes one of 4 ways, eggplant, fish, soya, or eggs. Eggplant is peeled, sliced, well salted and left to sit for about 20 minutes. The resulting bitter liquid in the bottom of the bowl is poured off and the eggplant rinsed twice and lightly squeezed to remove excess liquid. Then they are fried lightly in olive oil. Fish typically consists of pilchards, sardines, or tuna from home and is added to the veggies, really simple. Soya is soaked in water for about 20 minutes then cooked until soft, add to veggies. Eggs will be boiled, scrambled, fried, whatever I feel like, and added to the veggies.Seasoning here can make an entire meal. Everything gets salt and pepper, regardless. After that you are limited only by your creativity. I am lucky, I have a really well stocked spice shelf and my rule is to use 3 different bottles each time. Calfornia seasoning goes well on fish, basil goes great with anything, paprika and chili powder are good on pasta, and on and on. You try some pretty wacky combinations here. Flavor takes on a whole new meaning when you don't have any.Food here is very simple, very basic. Spices and flavor packets can make your world so much brighter. Something you have made one hundred times before can be completely new if you just grab a different bottle. Most of it is good, some of it doesn't work so well. For instance, too much oregano with the Mexican seasoning is a little weird. But the good stuff sticks with you, like Mac'n Cheese a la Malawi; boil macaroni noodles, drain, leaving a little water, add some powdered milk, kraft powdered cheese from a real box of mac' cheese, and a glob of a butter like substance known as 'Blue Band', mix well. To taste, season with salt, pepper, parmisan cheese (a God send!), parsley, basil, paprika, and/or chili powder. Once mixed to desired taste, add one packet of salmon, enjoy! Best if eaten by candle light, a headlamp, or moonlight, outside, and with a robust powdered drink mix, I recommend a raspberry/lemonade, vintage, of course (read as: mixed 2 days ago in a nalgene, left in the sun, and forgotten about). You will also notice there are no units of measurement. Six months ago the prospect of cooking without a measuring cup would have made me resort to take-out. Now I feel like it adds to the excitement. The leading culinary thought here for cooking, rice, for instance, goes a little like this; add water to pot. You don't really know how much you need but that ought to do it. Add rice, again, you don't know how much will give you the proper ratio but that ought to do it. You know that probably won't cook up to very much, here's some more, eeh...little more....eeh, and there's some more for good measure. Once this cooks up it will consist of roughly enough rice to have fed Atilla and his huns on their Westward conquest of Eurasia. The left overs from that, probably would have gotten Hannable's elephants over the Alps and into Rome. Had this happened, the fall of Rome would have come a good deal sooner and changed the course of history as we know it. So as you can see there is great potential and a good deal of power to be had in cooking without measuring cups, I highly recommend it.So there you have it. Eating out...waaaayyy out. It doesn't have to be fancy and if you can think a little before hand it is actually pretty easy to do. So get up, throw out those measuring cups and just wing it America! You never know what you can make!

The following words, lept, nay, demanded to be put to paper after observing real events. I give you, a hunt.Observe DeathObserve Death, he is in fine formHis body strong, his tail taughtObserve Death, his balance unmatchedOn such uneven ground, he defies gravityObserve Death, his movements silentEach footfall placed, noiselessness, easy to achieveObserve Death, his final blowJaws close, a life is crushedObserve Death, the skilled hunterThough you are but a gecko, Can you afford less zeal in the hunt,Than a lion?Yup, watched a gecko eat a cricket and he got a poem about it. He was very patient. After stalking his prey for the better part of five minutes he finally reached his goal. The cricket was less happy about the outcome but he put up a brave fight.

I wonder how Dorothy actually felt when she came to that realization. We all remember watching Judy Garland walk around, holding Toto, stunned by Munchkin Land. And right off the bat she knew that geographically she wasn't where she used to be, but they never touch on how she dealt with culture shock. From everythying I saw, she took it all in stride, after all, she got to bring her dog with her.Ah the dog. Man's best friend, or so I'm told in my culture. One of the first things told to us was, "People here don't treat dogs like we do. Get ready for it." So you hear it, constantly, and you try and brace for impact, knowing that it is coming. And it starts slow, maybe a kid throws a rock at a dog, or boots one back, keeping them at arms length with a stick the whole time. So far, nothing had amounted to what we would consider actual abuse. I was feeling pretty good about things. If this was a bad as it got then bring it on, this was not as bad as I thought. I didn't think hard enough.Last week I went to Salima on Friday, we don't have the Peace Corps bank here and that is the closest one, so I took a night in Salima. Whenever I get back from a trip, the first person to say, "hi" is the puppy. She belongs to my neighbors and is about 5 months old. One of the people at my neighbors is Ifa (I think that is how you spell it) aka- crazy person, the puppy belongs to his little brother. Puppy stole a fish (all 2 inches of it, maybe, if it was big) from the pot while it was cooking. As punishment, crazy person, lights one of the other fish on fire, open puppy's mouth, inserts fish, and proceeds to hold puppy's mouth shut. When I first got back I thought she had rabies. She had lost a ton of weight, not that she had a lot to begin with, and was drooling everywhere, she can't swallow her own saliva. I've tried everything, rice, pasta, fish, soy pieces, protein powder, milk, etc etc etc. Nothing. So yesterday I decided to survey the damage, clamped her between my legs and held her mouth open. I think about half of the mass of her tounge had burned away and her mouth was sloughing off decaying tissue and it keeps forming a ball behind her front teeth. I have disected things that didn't smell this bad. And there is nothing you can do. No vet, no supplies, no IV drip to re hydrate her, no way to tube her and put somthing in her stomach. Nothing. I'm not used to feeling this helpless when it comes to my animals. All I do is hold my breath and wait to see if she shows up each morning. I don't think she has eaten anything in 6 days. Please don't think that everyone here is like that though, Benson and Henery and everyone I have talked to are mad with him. No one is happy with it.And to the list of things I am not happy about you can add, "Price for Labor". One of the reasons to go to the bank was to get money to pay people for supplies for my brand new garden fence, grass, bamboo, etc. Then I had to pay Benson for labor. Boy, did I screw this up. First, we didn't discuss a price before hand, second I didn't ask anyone what is right for day labor, third, I just paid him and didn't ask about it. Benson said 4000 kwacha and I flinched a little but I said ok. Lated I was talking to Henery and he said that at the most it should be 200 for a full 8 hours of work. Yup, got really ripped off by my neighbor and friend. So how does Dorothy feel about culture shock. Shocked. You keep hearing, "You will see abuse, you will see abuse, you will see abuse." And you imagine senarios, but nothing is like real life. Getting to Mbewa I was so happy! No one was saying, "Azungu!" or following me everywhere asking for 20 kwacha like at the market. I felt accepted, I let my guard down. Never, ever forget, you are the azungu, you are rich, it doesn't matter that you really can't afford to throw away an extra 4000 kwacha. If someone loses their cell phone in the river, you should expect to hear about it. I just didn't expect to pay for it. I guess I was being naive. You think, not in my village, they've had volunteers for 4 years. They should know everything comes through Peace Corps and I can't just give money out. Wrong. You are white. Peace Corps or not, you can pay for it. And if someone thinks they see and opening they will take it, even friends. Not trying to be bitter, just a bad couple days. Sorry, I'll be perky for you later. The spot of light in the week? Henery's dog had her puppies, 3 days old and adorable! Yes I have pictures, no worries.

