Permaculture is the coolest thing I’ve learned about since coming to Malawi. I’d never heard of it before Peace Corps and was introduced to this beautiful system of sustainable agriculture and design by former PCVs Kristof and Stacia Nordin who served in Jamacia and also Malawi. Now they’ve been here for the past 13 years and are raising their 7 year old daughter here. They live in a village and practice permaculture as a way of life. They are one of the best examples of “practicing what you preach” that I have ever met. Anyway, they helped out for the first week or so of my Peace Corps training last year and got to tell us all about Permaculture. I fell in love with the idea immediately. I’ve explained it before I know. Gardens of Eden, diversity, mimicking nature, low-input, organic,….etc. That’s what permaculture looks like, and its pretty awesome for all of these crazy world problems we’re having related to fuel, sustainable food and clean water, and the like. It requires thinking and planning and integrating design and planning housing and landscape into a super-productive food making system. (Or anything else you might need to produce). It’s not just about idealistic hippies (though that is an important part). It sounds sort of abstract, because it would probably be boring for you if I explained the whole shebang, but you can google it and find that is one of the fastest growing movements right now.

As I’ve gone through sixteen months now of service as a PCV, I am especially grateful to the Nordins and to Hope Thorton, the manager of Nature’s Gift Permaculture Center outside of Lilongwe, for inspiring me about permaculture. It’s funny how the more I pursued it, the more people popped out of the woodwork that were also interested in Permaculture. Two individuals near my village, the local hospital, many people I got to meet at the International Permaculture Convergence, and, now, the 22 other individuals who are attending this Permaculture Design Course with me. I’m now a certified “permaculturalist!” They run these courses all over the world, to train people. This course is 12 days long, intensive, and not cheap. I’m pretty eternally grateful to GTZ, the German NGO that sponsored me to attend. We learn all about the principles of permaculture, mapping the landscape, strategies for water management, companion planting, and all the necessary ecological principles to create sustainable, renewable environments that integrate buildings, plants, animals, water, etc. So I got to skip out of my village for a couple of weeks and bond with other African permaculture people. Our group was so fun and diverse. Several Malawians attended, students from the Natural Resources College, the librarian from Chancellor College, a pair from Germany, a few from South Africa, one other American, etc. The course is facilitated by Alex Kruger who practices permaculture in South Africa.

We stayed Kumbali, the place where Madonna stays when she comes here, only that we are staying in the “cultural village” (which is still really nice), whereas Madonna stays at the lodge, which just declined to accept Bill Clinton this week since they were already booked. The two previous evenings were entertaining as we were visited by two separate groups. The first was a group associated with the organization, “Feed the Children;” people who had donated to help distribute “Vitameal,” a product made by “NuSkin.” Yesterday’s group was a bunch of people wearing ties and very shiny shoes from the World Bank. They just had their conference here in Malawi. The “Feed the Children” group was composed of Americans, Chinese and Japanese people. They came in at about 7pm and a few of us snuck over to overhear the slideshow presentation the Feed the Children representative was giving, promoting “Vitameal,” a vitamin-fortified maize porridge. The translators for the Japanese and Chinese people interpreted the messages of the presentor: “….these kids are orphans….they have been abandoned by their families…, you can tell everyone you helped at an orphanage. Everyone knows what that means… Mothers with HIV/Aids must stop breasfeeding their young children. They should, instead, go on Vitameal.” He was a larger man, that appeared to be sweating, rushing his speech, and had the precarious tone of a salesman. We found his talk very unsettling, especially in the context that we were there to learn about sustainable solutions to some of the problems of hunger. My friend and I later struck up conversation with one man about what he was doing there, and we sort of did some spy work, letting him tell us all about things we already knew. The following morning they would all get up early at the hotel, and go out to distribute the Vitameal. In the meantime, tonight, they had the opportunity to get a village experience, eat local food, hear local musicians, and watch and participate in local dancing. It was nice, and we all tried not to be too cynical about the whole thing. We got to dance too!

A guy I met at the course is South African but stays at the lake. He asked me what kind of work I was doing. I mentioned, among other things, that I was teaching an improved beehive, the Malawi Standard Hive. Why, he wanted to know, was I teaching Malawians how to farm bees? They have, after all, been raising bees for hundreds, or maybe thousands of years. I responded that I really didn’t know much about bees, but did know how to make a hive that is easier to manage, a top-bar hive with removable bars to transfer the colony and harvest honey. Still, he was right. There isn’t all that much wrong with the log hives people here are using. The argument goes that people cut down indigenous trees to make them, and the improved hive should be made from pines or bluegum. But if these trees were harvested sustainably, it shouldn’t be that much of a problem… Why is he allowed to take the meaning out of my Malawian job? Peace Corps is an interesting job.

Anyway, I got to learn some sweet environmental stuff and meet a bunch of really great friends, and dance a lot! And now I get to do my design at my house in my village and all my neighbors can continue to call me crazy for not sweeping my yard and mulching instead.

Viva, permaculture VIVA!

I am watching the World Cup, Cote d’Ivoire is playing Portugal, from the sitting room at the place I affectionately call the “Awesome Store.” I can hear the yells from the video show room that the Shaba brothers also own. They charge 30 kwatcha per game and people can watch all the World Cup that they want. Yesterday I watched Japan play Cameroon with the two new Japanese volunteers here. Although we arrived late and should have sat towards the back, we were forced into front row seats. It was all men, apart from one young girl carrying a sibling on her back, maybe there with her father. But today I am alone in a room ringed by CDs, DVDs, videos, tapes, photo albums, and electronic equipment. The owner of the store, Mapopa Shaba, and I, just finished our second computer training on my laptop. These guys are quite successful, owning a big general store, video show room, and resthouse. This is where Malawians beat me at Scrabble every Sunday. This is Malawi?

It’s a nice end to a day that was spent at my old village, Sibande, visiting people who I hadn’t seen for months. The visit was prompted because the grandmother I used to stay with had been very sick with Malaria. I visited her in the hospital last week, and thought I’d pay her a visit at home today. Expectedly, it turned into a four-hour event where I went to every house in the village and was alternately welcomed, force-fed nsima, and yelled at for my prolonged absence. This village was not happy when I moved 2km away last December, and I don’t consider these visits to be one of the highlights of my life here in Africa. It takes a special state of mind to make these visits.

Today I am ok with these extremes. Typing on my computer, seeing people in the stadium in Durban, watching the sport that was, at one time, the center of my existence. Coming immediately from holding small children, dressed in rags and covered with flies, eating nsima and a cucumber-like vegetable cooked to a slimy paste with peanut flour and baking soda in smoky kitchens with thatched roofs. Mentally, I am ok. Today. So many days, though, it affects me too much; this world of dichotomies. Of wealth and poverty. I think about it too much. I feel it too much.

Last weekend, I felt this unease, which I usually feel at lodges. On Friday I biked 40 km to the Luwawa Forest Lodge, North of me and 12 km to the East of my sitemate, Haakon. Haak had visited the lodge before and had got us positions volunteering at the annual mountain bike race there. About 30 people entered; the Malawi Cycling Team, based out of Blantyre, were in attendance, the Malawian bartender of the lodge, and various ex-pats working in Lilongwe and Blantyre came up with their families for the event. Members from the Blantyre team took the first seven spots. One went by my post, where I was marking the trail 15km in, with only one shoe. They had good mountain bikes and shirts and shorts that said “Malawi” or other local sponsors. He just must have forgotten, or lost, a shoe. The 50km race was a grueling route, tracking through the mountains of the southern Viphya plateau, but all but a few participants finished. The leaders from the Blantyre team finished in 2.5 hours. The last of the Azungus came in at about 5 hours. So for two nights we had free beds, hot showers, and delicious food with Malawians, British, one Brazilian from Mozambique, and even the French Ambassador and his wife (they didn’t race). It was especially fun hearing the Ambassador’s very vocal daughter yell in French during their team’s World Cup game. Luwawa is an international lodge in the middle of Malawi; a beautiful place with a stunning location. I gradually settled down, after, as always, feeling a bit strange amidst such diverse people, money, and having come straight from the village (especially when the other guests present were from the city). It’s good for the area and surrounding villages to have tourism, but it doesn’t change the fact that it always makes me feel sort of strange.

