Around about this time, new Environment volunteers start packing up for their long journeys. Chances are, if you are one of these exalted few, that you're already overcome with sheaves of packing lists, entire encyclopedias of advice. Still, if you want some more...

A largely comprehensive blog post dealing with items you should bring is available here.

Also, join the Facebook Malawi Environment 09 group -- a large volunteer-written packing list was posted there, and a few odds-n-ends follow....

Many volunteers suggest that they have been doing far more biking than they expected. This is not particularly the case for education or health volunteers, who should mainly require their bikes to get to town for shopping and food. But environment volunteers often work on projects some distance from their residences. Though you get a fairly complete toolkit and books of bike repair are (variably) available incountry, less-common bike equipment is rare. If you use saddlebags or bike-mounted lights or the like, you might consider bringing them.

Around the house, kitchen shears and lightweight, non-stick pans (but *not* pots, which are very cheap and common here!) are useful. Coleman produces a fold-up oven that one volunteer calls an absolute lifesaver, if you enjoy baking. You should definately add sunglasses to your list, the prescription type if you need them, but the cheap two-dollar type are particularly useful as gifts and as backups for your prescription pairs.

My original packing list recommended that you bring only a limited stock of books. This is no longer the case, as the regional houses and their associated libraries are closing. That means that your only books will come from whatever poor selection we can sneak into the Lilongwe reference library, from trading with other volunteers, whatever you can find in the two used-book stores in country, and from the books your predicessor leaves at your site, if you're replacing someone. In the latter case, you may end up with hundreds of great texts... or two battered copies of 'Conan the Cimmerian.' Point is, if you're a bookworm, you'll probably want to bring an emergency stash of your own. If weight is a concen, you might consider bringing books to study -- something you can read slowly and many times (ever wanted to pick up Hebrew? Or maybe Mandarian? What about taking the MCAT?) On a similar 'note', you might consider bringing a musical instrument. They're great entertainment in the village, and if you don't actually play... well, this is a great opportunity to learn.

Speaking of the closure of the respite and transit houses, you should probably bring a decent supply of cash. Malawi volunteers are among the lowest-paid in Peace Corps -- now you will need to pay for accomodation if you need to get into town (to see the doctors, or visit the office, or find someplace with reliable internet in order to fill out your quarterly reports, for example.) In Lilongwe and Blantyre, the cheapest dorm-room accomodation we've been able to negotiate so far will still cost you between 4 and 8 USD -- that's 4-8% of your monthly stipend, not including meals. (To put that in perspective, if you were making minimum wage stateside, a bunk for a night would effectively cost around 80 to 160 USD.) Point is, having a little money on hand to change into kwacha can get you through some very tight spots. Currency is better than a bank account -- you can keep excess cash in the Lilongwe office safe, and exchange rates are at present much, much better for hard currency. Travelers checks may be worthwhile for peace of mind, but if you have to cash them anywhere in Africa, you'll get 70% or less of their actual value, due to awful government exchange rates.

Without the houses, you may end up camping more than volunteers have needed to previously, so the tent and lightweight sleeping bag recommendtions remain in effect.

Lingne, or long strips of rubber and/or discarded vehicle tire, is widely available... but they do break, typically at inopportune moments. Several volunteers have recommended bringing bungee cords -- the 1 to 3 foot type, with hooks at the ends. They're great for attaching things to your bike rack, and also can be used as isotonic exercise aids.

Several electronics were highlighted as being particularly useful. A laptop is, now that the houses and their computers are gone, highly recommended. You'll spend fortunes on creaking internet cafe computers without one. (Actually, you probably will anyway -- but at least with a computer you can download report forms and the like, fill them out at your leisure, and transfer the information with a flash drive.) Charging a laptop can be tough in some areas, but car batteries are commonly in use, and can be purchased for around USD 60-80. (The kinds that can accept charge from a solar panel are more expensive, alas.) You'll need a converter, too, if your electronics won't take DC current, but those are available here. A portable DVD player eats less power than even a netbook, and can be nice if you're planning to build yourself a way to charge it.

Another useful device is a cheap digital thermometer -- the kind that run months on a single AAA battery. It's interesting to find out just how hot your site is... and if you end up erecting mushroom houses in one of your projects, having a couple spare thermometers will be very useful.

Good luck with your packing; you're going to love it in Malawi!

As well as the beehive project is going, it sends me into town on a rather frequent basis. It seems the hive project always needs a tool fixed, or another roll of plastic sheeting, always at more inconvenient moments than expected. “Hey, George!” I might say, finding my carpenter wandering the village. “You did not come to work for almost four days now. Is everything all right?”

“Oh yes, Madam. But there are no more three-inch nails. Here, you see? I need them to work.”

“What! Why didn’t you tell me!”

The closest place for hardware is the Mulanje boma, and a trip there additionally presents the opportunity to charge electronics and maybe get a cold drink, so it’s not too much of a sacrifice to head into town. Taking a minibus, though fast, is well outside my budget -- it's a dollar each way -- and the ride is a pretty one, so I end up doing a lot more biking than I'd imagined I would. The journey does have its hazards, however.

There are two possible bikepaths out of my village, and upon both, a gauntlet of children must be run. Last week’s trip found me in the center of a dozen kids who had somehow found and were playing with a Barbie. They’d ripped one leg and both arms off, and the doll was quite naked. Its hair was so dirty it all stood straight out in crazed tangles, as if Miss Barbie had somehow inserted her last remaining foot in an electrical socket. “Look, look! It is Teenlee! The same as Teenlee! The same, the same! But Teenlee is fat like two of this one. No, fifteen! No, a hundred!” Then they danced around me with the doll. One of them was sucking on an arm, the rest of the limbs were not in evidence.

Ah, Malawi. I took the other path, which passes the minibus stage. Nearly there, I found a young girl I vaguely recognize. I'm not terribly fond of the kids near the asphalt road; they're not as nice as my eways, and I thought this particular girl had begged from me before. This time, though, she ran up to the road. "Hello! Hello! You should buy a mandazi from me!" she called.

I like to support kids' projects, especially when it involves them working, not begging. "Sure!" I said, stopping. "How much they are?"

"Twenty kwacha," (13 cents) she said, and I eyed her seriously. Mandazi are not twenty kwacha. "Or, uh, ten," she admitted.

"Okay, I'll buy one," I said, handing over a twenty kwacha note. The little girl took it, and smiled, and stood there. Erm. "Do you have change?" She looked surprised and oddly off put, but dug slowly through her pickets and hiding places, and eventually produced a ten kwacha coin. Then she continued to stand there.

Double 'erm.' "You have cooked the mandazi?" I asked, not sure how best to prompt the exchange. The girl nodded firmly and made an affirmative noise, but went nowhere. By this time, we were beginning to collect a crowd of onlookers. "You will bring the mandazi?" The girl nodded again. A long pause, perhaps a minute. "When?" I asked. She shrugged.

It was only then that I realized the girl had no little basket of mandazi anywhere nearby. She was near her house, but... I parsed over our conversation in my mind, trying to figure out what was going on. My Chichewa is getting somewhat better, but I do have a little trouble with some of the word modifiers, which come near the end of verbs. Hearing the difference between mundiguleni (you should buy from me) and mundigulererni (you should buy for me) is tough.

"Did you say, 'mundiguleni' or 'mundigulererni?'" I asked. The girl nodded helpfully. I sighed, held out my hand. "I thought you said mundiguleni. I did not think that you were begging. Please give me my kwacha."

The little girl looked furious. She spoke rapidly, and stomped away, leaving me dumbfounded. "Was she that girl begging, or was she selling mandazi?" I asked a woman who had watched the whole exchange. She shrugged and tried to edge away -- bystanders, in my experience, love to watch interchanges but hate being drawn into any kind of an argument.

Unsure whether I'd just put a down deposit on a little fried donut or whether I'd been scammed for seven cents, and more than a little embarrassed -- hadn't other volunteers warned me never to buy something I couldn't see? Hadn't I been taught ad nauseum not to ask leading questions? -- I left. Still haven't seen that mandazi, though.

Passing by the minibus stage, I was treated to the sight of our very own Blue Panther. I'm not sure what his name actually is, mind, but he hangs out at the Mimosa minibus stage, and he's usually at least a little drunk. He also, almost always, wears blue sateen running shorts and a black 'Lady Panthers' jersey. (I don't know where the Lady Panthers play, or even what sport, but whoever used to wear number 27? Well, I found your shirt.) That day, he was standing a little away from the main part of the stage but still in full view of the approaching road, urinating -- but not by pushing the waist of the shorts down. Rather, he had hiked up one of the legs, and was peeing out that. He waved to me with his free hand.

I'm still not sure of the etiquette there. Is one meant to wave back?

I settled for ducking my head and peddling past, pretending as if I had not noticed. I veered onto the main road and narrowly missed running over Polka Man. I've only seen him a handful of times, and unfortunately never when I had a camera to hand. He's very old and very wizened, and very well-dressed -- for a dandy from the twenties. He always wears immaculate spats, and one of several perfectly-creased polka dot shirts, under a contrasting mustard-orange suit with massive flaring lapels.

"Sorry, sorry!" I called back, waving even as I swerved madly, trying not to hit the goats being herded across the road by two gape-mouthed little boys. Polka Man ducked his head, and pretended as if he had not noticed.

Along the way, I came across a scene that brightened the day - a little girl employed a battered, rusting watering can nearly as large as herself to dispense a careful measure of water to each and every stalk of tall, healthy corn that edged the walkway to her house. She was wearing a fluffy white lace and taffeta dress, but the bow at her back had come undone, and she trailed the ends through the mud betwixt the corn. She left small bare footprints along the embankment. To top off her outfit, someone had painstakingly bunched and tied her hair into some two dozen discrete, geometrical knots all over her head. She looked like a very surprised soccer ball in a doll’s dress.

I smiled, waved as I biked past.

The little girl’s eyes widened, and without thinking, she lifted a hand to wave back. Then she realized what she was looking at.

The watering can fell to the ground with a thump and a splash, the girl turned her hand over, palm up. “Give me!” she screamed, little heels flashing as she threw herself into a dead run, streaking for the road hand extended, howling the first two words of the only English phrase most children know: ‘give me my money.’ “Give me give me give me give! Give! Give me!”

It was like watching a zombie movie -- adorable little girl seated quietly in nursery reveals herself to be bloodthirsty ravaging beast, now in theatres!

I’m just glad I had a bicycle. At least I could outrun her.

I have come to believe that, in truth, most children who beg in or near the village merely want attention. American children, I imagine, might respond in a similar manner if, say, a space alien were to stroll down the street - an azungu outside the main cities is equally as rare, and as fascinating. One child must have learned that if you scream a certain phrase, a passing white person will stop and talk to you, and perhaps even give you an object of immense value in village contexts, such as a fancy pen or a packet of expensive biscuits. Helpfully, that child passed along the information, and now every little eway knows the phrase, though not necessarily what it means.

In cities, of course, child begging is much more of an industry. In certain areas, a passing azungu is virtually guaranteed to attract several grubby urchins trotting alongside. They have a more complex vocabulary - ‘hungry mum-mee, hungry mum-mee, give me just twenty kwacha’ (amusingly, they will use this soundtrack even if they have food in their mouths) -- but respond to neither English nor Chichewa attempts at conversation, save with a repeat of their plea. They are also more persistent, and will run alongside or in front of you for as much as a city block. Finally, and most annoyingly, if you fail to pony up some object, the city eways will occasionally toss pebbles at the back of your head. At least the kids haven't picked up the Nairobi nappy trick -- beggar children there sometimes wield small paper bags of garbage or feces, just incase their verbal requests for money do not carry enough weight.

Even without those... persuasive implements, the dedication of Blantyre beggar children makes their business a rather profitable one. While sitting in an internet café in the late afternoon, I once overheard a pair of street eways counting up their loot for the day. Together, they’d collected two hundred and sixty kwacha; a little less than two dollars, and they seemed to feel that this was a substandard return for their work that day. While this does not sound like a great deal, it is roughly the wage for a semi-skilled adult laborer, such as the foreman on a village construction site. It is nearly twice the wages of an unskilled tea-picker.

But I digress.

There are two hills, on the way to the boma, steep enough that I typically climb off my bike and walk, especially when carrying other objects on my bike -- that time, I was hauling a package bound for a friend, plus my ancient laptop and paperwork for our upcoming girls' camp. On the second such slope, a little girl waits hopefully almost every day with her tobwa -- chunky homebrew beer -- for sale. The bottles are arrayed like a bouquet in a bucket of water, in order to keep them cool, or at least, not as hot. That day, we exchanged nods of greeting, neither of us having the energy in the heat for more, and the girl quietly watched me go by. I was not three paces past her when the semi-trailer horn blared from behind.

Vehicles often honk to let bikers know they should move over, but I was already entirely off the road, as was the girl. Even if the truck had a wide load, there was plenty of room; nobody was coming in the other direction. Vehicles also sometimes honk just because there's an azungu (white person) on the road. So I took little notice of the truck, even when its deafening horn blast was repeated.

The tanker thundered by, disturbingly close, and at first I truly thought that one of the truck's passengers was, ah, engaged in relieving himself out the window, since this seamed to be the season for urinating in inappropriate locations. But the liquid that splatted upon me, my bike, and my packages was oddly cool, and far too copious, and the smell.... I was too stunned to even curse at the retreating truck, could only watched as it continued on, slopping glugs of diesel continuously from an unscrewed port four inches wide in the side. The deluge had gotten the little girl, too -- both her and her bottles of beer, which she'd not been able to get out of the way in time.

"What that!" I yelled to a man who was strolling along the opposite side of the road, so incensed that my Chichewa emerged even more fragmented than normal. My finger trembled as I stabbed it at the vanishing truck. "What that! What, what that!"

"What... what?" asked the gentleman, looking nervous.

"What the oil of fire dog to spill why!" I sputtered.

"Trucks always do that. You mean, they don't in your country?" the man asked, eyes wide with surprise.

I thought about that, thought about tanker trucks careening around the suburbs, splashing biking businessmen on their way to work and little kids' lemonade stands with diesel. I abandoned all attempts at Chichewa. "Like hell they do!"

Of course, if I had only known, I would have treasured the rare treat of having more diesel than I wanted -- several months later, there is little of the stuff in the country. Trucks and aid vehicles line up for hours or days waiting for the little fuel that arrives, and purchases are strictly rationed. The government blamed unscrupulous currency traders for a long time; everyone else blames the government's unrealistic China-like pegging of the kwacha to the dollar, minus China's economic puissance. The crisis cannot really be as bad as it looks, however, for though Malawi does not presently have enough foreign exchange to purchase sufficient fuel, the president was able to acquire a new jet. So that's reassuring.

Later, I heard two plausible explanations from varying sources. It is possible that the truck was filled in expectation of a cool day. Since the weather was hot, even for the season, perhaps the fuel expanded and pressure had to be reduced -- though I'm surprised no vents or valves for this purpose are installed on tankers. Also, it could be that drivers are paid by speed (and this one was loath to stop to find a lost fuelcap) or by weight of fuel picked up (rather than delivered.) In any case, the wastage was far from inconsequential; the amount splashed over me probably equaled a cup or two, and the trail of spilled fuel continued unbroken for the next six kilometers, all the way to the boma. No telling how far the trail stretched behind.

I rinsed off what I could with my water bottle, but then there was nothing to do but to climb up onto my smelly saddle (you don't want to get volatile hydrocarbons there. Ever. Trust me) and bike onwards, fuel fumes clinging to me in an oily cloud. It wasn't long before my skin and scalp started to tingle, then to burn, as the diesel soaked in. And I soon discovered for myself the meaning of the word 'hotseat.'

It's a good thing the rest of my beekeeping project is going so well, because honestly, a girl could get discouraged. Acquiring nails in Malawi is a pain in the ass.

Lately, the beekeeping project has been picking up speed - we recently completed our fifty-third topbar hive. The subsidized hives are bought by women and groups across the whole south face of the mountain, and our waiting list is far longer than we will ever be able to serve. Hives hung not three weeks ago have already been colonized, in plenty of time for the mango blossom season, and farmers sound happy.

But hives require hardwood boards, which I've been buying from local salespeople, who bring their wares to my house. I pay mk150 -- one dollar -- for gmelina planks, a type of pretty, yellow-white tropical hardwood, seven feet tall and six inches broad, which is mk10 above the going rate. (Little wonder, then, that people see scant reason to plant trees.) Three or four times, there has been one odd man who comes with his boards just after nightfall, after I've closed my door for the evening, but before my night watchman arrives. He always just has two or three boards, and he never knows the exact size of the timbers he has brought. 'Size, uhm... six?' he'll venture, if asked what broadness they are; they'll turn out upon measurement to be five, or seven, or even nine. And he's always staggering drunk.

I've bought his boards several times, always explaining that he needed to come during the day, that I just couldn't buy any more because I really didn't need that size, since I had lots. But he looked so sad, standing there with his two boards, and I know full well how much work it is to carry them long distances....

I should have had a little more common sense.

A couple of weeks ago, I was up reading well past my bedtime -- 'Mutant Message From Down Under.' You may have heard of it, or read it: an uptight lady visits what she thinks will be an Australian Aborigine awards ceremony, and it turns out to be a thousand-mile walkabout across the desert. Her clothes are burned, and she learns valuable life lessons about human kinship, joy, faith, the magic of drawing to you what you need, and living in utter harmony with nature. Now, I'm a big fan of kinship, joy, faith, and magic; I'll swallow all of them quite happily. But that last one gave me pause. 'It is truly amazing that after fifty thousand years', read the book, 'they (the Aborigine) have destroyed no forests, polluted no water, endangered no species, caused no contamination....' etc.

Waittasecond. Really? What about the evidence for vast savannah woodlands that once covered northern Australia? What about the megafauna? The marsupial lion, the giant platypus, the goliah kangaroo, Stirton's Thunder Bird, the diprotodon? What about Varanus priscus? Every really large or slow creature in Australia died out roughly 45,000 years ago, which is geologically a rather odd time for mass extinction, since these creatures survived several million years of climatic oscillations before that period, which was fairly mild anyway. The little ice age and its arid weather didn't hit until 18,000 years ago and the megafauna -- and the scrubland forest in which they thrived -- was long-gone by then.

But recovered tools, bones, and burn remains suggest that huge swaths of forest were lit on fire starting around fifty thousand years ago, a very effective and typical means of hunting. And of self-protection. Some of Australia's wildlife once was wild indeed: Stirton's Thunder Bird was nine feet tall and had a velociraptor's claws and a nasty hooked beak. Australia used to be home to two large constricting snakes, one of which was likely an ambush predator at waterholes; a similar creature figures very conspicuously in early art and in Dreamtime lore. And Varanus priscus, my favorite, was a massive-jawed lizard, a Komodo Dragon growing up to two tons and twenty feet in length. It would have stood as high at the shoulder as a pony.

Never endangered an animal species? I suppose that's correct, in a way -- no species were endangered, they were simply wiped out. Every human society eats their way right through the foodchain: in the West, humans killed off the mammoth, the sabertooth, the wooly rhino; here in Malawi, filling one's belly always, always takes precedence over the health of environment or wildlife; in Australia, humans drove to extinction with fire and massive habitat degradation their own sacred rainbow serpent -- the snake whose appearance was associated with water and rain and deep pools, -- along with most other large woodland species. They slew the last of the earth's dragons.

If Miss Morgan's aboriginal friends now live in a beautifully sere, lean environment, eating monk parakeets for lack of other game, in a land far removed from the bounty of the Dreamtime, it is in part because they have made it so.

I tossed the book to the floor in a fit of pique, thoroughly aggravated -- hippy new-age author chooses simplicity of message over archeological evidence, once again! -- and got up to make some tea on my little kerosene camping stove. Might as well burn some precious hydrocarbons while we're on the subject. Perhaps I could read again a few passages from M.F.K. Fisher's 'The Art of Eating' -- I like the chapters on cooking with war rations. (Three tablespoons of real butter, four whole eggs, a sliver of bacon, a *half cup* of milk powder, tablesalt instead of rocksalt -- so lavish! I want war rations!) But as my flashlight swept the front drapes, I heard a sudden clunking, like boards falling. "Hey!" I shouted, and could hear someone running.

This time, I remembered to pull the cord of my personal alarm. The thing's shrieking wail left me half-deafened but alerted the entire neighborhood. Moments after I opened the front door, my landlord's family was making their way to my gate, the elderly grandfather wielding a giant panga knife he could barely lift.

I explained what had happened, and the men set off with flashlights to search around the perimeter. "The thief was probably stealing your boards to sell them back to you," Mrs Malifiti said, seating herself on a stack of planks.

What? That happens? Malifiti looked at me as if to ascertain whether perhaps I had been born yesterday. "Yes," she said. "People know you have mankwala (medicine/magic). They will not come to steal, unless they have stronger magic, which is expensive. But they can take the boards, and hide them here, nearby, and bring them back again." Because if the property never actually leaves the land, it's not exactly stealing... and therefore probably not covered by my existing insurance plan. Err, I mean, magic wards.

I recalled that guy who brought 'his' planks to sell only in the evenings. Blast!

Monty, my night watchman, was more distraught when he arrived upon the scene. He checked the area himself, and ended up calling my counterpart. The three of us piled all the boards into a massive stack in the kitchen, where Monty sleeps. Monty also offered to start coming at five in the afternoon, well before dark; we agreed on seven. Mister Makhuva and Monty jointly selected a magician to come the next day. It was past nine before my counterpart finally left, but he did so with one final injunction -- I was not to tell anyone about the new mankwala.

As far as I'm concerned, if it is both invisible and secret, magic can't be very effective. Whatever happened to the good 'ol gris-gris, the juju skulls on pikes? Magic just ain't what it used to be. But I did actually have a skull -- the warthog one, found in Liwonde near a snare. I also had plenty of feathers. And red string, and some beads. What else could anyone ask for?

Mister Makhuba said it wouldn't hurt the 'real' magic that's been laid around the house, so the next day, I glued and sewed all my objects together, and hung the whole thing up on the outside of the house. I've been telling people it's mankwala against thieves.

"I figure I'm about one step away from being that Fijian volunteer in the eighties who painted a demon face on his door to frighten prowlers away -- and then shortly thereafter murdered his neighboring volunteer with a giant fishing knife," I told Laura, my neighboring volunteer, the next afternoon.

Well-accustomed to my sense of humor, such as it is, Laura calmly continued pouring me a cup of tea. She had several odd-looking smears of ash on her face and neck -- some mess is inescapable when cooking or heating water over a fire. "Tonga, not Fiji. And since you don't have any giant fishing knives, I can't say I'm all that worried. Cookie?"

It's always nice to hear a cookie being called a cookie. Malawians call them biscuits. "Thanks. I do have two really big panga knives, though," that last was offered hopefully.

"Blunt ones. And the edges are all wobbly and notched. Perhaps you could sharpen a fork?" Laura suggested helpfully. "But first things first -- you'll still have to find the paint and brushes. That makes at least two steps."

Oh, yeah. I frowned. "Descending into madness seems like an awful lot of work," I said, revising my plans.

"Mm. Despair is considerably easier," she sighed, cupping her hands around her mug despite the afternoon's blazing heat. And then she told me about yesterday. Since this was MSCE (end of year exam) season, she'd been either teaching, running study sessions, or setting up lab exams from six in the morning to nine at night for the last week. She'd just discovered that the physical science teacher inadvertently set several of his students on fire a couple of years ago. Evidently, the paraffin stove he'd been using in a chemistry lab blew up, as they do from time to time. Rather than taking care of the problem, he ran from the classroom, the door slammed behind him, and the latch fell into place, trapping his students inside with a fireball. Several were burned seriously enough to be taken to the district hospital; one still bears deep scars.

He was also the teacher assigned to help Laura set up the exam's lab experiment. Two litres of a 10% iodine dilution were required -- Laura made one, then attended to other tasks, while the teacher made the other. When she came back to check up on his progress, she found him pouring a liter-and-a-half of oddly clear liquid into her solution. "I'm... not sure mine is right," said the teacher cheerfully, "so I'm just mixing them together." Wait, what? So what percent iodine was the final product -- vital to know, since the exam hinged on this reagent? And what kind of physical science professor can't make a 10% dilution? Naturally, no more iodine was available from the school's pitifully bare chemical stores.

The school's headmaster chose that moment to walk in, and found Laura with a reagent that was both the wrong color and the wrong volume. He exploded, not unlike the fireball-emitting paraffin stoves, while the physical science teacher slunk away.

"You just took the blame?" I gasped, agog.

Laura paused. "Thing is, he might be incompetent, but he's probably my favorite teacher. He actually shows up for classes on a regular basis. And he's not known to solicit the girls for sex. So."

Additionally, exams are held in the dead heat of hot season, long before the rainy or even the breezy months. The evening of the iodine fiasco, Laura was lying under her mosquito net, in as little clothing as possible, putting the final touches on a study sheet for the students by candlelight... when one of her candles fell over. Onto the net. Which, naturally, is highly flammable.

Those darker smears on Laura's face and neck and hands, which I'd assumed to be ashes from the fire, were in fact burns where molten flaming plastic had spattered. Many of the marks were blistering quite badly. "Also, it turns out that sleeping bags, such as the one upon which I was lying, catch on fire quite readily," said Laura, sipping her tea gingerly. "Who knew?" Her bedroom was char-stained, her bedding soaked after she emptied a bucket of water onto the bed. And she still taught the next day.

I groaned and planted my forehead on the center of the desk. "I think," I said, voice muffled, "I think you win the bad day award."

She most certainly does. Some days are worse than others.

During training, more experienced volunteers suggested getting a pet. They told us that animals are superb companionship, and help increase a volunteer’s time at site: spending the weekend with a neighboring volunteer casting mud bricks, or looking up watertank construction in the boma, is somewhat less attractive when you have an adorable kitten awaiting your return. And they help keep your food schedule regular - you’re less likely to wake up one morning and realize that the only thing you’ve eaten for the past three days is bananas and little fried donuts, if you’ve been making efforts to cook frequently enough to meet a pet’s nutritional needs. (Unless of course you’ve run out of money in the pursuit of that goal, which happens more often than you might suppose.)

Now that I have several animals, of course, I comprehend their true benefit: they drive you half-mad, which makes the other happenings at site seem more rational by comparison.

First came the bees. I actually meant to attract birds, since the common local ones are very pretty. There are little zebra-striped, long-tailed ones, and others that look like an Easter egg, dyed grey with crimson or baby blue bellies, with a beak pasted at one end. At first, the little birds did seem interested in the three birdhouses I laboriously nailed and lashed into the trees around my house. But perhaps the time of year was wrong, for I never saw any of them bring nesting material. Then the bees started moving in, and property values as far as the birds were evidently concerned went straight down the tubes.

The bees are actually a great deal of fun to watch. My bees’ birdhouse homes are so small, they split off new colonies every three weeks or so nowadays - at least twice, panic in the street has heralded one of my swarms as they depart for greener pastures. (The bees, even this species, are harmless when they swarm, unless you go whacking them with a stick.)

(I’m uploading this pic as soon as I can find my camera cable. :/ ) Bees cling to the outside of one birdhouse, looking forlorn. You would be too, if your house was roughly one cubic foot in dimension.

Though at first he wrung his hands quite a lot at the notion of bees not put to productive use - ‘But how we can harvest them, Tenley? We must cut down the bird houses, and put them inside a larger hive,’ - my counterpart, Mr Makhuva, now just shrugs. “Oh yes,” he told a worried man, who had inadvertently felled a nearby woodlot tree *into* one of my… occupied trees, “that is a nursery of bees. She keeps them so that the nearby hives can be colonized more quickly. Still, perhaps better not to climb the tree.”

>(I’m uploading this pic as soon as I can find my camera cable. :/ ) And yes, there remains one-half of an eucalyptus tree sticking out of the canopy of my bee-laden mango. Serves the guy right for crashing his tree into mine. Honestly.

But my favorite aspect of having bees is educational. Because the hives are small and contain little honey, and because the bees are accustomed to nearby human activity, they are comparatively much less aggressive. Visitors nearly faint when I walk to up an occupied tree and tap a stick next to its buzzing, bee-draped birdhouse. “Bees, him do not like to fight people,” I insist. “Him only fight when you come to harvest the honey, or when the children punch rocks at him house. So, for example, not to punch rocks at him house.”

“Uhm,” say my visitors. “Do you mean throw? Don’t… throw rocks? And please don’t stand so close to that hive. Or at least wait for me to get further away.”

“Right! Not to punch rocks at him house!” I agree enthusiastically, giving my hive another poke.

Unfortunately, my educational material backfired a little when a large jam-making group came to call. I’ve taught several women’s groups a variety of skills – from mushroom farming to dried fruit making – and many of them have used the first of their profits to bring me something, often a chicken or some fabric or more potatoes than any one person could reasonably eat in six months. I tried to discourage this at first, until Mr Makhuva took me aside and had a little chat about not dishonoring the women involved. Evidently I am, however, permitted to gift items of roughly equivalent value to the group, so that’s what I do now. Since this group made jam, I was planning to give them a big sack full of empty bottles, difficult to find in the village, and also some snacks – rolls, peanuts, honey tea. Their village is around four kilometers away, and the women were walking.

The Naming’anzi jam maker’s association! And also, my cat.

At first, things went just great. Many more women arrived than I’d anticipated – around thirty, plus their village chief, – but I had a large mat, a chair for the chief, and snacks enough for all. Mister Makhuva gave a long, complex speech while the women ate – in particular, he extolled the beekeeping project we’re running, which subsidizes hives and suits. The women loved the local honey we supplied to illustrate the rewards of beekeeping – they slathered it over their scones, dripped it on the grass and their hands, wiped their fingers on their skirts. We pointed out that trees bore more fruit when better-pollinated, that hives were remarkably safe – the women hadn’t even realized they were sitting twenty feet from a pair of hives – and that honey had a stable market and sold for a superb price. The women were interested and excited.

The morning began to warm up. So did the hives. And then the bees found the honey.

“Bees are very, very safe,” Mister Makhuva was saying, “they do not bother people, if the hives are kept at least fifty meters from the house, and are not dist…” An amai, between one bite of scone and the next, appeared to go epileptic – waving, thrashing, kicking out.

“What! What!” we cried, scrambling to her.

“A bee! A bee! A bee landed on me!”

“It bited you?” I gasped. Public relations disaster, ahoy!

“No. But it landed on me!”

There are normally quite a few bees zipping around my yard, but now, I realized, they had quit heading back and forth to their hives, and now were converging. In number. Within moments, a discarded tea mug was covered in bees – a mug in which there had been honey. I looked around at all the honey-sticky amais. Oh, crudmuffins. Of course.

“Uhm,” said I, carefully neutral. “To have guests is very nice. But I know you being very busy. Thank you, thank you for coming. Good bye. Here, take some jam bottles. Oh, watch out, do not to punch those bees! Wait, more bees there are right there. Do not to punch them, either!”

“She means, ‘don’t step on,’” said Mister Makhuva, offering his hand to a lady who was trying to figure out the best way of stepping over a whole smear of bees that crawled the grass, the insects intent on lapping away every droplet of spilled honey with their cute little tongues.

The ladies were able to flee without further mishap, and the bees set to cleaning up the yard and the dishes quite thoroughly. Mister Makhuva joined me after seeing the last of the women off, just as I was laying out the discarded plates and cups for better bee access. “Well,” he sighed, “that went well. Want some help washing those?”

“No,” I said morosely, “the bees can just clean them.”

Mister Makhuva chortled. “The bees wash your dishes? Lazy, lazy, Tenley!”

I shrugged, grinned. “Hey. It’s the least they can do.”

-----

For some time, my village neighbors have been trying to convince me to keep chickens. I have a good yard, with lots of bugs and new green shoots, plenty of termites and piles of leaves. How, my neighbors ask, can I show respect to my guests if I don’t have chickens to give them? Several people have attempted to remedy my sad lack by gifting me with a bird.

Problem is, I don’t really like chickens. They scratch up all my new seedlings, even the ones they don’t eat. They’re spastic too, squawking and hopping and pooping and oh, all the noise they make! My neighbor’s chickens, when they slip through the fence into my yard, think nothing of wandering into my house, either – many are the times I’ve looked up from my book to find a chicken at my door and poop on my floor. My counterpart’s son helpfully made for me a very nice slingshot, but I’ve terrible aim, and usually end up simply chasing the chicken around and throwing dried hunks of clay at it. On two occasions, when I actually managed to catch one of the beasts, I flung it over the fence… only to have the *same darn chicken* back again a half-hour later.

All that would be incidental if only the local chickens were edible. But they are not. Their meat is like tire rubber, gamey and strange-tasting, sometimes so tough it cannot be pulled or gnawed from the bones with one’s teeth. This does not bother Malawians, since they simply eat the bones as well, with plenty of crunching and sucking. It’s a reasonably good method of getting enough calcium, I’m sure – unfortunately I’ve not mastered the technique myself.

But there is a fowl I have come to miss more and more. At last my cravings reached a breaking point. “I am getting turkeys,” I announced to my counterpart one evening.

Mister Makhuva raised an eyebrow. “Do you even know how to take care of them? Or where to buy them?”

“No, and no,” I admitted, “but I’m getting some anyway.”

Mister Makhuva exchanged a look with his wife. Then they both shrugged, their expressions identical. “Alright,” said my counterpart, “I’ll come over tomorrow and build a turkey house. Can you buy some more bricks from you landlord?”

I could and I did, and over the next couple of days, Mister Makhuva built just about the cutest little animal shed ever. Next, however, I had to find the turkey itself. Now, I knew that some people in the village had a few, for one can occasionally see them strolling about the village, intimidating and huge, usually in pairs. But I had no idea who owned them. We planned for Mister Makhuva to ask around the village, but in the meanwhile, we’d run out of beehive nails, so I biked into the boma.

On may back, though, I stopped… arrested by a plaintive gobbling on the breeze. Yes indeed, a man just on the outskirts of Mulanje Boma had a single turkey: for sale! We agreed on what I imagined to be a reasonable price – 2700, or about USD 16 – and also a time next week for me to come pick the animal up. The problem, though, was that the animal… was enormous. I did not get close, since it puffed up as if enraged whenever anyone did, dragging the tips of its wings on the ground with a papery scraping. It was clear that some kind of assistance would be necessary to bring the beast home.

I recruited Laura, my sitemate. I did tell her it was a big animal, potentially dangerous, but Laura is both loyal and brave and insisted on helping. She and I had it all planned out. “You grab hold of its razor-sharp talons,” I told her. “I’ll tie this piece of old tire around its body, so it cannot bludgeon us to death with its massive wings, powered by its giant bulging chest muscles.”

But we weren’t actually prepared for what we encountered, there at the little brick hut near the boma. There was the turkey, all right, but it appeared to have grown about a foot and a half – and more than that in breadth. Already enormous from a polite distance, it was massive and fearsome up close. “That thing has gotta be about thirty pounds,” Laura whispered, awestruck. I estimated forty, and began to envisage catastrophic scenarios: Turkey slays two with horrible giant claws and four-inch dagger-like beak. “There’s no way we’re getting it on a minibus.”

I very nearly called the whole operation off. “Uhm. Do you have… a sack? Or a box or something?” I asked the owner, imagining we might well need to find or construct some kind of wooden shipping case, like they use for crocodiles. The man shrugged, went inside. And came back… carrying a cardboard soap box, about eighteen inches long, twelve wide, and eight high.

I managed a polite laugh. Ha, ha! Funny joke there, sir.

The gentleman gave me an odd look, and then, in one fell swoop, seized the turkey… and packed it, squeaking and chirping, into the box. The turkey folded up tighter than a Transformer. He tied the box up with a bit of string, one stray feather sticking out of the cardboard flap, and handed me the whole mess – not more than twelve or fifteen pounds. Apparently, most of the turkey’s bulk was feathers. The turkey chirruped miserably.

We hitched back on a flat-bed eighteen wheeler, wedging ourselves in between tight-packed bales of used clothing, the wind whipping us rockstar hair, turkey emitting muffled peeps all the way home.

When we at last arrived, and gingerly opened the box, we discovered perhaps one of the reasons the seller was so eager to divest himself of this particular turkey – the animal had been running around with chickens, and consequently was crawling with poultry lice. His wrinkled, bald head looked like it had been thickly peppered. How terrible! What to do?

We thought about it for a moment. “What about that flea collar?” asked Laura.

So, while we had him still half-boxed, we put a cat collar on the turkey.

He was quite thoroughly unimpressed.

It took Oreo (or ‘Biscuit’, to Malawians) about five minutes to start escaping. At first, he simply refused to stay penned in the tiny little fenced area my counterpart had laboriously built – a resolution for which I secretly applauded him (we eventually just tore up the little fence.) But by the second day, he was fluttering over the perimeter fence and into the street, where screaming children chased him, pretty regularly. His gobbling and strutting was taking on a desperate quality, and he’d trot up to any new person in the yard and burst into full display. (Completely harmless and non-threatening, though most people seem as... cautious around the turkeys as Laura and I were at first.) Since he’d start gobbling at around four in the morning, even before the roosters awoke, I started to get the feeling that I was not winning any brownie points with my neighbors.

Clearly, Oreo needed some female companionship.

For four days, all our searching came to naught – then we found two, on the same day, from different sellers. The one I picked up came with a name. “Does this one have a name?” I asked, kidding, since people rarely name dogs or cats, let alone livestock.

“Yes,” said a young man, one of several who had clustered around to watch the azungu buy something. Well, what was it? The young man paused a beat, his face carefully straight. “Italy.” Italy? Why? “Because Italy is a beautiful country,” he said, “and it’s a beautiful bird.”

So, Italy. Due to a… miscommunication, I ended up with the other turkey as well – Pumpkin, for her prompt consumption of every one of my pumpkin vines. The two females sometimes squabble and nip a little; fortunately, Oreo doesn’t seem to mind one bit. Pumpkin is presently sitting on thirteen eggs; Italy has four and is still laying.