First off, I would like to say that I am really really really sorry (mom) for not posting an update before now. I have had internet access but not enough time to do an update. I will also take this moment to say that after talking to several people they think the flash drive was removed from my letter home because of legal reasons. Apparently you can't put anything bulky in envelopes. So a few people here think it happened at a US post office. We may have to come up with a new way to get movies home, don't worry, I'm working on it.

Anyway, what has happened since I last spoke with you. Well quite a bit actually. My other post 'SITE VISIT' will fill in what happened in the end of April. So I'll pause for a minute while you all go catch up on April.

Read it all? Good, now onto May. Caution, it's a looooooong post!



Unlike May in Colorado, May in Malawi is nice and toasty, snow free and beautiful. For those of you planning on visiting I highly recommend May and June, which it slightly cooler, say 60o-ish. Over the last few days of April and the first week of May, I had an amazing visitor. I am the third PCV at my site. I am replacing a married couple, Karen and Carl, who replaced Susan. Now, the amazing thing is that Susan was actually in Malawi! She was back in Malawi doing work on her Master's thesis about farming and farming practices in Malawi. So almost everyday for a week she came to Mbewa from the Boma and I got the hang out, observe and pick her brain. This was amazing, at the most I was hoping to find email for the other PCVs and maybe say hi. Never in a million years would I have thought that I would be meeting one of them here in the village. It was so good to just watch interactions with the villagers and just talk. It really did a lot to put to rest many fears and questions I had during that first week. Another thing Susan did was to bring a bicycle taxi ambulance for Mbewa. Basically, it is a nice new bike with a stretcher on wheels that is pulled behind it. Doesn't sound like much, but it is a lot cooler in person, and because we are so far from the nearest hospital, has definite life saving properties to it.

While Susan and I were on our way to Grace Piri's house to do and interview, Benson came up and told us that he had heard on the radio that they had killed Osama Bin Laden. Wow, we had to get that repeated a few times to make sure we heard it right. It was definitely news here. Everyone I talked to had the opinion that he was a "bad man" and that is where the conversation stopped. It is hard to talk about those things when, according to Peace Corps, you are supposed to have all the political clout of a bowl of jell-o.



Anyway, a couple days later, on the 4th I got a phone call from PC about attending a training in Senga Bay. Senga is along the South West part of Lake Malawi not too far from the town of Salima. I was really excited, we were finally going to get the HIV/AIDS training that many of us felt was kind of slack at pre-service training. That, and it was a trip to the beach, and I would get reimbursed for travel, extra special cool! So, at 1am on the 9th, the day I am supposed to go, I wake up freezing cold. I go get my long pants, long sleeve shirt, extra blanket, and my hoodie. I felt sore and achey all over and couldn't get back to sleep for 2 hours. When I finally did wake up again I was burning up and now slightly nausious, things were not looking extra special cool. So I took my temperature (101oF) and sent a text to our wonderful Dr. Max and began packing to go.



Dr. Max called me back and I gave him a run down of the symptoms hoping he would tell me to take a very powerful medication making me feel better quickly. He didn't. Max decided it was viral and the only thing to do was take some Ibuprofen. So I began to eat those like skittles. And sat in my house trying to decide what to do. I didn't tell Max that I was supposed to be going to Senga for fear that the verdict would be "Stay home and sleep." So my first thought was, "what would mom and dad do?" Mom would say, "eat crackers and take little sips of water."

I did, and it helped a lot. I also sucked the juice out of an orange and that perked me up considerably.

Dad's medical suggestions come in two forms, "Take two benedryl and a shot of Wild Turkey and go back to bed." or "Grit your teeth and bare it."

Well that first bit of advice was impractical for a number of reasons, I didn't have any alcohol and if I did, the resulting coma would definitely keep me from going to Senga, or showing sign of life for 8 hours. So I ignored the former and did the latter. 

My thinking ended up being, "I'll probably feel better in a day and will hate myself if I ended up staying here just to feel better tomorrow. Also, if I am dying of malaria or some other tropical disease I will be that much closer to the doctors." So I hauled myself to the road, and two hours later finally got a hitch to NKK (Nkhotakota). The mini-bus ride to Salima was slow, the driver only reached speeds of any real interest for a few brief minutes, in which we kit and killed a goat. I was sitting in the front seat. We were flying along, probably close to 60 mph, and we begin coming up, rather quickly, on three goats in the road. Two moved, one didn't. There was a very audible and palpable "SMACK" as the kid's head hit the bumper. I gasped, hands over my mouth, bug eyed as we continued down the road, the driver thought is was hilarous. Apparently, there was evidence of this occurance firmly entrenched in the grill, because at the police checkpoint people were pointing at the front of the mini-bus and saying "mbuzi" (goat). urgh.