One time I didn’t feel so strange at a Lodge was a few weeks ago when I helped teach at a girls’ camp in Senga Bay. That camp was for Malawian women in Form 3 and Form 4, the equivalent of our Junior and Senior in high school. And they were the guests of honor. This camp was organized by two phenomenal health volunteers, Courtney and D’Lynn, and was a follow-up for girls who had attended previous camps. It focused on issues such as health, nutrition, career development and goal setting, and income generating activities. It was attended by about 25 girls and 5 “young professionals” – women with some experience who served as mentors. I met up with the group in Salima, a town on the lakeshore, and we waited with the girls until our truck came. We then had 10 km down a bumpy dirt road with the girls singing the entire time. At the camp the girls got undivided attention on THEM. Crucial in a culture where they are, honestly, often regarded as second-class citizens, responsible for doing household chores and being submissive. These girls, though, were anything but these stereotypes. They were, predominantly, boisterous, confident, educated, and well-spoken. They soaked in the information presented to them, participating in workshops on business skills, sewing, making jam, sat through talks from the American Embassay (featuring visitors from schools in Miami Dade County), and topics such as “Women in the Media,” and took break times to swim in Lake Malawi. The days were packed with activity, and I did some enjoyable assistance in addition to co-facilitating with Melanie an allotted slot on nutrition and permaculture. Before we knew it the week was done, the girls had survived condom demonstrations and questions from the “sex bucket,” where they were encouraged to submit anonymous questions, and Courtney and D’Lynn put them through a graduation ceremony. Then we were back on the truck (packed like a real matola this time since they switched for a smaller vehicle), with the girls again singing all the way back. From there myself and two freinds stopped by my nurse friend Eda’s at Ndi Moyo health center in Salima, where she made moringa tea for us and we checked out the natural medicine garden. From there it was an attempt back to my village at Champhia, which was my first genuinly unsuccessful transportation experience. I found myself stranded at dark in the Kasungu bus depot and stayed the night at the District Assembly resthouse, which fellow PCV Melissa recommended to me. The next day I was, again, walking down the dirt road to Champhira.

5/03/10

To: Leany Jack

"We would like you to complete your promise.

a) You promised to help us with materials e.g. sprayers 2) treadle pump, lastly with some allowances of part and parcel of seminaries done so far:

So please do what you can at the mean time!! We can work an extra harder, an extra mile, civic educating the people about the permaculture, with encouragements. Time is money! Time lost shall never be regained. Your programme itself should have funds to operate fully and expectantly!"

This note was co-signed by a member of my permaculture group, as well as the co-facilitator. I found it dropped through the top of my door when I got home from work one day, and it infuriated me.

It's funny, because the guy that wrote it was, what I had considered, the most motivated person in the group. He adopted some permaculture principles, such as inter-cropping and mulching, and was even using urine (urea) as fertilizer. So you can imagine how shocking it was for me to receive this note, completely out of the blue. Of course, I had made none of these promises. Permaculture doesn't involve using sprayers and Peace Corps volunteers do not give allowances. This was all made very clear at the beginnning of the training. Don't really know what went wrong. The co-facilitator didn't actually sign his name, so it's only one guy who I had to stop talking to.

This kind of discouragement is commonplace. One of the most difficult things to do, I've found, is finding the right people to work with. Even when you work with the right people for months, something like that might happen. AAAH.

On a more positive note, we've completed about 6 permagardens now, and people seem to be liking them. We can usually do them in 1 or 2 days with the family, and people like having their veggies close to their house instead of having to go to their field. It's a simple garden, but it requires some digging. As with most things, until it's maintained (or not), it's hard to tell if the family really wants it, or is doing it because I gave them the idea. :)

Despite the fact that I often get discouraged and frustrated in the village, there have been alot of recent successes in the projects we've been working on in Champhira. This past month, my neighbor, Fraser, and I taught two families to build Malawi Standard Beehives. I learned how to do this in training, and my friends Scott and Yoel came last September to help me with a demonstration in my area, so I felt confident doing it myself six months later. (It was sort of annoying that for six months no one asked me to teach beehives, after that initial training, but now it seems to be paying off. Delayed gratification). To my suprise, one of the guys actually made 5 hives in one week. We did a hanging demonstration, and I'm selling him wire to hang the hives at half price.

There have been lots of good distractions from work, which has been nice! The new group of volunteers swore in at the end of April, and lots of us from the second year group went to their ceremony at the ambassador's house in Lilongwe for that. Then we had mid-service training for a few days in Dedza, and as always, had a great time together. We mostly chatted about what's been going on at our sites, how we can help with future trainings for the new group, and also about what we should be doing for our second and final year of service here. I like going to Dedza because it is beautiful, mountainous, and cool, like my site. My friend, Jazmian and I went jogging every day and we had dance parties at Ed's bar. We also visited a natural medicine doctor, named Nelson Moyo, who I'd been in contact with relating to some projects I'm doing with Moringa trees and medicinal plants. He works for Anamed (Action for Natural Medicine in the Tropics) He's sort of famous around here and it was fun getting to meet him and drink hibiscus flower tea.

In between swearing in and MST I took a day trip out to the lakeshore to meet up with Eda from Ndi Moyo Palliative Care Center (for cancer and HIV patients). They have lots of Moringa trees there and Eda was making me some moringa powder for a project we're trying to start with my hospital in Champhira with their nutrition department. Basically they get milk powder and peanut butter trucked in from the World Food Program or other organizations as supplements for undernourished kids, and they run out of supplies all the time. Leaves from the moringa tree are ridiculously high in vitamins and minerals and even have protein, and can be grown in most areas, so we're trying to help the hospital consider using moringa as another possible component to their nutrition program. If you 'google' Moringa, you'll find it called lots of things like "The vitamin pill tree" or "Miracle Tree," but really its just one of many possible ways to help combat malnutrition, the most important of which is, of course, a varied diet. Anyway, Eda is drying and pounding Moringa leaves for me so we can start using the powder in porridges at the hospital before their trees grow to the height they can cultivate.

This story is about a witchdoctor. I met a nice witchdoctor in my area. If you aren't sure what a witchdoctor is, it is basically a person who practices traditional medicine and natural medicine. This sort of incorporates natural plants and a belief in traditional religion including spirits and things like that. My neighbor and I went to visit this guy because we are interested in promoting natural medicine in the community since visits to the hospital are often expensive and unproductive, and natural medicines can be just as effective (most western medicines are just derivatives from tropical plants anyway). So we wanted to see what he uses for plants. He showed us around his place and gaves us seedlings for Neem, a highly valued medicinal plant. He showed us his Natural Medicine certificate, and explained to us how he determines if a patient is being truthful in their complaint when they visit him. Before he would let us leave he said he would demonstrate this village lie-detector test for us. My neighbor and I had to wait in one hut while the supplies were readied in another. We were then called into the second hut and instructed to sit on the floor, in front of a medium-sized clay pot with a flat winnowing basked resting on top of it. The witchdoctor removed the winnowing basket to reveal what looked like a stone and a necklace inside of it. He explained that this was the magic that ennabled the whole process to work. It sounded simple enough: he would chant the person's complaint over the clay pot and basket, while tapping lightly on it with his fingers. If the complaint was valid, the wicker basket would rise off of the clay pot, hovering in the air. Before he actually started, however, the witchdoctor lamented that the basket was too large, and therefore too heavy to lift off the clay pot. Instead, if the complaint was vaild, the basket would merely spin on top of the clay pot. I was skeptical. We sat there on the mud floor while the witchdoctor began chanting over the clay pot and basket. Since none of us had illnesses to complain of, he merely asked the pot and basket and the 'magic' inside if it was happy that we had come to visit. He chanted, chanted and tapped with the fingers of both hands and within seconds the basket was spinning around on top of the clay pot. To an observer, the witchdoctor was, very obviously, spinning the basket with his fingers. My neighbor and I cast sidelong glances at one another. We thanked him for the nice demonstration, and left.