Oreo's the big one -- Pumpkin is the bronze, Italy the white.

I’m a little concerned, though, about the… err, hatchlings. Young turkeys are susceptible to blackhead disease, a parasite-borne infection that is often carried by chickens, though it does not sicken them. And though I do my best to chase the chickens out, I’m not always around. I’ll check at veterinary outlets in Blantyre and Mulanje for the required medicine, just in case, but until then, I needed to find some way of keeping the chickens out.

I took my carpenter aside for a moment. He builds the beehives directly at my house, and is often around all day long, even when I’m at meetings or suchlike. “Hey listen,” I said, proffering my slingshot. “Chicken, he can giving germs to turkeys. So, if you to see him come in, punch him, and make him run away. Alright?”

George hesitantly accepted the projectile weapon. “Punch the…you mean, you want me to shoot at the chickens?”

“Right!” I agreed, happy to be understood. “Punch him real good.”

Those turkey babies will be totally fine. Now I just need to find a can of cranberry sauce.

-----

On their recent trip to visit me, which is itself a subject rich in tales, my parents asked me why I hadn’t gotten a cat. You love cats, said they, which is true. You have a spacious yard, relatively safe from dog incursion, said they, which is also true. I hummed and hawed – what would I do with a cat when I left? How would I feed it when I’m away to meetings? But really, I’d just been lazy.

So I resolved to get a cat. As if the universe itself were conspiring to assist, the very next time I biked into the Boma, the teller-lady at People’s asked if I’d like to buy a cat.

Surely, this was so fortuitous, it could only have been fated. Sure, said I, and thereafter followed a staggeringly typical pattern of events (successful turkey purchases notwithstanding.) We agreed on a price – five hundred kwacha, about USD three-fifty, or twice what a cat should actually cost. (I didn’t know the going rate for a cat at the time.) The lady asked for a deposit, I declined. She said I could pick the animal up next Thursday; when I arrived at the appointed place and time, she’d forgotten it. She said to come back next week. When I did so, I discovered that she’d left work early with a headache. I came back three days later and found the lady. “An accident has happened,” she told me in Chichewa, her eyes wide. “Some children were throwing rocks at the cat, and his leg fell off.”

A long pause.

Me: “What?”

“His leg fell off. You know that word? Leg. Leeeeg. It means ‘leg’ in English, I think.”

“I know what means the word,” said I. “But what you mean, leg fall off?”

“They were throwing rocks. The leg got broken. Then it fell off.”

So I did not end up buying the mystery cat of alien construction from the People’s grocery store teller, which is a shame, because I imagine the animal would have been highly entertaining. Much like a Mister Potato Head doll. Except it would be a cat.

Fortunately, however, I’d also asked a nearby volunteer to keep an eye open for anyone with kittens. And indeed, she soon found a lady with three tiny ones, all female, for sale at the very reasonable price of mk200 each, which worked out well, since we had three volunteers who wanted one. Actually, it was less of a sale than a one-day-only, going-out-of-business blowout. The lady did not want to keep the kittens any longer than absolutely necessary. They were eating nsima, she claimed, so there was no reason for the kittens to stay with their mother any longer – she’d sell them to someone else and return our money if she had to.

The kittens, however, were not so much ‘tiny,’ when my neighboring volunteer picked them up, as ‘minuscule.’ I was gone to a training, and so did not actually see my kitten until two weeks afterwards – even after two weeks of milk and fish and mashed up boiled eggs, she was more tottering than bounding, her tail was an inch-long nub, and she needed a brick as a step to climb into her litterbox. The kitten fit in the palm of my hand. About a third of her body weight appeared to consist of her giant eyeballs; her ears made up most of the rest of her mass.

Her head was a little bigger than a box of matches, but not by much.

What you say? You mean you didn't access this blog to look at yet another picture of someone else's kitten? Too bad. ;)

Finding a name proved difficult. She started out as Blaze, for her facial markings, but as she was too cowardly even to cross the open expanse of a room at first, it seemed an ill-suited nomer. We took to calling her Velveeta, after her second favorite food in the entirety of her young life – SPAM being the first. (‘Velveeta, hmm?’ said my village neighbors, thoughtfully. ‘That is a beautiful name. If we have another daughter, we shall surely give her that one.’) I even named her Scribbles for a time, after she assaulted the poster I was attempting to make, causing me to write on her in indelible pen. (An accident, I swear.) At long last, I fell back upon plain old ‘Mister Kitty.’

As Mister Kitty grew, her adorable assaults upon my person (aww, look, she thinks she’s killing my hand! Grr, get it, Mister Kitty! Good girl!) became somewhat less so, in rough proportion to the length of her claws. I started to worry about catching some horrible tropical gangrenous infection through the scrapes on my hands and getting them amputated and then having to spend the rest of my life with hooks in their place or maybe weed-whackers. So I tried to wean her off the bare skin – first onto a sheet-covered hand, then to a blanket-covered hand. Unfortunately, Mister Kitty discovered for herself the joys of attacking half-seen objects, such as my face, through the barrier of my dangling mosquito net, and quickly progressed to simply attacking the net itself.

In short: the blasted cat chews holes in my net.

“Oh. So that’s what happened. I kind of wondered,” guests say, when they come over and view for themselves the tatter under which I propose they sleep, the tatter which is meant to be their first and best line of defense against Malaria. “Do you have any mosquito coils I could light?”

Mister Kitty’s predilections are not confined only to the mosquito net over my bed. I was lazing away the hot noon hour in my hammock outside one day, when I made the mistake of scooping Mister Kitty up for a cuddle. Now, the hammock itself is a magnificent invention, but my particular one is made even more awesome by the inclusion of a zip-on nylon net. The net section was strong enough that even if I turned over a bit too much in the middle of the night, it supported my weight quite easily. Neither months of dappled sunlight nor the long rains had affected the nylon’s integrity. Yet the entire hammock can be wadded up into a bag little bigger than my two fists – better living through chemistry, indeed.

Mister Kitty did cuddle, purring like a prop jet. Then she spotted a bug crawling up the net. Leaping madly, she struck the netting with all claws outstretched and hung there – my parents used to own a Garfield stuffed animal with suction cup paws, and this is what she resembled, only with fangs and a whole lot more thrashing, jumping, and Tasmanian-devil growling. The nylon held for a few moments. Then a small tear formed. Then the entire netting portion of the hammock disintegrated in about twelve seconds flat.

“What happened to your hamma’?” Asked Monty, my night watchman, upon viewing the tattered netting that now droops around the still-mercifully-intact hammock sling.

“Oh… Mister Kitty ate it,” said I, which is true, but won me a very strange look.

At long, long last, I finally bit the bullet. I stopped by a roadside seller, and purchased a skewer of….

Nine dried mice, nine dried mice.

See how they... lay, see how they lay.

With paws snapping off like brit-tle twigs,

and teeth bared in a fu-tile grimace,

nine dried mice, nine dried mice.

(To musical accompaniment.)

Recently, Reuters ‘odd news’ had an article about mice in Malawi. What the article did not mention is how highly regarded mice are as an ndiwo (relish.) My counterpart’s son, for example, came over one weekend to help out with building beehives. ‘Boy, I feel great!’ he announced, swinging his arms heartily. Why? I asked. ‘We had the strong-making ndiwo for lunch today. I got two!’ Two what? asked I. Well, you can probably figure out the rest.

Mice are not cheap, I’ll have you know – nine of them cost me a hundred kwacha (sixty cents.) They were rather on the small side, too – the frozen ones you can order from rodentpro.com or miceonice.com for feeding to pet reptiles are much plumper. But I suppose that might have been because these ones were sun dried. (It turns out, mind, that the mice are not as dry as I at first suspected. I left the unused ones in a plastic bag for a few weeks and opened it one day to find that the mice were beginning to get fuzzy. Or rather, fuzzier. Yep, that’s me, the volunteer with a sack of moldy mice on her bookshelf. Always ready in case there should ever be an urgent need for moldy mice – indeed, armed against any manner of rancid rodent emergency.)

Point is, I was hoping that perhaps Mister Kitty could learn to make better distinction between food – like the rat that I am pretty sure is nesting somewhere under the eaves near the bedroom – and things which are not food, but are frequently mistaken for food -- such as my foot -- if she had something appropriate to play with. In other words, I wanted to teach her to hunt.

Mister Kitty was quite interested when I pulled a mouse out of the bag. I tossed it to her, she ran up to sniff it. Then she recoiled, and fled.

So much for that experiment.

Mister Kitty began assaulting objects belonging to me at a tender age.

Attempts to put a collar on Mister Kitty (with additional holes cut in the strap) failed, even after she’d been growing for several weeks.

A few weeks later, around nine thirty at night, Mister Kitty set up yowling outside my bedroom window. This is one of her very favorite games, and is played similarly to ‘marco polo.’ I move where the cat can’t see me, she cries, I scream at her, she trots happily to my side. “You blasted cat!” I yelled this time, startled from a very pleasant dream of icecream with sprinkles. “Get the heck in here and go to sleep!” Except maybe I used naughtier words. It was very late, after all, a full three hours past my normal bedtime.

There was a short pause, a thump as Mister Kitty jumped through the burglar bars on the low windows at the front of the house, then a pattering of little paws as the darn cat trotted into the bedroom. She has long since mastered the arm of navigating the mosquito net, and soon enough popped up next to my head, purring like a jackhammer. “Darn cat,” I told her sleepily, tucking her under the sheet and hugging her close. Within a few moments, I discovered why she’d been so eager to get inside.

Something itched on my arm, and I brushed it off. Then something else tickled. Then came a stabbing pain roughly on par with the jab of a small-gauge vaccination needle. “What the - arrgh!”

I should perhaps mention a valuable lesson I have learned in Malawi. Back home, the occasional itch or tickle was nothing to worry about. It was likely to be a stray eddy from the air-conditioning unit, or a fleck of glitter, or an escaped bit of down from the pillow -- the itch could be scratched at leisure. I remember that clearly. Here, however, it is always, *always* something – a wasp up your trouser leg, a palm-sized spider, a biting fly. This time, it was ants.

The cat had located a nest of ntombo, of nelele - of fire ants. They’re black ants, very rapid-moving, and even the workers bear large jaws. They do not bite as badly as the fire ants in the American south-west, or so I hear - the pain of an ntombo bite is sharp but short-lived. Still, they make up for any paucity of venom with sheer numbers.

I found my flashlight and spent the next fifteen minutes picking ants out of Mister Kitty’s fur and flicking them to the floor, while she huddled beside me.

Around half an hour later, just as I was drifting off again, a muted pattering began to sound, a very light clicking, like a thick mist against the tin roof. It was quite pleasant, I thought. Ah, and if there was rain tonight, I’d not need to water the nursery, which would be splendid news indeed. Another ant tickled, and I swatted it away before it could bite.

Within a few more minutes, the rain grew heavier, but something was… strange about it. The sound was closer than it should have been. Sharper. And it had an odd resonance, as if someone were very slowly moving a crinkly plastic bag, or opening a celophane candy wrapper, and attempting to be quiet about it.

Worried that a rat had gotten in, I groped for my flashlight, managed to knock it to the ground in the dark, pawed around for it, and at last found and switched the light on.

My walls were black. Also, they were moving.

And the pattering, clicking sounds? Those were ntombo, losing their grip and hitting the floor in such number that they sounded like rain.

I vaulted out of bed with no regard for my hole-y mosquito net, and naturally therefore managed to twist it around my head. One of the strings that hung the net snapped with a hollow pop; dust and termite trailings showered from the rafters all over the bed. And the ntombo that covered the floor -- of course they were on the floor, too -- began to climb my legs. And they stung; oh, how they stung.

I fought free of the net, grabbed Mister Kitty, and ran.

They were in the main room, too, boiling up through the floor, but had not infiltrated quite as thickly. I got to the little storage room, found a can of Raid and a bottle of superdust (pyrethroid insecticidal powder,) and initiated a battle that would rage the next three hours.

The ants were everywhere -- under the floor, up the walls, even in the rafters, from which they would drop from time to time, leading to even more painful stings on the neck or scalp. The ntombo seemed to be after nothing in particular, they followed no one trail once inside the house. But they left devastation in their wake. Little knots of ntombo dragged captured grubs from never-before-noticed crevices, crickets struggled beneath hundreds of attackers. I used to have a few large wasps nesting just outside my front door -- I watched in amazement as balls of ants chewed open the paper casings and extracted the squirming pupae. A dirty plate I’d not gotten around to washing was covered so thickly the plastic could scarce be seen. Every bucket of water, covered or not, was coated with a scum of drowning ants.

My loyal feline army proved not terribly useful, alas. Shortly after I used the broom to sweep most of the writhing, poisoned ant mass from one room, Mister Kitty found herself a millipede -- one among many creatures evidently fleeing the ant horde -- and spent a large portion of that evening and early morning happily batting it around the cleared area.

I killed piles of those ants, whole swaths of them, two and a half cans of Raid of them. And *still* they came, in ever greater numbers. I would just begin to imagine myself winning – the ants would quit boiling up from one corner – when they’d switch tactics for a time, raining down off the rafters. A few switches later, and there they were again, swarming up again through the very same hole, ignoring the insecticide or flowing around it. I sought out my night watchman after twenty minutes or so, when I’d woken up enough to realize that I really, really needed help… and found him gone. His wife had just had a baby a few nights before, I suddenly recalled, and he’d told me already that he might stay at his own house, just coming by my place a couple times in the night to check around.

After all the Raid and one of the two bottle of superdust ran out, I texted a quick message back to America. After all, if Peace Corps dropped by next week and found nothing but a pile of bones, they might want to know what happened. Dear Mom and Dad: “in middle of ant army attack. don’t worry. your daughter.”

I decided at last that I too would have to modify my own tactics. Where were all these monsters coming from? Perhaps, if my house was simply in the way of a… a migration or something, I could divert them. Somehow. Equipping the brightest lights I possessed, I ventured outside – and still managed to step directly into a river of biting ants. I wore no shoes or socks by that time, and had rolled up my trouser legs as far as they’d go – clothes just trapped the ants against the skin, where they would attack over and over again – and it’s still quite amazing to me, how many tender places a horde of ants can find on a foot.

And this, this was just one of the tributary streams. The bulk of the ants were arriving in a fourteen-inch-wide river, a glistening solid black streak that coated even the tips of the blades of grass. Near my house, the column fanned out, a delta of ants, to funnel into holes along the skirting, or climb directly up the mud-brick walls where they entered between the metal roofing sheets.

I was sprinkling out the last of my insecticide when the gate creaked. I hoped – prayed -- it was my night watchman. Or, heck, anyone who would know what to do. “Monty, Monty! Come quick! There are ants!”

It was Monty. *And* he knew what to do. He trotted up, then stepped back as ants boiled over his sandals. “We must set a fire! Where are your matches?”

Together, we heaped the wood shavings from the beehive construction project into piles around my yard. The main column of ants flowed down the side of my dry fishpond and then back up the other side, so we filled the pit with shavings, too. Wielding a firebrand, Monty lit the piles.

On the sun-dried shavings, flames flared fifteen feet. By the hellish illumination of those leaping tongues, we could see columns of ants disintegrating into chaos. Still swatting at my legs – I’d continue to find ants on my person for the rest of the morning – I whooped for joy. Mister Kitty bounded out and sat at my feet, blinking up, as if wondering what all this silly fuss and nonsense was about.

Not one to worry excessively, is Mister Kitty.

Once he was certain that the assault was contained, Monty went to warn the neighbors. Evidently, even small ntombo columns, like mine, can devour caged or penned animals. By the time Mister Kitty and I at last got to bed, it was just past one in the morning.

The ants didn’t come back that night, nor the next two after that. The third night, however, they returned once more, while I was away to Blantyre to pick up books. Mister Makhuva called me about it the next day. “But do not worry,” he said, “they did not make any trouble. Monty saw them before they could get close, and set the fires. Also, Mister MaCongo says he will come by tomorrow,” Mister MaCongo is the gentleman with whose hives I had my first unfortunate bee encounter, “and put down some magic, so they do not come back.” MaCongo is also one of the gentlemen who cast spells on the thieves who broke into my house. Since the thieves have not returned, he evidently does a pretty fine job with the whole magic thing.

The moment I got back to the village, I headed down to Monty’s shop – a little grocery he keeps on the main road. “Thank you, thank you, Monty,” said I, thinking on what a disaster it would have been if the ants had gotten into the house again – or if they’d found the roosting turkeys or their nests. Or the bees. Or Mister Kitty. “Thank you for to punch those ants.”

Monty grinned. “Any time, Tenley.”

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Public notice as required by law: This blog is a personal journal, and does not necessarily represent the viewpoints or stances of either the Peace Corps or the United States Government. Any use of this blog, in any manner whatsoever, will increase the amount of disorder in the universe. Although no liability is implied herein, the consumer is warned that this process will ultimately lead to the heat death of the universe.

A few weeks ago, my Peace Corps Partnership Program grant went online. A PCPP grant is a tax-deductible method for a volunteer's acquaintances to donate the funds to run development programs in the village. The link to my online donation form is here, and includes an ‘executive summary' as to what the program covers. (* See footnote.) However, there wasn't much room there to tell you everything about my projects.

Much of what I do in villages involves assisting individuals or groups to set up small businesses. I provide a portion of the start-up materials, walk the group through the production method, and also offer basic training in business accounting – just how to record expenses and income. Even very small enterprises can hugely improve a family's standard of living, particularly when run by women, who tend to devote more of their income to family health and schooling. Investments in capital, however, are extraordinarily difficult for women to make on their own. (It is no small matter to invest a week, or a month, of your family's income in a new business... especially if business failure means that luxuries such as soap or salt can no longer be bought.)

So here's the deal. I want a few of your hard-earned, red-blooded, American greenbacks. You can donate through PCPP, which is tax-deductible but cumbersome, or through Paypal, which is neither. And this is what I'm going to do with your money:

Jam making, household level. USD 4.

Jam is a high-value-added product sold frequently in larger groceries around Mulanje. The markup for canned jam, jelly, or marmalade is enormous, particularly given that fruit is all but free and Malawi is a sugar exporter (the stuff is relatively cheap here.) But though local women frequently bake and sell scones or fried donuts, none of them sell jam along with, either by the spoon or by the bottle. In test projects so far, homemade jam sells extremely well; one group's first ten bottles were sold by the early afternoon - a great rate of sales given that their market stall consists of a chair sitting out by the dirt road.

Jam making in Chikwawa with a wildlife club, which wanted to earn money to visit the nearby park.

Women make an excellent profit on jam; bottles sell for 150 kwacha (USD1 each) and the sugar and bottle together cost about 43 kwacha. This is about half to one-third the sale price of comparable jam in the groceries.

USD 4 purchases three kilos of sugar, a dozen jam bottles, and fifty plastic tubes for smaller sales. Women provide the fruit, cooking pots, and firewood, and net about USD 12 from the sale of their first batch of jam.

Help start a jam business: Donate via PCPP or

Oyster mushroom culture. USD 40.

In Mulanje district, mushroom cultivation is a highly profitable business. Due to the high startup costs, houses are usually constructed by groups of women, rather than individuals. The house is built with eucalyptus poles or bamboo lengths, grass, sand, nails, and plastic sheeting to keep the humidity high. The mushroom spawn is placed with corn straw into a standard plastic grocery bag, and then left in a dark, humid place for about three weeks. Once the bag is cut open and exposed to light, mushrooms soon sprout -- aside from being delicious, they are also highly nutritious, and the main ongoing input is simply agricultural waste.

Women from Beremony village, sowing spawn. So far, two groups near me are producing mushrooms. Both want to build new houses, as they sell locally everything they harvest, and have constant requests for more.

Inside one of the houses.

Amai Natchikale posing with one of the first mushrooms from her house.

Once fully stocked, a 3x4 meter house produces about seven kilograms of mushrooms per week for six months (it can be difficult to keep production up during the hot season, so that's a good time to clean and repair the house.) Mushrooms sell quickly at 400 kwacha per kilogram, so a single house produces about USD 17/week, or roughly the same income as four adults working full time in the teafields.

Groups supply all materials except nails, plastic sheeting, and enough mushroom spawn to start propagating.

Input: USD 40. Profit for women's group: USD 17/week, for 24 weeks.

Help start a mushroom business: Donate via PCPP or




Nursery tubes and tree seeds. USD 8.

A number of farmers in my area raise nursery seedlings -- young trees are purchased largely by the Malawi district government, which then pays for other individuals to outplant the seedlings. (Planters receive mk 200 per full day of planting -- about a dollar twenty.) Families who raise the seedlings receive ten to fifteen kwacha per each. This adds up to a very considerable income for any family, especially since a full thousand seedlings can fit into an area of only a few square meters. One thousand plastic nursery tubes are approximately mk 900 -- or USD 6, and the seeds for these tubes are a few dollars more.

Filling the pots is a lengthy task, made lighter by many hands at the Chingozi hill women's group.

At present, I work with about eight groups and individuals with nurseries ranging from 500 to five thousand seedlings.

Women provide the compost, water, and typically erect a small fence in order to protect the seedlings from goats.

Input: USD 8. Profit for women's group: USD 60-80, one time.

Help start a nursery: Donate via PCPP or




Nets for Trees. USD 7

Despite the attention surrounding HIV/AIDS, malaria kills more people in this region. Just as importantly, malaria also causes more lost productivity days -- very sick people cannot work effectively, after all. In The End of Poverty, Jeffry Sachs highlighted Malawi's net program as one of the best in the world -- mothers with newborns were allowed to purchase nets for mk 50 (thirty cents), part of which went to the administering nurses, who therefore had an incentive to keep nets in stock. The cost of the program was covered in part by the for-profit sale of nets in the towns, to those more likely to be able to afford them.

The program was dismantled a few years ago, due to protests that anyone in dire need of a net should be able to get one for free. Nets are no longer available to anyone in my health center as they are constantly ‘sold out', but the inappropriate use of mosquito nets (as fish traps and bridal veils) is higher than ever -- since those few people who receive nets gave up nothing for them, the nets have little perceived value.

At the start of the next rainy season, my counterpart and I will run a program to exchange nets for labor -- for tree planting. Women in need of nets will plant seedlings for two days and attend a short training on malaria prevention, and in payment will receive a free, treated net.

Growing strong in Malawi.

The cost of a net, plus twenty fruit tree seedlings, is USD 7. Women provide all labor, including the transport of the seedlings to the planting sites, and also construct and install bamboo rings to keep goats away from young trees.

Input: USD 7. Profit to women's groups: health investment. Also, increased future fruit and firewood production. Combat malaria *and* plant trees – what a deal! Donate via PCPP or




Winemaking. USD 13

Volunteers sometimes have a hard time deciding whether they really want to teach winemaking in their villages. Since I grew up in Utah, the choice was particularly difficult. On the one hand, many people in the village spend a significant portion of their time being as drunk as possible, at the expense of their children and families, and this is hardly a behavior that needs reinforcing. On the other hand, many fruits are simply left to rot on the ground -- there is simply no way to eat them all during their short season. Making wine preserves the calories that would otherwise have been wasted. And fruit wine is tastier than chicasu, than the local grain-based, distilled brew.

It's also safer: village distillation processes do a poor job of separating out the poisonous methanol from the intoxicating ethanol. (Some moonshiners, anxious to improve their profits and make their liquor taste stronger, carefully distribute the methanol fraction between the other bottles. The practice occasionally causes blindness, madness, and death.) Finally, mead -- honey wine -- can also be produced with practice. The benefit in this is that the process adds value to a product which is otherwise generally bulked and sold at a very low price. I particularly like encouraging beekeeping, since it has the benefit of requiring people to plant more trees on marginal land, especially of flowering local varieties, and also generates an income.

I have ended up teaching winemaking... but only to women's groups, and only three of them so far. Women tend to abuse alcohol less, and they do make a superb profit on the product -- consumable inputs to produce twenty liters of fruit wine are only about mk 1200, but each liter sells for mk 200 kwacha. Including the bucket, and enough plastic bottles to start with, it costs USD 13 to teach winemaking to an individual or group. Women provide the fruit and the yeast.

Input: USD 13. Net sales for women's group: USD 22 (profit USD 14), every three weeks.

Help open a winery: Donate via PCPP or




Subsidized bee hives. USD 24.

The honey from Mulanje district is drawn from the surrounding fields of mango, pineapple, tea, and tangerine, and is downright incredible stuff. It also makes a superb profit -- a hive lasts five or more years, and once fully colonized, produces between 10 and 30 kilograms of honey, twice a year. The hives are made locally by carpenters, and even better, they encourage the planting of woodlots, for the hives must be hung between trees.

Just a few hives can turn a family's fortunes around. Honey sells easily for mk 300/kilogram in bulk, and can be bottled for even better profits. So far, colonization has been extraordinarily fast -- bees even moved into the birdhouses I tried to put up near my house.

Macongo is proud of his two new hives.

Our local carpenter, and a stack half-completed hives. The business hivemaking provides has allowed him to buy an extra bag of maize now, while it's cheaper, so his kids won't have to skip meals during the hungry season.

The cost of a hive includes boards, nails, black plastic for waterproofing, and the carpenter's labor, about mk 2300 total. Recipients provide the wire to hang their hive, as well as mk 500, in order to increase their sense of ownership.

Input: USD 24 for two hives. Profit for recipient: USD 160/year, 4+ years.

Subsidize two beehives: Donate via PCPP or




Subsidized Bee suits. USD 14

Beekeeping in Malawi does have one potential drawback. In the US, much is made of 'killer' bees, which are the offspring of placid domestic honeybees... and these ones. Though the honey they produce is as pale and sweet as sunlight itself, the bees will chase interlopers over miles, will brook lightly no intrusion into their hives. Some manner of protective clothing is absolutely necessary -- unfortunately, the commercially produced suits from China, at mk 4800 (USD 28,) are well out of the reach of nearly every villager.

Enter... the corn sack suits!

You can't see it, but he's grinning ear to ear under there.

Sewn by a diligent tailor, plastic corn sacks can be made into suits every bit as durable and effective as the commercial variety. Every individual farmer does not require a suit of his or her own, so we have been distributing them in pairs to beekeeping clubs, along with the training in how harvest properly, and also to recognize the difference between ripe (low water content) honey and unripe. Villagers provide mk 500 towards each locally-produced suit, about a third of the cost, while grant funding subsidizes the rest.

Input: USD 14 for two suits. Profit for recipients: easier beekeeping, and a sense of self-sufficiency. Subsidize two beesuits: Donate via PCPP or




Fish pond construction. USD 280.

Lujere is a nearby village, located further up the side of Mulanje mountain. Owing to the slope and the deep clay soils, and most especially the perennial streams, the area is a superb candidate for digging fish ponds. However, the equipment necessary -- shovels, buckets, and lengths of pipe for the pond outflow -- is not a thinkable cost for any community group. After discussion with my counterpart and several groups in the area, as well as local village headmen, I would like to start a 'revolving fund' of shovels and buckets. Community groups wishing to construct ponds can then use the equipment on a per-day basis for their ponds.

Though fish ponds rarely make a great deal of money for groups, unless very intensively managed, they do provide an extremely valuable source of protein. The Malawia diet is based on enormous amounts of refined corn flour (the government of Malawi recommends people store one kilo of corn flour per person, per day,) so the addition of fish can drastically improve health and nutrition.

Groups provide all labor necessary to dig the ponds, as well as the land on which to site them.

Input: USD 280. Women's group profit: small, but improved nutrition. Provide the tools to dig fishponds: Donate via PCPP or




Fruit drying. USD 36

Mulanje is a district blessed with both an abundance of tropical and temperate fruits -- mango, papaya, pineapple, peaches, bananas, apples, custard apples, lychee -- and plenty of sun. Yet packaged dried fruit is imported from South Africa for sale in groceries. They do a good business, too, due to the tourists headed up the mountain. When I asked people about drying their own fruit though, they shrugged. "No one would buy it," I was told.

So I started making dried fruit. I've dried tomatoes, strawberries, sweet potatoes, mangoes, and pineapple. Now, when those foods are out of season and Malawians come over to chat, I serve dried fruit. Additionally, I located two businesses -- Mulanje Info and Carol O'Mula lodge, whose owners promised to purchase dried fruit, provided it was packaged attractively.

The sweet 'fruits' of our labors, left to dry in a prototype dryer. Who could resist?

Women started asking where I've been getting the delicious 'sun-fruit.' Now, two small groups have organized themselves and want to learn how. The most effective and sanitary solar driers do, however, require some wood and metal screening in their construction, which makes them expensive (about USD 6 each.) I would like to provide each women's group with six solar driers. Women will supply the fruit, labor, plastic baggies, and the labels for their product.

Input: USD 36. Women's group profit: drying doubles or triples the value of their homegrown fruit. They will also be able to store root vegetables, such as potatoes. Help start a fruit-drying business: Donate via PCPP or




Girl's camp, one student. USD 50

The nearest PC volunteer and I plan to run a girl's camp this November, after secondary school lets out. The camp runs two weeks or a little more, and includes a trip to Mulanje mountain (which most people, even here in the district, have never climbed), a visit to the boma to talk to government officials about their work, training in an assortment of business, women's empowerment, practice in writing resumes, and classes in life skills. Since the vast majority of students will never have a shot at the money to go to college, no matter how good their scores, the aim is to provide girls with options and possibility beyond getting married and farming.

The two week camp provides girls with all their food and housing, as well as project supplies -- the sugar and bottles for jammaking, paint for animal murals in classrooms -- and transport to the mountain and district center.

At present, we have funding for twelve students (out of nearly fifty form four girls); we would like to expand the camp to twenty.

Send a girl to camp: Donate via PCPP or




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This blog is a personal journal, and does not necessarily represent the viewpoints or stances of either the Peace Corps or the United States Government. Warning: blog has been found to cause cancer, asthma, vomiting, skin irritation, repetitive-stress injury, and a change of perspective in laboratory mice.




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(* Footnote)

Ok, yes, I know the summary on the Peace Corps website is a tad... odd. I called the Lilongwe office to complain that headquarters had messed it up in transcription, which was a little distressing, for I like to kid myself that I have a fair command of the English language. But ‘small businessing for women'? ‘AIDS infection' instead of ‘HIV infection'? ‘A district in Malawi' rather than ‘Mulanje district'?

"Oh yes," said the office grant coordinator, a very sweet and soft-spoken man. "Proposal is much better now, after I changed those things, for them to be sounding better. Is it good?"

Oh. Erm. Well. Them are definitely sounding better, all right.

There’s a particular game that, so far as I can tell, almost every volunteer plays at site. I call it ‘CIET.’ (You will, I am certain, instantly recognize that this pastime’s potential for syndication on a major television network is neigh unlimited.) Every week or two, some utterly bizarre food item shows up on street corners, or at the minibus stage, or the market, and one legitimately wonders: Can I Eat That? And, more importantly, What Will Happen To Me If I Do? These are five of those things.

Powdered Baobab drink (malombe, in chichewa.) Final rating: one thumb up. It would be two, if only the product was accompanied by a little less cholera.

Baobabs are the stereotypical African trees. Leafless for much of the year, their swollen, succulent-like trunks are often visible for miles, like the knobby, twisted spires of a forlorn tower. Many older trees are over forty feet in circumference, some are twice that. Once a year, if the rains are good, they produce woody-shelled pods filled with small gray seeds, odd-looking brown webbing, and around each seed, a coating of dry, fuzzy, yellow powder. The latter tastes somewhat like lemonade, though not sweet. It is extremely high in vitamin C and antioxidants, and is used in traditional skin care treatments, as well as to eat.

Dissolved in water with a little sugar and frozen, baobab powder is delectable. It seems to have a high content of gelling fiber, because it keeps large ice crystals from forming -- in other words, it makes its own almost-sherbet without need for churning. And nothing tastes as good after a long bikeride through the teafields. Also, since they're only five kwacha each, even a Peace Corps volunteer can afford them.

Ahh, refreshing.

Unfortunately, there's no telling where the sellers get the water they use to make malombes. This was a problem just recently, at the start of the rainy season. Cholera in this area is not uncommon at the start of the rainy season, but the end of 2008 marked a particularly bad breakout. (Interestingly, it hit Zimbabwe first, and spread up through Mozambique and Zambia. Mr. Mugabe was able to offer his downtrodden and starving populace encouraging news: the cholera epidemic was caused not by the chaotic breakdown of Zimbabwe's infrastructure and economy, but rather by the US and Brittan, which, he announced, were dropping cholera bombs over the countryside. Mugabe: super-sleuth, epidemiologist, *and* dictator for life -- what a swell guy.) Ever since my counterpart's kids broke my radio, my access to news has been limited, so the first I heard of the cholera scare was when I walked into the Mount Mulanje Conservation Trust with a fistful of lovely, frozen malambes.

Gladdys, the MMCT secretary and receptionist, eyed me severely. "You know there's cholera in the area. You really shouldn't be eating those."

Now, I'm an American. That means I'm well-accustomed to food scares. Melamine in my catfood? Salmonella in my pistachios? E. coli in the ground beef? I've lived through them all. I'm a food-recall veteran. I have faced my fears... and more importantly, done the math, which convinced me that my chances of being in any way affected by the scares were somewhere between my chances of being involved in a car wreck that day... and an emu stampede. Also, it was hot. The frozen malombes were dripping blessed condensation. So I smiled, thanked her for the advice. And then went and enjoyed them very, very thoroughly.

By the bike ride back, though, I was starting to figure out that something was amiss. By the evening, it had progressed to 'desperately wrong.' I spent the wee morning hours staggering in a hallucinatory daze from bed to the latrine... and then the afternoon hours, too. It was a little over three days before I could manage any food but Oral Rehydration Salts. By a week, however, another crisis had emerged -- I'd run out of toilet paper. Feeling much better and vowing to take things slow, I biked back to the boma. Thinking mainly about the heat, and still doubting the agent of my malady (a hundred times before had I eaten freezies, and never gotten sick!), I stopped along the way... and picked up a couple of malombes from a roadside vendor.

Guess they'd been using river water, too.

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Dried mudfish. Final rating: one thumb up.

Dried fish are more common in Malawi than fresh ones, save along the lakeshore. By 'dried', I don't mean smoked. Rather, the fish are simply spread to dry in the sun, larger ones split open, smaller ones whole, neither cleaned. They're a popular ndiwo (relish, or sidedish to nsima,) boiled with onions and tomatoes. In the markets, they're sold in odorous little piles, sorted by species and size. Most of them are an... acquired taste. They've a very strong fishy flavor, and the larger ones have bones that are designed as if specifically to stab into any available soft mouth parts. Plus, I personally find the sensation of crushing down on bony little fish heads... unpleasant.

However, one variety of dried fish is quite nice indeed. They're commonly called 'mudfish', and seem to be some variety of carp or catfish. When cooked, they have a bland-sweetish flavor and good texture, and the bones are very negligible. Fresh, I imagine it would be superb with a mango salsa.... the problem is, dried, it looks like this.

Mudfish, ahoy.

That's the reverse side.

I think that's an eyeball there. Maybe.

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Canned pilchards. Final rating: one thumb down

Part of my dislike may stem from the fact that I am still not entirely certain what a 'pilchard' actually is. They might be herrings of some sort. (The can is red, though I'm fairly certain that isn't the point.) While other canned fish is prohibitively expensive, a small tin of pilchards in tomato sauce is around a dollar. But the real reason I finally bought a can is this:

A clear deficiency in marketing. Yep -- not 'tiny and tender', not 'whole and pieces' but... substandard.

As a side note, substandard fish products are, surprisingly, not by any means the strangest packaged food products sold in the country. Indeed, locating such unusual items is something of a sport of its own amongst volunteers. One of my personal favorites, and, I feel, a contender for the weirdest food item award, is the ‘Kangaroo Kylie’s Unreal Manhattan Juicy Chewy Gummy Gum Babies.’ Which is, believe it or not, an adequately apt description of the candy.

Really.

I was not previously aware that Manhattan was an unreal world.

The package reads thusly:

"Bounce for joy! Kylie Kangaroo calling you to Gummi Land in the unreal world of Manhattan. Hop along into her wonderfully colorful world and see if you can catch one of her soft, juicy, chewy, gummy gum babies. Jump around in the magic land of floating fruity gum babies and let Kylie Kangaroo spill her sweet-filled pouch on to you. Join Kylie and her friends in the unreal world of Manhattan."

Who wouldn’t want to have a sweet-filled pouch spilled on to them?

Kraft foods may have something to answer for. On the other hand, what should one expect from a manufacturer located on Gross Street?

I have not dared actually try a gum baby, which is why I cannot rate them.

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White eggplant. Final rating: two thumbs down.

A couple of ladies at the market convinced me that these were just like eggplant, and very delicious. I'm sure they laughed themselves silly all the way home, for in truth these attractive white globes are spongy spheres of acrid bitterness. I tried patting slices with salt, roasting, frying, and dicing finely into soup, before I at last was forced to surrender and toss the remainder into the compost pit.

Don't eat these.

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"Beef" Jerky. Final rating: Two thumbs down

Just a few weeks ago, I discovered beef jerky at the market - huge piles of it, in fact. Wow, what luck! There were a few caveats: to begin with, the meat was a little stinky. This didn’t worry me too much; all the beef in Malawi is free-range and grass-fed, and thus is a little gamy to an American palate. Most cuts also tend to be only slightly less pliable than boot leather, but I figured that shouldn’t impact its jerky properties much. Also, however, the meat was simply laid out in great piles. Lumped cubes of desiccated fat were sold by the pile along one side. And the flies were… fairly thick. At first, I found this rather discouraging. But people seemed to be buying the jerky. Small infants were given finger-sized sticks to gum. Women, smiling, bought great hunks, which were wrapped in plastic and tucked away in baskets. They seemed happy with their purchases. And jerky is such a rare and welcome treat…

At last I worked up the courage to ask one seller what one did with the jerky. To nobody’s surprise, it is meant to be cooked in a manner similar to all other objects in Malawian cuisine: boiled with tomatoes and onions and salt until soft. Fair enough, I imagined - at least thorough cooking would surely kill any, err, critters that had hatched in there. I asked how much a small piece cost - amazingly, the jerky was only fifty kwacha, around thirty cents, for a good four or six ounces or so. Even for Malawi - especially for Malawi - that seemed… really cheap. “This meat, it come from animal what kind?” I started to ask.