So I finally got to Salima, found Peace Corps transport and headed to Carolina resort at Senga Bay. All told there were quite a few of us, maybe 13. I am not going to try and name everyone because I know I will leave someone out and it will come back to bite me in the butt. Anyway, training ended up being more of a meeting. We talked about what kind of HIV/AIDS training people didn't get that they felt they should have, and what should be improved. When were not in training we were in the water. Senga Bay was beautiful, and you know what, I did feel better the next day. The beach was great, nice sandy beaches, good waves, lots of sun and wind. Tragically however, training came to and end on the 11th of May and we were bused back to LLW (Lilongwe). Once in LLW a bunch of us had some things to find, I needed termite poision among other things. So some of us ended up spending the night at Mufasa's Lodge.



The next day I went to the dentist to have him look at a tooth that was really hurting. It ended up being a receeding gum line from brushing too hard, so I left with instructions on how to brush and not enough time to go home. So I spent another day in LLW with Alysia, Eric, Michael, and Adam, who came up from his site near Dedza to hang out. The next day I headed to the post office with Ellie because we both recieved package slips at the PC mail room. I got there at 8am, two hours later, we each walked out with 4 boxes. While contemplating how exactly to get all this home, we walked past a PC transport van that was actually headed to Ellie's site. She has been having trouble with bed bugs and they were headed up to do some work on it. So I got free transport half way home! After I got dropped off I condensed all the contents of one box into my backpack and carried the other three onto a mini-bus headed for NKK. Once there I paid too much for a ride to my village in a car, I didn't really care though, I was tired and wanted to get home. And since I didn't pay for half of the journey home I still came out ahead.

The boxes made it feel like Christmas, it was great! Books, short wave radio, speakers for the iPod, a frying pan, the Sunday funnies, magazines, my flute, protein powder, and salmon! Salmon, tuna, spam, and beef jerky, yay! Protein here is basically eggs, beans, or soy. Chicken and beef is expensive and hard to get back to site.

On Thursday the 19th I biked to Jesi's site (20 miles round trip! Ack! My butt bones hurt!) and set up my new mailing address with the secondary school here. So here you go folks:

Mary Emanuel, PCV

Kasamba CDSS

Private Bag 7

Nkhotakota, Malawi

Africa

While I was with Jesi, we went in to the Boma and did some shopping and had lunch. One of the things I picked up was battery acid. I bought a 12 volt motorcycle battery while I was in LLW, they come charged but they don't come with acid in them. After being very careful with a highly corrosive liquid, I got it all poured in and the little green light on the plug came on! So reason #642 and #643 why my site is awesome, 12 volt DC power and an American outlet! Dad, it is awesome and it actually works, thank you! Since it came fully charged I am going to use it until it runs out before I hook it up to the solar cell to find out how long I can go on a single charge.

The next day I headed off to the cluster meeting at Kamuzu Academy for the weekend with Collin, Tom, Eric, Alysia and Michael. I had heard good things about the Academy and was looking forward to go.

The school is big and makes you feel like you stepped into England, but with weird trees. This is where the rich kids of Malawi go to school, they all wear skinny jeans, carry iPods, and take manditory latin and ancient greek. A little shocking coming from village life. Alysia and I were invited on an educational tree walk with one of the classes. The kids were roughly equivalent to middle schoolers, I think, and therefore were completely disintrested in anything the teacher, Andrew, was talking about. He actually asked my opinion of one of the students. A girl who had demanded to be allowed to change shoes half way through the lecture, ("But sir I just want to put on my pumps!") and presented herself with a very standoffish, aloof demeanor. I flat out told him in front of the class that she had an attitude, the kids were stunned! I think I embarassed her. Serves her right, she should pay more attention.

Later, the two of us were invited to Andrew's place for dinner and we were not disapointed at all. Dinner consisted of, a really good mystery soup, rice, chicken, green beans, boiled greens, feta cheese, real butter, and a really good Chardonnay, all rounded out with peppermint tea afterwards. It was one of the best dinners I've had since getting here. Andrew was nice, he is from England and has been teaching in Malawi for 8 years. We all chatted for a while. Just a nice calm evening.

Later, back at our rooms we tried to watch a movie on Michael's laptop but, due to the horrible movie choice, by a certain someone who shall remain nameless, that killed the evening in a big way, we all went to bed. You know who you are and you will never live that down...ever. Not unless you make us more mandazi (really awesome sweet batter with banana fried in oil).

Saturday we went swimming and saw more of the school and did some shopping so we could feed ourselves and ended up making a soup like substance which we put over pasta and had with salad, mandazi, and some of my Thin Mints from home. Otherwise a quiet evening, went to bed.

Sunday, I had to get up early and leave for two reasons. One, I had to get back to Mbewa for my welcoming ceremony,and two, traveling on Sunday is a pain and takes forever, most everyone is in church. In the words of Murphy's Law, however, if something can go wrong, it will. I got on a mini-bus at 8am, 5 hours later I completed the 80 or so kilometers to get home, ouch. Also, I come to find out that it rained, for almost a whole day here, kinda weird for this time of year. So the party was cancelled. ARGH!!!

This time of year everyone is harvesting rice, and saving a crop comes before my party, so that has been pushed back until who knows when. Everyone felt bad about it too. They knew traveling on Sunday is a pain and I had things at Kamuzu going on, but oh well. Plan for the worst, hope for the best. And I learned something new, never do anything that requires travel on Sunday.

On Monday the 23rd I got to name a baby! Grace Piri, one of Benson's wives, had a baby girl Friday night while I was at Kamuzu Academy. I named her Hannah. Then, Benson decided he wanted a middle name too. Well there I was stuck, I hadn't given that any thought at all. The only name I could come up with that worked was Jo. So the newest member of Mbewa village is Hannah Jo Piri. Takulandirani Hannah! (You are most welcome) Hopefully pictures will make it to facebook soon.

After naming Hannah, the next few days were heavy with activity at home. Benson and I patched the cracks in my cement floor and did the fence for my garden to keep out kids (both human and goat), dogs and chickens. Hopefully pictures will follow soon but probably not until some time in July when I may be back in Lilongwe.

Anyway, we had a meeting with Total Land Care, one of the NGO's here in Malawi, on Tuesday the 31st in Malomo. It was mostly just a meet and greet, what projects they do, how Peace Corps can work with them, different goals etc. I plan on talking with them more later in the week but we'll see how it all plays out.