I can't really overemphasize how different it is here. Some volunteers say how the longer they stay here, the more they think life in Malawi really isn't that different. But I don't really feel that way.

much love, especially to Jim, who is now home hopefully on the way to opening his second tofu shop in the states. You are missed!

-Leany Jack. (the new favorite of my malawian names)

March!!!! I can't really believe it's already MARCH. I have been in this crazy country for an entire year. That is a long time without cheese. OK, i've eaten cheese a few times, but not very much. We got to see the new group of environment volunteers get off the plane last Sunday, so that was pretty special! What a crazy feeling to remember what it felt like to first step foot in Malawi. Many PCVs went, and we all stood up on the observation deck at the airport with the Peace Corps flag and an American flag and waved and shouted as they got off the plane (this was really easy to do since most volunteers had consumed a few adult beverages in celebration of the occasion). Then we all introduced ourselves and they were whisked away into vehicles and taken to Dedza for training. They arrived the day after my parents left from their visit here, so from the airport I went back to Champhira to my village!

My parents' visit was very exciting! Wow. Really exciting actually - I mean, more exciting than my normal life is, that's for sure. We had several interesting moments, including a dug-out canoe ride, crocodile sighting at a lakeshore-lodge, bilge-pump breaking on what i like to refer to as the 'matola of the sea' crappy lake malawi boat (thought maybe we could possibly sink?), and flooding up over the hood of the car on the way back from the safari. I like to think that my parents got to experience 'real Africa.' Anyway, you can ask them and they can tell you all about it! We did also have some purely awesome moments, like getting to see a lion transferring her cubs - they change their location every three days so hyenas can't get them, and a leopard hunting impala in Zambia. We also went on a boat safari in Malawi and saw some big elephants very close! We visited several beautiful lodges and ate delicious food! We rented a car so that we could see and do more, since public transportation can take so long, be unreliable, and sometimes stressful, though at first to go to my village from Lilongwe, we did take a bus.

So, before the car-renting part of the trip, we spent a few days in my village, so that 'bapapi' (the parents) could see how I live and recover slightly from jetlag. To get their 'katundu' to my village from the junction with the main road, we strapped it to some bike taxis (exactly what they sound like) and we walked the few km to my house. Mostly we cooked food over the fire, and they got to hand-wash clothes. They were supposed to weed my gardens, but daily life activities took too long or something so when I returned from my meeting I found them resting in my house! Other than that, we visited with a LOT of people. I feel sort of bad about the amount of people I made them visit in my village, but jealously is really a problem (its a huge honor for white people to visit), and there were certain people I knew would give me a very, very hard time if they were not visited. So we walked around and entered houses and greeted everyone and took pictures and ceremonially planted trees and ate alot of food. It was exhausting. The last night we had a big dinner with Daisen and Shota, my Japanese site-mates. They made sushi (don't worry, no raw meat. that would just be stupid) and my parents bravely tried goat meat, even after seeing where I bought if from :) (its not like the freeze-your-bum-off freezer section of the supermarket, that's for sure. my 'cut' was made with an axe.) so we had a nice dinner complete with homemade wine and Japanese alcohol. The next day our vehicle came and picked us up right at my door, which was pretty fancy! I thought that was the start of my purely relaxing vacation (driving in a real car, staying in nice lodges...) and to a large extent, it was, but it also turned out to be challenging as well!

I definately didn't anticipate how challenging it would be, but I guess it makes sense. This isn't, after all, Aruba or Hawaii. You have to be careful all the time! Especially for those just stepping foot in a developing country. In the city, there are holes (that we like to call 'azungu traps') on the side of the road (no sidewalks), and where there aren't holes there are protruding bits of metal and the ground is uneven. The drivers are pretty much possibly crazy, so in the city its really important to be aware or else you risk being run over. You obviously need to be cautious of which water you drink, and how food is prepared. Oh yeah and the Malaria thing. That's a concern. And heat. And where you are going to go to the bathroom (though I definately think the pit latrine is better for the environment and generally isn't too bad to use as long as you build up those thigh muscles.) And roads. It's rainy season, and even in the dry season, roads are bad. I didn't worry too much about crocs on the lakeshore, which I've swam in on numerous occasions. That is until we arrived at one of the nicest lodges I've been to, and heard the previous day a croc attacked a guy about my age and ripped his foot in half. We spent the entire day just watching it swim around and deny the bait the owners had put on the rocks to try to catch it. Apparently they are hard to shoot?

Mostly what was stressful was that when things don't go as planned here, there is no AAA. There is no 911. Maybe you are actually just in a rural village in the middle of nowhere. And there are some times that really help you understand why people here are so strong, so unflustered, and so in touch with their mortality. It's a very interesting and different view of life, that maybe one gets when they live absolutely in the middle of nowhere with only a dirt path connecting them from the nearest village, and many hours walk from the nearest hospital.

I learned that you need to have like 8 backup plans for your plans. Either that, or you are just going to have to be flexible. And I don't mean it in the AmeriCorps ways. I mean, really really flexible, and maybe be put in some very uncomfortable situations. Here is one example: One of the lodges we went to could only be reached by boat or by foot. It is one of the most beautiful places I've been to, so I wanted my parents to get to see it too. There is a lake ferry, a pretty big boat that runs up and down the lake and to the islands and Mozambique once a week. I planned to leave the lodge on Monday, on its regularly scheduled trip going south to Nkhata Bay. Well, Sunday evening word reached the lodge from the nearby village that the ferry was not running that day, but not to fear, another, smaller boat would go instead. Our worries subsided and we went to sleep, waking the next day to wait two hours past the scheduled arrival of this boat. It finally did come, and we went onboard, with lots of villagers, babies, chickens, and more 'katundu' - stuffffff. The boat could, maybe, have supported 25 people, but we had a lot more than that in there. There were no lifejackets, save the one the captain was wearing. This was slightly disconcerting. It became pretty clear it would be a long day, as each village we came to we stopped, anchored, and they paddled another small boat (that was being dragged behind us) to shore, picking up new passengers. After three hours, we had moved 15 km, 1/4 of our entire journey. With the lodge owners, who were also in the boat, going to restock their supplies, we hopped off at a village where there was a long, and very bad road going to Mzuzu, the northern city, hoping to find a truck instead of staying on the boat. Unfortunately, there were no trucks available and we had to drag our things back onto the boat. After this stop, things started going better, as for unknown reasons, we were no longer stopping at every village. About five hours into the journey, though, my attempted napping was stopped when I noticed slight panic in the boat and water spurting up from under the floorboards. The boat guys quickly ripped up the boards to reveal enough water to cause concern and require two men constantly bailing for about 30 minutes. A third mended the bilge pump. The floorboards were then replaced and periodically checked, and the situation stabilized. We arrived at our destination after about 8 hours! Quite an adventure. If you want to discuss building docks on the shore of Lake Malawi, my dad would be happy to converse with you. So then, we got to the super nice lodge for some much needed relaxation...and heard about the crocodile... and such went the trip!

So now they have returned and can watch all the movies they want, and sit on comfortable couches, and drink lattes, all of which I look forward to doing in a year and some months. I am really appreciating being American now. If you don't appreciate being American, you should do something to remind yourself how awesome it is. It's Lent - give up chocolate (and send it to me). Or only take public transportation (I'm telling you it is WAY better than in Malawi), or I don't know do something else crazy to make you think how freaking AWESOME it is to be American!

Now that I am back in the village, I am happily settling back down to my slow but sure life, where cooking and cleaning take half my day, and darkness takes half, and I am fortunate to get in a some work with the members in my sustainable agriculture group, and I am proud of myself if I chat with 5 people in a day, or don't get angry at the endless stream of interruptions when I'm trying to work in my gardens. The latest focus of my work is streamlining Permaculture and encouraging villagers to do Permagardens, which is a small-scale, easily manageable organic garden that they can have right at the home to increase food diversity and security. I still am riding my bike alot, and trying to stay out of the mud. Monica and I will go down to Dedza next week to be "resource volunteers" and answer the new volunteers' questions! That will probably feel really awesome. Especially because we like to pretend we are really sorority girls on spring break here to 'save the orphans' and of course have a few beers, if time allows. We are pretty good at it, and pretty obnoxious. I hope this doesn't undermine our pure and noble intentions of actually being here and helping people... TALUTA!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and New Year's! I put up some pics from a lakeshore hike I did with some friends for the holidays. Hope you enjoy. We walked through villages and slept on the beach for 5 days! Anyway, I am going to use the blog right now to primarily ask for some money for a friend of mine...