“Rich lady. Fat lady. How are you, fat lady? Hey, rich lady.” Now, normally, the old village grandmothers are mild tempered and quiet - they are, after all, products of an era in which a certain amount of self-effacement was expected from women. This one, though, was having none of that. And while I applauded her iconoclasm, I wished she could do it elsewhere. “Hey. You going to buy some for me? You should. Buy me that pile right there, rich lady.”

“Um,” I said. “No.” The vendor had already wrapped up the piece I’d selected; I paid her and fled.

So now I was the proud owner of a fist-sized block of stinky meat. Well, good. …Now what?

Upon arriving at my house, I first took a few minutes to examine the stinky meat. It looked just like it had when I bought it. When cut open, however…

Stinky meat.

The dark side of the... stinky meat.

The stinky meat. Cut open.

…it more closely resembled the fine cross sections of petrified wood sold in the gem and mineral curio shops that populate the likes of Yellowstone National Park. The inside was disturbingly pinkish-tan, laced through with paler streaks. The texture was not rubbery-pliable, like normal beef jerky, but rather very firm and somewhat flaky, a bit like salmon left in a cold-smoker for far, far too long. Encouragingly, the inside seemed to be somewhat less stinky than the outer ring, which lead me to believe that perhaps the meat had simply been stored incorrectly. If I stripped off the outside, I figured, I’d have a lovely and normal block of fairly lean, preserved meat.

So I tried it. I broke off the outer layer of one cross-section, which action left me with a medallion of pinkish… meat. (Not knowing what else to do with the bits I removed, I picked up my hoe, dug a hole, and buried them.) Under the influence of a bolt of premonition which I would only later appreciate, I started up a fire in the outside kitchen, rather than using my kerosene backpacker’s stove inside the house. I found a frying pan, added a little oil, and plopped in the… meat.

It sizzled a bit. Then it smoked. Then it issued forth perhaps the most ghastly odor known to man. It wasn’t the sharp-sweet scent of rotted meat - that, at least, I would haver known. This was swampy, coating, bowel-gripping. I am tempted to classify it as ‘indescribable’, but that just doesn’t do it justice. It was oily, thick, the kind of smell that settles into the very tissues of the sinus, that claws at the throat, that coats the finest branchings of lung with unutterably unspeakableness.

I fled from the kitchen gagging, the stink trailing after. I soon realized to my horror that this gaseous form might come to endanger life on this planet as we know it, for as long as that meat kept sizzling, the miasma would continue to spread, a persistant and malevolent cloud. Thinking quickly, I wrapped a bandanna around my face, darted in, and seized the skillet. Reeling, I dragged it outside to the hole I'd dug previously, dropped the entire pan in, and began covering it frantically.

Mrs. Makhuva, my counterpart's wife, found me that way. "Hi Tenley, I was just headed out to pick up some beans. Do you need anythi.... uhm. What are you doing?"

I told her the whole story, haltingly. Though seized by an inexplicable laughing fit, Mrs. Makhuva attempted to set me straight. "Sometimes the dried hippo -- or elephant, or eland, or whatever -- isn't really cured right. You have to boil it for some time, at least twenty minutes. Break it into little pieces first, like this. I'll see you this evening for dinner, though, right? Don't bring any of that hippo, nobody in our family eats it."

Within a few days, I was able to taste and smell anything other than illegally poached, sun-dried big game animal. After a week or two, I gingerly uncovered my cookware, and found the stink nearly evaporated.

But the place that I buried the meat? I still can't get anything to grow there.

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This blog is a personal journal, and does not necessarily represent the viewpoints or stances of either the Peace Corps or the United States Government. This blog is intended for indoor or outdoor use only.

In October, I and a number of other PCVs made the trip up from Blantyre to Liwonde, for the yearly game count. ‘Volunteers’ (there’s still a fee to cover certain transport expenses) are permitted to toss their sleeping bags under a tree and enjoy the coffee and pool in exchange for two to five hours a day of hiking around and counting critters. Seemed like a pretty great deal to me.

Liwonde from the air -- clearly, not one of my pics. Most of my pictures of this episode are utterly inadequate, so I'll be raiding the shared photo files for images taken in Liwonde throughout this post. Enjoy!

The trip to Liwonde required two hitches and a minibus just to get into town. We’d been told to meet out in front of the local Peoples, a chain grocery store, at one in the afternoon. With foolish American punctuality, a good dozen volunteers had assembled by the appointed hour. We piled our luggage in a heap and took turns to wander the market and loll in the shade. It wasn’t actually possible to nap. I’d felt that I’d grown accustomed to Malawi’s temperatures, but Liwonde’s in October is a whole new kind of misery – dust, old fish, humidity, and a heaviness of sheer heat, altogether form a miasma as welcome as a fine and lovely bouquet of hacksaws. Around two, the park called to say that the transport to pick us up would be ‘a little’ late. Small children peered through the tumbledown fence from time to time, oohing and aahing at the sight of so many azungus all in one place.

Malawi's most popular zoo attraction -- come see the tame azungus!

Close to three, a gentleman began wandering through the market, carrying with him a battered guitar and what might once have been a large and expensive subwoofer. Despite our best attempts to remain unobtrusive, we caught his eye. Grinning with delight at his new captive audience, the man set up for business, seating himself on the derelect speaker and bursting into song. He appeared to know only half a dozen chords on the guitar, which he repeated endlessly in unvarying sequence, keeping time by drumming his heels against the subwoofer. At first, he tried forming a song from the little English he possessed.

This is how the song went: “Azungu… gives me the money! Giving me money! Azungu! Thank you, Madam! Gives the money!” The refrain was followed by a similar, though subtly nuanced, chorus: “Azungu! Good-job keep it-up! Gives me money!” We agreed, later, than had the gentleman sung ‘gives me the precious,’ we all would have emptied our pockets on the spot.

As it was, I fear I made matters worse: at last I asked for a song in Chichewa. Any song. The minstrel took this as an invitation to move himself and his subwoofer-cum-footdrum around the fence, where he could provide us with front-row seats, much to the delight of the expanding crowd. Aware that my fellow companions were now planning to throttle me, but trying not to give the musician offence, I smiled as best I was able through one song (as near as I could tell, the lyrics went something like: ‘The sun is out and the day is hot... Azungu, my children are hungry and I haven’t had any beer, and shouldn’t a man have beer on a day like this? It is too hot. Give me some money, Azungu.’), but interrupted before the next set.

Our very own serenade.

“Thank you, I am very grateful,” I said, slipping the man fifty kwacha – roughly thirty cents. “But people many have come to look. Maybe you can to go play of the songs over there? On the market? Away from this here of place?” The musician was amenable, once he figured out what I was trying to say, and gathered up his things... just as a white pickup truck, our transport to the game park, rolled in.

So much for a musical interlude.

Cramming a dozen volunteers and our gear into one midsize pickup was a little tight, but things didn’t really get bad until we stopped to pick up three more park rangers – they’d been shopping in town, evidently at Sue’s Bulky and Uncomfortable Object Emporium, to judge by the plastic bags they stacked atop us. To make matters worse, the driver was in a hurry – we roared through town, careened onto a dirt track, and bumped and crashed the entire way to the park gates. The guards there seemed unconcerned about admitting a vehicle heaped with arms and legs akimbo. We all piled out gratefully another kilometer down the road... only to be told that we were to be left here, at the administration offices, while the rangers went back into town to buy food.

Providing seranades of the more... enjoyable sort. (Shared files.)

This was at three-thirty. The vehicle, due to a mysterious delay in which the driver vanished into one of the staff houses and declined to emerge until his supervisor was summoned to come retrieve him, did not depart until shortly after four. The rangers assured us they’d return by five. To be fair, we entertained ourselves relatively well, there by the staff housing. First, we visited the abode of the Peace Corps volunteer who lives inside the game park. She has plumbing, a cat, and a flush toilet, all of which were impressive. We fed the monkeys (inadvertently at first), and examined a number of brightly-colored, industrious little dung beetles. Someone shared a few boiled eggs. By six, we were starting to think about setting up some sort of makeshift camp. We watched the sun set. Then we watched the moon rise, to the accompaniment of unfamiliar hollow booming and growling noises from deep within the surrounding forest. Seven o’clock found us hungry and all hunched together in the remains of a derelict park boat, long since grounded by a rusted hole big enough to crawl through, but still equipped with the remnants of cushy chairs.

The Liwonde volunteer's house. Also, she has a toilet. And a cat. I'm not jealous. ;P

While, ah, examining the aforementioned toilet at length, I left my pack outside the door... with a mango atop. When I came out, the fruit was gone. After some experimenting, we managed to catch a picture of one of the thieves in the act.

It turns out the troop had a whole new crop of mouths to feed.

Around eight, the truck peeled in, coming within inches of running over our piled bags. The back was filled – mounded – heaped with bags from People’s, the very same grocery store we’d all departed some five hours ago. We unloaded by the light of the moon... and then waited while the rangers argued and sorted. Then we helped stack the *very same* bags back into the truck. “Sorry about the mix-up with the rides,” explained a ranger, gesturing us in, “but we’ll get you all to the main camp just as soon as...” The truck rumbled to life, and the ranger leaned out of the cab to shout back at us. “...just as soon as we pick up the game scouts.”

Six of them, as it turned out – and their rifles, too. As if in futile yet brave attempt to make up for lost time, the driver started off before they were even settled in the back – not, of course, that they could settle much. I hadn’t even seen two of the other volunteers for the last half hour; I presumed they were somewhere under those bags of bread and high-powered weaponry, but who knew?

What followed next was like something from a theme park adventure ride, though without the comfortable chairs or warnings to keep arms and legs inside the vehicle (indeed, there was no place ‘inside’ the vehicle to place the aforementioned appendages.) Animals – dozens of them – flashed by briefly in the headlights: heavyset antelope with widespread horns, small blurs that started to their feet and leapt away in high bounds, a slinking golden glow of reflective eyes in the darkness, all there and gone in an instant. It was almost enough to make me forget that my spine was being compacted between a bundle of tent poles and a bag of tin-boxed tea cookies by every high-speed jolt.

Waterbuck. (Shared files.)

Eland. (Shared files.)

Zebras, apparently not discriminatory, could be spotted running in small knots along with herds of almost any other ungulate. (Shared files.)

I'm... still not sure what this is. Though it did put me in mind of that Far Side cartoon about where jerky comes from. (Shared files.)

Growing up, my brother and I were often warned in severest terms about the dangers and illegality of riding unsecured in the back of a pickup truck. Oddly, those warnings never addressed the possibility of tumbling out the back while chasing an elephant off the road. Because there were elephants in the road.

They're bigger in person. (Shared files.)

Now, were I in the driver’s seat, faced by several hulking gray behemoths looming sudden and huge in the headlights, I would probably have politely waited for the beasts to move, prepared all the while to throw the vehicle into reverse and screech away. This turns out, so far as I can tell, not to be the appropriate method of bypassing elephants on a narrow dirt track. Rather, the proper approach is to lean on the horn, furiously flash the lights (thus transforming the surrounding jungle into a frenzied disco) – and speed up.

We streaked by within touching distance of the elephants’ stony grey hides as the beasts, trumpeting, crashed away through the thick brush. Perhaps observing a few wide-eyed looks, or overhearing a gasped exclamation, one of the guards shouted. “Do not worry!” he said, “this is normal!”

Well, alrighty then. Great.

We arrived at camp little after ten at night. There was a proper grassy area, surrounded by a fence, around the lodges; this, of course, we were not to use. “Just go over there,” the driver gestured towards the surrounding bush with the air of one much put apon. But what about elephants, we wondered, or the hippos whose grunting from the nearby river resounded throughout the camp? “Nah,” he spat, “they think tents are rocks. Don’t step on ‘em.” Given what would happen if a hippo did blunder into an ultralight bivoac, this did not strike anyone as particularly reassuring. Also, I did not have a tent. I had a hammock. What would an elephant think of that? The driver just shrugged, clearly uninterested.

These trees looked like a good place to string my hammock... until a camp staff member, wandering by, mentioned in passing that the large baobab tree some ten feet away happened to be the local elephants' favorite midnight snack. Whoops.

This is where and how I finally set up camp. Pretty bwana, eh?

By sometime around eleven, exhaustion had laid its heavy reign. Most of us had been up since six or so, travelling, and we were supposed to be up at four tomorrow morning to set out on our transverse walks. So, quite naturally, we needed to have a meeting in the main lodge. I don’t recall much about this assembly, though evidently everyone was assigned to particular paths, and animal species and safety measures were discussed in depth; I may have been slumped over half-asleep. I do remember setting my alarm sometime later, wetting my shirt down (it was still so hot that sleep would have been difficult otherwise) and crawling into my hammock.

At two in the morning, we awoke to discover ourselves in Jurassic Park. Hollow cracks and moist ripping filled the air, underscored by long bursts of low, moaning grumble precicely like the sounds issued by movie-magic dinosaurs. The elephants, it seemed, had returned to the baobab tree they favored, right where I would have slung my bedding.

This is what that tree looked like the next morning.

Those who were able to get back to sleep were woken at four, for the first day’s count. Not only are the animals much more active in the early morning, but also it’s possible to actually move about – unlike later in the day, when heat ratchets from merely uncomfortable to blistering. We were assigned to walk in pairs, and each group was assigned a clip board and a four-page field guide. After a few more words of caution (if something charges you, don’t scatter!) we climbed into the open-sided safari vans and were ready to roll.

Well, almost. First, of course, we had to wait for the scouts. They arrived close to six, some clutching paper cups of coffee, which were eyed jealously. As it turns out, no one needed caffeine anyway – we rolled out of camp and into a wonderland. Animals were *everywhere.* We chased trumpeting elephants off the road several times, which during daylight is, if anything, more adrenaline-inducing than at night. Dozens of warthogs (and who knew they had golden manes?) streaked beside the road, tails held high, as if racing the vehicle. Eland patriarchs lifted their great-horned heads to watch us suspiciously, hundreds of swift-leaping antelope sprinted by in a gold-tan mass. And while I’d seen many of the species before, in zoos and certainly on television, this was as different as soft serve and Haagen Das, as velveeta and brie, as...

Well, you get the picture.

Speaking of pictures... (Shared files.)

We dropped one pair of volunteers off to begin their transect walk in a glade with dozens of these. (Shared files.)

My team was dropped off last, at a site just north of the main camp, beside the Shire (pronounced ‘shee-ray’) river. Within moments, we were scribbling on our animal count clipboard. “Six male bushbuck,” I’d whisper excitedly, delightedly, straining for a better view around some bushes. “Big ones. They’re huge!”

“They’re waterbuck,” our scout would say, “also: all female. Two yearlings, four adults. One gravid.” Then he’d check his cell phone messages.

“...and a hornbill! With a red... thingie on its beak! Write that down!”

“We’re not counting birds,” sighed the scout. “And we’ve got nine more kilometers. Let’s go.”

They really did have a red thingie, though. (Shared files.)

When we got to the banks of the river, our pace slowed still further: numerous animals had come to drink, and we had to be careful not to double-count the herds. The birdlife alone was stunning – huge white egrets, kingfishers spearing thier breakfast, slender stalking shorebirds I couldn’t begin to identify, shallow shoals corrugated with the backs of basking crocodiles. Hippos eyed them suspiciously, grunting deep hollow booms, like the maniacal laughter of a twelve-hundred pound mad scientist.

Wildlife along the river. (Shared files.)

(Shared files.)

(Shared files.)

(Shared files.)

And, of course, there were the poachers.

We'd been noticing a number of small boats out on the water, and as the novelty of being in an adventure safari began to fade -- just the slightest bit -- my partner asked the scout about them.

"Oh yes," said the scout, "Those are poachers." As it turns out, not all those big fish being sold out in Liwonde town came from the fishing-allowed sections of the river; in fact, most of them probably came from the protected region. Much of the rest of the Shire is long since fished out. Those idyllic, hollowed-tree canoes were in fact the agents of biodiversity loss. “The tree trunks to build the canoes usually come from inside the park boundaries,” added the game scout.

We were aghast. But what do the scouts normally do, when they catch fish poachers? As it turns out, they destroy traps when they can, and burn or sink captured boats. They can also take poachers in to the local authorities, and since the game scouts get to keep captured fish, they certainly have an inducement to nail poachers as often as possible. But what about these particular ones? The scout shrugged, shaded his eyes. “They’re on their way out, and they’re on the water. Unless the park’s boat is close, we don’t bother them.”

But maybe the boat was close? Who knew, right? The scout languidly glanced at his phone. “Oh,” he said. “I’m out of units. Let’s keep going.”

But wait! We volunteers both had phones. And Liwonde park is so small, reception was just fine. “Here, use mine!” I announced proudly, producing the cell phone.

With a heavy sigh, the scout took it, dialed the call back to the central office. He chatted for a moment, shrugged, and returned the phone. “They can’t come,” he said, “but I reported it.”

They're pretty... if you don't know what they're doing.

While I had no doubt as to the later, I’d heard (or, given the extent of my understanding of rapid-fire Chichewa, *thought* I’d heard) the word ‘duka.’ Broken. I hoped, with sinking heart, that the ‘boat’ in reference was not the one parked on very dry land just outside the central offices, in which we’d all taken shelter not fourteen hours before. You know, the one with the giant hole in its side.

“Come on,” said the scout. He was the one with the gun, so we did.

The landscape alone, as we passed thorough riverine, forest, veldt, and grassland habitats, is enough to write home about. Africa is manifestly scenic, in an alien and yet, somehow, in a manner that seems to crawl just under the limits of recognition, intensely… familiar way. There were huge, tortured, bare baobabs at every turn, or the magnificent silhouettes of palms on the waterside, or the ruins of long-spined yellow fever trees, where Elephants ripped out chunks of inner bark, utterly unmindful of the wicked thorns. For the first time, I understood the meaning of ‘game trails’, for here one was obliged to walk around discrete, thick clumps of brush, following, yes, the masses of footprints of creatures gone before you.

The landscape is just gorgeous. (Slared files.)

And, oh yes, the animals. Nothing that I’d seen at zoos prepared me for the experience of coming around a bend and surprising a herd of oxpecker-bird-covered cape water buffalo, the way their heads lift myopically as they taste the breeze, their caution suddenly mine as well. Nor for the footprints in still-gelid mud, big as both my spread hands, thumb to thumb.

Perhaps influenced by our delight, or perhaps pleased with the time we were making, our scout turned to us near one particular bend in the river. “Want to see a dead buffalo?” he asked. “We found it five weeks ago.” We nodded.

We could smell it a long while before we saw it. At a few hundred feet, the breeze shifted, bringing us a gust of odd sick-sweetness, like rot and lemons and manure. It only grew stronger as we approached a thick copse of bush. By fifteen feet, it was not possible to breathe through one’s nose. The smell, so thick it felt oily, seemed to coat the insides of the lungs.

Aaand... here it is!

The animal was laid out on its side, head a death’s mask of taunt skin and exposed bone. “We think it got caught in a snare,” said the scout, stepping right up next to it to gesture at the wire still enwrapping its throat, even as we gagged and cringed, tucking our t-shirts over our noses. The effort was useless; the rot seemed to have crawled inside, could all but be felt on the skin.

It seemed as if this… cored-out heap of bones and tight-stretched leather could not possibly once have been a living thing. There were, oddly, no flies. The hide was finger-thick, when the scout handed us a chunk that had been dragged away from the main part of the corpse, stiff as wood but heavier. Each hoof, empty and separated, was like a pair of baby booties.

My, what pointy feet you have.

“Want to keep a horn?” the scout offered, holding up a malodorous curve of black keratin. We didn’t.

Quietly, we retreated to wash our hands in the river. The smell seemed to follow us, clinging, for miles.

Near the end of our walk, we came upon an area that, according to our scout, was used as a waycamp for park staff. “We also bring poachers’ boats and equipment there,” he added, and we insisted on a detour. And captured goods there were indeed: at least six boats with great holes burned through the bottoms, flattened sections of carefully-knotted fishtraps, and piles of the baked-clay sinkers used on nets. “You know,” I said, looking around, “if that trap were repaired a bit, I’ll bet someone could use it.”

The other volunteer examined the trap. “Let’s smash it,” she said.

I grinned.

Between the two of us, we stomped the contraption flat before our scout, evidently wearying of our distraction, took one end in either hand and simply ripped the trap in half, splitting the weathered but thick-woven cords like thread. We applauded him, and on we went.

Despite the animals, whose numbers never thinned, we began to weary towards the last kilometer or two of our hike. Footsore, we at last reached the park’s airstrip, a narrow gash of asphalt cut through the thick trees. Within minutes, the park vehicle rolled up and took us – marveling at the unexpected efficiency – back to the main camp. We handed in our forms and had the rest of the day off.

Nobody, though, was of a mind to do much. Even by eleven in the morning, the sunlight was a tangible thing which beat down, infecting everyone with heatstroke-like lassitude. We congregated gladly at the resort’s fenced pool.

This is what we did... all day long. (Shared files.)

Food at the lodge was prohibitively expensive (ten bucks for lunch? You gotta be kidding me,) but there was a small kitchen facility for cooking whatever we’d brought with. The moment foodstuffs appeared, however, so too did those little monkeys whose antics at the central office had been so endearing.

Once they started snatching food, quite literally from under our noses, they became somewhat less so. We’d hear a rapid galloping over the roof, then long-tailed bodies would streak by, then someone would be missing a couple tomatoes or an onion. The assault never let up – even glancing away or moving a few steps from your food was an open invitation to attack. Several visitors from the lodge were having a picnic lunch, and after a giant chunk of their bread was stolen, they found a stick and whacked at any assailants within reach. That only slowed the monkeys down.

Since I’d only brought a peanuts, dried fruit, packets of shelf-stable milk, and some protein powder, all of which were carefully hidden in my pack, I enjoyed myself thoroughly. Though I helped to defend whatever was asked of me, it wasn’t terribly upsetting when something was taken. A little after noon, though, one of the other campers wandered by the pool. “Did one of you leave your pack by that… hammock thing?” he asked. “Because the baboons got it.”

Oh.

And also: Oh crap.

Yep, it had definitely been my pack, I discovered as I jogged up. Every single object I’d brought had been scattered in a wide swathe. The food was for the most part gone or, in the case of the plastic, shelf-stable milk packets, bitten into. Even the protein powder was gone, though I hadn’t a clue as to what a baboon would do with that. Other than the food, I was only missing some stationery, which had been in a ziplock bag with some gun. The pack itself, fortunately, was undamaged – perhaps I hadn’t quite closed the zipper, which allowed the pack to be pried open. Well, either that or the baboons know how to work zippers nowadays.

It took a while to gather everything up. I still had two packs of milk and a cup or so of granola, which I figured should be enough for the rest of our stay – only a little over 24 hours or so. I put those in my daypack, which I carried around with me everywhere for the rest of the day, and repacked the rest of the mess.

Fortunately, the lodge served tea a few hours afterwards. Word spread quickly, and since nobody told us not to go… in we filed. The Liwonde park lodge is a gorgeous structure, built traditionally with a thatched roof and great open sides, so it’s very comfortable even in the heat. Tea, coffee, and little fried donuts were served on an (unguarded!) open table. Though the staff gave us some suspicious looks, they didn’t protest as we made off with plate after plate of mendazis. We hauled our loot down to the river bank and ate there, watching the sun set.

Sitting on a dock on the bay, watching the time… roll… away…

One of the donuts even looked like an elephant. Mmm, delicious.

We had our game meeting around sundown and were allowed to head off to bed early, much to everyone’s relief. I drank a packet of milk, and had just finished dunking my shirt in the nearby tap, when one of the newly-arrived Peace Corps volunteers, here for a later count, sidled up. “Hey,” he said, “You got any food?”

“Not much,” I said, grinning, trying to see the humor in the situation, “the bab…”

“Can I have some? We didn’t bring any.”

I frowned. “Right on the invitation sheet, it said there wasn’t anything available in the park, and that you needed to…”

“Right,” he said. “But we didn’t.”

“Well…” I hedged, “I have a little granola I made, so maybe you could have….” I said, as I dug the baggie out.

“Great, thanks!” he said, plucking the bag from my hands and hurrying off.

“…part,” I finished lamely. Just great. Heck, a day of eating light definitely wouldn’t kill me, and if all the other volunteer had was some granola for the next two days, he was in pretty bad shape anyway. Finally, I shrugged and went to bed. Or rather, to hammock. Not even the elephants woke me up.

The next morning was a little easier than the first; at least we’d all slept well. I was even able to get up early enough to brush my teeth in the pool’s changing room. It was tough to tell by flashlight, but something seemed odd about the fence. (It turned out later that I was right – a large section of it had been torn down overnight. Smashed flat, actually, with thick poles and grass scattered everywhere. Why? I’d asked. The staff member had shrugged. “Oh, the hippos are always getting in,” he’d said. “Don’t know why they like the pool. They have a whole river.” Oh. So that’s what hippos do at night. Who knew?)

We rolled out of camp at around the same time, but instead of an open-sided safari truck, we rode in the bed of the truck. The drive to our starting points took us outside the park, along village roads. We were slated to cover a region about one mile north of our fist hike. The path would cut from the villages along the east side, straight to a large pond that marked the western boundary, a journey of about twelve kilometers. We were nearly the northernmost of the teams; all the points in the park we’d be visiting were within four miles or so of human habitation. Foolishly, I made no particular inferences regarding this.

Little clusters of habitation were as thick here as they are in my district – one village flowing directly into another, their only separation swaths of fields. I admit myself surprised that so many people could live so close to the park – surely there would be problems with game animals getting into the fields? When I asked several of the scouts crammed in the back of the bouncing truck, though, they exchanged glances. “No…” said one, “that’s not really a problem.” Hmm.

Villagers turned from their early morning work in their fields, apparently unsurprised, their eyes blankly hooded, to watch the truck full of azungus and gunmen bounce along. People here did not wave, and many did not return the greetings we shouted – unusual, for Malawi. The village roads were not so well maintained as in the park. One bridge was, in fact, almost (but not quite!) enitrely missing, forcing us to drop one pair of hikers off several miles from their actual starting point.

Sorry ‘bout that, Dave!

It also took much longer to get where we were going along the deeply-rutted tracks; neigh two hours. About an hour and a half in, when my butt and back felt thoroughly minced, my mind sunk in a vibrating and jostling fog, there came a sudden commotion from up ahead. Our scouts abruptly transformed, Optitron style, from friendly and laughing Malawians (albeit with guns) into sleek aggressors. They shouted, thwacking at the car with their rifle butts, and we screeched to a halt. Before we were even stopped, the scouts were vaulting from the vehicle and tearing out across a freshly-dug field. One ran so fast he forgot his assault rifle, and had to come back.

It took me a moment to focus on what had alarmed them so – but oh, just there – running men. Three of them, and a dog, all fleeing. They carried something splashed with red.

Poachers.

I couldn’t get the camera out and turned on fast enough. This is the best shot I managed.

They dropped raw-rent giblets of meat as they fled. Farmers in their fields shouted, running for cover. The reason why they too fled quickly became clear; one of the scouts took drew aim on the dog. The animal, though, was fleeing back towards a cluster of huts; large targets if the scout missed. At last, with a curse, the game scout turned away. Across two fields, the rest of the men had no better luck with the poachers who, divested of their ill-gotten meat, scattered in all directions.

It was all over in little more than a minute. Growling in disgust, the scouts trickled back to the vehicle… carrying hunks and strips of furry meat.

Daddy’s home, and he brought *steak.*

Which, of course, they tossed into the bed of the truck. As it turns out, not only do scouts get to keep any fish they seize… they also get to keep any meat. So there was a good reason for the poachers to drop their catch, beyond simply lightening themselves – while carrying meat, they represented dinner. Without it, they represented simply extra paperwork for the scouts, which could conceivably influence the length of their pursuit.

Still, though, it was remarkably little meat on which to stake one’s freedom. The little pile of flesh glistened in the corner of the truckbed, collecting flies. The bare ribcage was only perhaps fourteen inches long, the individual ribs about the size of a whiteboard marker. There didn’t seem enough… parts to make up a whole animal, the total weighed perhaps only five or six kilos – worth about ten bucks total in this area. “What… was that?” we asked, hesitantly.

“Newborn bushbuck,” said one of the scouts, climbing back in unconcernedly. “Looks like at least two groups split it up between them.”

This is a bushbuck. I'll bet their babies are cute. When they're, err, all together.(Shared files.)

The gobs of meat commenced to jiggle as we set out again, sometimes taking advantage of the vehicle’s jolts to sprawl forlornly towards us, leaving bright carmine streaks on the truckbed in their wake.

The drive abruptly became a quiet one. “Does this happen… often?” I asked, hesitantly.

The scout shrugged. “Sometimes,” he said, uninformatively.

“Have you tasted all the animals in the park?” I asked. The scouts shrugged. I tried again: “Which ones are the best?”

Two game scouts glanced to one another. “Eland,” they both answered, unhesitatingly. “It’s just like goat,” a third added.

Well, then. Good to know. We rattled onward.

At long last, I and another volunteer were dropped off with our scout. We were outside the fence, but entrance to the park boundaries was via an open gate, clearly large enough to admit anyone afoot or on bicycle. Slightly further down, the fence simply ended at a large sections of freshly burned grass. “Where’d the fence go?” I asked.

“It’s budgeted for replacement,” said the scout, which wasn’t exactly what I’d asked. We would, of course, find out exactly what had happened to the wire fence shortly enough.

But at the time, we simply entered, unaware and unalarmed. This section of the park was more thickly forested. The trees were twisted and bare, save for where thick creeping vines scaled their trunks like amorous pythons.

I don’t even know what those vines are, but they were all over the place, some thicker than my torso.

Interspersing the trees were patches of grassland, the yellow-seared blades taller than my head and murderously sharp-edged, delivering papercuts to any exposed skin, even ripping small slits in clothing. Just as at the park boundary, though, the grass had been burned in places, sometimes only over small sections, sometimes for hundreds of feet in all directions.

For the first fifteen minutes, we watched alertly for animals in the tall grass. For the next fifteen, we started becoming concerned. Half an hour into the walk, when we hadn’t spotted anything, we finally asked what had happened to the animals. “Oh,” said the guide, checking his nifty little GPS gadget, “They’ll probably all be near water.”

They weren’t. The first little pool, the bare remnants of a much larger stream, was empty save for a scattering of small hoofprints. We did, however, start to find snares. The first, tied around knee height, nearly sent me sprawling head over heels as I stepped through some close bushes. The burn-blackened wire was neigh invisible against the dead-seeming shrubbery.

Oh. So that’s where the wire fence had gone.

The game scout helped untangle me, wound the wire into a rough loop, and slung it over his shoulder. Now alert, we started looking specifically for snares, and by the end of two hours, he had a dozen such rolls. Our game list, in contrast, had sightings of two warthogs and a bushbuck.

And, over the course of our rapid, three-hour march, including to the marshy rim of the small lake… that was all the animals we saw.

Sometimes there were footprints of other species, and a few baobabs were missing bark in strips, characteristic of thirsty elephants. And just beside one snare, we found a warthog’s skull, bleached and bare. “Young. Looks like a female,” said the scout, turning it over. “Want to keep the tusks?” I did, but despite repeated jerking and a little stomping, couldn’t break them loose. So I picked up the entire skull and carted it along.

She's presently hanging on my wall at home.

As no roads went through this area, we were obliged to walk another hour out of the park. Half way there, we began to encounter fields of crops. “Oh,” I panted innocently, tiredly, “are we out of the park?”

“No,” the guide said simply, mouth tight.

Around the place the park fence should have been, houses began, the village thick all the way up until the main dirt track. I’d thought that the fence before – with its burned out sections and gateless entrances – was poor; here there was nothing at all.

Quiet and very tired, we stumbled at last through someone’s cassava field, then waited at the side of the road until the park vehicle roared up. We were actually inside the truck before we noticed – surprise! – that the vehicle hadn’t been back to the main camp: the poachers’ meat remained in its sad little pile in the broiling sun, now significantly darker, crustier, and thick with flies. We stopped briefly at a cluster of game scout housing just inside the gates (they were closed and guarded, here, as if it mattered)... to drop off the sad little chunks of flesh and bone and fur. Children, laughing, carried it back towards the houses. And on we went.

Mmm. Appetizing, huh? Especially after sitting around in the sun for a while.

As if nothing at all were amiss, the staff at the main camp collected our pitifully short game count list. “Watch out for the hippo wandering around the camp,” we were cautioned, “and stay out of the pool. Your ride back to town leaves in an hour.”

There was just enough time to pack. There was indeed a hippo in the camp – it grunted and snuffed its ill-tempered way between tents, evidently unimpressed by either the people breaking camp or the pair of fat baboons who sat across the clearing on their rosy bottoms, eyeing my pack. At the lodge, where we waited for the car, a warthog shuffled on bended knees over the manicured lawn, cropping it down to nubbins.

He didn’t seem to mind posing for photos, which is good, since I wasn’t able to get any that day in the actual, yanno, park.

I’m not certain how to end this post, save perhaps with a small piece of advice. If you’ve ever wondered at Africa’s wildlife, if you’ve ever wanted to go on a safari, or see these magnificent animals in their natural habitat… don’t wait. See them when you can.

Like Afghanistan’s Buddhas or Greenland’s ice shelves, their time is ultimately limited.

Oh, and when you come? Bring extra food. You never know what you'll end up having to feed.

(Shared files.)

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Important notice to purchasers: This blog is a personal journal, and does not necessarily represent the viewpoints or stances of either the Peace Corps or the United States Government. The entire physical universe, including this blog, may one day collapse back into an infinitesimally small space. Should another universe subsequently re-emerge, the existence of this blog in that universe cannot be guaranteed.

Around this time of year, a whole new crop of Environment volunteers packs up and sets out for shores strange and foreboding, or at least, the Lilongwe airport. As I recall, packing was intensely worry-filled – though I realize now how it need not have been. Just in case it might help ease anyone’s mind, I thought I’d offer up my own packing list, as an addendum to the official one. If you’re not about to embark on a two-year mission to a third world country, or if you’re already happy with the stuff in your bags, you’ll likely want to skip this post – it’s unlikely to be particularly interesting. I’m not even going to include any pictures. Okay, maybe one, but that’s it.

First, general notes: your bags are limited by weight (though not strictly), but packages from home are charged by volume. In other words, if you’re having anything sent to yourself, heavy and small things should go in packages. (And several volunteers recommend mailing yourself a package or three several weeks before you leave; your address in Lilongwe is Your Name, PCT; PO Box 208; Lilongwe, Malawi, Africa.) Large but light things should go in your bags – to the extent possible. Also, you may want to determine now your packing philosophy. For example, the official list says to bring a non-stick frying pan, and indeed, it’s quite possible that you’ll want one sooner or later. You could… A: bring it (or a lightweight nesting pan set) in your gear, which could be a considerable weight cost; B: buy it in Lilongwe’s Shoprite for around fifteen bucks, a considerable monetary cost especially if you’re determined not to dip into your own savings; or C: wait till you can find a cheap one from a departing volunteer or some back alley Indian importer’s boutique, a considerable cost in time and hassle. Just like in any fourth grader’s multi-ending storybook – you get to pick your own adventure.

Bring Ziplock bags and Tupperware – the cheap kind is fine. You’ll be very, very glad to have both, to contain and limit the rapidly-spreading weevil infestations in stored foodstuffs, if nothing else. Ziplock bags are hugely expensive and found only in two cities; all the covered containers available are of poor construction.

Regarding your own medical supplies: consider bringing multivitamins, icy-hot, antibiotic ointment with pain relief, good hydrocortisone cream, any favorite brands of decongestants or stomach-related tablets (gas-ex, peptobismol), and Costco-sized bottles of ibuprofein and aspirin. Except for the first two, you can get all these items from the medical center… upon request, and in tiny quantities and odd dosages or formulations. If you want any mosquito repellant except DEET, bring that too.

Toilitries: Bring any unusual personal grooming items which you enjoy using – a pumice stone, nose hair trimmers, ultra-fancy razors, whatever. As for consumables and cheap razors, you can purchase all the basics (soap, lotion, toothpaste) in most villages. There are even some premium brands, like AXE body spray, available in Lilongwe… at a price. A tube of good gel deodorant can set you back ten bucks. On the other hand, you can also find Indian imports for about a dollar, though these sometimes verge on the… well, strange.

But then, who wouldn’t want to top off a bucket bath with a little swank?

As for food items: I’d recommend bringing as many luxuries and spices as you have room for. You can get the basics and good Indian spices at Tutla’s in Lilongwe – pepper, garlic powder, tumeric, and even coconut milk and soy sauce – but many east Asian (lemongrass and galangal) and western (rosemary, dill, and sage) spices are tough to find. Spice mix in packets or bottles, like instant barbeque sauce, taco mix, spicy Creole seasoning, or Thai peanut curry (my favorite!), are held in such esteem as to be an acceptable form of currency among volunteers.

As for the luxury food items you should bring or have sent: the food during training is excellent, though you’ll probably only appreciate how awesome it is after you’ve been at site for a few months. So if you miss any food, it’ll probably be something familiar: cheetoes or grapes, maybe. Once you’ve been at site for a while, you’ll probably begin to crave protein. There’s little dairy available in most areas, and animal protein of any sort is very expensive (except for the ubiquitous little dried fish, but they’re an… acquired taste). For example, the Malawi PC office calculates that you should need about a buck fifty a day for food. That’s sufficient to purchase roughly seven eggs, or five cups of milk, or almost an entire six-ounce can of tuna, or a pound of bony goat meat… or between three and eight kilos (~6-18 lbs) of the refined corn flour used to make nsima, depending on the time of the year. On the bright side: there’s plenty of opportunity to learn to make killer beans and tortillas. This is a great country in which to be a vegetarian. But chances are good you’ll really come to appreciate a little protein powder, some granola bars, parmesan cheese, jerky, or even (gasp) spam.