So that wraps up the merry month of May. If you actually read all of that then you probably have too much time on your hands or are procrastinating something. But congratulations anyways, I know it is a lot to read, but you wanted details and you got 'em so next time be careful what you wish for. Hopefully things will settle down more and I can get to posting more regularly. In the mean time, my door is always open if you ever happen to find yourself in Africa.

Love you all lots and miss you!

Mary

P.S.- Currently it is the first day of June and guess what! I saw my first Green Mamba! Wooh! He climed my fence and went up into the mango tree. Yes I got pictures!

When I last left you, gentle reader, I was in Lilongwe headed North to Nkhotakota, and my site at Mbewa village. Nkhotakota is the name of my district and Boma. The Boma is best dscribed at the "capital" of a district, where the government buildings are. Anyway, the PCV I was assigned to shadow was Jesi who lives a mear 13 kilometers or so from me and is my nearest PC neighbor.

We left Lilongwe in a mini-bus headed to the Salima turnoff then North on the M18 to Nkhotakota. All together I think it took about 4 hours. Once at the Boma (Nkhotakota), we dropped our stuff off with George at the internet cafe. The guys there are awesome and watched all our stuff while we were eating lunch, shopping for dinner and getting the tour. There are two flush toilets in Nkhotakota, one is at the internet cafe, the other is at the BP gas station. The guys there are nice too, and they have cold Cokes and Fanta.

After getting our stuff back we proceeded to walk to Jesi's house while ignoring the calls of, "what is your name?" "Where are you going?" "Give me your bottle." and "Give me 20 Kwacha." mostly from kids and teenagers.

Jesi has a nice house, she is an education volunteer and leaves Malawi in another 5 months I believe. We hung out at her place until Monday the 11th when we ventured to my house! I live a long way out and there are three ways to get there, hitch, ride a bike, or walk. Walking sucks as I later learned, but I digress. Anyway, hitches can be hard to find and we didn't have two bikes so we opted for a couple of bike taxis. Basically, there is a platform mounted on the back of a bike and you sit on it while someone pedels you around. Yes, mom, it's completely safe. So we got the taxies and made it to Mbewa. We were greeted by my neighbor, Benson, who speaks pretty good english, and he brought us to my house.

Folks, I am glad to say, my site is amazing! I have mango and papaya trees, flowers everywhere and two perfect spots for garden beds. The house has three rooms, living room/dining room, bed room, and storage. And, best of all, the room were full of stuff! Good stuff too! Beds, chairs, a cabinet, book shelves complete with books, spices, buckets, pots, pans, dishes, parafin, a tempermental stove, and on and on and on! I would like to give a shout out to Karen and Carl, the PCVs I am replacing, if you ever read this, thank you for leaving everything in such great shape. I was not expecting to get something this nice!

After hanging out for a couple hours we hitched a ride back to Jesi's house. On Tuesday we went to the Boma bright and early so I could get food to bring to site. We parted ways, me going to Mbewa and her, going to Tanzania for vacation. This is where Mary pulled a stupid. I decided to walk. Now I live 16 km (10 miles) out of the boma, maybe 3 km from Nkhotakota Game Reserve, it's a hike. My train of thought went something like, "walk a little ways and when you get tired just grab a bike taxi." Problem; the bike taxis are harder to find the farther you get from the Boma. By the time I realized this I think I had walked 12-13 km and my feet hurt, I was tired, sunburned, and the kids still wanted 20 kwacha. Finally I passed a funeral. Now, to signal that there is a funeral, the people place branches on the road near the house. If someone is on a bike they get off and walk past the funeral. I happed to find the one bike taxi in the area and rode for the last few km home. Once home, Benson stopped by to check on me and inform me that the Chief would be coming by to meet me tomorrow.

Wednesday, Benson and his brother, Chief Mbewa came over. Thankfully Benson could translate and we chatted for a while about where I was from, where I had been in Malawi, other trainees, how long I would be there for, what Karen and Carl did, and what they want to start on. After the meeting, Benson took me on a walk to see the local primary school and bridge put in by Karen and Carl. We kept walking and came to my local lake, Lake Chilingali, but the locals call it Lake Chikukutu. It has hippos (Bhoko) and crocodiles (Ng'ona), I didn't get a chance to see them but I think I will someday. After the super long walk, I went home and hung out for the rest of the day. A student in secondary school stopped by later in the afternoon. His name is Blessings, and he wants help with biology, and physics so we'll see what I can do.

Thursday, we went to see the other half of the village between me and the game reserve. Our first stop was the waterfall. Yup, I have waterfalls. They aren't really big or anything, but they have a lot of character. So we walked along the edge of the reserve and tried to find the baboons (Nyani), we could hear them but couldn't catch up. We did see where they had ripped a bunch of peanuts out of a woman's field and ate them. They also showed me where the elephants come out of the reserve and eat people's corn and casava. I really hope I get to see the elephants but I know I will see the baboons, they come sit in the trees near my house during mango season, yay! After this really long walk I once again proceeded to crash at home. After crashing I decided to feed myself. While eating, my attention turned to rustling in the grass near the fence. Nile Monitor lizard! Super cool! He was about 2 feet long and mad...but I took his picture anyway. The three dogs hanging out at my house went to see what I was looking at and began to fight it! You really only see stuff like that on National Geographic or Animal Planet. I was half expecting Steve Irwin to jump out of a tree and go, "Crikey! He's a might agitated!" But he got away from the dogs and climbed the fence and ran off. Interesting afternoon.

Friday I left Mbewa and headed for Mchinji and language intensive week. Language intensive for my group took place at the Kayesa Inn. We were there with a handfull of language instructors and we did Chichewa lessons everyday for a week. It was hard, but productive. At the end of the week we had to give a presentation on some topic related to our sector. So since I am an environment volunteer topics for me include building a mud stove, composting, tree planting, etc, anything to do with the environment really.

So I was preparing my presentation on tree planting when I realized that I really didn't want to to a presentation on trees, or stoves for that matter. So I found Chrissy, my language instructor, and got some help on a new presentation, about animals in Malawi. I actually liked it and thought there was potential to not suck. So I spent a ton of time memorizing and reciting by myself to make sure I knew the language. Come to find out that during the presentations everyone is clapping and cheering after almost every sentence. So what do I do, I panic. Normally, I get nervous during presentations and I talk really really fast, that is considerably harder when you have a tenuous grasp of the language in which you are speaking.