SO this is the information I have about my neighbor who is asking for some help financially for his kids to go to school. Tons of Malawians, of course, want help for school or other things, but it's pretty impossible to help everyone. Also, lots of people,especially men, do waste money on things like beer, or maybe aren't very motivated and aren't working as hard as they could be. Mr.Ngulube is not only very motivated and competent, he also helps me inso many ways, everyday with getting things done at my house, findingpeople to cement or get firewood, etc, and just generally being concerned with my safety and well-being. I would really appreciate it if you could spread the word to family and friends about this, so if they want to contribute they can. The link to the paypal account I set up for this is at the top-right of my blog. Here's some info about Mr. Ngulube and his kids:

Mr. Fraser Ngulube, my neighbor, is a Forest Guard in Champhira,Mzimba district in Malawi. He works for the Department of Forestry,helping to manage natural resources at the Champhira Forest Reserve.His work includes leading many tree nursery projects. Additionally,he raises pigs for sale and farms maize, cassava, tomatoes, onions,and many other crops, both for home consumption and for sale. He is married to to Mrs. Jen Phiri. They have seven children.

Unfortunately, Mr. Ngulube's brother passed away last January, and according to culture in the northern region of Malawi, he has acquired responsibility for his late brother's two wives, as well as their eight children. (that's alot of kids). Part of this assistance isfinancial, and with his Forest Guard monthly salary of 11,000 Malawi kwatcha (about $78 USD) in addition to sales of his pigs and farm produce, he is now struggling to pay school fees for his children.Though he does not, as of now, keep good records of his finances, he has asked that I help him begin to document his expenditures and revenue.

He currently takes out two loans, one from a village club and and one from an individual, at a total of 15,000 kwatcha ($100 USD) each school term to pay the fees.

Following are the details for school fees for the kids he's responsible for, so you can have some idea of how much secondary school costs here. Secondary school has grade levels - Form 1 throughForm 4 (like freshman to senior). Each with 3 terms. After Form 2,students that pass obtain a JCE (Junior Certificate of Education), and after passing Form 4 they get an MSCE (Malawi Standard Certificate of Education). MK = Malawi Kwatcha.

Temwa - Form 4

Fees (per term) 5,000 x 3 terms = MK 15,000

Books and pens 800 x 3 = MK 2,400

Pocket money = 500 x 3 = MK 1,500

Total = MK 24,300

Approx. USD $175 for Temwa to complete secondary school.

Denis - Form 4, Zomba Police Secondary School

Fees 10,000 x 3 = 30,000

transportation 1,000 x 3 = 3,000

books and pens 800 x 3 = 2,400

pocket money 500 x 3 = 1,500

Total = MK 36,900

Approx. USD $265 for Denis to complete secondary school.

Florence - Form 2

Fees 2,000 x 3 = 6,000

books and pens 800 x 3 = 2,400

Total = 8,400

Approx. USD $60 for Florence to finish Form 2

Fraser - Form 2

Fees 2,000 x 3 = 6,000

books and pens 800 x 3 = 2,400

Total 8,400

Approx. USD $60 for Fraser to finish Form 2

Any contributions would be greatly appreciated. You can give a donation to an individual student, or just make a general contribution. If anyone wants more information about this family or the students I am happy to provide it, take pics,etc. Just ask!

Thanks alot in advance!

-Sincerely, Lyn

The above quotes were taken from people I met at the International Permaculture Conference 2009 (IPC09), which was held in Malawi. I think I’ve explained it before, but Permaculture is just a fancy way of saying a system of sustainable agriculture. Or maybe the closest we can get to sustainable agriculture, with current knowledge. Permaculture encompasses a wide range of topics part of an effort to care for the land and increase food security and nutrition. There are individuals and organizations beginning to adopt it in Africa, and there are many followers of Permaculture in developed and developing countries throughout the world, as I learned when I stumbled into IPC09.

It was a pretty cool thing that I found myself at this conference with upwards of 400 beginners and experts in Permaculture from 50 countries across the globe. Last year the conference was in Brazil. I happened upon this opportunity when I told my bwana (boss) at the office in Lilongwe that I had begun trying to form a group of farmers interested in learning and practicing permaculture. After his site visit to Champhira, I got a comfortable, air conditioned ride to Lilongwe and was delivered the next morning to Kumbali Village, made famous by Madonna, just outside of Lilongwe, where the conference was being held. We heard from respected Permaculture leaders as well as Malawi’s Secretary of Health and Nutrition, Dr. Mary Shawa. People talked about biogas and making composting toilets, but mostly about agriculture in Africa. As you can imagine, this conference had lots of hippie type people with dreadlocks and not wearing shoes, and some other people too. I loved it.

I’ll tell you why like permaculture, and why I’m trying to promote it while I’m here visiting Malawi. First of all, relatively speaking, it involves the input of little money. People here are used to waiting for handouts. From the government. NGOs. Random foreigners. Anyone. This makes some people here lazy or feel helpless. Permaculture focuses on doing it yourself, with what you have; thinking creatively and solving problems along the way.

Permaculture is about restoring the land to more closely resemble its prior state, when people used lots of local trees and plants for food and medicine, and the soil was fertile. Before maize and fertilizer. Restoring diversity and abundance of foods. I like it because it’s sort of like making little Gardens of Eden everywhere.

“Dende is a problem.” “Dende” is the side dish to nsima. So many times a week, people say this to me. Why, oh whyyyy is it a problem???? I don’t understand. If you plant other stuff, besides maize, you will have food to eat. But there is so much focus on maize, from the government and in the community, that often people just don’t plant that much dende. With permaculture, you plant a lot of dende.

“Njala” - the cyclical hunger that affects most Malawians (and lots of people in other countries too). A specific goal of permaculture is so that people have food all year long. As the rains have begun this month, we have entered into the in-between phase when the dimba (wetland) crops are running out and the munda (field) crops aren’t yet ready.

So, yeah. I’ll be trying to get a little group here in Champhira off the ground. Only a minor speedbump so far with my elderly co-facilitator still in Mozambique. I think I found another helper though – Hattly. We’ll see how it goes.

My “programs”

Maybe you are wondering, how does a Peace Corps Volunteer, dropped into an African village, start a project? I am trying to figure this out too…

Do I try to find the interested people? People with “potential?” Anyone at all so that I can convince myself I am actually doing “work?” I don’t know. My old man friend Mr. Longe said we should go through the traditional authority of the Group Village Headmen (GVH) to form our permaculture group. As a result, I have spent several days visiting decrepit old men. Of course I don’t know where they live, so some I go to with Mr. Longe and some with a Forest Guard, and we do a little sales pitch about permaculture and why its good and that they should send two or three people to our training. There are 15 GVHs in the Champhira area. I don’t know how many villages each one has, but maybe ten or twenty. This makes a lot of villages just in my immediate area (within a 30-minute bike ride). It’s a lot of work making sales pitches about some strange method of agriculture to old men, but sometimes they feed us mmmmm nssssima.

Mostly Malawians tell me that I should come to them with my “programs.” That makes me think to myself: what exactly are my programs? So I decided that I wouldn’t have any programs. I tell people that I will work with them to figure out what they want their programs to be, but I don’t specifically have any programs. People in my area are used to extension workers coming with their “programs” and doing trainings: mudstove, trees, irrigation methods, whatever. There is nothing inherently wrong with these trainings, but oftentimes the people lack any interest whatsoever in them, and they are not encouraged to identify and solve their own problems. Thank you PC for making me realize the importance of doing this. People have brains for a reason, I think. Villagers should not be exempt from using them….it creates problems.

I’ve tried a lot of methods of starting projects that have failed. I guess I expected Malawians to drop everything and come banging down my door begging to know how I could help them improve their lives. How silly of me to get irritated when this didn’t happen. Things move slowly here. I am the first volunteer. Relationships need to be made first. Connections made with the right people. And all this takes time. Who is the visitor here anyway? I am the one interrupting the life and schedule of Malawians. Not the other way around.