You can buy a number of American candies and snacks, at roughly double American prices, in large cities – Snickers, Oreos, Lay’s potato chips in tubes, Mounds bars, M&Ms – but Reese’s pieces, Starburst, and Skittles are unavailable here.

Don’t bring Crystal Light or Tang or Gatorade – or at least, not much, unless you really love those particular brands. ‘Juice’ packets sell in every little grocery store for fifteen kwacha, and are just fine for flavoring your heavily-chlorinated water. Speaking of which – the Peace Corps supplies you with a very good charcoal filter, and Waterguard (dilute chlorine) is available in every minor town, so don’t worry too much about bringing iodine tablets or a silver-imbedded ultra-compact backpacker’s filter. On the other hand, you may want to consider an ultra-compact backpacker’s *stove*. Local paraffin (kerosene) stoves use wicks rather than a pressurized fine fuel spray, so they are messy, use a lot of kerosene, and occasionally blow up in one’s face. (My sitemate lost half an eyebrow.) But in some areas of the country, paraffin is difficult to find at any price, so you may end up having to cook on wood or eat with other people anyway.

There are a number of handy gadgets and conveniences, difficult to find in country, which you may overlook when packing. In no particular order: good glue (rubber cement or multipurpose,) hand sanitizer, good scissors, sturdy hiking socks (don’t worry too much if they don’t match; you’ll be cutting up one of a pair to repair the other pretty soon, anyway), a knife/tool sharpener (or a set of kitchen knives that will hold an edge better than the local variety), leatherman, vegetable peeler, a book or three which you’ve been yearning for time to read, a durable waterproof wristwatch possibly with alarm and compass, batteries for the aforementioned wristwatch, short wave radio, can opener, solar shower, hair clips if you’re going to grow yours out, sewing kit (you can find thread everywhere but good needles are much more difficult), a giant roll of duct tape, a French press (coffee is oddly expensive in this coffee-growing country, but loose-leaf tea is very cheap), spice or coffee grinder, a frame backpack, a tent and lightweight sleeping bag (sleeping accommodations at the volunteer resthouses are very limited during events, so you may end up using a tent more often than you imagine, unless you like sleeping on a couch in the room where three other volunteers are watching movies till two AM), and a hammock. If you can get them inexpensively, aromatic oils are wonderful to have – just a drop or two makes a bucket bath relaxing and special, and a dab of lavender on your pillow can ease sleep. Incense, if you like it, is nice for the same reason.

Seeds are very lightweight and, in my biased opinion, one of the most important things to bring. Herb seeds are primary – basil, sage, rosemary, parsley, savory, chives, thyme, mint, oregano, and so on. But familiar vegetables and flowers can be a godsend after a trying week, too – watermelon, real pumpkins, beets, broccoli, sweet corn, lettuce, carrots, green beans, snap peas, and peppers are all neigh impossible to find in villages. And while freshly-picked tomatoes are an integral part of the local cuisine, the varieties commonly grown produce fruits which resemble the pink cannonballs sold in chain grocery stores in January, back in the ‘States.

If you’re willing to share seeds, you’ll find many eager takers. A small gift of seeds can be a good way of helping someone out without giving them money directly – lack of seeds is a big reason why people don’t try a larger or more nutritious variety of crops. Yet unusual vegetables sell well and command high prices in the market, when they can be found – a single medium-sized carrot, for example, is between ten and twenty cents. You can order half a pound of carrot seeds – roughly a quarter million seeds – for around fifteen bucks from sites such as rareseeds.com.

Clothing was discussed in posts previous, but just incase you’re in a hurry, I’ll cover the basics: you’ll probably want to largely ignore the Peace Corps list. You can get most items here – jeans, dress shirts, t-shirts, skirts, and shoes. (According to the PC list, you’re supposed to bring six or seven pairs of the latter. I foolishly did, and for a short while was known to wiser volunteers as ‘shoe girl.’ You don’t need more than light hiking shoes, fancy shoes, and some everyday-wear waterproof sandals, unless your feet are hard to fit. The sandal companies ‘Chaco’ and ‘Teeva’ offer PC volunteers a big discount, if you scan and email your acceptance letter.) Bring your own underwear and bras. Environment volunteers should bring a minimal quantity of sturdy and easy-to-clean clothing for mild-to-cool weather, since Dedza can get chilly in March and April – but you’ll never need more than a light jacket and a blanket in the rest of the country. (Health volunteers arrive in Dedza during the absolute coldest months – they can expect daytime temperatures in the fifties, with freezing at night.) Also bring one nice outfit (including a skirt or dress, if you’re female) for getting off the plane, swearing in, and the village farewell. You can find plenty of slacks, suits, and dress shirts here for those occasions when you might need to look ‘professional.’ (Education volunteers may be the exception, as they need to look respectable every day at their schools, even during training.) Do be aware of village sensibilities: above-knee shorts and revealing shirts are right out, though women can wrap a tchenje (length of cloth) over trousers without any difficulty in most districts. In Lilongwe and Blantyre, women can wear trousers outright. Once you get here, button-up dress shirts are fine for men and women alike – no need to run out and shop for ‘blouses’.

Electronic goods require some foreplanning. While some volunteers are perfectly capable of living without so much as a wristwatch, a little music or an occasional movie can make all the difference in the world. Those I’ve spoken with are of varied minds about laptops. Charging them may be difficult (some people have electricity in their houses; some live four hours from any reasonably reliable power,) and other volunteers may ask to store pictures or transfer files. If anything goes wrong, getting a computer serviced here is… problematic. If all you want to do is type, an electronic typing device (like Alphasmart dana series – check ebay) is lighter and much cheaper, but most don’t play movies or do much else. With the latest update to the reporting system, you will need to use an internet-capable computer to complete reports, but while you can usually find the computer itself in town within a day of travel, you should bring along the usual accompaniment of flash drives and card readers to carry your data around.

A solar charger is a great idea – there are only a few weeks during the rainy season when it will be useless. But take some time to make certain that it charges all your devices; for example, many cameras will not accept rechargeable batteries. If yours won’t, it’s a good idea to bring along some good disposable batteries, since local ones are very bad and western imports are hugely marked up. Also, most ipods (recommended) need to be charged by a 12 volt solar panel – Bruxton sells a good small one that also switches to 6 volts for faster charging of smaller devices. There’s a large, cheap briefcase-style solar charger available on ebay – don’t bring one, as they don’t work well and are heavy. Battery-powered speakers (the Solio brand is recommended by one volunteer) usually take rechargeables and are nice to have if you bring an ipod.

Don’t plan to acquire any electronics in country, except for the phone the Peace Corps issues, and anything you might purchase from other volunteers. Between transportation and import taxes, everything here is more expensive in real terms than in the states – twenty dollars for a SD card reader and the same for a flash drive, forty bucks for battery-powered speakers that can be had on ebay for five to fifteen, a thousand for a laptop that should run half that.

You should bring plenty of lighting – preferably both motion-sensitive lights that can be stuck to walls, and flashlights. The latter are hugely prized as gifts – locally available flashlights are pretty cheap at around two bucks, but they’re also awful. The one I was suckered into buying seems to have been hammered out by a drunken tinsmith, and like many Malawian electronics still functions only reluctantly. If you bring crank (recommended) or shake flashlights, also bring at least one really good ultrabright maglight and a headlamp – one which utilizes AA or AAA batteries, not the button type batteries, which will generally have to be mailed to you. You might not fully appreciate the benefits of superior lighting until you find yourself stalking around outside your house in the dead of night, juggling your machete, flashlight, and personal alarm as you try to figure out what in the world is making that scraping sound against your window frame, while doing your best to avoid the local snakes. Bring good lighting.

Appropriate small gift items for your host family include calendars, pictures, needles, a little flashlight, or, if you want to be lavish, a deflated soccer ball. You can find balls in the Sana shop in Lilongwe for about four dollars, but they tend towards mediocre construction. (Identical balls are sold in the market and many shops for whatever the sellers think they can get from you.)

If you have friends or family kind enough, supportive enough, and awesome enough to be willing to send you packages, you might want to mention a few of the above points or even print out parts of this post, rather than letting people waste money in sending you things you can’t use. Tales of well-meaning care package mishaps abound: there’s the volunteer who received can after can of roasted peanuts (a major local crop here), scented bar soaps (available in every village for fifteen cents), and sanitary napkins (free and plentiful from the health center and all three resthouses.) And then there’s the volunteer who asked for real pumpkin and utensils, because all silverware available at the market is very thin; the forks sometimes bend when fluffing rice. Rather than receiving, say, a prized can of pumpkin pie mix in his next package, he got several small squashes, loosely-packed and thoroughly decaying, and a box of Dixie plastic spoons. Don’t let this be you.

If you still have questions, please feel free to drop me a line at tenley_s@yahoo.com If you’ve found this post helpful, or if you wish to become instantly beloved and acclaimed by all other environment volunteers, we sure wouldn’t demure if you wanted to bring us something. Cheese, root beer, the second season of ‘Californication’, boxed cake mix, tuna, trashy magazines, smoked salmon, chocolate chips (bring a big bag, and we’ll bake you chocolate chip cookies when you’ve been in the village a few weeks and could kill for a taste of home,) canned shrimp, movies, walnuts, Reese’s pieces, Ritz crackers, the latest Economist – we’re not particular. We’d acclaim your name throughout the ages… and also throw you a party once you swear in. (Ok, we’d do that last one anyway. But the cookies and praise and composing of songs in your honor – that’s extra.)

Happy packing – you’re going to love it here.

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This blog is a personal journal, and does not necessarily represent the viewpoints or stances of either the Peace Corps or the United States Government. Warning: This blog may contain small parts; do not swallow blog.

Most of my days here in Malawi are relaxing, delightful, informative, and challenging, like the day described in the following (earlier) post. Some… aren’t. This is the tale of one of them.

One Tuesday a few weeks ago, I rose early to bike into the Boma. I had an appointment to pick up some three hundred papaya trees from the nurseries at the Mount Mulanje Conservation Trust. This particular project stemmed from a chance conversation on a minibus – the man I sat next to happened to be in management at the local Mulanje Peak Foods factory. He mentioned that his firm was having a difficult time finding papaya fruits regularly, save from Mozambique. Plenty of local people have papaya trees in their compounds, of course, but these are not well-managed, are of inferior varieties, and are mainly for family consumption. The fruits are certainly not locally available in the 3-5 metric ton quantities which Mulanje Peak Foods requires to justify the cost of firing up its factory each day.

Mimosa is a great area in which to grow papayas, which love our rainfall. I asked my counterpart to help me find some farmers interested in trying out a couple dozen papaya trees around each’s fields – in a marvel of efficiency, he had the names to me the very next morning, along with the Group Village Headman’s approval. I called the company’s liaison officer, confirmed that the fruits were needed and that a good price would be paid, then dropped by the MMCT to stalk their nurseries.

The nurseries at the MMCT are extensive and gorgeous. And indeed, they had a good thousand or so papaya trees.

When I went in with my little list of club members, I expected to have to negotiate a price, to arrange delivery on my own with a local transport company (i.e. guy with a truck), and then keep pressure on both organizations so that the trees arrived in a timely fashion.

I explained to Moffat, the MMCT gentleman in charge of most community projects, what I wanted. “That’s great,” said he. “We can certainly issue you three hundred or so trees. Do you mind if we photocopy that list of names?”

I didn’t. But what about the cost?

“Oh, there’s no cost. We’re happy to support Peace Corps projects. And we’ve been looking for ways to interlink local processing, like Mulanje Foods’ juice factory, with local inputs. When would you like the trees delivered?”

Uh. Delivered? Well. When would be convenient?

“Hm,” said Mofat, leaning back to look over the calendar on his wall, “we’re closing for Christmas next week. How about tomorrow?”

I was left pretty speechless. I eyed Mofat suspiciously, trying to determine if he wanted a bribe. He smiled back pleasantly. This wasn’t the way Africa was supposed to work. This was like, well, like America. Nicer, even.

So we arranged for me to come into town the next afternoon to direct the truck with the seedlings to my village, since the back roads there can get rather confusing. I decided then to come in a bit early, grab some lunch and do a little shopping.

But that was the day before. Now, I awoke to my house’s very own, built-in alarm clock – ever since I installed gutters, birds land of my roof to snag a drink. This is fine, of course, but my roof is tin. So every little birdy footstep resounds as if baboons are assaulting my residence, and when I get a several birds, it sounds like an entire troop of clowns are up there in the midst of a midget act, running fast as cartoon characters, punctuated with chirping that seems to emanate from directly over my head.

At least it’s an improvement over being awoken by sobbing children,– one of the families near me (they seem to be a lone woman and a half-dozen children or so, though after my first week in the village, when the mother pleaded for a number of objects from me, such as my hat and sandals, I haven’t had much to do with them even to count up the kids,) has seemed in dire straights recently. December is the hungry season, before the earliest corn is ready and after last years’ harvest has run out. The mother works in the tea fields; the children wander all day, blank-eyed, or gorge on mangoes beaten down from their neighbor’s trees. They’ve become thin (well, thinner); their hair is reddish, brittle and scruffy in patches. And they cry. But substantial charity giving is a risky proposition – chances are, the recipient and all who hear of the gift will turn up on one’s porch the very next week, asking for more. So my counterpart delivered six kilos or so of soap and foodstuffs, mainly corn flour and beans, from ‘a local church.’ So now the kids don’t sob, at least, not for a little while. And nobody has yet turned up at the rich azungu’s doorstep to ask for more – cross your fingers.

So overall, the morning started out pretty darn well. But as I was getting ready to head out, Olive – one of the girls who helps out with around the house -- dropped by to see if there were any jobs for her. I didn’t have anything in particular, so I asked her to sweep outside with a bundle of twigs, a small fifteen-minute task for which I pay her about twelve cents, enough to buy two small packs of cookies or four little fried donuts. As much as I dislike the bare-swept earth around most houses, my counterpart and neighbors become worried for me if the ‘trash’ (mulch) is allowed to pile up at my place. It works out alright; I just pile the sweepings atop the garden beds.

The day before, I’d discovered fluttering in the dewy grass a gorgeous young butterfly. It had clearly just emerged, for its wings were crumpled and glossy-looking. With careful prodding, I managed to coax him onto a leaf, and moved him to a dryer place, off the path, careful not to brush his wings. I often see these butterflies fluttering around my yard – there will sometimes be three or four in sight at any one time – but had never had to opportunity to examine one closely.

They look like tiger swallowtails, but without the swallow tail. Anybody know what this newly metamorphosed little guy is?

I’d felt pleased with myself at the time, but had forgotten all about the matter when Olive called to me. “Teenlee! Teenlee!” she piped, trotting up onto the porch. “Here Madam! See what I found?” Her hand was clenched into a fist. Unthinkingly, I held out my cupped hands for whatever item she’d discovered. Out spilled my butterfly, now with creased wings. It fluttered through my fingers. “Oh! You have to grab it, or it will run away!” Olive scolded me, deftly seizing it by the wings and handing it back.

“No – no! Olive! Do not to grab!” Too late. I cupped my fingers as carefully as I could around the trembling insect and took it to a mass of blooming basil. The butterfly climbed shivering from the cage of my fingers, flapped awkwardly, rose up… and landed a few inches away. A postage-stamp-size segment of wing clung to my fingers, and shed wing-scales made my hands glitter in the sun. Oh, crudmuffins.

I took a deep and calming breath, than did my best to explain, in Chichewa, why you cannot touch the wings of butterflies. “If you grab the, uh, pretty mosquito, Olive, little will stay on your hands. You see this? So the pretty mosquito will not… drive very well. It will not find food. So it to die. Please do not kill pretty mosquitoes of mine. Understand?” Olive nodded, eyes blank with the empty and uninterested, but pleasant, incomprehension I’ve come to recognize. I sighed. “Here are your money, Olive. See you tomorrow, alright?”

The trip into town is, for me, a long ride. But I’m getting better with the hills, and the landscape is gorgeous. I’ve even learned to largely ignore the drive-by begging – kids who shout for me to give them money as I zip past. My first sign that this would be a day to remember came when, on the long downhill slope into the boma, I lost control of my bike. It was just a little skid, off the edge of the pavement in a wet patch, but it flung me off the bicycle and bounced me out into the middle of the road. My helmet saved me from a very interesting head abrasion, but the arm of my long-sleeve shirt, and both knees of my nylon camping cants, were shredded. Dripping blood, I hauled myself and the bike to the edge of the road, and limped into town.

Finding my injuries not serious enough to warrant pleading for bandages from the MMCT, I stopped at the post office first. There were two pieces of mail that week – a letter from home, and my absentee voting ballot. The date was Tuesday, the 16th of December. From the assorted date stamps, this particular piece of mail had taken around nine weeks to reach me – it was sent five weeks before the election. Thanks, Utah.

Well, at least they sent it. Fortunately, I’d made the long trip into Lilongwe for the express purpose of filling out a federal write-in ballot and sending it home in the embassy’s diplomatic pouch, so at least I voted. Still, it makes one wonder about how much districts really want to hear from Americans overseas.

With plenty of time to stroll, I locked up my bike at the MMCT, and headed out to Chitikale, hoping to find milk and paraffin. As I was walking, a young man trotted up.

“Hello Madam, how are you?” he said.

“Hi Sir, I’m fine. And you?” I answered; back in the States, I’d always disliked meaningless greetings. But here, they’re used constantly, by everyone, sometimes even in crowded city settings. Indeed, my prior dislike for greetings has over time begun to blossom into loathing – so often is the ritual used to preamble a request for something.

“Good, thanks. But Madam, I have a problem. I am an orphan.”

“That’s definitely a problem,” said I, “but I can’t…”

“…And school fees, they are very expensive, Madam. My mother has no money, Madam, and I cannot go to school without…” actually, this is less funny than it sounds. The government of Malawi considers children ‘orphans’ who have lost but one parent, as Madonna herself found when she adopted a boy whose father later wondered what had happened to his son. On one hand, since kids with one parent often simply roam from extended family member to extended family member, acquiring whatever food or education they can, calling them ‘orphans’ isn’t exactly a misnomer. On the other hand, having more ‘orphans’ allows a district to apply for more aid money. Also, this kid was far better dressed than I, even discounting my assorted rips and bloody patches.

“No. I can not give you anything,” I said, and increased my pace. Fortunately, the boy, finding himself utterly ignored, eventually left. This doesn’t work for all touts, of course, but it’s always worth a try. I was congratulating myself on the successful application of a coping mechanism when I finally got into the market.

The kids found me first – four little ones. They cavorted around me, and at first I could not decipher their high-pitched piping enough to tell why they shouted so gleefully. But I figured it out soon enough. “Unagwa! Unagwa! Tenaowna, unagwa!”

You fell, you fell. We saw you, you fell.

Also, not ‘mu’, the formal ‘you’ which is used when speaking to adults, but rather ‘u’, which is used when speaking to children or dogs. Why, the little jerks. “That’s ‘mu’ to you, eway! Enough! Go away!”

Of course, I should have ignored them, too. The eways tagged along for the rest of my abbreviated shopping trip – there was no milk at all, and the paraffin had run out a week ago, though a hunched and elderly man was selling some out of a rusted barrel for double last month’s price: the equivalent of around eight dollars per gallon.

I did find a few carrots. As I was picking them out, though, one of the local market Rastas began wandering towards me. None of us, of course, are certain if they are ‘Rastas’ in the appropriate use of the term, but they do have smoke-reddened eyes and grungy ropes of hair. Their species density is thickest in areas of commence – in large markets or minibus stops. And they are interested only in hard currency, not food, which is strange, since I’d imagine they’d perpetually have the munchies. Generally they just stand and watch, then plead for money as the change is being handed over. This one wasn’t prepared to wait. “Ndalama… ndalama…” (money, money) he pleaded, pawing crudely at my arm and backpack. Alcohol fumes rose off him in visible waves.

“Sorry. Another time,” I apologized hastily to the vegetable vendor, and fled. Some salespeople will shout at the Rastas to keep them at a distance – others just find beggars’ confrontations with foreigners amusing. Sadly, the later attitude typically applies when volunteers are attacked by drug-hazed marketplace madmen. (Actual assaults are not common, mind. And the Rastas are easy to outrun. But it happens.)

So, anyway. No carrots and no milk. Despondent, I headed back into the main part of town. On the way there, a man approached me, dismounting smoothly from his bicycle. “Hello, madam, how are you?” he offered, and I returned the greeting. The man paused. “Have you been up the mountain?” he asked politely.

I admitted that I hadn’t yet. Mulanje mountain has had a, ah, minor problem with men armed with an assault rifle robbing tourists, of late. Evidently, they even took one tourist’s shoes – along with his cash, passport, identification, camera, phone, and so on. I’m assured that rangers and police are swarming the mountain even now, but volunteers are still prohibited from heading up there on leisure.

“So… where are you going now? Where are you staying?” the man continued. Ah, how quickly the commonplace transforms into the bizarre! Volunteers get asked these things daily, and we develop noncommittal answers, but I still find the questions weird. “I have something to ask you, Madam….”

I interrupted, and let the gentleman know that I’m a volunteer, and have no money. I could not loan him anything. “I was not going to ask for money,” the man sniffed. I swallowed, ashamed at my assumption – I’d been certain that was where the conversation was headed. Then he continued: “I wanted to ask if you need porters and guides. Very good, cheaper than at other place.” That meant unlicensed, illegal, and possibly of criminal intent.

I told the guy I wasn’t interested, and increased my pace. He hurried along after – “When are you going, then, Madam? Can make you very good deal. Best deal. Where you staying?”

Short of fuse, I hurried ahead with clenched jaw and ducked into the grounds of the Mount Mulanje Motel. Since the restaurant ‘Vision Tasty’ changed hands, the motel has been the local volunteers’ favorites place to get together and chat. Their restaurant serves the best grilled chicken and chips in town – in volunteers’ price range, anyway. I found a seat out of the way, and slowly began to relax. It was just past lunch time, so the seating area was nearly empty, save for a handful of drinkers down near the bar. Incredibly, the food was delivered reasonably promptly, the water was cold, and the waiter even remembered the tea I’d ordered.

I’d been overreacting, I decided, happily dabbing lovely oil-dripping chippies (better known as homefries, to Americans) into chili sauce. The day really hadn’t been bad. Maybe my blood sugar had just been low. In fact… “Hey. You pretty.” One of the drinkers from across the restaurant swayed in front of my table.

“Go away,” I said, looking for one of the waiters.

“I saw you. You was speaking Chichewa. I like that, you be all white girl. Fat like that. I gotta room here.” While it was nice, I supposed, to hear someone other than myself butcher a language, I wasn’t particularly interested in hearing any more. I waved down a waiter – eye contact was necessary, since they seemed otherwise more inclined to stand and watch.

The waiter lightly laid a hand on the drunk’s elbow and eased him on his way towards the bathrooms, where the drunk had apparently been heading in the first place before his diversion. I took a moment to unwind. Really, these encounters are amusing, nothing worse. In fact… Hands descended on my shoulders. “Bet you kissing real pretty,” the drunk snarled in my ear, grinding himself up against my chair. Err, except he said something else, not ‘kissing’.

I’m not clear now, after the fact, how I moved so fast. In roughly a tenth of a second, I scrambled to my feet; knocked the chair to the ground, somehow causing the drunk to fold over clutching himself; seized my backpack; slipped what might have been the appropriate payment for my meal across the bar; and was gone. Black with fury, I darted across the road without looking, causing one bicyclist coasting down the steep hill to swerve madly and shout at me – Doppler Effect curses.

I paused a moment to mop my face and try to collect myself. Really, that wasn’t entirely terrible. I wasn’t hurt, so everything was okay. In fact… a plucking came at my tattered sleeve. “Please, madam. I have malaria. Just ten kwacha, madam, give me only a little…”

Oh, the hell with trying to compose myself. I reached out and seized the front of the boy’s shirt, hauled him close, possibly jerked him off the ground, yelled. “Do not to beg! Never beg, you little beggar! You should make ashamed! Did your mother teach you to beg? Is that it? Or were you born a beggar? Ashamed!” It might have come out more threateningly if my Chichewa had been better. But the skinny twelve-year-old apparently found me plenty terrifying. One of his shoes fell off. With a short scream, he dropped the small cooler he’d been carrying. Plastic bottles of the local chunky beer, ‘tobwa’, which he’d been apparently been selling, rolled away – though none broke, fortunately. The moment I let him go, he broke and ran, lone sandal flapping on the asphalt.

So that’s how I ended up assaulting two Malawians in roughly as many minutes. So much for all those carefully practiced coping mechanisms. I felt – still feel -- terrible, standing there amidst the boy’s chunky beer bottles. But also… strangely warmed, oddly lightened. Or perhaps just with a slightly sharper sense of the ridiculous.

Carefully, I rescued the chunky beer from the open roadway, uprighted the cooler, and put the bottles inside. Leaving the cooler safely on the verge – the boy had run and hidden behind some shrubbery nearby – I made my way thoughtfully back to the Mount Mulanje Conservation Trust.

There, Moffat had a hundred big, beautiful papaya seedlings loaded and ready to roll out. I left my bike chained up – I’d come back and retrieve it another day – and climbed into the truck with a sense of awe. The interior of the MMCT vehicle was a small haven of air-conditioning and background jazz, soft cushy seats and the scent of new car. The conversation with Moffat, once we got going, interesting and informed. The drive back to the village a short one – by that point, I was rather hoping it could be longer.

We rolled up at my counterpart’s house around two in the afternoon, and there was plenty of help unloading the heavy plastic tubes – every eway in a ten-house radius turned up to see what all the commotion was about. The tubes were bigger than the ones I typically use, a good two liters each, and had been recently watered, so they were heavy. By the end of the first hundred, my arms were sore. Then we drove back and picked up another hundred seedlings – and at the nursery, there were only two other people to help load. Another unloading adventure, and then back again for more seedlings. It was past five when we finished, and my arms felt like overcooked noodles, my back a twist of knotted ropes.

The seedlings were big and healthy… but also heavy! I’m endlessly grateful for the use of the MMCT’s truck – without that, I might have tried hauling them back a few at a time on my bike. Which wouldn’t have worked one bit.

I thanked Moffat profusely, limped to retrieve my backpack from the rear seat of his beautiful, beautiful truck, and waved as he drove away.

A light patter of rain was falling when I at last made my weary way back home, a refreshingly cool sprinkle. I began to plod towards the door, when something caught my eye – the gutter spout that fed into the fish pond was issuing no water. I headed back to investigate. One of the supports keeping the gutter up had evidently fallen, possibly because of the weight of the fruits of the nearby pomello tree. The fruits hung in great heavy clusters, and during high winds, the laden branches rub loudly against the roof. Though aware of the problem, I had, alas, done nothing to fix it – clinging to an aged ladder made of sticks and hacking at a tree bearing two-inch thorns with a machete had not struck me as a great idea at the time – and now water was pouring into my newly-planted flowerbed. Sighing, I found a stick, and starting poking at the gutter.

I’d more or less gotten the strip of metal positioned correctly, when the stick slipped. The gutter tilted, depositing the sum of its chilly contents directly onto me. Well, I’d needed a shower anyway, I supposed, digging my cell phone from the folds of sodden clothing. The phone had recently survived a short swim in the fish pond, when I’d fallen trying to get out. More water probably wouldn’t benefit the device overmuch.

There’s something else, I discovered as I walked back via way of my plant nursery, which also does not do well in water: books. Especially notebooks left out in the rain – specifically, the laboratory-style notebook in which I’d been recording the placement and results of my assorted plant and seeding experiments. From the look of the thing, it had been outside all night and day – right where I’d left it, of course.

Shaking out the sodden pages, I squelched my way to the front door, where one more surprise was waiting – or rather, not waiting. My little tree frog, the one with the sticky toes, the one that would eat grasshoppers practically out of my hand, was nowhere to be seen. I looked in the derelict bamboo bee hive, in the water tank, and under the thriving spider plants. No froggie. Come to think of it, I hadn’t heard his strange little bird-like chirruping the night before, either, and I hadn’t thought to look for him in the morning. Could he have fallen prey to something? Or had he simply departed for greener pastures? There was no way to be certain. Much saddened, I fumbled the door open and sought out some dry clothes.

I was but halfway through changing when Mala, my counterpart’s eldest daughter, called out. She’d brought my daypack – the day before, I’d filled it with mangoes plucked from my overladen trees and sent it to my counterparts’ family. Mrs. Makhuva had taken one look at the state of my daypack and had promptly ordered it seized and washed. Mala had even had the foresight to go through the pockets and remove the items before scrubbing it out in the river – my address book and the seeds I’d gathered on a stroll a week ago had all been placed separately in a little plastic baggie. I thanked Mala and then paused, glancing over the little bag of items from the pockets. Odd. I thought I’d left rubber bands in there. I’d brought them back from Blantye, since I’d been unable to find any in my local district city. I was using them as hair ties, among other things. Frowning, I glanced up… and noticed that Mala was draped in rubber bands. She had several around each wrist, and, inexplicably, several safety-pinned to her shirt.

Uh. “Mala? Where did you get those rubber bands?” I asked.

“Oh, these?” Mala answered, as if just noticing her new jewelry, “In Chitikale.” That’s the big market, near the boma.

“Where in Chitikale? Which store?” I pressed, trying for delicacy. I was not, in fact, perfectly certain that I had left the bands in my bag. On the other hand, since my last proper hairband vanished, the only remaining hair tie I possessed was the single rubber band I was wearing, last of a half dozen sent from home.

“Oh…” Mala paused. “I didn’t get them. Someone else gave me some. You don’t know her.”

On one hand – they were just rubber bands, for heaven’s sake. And there wasn’t even any proof they were mine. On the other hand… I sighed. “Alright, Mala,” I said. “Thanks very much for washing my bag.” I gave her a candy and waved goodbye. I put the daypack away and checked the places where I might have absent-mindedly stashed away a fistful of rubber bands – there were none to be found. A nagging ache began to settle in my sinuses.

An hour or so later, I was engrossed in attempting to resurrect dinner – I’d made the protein powder and flour batter too thin, resulting in pancakes that clung like smoking chocolate rubber to the bottom of my only frying pan – when my landlord shouted from my porch steps. “Hi ,hi, hi? Hello?” he called, voice distinctive as always, as if he were perpetually on the verge of sneezing.

At least, though, he did not try to enter – it had taken some time to properly establish the understanding that while the house was his, he was no longer free to wander in as he pleased. “Mpatso,” I smiled feebly, joining him on the porch and drawing the door firmly closed behind me to discourage peeping. Most people are pretty discrete about looking in my doors and windows nowadays – Mpatso tends to comment loudly and repeatedly on any item he happens to glimpse. “What can I do for you?” I’d paid this month’s rent already, as well as next month’s when Mpatso requested the advance. I’d been hoping to avoid the man for a little while. My nagging little headache began to blossom into something much worse.

“I just came,” smiled Mpatso, “to ask how you were. Did you have a good day?”

Oh. I told him I’d had a very busy day, but a good one, and ashamed of my suspicions, asked how his own day had gone.

“Good, good,” replied Mpatso. He paused. “As you requested to be told about our prayer services, I am just wanting you to know that we will be having another one. We will start at eight, and go till four. Same as last time.”

After that first long, long night of shrieking and ecstatic howling, my neighbors’ brand of Pentecostal revival, I’d begged my them to please let me know beforehand when they planned a service. They’d done so one time previously. That time, I just spent the night with Laura, my marvelously accommodating site mate. Plan B, if Laura was ever away or indisposed, was to catch a minibus to the boma. There, basic hotel rooms with baths, electricity, and air conditioning run around twelve bucks a night, a lavish but, I felt, well-deserved treat. “Alright,” I said. “I hope you have a good service. What day is it?”

“Oh, tomorrow,” said my landlord.

I opened my mouth, then closed it. Tomorrow? Laura was gone on vacation, and I had arranged meetings until the early evening – much too late to catch a ride into town. “Tomorrow?” I parroted, trying to suppress the urge to clutch at my throbbing head.

“Yes,” Mpatso confirmed pleasantly. “Tomorrow.”

“Did you… just find out now?” I managed to inquire.

Mpatso paused, looking oddly pained. “Yes,” he said. “I found out just now. If I knew earlier, I would come and tell you. And now I have told you, just as we agreed.”

I had to admit that this was so. I bid Mpatso goodnight, went inside, and tossed back a fistful of aspirin. Then I jotted a note on my to-do list, to go ask my counterpart if I could sleep on his front porch tomorrow night.

Dinner being otherwise something of a loss, I ate a fistful of little fried doughnuts dipped in roughly granulated sugar, chased down with skittles. At long last, I curled up with the book I’d been saving for myself – Ulysses, James Joyce. Gotta get me summa that thar culture, yanno. This copy promised to be heavily annotated, which I love. How delightful to learn why the author chose particular street names, from whence quoted fragments of poetry originated, how the period symbolism comes together… oh, baby. Nothing better. I read the preface, the acknowledgments, the introduction – an indulgence of a personal reading pathology (I can generally refrain from reading the overleaf nowadays,) – with growing enthusiasm. Monty, my night watchman, arrived around eight, and called out a greeting. I wished him a good night and good sleep, and turned back to my tome, waving away the slowly accumulating mosquitoes from time to time.

The book was a great thick beast, and clearly had been well researched. I actually skipped a few pages, to part I, The Telemachiad. And… there was no text. Footnotes, yes, and even sometimes footnotes to the footnotes, but they weren’t at the foot of anything. To paraphrase that famous utterance by the little old Wendy’s ladies: ‘Where’s the Ulysses?’

As it turns out, Ulysses Annotated by Don Grifford contains no discernible Ulysses. It is a three pound block of Ulysses-free text, meant to be read in conjunction with the actual Ulysses. As a condiment, of sorts. The problem with this, of course, is that I am presently residing in a small African village, a four-hour minibus expedition from the nearest book store of any size, and they carry mainly last year’s thrillers and coloring books. Nooo!

Entertained with contemplations of vengeance upon Professor Don Grifford and his sponsoring university (I’ll get you, my pretty! And your little purple cow, too!) I crawled under the net and blew out the last of the lamps. Something seemed… moist in the bed, just in one spot. I broke land-speed records in diving for my flashlight, and discovered the culprit – one half of a reddish, grub-like creature, still faintly twitching, had been tucked neatly between the sheets, doubtless by one of my thoughtful house lizards. Gee, guys. Thanks.

After ejecting the cutworm-thing and shaking out the sheets, I settled back down, too exhausted and sore to worry too much about the possibility of lingering bug juice. Blinking up into the darkness, I discovered that a firefly had negotiated passage through the gaps in the mosquito netting tacked over the window, and now was drifting happily over my bed, relentlessly flashing her Morse-code declarations of love, devotion, and promises not to consume her partner shortly after mating.

If only some days came with a similar warning.

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This blog is a personal journal, and does not necessarily represent the viewpoints or stances of either the Peace Corps or the United States Government. Keep blog out of reach of children, teenagers, the elderly, the left-handed, Republicans, those prone to indigestion or liver cirrhosis, and brunettes.

Recently, I received a delightful letter from some girls in a California girl scout troop. They all asked what my usual day is like. I don’t have a regular schedule… and my days are frequently weird, startling, inspiring, or saddening; anything but typical. Still, I promised to post the story of one of my days – this particular one was a Thursday a few weeks ago. Enjoy!

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Last Thursday, I woke up at one thirty in the morning to fluttering sounds. This isn’t unusual; there’s a bat which occasionally takes advantage of a poorly-constructed window screen (a piece of mosquito netting I cut off the rim of my bed net with a pocketknife and nailed haphazardly over the window frame) to enter and flit about. He was always gone by dawn, so I never minded all that much, and if a little brown bat wants to do me the favor of eating up all my mosquitoes, more power to him. This time, though, the flapping was accompanied by a downright impolite level and volume of sonic chirping.

Darn bat! I groggily rolled out of bed, fighting my truncated mosquito net out of the way, and fumbled for my flashlight in darkness that’s tangibly thick – having grown up in a city, it was hard for me to fully grasp what night in the village means. There are no streetlights, no porch or nightlights, nothing but the wheeling of stars and moon above. The bat in my bedroom fled the light, and I followed. Then I stepped into the hallway, and got a good view of my visitors. I felt like the Sesame Street Count. One, two, three, four! Four bats! Muahaha! Oh, for the love of little toasts – “You guys think you can have a convention in here? Is that it? Well, you can very well all just have it someplace else,” I demanded, trying to shoo them all out.

“Wha... Tenley?” It was Monty, my night watchman, who spends the night in my outdoor kitchen. I’d woken him up, too.

“Nothing! Don’t worry!” I called out, as I chased bats back and forth with careful herding motions and a broom. “I’m fine! Really!”

The bats appeared to take little notice of me, instead swooping dizzyingly around the rafters, darting in and out of my pantry and storage closet, and cavorting through my bedroom. It took a good half hour just to get three out. But at last the one remaining seemed to settle down under a beam at a corner of the ceiling; it no longer trilled its high-pitched sonic squeak. Also, he was small and fuzzy and shivering, with his cute little squashed face and tired, drooping wings. I just couldn’t countenance poking him with the broom any longer. “Fine, you can stay,” I told him, “but I want you out by morning. You hear?” The bat trembled what I took to be ascent, and I retreated to bed. Sleep beckoned. As if aware of my intentions, the adorable, sticky-toed tree frogs that live in my bamboo beehive decided it was time to burst into a lengthy serenade right outside my window. Darn frogs.

But so cute! Also, they change colors.

My bamboo-beehive frog doesn’t seem to mind being picked up and carted around, accepting every indignity with zen-like calm.