So instead of the adrenelin making me talk faster it all went to my stomache and I locked up and had the worst case of nerves I have ever had. As Alysia put it, "Could that have looked any more painful?" My train of thought was not just de-railed, it was straifed my enemy aircraft. It was really bad. But it did eventually end and my stomache stopped doing flip-flops an hour later. Everyone else did really well, I'm so proud of our group.

The last day of language intensive, a group of Ngoni traditional dancers came and gave a performance. It was really cool. The outfits were made entierly of animal skins. I think in the course of a few hours I was able to identify; baboon, vervet monkey, civit, savannah cat, bushbaby, rock hyrax, mongoose, sable antelope, cerval, hyena, small spotted genet, striped polecat, and possibly buffalo. It was so cool to see so much biodiversity in one location at the same time. Oh yeah, the dancing was really neat too, I have pictures and videos.

Once we got back to Dedza we took our final language exam. Really all you do is talk with a trainer for as long as you can in Chichewa before you start to talk in nonsense. I must have done something right or learned at least one thing new because I tested at Intermediate: High, exactly where we need to be. Weird.

On the 26th of April we went to Lilongwe to the US Ambassador's house for swearing in. That place is amazing, and I am looking forward to going back on the 4th of July. The next day we were back in Lilongwe to do shopping for our sites then back at Dedza to pack everything up. I got back to site on the 28th with all my stuff, and let me say that the prospect of not living out of a bag is thrilling!

And that closed out April.

Until next time, I love you all very much! (Megan thank you for the phone calls!)

Kuno Ku Malawi,

Mary

Yesterday homestay ended. We had a huge farewell day and all for villages (Khankomba, Komako, Konkera, and Mbozi) came to our village. We had displays with all the things we have done, jam making, peanut butter, permagardening, composting etc. There were a lot of speeches and then we to share an aspect of American culture so we had a baseball game.

Granted the ball was a wiffle ball with tape on the outside for weight, and the bat was the handle for a hoe, but it worked out really well. We staged a fight with the referee and our coach, second base was thrown around and coach was ejected from the game, dirt was kicked on shoes, it was great!

Then the gule wankulu (I think I probably spelled that wrong) showed up. I would post a video but it would take forever to load. Basically people with masks and costumes come out and dance. I get more details on the dances later, so more to come on that.

Currently I am in Lilongew at Peace Corps headquarters en route to Nkhotakota, the nearest city to my new village. I am going to be in a village called Mbewa in Nkhotakota Wildlife Reserve where we have big ants, green mambas, and sleeping sickness.......but I am close to the lake! Yay! I think SCUBA diving makes up for all that. I love you all and will get you more details on my site in a week or two!

Moni from Malawi!

Oh my goodness where to start, it does not feel like I have been here for a mere 4 weeks! Well the flight from JFK airport to Jo-Berg in South Africa was the longest 15 hours of my life. But I will give the airlines props for trying to make it suck less than a black hole. You get your own personal tv loaded with movies and some tv shows. They keep you in total darkness almost the whole time. I think it helps with jet lag a little but honestly we were so stressed out that I didn't notice any jet lag. Watching the sunrise over Botswana was beautiful. That was the first time I have seen a sunrise from above the clouds and I think it is infinately better that way. From Jo-Berg we flew to Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi. At the airport you get off the plane directly on the tarmac and from all the way over at the terminal we could hear yelling and cheering and see a Peace Corps flag. They came to meet us! I was expecting someone with a bus but we got maybe 2 dozen PCVs (Peace Corps Volunteers) who all come down to welcome us to country.

From there we drove maybe an hour to the College of Forestry in Dedza, which was to be our home for the next week. That first week was a lot of cultural stuff, more vaccines, how Malawians view Americans, and survival Chichewa (the main language here, and the one I will be speaking). Each week, PC brings in 4 new PCVs to help with training. The first week the PCVs took all our pictures and left notes about us for the next PCVs. My note: "Likes birds, bugs, and hugs". Yup! Coolest bird so far, Pintailed Whydah.

Anyways, After week one we found out which village and which family would be our home for the next 6 weeks. Because our group is so large we were split among 4 villages. Mine is Kankhomba and my family is great. My amayi (mother) is Emily my abambo (father) works in South Africa most of the year so I won't get to meet him. I have 4 siblings my achemweli (sisters) are Dunia, Lahem, and Isha, my chemwene (brother) is Amadu. Ages go from 15 to 5. I'm pretty sure the kids thought I was a joke for the first two weeks but I showed them some oragami, pictures from home, tic-tac-toe, the hokey pokey, and head, shoulders, knees and toes. They really like head, shoulders, knees and toes. Like a lot! And they taught it to their friends. So I'll be walking past my house and 3 or 4 kids will all go, "Headie, shouldar, knee, ndi toe!"I impressed they got it so I'm not gonna sweat pronunciation.

Overall the people are super nice and really facinated by us. I kept hearing that it would be like living in a fish bowl but I didn't think it would be like this. Great example: one Sunday, my village met up with the health trainees in the next village. We met halfway at the church and just hung out. We had about 50 men women and mostly childen standing or sitting but just watching us. Really? I don't have an extra head, we aren't that interesting! I have known me for 23 years and if I didn't have to hang out with me all the time, I wouldn't. Anything we do as a group is watched intently. Particularly anything physical, digging, laundry, getting water, etc. We were building a mud stove and people were gathered to watch. They didn't think we could do it because, "Azungus don't work." Well ha! We made a mud stove! At first you think whatever, they'll move on. But they don't! And then you get frustrated because back in the States, staring at someone like that would be extremely rude. Whenever you walk somewhere you have to say, "hi" to everyone and they always want to know where you are going. Big slow breaths. American culture, you say hi and keep going. Not here, and you have to keep that in mind. It is a big deal that you are staying with a family and for some of the kids it is the first time they have ever seen a white person. We joke that it is like living in a zoo, "I like that one, he's moving around!" If you don't want to be looked at the best place to go is home.