Take vacations.

Somehow, though I am the victim of a typical case of “site guilt,” I found myself on a hike through Nyika National Park. (“Site guilt” is defined loosely as: reluctance to leave one’s village for feelings of guilt. Specifically to include that, as a PCV, one must, at all times, remain in one’s village, suffering all village inconveniences, including the lack of ability to travel and endeavoring, at all times during one’s service, to sacrifice oneself, and basically not have fun). I commited to a hiking adventure in Malawi’s oldest national park with Daisen, my JICA site-mate, Matt, Yoel, and Scott, my fellow Tumbuka classmates, Harry, one of our Peace Corps trainers, and Abraham, our Forest Scout. We went into the park from Karonga, by the lakeshore, and traversed to the main camp at Chilenda over a period of about four days. It was great! Nyika in itself is sort of a downer of a national park, with its lodges currently closed, management in a state of limbo, and prevalence of poachers denuding the landscape of its grasses and animals. It was, however, a pretty phenomenal hike. The first two days were spent mostly climbing, ascending onto the Nyika plateau, and with our packs full of food and camping gear. The third day, when we were upon the rolling hills of Nyika, we finally got to see some animals: Reed Buck, Bush Buck, Roan Antelope, Zebra, Warthog, and Common Duiker. Unfortunately the only leopard we saw was in the form of a skin at Chilenda Camp, from an animal confiscated from poachers. Of course we all had to pose with the skin (as well as the zebra skin, elephant jaw, and rhino skin).

On our journey we camped at sites where forest scouts stay when they are in the field, looking for poachers. Each night we camped by a stream where we washed our feet and clothes, and got water (don’t worry we put water-purification juju in there). We cooked our food, and Harry and Abraham, our Malawian escorts, cooked their food and we drank the finest Malawian hooch from plastic sachets and shared stories of witchcraft. Since Abraham carried his M-16, we were safe from beasts of the forest.

Upon arriving at our destination of Chilenda Camp, we were met by some fellow Americans doing some research on birds in the park. Their work was all secretive and official and they were well-funded and had lots of food, which made us all feel like poor, sad Peace Corps Volunteers. (But we get to know the culture so WELL and stay in a REAL village). We walked around the park for a day, viewing the animals at their watering holes before we headed to our next destination, which was a Halloween party in Chitipa, the northernmost district of Malawi.

Getting to Chitipa was sort of fun since there are no paved roads and the only transport is by “matola” – usually the back of some sort of flat bed or pickup truck. To get out of Chilenda Camp, which is more isolated than we had thought, we rode behind a tractor at 4 in the morning. By the time we got to Chitipa, it was two days later and we were very, very dusty. Lots of volunteers went though, and we got to eat delicious food including a luau-style pig. Additionally, we got our butts kicked by the Chitipa Police Department in a rousing game of volleyball, which was spectated by many interested villagers. By the time I returned to Champhira, I had taken a nice, two-week vacation, that was very much needed.

I am still waiting for life here to get “easy.”

"We have been told we are not a worthy people. Now we are like a piece of paper blowing in the wind. We have no direction. We are busy copying others in Africa, and as a result, we cannot have progress."

-Walter Nyika, ReSCOPE Programme, Malawi

"People ask, 'Is Africa too dark?' No. It is not too dark. The sun is there. It has day and night."

-Kyamuwendo Elijah, Kulika Uganda

Ok I’ve held out long enough, I have this weird, itchy rash on my body that seems to come and go. I don’t know what it is. Sometimes I wash my sheets. Sometimes I wash my clothes. And myself. If I was a somewhat dirty person before I am definitely dirtier now. You can only get yourself so clean with a bucket of water, and washing clothes is something that can easily get put on the backburner for later. All that matters here anyway is if stuff is clean on the outside, no matter what strange critters are living on the inside of my clothes (or inside buckets! – I watch tons of people wash the outside of their buckets at the borehole, or the outside of maize sacks, foregoing the inside, where the water and maize actually goes…) Not to gross you out, though. I’m sure you won’t get an itchy rash if you come visit me.

Most of the people that had appeared at my family compound when I got back from IST in August have gone back to their homes. This includes the two orphans we acquired when their mother passed away and they were left with their father, who my family reported was an alcoholic pot smoker. I doubted the credibility of their seizure though when the father showed up at our house one day and took his kids back. One of them is named “Lomutu” which is a tribal Ngoni name meaning “medicine.” She was sort of fat and really really cute. Bummer those orphans had to go back home, I liked them. (By our standards, they’re not really orphans, but here in Malawi if they only have one parent they are designated as such.) So in place of our orphans we just got two new puppies, in addition to Polion, the nice dog we already had. My family wants me to name the dogs. I’m slightly offended that I get asked to name pigs and dogs when other volunteers get to name babies. Ok I was asked to name one baby, but I didn’t. If I’m asked to name another baby I already have a good name picked out so I’ll be prepared. So the kids at the house are teaching them nice dog tricks like “choka” – GET OUT and “luma!” – BITE. I try to counteract these trainings by teaching them to sit, and letting them drink water by my house. I know, I am too nice.

One by one my chickens keep getting killed off. It seems like every few weeks, the grandfather comes up to me, all serious like, and gives me a new reason why we have to kill one of my chickens. This week, the reason was that one of my roosters is very bad and ventures off into the neighbors’ yards a lot. Sometimes, maybe, he even sleeps there. People here steal, the grandfather reminds me, so “What should we do???” Clearly knowing where he was going with this line of reasoning, I replied that I didn’t know, and what did he think? We ate another of my chickens that night, but this time I really stood up for myself better and said in the future, when I get my own little chicken house I would like to keep two of my lady chickens for eggs. As things are, I don’t see eggs from any of my 15 chickens that stay with the grandparents’ chickens. Well, there were 15. Now there are probably about 6. Other reasons my chickens have been killed include: chicken disease (there are too many chickens, and many will die from chicken disease, so we need to kill one), too many roosters, and too many non-hybrids.

Besides my dwindling number of chickens (though delicious), there are other joys to living in the very same compound as a Malawian family. From time to time I am asked for soap, or salt, or the use of my house. The force-feeding is getting better as I’ve put in a valiant effort at gaining some more independence and maybe even a little respect as a teacher. Though this was sort of difficult at first because no other civil servants stay in the middle of a village. They stay at schools or health centers, or trading centers. I’ve had some problems with other villagers and chiefs thinking I am only allowed to work with my small village, but I like to ride my bike too much just to work there. Also, sometimes my village chief calls meetings at the grandparents’ house, which is basically in my yard, at 6am. This always gets me a little mad, because I never know about these meetings until they happen, and I’m not really ready to interact with the world until I wake up a little.

But really, there are some things that are actually pretty cool about my village. For example the other day the two girls at the house came home from the market with pants they bought! No girls in the village wear pants, but when I ride my bike, I do, so they see me in pants a lot. Also, sometimes the grandmother gives me potatoes or other foods that I can cook. Also there are people to watch my guinea pigs and water my garden when I go away. I should think about these good things more often. My personal space is maybe slightly increased since I got a fence, and the bad kids are not allowed inside anymore (They failed to take advantage of the opportunities I provided them with to prove they were not so bad). Though a fence doesn’t prevent you from being woken up at 5:45 am because the firewood lady had come. My annoyance was short-lived. Getting firewood is a problem.

My friend, Melanie, lives on Lake Malawi. I went there for her birthday party/ annual party last month. She lives a few minute walk from the lake, which looks like the ocean, but has no salt and is the perfect temperature, and is home to lots and lots of species of ciclids that look like tropical fish. LUCKY! But it’s really hot there, so obviously I don’t really wish I lived there! Champhira is so nice and cool and “breezy” all the time. Ok, fine, “windy.” The people of Nkhata Bay speak Chitonga and are laid back, and wear tanktops a lot. My district of Mzimba is known for its more formal people. We swam and camped on the beach, and got to hang out with lots of other volunteers, and it was wonderful!