I must have slept, though, because when Monty called out that he was headed off to go get ready for market, around five AM, I startled awake. There wasn’t much chance of getting any more sleep; the kids in the neighborhood begin to scream as if on synchronized tracks. Blearily, I rolled out of bed – thrashing loose from the entangling mosquito netting one last time – and tossed back the curtains. Predawn fog hung as thick as the bug net, rising softly in billows. On the street outside, merchants with overloaded bicycles coasted silently out of the mist, heading for the trading center. I checked to make sure my overnight guest had left, found a pair of trousers and ventured out. So early, it’s still cool; I pulled a few monstrous weeds, ate some huckleberries off the bush, (at least, I think they’re huckleberries. I’m not really sure,) picked a little mint for tea later, and exchanged greetings with travelers on the road – women were already carrying water back to their homes -- while considering my new bat problem.

The mint patch. Thanks to Amber's Organics for the spearmint seeds!

Perhaps, if he had more comfortable lodgings, the bat would leave mine alone. But how did one build a bat house? I vaguely recalled perusing an article about the specifications, at one time or another. I ate breakfast, a gloriously ripe pineapple, consumed Malawian-style like a giant ice cream cone, and looked over my supplies.

Pineapples are available for a fairly extended season… but they’re really good now, in December. I never before realized that pineapples sweeten from the base up; that end of the fruit is much tastier than the other. Who knew?

I had an old board. And nails. A few scraps of fabric… and duct tape. If there’s anything of which I’m utterly certain, it’s that any object in the world can be fashioned from duct tape, including nuclear supercolliders, so surely a bat house is not beyond its prowess. After a little sawing and an equal volume of cursing, this is what I came up with:

It’s… the batcave! Dum dum de dum!

It’s just two boards, spaced apart by one-inch strips of wood around the top and sides and hung with string. The cave is open on the bottom. The chinks where light might seep in are covered with fabric tacked into place, and then with duct tape to keep it dry. The batcave is hung under the eaves, hopefully out of the worst of the weather, behind the pomello tree, for shade. Then, I nailed the screen on the house’s windows down better to discourage any more visitors.

Not a bad accomplishment, for before eight in the morning. I scurried inside to dress hastily for a meeting with an HIV/AIDS club just over in the next village. I was finishing with the buttons when a small voice piped up outside my door – “Odi!” It’s polite to announce one’s presence with that sound, pronounced the same as in “Garfield and Odie.” It was one of my counterpart’s kids, performing the standard eway task of message-carrier. The meeting had been canceled an hour beforehand. Pleased, I handed over a small candy in thanks, and went back to change my shirt again – usually, I don’t hear that meetings have been canceled until I’m actually there and have been waiting an couple hours. So it was a real treat to get the news early.

That gave me time to work on the pond a little. ‘Pond’ is actually rather optimistic; it’s really more like a ‘pit’. I’ve been noticing that many people in this area have tin roofs, but do nothing with the runoff from them. It’s a pity, since if this water were saved, people could have kitchen gardens all summer, or they could farm fish, which provide valuable protein to a diet based mainly on refined corn flour. But most fish ponds are constructed in low-lying areas, where they can flood regularly – I’m not sure if it’s possible to construct a fishpond affordably (keeping in mind that most families can ill-afford even a single bag of concrete) in the village proper. But it’s worth a little experimenting to find out.

Ingredients: One giant pit, dug by hand and bucket. My sitemate, who works at the nearby secondary school, helped me select a hardworking student who was unable to afford the cost of classes next semester. I paid his school fees, he dug my pit. It’s roughly 3x4x1.5 meters, for a total capacity of around 15,000 liters of water.

Also: One bag of concrete, mixed by hand with a sand and little pebbles hauled in by the sackful from the river, about a kilometer away, and then smeared in a thin layer over the walls. Since my measuring equipment consists of a pot and a tin plate, I’m not precisely certain about the ratio, but it should be around 1:3. I would recommend against mixing concrete with your bare hands, if you can avoid it – on the other hand, it’s a great way to, uh, exfoliate. And also, to lose fingernails. That’s plastic and bricks on the bottom, though I think I’ll have to cover ‘em with concrete, since the bottom leaks.

By the time I finished with just a single basin of concrete, I was covered with mud, from head to filthy bare hobbit feet. Cleanup, fortunately, is now much easier – I used to swat spiders away from my face while attempting to tip chilly river water over myself with a bucket, while small giggling children ran up to peer into the mud-floored batha. It was not the most effective of shower setups.

This is what the batha used to look like.

The fence now keeps the eways at some distance, thank heavens. With the arrival of the wet season, the municipal water is running again, so clean water can be drawn from the tap a few hundred meters away from the house. A thin smear of concrete on the walls and floor of the batha keep me from emerging dirtier than I enter. I nailed a reed mat to the ceiling to keep the spiders on their own side, and drove some nails into the wall to hold clothes. Best of all, I found a place to hang the solar shower – thank you, Dad!

This is what the batha looks like now. Those are newly-planted Muscatine grape vines and morning glories on the right, tomatoes and basil to the left.

If you haven’t seen one before, that black bag is the solar shower. It heats water to a most pleasant temperature with only a few hours of sunlight. I was cooking beans in the kitchen, hence the smoke.

Around eleven, I wrapped a chitenje over my trousers and went for a stroll. Any walk through the village is by necessity leisurely; there’s always someone to chat with. My neighbors are generally delightful – there’s one old grandmother (‘agogo’, in Chichewa,) who always insists that I dance a few moments with her. People nearby also know me, and accordingly do not beg for things (like, say, my glasses,) which is undeniably refreshing. Wandering down to the market took a good half hour, though had I biked, it would have been five minutes. Closer to the trading center, of course, there are plenty of kids who haven’t seen me often – one little unclothed eway, apparently just set loose to run, uh, free, stared at me in ‘naked’ shock. “Azungu!” (‘white person’) he cried, pointing one stubby little finger. Evidently he wanted to make sure everyone else on the road noticed this astounding apparition. I smiled at him. The eway burst into tears and ran away, shrieking.

Yep. I have that effect on people.

I picked up tomatoes in the market – they’re expensive now, a bit more than a dollar for ten big ones. (If that sounds cheap, keep in mind that a day’s wages for manual labor are around a dollar.) The seller grinned broadly and slipped me three extras – ‘maprizies.’ The market day teahouse is run by Monty, my night watchman, so I have to go enjoy a cup and a mendazi, a little fried doughnut. The patrons, in a joke that never gets old, gasped in alarm as I put merely a single spoonful of sugar in my tea. I can’t be a Malawian unless I drink tea like a Malawian – with at least three big spoons of sugar. I made as if to pour my tea directly into the sugar bowl, and Monty, laughing, jumped to guard it.

One of that day’s tea house patrons belonged to the VDC, the Village Development Committee. I offered him a mendazi and asked about the treadle pumps I’d heard they received last year. My Chichewa was good enough to understand a fair portion of his monologue; Monty helped with the rest. Treadle pumps allow farmers to irrigate during the dry season, and can double or triple harvests. However, they also require a good source of water, more than just a deep well or shallow stream. The pumps were of relatively little use in this area, as we lack a river. Well, at least I could tentatively scratch one item off my list of possible projects.

On the way back, I met Mary and her son, Raziel. She had asked me to name him – Raziel is the biblical angel of knowledge. I hope it proves a fortuitous nomer – though if I’d been thinking when I offered the name, I would have realized that Malawians have trouble pronouncing both R and L. The kid’s name comes out as something like ‘Blazier.’ Poor guy might need the extra luck.

Raziel’s tired of all this silly camera business.

Lunch was some scones – something like a dinner roll – bought from one of my neighbors, with peanut butter and honey. The former came from Jenny’s village development club. Jenny is a fellow volunteer who lives nearby; she administered the tail end of a grant to help her village build a neat little house to shelter a Peace Corps-supplied, hand-crank peanut sheller. If villagers can add value to raw farm products, for example by shelling, roasting, pounding, and bottling peanuts, the rural community can capture much more of the profits from their labor… and their peanut butter is cheaper and tastier than store-bought. This particular club is using their profits to start a village savings and loan. The honey came from my own bee farmers, and is delicious.

At one, I had a meeting with my mushroom-growing womens’ group. I needed to take a look at the mushroom spawn they’d sown a few months back. As my counterpart, Mr Makhuva, would be stuck late at another meeting, we arranged for me to go with his assistant and his son, Grant. One of Grants friends tagged along.

Also, four weeks ago, I taught the womens’ group to make wine – a good use of the local fruits, which are often otherwise left to rot alongside the road, as there is simply no market for them. The oyster mushrooms, alas, were not doing so well – in fact, the spawn had not grown at all. I was forced to conclude that bringing the spawn all the way back from Lilongwe, in the middle of the hottest season, had just been too much for it. I made plans to go look for more spawn in Thyolo next week.

The wine, however, was another story. Made with the white sapotes mentioned in posts previous, it was flavorful and rich, reminiscent of a fruity hard lemonade. I bought a liter for ‘testing’, and poured a cup for Mr Makhuva’s assistant to try. Foolishly, I left for a few moments to help the ladies sift the wine through a folded piece of cloth; when I got back, Grant was pouring out the last of the wine, and the three men were well on their way towards, uh, overindulgence. Whoops.

My counterpart and the local Group Village Headman arrived a few minutes later, and he too had to try a glass. And then another. After three, he began to wax grandiloquent – though helpfully so, holding forth on where the women could best market their new product, what they could sell it in, whether they should sell to those already intoxicated, and so on. And on. Then he bought two liters and departed, his walk somewhat serpentine. The ladies were clearly thrilled with the wine; they planned to make a new batch with mangos. Even selling at 60 cents per liter, they make a good profit. They were discussing a price hike when I at last left them, my tipsy counterpart in tow.

This is the womens’ group, including my counterpart, one woman’s husband, and a chief or three. I’m not normally so weird and squinty-looking. Really! It was just bright out.

Back at my house, Olive, one of the neighborhood children, was waiting politely on my porch. Olive frequently helps out around the house, washing dishes or bringing water, in return for candies or a snack. She’d brought her youngest sibling, Precious, and also a handful of fresh, unroasted macadamia nuts to sell for a few cents. I was happy to oblige; I’d been looking for more macadamia seeds for a while. I didn’t have any errands for her, but she seemed disinclined to leave. I gave her and Precious each a little packet of popcorn. Olive knitted a bit, and we talked about her recently-finished school exams and plans for the future, while watching Precious. The toddler had little interest in her own snack, but seemed happy indeed to hoover up any fallen grains of popcorn from the porch steps. I guess the dust added just that touch of ‘je ne sais quoi.’

Any stray popcorn on Olive’s lap or my sock was also fair game.

Shortly after Olive left for chores at her own house, Monty returned from his day at the market, and announced that he was going fishing. Did I want to go with? Sure thing! I gabbed up a water bottle, locked the door, and off we went. As it turns out, his grandfather had once built a pair of rather expansive fish ponds down near the semi-seasonal stream. With the recent rains and termite swarms, the fish were multiplying rapidly. Using worms dug from the surrounding bank and fishing poles made from thick elephant grass and string, we fished for an hour. Monty caught seven little tilapia, a tasty and hardy local variety called ‘chambo.’ We were about to pack up – it was getting dark – when I at last snagged a tiny one. Monty deftly unhooked the flapping fish, then paused. “Do you want to take this one home?” he asked.

Previously, my counterpart helped me build (really, he did almost everything) a small tank for water collection, about 700 liters. I had no idea if it was big enough to raise Tilapia in… but why not try? I hastily dumped out my water bottle, popped in the fish and some pond water, and proudly carried the frantic little guy home. I had just enough time before dark to take a few blurry photos, then let the fish loose. He swam right into the muddy water tank.

He’s a handsome devil, to be sure, with ruddy fins and tiger stripes. So far, he seems content to eat popcorn, nsima, termites, and lettuce leaves.

Tired but well-satisfied with the day, I grabbed a handful of greens from the garden – swiss chard and sweet potato leaves – washed them off, and used my little camp stove (thank you, dad!) to simmer them with some tomatoes, onions, and soya pieces for a quick dinner. I locked the door, lit a few lamps and read and wrote for an hour. Monty came back around eight, calling out a greeting as he arranged his bedroll in the kitchen. By eight thirty, I blew out the lamps and crawled under the netting once more -- just as the rain began to fall, a rushing murmur across the tin roof – hoping not to dream of bats.

So that’s how my days are.

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This blog is a personal journal, and does not necessarily represent the viewpoints or stances of either the Peace Corps or the United States Government. Keep blog out of reach of children, teenagers, the elderly, the left-handed, Republicans, those prone to indigestion or liver cirrhosis, and brunettes.

In the interests of getting, and staying, out of the house (see prior post), I also leave the village on a frequent basis – in fact, perhaps a quarter of my time is spent away from site on one errand or another. The Peace Corps has its own share of official and semi-official events – trainings, language intensive weeks, the Fourth of July (usually held sometime in June, for no reason I can fathom,) and Thanksgiving. Peace Corps volunteers host their own events – Health and Education sectors both run camps in which secondary schoolchildren from all over the country meet for intensive study, and some Environment sector volunteers are invited to teach classes. Between all those and the rather, ah, less official trips – Halloween and election parties, visits to other volunteers’ sites, game counts, and even resupply trips to stock up on toilet paper - time away from site can be significant.

But first, a word about traveling.

A valuable reminder from the volunteer files! Click to enlarge picture. (The sign reads "Dead Slow. 5 km of sharp bends ahead. Overspeeding is death in progress.")

Malawi has roughly as many paved roads as a major US city – but these are spread out over a country the size of Vermont, and may be in indifferent repair. Short trips, of course, are best accomplished by bicycle, and fortunately the Peace Corps provides volunteers with a very good mountain bike near the end of training. In our case, an extremely good bike. Evidently, the dealer in South Africa who sends the bikes didn’t have the model ordered, and asked our assistant director whether he’d take Gary Fisher brand bikes at the same price.

I, sadly, know nothing at all about mountain bikes, and I believed it had been announced that we were to receive Fisher Price bicycles. This struck me as an ill omen, but for a full week I avoided mentioning anything, for fear that I’d come across as a whiner. As it turns out, the bikes were full-size, sturdily constructed, and silver, not neon pink with handlebar streamers.

For all the durability of the bikes, Malawi’s roads can push them to the limit. Twice I’ve made the trip to my counterpart’s village, a mere twenty kilometers away if one could travel directly, but a three hour trek by bike. The footpath winds through cornfields, villages, markets, school grounds, over a river which must be forded by a small wooden boat poled by a child who surely should be in school, and down escarpments. It is crossed and joined by a plethora of other footpaths, so if you don’t have a great sense of direction or a great guide, your chances of arriving rest on your ability to ask and interpret directions in Chichewa.

Me: “Hello Sir! Do you know where I can be finding of the Sarkoma village?” The village name is not pronounced quite like the English word for cancerous cells – more like ‘sar-khama’.

Helpful villager: “Oh yes, Madam, you are very close. Just to the right of the Baobab tree, and then you go left, until you see the well. Not the old well, the new one with the concrete. The family who lives just there keeps goats, Madam, and if you go behind the goat shed you will see the three roads, just little roads, Madam, and you want the middle one, not the one on the right, because that leads down to the tarmac.

Me: “…what?”

The roads might be awful, but the views... pretty amazing.

Once there, of course, it’s a perfectly nice village, name aside, though there was a bat living down inside my counterpart’s latrine, which made runs to the bathroom equal parts fascinating and frightening. Especially because, anticipating that we’d stay but one day, I’d brought but half a roll of toilet paper. The bat could be heard flapping about below – could be seen in flickers when I shone a flashlight down – and seemed well-contented to snap up unseen insects and consume them with crunchy little clicking sounds. The bat was so happy, in fact, that it had no interest in biting any bottoms, for which I was grateful indeed. Also, the chiropteran clean-up services left the Makhuvas’ latrine cleaner than mine. (I wonder if there’s a marketing opportunity there – ‘bat-in-a-box’?) I fortunately did not run out of toilet paper, though it was a close call.

One roll in two days? Mike, one of the volunteers in my group, would scoff. During training, he purchased an entire bale of TP, forking out much of his trainee's minute salary for the week. He claimed it was worth it: "one roll, one wipe!"

I spent two nights at my counterpart’s house, helping him harvest the honey from several hives, and then process it. Harvesting, as ever, was an adventure; after the smoker ran out of fuel, I ended up with a dozen bees in each sock and not one but two improbable stings through suit, trousers, and underwear. We extracted honey from the comb by slathering dripping chunks of wax into sections of clean mosquito netting and squeezing. Meanwhile, the bees, attracted by so much fresh honey, fought to get into the cracks in the window frames and divebombed any doorway left open for even a second. Finding the buckets of unprocessed honey, they climbed right in, becoming stuck and angry, ready to sting any hand that attempted to scoop up more comb. We extracted for seven straight hours – that’s the amount of time needed for two people to produce thirty kilos of beautiful, pale amber, citrus-scented honey by hand and net. For the bulk sale of this liquid gold, Mr. Makhuva eventually received a grand total of 6,000 kwatcha – about forty bucks, or around a fifth of the bottled retail price.

But back to transport. While some volunteers routinely bike hundreds of kilometers, my longest trips to date have been less than fifty, round trip. For longer journeys, I hail a minibus.

The inside of a minibus.

Now, minibuses or bush taxis in other parts of Africa have a certain reputation. Here in Malawi, regulations are a little more strict, so you will never find more than about twenty-five people or so in a fifteen-seat van, including the sobbing infants, nor are there typically goats or passengers strapped to the roof. Most poultry is fairly well-confined: passangers' luggage may consist of a burlap sack with a quacking duck head sticking out, or plastic bags of frantically panting chickens are to be tossed under the seat. Other people merely tie their chickens' legs, though this is risky – chickens rarely actually get loose in the minibus, but when they do, driving becomes quite impossible.

I’ve never had a minibus break down for more than a few minutes -- twice, minibusses in which I've travelled simply ran out of gas on the road, necessitating a mad dash by the conductor to find and purchase a two-liter soda bottle of the stuff from village vendors. And once, we had to stop so that the driver could be assaulted -- he'd inadvertently cut off a military transport vehicle on the narrow road, and when the army van signaled him to stop, he did so, rapidly rolling his window up. The precaution proved wise, for a muscular man stormed out of the army van, stalked up, and shouted at the driver to open the window. When he wouldn't, the muscular man simply wrenched the unlocked door open, boxed the cringing driver's ears soundly, and then strode away. The driver of our minibus waited until the military vehicle had pulled out. Then, without a word, he started the bus once more, and off we drove.

Also, long stops while the conductor tries to attract customers are common. Conductors and touts are very insistent about filling their busses; they shout at people strolling, scream destinations and prices, and run up to passerbys to demand to know here they’re going. If you do provide the requested information, the tout will lead you for blocks through a crowded market to find you just the right bus, a service for which they receive a few kwatcha from the driver.

Austin and Sarah resignedly fold themselves into a minibus.

A matola, or pickup truck, is an alternate form of transport, particularly for sites located far from the main roads. They’re typically cheaper than minibuses, but rather scarier – people, pigs, sacks of grain, and more can be piled high in the back, and every bump in the road threatens to eject passengers.

Matola rides, ahoy!

While minibuses and matolas might break down relatively infrequently, it is normal for inconsequential parts of the bus such as the doors or the back hatch to fall open or, more rarely, off whilst in transit, scattering luggage over hundreds of meters. Holes in the floor, ceiling, or windows are about par for the course. Interestingly, some of these are functional – at most minibus stops, groups of salespeople wait with eggs, vegetables, samosas, fried dough balls, cell-phone units, drinks, and small toy cars made of wire or bamboo or paper Chibuku (chunky beer) packets, ready to sell you a snack or amusement where you sit. Because the windows may not open, plastic-covered holes in the van body are a convenient means of passing your money out and collecting your purchases.

Crowds of vendors await at bus stages and stops.

One nice element regarding minibusses is that prices are set by an association, so for the most part even an azungu can be relatively certain of getting a fair deal. Sadly, transport is expensive – if I take a ride to the Boma, rather than biking the twelve kilometers, it costs me 200 kwacha. Short trips are comparatively more expensive than long ones; a minibus ride to Blantyre, at around 100 kilometers, costs 600 kwacha. (Due to frequent stops, the trip also takes two to three hours, on average.) The full round trip journey, from my site to the capital and back again, costs about six days’ wages via the cheapest transportation possible. For that reason, most volunteers learn very quickly to hitchhike when possible.

So far as I’ve observed, hitching is remarkably safe and effective here in Malawi. The country has a culture of friendliness, and getting picked up is generally not too difficult, at least, not in the more populous south. I have to admit that hitching is generally much cheaper and far more interesting than public transport – you never know who you’ll meet or what kinds of contacts you’ll make. Malawi’s a small country, and chances are good that your hitch will know someone you’re working with on a development project, or run a related business. Even lorry drivers seem to enjoy the chance to chat with an azungu. Drivers will sometimes go to some lengths to help a PCV out – going significantly out of their way, or sharing food or advice on the road (or, somewhat disturbingly, beer.)

On the other hand, there are also stories of volunteers being solicited for sex or drugs. Despite the extra expense, I’m still a tad reluctant to hitch unaccompanied.

Small children, when trapped inside a minibus with an azungu, will often burst into tears.

For all that most hands-on development projects take place in the village, I find that much of the legwork of finding contacts and funding occurs in the boma (distric capital,) at the foot of Mount Mulanje. The Mount Mulanje Conservation Trust is right in town, as is Info Mulanje, a guide group that arranges hikes up the mountain.

With such a great tourist attraction so near by, there are plenty of opportunities for selling village-made products in town. For example, many hikers who come to climb the mountain purchase dried fruit and other lightweight foodstuffs; the only place to buy these currently is the local People’s grocery, which must import its dried fruit… from South Africa. Why, when Mulanje is replete with both sun and fruit?

Sadly, the boma’s bus stage is the haunt of several Rasta beggar men, who are particularly grungy and crimson-eyed, and also reach out to pat or touch while they beg, in order to better attract attention. Lest one develop any sympathy for them, however, it is worthwhile noting that none of them will actually accept food. I’ve tried giving the eldest Rasta beggar fruit twice; he protested ("No, Madam! Money!")and followed me around, waving his new avocado or tangerine and mumbling unintelligibly. When ignored, he eventually dropped the fruit and shuffled away. Though there’s a nice market at the bus depot, I try to avoid the area whenever feasible.

Over long and well-traveled routes, large busses are sometimes available. There’s the commuter line, which is marginally cheaper than a minibus – and correspondingly more jam-packed and prone to breakdown. There is also the AXA or Coachline bus – at almost twenty bucks to get from blantyre to Lilongwe, they’re expensive, but also clean, fast, and never crowded.

However one chooses to travel, Malawi’s transit and respite houses shine like beacons amongst the broken surf. There’s one each in Blantypre, Lilongwe, and Mzuzu, dividing the country into rough thirds. Not every Peace Corps country has volunteer houses, but in Malawi transportation is simply so slow, it’s impossible to make it from most sites to Lilongwe in a single day via any means. In some other countries, volunteers have to spend nights in the cheapest of locally-owned resthouses, which are frequently not particularly safe nor sanitary. In contrast, at the regional houses we have a kitchen (with a fridge, which typically works, except when someone puts a steak knife into the Freon coils when attempting to chip ice out,) study area, decent bunk beds, showers, and most vital of all: libraries. They’re also a great meeting place – over Halloween, the volunteer organization Gender And Development (GAD) ran a very successful wine-based fundraiser.

The house is somewhere around 2000 square feet, on a quarter acre, a ten minute walk from city center. Not a bad deal, for rent of roughly USD 350 per month. Sadly, the lease is close to expiring, and we may be moving soon.

Most recently, most of the southern volunteers met there for an election party. The volunteer charged with maintaining the house (as well as managing some larger group committees and suchlike) arranged for Doogle’s, a local backpacker's lodge and bar, to stay open all night. We dined on such rare delicacies as cheeseburgers and nachos and watched the election all night long – save for a brief interlude around 4 AM when someone wandered in and wanted to watch bass fishing - on a huge projection screen. A fine time was had by all.

Well, except maybe the people who passed out on the benches, and who therefore missed those last few exhilarating moments.

There are other networking opportunities in Blantyre, as well – recently, volunteers from the region visited the Plumpynut factory. The facility produces a peanutbutter-like product for distribution at malnourishment clinics. It’s made with peanuts, milk powder, oil, vitamins, and minerals, and packs more than eight hundred calories into a plastic cup similar to those in which, say, Yoplait non-fat artificially-sweetened fruit-on-the-bottom yogurt is sold. At the moment, the company is acquiring its peanut paste from one of the other big food-producing companies, but we hope to encourage them to accept shipments directly from village-level cooperatives, which should improve the price farmers obtain for their products.

The Plumpy Nut production facilities.

Still, there are plenty of volunteers who just come in just for a day, simply to pick up more books. The Blantyre house library is fairly good, with four large bookcases of fiction, sci-fi, fantasy, thrillers, histories, and more. I’ve read more superb books in the last six months than in the year previous; if you’d like to read about Africa in far better prose than I can manage, you might want to check out A Primate’s Memoir, The Village of Waiting, and The Poisonwood Bible. Also recommended: The Lovely Bones, The Hotel New Hampshire, God of Small Things, Four Ways to Forgiveness, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and Giovanni’s room. For a scathing condemnation of the international aid industry, there's Michael Marven's 'The Road to Hell.'

The very best way of all to travel... Death in Progress or no.

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Component equivalency notice: the subatomic particles comprising this blog are exactly the same in every measurable respect as those used in the blogs of other manufacturers, and no claim to the contrary may legitimately be expressed or implied. This blog is a personal journal, and does not necessarily represent the viewpoints or stances of either the Peace Corps or the United States Government.

Recently, I was asked by a grandparent whether I ever leave my house. While I’m pretty sure that wasn’t meant exactly as it came out, the point is a rather good one – I do try many of my projects, such as biointensive kitchen gardens, rainwater harvesting, and constructing cheaper bee hives, just in my own yard, but as Milton once observed, one ‘cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered Peace Corps Volunteer, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary.’ Or something like that, anyway.

Here's one project that needs some perfecting -- this is supposed to be a beehive.

The first project I started, virtually my first day, is my tree nursery. I brought along seeds for a couple hundred favorite types of trees – fruit, timber, fuelwood, and flowering species. A few of my favorites are Brazilian mahogany, teak, white sapote, Hawaiian koa, oranges, Surinam cherry, moringa, sapodilla, ylang-ylang, grapefruit, giant sequoia, improved selections of guava, papaya, granadilla, and twenty-three varieties of acacia.

In some cases, I went to rather lengthy efforts to get the seeds safely into the country – the white sapotes had to be ordered from Puerto Rico, for example. A white sapote is a very tasty south-American native fruit, somewhat like a very sweet and not-too-juicy pear, with the same granular texture. Then I had to pack the short-lived seeds in moist spaghum moss and treat them with fungicidal tea tree oil. After worrying about them for the two months of training, I finally got the seeds planted… only to discover that the fruits already grow all over Malawi.

Whoops.

The seeds I brought...

And the fruits, sold everywhere in my village for about three cents.

Having seen my host family’s tree nursery back in Dedza, though, I knew I wanted to experiment with superior water conservation. Mr. Seymani’s nursery, like most, was placed in a spot with a modicum of shade and protection from goats. The black plastic tubes were compacted very tightly with dirt and then lined up on typical Malawian hard-packed soil, like that surrounding most houses. Because any water put in the top of the tube promptly ran out the bottom, the tubes had to be watered twice daily. Fertilizer, we were told, would be necessary, since there’s so much flushing of the soil.

But what would happen if someone were to dig a shallow pit, about two or three inches deep, and then place the tubes in that? According to my Dedza host father, nobody did that with nurseries. Why not? Well. People just didn’t.

After giving the matter some thought – about runoff, about root competition, about dealing with the excess water during the rainy season, I started my nursery on a slight slope near my house, digging shallow pits so that small amounts of water would stay in the soil around the bases of the tubes, but torrential amounts should overspill and run downhill, hopefully keeping the tubes from waterlogging. To date, the plants seem to be adapting quite well; most of the trees have sprouted.

This is what the nursery looked like about three weeks after my arrival...

So too have many of the flowers and vegetables so generously sold and donated by garden enthusiasts around the country. Thank you very much! Oh, I've tried to keep everyone's addresses, but if you haven't received a letter from Malawi and would like one, do drop me a line! I hope to post more pictures of your plants in the future – especially those in other peoples’ gardens. Tubes of unusual or herloom tomato plants have been very well-received – most are far tastier than local varieites. Also, I’ve been passing out carrot, radish, and American-type pumpkin seeds. Eventually, I’d like to set up a village-level seed co-op for some of these rarer, but highly marketable vegetables. Provided, of course, that farmers have good success growing them; one elderly gentleman has called me to his low-lying field no less than thrice to examine his poor, shriveled pumpkin plants. Each time I’ve explained that these pumpkins need to be planted in hills, mounded up like so, and never watered from above… only to return a few months later to find both the conditions and plants unchanged. Sigh.

In any case, I presently have nearly two thousand plastic tubes of trees, tomatoes, vegetables, and flowers, which require watering but once per day, even during the hottest weather. My counterpart, Mr. Makhuva, isn’t certain the nursery layout will work, but we’re both monitoring the experiment. In the meantime, I’m assisting in five community nursery projects of the more traditional sort.

And this is what my nursery looks like now. Further proof that the disorder of the universe is constantly increasing!

Four of them had started before my arrival, though all had fallen into some degree of disrepair or abandonment. One very fortunate fact about my site is that the local government has taken a keen interest in reforestation, aided by the largest local NGO, the Mount Mulanje Conservation Trust (MMCT). My (admittedly imperfect) understanding of the situation is that farmers who raise and plant and maintain tree seedlings receive ten kwatcha for growing and planting each tree from the district – about seven cents. Forestry officials verify that the trees are actually planted, and not promptly eaten by goats.

With the closest of these groups, I assisted in the construction of an entirely new nursery. We were cutting down great poles of bamboo for the fence when I was treated to my first boomslang sighting. The adult males are truly beautiful snakes, their color a perfect, clear, new-tea green, each scale bordered by a fine black lacework. Boomslangs are shy, reluctant to bite even if handled, and have huge golden eyes that make them look like Disney cartoons. They’ve also got particularly fascinating venom, very slow-acting, causing death by internal and external hemorrhaging. I still feel terribly guilty – this specimen was attempting to cram himself under a log, which I overturned in order to get a better view of him. Once exposed, the shy little snake was noticed by nearby Malawians, who whacked him to death. Fearing (correctly or not) allegations of complicity with the snake or malicious witchcraft, I didn’t even protest. I’m still not sure what sort of penance might be appropriate; though I ended up leaving an offering at the Hindu shrine, just incase.

I don't have a picture of the particular snake, but this is what they typically look like. Only cuter.

The local Hindu temple, in Blantyre, is a lovely and restful place.

It also contains some Buddhist shrines; though I'm not sure how the Buddah feels about snakes in particular.

It didn’t take long for all the nurseries to run into a spot of unrelated trouble – the forestry department is supposed to issue black plastic tubes to such community efforts, free of charge. This year, they supplied my counterpart with two thousand of these pots… to be split between all four nurseries, each of which is set up to handle ten thousand trees or more. Yet, on a casual stroll through the village, discarded tubes could be seen littering drainage ditches. They came, I found, from the nearby teafields, where they were used only once and then discarded in large piles. Collecting and washing so many little plastic sleeves, though, would be a Herculean task.

It sounded like a job for the eways.

It took a few days, but word spread quickly enough that I would pay roughly 30 tambala (about 1/5th of a penny, or about half the cost of new) for every plastic pot kids could gather, a bit more if the tubes were washed and in good shape. As a collection system, eways are markedly thorough – vacuuming up every discarded plastic container in a five-mile radius – but also prone to glitches. Tiny toddler eways would interrupt whatever I was working on to present a single battered sugar sack or useless thin plastic ‘juembo’. Pre-teen male eways would claim to have collected eighty pots, when in truth they had only thirty, albeit puffed up and knotted so that they looked like more. Others occasionally took advantage of the chaos, when many kids attempted to redeem their pots all at once, to claim they’d not been paid for a fictitious number of plastic sleeves. Adult men, wreathed in beer fumes, staggered up to my gate to hawk huge bags of collected pots. Still, within two months, the eways collected somewhere between twelve and fifteen thousand tubes, and my counterpart got them distributed to the nurseries just in time for seed sowing.

Women hard at work in one of the local nurseries! Despite their other duties, they're generally much more active in the day-to-day activities of tree-planting projects than men.

One nursery, down at Chingozi hill, is the closest, and I correspondingly worked with them the most – rebuilding fences, laboriously hacking weeds from around their already-planted trees from years previous, and helping to fill tubes with dirt. I photographed them at their great environmental work, and got the snaps printed out in town to give to the group – a small gift but one which Malawians delight in, for most individuals have never even seen a picture of themselves.

Evidently, some of the women also became comfortable enough with me to start teasing – or perhaps I merely learned enough Chichewa to at last understand what the womens’ banter was regarding. I assume the jokes about which woman’s son I should marry were just that, jokes, but matters progressed into laughingly asking me for jobs, then insisting, and at last seriously requesting money to purchase the local chunky beer, tobwa, so that the women might not be hungry as they worked. Or money for sodas; that would also do nicely. Unable to construct anything like a witty rejoinder by that point, I excused myself and left.

Now, my counterpart, Mr. Makhuva, kindly pre-explains my role to the nursery groups before I start, emphasizing the voluntary and mainly unpaid aspects of my presence. Somewhat shamefully, I still haven’t found time to go back and continue helping the Chingozi nursery club in the few months since the incident. I will, of course, just… not quite yet.

More pics of people hard at work amongst the seedlings.

I should have taken him along on my trips to visit the local secondary school’s wildlife club. Secondary school curriculums permit students one period a day to use for club activities – often focused around bible studies, though clubs exist for creative writing and team sports. And wildlife, among others.

Many volunteers have reported superb interactions with their wildlife clubs, so visiting mine was atop my list of priorities. The director of the club was pleasant, and introduced the club members and their goals – to conserve water and soils, spread environmental awareness, help farmers adopt more earth-friendly permaculture techniques, and the like. “So what projects have you started?” I asked.

“Projects?”

“Yes. Like maybe tree planting to protect the soil? Or a permaculture plot?”

The director, one of the school’s professors, shrugged. Nope. Had the wildlife club done …anything? The director looked at me suspiciously, as if questioning my surprise. “We have applied to go to the mountain,” said the teacher.

As it turns out, he meant that he’d applied to the Mount Mulanje Conservation Trust (MMCT) for one of their community services – free hiking trips up the mountain for school groups. There is, however, a very lengthy waiting list, as the trips include lodging, guides, and food, and so are expensive for the MMCT. This particular secondary school had a group climb the mountain a year or two before my arrival, so they’re now back even further on the waiting list. There’s also another option, however – those groups who can get together some money can benefit from deeply discounted trips up the mountain, also sponsored by MMCT. In either case, the club would need money to pay for transportation to the mountain.

“But I think you can get it,” said the director in front of everyone, with an oddly pained expression. Wait, get what? “I think you can arrange the trip,” he explained. “You work with the Trust. So you can improve the list.”

The teacher’s English, like that of most Malawians of any level of education, was a great deal better than my Chichewa, so his meaning was pretty clear. I’d hadn’t ever actually been asked, right up front like that, to pull strings. In the US, it’d be pretty unimaginable.—even elected officials have to be wined and dined before getting into bed with special interests. I explained that I worked for the forestry office, not the MMCT, and also that I had no power or position. However, I would do everything I could to help them take a trip to the mountain… without doing anything illegal or unfair.

The kids seemed much delighted by the prospect of visiting the mountain – or indeed, anyplace outside the local district. The answer appeared simple enough – the wildlife club needed fundraisers; then they could go where they liked. We discussed some possibilities, and the club decided on a small tree nursery. They could sell seedlings and grafts, and disseminate information on how to keep erosion down and how to use trees in permaculture. We discussed fences, site placement, items needed, and the profit the group could expect to make. It sounded like a great plan; I brought over black plastic tubes, seeds, and nails for the fence, and we spent several hours setting up the nursery. A few weeks later, satisfied that everything was going well, I had to head off for extended training back in Dedza.

This is a picture of my mud stove, kindly built by Jean and Susan, who were volunteers in Malawi in the 70's. When the stove is filled with wood, the flames jet up through the burners sound like a jet engine; I love it!

When I returned, I found that the students had gone on holiday. Watering had ceased for at least two weeks – the shriveled little stems of seedlings stuck up like twigs from the sun-cracked soil. Hmm. I managed to get a meeting with the wildlife club director, and explained that I’d located some NGOs who would buy seedlings, which the growers would then be responsible for planting and maintaining. It’d be a great way for the wildlife club to get their mitts on a little money and to reforest some parts of the village… but NGOs are not in the habit of purchasing dried-up little twigs. I’d help the wildlife club write the grants, but they needed to replant the nursery. And this time: water it.

Excited, the director announced at the next club meeting that I would be writing grants to sell the seedlings. I called a quick time out – hadn’t we agreed that I’d *help* with the grant? And also that they needed to have some seedlings to sell? The director nodded shortly and changed the subject, turning to discuss an upcoming poetry competition with the kids. I eventually took this to mean my dismissal, and wandered off, a little bewildered. When I later arranged a meeting to begin filling out the grant application, and take a look at the new nursery, nobody showed up. I’m still not certain what’s going on there, precisely.

Overall, however, tree-planting in the Mulanje area has been highly successful, clearly far more so than in Dedza. On even a short stroll, one passes by a dozen mature woodlots. In most cases, my counterpart knows the owner of the plot and oftentimes provided the seedlings in the first place. Seedlings are easy to obtain even when not provided by the forestry department – it seems that every fifth house has a little nursery grove, most just a thousand or two.