Home is nice. I have my own room and people don't state at me. My family hosted a British girl back in 2005 I think, so mom understands to speak slowly because my language skills are retarded. (I am nowhere near the gifted end of the spectrum when it comes to language, it's hard for me.) I showed her the photo album Megan gave me before I left and they loved it, a million thanks for that btw, Meggers. They got the biggest kick out of the animals, Cheyenne, Cody, Lance, Nali, Zebbie and Ev, being in there and having names. People here don't keep pets. All the dogs are strays and I have seen only 2 cats since getting here. The bugs are great though. Tons of cool moths and beetles. The spiders haven't been bad, I have seen only one trantula and it was dead at the time. Ants are another story. Just like back in Colorado, rain forces ants inside. I have an anthill under my reed mat that my mattress is on. I have already gone through one can of Raid and the fumes may kill me too. There are a million little holes and getting all of them is tough. Luckily though they are the little black ants, not big red ants of death and bites. The ants are also flying off to make new colonies. This provides food for a lot of things. I was sitting outside the other day and watched a couple falcons (no, Catie, I don't know what kind they were) circling above where the ants were emerging, snatching them out of the air, eating and flying off. Pretty cool. The Malawians also eat the ants. They fry them, and pull the wings off. Luckily though I haven't been around when they make them, no bugs for Mary. However I did eat half an eel the other night for dinner.

We got home late from class and I didn't get to help with dinner. After taking my bafa (bucket bath, and not as bad as you might think) I went inside for dinner. My amayi motioned to a plate with some dark things on it and asked if I wanted one. I didn't think it was chicken so I said I wanted just one. While sitting in the dark, eating my nsima and pumpkin leaves, it dawned on me that the smell coming from my plate had a fishy aroma, but the thing wasn't shaped like a fish and maybe I should find out what exactly I had gotten myself into. I flicked on my flashlight, yup, dead eel. Thank goodness my amayi has delt with azungus before and Peace Corps told them we are weird. I sat there slack-jawed saying, "I can't eat that! How do I eat that?!" my amayi was saying "It's fresh, it's fresh, British eat." my brilliant comeback was "I'm not British!"Then I had a moment of clarity. Peace Corps gives food to our families and I know eel is not on that list. It has probably come all the way from Lake Malawi and is probably expensive and a rare treat. Then, that little voice came on and said, "man up and eat the damn eel, Mary." So I did. I'm not as hard core as the Malawians so I did pull the skin off and left the bones and head. Not much meat and it had a really strong flavor but over all not bad. I would eat it again, I didn't get sick.

Otherwise the food isn't anything fancy. Corn is the staple food and after it is dried they grind it into a flour. The flour is added to boiling water to make something like really really thick mashed potatoes, called Nsima. And they eat a ton of nsima! Otherwise I eat a lot of pumpkin and bean leaves, rice, pumpkin, squash, chicken, goat or cow (we think), tomatoes, potatoes, tea, sugar, oil, and salt. I wish I got more fruit. Guava are just coming into season so I hope for that. But we missed mangos and pineapples, nuts.

What else might you find amusing, probably the bathroom. The toilet is the chimbudzi or chim. The chim is a glorified hole in the ground and aim is critical. Getting yourself in the correct position, adjusting your pants or skirt, and avoiding the corners of the room where the spiders hang out requires a mastery of chim-nastics. So far so good. The Malawians are shocked by how open we are about using the chim. We don't care if you know we went to the bathroom or not. They care. Malawians are super sneaky about going. Legend has it, that if you see a Malawian come out of the chim, they have to give you a pot of gold. Or something like that. Right next door to the chim is the bafa, just a room with a rock floor and a small hole for drainage. You bring in a bucket of water with a temperature about 3 degrees below that of lava ( I think Malawians have no nerve endings) and boil the dirt and germs off your skin. You have a big cup and pour water over yourself. Yeah it's not the fanciest method but I like it. You get dirty and tired, go home and amayi says "kusamba!" and you get to wash it all off in the dark while listening to the bats come out. It's a nice way to unwind actually.

I wish I could say more but time has it limits. So until next time, I love you all and miss you even more!

Kuno Ku Malawi-

Mary

P.S.- I just wanna give a shout out to my Gunnison peeps! What up! Coming from freezing Gunni to sub-tropical Africa was awesome. I'm warm, hee hee! Let me know when you want to visit.

Chelsea do me a favor, pass this on to Magee- "Nthawi yakwana" (The time is now) You don't pronounce the "h" it sounds like: "N-taaw-whee Ya-k-wana"

Finally made it! After saying goodbye to Mom, Dad, Catie, Robert and Megan at Denver International Airport I wound my way through security. Thank goodness they didn't make me unpack everything in my backpack. If they had, I think I would have started crying, packing sucks. Once I got to the terminal, I was found by Mary Hansen, a fellow Malawi PCV who is also from Denver. Thankfully we were flying on Southwest, so we didn't have assigned seats and I had some company on the flight.

After we landed in Philly we heard someone a few rows back say, "yeah, 2 years is a long time." Now, when you are in the Peace Corps, "2 years" is a magic number so we perked up but didn't see anyone, and wouldn't meet them until later. So we hauled ourselves to the baggage area and forced our way out to where the shuttles pick you up to go to different hotels. In a world of black rolling luggage, PCVs have a tendancy to stand out. You see a small group of 20-something year olds wandering through an airport weighted down under about 80 lbs wirth of stuff and you put two and two together. So that is how we found, Ross (the mystery person on our flight), Robert, Cassie, and Katie while waiting for a bus.

During our check in we found out that the PC gives all the volunteers $120 to get them through the weekend. Wooh!! So several of us went and walked around near the hotel to find a place for dinner. It's interesting here, to the left of the hotel you are in the Asian district of Philly, but if you go right you are surrounded by Irish pubs. I bet St. Patrick's Day is pretty interesting around here, the jokes probably all start with, "A priest and a buddhist walk into a bar...". Anyway, we found a pub not too far away and had steak, really good steak too. The last decent steak I am likely to have in two years, let us have a moment of silence for our dear friend. *sniff*

Today we got up bright and early and went to get our Yellow Fever vaccination. Let me tell you, there is no early morning eye opener quite like a shot of live virus in the back of the arm, forget espresso. Which brings me to now. It is about 11am and we are having a break before going back to pre-service training until 6:30 tonight. Then it is going to be a mad frenzy of stealing as much toilet paper and tiny soap bars from the hotel as we can and packing for a 15 hour flight...yay.