An amazing thing has happened in my life. I planted things in my garden, and they grew! I am now eating lettuce, spinach, carrots, peas and beans. I know this may not seem like a miraculous thing, but believe me, it is. No one here eats any fresh vegetables. Now, I’ve never gone on a “raw” diet or anything crazy like that, but I like fresh veggies, and I hear they’re pretty good for you. So now I can eat salad, which is pretty super awesome. Though I have to put up with people grabbing my watering can to look inside and touch whatever strange commodity I have in there. I think everyone in my village has tried the lettuce at this point, despite the original disapproving reaction “we cook vegetables here” along with kackling laughter. Actually I’ve found this reaction really interesting. Not all, but many people, instead of being interested and receptive, just think its really funny and that I don’t really know what I’m doing. “In America, lots of people like to eat fresh vegetables,” I assure them. “They don’t require cooking, and are very good for your body.” Some people actually like the lettuce, so that’s cool. I’ll let some of them go to seed so I can share.

So far along my quest to teach others stuff, I have learned to make jam, peanut butter, soy milk, start a tree nursery, build beehives, and “farm.” Maybe “garden” would be a better word for the scale of my operations. It’s funny because I read in those magazines people send me that in America now people are trying to save money by making jam or growing their own vegetables. So you can be encouraged that on the other side of the globe, some of the world’s poorest people are also learning the same thing. Maybe there is some sort of convergence going on, I don’t know.

My life here is sort of like a weird scavenger hunt. Where can I find information? Where can I find correct information? Where can I find interested people? Motivated people? People that make me feel glad to be a volunteer here and not like a neon dollar-sign. At times I feel like I’m blundering aimlessly. I think it’s easy to feel like this as a Peace Corps Volunteer with little money, resources and support. Nothing against Peace Corps. But my personal non-confrontational style sort of collides with a culture in which people are usually yelled at and instructed to do things. So these days I spend a lot of my time hunting down people who show promise to be actually interested in projects rather than those that just want to taste jam or who just want to get money. Because let’s be honest; this is everyone. So I found one what they call “key farmer” – a leader in his community with teaching innovative farming practices. He’s started a tree nursery already, and I showed him how to plant some agro-forestry species. He gave me the names of some other lead farmers who’ve also started tree nurseries. I traveled by my flashy South Africa bicycle to one of their houses this morning, didn’t find my guy, but spent an hour touring the gardens with his wife. I’ll return later this week. And that’s how it goes. Much time is spent in traveling, talking, eating, and waiting.

The tree nursery operations will be transitioning into the monitoring phase soon, as November will mark the beginning of the rains, and December and January are ideal times for outplanting in the fields. Most tree species take 8-12 weeks in the nursery, so this puts us at the end of the ideal time for nursery planting. I have several individuals and groups I am now working with on tree nursery projects. In my opinion, individual family and village woodlots are the most important because they put trees right in the village, there is less room for conflict with nursery management, and there can be individual ownership. In the past, villages in my general area have done group nurseries based on the initiative of the Department of Forestry or NGOs. Some of these tree seedlings were then sold, but the beneficiaries were village chiefs only. Upon seeing this problem, I have focused my efforts on smaller-scale nurseries.

It’s interesting, because I’ve been able to see the beginnings of one of these larger-scale projects. An NGO came and met with some village chiefs at the Agriculture Department. The Group Village Chief then had a big meeting with everyone, which I went to. As one of many items on his agenda he introduced this project which is supposed to be a fruit tree nursery and later a seed bank. The NGO has reported it will come back with seeds and tubes and all necessary supplies. The chief cursorily asked for people to go to the training, promising there will be food and allowances, and wrote down names. Then instructed people on the day to begin construction of a fence for the nursery. Now after two days there is a huge fence by the river. You can really get stuff done as a chief when you have people who cannot disagree with you. In the future we will see if they actually fill that whole space with seedlings, how they manage the project, and who receives the benefits.

One of my favorite guys, Mr. Karonga, was selected to be a carbon farmer for our region. This is part of the global carbon sequestration project that is going on, where people plant large plots (at least 2 hectares) of trees, especially in developing countries, so that developed countries can keep making cities and “developing.” I need to do some more investigation on the details of the subject, but this is my rudimentary understanding. He will be paid both for the seedlings in his nursery, and also for the successful out planting and hopeful survival of his trees. Some afternoons I go to his nursery and help fill tubes or teach his family how to plant different kinds of seeds. His nice mother, who I really like, apparently refuses to accept the teachings, because usually when I see her she is doing some kind of weird treatment to the seeds, like boiling them in hot water, contrary to my instructions.

I have a new friend. His name is B.E. Longe he is 75 years old. I met him during my site visit here in April. I was sitting on the side of the road, waiting for a bus, and commented that I liked his Obama hat (political leanings aside, its always fun to see people wearing Obama clothes). He spoke English and we chatted until the bus came. About a month ago, I met this man again in my trading center, not knowing he was living in the area. He was all smiles asking if I remembered him, and he got to explaining that he’d taken a class on permaculture, a system of sustainable agriculture, that was taught by one of my Peace Corps trainers. Permaculture is something that really interested me when we learned about it during training, and here in Champhira I’ve been reading the books they gave to us about it, and trying to implement some of its practices in my own garden and at my home. It involves taking care of the soil by various methods including mulching, using manure, and interplanting different types of crops. The goals include farming more sustainably, and diet diversification with less money and less work required (no buying fertilizer, mimicking nature, etc.). It’s really an important thing here, because, as it is, people are killing their land, not eating a balanced diet, and making a lot of work for themselves. Other than modeling these things on my own, and having conversations with individuals, I hadn’t begun to do any kind of organized trainings for villagers here. Until I met B.E. Longe.

An ex-agriculture man who’s traveled to countries including Taiwan and Scotland for his work, Mr. Longe is just as excited and motivated about this work as I am. In the Mzimba Boma, where he worked for a long time in conjunction with the community based organization “Tovwirane” (“We should help each other”), he successfully managed a permaculture group. So I went out to his house, where he talked mostly about his farm and his land and things like that like older people sometimes like to talk about, nonstop. And ultimately we decided that we’d better try to teach people here permaculture. So at this point, we’ve scheduled a meeting to be centered at the agriculture department, and have begun meeting with various village chiefs to brief them on the goals of permaculture and to ask that they should send three interested individuals to our meeting. It’s funny starting projects when you have no idea where they will go, or how they will progress. I have lots of hope for this project, although we have already hit a major roadblock. Mr. Longe found out three days before our scheduled training that he needs to go to Mozambique to teach some farmers about Oriental Tobacco. This leaves me alone to teach permaculture until further notice. And this is how the world here works. I was so frustrated at this at first that I gave up on going to the maize mill to grind two pails of maize to make nsima for the first training. I’ll make it short enough so that people won’t have to eat. (People here are used to eating at all meetings.) My frustration was again put into perspective when I reminded myself that I am the visitor here. I am only here for two short years. Yes I am here to teach people, but people here have normal lives and jobs too. Granted, these normal lives and jobs put random interruptions at very inopportune times, but still, I can’t be too mad for too long. It’s probably more important that I am just here living, than anything I could teach.

Funny things about Malawi:

Women pee standing up. Anytime, anywhere. I would say its only rated PG though, so don’t worry.

I was talking to my friend Evelyn and learned the word for “love” in Chitumbuka. She explained it as you know, what women do for men to express their love, like cook for them. When I asked her what men do for women that expresses this word, she couldn’t think of anything. Actually she thought of that they sometimes buy women clothes, but quickly retracted her statement, saying “but that is their duty.”

A crazy man sometimes brings fruit to my house. Like 20 kgs of fruit. He suggested that I give him some small money when I see him in the trading center so he could buy beer. I just gave him some small money right then instead. It was nice of him to bring fruit.

All your American clothes come here. It is the best salvation army ever. Ambiance could use a little work – auction style with bullhorns is common in the markets. I just can’t shop well in that atmosphere!

It’s common for people to wear the detached hoods of jackets tied onto their head as a hat.