But, as some of my experiences suggest, challenges remain, from the mundane to the bizarre. Goats can carve through a newly-planted field in an hour (we’ve been teaching how to build little bamboo surrounds for seedlings) and it’s difficult to wean farmers from non-native, water-consumptive species, such as blue gum, to native and slower-growing but more valuable varieties, such as red mahogany.

On walks to meetings with my counterpart, we pass by sun-baked, uncultivatable hillsides; when I mention how suitable the site is for trees, Mr. Makhuva can many times provide a full history of the owners and their plans and why they didn’t want seedlings: one man did not want a woodlot because he believed witches would frequent it.

Some days, it’s enough to make one reluctant to leave the house. ;)

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This blog is a personal journal, and does not necessarily represent the viewpoints or stances of either the Peace Corps or the United States Government. This blog should be read by trained personnel only.

The first Sunday in August, at around 2:30 AM, my house was entered.

In retrospect, of course, it was obvious that something like this should happen. It was the first warm night after a long month of chilly evenings. It was a weekend, during which the already high alcohol consumption in the village reaches astronomical levels. My counterpart was gone on a visit to his village, a tough three hour journey by bike. And I’d recently decided I felt safe enough to dismiss Montfort, my temporary night watchman.

This was a stupid mistake. Granted, having someone camping out in my kitchen every night is inconvenient, moreso when Montfort plays his radio till late. According to the Peace Corps, a night watchman is optional – recommended mainly for those living in cities. Also, due to a miscommunication, I ended up paying Monty roughly twice the going rate for labor in the village, particularly for a duty consisting entirely of sleeping. So I really hoped not to be saddled with a guard for my entire tenure.

I should have taken the matter more seriously. Even in the ultra-safe villages the Peace Corps chooses for training, with villagers and drivers and trainers constantly on the lookout for trainees’ wellbeing, many of the female staff elect to have guards of their own. While participating in a charcoal-burning training in a neighboring village (it turns out that you can make very good charcoal from agricultural waste, rather than from the rapidly-vanishing native trees,) we found an unusual object outside the house of Fanny, one of the language trainers. It seemed to have started life as a wooden hoe handle, basically a heavy wooden club with a bulbrous head and a slot for the hoe blade. But into the head had been driven dozens of long metal spikes. Someone wondered what it was. “It’s my guard’s mace,” said Fanny from behind us, unleashing a hair-raising cackle. “If someone tries to get in, this will split his head open like an overripe melon.”

Good to know.

An old pic of Environment '08 making charcoal from corn cobs in a neighboring village.

The process involves stuffing agricultural waste into a barrel and setting it alight. After the moisture content is low enough (the smoke thins out,) the barrel is tipped from its brick supports, covered, and sealed with a couple shovelfuls of dirt. The barrel cools after a few hours, yielding good quantities of high-quality charcoal. It's much more efficient to make charcoal this way, rather than digging a pit in the woods, felling trees and setting them alight, and then burying them. Such charcoal pits were common sights on all our hikes -- slow-smoldering patches of earth, like something in the aftermath of a firestorm.

Also, making charcoal this way can result in enormous gouts of flame, which is pretty awesome. ;)

According to the police, the burglars entered through the eight-inch gap (sufficient to admit a really skinny teenager) between the bars in the windows of my living room. They may have spent some time first, with flashlights and a bamboo pole pulled from one of the trellises in my garden, hooking any valuable items within sight through the windows – this is a common form of theft in the houses of PCVs – before summoning the courage to climb inside. I was in the habit of keeping the keys to my back door in the lock, on the inside, affording an easy exit to interlopers. I may not have even woken up during the theft, were it not for the fortuitous placement of a motion-sensitive light in my bedroom, located so that it viewed the hallway. The first time it went off, I thought perhaps a bat had gotten in, and I woke enough only to roll over. The second time, though, the light was accompanied by muted whispering.

So. Not a bat.

With a bleary curse, I rolled out of bed. Something scrambled in the hallway. I’d been putting in nails the night before, and had left the hammer beside the bed; I grabbed it and the first lamp to come to hand, and ran out, sans spectacles. The hallway door was wide open, propped by a brick from my flowerbeds. Outside, I caught a glimpse of someone running. My newly purchased blanket lay in a crumpled pile just outside the door, far from the living room bookcase that had previously housed it.

In the end, it turned out that they got several items from inside, such as my camera and a couple of flashlights, and a number of outdoor move-ables, like a 200-liter water drum and my shovel – even my garden hoe, the like of which are vastly common in the village and are anyway worth only about a dollar.

This is my house just before the burglary, after a couple months of hard work -- painting, cleaning, decorating, repairs to the roofs, and suchlike. The water drum (alas!) is near the porch. Several Malawians mentioned beforehand that perhaps I ought to move the drum to someplace less visible; I couldn't imagine someone actually stealing it. My bad.

Now, of course, I know what I should have done – should have screamed bloody murder, should have found the little personal alarm the Peace Corps thoughtfully issued, should have done something to call out the neighbors. As it was, I ran back in with the thieves’ discarded loot, locked the doors and windows, and tried to call the police on my PC-issued cellphone, which as any Malawian could have told me, was downright foolish. Even had I reached them, they couldn’t have come nearly as fast, nor been so effective, as a good ‘ol homegrown mob bent on vengeance.

The entire village, I think, would have engaged in a manhunt. The next morning, dozens of people crowded into my yard, examining the footprints left in my flowerbeds and the mud where the water barrel had been tipped out. The old bee farmer, Macongo, borrowed a knife to stab at one clear print, digging up a bit of dirt and enfolding it in a handkerchief. Indeed, the local witch doctor arrived almost before the police.

At first, I wasn’t certain who this particular gentleman could be. My yard was full of people offering condolences, and this man was perhaps in his twenties, certainly he was not a stooped and decorated, staff-wielding, wisdom-exuding elder. He did carry a shoulder-bag of some rufus-tan animal fur, but that didn’t strike me as particularly unusual, given what passes for high fashion in the village.

A few days after the theft, we (I, Monty, and Mr. Makhuva) planned and built a small water tank with a 700-liter capacity. Made of burned bricks and concrete, it is rather unlikely to be stolen. Also, it probably contains very few cyanide compounds, which judging by the half-obscured printing on the side, was what my stolen water barrel was used to transport. We scrubbed it out really well before putting drinking water in it, of course, but family members were reportedly unthrilled by my possession of a used toxic waste barrel. (Don't know what all the fuss is about, myself; one of the staple foods in the area is Cassava, which also cyanogenic glycosides, but I never hear anyone worry about *that.*)

My counterpart, who had dropped everything to ride back from his home, ushered the man inside with respect and gestured me to follow. The man asked a few questions similar to those of the police – what was missing, where were the footprints, and the like. He mentioned casually that there were four thieves, and that they were, in fact, looking for money when they entered, and had only taken objects as a last resort. I nodded politely, uncertain what to make of this gentleman’s wealth of apparent speculation. Then he asked if I would like the thieves’ bellies to swell up until they died in terrific misery.

I had to have that one translated. Perhaps sensing my confusion, my counterpart, Mr. Makhuva, chatted with the witchdoctor a moment. “Or perhaps the hands that grabbed your things should come very hot, and twist like this,” offered Mr. Makhuva, “so that they can not take anything from other people.”

Uhm. Well. “Maybe the steal people will… walk very slow. So the police will grab them,” I offered in only mildly inane Chichewa. The witch doctor frowned at me. Evidently this was a rather more unusual revenge request. After a prolonged discussion that I did not follow, the magic practitioner stood and began removing things from his bag.

A photo of my house a month or two ago, after the completion of the tank. It ended up costing a little less than a new water barrel, and was significantly more fun to put together. Also, little frogs have started putting tadpoles inside it, which are adorable, even if I have to be careful they don't get stuck in my watering can.

“He will come back tonight for the rest of the magic. But first he is going to… make a circle around your house,” narrated my counterpart. “So that bad people will become afraid, and not enter anymore.”

I admitted that this would be a very fine thing indeed, then paused. “What if my lizards make of the afraid? Will they coming in still yet?” I asked seriously.

This prompted more discussion. “No, it won’t stop lizards,” translated my counterpart.

But what about the little tree frogs whose company I so enjoy? “No,” frowned Mr Makhuva. “Only people. Bad people only.”

It was a serious question. I have the cutest little frogs ever that have moved into my (mainly chicken-free) yard. This one is a tree frog, with big, bulbrous, sticky-clingy fingers. It chirrups like a bird occasionally at night and whenever the barometric pressure drops. This particular individual lives on my porch in my experimental beehive. He lets me pick him up, and also eats grasshoppers whenever I put one near him. Who knew I'd be getting a pet in Malawi so soon?

Satisfied that putting magical wards around my house would not have any unintended consequences, I invited the witch doctor to go ahead. Which he did – mashing up some herbs in a bowl and, using a whisk made from the bristly tail of some animal, flicked the liquid across the places from whence items had been taken, as well as the doors and windows. The ceremony that morning took only a few minutes. Later that evening, however, after a handful more visits from the police and dozens more from well-wishers, my counterpart and the witch doctor returned, this time bearing a chicken.

I’d been given to understand that witch doctors were often only paid after they produced results – after the thieves had been caught or items returned. Evidently, however, this was not to be the case. My revenge request had been, I was assured, of some difficulty. Also, expensive. How expensive? “Seven hundred kwatcha,” admitted Mr Makhuva, reluctantly, “plus a chicken.”

Seven hundred kwatcha is about five bucks, a lot of money here. A chicken is half that much. My counterpart, Mr Makhuva, was graciously donating the bird from his own chickenhouse, a gift of deep substance and meaning in the village (a chicken is an appropriate gift for weddings, namings, welcomings, and more.) Who knew that calling down a fearsome curse would prove so expensive? On the other hand, when would I get a chance to do something like this again?

Unfortunately, I was asked to leave for the actual rituals and therefore cannot report on them specifically, though they apparently involved the witch doctor stripping down to his skivvies and burying the chicken, or parts thereof, in my front yard. Also very unfortunately, the Peace Corps in its capacity as a representative of the US government will not reimburse receipts for magical energy wards. Darn.

I haven't noticed any particular effects from the magic spells cast on my house; however I did find a double banana a few days later. Yep, two bananas both in the same skin. Clearly a case of correlation as causation.

They did, however, pay for the installation of new burglar bars in the windows. Between those, my permanent re-hiring of Monty (the night watchman) at a renegotiated rate, and the widespread support and assistance of my village, I feel pretty darn safe.

Oh yeah – and if you happen to be heading out shortly to spend a couple years in a mud-brick hut? I really recommend bringing some of those motion-sensitive lights. They’re pretty neat, for more than simply illuminating a midnight stagger to the latrine.

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Warning: this blog is not an effective contraceptive, and chafing may result from prolonged use. This blog is a personal journal, and does not necessarily represent the viewpoints or stances of either the Peace Corps or the United States Government.

In late September, a streak of suffocating weather was at last broken by rain, a heavy shower that dropped more than an inch over the course of a night and a day. In most of the rest of Malawi, this would be unimaginable – many places don’t receive their rain till mid or late October. Though the next week in Mulanje was clear and hot, the clouds each morning keep threatening – the monsoons are just around the corner.

The insects, it turned out, knew this long before I did. I’d been noticing a possible increase in bug populations – tiny praying mantises by the dozen in the tree nursery, more spiders and crickets, -- for some time, but my data was all subjective. Fortunately, however, I was soon to gather more solid statistics, in the form of no less than three encounters.

A green bush locust, latin name Phymateus viridipes, courtesy of Bryce (a somewhat more northernly volunteer.) Not all insects here are scary....

The first was on that September day of comfortably cool drizzle. I elected to bike into the boma, or local district city. My boma, Mulanje, is only about twelve kilometers away. That’s the closest location to find milk that resembles typical grocery-store fare in the States, though here it is sold frozen, in half liter plastic sacks. And such oddities as skim, half-fat, cream, and one percent do not exist. As I intended only to pick up paraffin (kerosene) and milk, I dropped my large bag at the Mount Mulanje Conservation Trust, and took the daypack up to the stores at Chiticale.

Halfway up the last big hill, I experienced a most curious prickling, near-painful waves of pins-and-needles from my flank all the way around my waist, belly, back, sides, even up to my shoulders. I thought for a moment it was a side effect of the biking, the exercise – but it didn’t fade. Indeed, over the hour or so I waited in the paraffin line at the filling station, it got progressively worse. Though the prickling didn’t exactly hurt, rubbing the spot most certainly did. After collecting my groceries I had little enough time to dwell upon the situation, for as I started heading back the clouds seized upon the opportunity to split open, transforming a refreshing drizzle into a torrential downpour.

...But many, like these pacific-blackberry-sized ants, equipped with pincers like something from a swiss army knife, are.

Now, one factor to keep in mind is that bikers in Malawi get honked at – a lot. While unlike pedestrians they do not seem to be viewed largely as speed bumps (presumably hitting a bike would damage one’s vehicle, after all) they also are given no particular right-of-way, save for a warning blast of the horn as a vehicle approaches from behind. Many drivers also honk vociferously and sometimes shout at Azsungus (white people.) Riding back in the rain is therefore something of an obstacle course – skidding through the deepening puddles, swabbing ineffectually at fogged eyeglasses, startled by mad honking and then inundated by the splash from passing cars, and all the while steadily leaking paraffin from a couple of 2-liter coke bottles crammed in the pack, thus rendering me the most flammable object in the entire sodden district.

By the time I got home, though, the prickling had progressed to a steady burn. Twisting around, I could just make out a series of pearl-like blisters on my skin, and by the next morning, a thin layer had begun to peel off an area the size of my hard – and the prickling had not stopped. Finally worried, I questioned my counterpart.

On the lighter side: marshmallow mice are on sale in the local Shoprite. Yep, they're marshmallows. Shaped like mice. The tails are licorice flavored. Mice, the real kind, are whacked with sticks, boiled, and dried. They're sold on skewers in marketplaces.

“Oh yes!” Mr Makhuva exclaimed, when I described the prickling. “That is a… what is it, with a tail like this?”

“Scorpion?” I supplied, worried. Scorpions out west in the states can kill people. It must have crawled onto my pack in my moment of inattention, and then…. “Is this bad?”

“No, no,” Mr Makhuva laughed, “skolopian will go away in three, four days. To make it faster, you must take a very small stone, like this, and bite it between your front teeth.”

“Scorpion,” I said, and then, “what?”

“It is ‘mankwala,’ medicine, for skolopian,” Makhuva explained, offering a pinch of grit from my flower bed.

“Scorpion,” I said, but tried the home remedy. Shockingly enough, it didn’t work – for the next week, hot weather or any exertion on my part brought more waves of near-painful prickling, like an unscratchable itch. I now know I’d go to great lengths to avoid another scorpion sting. But of the two, I’d take a scorpion over another tsetse fly bite.

Another picture from the shared files -- this is what happens to some of the many free condoms handed out in country. Tuck a few inside one another, blow them up, and wrap them in shopping bags, and you have a lovely homemade soccer ball.

Scarcely a week after the scorpion, I was watering my garden in the early morning. I wore a red shirt and khaki trousers, which is appropriate enough attire for inside my compound. Small children on their way to school stopped to peer through the gaps in my fence and shout hello, as usual – and as usual, I was enjoying the cool morning and birdsong… when I was shot just above the right kneecap.

My leg buckled and down I went, butt over watering can, spasming, clutching at my knee, expecting to find a large bloody wound. There was nothing but an odd little lump under my trousers. “Arrrgh!” I yelled, batting at it.

“What’s she doing?” asked some of the eways of their fellows, who had claimed the best peeping holes at my fence. “Madam! What are you doing!”

“I to die!” I managed to shout in Chichewa. “Getting please the help!” The small lump was not a chunk of my own seared flesh, as I had at first thought. I tried to rip it out, forgetting in my desperation that I was wearing sturdy nylon trousers.

“…I think she is performing a drama!” declared one eway. “Yay! Good drama, Madam!” small children worked their arms through the gaps in the fence to wave. “Madam, how are you!” piped others, just coming upon the scene. “Did you wake up well this morning?”

“Arrrgh!” Lacking the dexterity to work the zipper that ran up my trousers from ankle to knee, I gripped both sides and ripped it open. Out buzzed… a small back dot, evidently none the worse for my mashing.

Tsetse fly.

The wound was tiny, only a pin-head-sized speck of blood, but even still it hurt – bone-searingly hurt – for about five minutes before the pain began to fade. By fifteen minutes, I was more or less capable of walking upright. I still don’t know how the little sucker got up my trouser leg, and it seems impossible that so tiny a bite could hurt quite so much – I’m told there are several sizes of tstse fly, with some larger and nastier than others, but chances are I’m just a bit of a weenie. Other volunteers have been bit, and reported only mild pain. Even still, I may be tucking my pants inside my socks for the foreseeable future.

That's ok; Malawi has its own sense of appropriate style, evident in some of the signs that bespeckle the highways and vehicles.

As a welcome break from the bodily assaults, my most recent big bug encounter involved a praying mantis. I’ve been seeing them in ever-increasing numbers, everything from the hundreds of dime-sized little green terrors living the easy life amongst my nursery, to a glorious blue-spotted, shield-backed mantis five inches long that chittered angrily when disturbed. But just recently, I’ve begun to find them taking shelter indoors at night. During the day, mantises are not difficult to catch and take to a suitable tree, but at night they behave like mad things, flitting about, clinging to lit lanterns, targeting touchdowns into any attempt at a late-night snack. I tried for half an hour to catch one medium-sized desperado before at last retreating for the night, resolved to try scooping him outside in the morning.

At dawnbreak, I found him face-down in a pool of solidified wax in my candle bowl. Much saddened, I had to chip the poor little guy out. Had he been hunting the small moths which flocked to the light, or had he, in the depths of some private insectoid despair, taken the easy way out?

As it turned out, the mantis was simply prescient, for the next night, my landlords across the street staged a pentecostal revival until 4 am.

Now, I’d known for some time that my landlord held services at his home – several days a week, the very-audible preaching continues until nine or ten at night. The services are loud, and closing the shutters against the noise helps not at all. I don’t mind much; staying up an extra hour or two is no real inconvenience. This night, however, the congregation was far larger. And rather than merely calling repeatedly for Satan to “get out! Get out now!” and then breaking into a bunch of songs, this particular revival featured (as nearly as I could tell) hours of screaming in tongues, multiple demonic possessions and expulsions, and the *same* hymn repeated endlessly. Even chewing gum, masticated and stuck in my ears, failed to fully mute the furor. My counterpart, half a kilometer away, heard the shrieks and howls. While I wish to stress that I have only respect for the pentecostal faith, I do think that a warning beforehand would have been only courteous.

Because frankly, if I’d known beforehand what the night would entail, I too would have sought out an enormous puddle of wax into which to fling myself.

More odd signs -- these ones on carpenters specializing in coffins. Such workshops are frighteningly common here in Malawi, where the death rate continues to climb.

At least, I presume my suicidal mantis had an inkling of the future; it’s possible he was simply deranged by the pythroid powder on the floor. Almost every grocery store of any size here sells ‘superdust’, which is an insecticide used to treat stored grain. Pyrethroids are an interesting family of compounds – derived from a genus of daisies, Pyrethrum (and its lab-produced derivatives) kills insects, but even moderately high concentrations do not affect mammals or reptiles. That’s important, since I’m more than a little fond of my house lizards – half a dozen each of big-eyed chirping geckos and blue-lined skinks. I spread a little powder on the floor and then sweep it into every corner, where it discourages the bugs for a month or so. It’s evident how much it helps; if I or my counterpart’s daughter mop, thus removing the invisible layer of powder, the termites build vertical chimneys several inches high up through the cracks in the floor by the next morning.

A mix of superdust and lime serves quite well to seal up the termite tracks wherever they break through the wall. Termites use a combination of soil, spit, and their own wastes to construct hollow tubes about the diameter of a straw across surfaces, leading from one food source to another. There are several different species of various size, and as with ants, they have several castes. The soldiers have a mean set of jaws that can deliver a bad pinch; both they and workers have pale, bulbous bodies. On occasion after rains, swarms of the winged reproductive caste emerge from the earth and fill the skies. The termites have four long, thin wings and are so slow-moving they can be snatched from the air – children in particular seem to enjoy grabbing handfuls and sucking the bodies off the wings; the former are apparently quite tasty. A day after the rains, the ground was littered with thousands of shed or severed iridescent wing membranes, like a pixie mass execution.

So I wouldn’t mind the termites much if not for the trails they build all over my walls. And floors. And the rafters, which they eat, and my furniture, which they also eat. And that’s just unacceptable – I didn’t have enough money to purchase much proper furniture (and much of it was just in arriving,) so I built some myself, using the butt-end of my PC-issued bike-lock as a hammer. It took several long, sweaty afternoons. The shelves list to the side, they wobble and tilt and sometimes cause splinters and drip pitch on the floor. I’m rather pleased with myself. Using only a machete, two hand-hewn boards, seven rusty village nails, and a bicycle accessory, even Martha Stewart surely could not have done better.

I’ve embarked on other projects which would doubtless do Martha proud. After five PM or so, there isn’t enough light inside the house to read by. After nightfall, candles work alright, provided you’re careful not to singe your book, but there are a limited number of unoccupied spaces (or, rather, flat spaces, given the state of the shelving) on which to put them. Fortunately, every village market seems to sell small tin lamps, made from pieces of food cans. They’re quite ingenious, and when filled with about four ounces of paraffin, burn for a good thirty hours. But they also needed to be placed on a flat surface. I could tie a string to the handle, then loop that over a nail in the wall, but then the lamp tilted forward, spilling the kerosene. After a bit of thought… I duct-taped sticks to the lamps – wall sconces, Peace Corps-style.

My lovely new lighting creations. There are around a dozen on my walls now.

A pair of returned Peace Corps volunteers, here in Malawi with their kids on a working vacation, aided me in completion of another project: a mud stove (in actual factuality, I managed to sucker Jean and his wife into doing *all* the work.) These devices burn around half the fuel of a traditional three-stone fire, and can be large enough to permit baking and more efficient removal of smoke from the kitchen – at present, chronic cough is common in village women. Years of inhaling the miasma from cooking fires started with plastic trash sees to that.

My new stove is a marvel of engineering. I do tend to overload it with wood, however, thereby causing flames to come shooting out the burner openings with a roar like a jet engine warming up. I really like it.

An example of the 3-stone fireplaces common throughout Malawian villages. In this case, a pot is layered with coals, in the manner of a dutch oven, for baking.

Ethan, a member of my group from up north, demonstrates how to construct a stove rom bricks and mud. Mine resembles this one....

...but is rather, uh, larger.

For my next wondrous home-improvement project, I will be pouring myself a concrete funnel (volcano shape) for my latrine (‘chimbuzi’ in Chichewa), thereby producing a truly phenomenal device known -- previously only to volunteers -- as a ‘chimcano.’

Wish me luck.

Because, right now? This is a typical chim, and what I generally use. I have new sympathy for little boys who have a difficult time keeping everything in the proper boundaries, lemme tell ya.

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Handle with extreme care: This blog is a personal journal, and does not necessarily represent the viewpoints or stances of either the Peace Corps or the United States Government. This blog is, however, comprised of minute electrically charged particles moving at velocities in excess of five hundred million miles an hour.

Settling into site is both an exercise in patience and one long string of learning opportunities; little wonder some volunteers believe these weeks are the most trying. First, all the neighbors are intensely curious, and wanted to visit for the purposes of both well-wishing and gawking. Small knots of men and women stopped every few minutes under the shade of my trees, ostensibly to chat, mainly to stare. It was great meeting all the neighbors, of course, but while I was busy with one little group the rest made themselves comfortable all over my tiny patch-of-bermuda-grass lawn.

This chameleon says hi. It seems to be enjoying the bare-packed soil just fine. Picture courtesy of the shared volunteer files.

Which really brings one to wonder – what in the world is that big, bare, swept-clean area for? You find them in front of, and often around, every house. I’m told Malawians find bare, hard-packed soil attractive, but people don’t seem to want to stand on it. Aside from the time or two I’ve seen families threshing beans outside, people don’t really use their dirt patches for much of anything. The staff/owners at the two permaculture farms we’ve been to claim that sweeping (and compacting the soil over a large area) causes runoff, erosion, and lowered water tables, which judging by the water-cut gullies, appears to quite possibly be the case.

Sarah utilizes the bare ground in front of her homestay house for study purposes.

Later, when I tried to lay down the law regarding my own front yard, neighbors and friends would come over for the express purpose of telling me that I needed to sweep, often offering to perform the service themselves. My explanations of the situation, in halting and likely comedic Chichewa, were negated by the simple observation that ‘people on the road might see.’ So now, in the spirit of compromise, most of my yard is swept, too – at least, the bit that can be glimpsed – by my nightguard. The sweepings make good compost, anyway.

Kids are the most curious of all. At first, they quite happily entered my yard without the customary ‘odi’ to announce a person’s presence, and spent time poking through my rubbish pit with long sticks or peering in windows. Any attempt to do anything – light a fire, carry water, take a bucket bath – was met with roars of excited, fascinated laughter. “The Azungu! (White person.) Look, she cooks! She is starting a fire!” Those first few days, if the kids could not directly view me, typically by virtue of my taking refuge in one of the house’s back rooms, they shouted to the painter for updates – “a kuchita chiyani?” (‘She is doing what?’). Chasing the kids away is not hard, a few stern words will do, but it typically takes them about ten minutes to return.

At first, I’d planned not to get a fence, and certainly not one taller than my chest. It seemed so… unfriendly, unwelcoming. But between the kids, my landlord's mother-in-law, the pig tracks and rooting holes in the flower beds every morning, and the goat that, while regarding me irately, ate with relish the black plastic nursery tubes in which I’d planted my long-traveling tree seeds, I soon changed my mind.

My landlords -- Patso, Fascilline, and her mother-in-law, who lives beside them. The mother-in-law, Mai Malifiti, enjoys her grain alcohol a little much, and frequently wanders by my residence to request firewood, soap, flour, relish, and bread, among other things. A fence was definitely in order.

My landlord frequently came by, those first few weeks, to impress upon me the need for he, himself, to accomplish any repairs or additions to the house. From discussions with him, I came to believe that if I bought the supplies, he’d do the labor for free. This emerged not to be the case. For the fence, for example, he used supply money to hire a number of relatives, who assisted him to build a structure resembling, though not so meticulously constructed as, the fence around the local beer den. The tools they borrowed from me to complete this work vanished daily into Patso’s (my landlord’s) house, and had to be requested back. Patso’s brother is a carpenter, and with naivety foolish in retrospect, I contracted for some of the furniture I needed, such as a desk, benches, and bookshelves… and agreed to pay up front. (Nine weeks later, the desk would finally arrive, sans its drawers and significantly smaller than detailed, while a similar desk from a local carpenter with whom I’d made friends cost less, looks nicer, and took four days.)

My lovely new fence.

Fences don't typically last through the rainy season, anyway, so it'll be replaced soon enough.

Actually, all wood products here in Mulanje are lovely and frankly very inexpensive; even my ‘expensive’ desk was only about $25. This is one of the few areas left in the south where significant forest cover remains in places. Mbawa, red mahogany, is a native species with beautiful, deeply textured lumber. A few ancient trees, eight or ten feet in diameter, still stand on land owned by the tea plantations. Some fantastically forward-looking farmers have even begun to plant their own mbawa trees, though most individuals who have nurseries simply raise seedlings for purchase by the many local aid organizations.

Still, even farmers who aren’t prepared to wait thirty years to harvest hardwood have at least small woodlots, often of faster-growing imported species, such as eucalyptus. My counterpart in the department of forestry, Mr. Makhuva, encourages beekeeping as a means to expand these small family-sized forested corners. Local beehives require shade, and also need to be hung from trees for protection from honey badgers. The bees themselves need a large variety of blooming plants – the monocrops of farmland don’t usually provide flowers over a season long enough for good honey production.

My counterpart, Mr. Makhuva.

There are at present several hundred beekeeping clubs in the Mulanje area, producing two tons of honey annually for bulk sales, and a great deal more for local consumption. Unfortunately, filtered honey sold to the big transport companies fetches only 200 kwatcha per kilogram, or about 60 cents per pound. Bottled and labeled, local honey sells in grocery stores for 800 to 2000 kwatcha per kilogram – and Mulanje’s honey is better than most. Here, the bees work the teafields, citrus and mango trees, and pineapple plantations; in dryer parts of Malawi the bees have access to tobacco flowers, which sometimes lend an odd burnt taste to honey.

Honey production *can* have high start-up costs, too much so for the average villager. Imported canvas bee suits cost close to 5000 kwatcha; lovely timber beehives are around 3000 each when produced locally. Many bee clubs have taken out loans, the interest on which currently runs well over twenty percent. Fortunately, beekeeping can be much cheaper with a little innovation – during my first month at site, I bought a handful of plastic corn sacks and had them tailored into a bee suit, for less than 1500 kwatcha. Testing an experimental beesuit was a little nerve-wracking, even given that I’d seen similar suits work before. In fact, the cheap suit has so far worked better than the imported ones, having fewer seams and no Velcro to become loose or tangled.

During training in Dedza, we also learned to make cheaper bee hives from locally available materials. Sarah and Ross pose with theirs.

The need for good suits was impressed upon me very quickly. About two weeks after my arrival, Mr. Makhuva began taking me along to beekeeping club meetings – including an election meeting, at which the treasury official arrived slightly later than usual, even for Malawians, finally driving in a bit over four hours past the commencement time -- and harvests. That first harvest, I assumed that the hives would be like the ones we opened in Dedza, during training. Then, I sat safely in streetclothes within fifteen feet of the hive, so close that angry bees brushed me as they dove upon the suited intruders. This time… was different.

I told Mr. Makhuva I’d watch the harvest, and sat at a good vantage, perhaps twenty feet away. My counterpart seemed reluctant to open the hive. “So… you will wait at the bottom of the hill?” he asked, checking his gauntlets for the third time. The protective handware appeared to be US-typical gardening gloves, the suit cinched tight to them by a small strip of fabric.

“Nope. I’ll wait right here,” said I.

“You will wait until I approach the hive… then you will leave?”

“No, no,” I said, unsure what the holdup might be. “Don’t worry, I’m safe here.”

The farmer, Macongo, whose hives we planned to harvest shifted his weight nervously. “Now we should run, madam,” he offered.

“Don’t worry,” I insisted. “I’ll be fine. Really.”

The view towards Mozambique from Lujere, a nearby tea estate, where other clubs' hives are located.

Famous last words. Unlike the training hives, which were recently colonized and quite possibly stocked with an imported Italian bee, this hive was heavy with honey. The colony was so numerous, bees clustered around the entrance, unable to find room inside. They soon found something other than the dilemmas of real estate to attract their attention, however. The hive was opened, and hell itself boiled forth, a cloud blizzard-thick, even with the purportedly calming effects of the smoker. It took the bees around ten seconds to find me.

“We must get away, madam!” Macongo, the elderly farmer, shouted from the top of the trail.

The bees that landed were light as puffs of featherdown, like tickling fairies on my face and throat and hair. But they weren’t stinging, and I was convinced that if only I could stay still enough....

“Run! Run!” Macongo fled a few steps, only to return, resorting to English nearly as bad as my Chichewa to impress his point upon me – “Get out! Get out!”

I still don’t know whether I flinched first, in some small way, or whether I was doomed from the start. But the stinging commenced with what seemed a dozen jabbing pains, and I broke and ran, pursued by a cloud like something out of a cartoon strip. Now, Africanized honey bees are famous for chasing a target for a long, long time; I didn’t realize then that their African ancestors will literally follow an intruder for *the entire day,* until their ‘sting-this’ chemical trail dissipates, at speeds well in excess of what a human can manage, even when that human happens to be hurtling down a mountainside, tripping over broken ground, crashing through small trees and sheaves of razor-grass. Macongo led me in a duck-and-weave pattern that would have tripped up a quarterback. He’d pause to wait, then flee once more as it became evident that, yes, there was still a swarm tailing me.

It took an hour for the bees to find more attractive targets. When we finally stopped, gasping for breath, Macongo helpfully reached over and pulled stingers from my skin. Then he sat me down on the trail, in front of a big bucket of freshly harvested combs, and broke off a huge chunk, brushed the clinging bees away, and handed me a section. “Madam,” he informed me seriously, “if there are bees, perhaps you should run.”

It was the best honey I’ve ever had. And the next day, after it emerged that I had actually gotten off quite lightly, with only a couple dozen stings to which I did not have a bad reaction, Macongo came by my house bearing another enormous slab of gold-dripping comb. There was probably some kind of a lesson in all this – perhaps something about Malawians knowing their own environment and capacities better than I ever will… or maybe something about Malawians’ deep vein of compassion and care for their neighbors, even the foolhardy ones.

I definitely learned one thing, though – I’m simply going to have to help expand local honey production, ‘cause this stuff is *amazing.*

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This blog not intended for highway use. This blog is a personal journal, and does not necessarily represent the viewpoints or stances of either the Peace Corps or the United States Government.

Courtesy of the shared volunteer photo folders on the office computers: Malawian kidlets are about the cutest human beings anywhere. Since I have no photos particularly applicable to this post, I'm just going to sprinkle the text with Malawian kid pics from volunteer archives. Enjoy!

Each beautiful morning in Mimosa dawns with the calls of roosters marking their territories, typically followed closely by the hoarse, anguished cries of someone being beaten viciously right outside my window. Baby goats are pretty much gamboling bundles of pure adorable-ness, but the adults have an earily distressed bleat that sets the teeth on edge. Around the time the goats wake, so too do the neighborhood children, who demonstrate lung capacities that would shame a pearl diver. There’s not much chance of me sleeping past six in the morning – quite a change for someone who used to be an avowed night owl.

Fortunately, everyone else is up at least that early. That first morning, my landlord’s wife, Fascilline, came by to bring water around half-six (6:30,) and a painter and a couple of mud-smearing ladies showed up around seven to complete some repairs. My extraordinarily helpful and welcoming counterpart came by a half hour later and helped me put together a list of items I needed, like a mat, and went off to purchase them. I wandered a bit, scraping termite trails off the walls and moving stuff from one room to another as the painter requested – unpacking was somewhat complicated by the fact that there was literally nothing to put stuff on, in, or under. The floor was a mess; while I’d bought a broom, it had no handle – they were supposed to be available far cheaper in villages than in Lilongwe. Children clustered close, peering in the doors and windows. Eventually, I grabbed a shovel, and ventured outside.

A photo taken by my Assistant Peace Corps Director, when he dropped by a year before my arrival, to approve the location for a volunteer placement.

The house was in relatively good shape. Some items, such as the kitchen and latrine roofs, painting the lime inside the house, and mudding the kitchen walls, had not been completed. But the termite-eaten rafters were replaced, and a thin smear of concrete had been painted over the kitchen and bath floors. The enormous piles of trash and dead shrubbery piled around the house had been hauled off to the side and burned; the bananna trees that had grown so thick they blocked the latrine entrance had been cut and heaped in a pile. Most of the big hornet nests attached to the house had been knocked down, and the termite trails scraped away. Not bad at all, but there was still a lot I wanted to do. Where to start?

A flower bed seemed reasonable, for my first day. I started alongside the house, breaking through the hardpacked soil a few inches at a time. The African farming tool of choice, the short-handled hoe, did a somewhat better job than the shovel, but the bare ground had been trampled and compacted for years; nothing grew. Baked bricks were buried under a superficial layer, as if the foundations of an older structure had been knocked down to build the present house. It took a little while to dig a hole some ten inches deep, two feet wide, and ten feet long; and earned me a lovely handful of blisters to boot.

Children clustered close, watching my every move, chatting amongst eachother and commenting to me in chickewa too fast to follow. One little boy found a small, sad little guava tree along the side of my house and set to whacking the tiny, immature fruit down with a stick, jumping up to grab branches and yank them off whenever the fruit failed to drop. There was a prompt screaming fight over the little prizes, leaving some of the youngest kids sobbing in my front yard.

You wouldn't want this sweet thing crying in your front yard, would you? Me neither.

“Alright, everybody,” I said. There had to be something for my, uh, visitors to do that was undestructive. Provided I could get the Chichewa right. “I want you all to find me some mosquitoes.” I looked around at the blank faces. “Err, I mean grass. Grass and leaves. Like this….” I collected an armload of half-burned organic matter, hauled it back, and dumped it in my trench.

The kids were thrilled, and fell over themselves to help. In a single minute, I had a lovely big mound of vegetation, much of it half-rotted or burned. Perfect. I felt triumphant – so many volunteers had told me that dealing with the children was one of the biggest challenges ahead, and I had gotten it right. Much encouraged, I handed the hoe off to one of the largest boys, with instructions of where to dig, and started covering the vegetation in the first bed with some of the heavy clay soil I’d excavated.

Such big, bright eyes!

New bracelets ahoy!

A problem, however, promptly arose – there was so much organic matter now, and the soil fluffed up so much when loosened, that the pile kept tumbling over, even with the house on one side for support. Water would surely run right off. I would need something with which to edge the bed.

Close beside my house, however, was located an enormous pile of burned bricks. Burned bricks are simply mud, molded in forms, and then stacked in a pile with a hollow channel down the center. This gap is stuffed with the largest logs you can cut, and then set alight. (In Kirk’s village, which is nearly treeless, three of the village’s few remaining communal mango trees were cut in order to fuel a pile of bricks to build an extension for the chief’s house.) The fire can smolder for days.

This particular mountain of bricks – some three thousand – had been baked at least two or three years ago, judging by the weathering and degradation of the bricks, and the seedling trees growing atop. This too is not unusual; many families have no hope of building a new house all at once. Rather, they’ll pay for a pile of bricks one year, and if harvests are good later, they’ll start on the foundations a couple years later, then a few years later they’ll start buying wooden poles and metal roofing sheets. Still, if they leave the bricks unprotected for too many rainy seasons, they’ll collapse back into a mound of undifferentiated mud.