So, until 2am I am in the City of Brotherly Love where it is rainy and windy. Don't expect a whole lot in the way of blog posts or email until mid April. Want to get a letter? Then I need your address, unless you already gave it to me. If you come across someone who was not aware of my departure make sure they know that rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated.

Love you all very much!

I have defeated packing. Long live the Eagle Creek Packing Cube.

I can't believe no one has mentioned these before! They are perfect! Ever wondered why Hannable couldn't conquer the Roman Empire? He didn't have packing cubes. If he did, he could have loaded all his elephants in one or two, chucked them over the Alps and picked them up on the other side. Ever wondered how Lewis and Clark were able to send so much stuff back to President Jefferson? They HAD packing cubes. Someone has been holding out on me.

Anyone remember the computer game Oregon Trail? You could go hunting for extremely pixilated deer and buffalo, shoot as much as you want, but you could only bring back 50 lbs of meat. That is like packing for Peace Corps. Look over every posession in your life and bring only those most needed.

Seriously though, if you are in the PC and are getting ready to go, then you undoubtedly know about the packing limitations and are losing sleep over it. We have very specific size and weight limits and they make a difficult task seem impossible. To me, packing just about everything you will need for 2 years is tantamount to summoning up a miracle, (i.e.- Mary! Go to the moon and back before supper!) I just can't think under that kind of stress.

I have been packing, unpacking, and repacking for the past couple of days trying to decide how best to roll, fold, or stuff my clothes so as to allow for as much room as possible for other things. No matter how I arranged all the clothes they took up a heck of lot of space in both the duffle and backpack. Then my sister came home for a visit. She has a couple of the cubes and boasted the claim that they would solve all my packing problems, bring about world peace, stop global hunger, and begin instituting harsher punishment for parole violaters (kudos if you understand that reference). To me it sounded something like this:

"Excuse me little girl!"

"Yes?"

"I understand you need to get to the moon and back before supper."

"Uuuhhhh....."

"Well this tiny little bag of canvas will solve all your problems!"

It did, savor this moment Catie; you were right. We were shoe shopping, and passed a display of Eagle Creek packing cubes, on sale. I stopped, looked and ended up buying one. After we got home, Catie began shoving all kinds of clothes into this itty bitty thing. So yeah, that one physics law that says no two things can occupy the same space at the same time, totally broke it.

In that first cube went, 2 skirts, a dress, 4 shirts, one pair of leggings, one pair of bike shorts and three pairs of underwear. And it all came out to this 9"x13"x5" little package:

It takes up way less space than just throwing clothes in a duffle and hoping you can press them down really tight. You do all your squashing here and then these fit in the bigger bag and you pack around them.

Anyway, I promptly went back and bought two more cubes of this size and one smaller double sided cube. Then I went from all of this taking up loads of space:

To this:

Now, I am not saying packing is now 100% worry free. You still have to find a way to get in the rest of the stuff which, when combined, is about the size and shape of a dead yak, and roughly as cooperative. However! Having 99% of all your clothes in nice, neat, easy to move around, cubes makes things tons easier. I still need to rearrange what is in the cubes, I want it all split as evenly as possible. Once everything is situated all you have to do is pack around the cubes.

I know how it sounds, an entire post devoted to the idea of putting a bag in a bag, but trust me on this one. They will ease the hurt. I know it is last minute too, we leave in 6 days. I was blessed enough to find mine on sale at a store. However, since PCV do get really good discounts through the Eagle Creek website it would probably be worth it to get some and have them rushed. I promise you will not regret it.

Packing before the cubes is like riding a tricycle, getting cubes is like being upgraded to a space shuttle. You still can't get to the moon and back by supper but you will eventually.

You know the story about the shoemaker and the elves? He can't finish the shoes so the elves come in at night and do it. I have a similar problem with a different twist. I can't organize all my Malawi gear without the elves wreking it. My elves are destructive.

When I first started buying things for Malawi everything was simply contained to two boxes. Nothing was spreading out or cluttering up the rest of my living space. As time has gone on I have obtained more and more things for the boxes, and because only so many things can occupy the same space at the same time, I was forced to spread out. I think this is what attracted the elves. As the boxes were abandoned, I had a few well organized piles. One was for things that were definitely going, another for electronics, one for clothes, etc. and this seemed to work.

Gradually, almost imperceptivly, things started to shift. Piles had been moving and spreading out, invading the surrounding spaces of other piles. War crimes were being committed, the bed sheets had taken the socks hostage and would only release them if the water bottles promised not to harm the solar charger. Why exactly the sheets and solar charger had a treaty, I have no idea. In fact, none of it made sense. I couldn't explain how everything was becoming so disorganized, there could only be one logical explaination...elves.

They were sneaking in and making eveything a mess. Mom suggested it was my lack of organization skills. Shows what she knows, she put a table in my room for everything to go on. The elves saw this as a challenge and, as a result, the mess is now a couple feet up in the air. So far, all attempts to stop them have met with failure. My final option is to coat the legs of the table with, either, glue or vasaline. Then again, elves are supposed to be good, maybe I am dealing with Gremlins. Regardless, my only hope of escape is to pack it all and leave the country. 9 Days to go.

On a different note, over the last month or so I have been going about the business of saying goodbye to many people. It's weird saying goodbye and you really haven't left yet. It seems like goodbyes should always be said in an airport or parking lot, right before someone leaves. Otherwise it feels like you really aren't going anywhere. For instance, you know you aren't going to see someone from now until you leave in 2 weeks. Your only option is to say your farewells for 2 years..and then you drive 20 minutes home. Kinda anti-climatic, or like you don't mean it. I didn't realize that there are still people who don't know I am leaving. That is alway interesting, you have to fill them in and say bye all at once. If you happen to be one of those people, I am really sorry! I'm also getting everythying together for my horse, Lance, so mom and dad know what to do and who to call. It feels like I am handing over the keys to my car. I have never been more than a few hours from him since he was 2 and he is almost 8 now. I am gonna miss him. Otherwise things are running smoothly, I'm still waiting for a few things to get here but it's almost time for wheels up!