Even though everyone is cooking nsima, people always ask each other what they are cooking. The answer course, is nsima. The next question is “dende uli?” – “what side dish?” The menu options at restaurants may be: Nsima and beans. Nsima and greens. Nsima and chicken. Nsima and goat. In actuality, at any one time, there are usually only one of two menu items available. Anyone who goes into an American wholesale store and gripes about the one million choices we have better come here. Maybe I actually like nsima now though. I cook it every night. Sometimes I can convince myself it tastes like mozzerella cheese.

I would definatley be lying if I said this wasn’t hard. It’s way harder than I ever would have imagined. As a Peace Corps volunteer in Malawi, you better like attention, or at least be able to bear it. I think I just barely make the cut. The “problems” and need here is very often overwhelming, and I’m just one person, with little resources, and a very basic understanding of the local language. When I have resources, it’s often difficult to know where to use them, and where to focus my efforts. There is a lot of sickness and disease, and the land is in very poor shape. It’s strange though, because when I think about it, these are the same problems we have in America. The difference here is that everyone feels victimized, powerless, and many people grovel for money and help. In America, we hide our problems better, or convince ourselves that things aren’t so bad. Here in Malawi, the wound is very visible. That sometimes makes it a difficult situation to live in. Mentally it catches you in a bind. Some days you want to “help” everyone – according to your definition, or maybe their’s (they are often different), some days you are depressed and overwhelmed at the need, and some days you enjoy peaceful ambivalence, go to a grocery that’s playing Bob Marley, buy a coke, and read a newspaper.

My work here is starting up! This is really exciting, because as fun as it was to spend three months learning about the language and culture of northern Malawi, at times I would forget that I was here to teach. I mean, I could spend all day drinking tea and eating sweet potatoes and playing soccer and bao with the kids in my village. So it became actually a comfortable little lifestyle. I would to go to my garden, follow Daisen around to his meetings so I could “see places” and “meet people,” play with the kids, and visit local health centers, the agriculture department, and so on. It was a great thing to wait initially before starting any projects, and I am so grateful now that I spent a good amount of time just getting to know people, but now it is time to really start some work. So in all my initial research and traveling, several project opportunities have presented themselves. A local community based organization has three groups – People Living with HIV/AIDS, Community Based Care, and Orphans. These groups would like to raise money so that they can better assist the people they serve, so we have now had two meetings to discuss prospective projects. At the first meeting, 30 people came. The second meeting, five people came, one hour late. Maybe this is because they now know that I will not give money or handouts, or maybe they were just busy, I don’t know. But it’s definitely a problem here that people are used to receiving handouts and allowances from the government and donor organizations. At the first meeting I made it clear that I will not do this. Sadly, many people believe that they can’t start small businesses or innovative projects without outside initiative and money. Reliance on this outside aid takes away a lot of freedom of thought for people here and leads them to believe that without help they are stuck in whatever situation they find themselves. Apparently this was especially bad during the reign of former president Muluzi, but is currently still a big problem. So after I explained, in my best attempt at a motivating speech in Chitumbuka, about the merits of self-initiated, self-funded business, I am left now with five people who want to begin raising chickens. The plan as of now is to begin raising meat chickens, later egg-laying chickens, which are a bit more expensive, and in eventually, if one of the groups is successful and can gather enough money, milk goats or cows. It is my hope that these groups will be self-run, and, as much as possible, self-funded. I explained that I can provide or find training, help to obtain project supplies, and assist in business management skills. To some people, this is not such an enticing offer as a handout, allowance, or bottle of Fanta at a meeting. This is a very frustrating thing to me, but one can hardly place blame on people here, where there is very little room for failure when you are a susbsistence-level farmer with chickens, goats, pigs or cows as your bank. There is not much room for error, and generally people do as they are taught from their families and the government. And people here are used to receiving handouts. This same frustration is also a privilege because I do have the resources to try new things here. I can show demonstrations with different methods of farming. I can be an advisor and security blanket for small business projects. And I can fail. From these successes and failures other people can learn, with no risk to themselves. Another project that is setting itself up is a tree nursery. We have so far collected 15,000 tubes and have begun seed collection from trees. It’s funny trying to make a plan about this tree nursery. I would really like to make a plan, I think it’s a good idea. The reaction I get from the people I’m working with is as if I’d made a really, really funny joke. So I think that I will have to force this plan to happen, because like some other things here, I am learning that you have to force people. (I hate forcing people, it sucks.) So the month of September will probably be pretty busy with filling tubes and all that. There are two groups of people that want to do beekeeping. These groups I am excited about, because both are already keeping bees in log hives, so they are familiar with the fact that bees sting, and they are somewhat self-motivated already. Also because both of the communities live in beautiful protected forest reserves, one of which is an amazing four-hour bike ride away! If this one village ever makes enough honey to sell, it will be a really fun project getting it to the market. I am acutely aware of the fact that I don’t feel very confident about advising a beekeeping project, but I’m hoping some volunteers who have successful groups will be able to help us get started. Despite all the work and stress of living here, It’s still lots of fun. I received three adorable guinea pigs from Nahoko, a JICA volunteer in Mzimba. She will be ending her tour here in September, so last week I rode the crammed minibus home with a box of guinea pigs, as well as lemon-grass to plant in my garden, and a big bag of lettuce, which she grows, but you can’t find anywhere in the markets. I had tried to bribe the kids in my village to build me a guinea pig house by taking their pictures, letting them use my soccer ball, and telling them that they’d get some of their own once they had babies. I’m sort of a do-it-yourself person, but with some things like building animal houses, or people houses from bricks and mud, Malawians just know better. Anyway, as I biked to the trading center to leave for Nahoko’s house, the “chitupa” consisted of some poles lying on the ground, a few muddy pits in my yard, and the village boys sitting on the side of the road watching the cows. This is a digression, but the previous day, when they had cut those poles, some goats from the neighboring village came over to Sibande for a visit. Their owners were nowhere to be found. Maybe they escaped or their little herdsmen (they’re always kids) fell asleep somewhere. So the boys in my village took that opportunity to play with these goats. They chased them around, and tried to milk them, dragged them by one leg, and rode them two to one goat. Things like this are getting to be sort of regular occurrences here. There are only so many things to get excited about – a plane flying overhead (happens very infrequently), a car on the dirt road a kilometer away, and the goats from the neighboring village visiting unaccompanied.

I don’t know when it was that my feelings about this place changed, but for awhile there I was a little nervous that I was completely unrealistic in my expectations of what it would be like to live in a village in Malawi. Actually, I’m not sure I ever thought about the realities of adjustment to a culture like this. The first two weeks were terrible. I mean really, really bad. I got dropped off by my lovely Peace Corps driver at my village, and as the car pulled away the woman who was living in my house moved out. No one in the family compound I live in, and very few people in my village, speak any English. Riding a wave of confidence after doing well on my language exam that concludes training, I was in for a very rude awakening. I’m pretty sure that in those first two weeks I did nothing in a culturally appropriate way, and lacked the language skills to attempt any conflict resolution. After 8 weeks of intense language training (which was great, really), I could order nsima, ask for basic directions, and talk about my future work, but I was always in control of what I was saying. It is whole new ballgame when you are being grilled by confused Malawians who are wishing/hoping/expecting that you can speak super awesome Chitumbuka already…. why oh WHY would they think that! (Well probably because they have no basis of comparison to other foreigners visiting, of which I am the first in my village). So during those first couple of weeks, when I was not crying, I did yard work and furiously studied Chitumbuka.

Now it is August. I’ve been in Sibande Village for three months! I can’t believe it. I hesitate to say that life is becoming sort of normal. It’s not. But I guess it’s more normal than before. The flow of visitors that came incessantly to my house for the first month has slowed, the family I stay with doesn’t sweep my yard as much, and I even cook some of my own food. I think the fact that no one would bring me firewood was because the grandparents only wanted me to eat with them…but I used all the sticks that supported tomatoes behind my house to cook anyway, and finally, a nice lady carried me a LOT of firewood on her head, from very far away. She collected it from a nearby mountain and made three trips to my house. I think maybe this finally happened because I told people I was going to the mountain to collect my own firewood, which really, I was intending on doing. I carry other stuff on my head, why not firewood. Women here are, needless to say, jacked. Anyway, back to trying to make a life for myself here in Malawi. So yes, I get to cook for myself sometimes now, but I’m very glad I didn’t burn any bridges in my initial fury of living with a family here (which I was not expecting…that’s why I left the US, so I could live all by myself in a village in Africa. This is the most communal society ever. I don’t know what I was thinking) because when I get home late or don’t feel like cooking I can always just eat with my nice Malawian family. My family and the village has become used to the fact that I just do some strange things, like go and hike up the mountains, or sometimes go running in the morning, or sometimes sleep until, God forbid, 7am. The number of people that ask to see my “soft” American hands is decreasing as more people know that yes I farm my own dimba (wetland garden) which I was given by some of the chiefs here.