At Dedza, if the kids saw you with a camera, they'd promptly stike the most outrageous poses and beg you to take a picture. Cuteness!

Even weathered bricks, though, are just fine for flower bed edgings. I passed out some bananas a neighbor had wandered by selling, and then enlisted the kidlets to help haul bricks over to build a pretty little retaining ridge. My landlord appeared within mere moments. As it turned out, the pile of bricks belonged not to him, but rather to ‘some other person.’ Patso had just been letting him use the land for his brick pile. I should not, in other words, steal the neighbor’s bricks. I asked if I could buy the bricks, and it emerged that the man was in Blantyre and could not be reached for comment. However, Patso did have a neighbor, who would sell me fifty broken bricks (burned bricks are not very strong, and often break during construction projects, leaving large piles of rubble) for a mere one hundred kwatcha. Not knowing the price of bricks, I said this was fine. Patso requested an extra fifty kwatcha in order to rent a wheelbarrow from a neighbor to carry the bricks back.

Sometime during the conversation, my normally quiescent BS meter edged into yellow. Why not just use the kids to carry the bricks back? Patso said it was much too far. How far was it? ‘Over there.’ I’ll go with the kids. In fact, I’d give them each a ‘sweetie’ – a small hard candy of indifferent flavor, sold for about a kwatcha each. Since there were perhaps fifteen kids standing around, it seemed to make sense.

Another Dedza village picture. Not quite sure what that kidlet in the back is doing.

Looking pained, Patso lead the way. ‘Too far’ turned out to be around a block away. The bricks were definitely broken, and the kids loaded up with up to three or so. Masses of older boys, evidently too cool to help out, stood on stumps and watched. A second trip was required, and as kids picked up bricks, I started to get the sneaky suspicion that I had more than fifteen kids – actually, there were maybe more like thirty. Where had they come from? The pile of broken rubble in front of my place seemed greater than fifty. I ducked into the house to find my candy stash, and came out with a couple fistfuls… only to find that the numbers of children had swelled further. Which ones had carried bricks?

Uhoh.

He'll grow into it.

I started dropping candies into outstretched palms, and the kids morphed, decepticon-style, into a howling, shoving, grabbing knot of grasping hands and feral grins. One kid weaseled a candy out of my closed hand, and then it was all over. The candy vanished, leaving some kids shouting in triumph and others, whom I knew had carried bricks, in tears. Oh, crudmuffins. This time, I went into the house and emerged with just a few candies, and tried to move some ways away from my now thoroughly-trampled flowerbeds before handing out the goods. It worked a little better. But by the time Patso yelled at the kids to clear out, the older boys who had not helped seemed to have acquired around half the candies. My yard was littered with wrappers, and I’d handed out nearly a hundred sweets.

On second thought, perhaps I didn’t have quite as good a handle on the kids as I’d assumed.

Kids don't have a lot of stuff here -- these ones grin for the camera inside their schoolroom -- so I can understand the paroxysms of joy over the sweeties.

Helpfully, Patso assisted me to pick up some of the mess. I ruefully apologized, and admitted that the wheelbarrow would have been far better. Patso nodded sagely. Then he asked me for an advance on next month’s rent.

Huh. Repairs on the house, I figured, had maybe been more than I or Patso had anticipated. It seemed fair enough. I wandered on in and sorted through my stuff again, finally coming up with the requested amount. Rent, by the way, is not exhorbitant in the village – mine is comparatively high, at two thousand kwatcha, or about fourteen bucks. I handed it over, along with a receipt to sign. It’s wise to get receipts, since volunteers have had trouble before with payment arguments.

Patso thanked me, then glanced around. “I notice you have a shovel,” he said, a bit out of the blue. “Sometime I have some job, over there, and it needs a shovel. You have a shovel.”

More kidlets!

“Yes.” I said. Oh dear. “But I cannot borrow it to you.” The verb ‘to lend’ does not exist in Malawian-ized English. “Because… uh. Because it is a Peace Corps shovel. It does not belong to me.” Other volunteers had suggested this tactic, particularly with our bikes, which the PC actually does own. But maybe it would work with shovels, too.

“I will bring it back,” offered Patso.

“What if it breaks?” I asked.

“But maybe I will need it for jobs here at your house,” said he.

I stated that, in such case, of course he could use it. But there were no jobs here which needed a shovel. That seemed to end the question, and after a few more pleasantries, Patso headed back across the road to his own house. Similar conversations are surprisingly common – especially, I’m told, at the beginning, when people are trying to figure out how far they can go with you – and as near as I can tell, not at all socially frowned upon. In retrospect, of course, I should probably have worried less. I could have offered to exchange use of the shovel for a few days for a bundle of grass mulch, for example. The shovel would end up stolen a couple of months later, anyway, so there was really no point in keeping it pristine.

It was barely past ten. In a mere four hours, I’d unpacked as much as possible, helped to paint my house, dug a flower bed and a half, stolen some bricks, bought and brought others, and handled my first string of minor extortions, for better or worse.

It felt like bedtime.

Lest you imagine this post casts the country in an imperfect light, rest assured -- smiles abound in Malawi!

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Caution: This blog is a personal journal, and does not necessarily represent the viewpoints or stances of either the Peace Corps or the United States Government.

The contents of the blog should not be fed to fish.

Thus it was that, in one or two days, each of us had to find everything we might possibly need for the indefinite future – on a budget of about a hundred and fifty bucks (a bit more, if you were going to an entirely new site, as I was.) Oddly, many items in Malawi are at least as expensive as in the states -- rice and flour are around a dollar a kilo, paint is easily $25 a can, a converter and deep cycle battery would set you back at least $170, the cheapest cheese in the country can be had in Lilongwe at $13/kilo, a small 8" Teflon frying pan is $15, a wash basin or bucket is 5-10$ -- and you’ll need a bunch, since all your water will probably be carried in them. Even with the lime (used as cheap interior house paint) and concrete the Peace Corps may provide for free if your house requires, most volunteers dip into their own savings at this point.

You’ll most certainly want to check out the markets. A very large one is located just down the hill from the Peace Corps office. Rickety bridges, usually washed away each wet season, join the two halves – clothes and hardware on one side, food on the other. In a triumph of capitalism, small goups of men build the bridges each year from an assortment of bent nails and half-rotted boards, and then charge 10 kwatcha per person to cross the structure. They’re a great deal of fun – the experience of being on the bridge while several people attempt to cross at once rivals many Disneyworld rides.

These gentlement collect the ten-kwatcha (7 cent) fee for crossing. Why four persons are required to perform this service, I am not certain.

Wheee!

Deep in the heart of the food zone lurks The Silver Spoon, a tiny dive where beans, nsima, and a lump of boiled greens of indeterminate origin can be had for less than a dollar. It’s a favorite of Peace Corps Volunteers, though still a bit of a luxury (A PCV’s ‘salary’ in Malawi, including transport, project supplies, and housing costs, amounts to roughly six dollars a day.) If you plan to splurge on meat, however, Aminas is far superior.

Filling the cars with our purchases was… an adventure. Not only could most people not afford everything they felt they’d need, most didn’t have room to take it to site. Three volunteers and their gear – including bikes, mattresses, water filters, bags of cement, library reference books, and more – were packed in and atop one landcruiser; people who could sit without being stabbed in the back by a shovel could count themselves fortunate. These difficulties were compounded by the fact that a good half the group was suffering the effects of a highly entertaining round of beer Olympics the night before.

A great big thanks to environment 07.

Wheee!

The ride down to Blantyre was something along the lines of five hours, interrupted by a stop for the driver to purchase potatoes, a bathroom break, and fifteen minutes for Alicia to snag as many large buckets as she could stack on our laps. Alicia’s site is located some 20 kilometers off the tarmac, on a dirt trail that dives through river gorges and across plateaus. By car, it took more than a half an hour to travel each way; on site visit, Alicia traveled by bicycle taxi, which took four hours. Even in April, Malawi’s winter, Alicia’s site is hot and dusty. Her house, however, is a very pleasant shade of purple.

Unloaded, Alicia’s gear made a sad and lonely pile in front of her house, surrounded by a rapidly gathering knot of eways who oohed and ahhed as each object emerged from the vehicle. The landlords rushed over with Alicia’s keys, and the mass of small children began enthusiastically and indiscriminately hauling things inside. A few moments for tearful goodbyes, and we left Alicia in a cloud of dust and small children, one of whom took the opportunity to welcome Alicia to her new home by opening the front of his shorts and piddling unabashedly in Alicia’s front yard.

By the time we drove through Blantyre, got to Jenny’s site, picked up her peanut sheller (an enormous concrete cone, made all the bigger by the fact that the only place to put it was atop me,) and found my turnoff, it was… late. The headlights momentarily illuminated a knot of people standing near the road, people I vaguely recognized, before we bounced and jolted the kilometer to my residence. The poor Peace corps driver had been instructed to finish dropping us all off long before dark, which wasn’t even physically feasible. Worried and distracted, he helped me unload my gear in a large pile in front of my house, while the usual accompaniment of awestruck eways looked on. No one present had the key to my house. My landlord did – he’d been waiting by the road for me.

Once reassured that the key would be here as soon as the landlord could jog back, the Peace Corps driver gratefully finished off a last bit of paperwork and roared off.

I looked around at the many interested faces squinting in the glare of my flashlight or examining my pile of belongings. Uh. Well. “Hello,” said I, desperately whipping out my newly learned Chichewa. “What is your name? It is a beautiful night. There are not many legs in the moon.”

To my great fortune, my counterpart and landlord were quick to arrive, keys in hand. The door was opened with a flourish – a very good sign, since the last time I’d visited, the front door had settled too much to be opened at all. As if by magic, the masses of attentive eways teleported my belongings into the main room. This was excellent, I figured – I’d be able to find a corner for the mattress, set up the mosquito net, maybe even sort some stuff out a little bit before sleeping. As soon as people left me alone. My landlord and his extended family, however, showed no particular signs of doing so. Instead they wandered around, showing me the very fine repairs which had been made, thoroughly explaining the reasons why other repairs hadn’t been accomplished yet, chatting in little knots, and, in the case of the children, staring at me with great fascination, though the youngest did burst into tears whenever I chanced to look back.

After an hour of careful hinting, I at last asked everyone to leave, so that I could go to bed, please. My landlord, Patso (meaning ‘gift’) helpfully herded everyone out... then asked for the rent money. “Today?” I inquired, blinking at my pile of stuff, somewhere beneath which was the envelope stuffed with cash, “Can’t it wait until tomorrow?”

Though Patso was polite about the matter, it couldn’t. I eventually dug up the right packet and paid for my first months’ rent and for repairs. With many thanks, Patso began to leave… then paused at the door. He asked if I had a nightguard arranged yet. I didn’t. Very kindly, Patso offered to sleep in the detached kitchen for the night. I hesitated a moment, but agreed – we’d been told this was a frequent occurance, and a means of showing corncern and welcome for a newcomer, and it would be somewhat rude to refuse. Then I realized how chilly it was. “Oh!” said I. “Do you have a blanket? And a mat, or something?”

“No, I haven’t” said Patso, looking oddly pained, or possibly gassy. His English is excellent, though clearly British in derivation.

“Wait a second, let me see if I can find something…” said I, trying to go through the jumble of bags and boxes, preferably without stepping on and smashing anything. The Peace Corps had provided a pair of sheets, and I had several tchenjes, and…..

“Oh, I have a blanket,” said Patso, as I scrabbled around, elbow-deep in a pack, hoping that the crunching under my knees was not my supply of candles. Huh? “I have them. Yes,” he added.

This is actually a very interesting aspect of Malawian – perhaps even of African – culture. Families are traditionally extremely generous; they’re expected to be. When Malawians ask if one has something, the inquiry typically presages a request for that item. Thus, the evolution of the all-too-common social white lie – claiming not to have something. All “ndilibe” (‘I am not with it’) really means is that someone doesn’t have enough of something to *share.* Malawians understand this, and are generally unoffended.

The tactic of social lying, unfortunately, has also found a use vis-à-vis donor organizations, in which cases the lies can reach absurd extremes. Later, while in another volunteer’s site, I was informed by a large group of women that they did not have rice (there were extensive fields of it behind the houses,) nor a grain mill (it was two buildings down, and other women walked in and out with freshly ground corn,) and that they did not grow beans in the village. (They did say they bought beans for meals at the nearby market. The reason they did not grow beans locally, however, was that they lacked seeds.) Playing up one’s own poverty has historically been, and likely still is, a good way to get help from aid organizations. The Peace Corps is one among many such groups that worry about the learned helplessness, the cycle of dependency, that can afflict so many well-intentioned projects.

Here are those pictures of the enormous Baobab tree I promised some time ago. They have nothing to do with the story at hand, and have been arbitrarily placed to break up way too much plain text.

We had about fifteen people -- not nearly enough to encircle this behemoth.

But I digress. Patso evidently had bedding, so I thanked him and showed him out, then at last set to picking out a bedroom of my own and dragging my mattress over. After wrestling the floppy rectangle of foam through the door, I found to my surprise that the room was already inhabited… by three plump roaches and a scorpion the size of my palm, plus a number of disoriented leafcutter ants, all of them scattered liberally about the floor and walls.

Oh, yeah – that’s another thing you may want to consider buying while you’re stocking up in Lilongwe: Raid insect spray. Also, mosquito coils, and something with which to light them, placed somewhere you can locate easily, even if all your worldly belongings are heaped in a corner. I had, I discovered, neglected to purchase nails with which to hang my mosquito net. I’d even forgotten string, which wouldn’t have helped much anyway, since I had nothing solid enough to climb upon to tie anything to the rafters. I was studying the conundrum, carefully avoiding eye contact with the thuggish-looking cockroaches, when I dropped my flashlight, sending batteries skittering in many directions all across the floor.

It was, all in all, a bit of a long day.

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Read this before opening blog: according to certain suggested versions of the Grand Unified Theory, the primary particles constituting this blog may decay to nothingness within the next four hundred million years. This blog is a personal journal, and does not necessarily represent the viewpoints or stances of either the Peace Corps or the United States Government.

I and a few of the other trainees got a Peace Corps ride back to Dedza from Kuti game ranch. Somewhat oddly, the driver insisted on dropping all us trainees off on the side of the road near Salima, then heading back to pick up the trainers and their luggage. We half-assumed we were going to be abandoned there, but settled down to wait. While flicking pebbles across the road and watching goats trot by, the ropes that had once tethered them trailing from their scrawny legs, we noticed that we’d attracted the usual number of children – about a half dozen, crouching nearby, pointing at and whispering about the azungus, giggling madly whenever we glanced their way. By eway standards, this is exceedingly polite behavior, and so garnered no attention from any of us. Until, that is, the kids scattered with panic-stricken screams.

I looked down and found a Schlegel’s blind snake a few feet away, wriggling with great determination but little headway over the broken remains of the sidewalk.

Now, a Schlegel’s blind snake is not a particularly threatening reptile, even if you didn’t know that it’s completely harmless. It has unmistakably blunt head and tail, and is quite small. Except for its dark, glossy color and flicking tongue, it would be easy to mistake for an earthworm. Indeed if, like this one, the snake is somehow evicted from the burrows where it spends most of its life hunting termites and cockroaches, the reptile crawls about as well as an earthworm, scooting along with a frantic and worried air. The snake’s belly scales are so smooth (all the easier to move forward or backward in termite tunnels) they don’t permit much purchase, so the reptile doesn’t get anywhere very fast.

A Schlegel’s blind snake. Not my picture, alas.

The kids couldn’t have been more frightened if a lion had been dropped into their midst.

Snakes may get a bad rap in the states, where we have comparatively few venomous ones. But here snakes are simply and purely reviled by pretty much everybody, when the animals aren’t being cut up and utilized in a witchdoctor’s magical rites. Later, in my first few months at site, I’d end up seeing more wild snakes than I have in years in the US, most of which were in the process of being whacked to death: a beautiful adult male boomslang as vibrantly green as new tea leaves, a black mamba – not black, but rather a sleek gunmetal gray – an olive grass snake, a puff adder, and several unidentified juveniles.

The Peace Corps, for obvious reasons, isn’t too keen on volunteers picking up reptiles. Many of the snakes here are rather on the nasty side, after all. So of course I did not pick up this poor little guy and carry him to a place where he could wriggle under some thick bushes, thereby saving him from being beheaded as soon as the kids could collect themselves enough to run and find a guy with a machete, and also causing the eways to gambol about as if the lot of us azungus had just walked on water before their very eyes. The PC would definitely disapprove of something like that. Yep.

Back in Dedza, everyone arrived eventually from their far-flung site visits. And what tales they had to tell! At least one person had developed malaria, or at least, all the symptoms thereof. Some people were going to be situated miles from anything that could be loosely described as a grocery store – a disheartening prospect given that many of the villages in which they’d been placed produce and sell nothing but corn and little dried fish. One young gentleman had his matola break down on a back road; he at last walked ten kilometers till dark when he was forced to ask lodging from an utter stranger, who turned out to be both a parish priest and proprietor of the local movie den, which showed strange Malawian music videos till nine and soft porn thereafter. While everyone’s house, fortunately, had a roof, some of them also were occupied by Malawian families or by enormous wasp swarms. Not all came pre-equipped with certain luxuries like, say, a latrine.

Clearly, after exchanging tales of our adventures, there was nothing to be done but to drink far too many packets of distilled sugarcane liquor and/or bottles of coke and pull the mattresses off the beds, pile them in the hallway, and ride them at dangerous speeds across the freshly-waxed floor. The next morning, those who could not move were rousted out of bed, and off we went to Lilongwe, our unreasonable quantity of baggage in tow.

One-third of The Pile.

Lilongwe quickly becomes a Mecca of sorts for many volunteers, or at least, for those who happen to be at all fond of things like, say, the internet, cheese, deodorant, Indian spices, incense, oreos, garlic, ‘unusual’ household implements such as frying pans, and gelato. None of us can afford most of these, of course, but that doesn’t mean you can’t press your nose up against the glass and gaze longingly. And then there’s Amina’s, which I was introduced to for the first time before swearing in. Located conveniently nearby the Peace Corps office, Aminas serves steaks so enormous they must be presented on their own oversized plates, which they still often overflow. These coronary-clogging works of art are accompanied by a small mountain of rice and some tomato sauce for 500 kwatcha – less than four bucks – or you can get chippies for an additional 100.

Amina's. All food is Haalal, even.

The steaks. Trust me, after a couple months of typical low-protein village fare, this would look darned good to you, too.

The lot of us trainees and several of the Peace Corps staff ate at Amina’s remarkably cute plastic and wicker outdoor tablesets, and there discovered Amina’s sole drawback. About halfway through lunch and ignored by the waiters, small children arrived and wandered between tables, pleading in high, weak, thin voices for table scraps.

Later, of course, I was to discover that using a high-pitched, half-starved voice is one of the commonest tactics for garden-variety beggars of all ages. You can often hear panhandlers turning it on when addressing whites or persons they assume to be of means, and off when chatting with their nearby friends. In retrospect, the fact that these kids, like most in the city, were rather better fed than many of the village eways should have tipped me off. On the other hand, it’s difficult to eat when kids are clearly hungry. We’re warned several times how hard it is for volunteers on extremely limited incomes to work out a means of dealing with beggars effectively – how much to give, whether to give at all.

It’s sometimes good to see, though, that even the missionaries haven’t gotten the equation right yet. While in Lilongwe, I was treated to the following scene: an entire busload of ‘em – some manner of religious choral group, by the uniforms and the name emblazoned on the side of the van -- stopped at a red light. A common sight. A small child ran up to plead for money through the open windows, and a fistful was handed over. Also a common sight. The bus pulled away, and the kid stood in the middle of the road to count up his gains. Evidently, most of the coins were the fifty Tambala ones – worth just half a kwatcha each, or about 1/3rd of an American cent, but rather heavier and bulkier. Though Shoprite is fond of making change in the form of dozens of the half-kwatcha coins, they’re not real useful; even a mandazi, one of the little balls of fried dough sold all over, is five or ten kwatcha, and lugging around so many coins virtually assures your death by drowning if you should be so unfortunate as to step into one of the city’s flooded drainage ditches. In distinctly uncommon fury, the kid fisted his loot and hurled it at the retreating bus before scampering out of traffic.

I guess nobody else has found a use for tambala coins, either.

A picture of Malawi’s currency. The largest denomination is 500 kwatcha, or a bit over three dollars, at the time of this writing. That said, most villagers in markets do not have change for this bill. The one-hundred and five kwatcha bills are missing from this picture; the five-kwatcha bill is rare now -- it’s worth about three cents.

Most bills of small denomination look a great deal like this one. They have typically seen more bosoms than Don Juan – women keep their market proceeds there or knotted up in one corner of their tchinjes.

Several tambala coins. The tambala pieces are about the size of a nickel; there are 1-kwatcha coins which are a bit larger than the 1-dollar coin. There are also 5 and 10-kwatcha coins, but even with a pocketful of change, it’s unlikely you’d be able to purchase much of anything.

Swearing in occurred at the Ambassador’s home residence. As one might expect, the place is gorgeous, with the kind of landscaping that both reminds intensely of home and seems so utterly out of place. It was as much of a shock, after the mud huts and the minibuses and the goats, as Lilongwe itself is after the village. (None of us could do much, upon our first visit to the city, besides stare in awe at buildings taller than two stories, at cars and shops and women in trousers. Imagine!) The Ambassador has a pool -- cerulean and cool-looking in the hot sun, guarded by no less than two men to prevent any crazy volunteers from putting desire into action – and a glorious collection of plants, including daylilies and spiderplants, growing in the manicured beds which, edged by neat brickwork, flow like ossified waves to meet grass as green and soft as tea fields look. The plants were… unguarded. Even a huge, lovely, variegated spiderplant, hung heavily with baby plantlets, was unguarded. Of course, I’m sure the Peace Corps would frown on anyone snipping pieces of the ambassador’s shrubberies and spiriting them out of the compound. Yep.

The ceremony itself was very much what one might expect from such an event. A number of Very Important Malawians gave the standard speeches – simultaneously bombastic and uncomfortable in what is, after all, for them a foreign language. The ambassador deviated from the speech he’d been handed, to very fine effect – he’s an excellent speaker. Sadly, he’s also moving to the Congo shortly; we still haven’t met his replacement.

Goldfish and a handful of chichlids, native to Lake Malawi, in the Ambassador’s pond. They seemed to enjoy the mini-pizzas and samosas just as much as I did. They didn’t seem to appreciate the cake quite so much; more experimentation may be in order.

And voila, we were all real, honest-to-goodness Peace Corps Volunteers.

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This blog is a personal journal, and does not necessarily represent the viewpoints or stances of either the Peace Corps or the United States Government. Warning: do not employ blog as a personal flotation device. This blog also not intended for use as a dental drill.

My language intensive week was held at Kuti Game Ranch, just outside of Salima, due east of Lilongwe, near Lake Malawi.

The ranch is an interesting little place. It covers around a thousand acres, and contains zebra, gemsbok, bushpigs, baboons, several very awesome snake species, and more, including Malawi’s only two giraffes. The park isn’t large enough for elephants or large predators. It is run largely by the Hunter’s Association of Malawi now, though it was originally set up as a reserve by funds from the European Union, among others, as an economic development zone. The idea was to provide a space for villagers to collect fallen firewood and medicinal plants, while allowing them to sell their handcrafts to tourists.

Alas, as the funding dried up, so too did the tourists. The park’s horses died, the construction of new A-frame chalets halted, poaching both by donating hunters and by locals continues to slowly decimate the wildlife. Service can be a little… strange, and the biting insects are out of this world. That said, Kuti is overall pretty darn charming.

Zebra butt. Turns out that zebras don’t eat spaghetti. Who knew?

One of the environmental volunteers from my class is stationed nearby, and he’ll be spending a portion of his time assisting the park with some of the issues they’ve been having, like how to balance their accounts. I wish him the best of luck – Kuti really does have quite a lot going for it. After language classes, we went out for a drive and checked out some of the smaller wildlife, though at the time the grass was still too thick and high to see much. The zebras didn’t make an appearance for most of that week, and then it seemed they were everywhere, including just outside the chalets where they engaged in activities unsafe to mention in mixed company. All night long.

My language training class. Not that the PC would permit us to actually *drive* with people up there. Safety first, you know.

Agatha, one of the language trainers, feeds the ostriches...

...and, after one takes a snap at her, isn’t so sure she likes the experience.

The cultural discussions and activities were perhaps the most helpful, since by this time, we had all passed the language exam and were a lot more worried about moving into site than about employing correct verb forms. For one activity, we visited Tim’s village. He’s located about 30k on paved roads from Salima – and then another 10k or so on unpaved ones. This is a much more typical site placement than my own location, little more than a kilometer from the tarmac. Tim’s got it just a wee bit harder than average, however – his roads are impassable during the wet season, and his house, upon his arrival, had no roof and no latrine. He’s done an amazing job, however – not only is his yard a permaculture wonderland, but he has also assisted his village in using a hand-crank peanut sheller and an oilpress to generate the matching funds for a borehole grant. It’s his village’s first borehole and their only source of clean drinking water; cholera rates have plummeted.

We arrived right at eleven, having arranged to chat with the village headman (a woman – about 20% of them are, in this area) and several other elders, in order to discuss traditional customs. The Gule Wamkulu also volunteered to perform a dance, which was meant to start at noon.

After being welcomed into the chief’s compound, we were graciously seated on threadbare mats. Everyone shook hands with and greeted each of several dozen elderly men and women, a process which took half an hour. Then we sat. And we waited. A large portion of the village trickled in, selecting seating throughout the compound where they watched us, murmuring amongst themselves. Tim was invited inside the hut for nsima, an offer difficult to refuse when it comes from the chief. And we waited some more.

A picture of us, waiting. You can just taste the anticipation.

It didn’t take long before gasps drew my attention from navel contemplation. Dogs had been wandering through from time to time, sniffing at the ashes and sluggishly inspecting the trashpit for any new additions, but this one… well. It’s probably the second-worst case I’ve seen in the country of animal maltreatment, and so is by no means common, at least at this point in the season. The dog approached us, and one small boy evidently judged from our cringing that we were not in favor of the animal’s proximity, because he ran up and kicked it away, quite literally. It was out before I even knew it – I shouted at the kid. Definitely embarrassed myself and everyone else, and no doubt both bewildered and offended the Malawians. The boy was just giving us a hand in deterring a stray village dog, after all. I think I once wrote that, socially, keeping an animal here implies no responsibility to vaccinate or feed it.

I still cannot think of an appropriate comment.

Around one o’clock or so, with the dancers ‘still preparing’ and the elders busy with lunches and possibly intending to speak with us only after the dancing (nobody was quite sure), we all went for a stroll. We visited Tim’s house, another kilometer or two up the rough dirt road, past the school and the new borehole. Another short hike through Africa’s equivalent of poison ivy took us to his landlord’s place, where we found the largest tree I have ever seen. It was a behemoth old baobab, stark and strange with a swollen trunk some thirty feet in diameter – more than ninety in circumference. It had already dropped its leaves for the year, but the trunk still played host to two bee colonies. One deep cave sunk ten feet into the side of the tree; the floor carpeted with bat guano. Lizards raced eachother over the leathery-looking surface, and strangler figs wove ropy roots down the baobab’s sides. It was simply awe-inspiring. Austin has the pictures, unfortunately – I’ll post them when I get my mitts on them.

Then we walked back to the village headman’s house. And waited. After a while, we all moved to a small grassy area, where chairs had been brought, and we waited there for a bit. Problem was, we truly had to leave by two, otherwise we’d be terrifically late for our meeting with another village, where we were scheduled to attend another event. Our hosts continued to assure us that the dancers had been preparing just for us, that they’d arrive ‘pompano,’ that they were just down the road.

Sometime around three, we started to make out excuses and climb back in the car, which is when the organizer for the Gule Wamkulu ‘reminded’ us of the booking fee for the dancers.

Booking fee? Ah yes – while the Gule Wamkulu once performed at ceremonies and to welcome guests, nowadays they typically dance for tourists. Tim hadn’t explicitly asked the dancers, when they volunteered, if they’d expect remuneration. Which, as it turns out, they did – and quite a lot of it, particularly given that they had yet to actually arrive.

I was unable to follow the full conversation in chichewa, and am not entirely certain what amount was agreed upon, if any, but the Peace Corps coordinator did not seem particularly well-pleased when he climbed back in. We headed off at half-past three -- and passed the Gule Wamkulu coming up the road.

To cap the whole matter, by the time we got to our second village, everyone had gone home, assuming that the azungus (white people) were not going to be attending. One hears many, many times during training that volunteers need to be flexible, adaptable, and most especially patient with most Malawians’ sense of time. Here, tasks simply take as long as they take to be done right. The business of life proceeds each day in a constant and natural rhythm, and there’s always time for sitting back and relaxing. Of course, from an American perspective, not much tends to get done.

Language week over, we headed back to Dedza to pack the last of our belongings, and then... on to swearing in.

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This blog is a personal journal, and does not necessarily represent the viewpoints or stances of either the Peace Corps or the United States Government. Alert: Blog was manufactured in a facility which processes peanuts and treenuts.

Our site visits had an unpropitious beginning.

Announcement of where we were going came the night before, at an awesome party at the residence of Wellington, one of the trainer/coordinators. He’s got real dogs, for one thing – not the skinny village mongrels that run unvaccinated with mange eating at their ears and muzzles and flies, fat and blue, thick over their sores. Wellington has also got a bwana (‘awesome’ or ‘boss’) house near the college, with room for a roaring bonfire and a barbeque outside and real bathrooms inside (one quickly becomes accustomed to identifying and grading locations based on their potty facilities.) The listing of the sites seemed like a dessert list – they all sounded beautiful, adventurous, and ripe with project possibilities.

I got Mulanje.

Pretty, huh?

Mount Mulanje is Malawi’s highest point, at a tad over 10,000 feet.

It’s sometimes called ‘The Island in the Sky’ due to the clouds that shroud its base nearly all year long, leaving the top bare and afloat seemingly midair.

The rainfall here is high, and the dry season is only a few months long, rather than six or more, so there is no real ‘hunger season’ as there is in the rest of Malawi, when the stored grain begins to run out. The mountain’s slopes are cloaked with tea and pineapple plantations, which are beautiful, but something of a mixed blessing for the locals. The plantations provide jobs, but also opportunities for abuse between overseers and the often-female workers. The plantations reduce the amount of cultivatable land available in an already densely-populated district. Mulanje’s proximity to Mozambique also means there is a great deal of cross-boarder traffic – truckers as well as traders, their wares piled high atop rickety bicycles. As humans move, so too do diseases; Mulanje’s HIV infection rate is among the highest in the country.

Not that I knew any of that, upon being handed my site assignment. The instructions read simply to ‘take public transport to Blantyre, then to Limbe, then Muloza, where another volunteer will be waiting. Here’s her number. Good luck!’ Alrighty then.

The next morning, the Peace Corps vehicle dropped me and all the other volunteers headed south (I’d at least ascertained that Blantyre was a city to the south) at the Dedza roadblock. This is the location where the police check to make sure you aren’t carrying thirty people or more in the back of a truck, nor enormous slabs of endangered hardwood, or at least that you can pay the appropriate bribe if you are. It’s also a good place to catch minibuses, since they have to stop here, anyway. The driver helpfully assisted us to unload our week-bags (packed with more or less everything on a rather exhaustive list, including bednets and sleeping bags,) wished us luck (again,) and roared off, cheerfully ignoring our increasingly worried stream of questions.

Thing was, we weren’t sure what a minibus was supposed to look like, since the only one we’d really seen for certain was the Peace Corps one, just after our arrival. Nor did we know whether they arrived on any particular schedule, nor even if there would be any that morning, nor how much they should cost, nor what to do if one broke down, which we’d heard was their wont on an alarmingly frequent basis.

So there we sat upon the roadside, while passerby peered at us curiously and shopkeepers swept the rubbish that had accumulated overnight into piles and set the whole mess alight in a roil of sweet black smoke. Anytime we asked over the next forty-five minutes or so, whichever unfortunate soul we’d stopped would reply that a bus would be here ‘pompano’ (soon-soon!)

So we waited, sharing little bits of paper upon which we’d been instructed to get receipts for all travel expenses, and debating the merits of purchasing a coke now. A number of frighteningly ramshackle vehicles, something like minivans but built like Volkswagen buses and crammed with people, zoomed by. Were those minibuses? Were we supposed to wave? We were nearly prepared to chance it when, at last, something that definitely looked like a bus rolled up. It had four seats across and perhaps six rows of benches, and the sign up front said it was headed to Blantyre. And there was room for us all to travel in a group. Looked good to us – in we climbed.

Turns out we shouldn’t have drunk those sodas.

We rolled out around eight in the morning; it was well past one by the time we arrived. As we’d all discover later, minibuses tend to be faster and to stop less because they have just twelve seats. Medium-busses can be a bit smoother, and you can more frequently bargain the price down a bit, but they take longer to get to places. It seemed that every few kilometers we hauled out onto the side of the road so that a handful of people could climb off and a new set climb aboard, to be shouted and cajoled by the conductor (the gentleman on busses who takes the money, since the driver may frequently be too sloshed to perform this function,) into squashing their bodies into increasingly smaller spaces. At times, we were up to six adults to a row. It grew hot, then stifling; the driver happily turned up the volume on his evangelist radio program, and on we tootled.

As we descended from Dedza’s higher elevations, it became apparent that the rainy season was well and truly over for most of Malawi by the middle of April. The countryside was dry – indeed, for an area that gets no less than twenty-five inches of rain a year, it was simply too parched. The land resembled the high deserts of Utah more than anything else, and those get a quarter the rainfall.

Of course, it might look greener if there were more trees around.

The villages, however, don’t remind one of Utah in the slightest.

Blantyre is huge (in my admittedly now-skewed estimation) and bustling. It hosts a sizeable ex-pat community, and the upscale dining joints to go with them, including the best little icecream place in the south. ‘Home Needs’ is a superb little Indian restaurant, which seems once to have been a hardware store, right on the main road to the respite house. There’s even a beautifully landscaped Hindu temple nearby, if the town wears on you too much – which it very well can. Aside from the annoyances of non-existant sidewalks and manic drivers, would-be artists hawk seed-bead necklaces and poorly-painted cards aggressively to anyone who looks like they might be either lost or a foreigner, and a wandering white person with an overstuffed backpack looks like both.

After weeks in the village, entering a strip mall is like stepping into another world.

We dropped by Doogles for a spot of lunch, where the food was excellent and the view of the pool even better. We were met there by several rather more world-wise volunteers, who would shepherd most of us newbies to the respite house, while I and one other volunteer tried to make it to the border before sundown.

After a certain number of minibus-related mixups (including missed stops and getting off one stop too soon) and other delays, I reached Muloza, at the border, somewhat after five. M, the health volunteer who was to shepherd me around her own site for a day or two before sending me off to mine, had been trying to call for hours. By the time we met up, dusk was falling, and her house was still some eight kilometers off the tarmac. There was no option but to take… a bicycle taxi.

Lest you assume I mean a nifty little cart with padded seats and maybe a cute umbrella, let me dissuade you.

A bicycle taxi is actually just a skinny guy on a creaking and elderly bicycle. One sits on the back, often directly on the metal rack or occasionally on a thin wedge of padding, while the bike bumps and jolts over every manner of obstacle. Including my giant pack, I no doubt weighed as much as bicycle and man combined. He pedaled me uphill through gorgeous teafields under a spreading sunset for an hour – for the princely sum of fifty kwatcha, or thirty-five cents, while M rode her own bike. By the time we arrived, the man was panting, sweat dripping off his face. I felt terrible, and gave him an extra fifty kwatcha and a drink of water before he headed back.

Of course, this was almost certainly the wrong thing to do. A few days later when J – who is Malawian-sized and certainly no extra trouble -- arrived, the price at the same taxi stop had mysteriously ballooned to one hundred kwatcha. It took extensive haggling to bring it down to eighty, and even after being paid, the taxi dude hung around M’s house in a distinctly disconcerting manner for some little while. Paying over market price, even when the extra tip is warranted, would appear to be inadvisable.

Staying at M’s house was an exercise in adapting to Malawian schedules. She had two meetings and a class at school planned for our two days; all of those items were canceled, generally with news reaching us while we were on our way to the place. I did, however, learn a great deal, simply by having someone to chat with about what kinds of house repairs I might need to contract for, what things should cost, all that jazz. We played around with making candles from wax drippings, and even still, I had time to laze on the cool concrete porch in the 95+ degree heat (this was during the winter, mind) and write letters.

But soon enough it was off to my very own site, in the company of J’s counterpart, Alex, who had helped find the place more than a year ago. A counterpart is an individual working in the Malawian government who is assigned to shepherd a volunteer. It’s not necessary to work with them, of course, but at least every volunteer is guaranteed one good contact with their community and one resource for help with their projects. Both J’s counterpart and mine work for the Malawi Department of Forestry, and both speak fair to excellent English.

My site is close to the little town of Mimosa, which is just about the best name for a village I’ve ever heard. After arriving to the stage by minibus, we strolled down a red-dirt path, past vendors, a government-run tea research institute, tiny little groceries, and the minute local post office. Scarcely a kilometer down the road, near the local water tap, we turned off at a winding forest road. Perhaps three hundred meters further along, and we passed an overgrown wreck of a house, rubbish and shrubbery heaped waist-deep all over the yard, termite trails tracing the brickwork, wasps at work extending their little paper hives upon the porch. For no apparent reason, Alex stopped to chat with the people living just across the road. I stood around and attempted to look pleasant while waiting – I wanted to go see my new pad!

At last, Alex turned to me. “This your landlords,” said he, introducing the couple to whom he was chatting. “Your house are there,” he added, jerking a thumb back towards, yes, that house.

Oh.

Here’s the outside a few days later, after most of the piles of stuff have been disposed of, naturally, by setting alight. The image is a composite; click for better view.