I think I am at the point where most everyone I know is aware that I am going to be leaving for Malawi in the next month. This has led to the most amazing outpouring of advice I have ever seen. I think this is mostly due to the fact that everyone I know has traveled outside of the US...I haven't. That is not to say I never go anywhere. I have seen most of the US, been all the way to the tip of the Florida Keys, and slept on more floors than I care to remember. When I was a baby we drove from Alaska to Florida but since I do not have a stamp in a passport from that, I don't think it counts.

I am not claiming to be a traveling savant, and everyone knows this, so advice has been about the first things to do when you get somewhere, safety tips, how to keep luggage safe etc. And it's not that I'm not grateful but the tips, however, are coming from people who hole up in resorts as soon as they touchdown in country. Their tips are about traveling, not living. Travelers want to live the same way they do now, just somewhere else. Livers (not the organ), actually LIVE!

Example:

Traveler"Oh Muffy you're back! We missed you at the club this past week. How ever did you find Mexico?""Why, Dash I turned South in Texas! Hahahaha! The worst thing happened though, the bar ran out of Pina Colada mix!""Muffy, surely you jest!"

Liver (once again, not the organ, although from the sound of it, were this Muffy's liver I'm pretty sure it would sue for separate custody) "Dude! You made it back!""No kidding, the doctors say it isn't Malaria and shouldn't be too life threatening after the next week, oh yeah, the cactus spines should work their way out in a year or so. I'm just glad the camera is showing signs of life."

I guess what I am trying to say is pick your sources well, Muffy and Dash wouldn't know a hardship if it came up and slapped them on their cashmere clad butts. But I can't say I'm a whole lot better. Currently the top of my hardship scale has been trying to keep a certain little mouse from eating a hole in my backpack to get my trail mix. My method was to wake up every 5 minutes when I heard him gnawing at my pack and make some vaguely human sounds threatening his existence and wave my hand in an attempt to ward him off. Ultimately, I fell asleep and failed and the Marmots moved in, they took the entire bag...furry little vermin. No trail mix for a 7 day backpacking trip, yup, that is my hardship. Oh well, at least I know enough to know that Muffy and Dash would not be sources for advice of any kind. But this seems to be the only local advice I can dig up. To make matters worse, I keep hearing about people taking longer to come out of culture shock than others.

This could take a while............

Packing is a pain, packing for two years is like moving and packing for two years in a foreign country has never been done before (not in this house anyway). Trying to figure out what to buy and whom to buy it instills in me a sense of impending doom. I only have 6 more weeks to get all of this hashed out! I do have some things, I will say that. A couple journals, nalgenes, a money belt, hand crank flashlight and a few other odds and ends. Mostly though, I think my pile is lacking. The last time I packed a lot of stuff was for a 10 day backpacking trip and I thought that was a challenge!

I still don't know how I am going to get it all over there either. For those of you who don't know, packing is going to be like a bizzar game of tetris. Everything has to fit in two checked bags and one carry on. The two checked bags cannot have combined length, width, and depth of over 107" and cannot weigh over 80 lbs and no one bag can weight over 50 lbs. To make matters worse...I was never very good at tetris.

I have my 75L Venus backpack by REI which I am planning on bringing but otherwise I don't really know. Possibly a duffle maybe a suitcase of some form. I think I'm more worried about the weight requirement. From past experiences electronics weigh a lot so I am going to try and bring them with me in my carry on bag. Stuff like my netbook, ipod, solar charger, adapters etc are expensive and I don't want them to get crushed. If I can keep more heavy stuff with me then I can fit more lightweight stuff in the other bags, I hope.

I wish there was someone else in Colorado going to Malawi, I need someone to bounce ideas off of.

Me! To Malawi specifically. For some of you this is no shock, you have been in on things since the application started. Some of you may not know, for that I am sorry, I'm sure I meant to tell you but something probably happened. For those of you I don't know, welcome to my blog.

Back in December of 2009 I submitted an application to the U.S. Peace Corps. Then entire year of 2010 was devoted to two things, graduating from college and Peace Corps. I was impatient to graduate. Imagine a road trip *cough cough mom cough* where you only get to pee at every other rest stop when you stop for gas...and you forgot to go on the last one. That kind of impatient. Waiting for Peace Corps, that was worse.

For those of you who may have missed the whole process, you start out with an application that is roughly 90% questions about your current health state. I can only assume this is to ensure you will not flop over in the dirt if you are more than 10 minutes from a Walgreens pharmacy or your doctors office. You must also submit references, one from a work supervisor, a volunteer supervisor, and a friend you have known over 2 years (thank you Megan).

Next comes the phone interview, mine was about a hour and a half but I think I asked as many questions as she did. If you make it past the phone interview you then get fingerprinted and do a security check. Make it past this and you get to level one up! Wooh! Now you get the medical packet.

I think this would have been less of a pain if I wasn't 300 miles away from the only place my insurance works. As a result I was poked, prodded, and drained of blood over Spring break and over other various three day weekends. There is also a dental part and eye exam, that is right everyone, you get the full work up. Then of course you will probably have to make a few trips back to the hospital to get things signed that weren't and finish other blood work and vaccinations.

After the medical clearance you wait...and wait...and wait. But when things start to happen they really happen. You interview with a placement officer, send transcripts and talk with other people about what program is really right and why you can't go to a tropical island (sorry Catie). You are waiting on pins and needles for something, anything, that says where you are going. Then over the course of one final phone call you are told congratulations, you are accepted, now wait for the packet that tells you where.

As my roommates can attest, I was more than a little impatient. I don't think I checked the mail that often since I thought Santa would write back. But it did come, on the 10th of December, earlier than I thought it would. And the country is Malawi! Where is Malawi you ask, simple, South East-ish Africa. It is a long skinny country right next to Lake Malawi.

What am I doing there, well the simple answer is that I will either be a Community Forestry or Community Parks Extension volunteer. Right now that is as specific as it gets. I should know more once I get there.

So sit tight sports fans. We are entering the final 6 weeks prior to departure. There is a lot to buy, pack, learn, and stress about before February 24th and it has only just begun.