This was my latrine. It had a sunken, unstable mud floor and was a wee bit… overgrown.

I think, at the time, that if I’d known exactly what sort of house most other volunteers got, I’d have been significantly more optimistic about this one. Tim, after all, showed up at his site to discover that he did not have latrine at all – nor a roof on his house, which presented some problems. Averil, from my group, discovered that there was a family living in his place. Emily, also from my group, had a house at which the local Rastafarians and teenage dropouts were accustomed to conduct their business. So really, in retrospect, having termite tracks decorating one’s bedroom from floor to ceiling, paper thin doors that don’t really open anyway, ant hills six inches high through the cracks in the floor, and rafters entirely eaten through isn’t all that big a deal.

I had some repairs started during the three or so days I was there – got locks installed on the doors, such as they were, and helped to begin to clean up the grounds a bit. The house was not, at that point, livable; I stayed with my landlord, who assured me that the major repairs to the house would be accomplished by the time I returned, in two weeks. We arranged a plan to split the repair bill. Most of my time was spent wandering the area – my counterpart was away at the local hospital, but his assistant had time to show me around. Between visiting the GVH (Group Village Headman) finding out where the school, market, and other important places were located, and attending a funeral, the time went quickly. Armed with Mpatso's (my landlord, literally meaning 'gift') promises, I departed for 'language intensive week,' up in Salima.

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Consumer Notice: This blog is a personal journal, and does not necessarily represent the viewpoints or stances of either the Peace Corps or the United States Government. Additionally, due to the "Uncertainty Principle," it is impossible for the reader to find out at the same time both precisely where this blog is and how fast it is moving.

This is the number of Peace Corps Volunteers, staff, and trainees that can be fit into one Land Cruiser: five on each of the two long benches down the back, two in the front seat, one in the driver’s seat. Two lighter girls to sit on laps in the back, and one brave soul to lay down the length of the vehicle, balanced across everyone’s knees. Add a sack or two of potatoes under the forest of legs somewhere towards the back, and off you go: sixteen.

This is what the finished product should look like, prior to wedging the doors shut.

As you can see from this side view, there’s still plenty of headspace available, in order to prevent concussions when the vehicle rockets over rainy-season, ungraded mud roads. Packing volunteers tightly is actually for their benefit, since the compression prevents settling during shipping.

We traveled back and forth in this manner quite a lot. Aside from settling into the village for those two months, we also had technical and language training nearly every day, plus trips to the college on Thursdays for medical (i.e. shots), paperwork, and real bathrooms (not on the itinerary, but vital all the same.) While language classes were held in each village – we were spread out over three to prevent us from overwhelming a single little hamlet -- getting everyone together for the other events necessitated several trips in one of the PC’s much-abused land cruisers, piloted by one of three exceptional drivers. They are also the individuals who will take you to hiking spots as well as to the boma (district capitol – in this case, Dedza township,) to get peanutbutter and cookies, so it’s probably a good idea to make friends.

One of the sights that strikes me oddest on the trips into the boma is the wood. It’s everywhere, used as storefronts, as makeshift roofs, as teetering bridges over gaping voids where sidewalks might once have been. Timber is cheaper here than in many other regions of south and central Malawi, due to the college of forestry. Still, however, it seems odd that such high grades of wood should be used for such mundane tasks. Figured, veneer-quality wood is burned by old men and children every morning beside the roads, for warmth. Ethan, one of my groupmates, an extraordinarily fine carver and an environmental Nazi (in the very nicest way, of course) swiped a stick of the stuff from his host family’s woodpile and carved an elegant Celtic-knot-decorated serving spoon, the wood rich with rippled tones of caramel and cream.

The problem is a common one – even timber of very high international market value has little value here, due to the difficulty of getting unfinished wood out of the country. Malawi has only a few paved roads, and no waterways or rail lines leading out. Mozambique, with seaports, one-tenth the population density (due, granted, to civil war) and far healthier forests, is much more attractive for logging and tree farming. Given the variety of hardwoods that can still be found in Malawi, I am hoping to work on projects involving value-adding to woods, such as bead or carving production, along with the tree-planting to support the timber harvest.

Income generating activities – particularly those with low environmental drawbacks – have formed the bulk of our training. All three villages came to ours for training in the construction of tree nurseries. It’s not particularly difficult – you fill little plastic tubes with good soil and stick in some seeds, possibly scraping the seedcoat first so that the water will enter and the seeds sprout more quickly. Then you water them – every other day, unless it starts getting hot. Fruit tree seedlings may be sold to farmers for around k20 (13 cents) each, while grafted plants sell for k150. If that sounds like very little – well, it is. Demand for fruit trees – trees of any sort, actually – is quite low. Few people see the point in planting trees. There is already enough fruit, given the moderate to low per-capita consumption of the stuff. Many fruit crops, such as mangoes, arrive in such abundance over such a short period that the excess fruits are left to rot on the ground. Preserving methods, such as drying or winemaking, are not widely practiced. As for timber species – people see little point in planting something that cannot be harvested for twenty years or more.

Filling pots.

Emily’s pretty happy with her work.

My host father very, very, much enjoyed sharing his expertise.

Other means of extracting value from wooded areas exist, of course. Medicinal plants can be cultivated, and bees can be kept in mixed timber plantings. For three days, we made beehives out of cheap, locally available materials, hung them, discussed theory and practice of beekeeping, then donned suits and cracked open a few occupied hives. Locally produced hives are far cries from the large, square hives used in the US, stereotypically seen sitting in fields of clover. These hives are suspended between two trees (due to honey badgers) and are mainly just a hollow box with removable topbars, upon which the bees must attach their own wax – no fancy pre-molded combs for these ill-tempered ladies. Apis mellifera scutellata is the local species of honeybee, famous for its aggression – and its introduction into Brazil in 1957. From its interbreeding with local, gentler strains of bee descended the Africanized honeybee; the killer bee.

Fortunately, other PCVs have worked on ways to make sting-proof bee suits out of cheap, locally-available materials, as well.

Soapmaking was another IGA (income-generating-activity) we practiced in our village, this time with the participation of our host families. Soapmaking at its most simple is really just the combination of lye and oil, in this case, plain palm oil. Soap, however, comprises a large portion of most families’ budgets. Used for washing bodies, dishes, and clothes, a single bar of soap (expensive in Dedza, at around k30, or 20 cents) doesn’t last long for a typical family of 5-10. To put the cost in perspective, a day’s wages for unskilled labor, such as picking tea or coffee, is about k150. There turned out to be enough oil and lye to produce a single half-size mold of soap for every host family, which thrilled them no end. The filled molds needed to sit a few weeks, to complete curing – our amays (‘ah-miee’, equivalent to madam,) took their respective molds carefully home and whisked them away, stashing them out of sight.

It wasn’t until later that I realized what was going on. Traditional Malawian culture is hugely generous. If one has two bags of sugar, one is expected to give the second to someone. No need to worry about forgetting: if a relative or friend comes over and notices you have two of something, he’ll probably ask you for one. Or hint that he would like it – or admire it, which is often the same thing. This leads to some fairly odd practices – few people buy anything in bulk, even if it’s significantly cheaper that way. Objects of value are not typically left out where visitors can see them, but are rather squirreled away promptly into the abambo and amay’s bedroom or into odd hiding places behind the ever-present outdated calendars lining the walls – because if the neighbors know you have it, they’ll ask for it.

There appears to be nothing socially wrong at all with asking people for things. My host family requested a number of items from me – painkillers like aspirin, needles, milk powder, anti-fungal cream, a spare bee hive, honey, pepto-bismol, zip-lock bags, thread, antibiotic ointment, coughdrops, and money in the mail after I left. I think that last one was a joke. Pretty sure. The fault was generally mine, of course. For example, when my amay complained of a splitting headache, I wanted to help. Like a dummy, I brought out my *entire* medical kit to riffle through it for some analgesics, after which time the whole family began suffering a range of increasingly strange medical problems (‘wounds in the nose’ which, I was assured, could be cured by a rigorous course of aspirin for no less than one week.) Any objects I forked over were promptly spirited away into the bedroom.

Which is not to say the family didn’t deserve a few extra items – my host mother would arise at four to draw bathing water, heat it, and start breakfast, all so I could get to class by half-past-seven. She washed clothing for me, taught me to wash for myself so I wouldn’t be completely clueless at site, and then pulled my ‘clean’ laundry down from the line in order to rewash it correctly when she thought I wasn’t looking. She scrubbed out my water filter and kept it filled, taught me how to wrap a tchinje and how to cook nsima (a surprisingly grueling task over a three-stone fire.) The family bought for me and cooked delicacies such as little dried fish from the lake, cabbage, and peas. They cheerfully demonstrated how to set the trashpiles alight (Malawin villages are quite clean, not because people throw their most of their garbage into the trashpits, but because the amays sweep the grounds daily and set everything on fire in a billow of sick-sweet black smoke – fallen leaves, topsoil, plastic wrappers, chicken droppings, whatever.) The family pulled up their bean harvest early, shelled them by hand, and dried the beans on the porch, all because I’d expressed in passing an interest in planting native varieties of shelling beans at my site – then they helped me pile the remains of the beanstalks onto my bedsheet and carry it over to the school, where we were learning to make charcoal from agricultural byproducts. They worried constantly whenever I had the slightest sniffle or stomach upset. They permitted me to skip church to go hiking, an activity the purpose of which I’m sure still mystifies them.

More than even all that, they put up with me graciously – even when I forgot my tchitenje and scandalously wandered around the compound in my trousers, and when I darted from the batha wrapped *only* in a chitenje because I’d forgotten soap, and when I went wandering with a whole group of other trainees at dusk for the sole purpose of finding a place to sit and chat. They gave me a great deal of advice, as well as two plates, a mug, a nifty spoon, and more kilos of beans and potatoes than I knew what to do with as a going-away present at the village farewell ceremony.

After more than six weeks with our families, we finally had to say goodbye to our villages, at the appropriately named ‘village farewell ceremony.’ Ceremony and social events are dear to Malawians, so we could not part without one. It was held in one of the villages of the other trainee groups, so our families had to arrive by PC-hired matola. A matola, by the way, is simply a flat-bed truck, onto which as many people, goats, bicycles, and other objects cram as possible... for a fee. They frequently roar down tarmac or dirt roads at high speed, their passengers clinging to the frame and each other for dear life. The matolas can’t legally pass the police roadblocks when loaded with unsafe numbers of people, but otherwise they’re a frequently used form of transport.

How many Malawians fit on a matola? More than PCVs fit in a landcruiser, that’s for sure.

After a handful of speeches, (including one by a representative of the hosting parents, the brunt of which seemed to be that the families couldn’t believe they had actually managed the last few weeks) the dancing was initiated by small groups of drumming eweys, who threw themselves into frenzied, jerky displays of athleticism. After that rousing beginning, we, the volunteers, had to present something we’d ‘prepared’ to entertain our host families. We’d decided on a song – that one by the Beetles, about ‘there are places I remember.’ Keeping in mind that we’d practiced all together perhaps twice, that we were accompanied by a ukulele (albeit very well played) and that none of us can actually sing, I think we did a pretty good job. Silence reigned for long moments after our, uh, ‘recital,’ as if the Malawians were making certain that we were quite finished. After a smattering of hesitant clapping, we were politely ushered from the grass performance area, and the dances resumed.

From time to time, people took coins or small bills out to the dancers, making a show of handing them to an individual designated to take collections. The eweys danced until they were tired, after which other groups, like collections of village amays, took their places.

Ewey drummers and frantically energetic dancers.

The amays with their more demure circle dance – mainly just two steps forward and one back around drummers, while singing and clapping.

The crowd all this attracted was enormous, perhaps five hundred people or more – it was difficult to see the road beyond the crowd, but from time to time the people in the back started or murmured, the children scattering with little screams. Some of the swifter Gule Wamkulu were practicing, or perhaps just raising a little anticipation. The Gule Wamkulu are traditional dancers, generally animists, who dress as spirits and perform at important events. Nowadays, they also perform for money. A major portion of their ritual preparations involve getting as drunk as possible, so the dances can tend towards the somewhat odd. Some of the braver elder people -- and one drunk middle-aged man -- danced brief circuits around the Gule Wamkulu. They paused to try to pull us in, from time to time; Devin, Kirk, and I joined the dance.

Many of the spirit dancers were so burdened with their costumes, they looked on the verge of collapse. On the far right, you can see the ubiquitous crazy drunk, common to public gatherings all over Malawi, who circled the dance field in a curious high-stepping stagger throughout the entire performance.

The costumes were marvelous, though, beyond a doubt.

After a long six weeks, we were nearly proper volunteers. We just had to visit our sites, and then swear in... both of which, as it turns out, are stories in their own right. Next time!

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Warning: This blog is a personal journal, and does not necessarily represent the viewpoints or stances of either the Peace Corps or the United States Government. This blog is for internal use only. Do not apply to broken skin, do not spray in eyes.

This is nsima.

It is made of corn meal – usually not whole corn meal, which is called ‘gaiwa’ and is not highly regarded, but rather of hulled kernels. The evolution of nsima over the last few centuries is illuminating. Corn wasn’t grown in Malawi until its introduction by Portuguese traders, sometime during the late 1800’s. Diets before then likely included native, hardy grains such as millet, as well as a huge number of wild edible fruits, vegetables, insects, and animals. The grains were, like corn, mashed into powder and cooked into nsima. Corn, however, is perhaps the single best crop for producing a maximum of calories on a minimum of land, and the tradition of pounding nsima from a variety of different grains, according to availability, died out, but the tradition of eating nsima as a daily staple did not.

When pounded in a large wooden mortal and pestle by hand, whole maize flour is usually produced, since the process of soaking the kernels, separating them from the hulls, and then drying and pounding the endosperm segment alone is laborious. But maize mills have spread throughout Malawi, and are accessible to many, perhaps most, villagers. Processing maize at a mill is hugely more efficient in time and effort than pounding by hand – but it also results in the typical, bleach-white, nutrient devoid, near-tasteless corn flour that is served in brick-like lumps at least twice a day. I am often asked what, in America, is the ‘staple’ food. They do not mean, for example, bread, which is consumed at some meals but by no means all, nor do many people even eat bread every day. No, they mean a foodstuff without which one cannot be considered to have eaten, without which a meal is just a snack. They mean nsima.

There was lots of nsima during homestay.

The PC goes to quite a great deal of effort to make certain that’s not all there is, of course. They provided our homestay families each with cash in exchange for shepherding us and some k4000 per week in foodstuffs – about USD30, but still many times the normal village expenditure on food for one person. For example, each volunteer’s family received potatoes, a liter of paraffin and a couple of cooking oil, several kilograms of rice and beans, goat and chicken meat, and twenty eggs a week, among other things. Which was not to say that any of us ever saw half that – the supplies were to greater or lesser degree distributed with the usual African efficiency to poorer relations. I was lucky in my placement for several reasons, not least of which was that my family fed me, and did it really quite well. Other volunteers were not so fortunate. My present sitemate, the volunteer living closest to me, was more or less required to fend for herself, save at dinner, which closely resembled the above (boiled kale greens and nsima.)

My abambo (father of the household) was a retired forestry extension worker, which made him an ideal resource for an aspiring environmental volunteer. His kids – all eight of them; a medium-sized family – were more or less grown and had moved at least to other compounds, with the exception of one or two of the sons, so I had an unprecedented degree of privacy and a room actually within the tin-roofed house itself.

My host mother and father, with one of their sons. Their house was amongst the nicest in the village.

Other volunteers tended to have their own mud huts inside the family compound; which meant that whenever they stepped out their door, they did so under the gaze of every small child in their family, plus the neighboring ones. The kids were intensely curious; they’d worm holes through grass fences or climb stumps to get a better view into volunteers’ windows.

Several huts in our village. Homes ranged from mud-spackle with grass-thatched roofs, like the one on the right, to tin-roofed 'palaces' build of fired mud bricks.

The kids were marvelously willing to help, however – whether in teaching chichewa words or carrying a pile of dictionaries home for study. No place in the village lacked for its own pack of pre-teens, laughing, scampering, falling over one another, many dressed in little but ragged bits of fabric the same reddish-tan as the omnipresent dust. Dozens would follow us every time we hiked a small nearby hill, and we took to calling them the Ewes (‘Eee-ways’), after the informal ‘you’ in Chichewa, used only when speaking to the young or to close friends.

One of the trailing Ewes. These kids kept up barefoot over ground for which we needed hiking boots, and none of them ever carried water – though they were quite happy to drink mine.

The youngest groups included both girls and boys; the slightly older ones were boys alone, save for a brief time after school got out each day, when the kidlets would stream past with their books, sometimes carried in plastic bags printed with the UNICEF logo or, in one case, a giant, purple, sequined woman’s purse, much battered, the straps broken and most of the sequins long since gone. Girls in Dedza, as is usual in rural Africa, have no time for play after school; they often have no time for school at all. Instead, they carried firewood, or water.

I carried water perhaps three or four times, managing to slosh at least half of it all over myself in the process, much to the amusement of the neighbors (I consider it an early shower: nothing wrong with that.) I carried a 15-litre plastic bucket on my head, not quite full, with the help of a tchinje rolled into a donut-like padding – a mere thirty pounds of water, and I still had a sore back and neck each time. Twelve-year-old girls typically carried 20 litres (45 lbs) or more, usually without fabric used as head padding, and in metal buckets. Little wonder the girls are frequently too tired to perform well in school.

As perfectly adorable, polite, helpful, and giggly as the children are, they can also be astoundingly cruel to animals. It takes more than a few moments to wrap one’s head around the image of a grinning, gap-toothed four-year-old cheerfully seizing a starving, skeletal kitten by the neck and tossing it off the back of a cart where the child wants to play. Or of four little boys beating delicately-painted chameleons down with sticks from the leaves to which the reptiles cling. Not for food, for chameleons aren’t eaten. It takes a while to realize that this culture has a very different outlook on animal welfare. For example, keeping a dog or a cat here implies no particular responsibility to feed or to vaccinate the animal. If this sounds shocking – and I still find it so – one must realize that Malawians too find our treatment of animals appalling. In the US, we typically feed our dogs more expensive, more nutritionally-balanced food than many villagers here in Malawi can manage, to say nothing of the doggie clothing, collars, and medicines we further spend money on.

I had far fewer compunctions about killing a few varieties of other animals – insects, to be precise. The flies are thick in Dedza at the end of the rainy season, impossible to get away from during the day. One trainee awoke itchy, and found that a column of ants had determined that his bed – and he himself – was the most convenient bridge from floor to thatched roof, and had more or less covered him during the night. Spiders with shellac-black bodies the size of golf balls inhabit the outside corner of the dining room, up at the college of forestry, while beetles as big as a baby’s fist seem fond of buzzing through the windows there and landing on any half-finished dinner plates that might be handy.

It might be just one more peculiar piece of Peace Corps folklore, but I’m told JRR Tolkien was highly inspired by Malawi while penning The Hobbit. Aside from the occasionally monstrous insect life, the landscapes are straight out of Middle Earth, down to many of the names. Malawi has a Shire river valley, and is the terminus for the (Great) East Road, linking Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique. (Sadly, it was not built by dwarves, or it might be in better repair.) Malawian thatched homes seem to spring up from between thickets of vegetation, like hobbit holes. The mountains, weathered granite upthrusts amidst verdant farmland, seem unreal, impossible, and the sky -- set alight every evening by a breathtaking sunset -- is so very, very clear. Even denuded of much of its natural forest, the land breathes enchantment.

Sunset over Dedza's mountains.

The rainbow we were greeted with, the afternoon we arrived in village.

The deforestation is not ‘rampant,’ per se. It has already happened, very thoroughly, and there is no longer any old forest to compare to the unending farmland in much of the central region. Even the graveyard groves, where trees are permitted to grow undisturbed, seem to be less than twenty years old, judging by the size of the trunks. From atop one of the many low mountains around Dedza, one can see little but a patchwork of corn, punctuated by trees like cotton swabs – mango or other fruit trees, their limbs shorn short for firewood – and the larger dark patches of graveyards. And, of course, there’s the dark green pine forest around the college of forestry, and the watersheds it protects.

Trees exist mainly as singlets -- the small copses are graveyards. The college of forestry is dark on the horizon.

The landscape behind Devin is almost exclusively maize fields and graveyards. Which doesn't make him any less pretty, of course.

The college of forestry sells the wood it grows. Fallen firewood, all you can carry in one load, can be had for k10 – about seven cents, or the price of one large mendazi (fried doughball snack.) Whole, hewn logs, the culls not fit for timber, sell for k150 and up. The forest floor, however, tends to be picked clean of firewood over the most accessible parts, even half a dozen kilometers inside the forest’s boundaries. Theft of wood and illegal cutting of timber is pervasive, sometimes with the forest guards’ complicity. One weekend, after language exams, about two-thirds of my training group hiked Dedza mountain, a 3-hour, fairly steep ascent above town. The view from the top is glorious – we could even make out lake Malawi, a smear of darker blue under cerulean skies in the distance.

The view from the top.

Bright takes a rest; Alicia takes a nap...

...while Ethan strikes a Captain Morgan pose and Austin and Sarah canoodle. Yeah, that's right, I said canoodle.

But along the ascent, we noticed a rather unusual number of pieces of discarded clothing laying beside the trail, or in small clearings in the brush. It wasn’t until we came across a woman who literally fled from us that I realized what was going on. It seems one matter for people to steal firewood from the bulk of the government forestry plots; quite another for town residents to thieve wood from the portion of forest that keeps their drinking water pure and prevents mudslides from crashing into the city every rainy season.

Evidently, this year’s hike was tame. The trainers say that last year, they and the prior environmental group came across poachers with dogpacks, illegally hunting bushpigs and baboons.

The newest crop of environmental volunteers have some challenges ahead – above and beyond the prospect of nsima daily.

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Advisory: This blog is a personal journal, and does not necessarily represent the viewpoints or stances of either the Peace Corps or the United States Government. Do not read blog while sleeping or unconscious.

One hundred fifty pounds. That’s what you get to bring, and it seems generous enough.

The PC-provided list of suggested packing runs triple that, including everything from frying pans to pup tents to no less than six pairs of shoes and enough clothing for three new volunteers. Atop that, you’d be forgiven, upon reading the list, for assuming that Malawi lacked certain items of basic necessity, such as, say, soap. And deodorant, cotton swabs, and toothpaste. Blogs don’t seem to mention how volunteers get their hands on those particular items.

It seems now that, perhaps inevitably, half the objects I packed were almost certainly superfluous and at the very least, in excess. On the other hand, I ended up leaving other items likely more useful during the first few months of training and site setup. In other cases, it would simply have been nifty to have been able to pull just the right thing out of my bag. So, in the interests of all those volunteers following, I hereby submit this (non-exhaustive) list of stuff you need and stuff to leave.

A fine last meal. Or maybe two or three. Aside from whatever parties you and your parents or friends threw at home, there are some very nifty restaurants nearby the hotel in DC. If you have a little extra cash to spare, there’s a very fine Spanish tapas bar with excellent wine. Definitely visit the superb pizza, Thai, and Moroccan joints. Enjoy cheese and real spices, in particular, because both will soon be difficult to get, if not impossible.

Camera. On the flight to Johannesburg, you can view the curvature of the earth, and the approach of the coast of Africa like a spreading mantle upon the dawn-frosted sea. Also, you should take pictures of the enormous mountain that everyone’s bags make, all piled together. Besides, your friends will be hassling you for pictures of your ‘hooch’ before you know it. Cameras are subject to moderately high rates of theft, but you can find older models on ebay for twenty-five bucks, if you want to bring two. My Canon powershot A20, ordered at the last minute as a backup, has been a stalwart little device despite sand and moisture.

Your passports. Keep track of both, especially your PC-issued one. If, theoretically, you were to have it on your lap during the landing at Johannesburg, and if you were then to get something else out of a bag, your passport might fall on the floor. And then you might forget it. And then you might get all the way into customs before realizing you were missing it, thus leading to near heart-attack inducing panic and a breathless jog back through miles of oddly sloped corridors to find some dude standing around behind a door you can’t open, holding your passport. And then you’d have to convey mainly by gesture that you’d like him to try squeezing it under the door, which will incredibly just barely work. Theoretically speaking. Oh, and as long as you’re in the Johannesburg airport, try the hand driers in the bathrooms. They’re like toasters – air jets out on both sides of your hands. Pretty nifty.

Porn and/or smut. Oh, not the usual variety, though I’m sure that would be appreciated as well. Upon your arrival at long last in Lilongwe, you’ll probably be, ah, greeted by as many volunteers from your sector as could be tempted in from the wilderness. These are the same people who will likely host a party for you after your official swearing in. But your assignment-mates will love you even more if, say, you happened to bring them a bottle or two of rootbeer from the Johannesburg airport, some *real* cheese, or some trashy celebrity magazines.

An extra bag, empty, inside one of your other bags. This is because you get a great deal of stuff over your few weeks of training, starting with manuals, papers, and a neat little pile of welcoming gifts the very first night, after you’ve been whisked away from Lilongwe via minibus. The campus at Dedza is gorgeous, set into a craggy mountain clearing. The dorm rooms are comparatively spacious, wired for electricity and lighting, and you have real bathrooms. Flush toilets and everything, provided the water pipes aren’t broken or being worked on, and there’s often even toilet paper. The food is plentiful, not bad, and representative of the food you’ll find in the village, though there’s a considerably greater variety offered daily at the college.

Some of the buildings at the dedza college of forestry. Pictured are Sarah, Kirk, Whiz, Audra.

The hike up the mountain above the college. Pictured are Cory, Austin, Averill, and Harry, one of our stalwart environmental skills trainers.

The front of the dormatory block. This will be a welcome sight every Thursday, when you return from your homestay family for an afternoon at the college, because this is where your bathrooms are.

All that clothing: it’s probably not worth wasting precious packing space on any clothing but specialty gear/favorites, and the bare minimum otherwise. Well, you should probably have something to show up in, and Dedza does get chilly between March and August – the coldest nights, in June and July, can easily dip into the 40’s. Girls will need one good skirt for arrival and for fancy events; the rest of the time it will be fine to wear trousers under a tchinje (‘chih-tehn-jee’) – a length of patterned cotton fabric, available in every market for 300-450 kwatcha (USD 2-3.) You will get one with your ‘welcome-to-Malawi’ pile of loot, along with maybe some soap, flipflops, and definitely a whole huge stack of documents. Do bring any clothing items you do not care to buy in an open market (underwear, perhaps) or that you likely cannot buy (good thick hiking socks.) Also have a nice shirt or two, and a t-shirt, since you won’t have opportunities for shopping for perhaps three weeks. Once that opportunity arises, however, t-shirts can be had for around k150, and good men’s dress shirts for k300-450.

That is, of course, provided you have any money left after Ed’s bar. A couple of beers or sodas there, or some plates of their excellent chippies, can really set your minimal trainee’s allowance back – but the bar itself is cute, close, and the service is reasonably good. The covered outdoor seating is a splendid place to chat with your group. Sadly, the kids along the main road to Ed’s have acquired poor Azungu (white person) habits, and will likely shout or beg; while this behavior is far from the worst you will encounter, you might want to take the back trails to Ed’s, if you go.

Soap, feminine hygiene products, shampoo, deodorant, q-tips: also far less necessary than you might imagine. Africa has soap. Really. It has lots of soap, the standard laundry-type bars of which sell for about twenty cents. ‘Nicer’ shampoos start at a couple hundred kwatcha, and are sold in even tiny groceries. Deodorant, q-tips, and other western toiletries are harder to find, and the nice brands are very expensive (k1400 for a single container of gel deodorant) but cheaper brands exist, and all can be had in Lilongwe. Tampons and pads, beyond perhaps a 3-month supply, are not necessary. Soon you will be swimming in them, albeit hopefully only metaphorically. An entire drawer in the Lilongwe house is devoted to them, and half a shelf in the medical office, both of which you may raid at will. (You just have to sign for the medical office ones.)

Trashy novels, giant tubes of sunscreen, aspirin, bulk insect repellant, water purifying drops, water filter, bandaids: all three respite houses in Malawi include well-stocked libraries, populated by hundreds of volunteers-worth of thrillers, travel guides, fiction, and sci-fi mind candy. Bring a book or two for training and the long flight over, or a favorite text for reference, then stock up at the houses. A water filter is provided, and waterguard chlorine drops are very cheep and available. During your first few days, you will also receive a medical kit – a hard-sided briefcase crammed with almost every imaginable drug and medical device you will likely need, including sunscreen and repellant, and a lot more you won’t. Sadly, its few missing medications, such as an antiprotozoan in case of giardia infection, may eventually prove to be… inconvenient. Theoretically speaking.

Peanutbutter and most carbohydrates are not necessary to bring. Between three meals a day and two teatime snacks, you’ll have plenty to eat during training. Peanuts (groundnuts) are grown here and you’ll probably end up teaching one group or another how to make peanutbutter, which is also widely available. While you might want to bring some oreos or other much-beloved treats for special occasions, mediocre cookies and chocolate are available at the groceries in town. Even oreos can be had in a handful of specialty stores in the capital. Everyone’s training group seems to include someone whose friends send them care packages consisting largely of soap, tampons, and peanuts – none of which are rare or difficult to come by.

Things which are difficult to come by include: heavy-duty scissors, hammocks, small kites, favorite spices, garden seeds, a French press for coffee or loose teas, favorite electronics such as an Ipod, laptop, solar battery charger, and/or battery-powered speakers. A mix tape might be nice, since you'll do a lot of riding in the PC vehicles, and otherwise will be sitting through the rap or reggae chosen by the drivers. Oh yes, and good lighting. That last one will bedevil you, once you get to site and the novelty of reading under the mosquito net with a flashlight begins to wear off. Particularly given that you may need the flashlight during the day, as well – house construction in Malawi tends towards tiny windows and dark, low roofs.

And you should probably bring a gift for your host family. Your host family will introduce you to all the most interesting facets of Malawian village existence – eating, bathing, all the many joys of using a squat latrine, 4 AM wakeup calls, carrying water from across town upon one’s head, begging, the astonishing good-spirited helpfulness of children and adults alike, insects like something out of Alien, the endless chores of woman and the endless rounds of homebrewed beer for men, asthma-inducing kitchens, incredible generosity, schoolchildren clutching UNICEF plastic baggies and oversized woman’s purses full of schoolbooks, shockingly meaningless cruelty towards animals, grass-thatched huts that may or may not tumble bits of fired mud onto you on windy nights, tattered rags masquerading as clothing, fat jokes about you or your group mates, toys made of the kind of plastic bags that you were always taught never to give to children, and so, so much more. You really ought to bring them something. Pictures of your family will go over very well, as do postcards or a calendar from your state. Needles and thread are highly prized. If you want to give gifts of great use, small LED flashlights (the lower power draw the better, since batteries are expensive for most villagers) or alternatively powered flashlights (crank or shake charge) would thrill your hosts unutterably.

The rest of your pack, you should fill as the spirit moves. Oh, and the checking attendants for your flight know you’re Peace Corps – a bag which happens to be extra pound or six overweight, or a daypack you want to carry on as a ‘handpurse,’ rarely goes remarked.

Theoretically speaking.

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This blog is a personal record, and in no manner constitutes the views or attitudes of the Peace Corps. Warning: there is an extremely small but nonzero chance that, through a process known as "Tunneling," this blog may spontaneously disappear from its present location and reappear at any random place in the universe, including your neighbor's domicile. The author will not be responsible for any damages or inconvenience that may result.

We leave in a handful of hours.

Peace Corps had the whole Malawi group fly to Washington, DC, for a process called staging. The last day and a half have been packed solid with lectures, group-building games, stories, and information regarding Africa in general. While the staging is billed as a general introduction into the Peace Corps itself -- the policies and politics -- there was a great deal of advice regarding Malawi in particular. One instructor was a prior volunteer in Malawi; the other was from Burkina Faso. Her English was superb, and her tales were fascinating. I was left feeling honored that someone who had been through so much would choose to be here, to lend a hand towards preparing a gaggle of clueless volunteers.

I think that worth noting. None of us, it seems -- as excited and hopeful as we are regarding the future -- really know what we're doing. Everyone is nervous, thrilled, honored, and confused by turns. Like any other humans, we all have strengths in a handful of fields, weaknesses in others. None of us fit the image of the perfect adventurer, and none of us appear, on the surface, to be natural-born ambassadors. Evidently, all this is normal.

And yet, everyone has struggled to be here. Peace Corps is selective. Stories abounded of people having to travel dozens of hours to get esoteric medical forms filled out by disinterested surgeons, of people who went to extraordinary lengths to pay off their debts in the months before leaving. Many people dealt with medical professionals who were difficult to reach, or charged fistfuls of money and took months to sign a few sheets of PC paperwork; or recommendation providers who simply could not be chased down. (I have a great deal of gratitude towards those who wrote mine in such a marvelously timely fashion, BTW. Thank you!) Other volunteers turned down lucrative jobs to be here, or worried themselves sick over the invitation for weeks.

And no one, I think, has done it alone. Aside from the enthusiastic support of friends and family -- and this, for many people, has made the difference -- I think everyone might have been touched by the kindnesses of strangers. Some got their wisdom teeth pulled, or, like me, had other medical work done for discounted rates. I received seeds. I was purchasing daylily seeds (hardly, lovely, and edible non-invasive plants, great for erosion control) on ebay, and I happened to mention to the seller why I was ordering them. He sent treble my order, and shortly thereafter, I began receiving seeds from donors all over the country. Flower, vegetable, fruit, precious hardwoods, drought-tolerant grains -- you name it. Thank you! I hope to be able to post results from my test plots soon. If, of course, customs lets me into the country with my loot. ;) PC does suggest we bring garden seeds; I'm just not certain they expected me to bring quite so many.

It has been snowing here, in DC, evidently for only the second time this year. Huge white flakes frost the period colonial cottages and the massive new hotels alike. The hotel from which staging was run is ideally located -- close to a bevy of superb restaurants, and within easy walking distance of the metro. We have all braved the cold a number of times, though with twenty-one people, we've only eaten together as a single group once (in a tiny Thai restaurant, of which we occupied nearly the entirety, and in which I had the most delightful fried tilapia ever.) My roommate and I had our last dinner here in the states together at a delicious (and likely far too upscale for the way we were dressed) tapas joint, and Coldstone ice cream afterwards -- my first time to experience the place. Wow, now that's an icecream! A very fine final repast, I must say. ;)

We have six hours left, now, before we head to the airport, and then to Johannesburg. Sadly, I'll likely not have internet or phone access for the next two months, as we'll be living with our host families in the little pottery-producing town of Dedza. Peace Corps tells us time and again to let family and friends know that 'no news is good news', but I do hope to write.

Drop me a note. I'd love to hear from you.

Cheers, and best wishes!

*This blog is a personal record, and in no manner constitutes the views or attitudes of the Peace Corps. Caution: Blog does not enable reader to fly.*

Hello there! I'm a biochemistry geek and a tropical plant nut, and I'm embarking on the long road to Malawi tomorrow. Welcome to the blog.

Just in case southeast Africa isn't your strongest suit of geographical savvy, Malawi is a little country, slightly smaller than Pennsylvania, tucked just to the west of Tanzania, cupped by Mozambique, south of Kenya. (No, I didn't know this at first, either.) When I first applied for a volunteer assignment with the Peace Corps, in August of last year, I was nominated for agroforestry in western, typically French-speaking, Africa. By the time the deluge of paperwork ended, however, I had missed the mission deadline, and was offered Malawi instead. I couldn't be more pleased.

Malawi is subtropical, monsoonal, mountainous, and landlocked. A fifth of the land area is occupied by lakes, from which come the brilliant cichlid fish species so popular in aquariums (and, in the case of tilapia, upon dinner plates) the world over. The landscape can be spectacular, and the scuba diving even better. Fauna and flora are both abundant and varied in the national parks. The country appears to be on the cool and temperate side for Africa -- low lying shorelines may climb to the low hundreds (38C) during the summer, and mountainsides may chill to the the forties (5C) during the winter nights, but it's a far cry from Mali's one-hundred-thirty (55C) degree days. Most of the country receives between 30 and 45 inches of rain, almost all of it from December to March. The population is famously friendly -- Malawi is frequently called 'The Warm Heart of Africa.'

Malawi has its share of challenges. The human population is some twelve million, with an average life expectancy of 42 and a birthrate of nearly 6 children per woman. Female literacy hovers around fifty percent, and GDP per capita, adjusted for Purchasing Power Parity, is USD $800. AIDS, Malaria, and a host of other diseases are widespread -- the former afflicts between 15-30% of the adult populace. 90% of inhabitants are engaged in agriculture, often subsistence cultivation of monocultures such as corn; deforestation and soil degradation are rampant.

I'm still not certain what, precisely, I will be doing as part of agroforestry in Malawi. I have packed (perhaps far too many) seeds, both of unusual crop varieties, and of tropical and subtropical fruits, nuts, and hardwoods. One custom reducing land productivity is that most individuals do not farm during the dry season, as irrigation is not widespread. But there are crops which should grow well under arid conditions, such as sorghum, tepary beans, amaranth, quinoa, or millet. The second of these fixes nitrogen, which improves the soil particularly for nitrogen-hungry crops such as corn, without having to add expensive fertilizer. There are also nuts and fruits which produce all year long.

I expect the first two months of in-country training will familiarize everyone a little more with what has been tried, and what hasn't, by aid organizations. The pamphlets describe a fairly busy schedule -- they also seem to imply that internet and phone communication will be neigh impossible to come by. If you would like to get ahold of me, drop me a letter!

Peace Corps

Tenley Schofield, PCT

PO Box 208

Lilongwe, Malawi,

Africa

Postage to Malawi should be about 90 cents for the first ounce.

Oh, and I nearly forgot: This blog is a personal journal, and does not necessarily represent the viewpoints or stances of either the Peace Corps or the United States Government. Batteries not included.