One of my biggest coping mechanisms initially was letting go of what I (ME ME ME American ME) wanted to do and adopting instead what I saw were important things to Malawians. In my mediocre attempt at studying Malawian culture, I identified a few main things that are valued here: 1) People. Spending time with people. Talking with people. Drinking tea with people. 2) Cooking nsima. 3) Kulima.

After 2 weeks of not knowing what to do with myself as I “adjusted,” I realized I could just try to do these things that Malawians liked to do. This probably sounds really simple, but believe me, it was this huge revelation when it occurred to me.

I will start with number 2: cooking nsima, the staple food of Malawi and a whole bunch of Africa. This was a relatively easy project to attempt, because at my welcome party, I was given a grand total of about 500 kg of maize. (Most people that came brought one bucket…so now you know that quite a few people came to this welcome party. I am going to initiate welcome parties like this in America. I also received ten live chickens. I think it would be good to give live chickens as gifts in America). I had no idea how to turn this hard maize into the magical food that is nsima, so I began my quest by asking my family. They taught me to sift debris from my maize and then I put one bucket into a feed bag and strapped it to my bike and brought it to the maize mill. I happened to find my friend and language tutor, Evelyn, in the trading center of Champhira, which is about 3km from my house, where the maize mills are. I was grateful to find her because once I got to the maize mill, I didn’t really know what to do. She escorted me, of course, because Malawaians always have time to escort you, you don’t even have to ask, they just always do. As I was expecting to wait for hours, it was sort of anticlimactic because as the only visitor/azungu around, my maize was measured and I was whisked in and out in a matter of five minutes while Malawians with huge bags waited in line. Admittedly, the amount of maize I wanted to have ground was sort of pathetically small. So there I had my “mgaiwa wufu” – which is unprocessed maize flour. Most people here eat the processed kind which is pure white and devoid of all nutrients as well as flavor. Plus this kind is way more work to make, requiring two trips to the maize mill, soaking in water, sifting, drying in the sun several times…

So I returned to my house with my prized cargo. After watching many people cook nsima I had an idea of what to do, but I still needed some extensive tutoring from my Malawian grandma. I like my Malawian grandma because she always makes me feel good about myself, like good grandparents are supposed to do. This was especially refreshing when most of the time, whatever I did that first month, I was told I was “failing.” Then in the coming weeks, I tried, little by little, to cook my own nsima. Instead of saying I fail now, my family tells me that I know how to cook it! Amazing! Cooking nsima really isn’t difficult at all, since you just make a thick porridge with this flour, but it can be kind of dangerous as it starts to boil a lot and splatter scorching porridge glue all over. So people were quite happy and amazed that I cook my own nsima. Really. This question comes in line with, what’s your name, where are you from, DO YOU COOK NSIMA? Yes I do. Three of my maize bags now sit in the grandparents house because my house is small. I told them to just use it, but I doubt they will. The other three bags are in my house. It will take me a very, very long time to go through them. I think maybe in the meantime I can make them into some comfortable chairs. There is a scarcity of comfortable chairs over here.

The next thing I adopted as a project was “kulima” – farming. This was pretty easy to do because it was one of my biggest goals in joining the environmental sector of Peace Corps – to learn to grow stuff from people who grow stuff to live. So I dug a big hole in my yard and filled it with organic rubbish and manure and dirt. I didn’t actually do all this work, of course; my local 10-15 year-old assistants did a lot of helping, which made me feel less hatred towards them (they were, and usually still are, always hanging around my house, but in the beginning, this was especially annoying). I planted things on my newly prepared bed, and in the subsequent weeks my chickens ate the seeds and every new shoot that came up, except for four squash plants and some onions, which apparently they didn’t want to eat. This week I ate my first zucchini, which is probably the most exciting thing that’s happened to me.

After my big welcome party, I was also given a dimba (wetland) garden by the small river close to my house by my friend Mr. Karonga (a man who helps me do just about everything I need to do, and has been integral to my settling in here). We tramped to the overgrown plot, where I was made to prove my strength in “kusosa” – clearing, and “kugaula” – turning my garden. Then it was mine. Having this garden has been a great source of encouragement for me here. Going to my garden gives me something to do, it requires me to expend physical energy, and it is one time when usually I can be pretty sure (though not 100%) I will not be made to eat nsima or sweet potatoes. It is also something that is funny because people in my community are so incredibly shocked that an American woman would possibly be able to farm. I have tried some different methods of planting in this garden to experiment with some ideas Peace Corps trainers gave us. These methods include companion planting certain crops together that are supposed to help each other grow, help enrich the soil, and protect the plants from pests. Huge, biting black ants have invaded this garden, so I think I am doing something wrong. But anyway I am trying to experiment mostly because the farming methods used here deplete the soil a lot, and people end up buying fertilizer which is really expensive but that the government heavily promotes and sometimes subsidizes. So, in my area, most people grow huge plots of tomatoes, cart them at 3am by oxcart to the market 10km away, sell them very cheaply, take the money and buy fertilizer to grow more tomatoes to sell at the market…. Yeah. My garden looks a lot different than Malawian gardens, but my strange methods make a good conversation piece. I have also planted typical crops like maize and beans and sweet potatoes and tomatoes, so I can point to a location in my garden when people ask me where those things are.

I think its sort of like being in the military coming here. People cut you down really really low, and then slowly build you back up. Farming, speaking the language, cooking, maintaining my house – I was told I was “failing” at everything initially. But now for some reason people don’t always automatically say this when I’m doing something differently. I think it was a good idea to adopt Malawian projects at first, to show them I am interested in what they’re doing. Now slowly I will infiltrate my strange American ways…

Now back to number 1 – People. People are clearly the most important thing in Malawian culture. Family, the extended family system, children, and friends. Everything else takes a back seat, including meetings, deadlines (are there any?), time, projects and plans. This is frustrating for an American. People spend a lot of their days just sitting and chatting with each other. On the roads and paths people stop and greet each other formally and often chat leisurely. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a Malawian say they’re busy or late. It’s been hard work to slow myself down and try to value people and time with people as much as Malawians do. I like to get my little agenda in my head and then carry out my plan. This was a serious problem because I am always interrupted, and my plans are never executed as I hoped.

Aspects of my American culture really clashed with aspects of culture here. Numerous times I was chastised for my greeting style, which consisted of me shouting to passersby. Now I know that if I am sitting on my porch and someone is coming to my house I wait, wait, wait, wait, I see you coming, still I wait, waiting, you have arrived, you sit down, ok now I can greet. This is kind of fun in a way that would be ridiculously awkward back in the States.

Slowly I’ve been realigning my expectations with the realities of living in a culture that values people above all else. I consider it as work accomplished if I talk to my neighbors in Chitumbuka. I add some extra minutes before and after each task I want to do, in case I may be invited to eat at someone’s house. I greet everyone I encounter, because I know how happy it makes them. Generally, I’m learning how to slow down, which is pretty refreshing.

You may find it funny that on some Sunday afternoons I play Scrabble with Malawians at the big general store. The owner has memorized all the 2 and 3 letter words, so he wins every time. I think he received this game and the cheat manuals from some Peace Corps volunteer in the past (nice work).

I think that I have integrated into my family now, because the dog follows me into the trading center, even if I’m on my bike. I pet him and scratch his ears and am teaching him to sit, and I don’t hit him, so I think he likes me.

So my work here is starting up, slowly but surely. In the beginning I thought I would die of boredom, but the past couple of months have been getting busy, and it’s looking like there is lots of work available ahead of me. I’ve traveled around lots with my friend, Mr. Karonga, and a JICA (Japanese version of Peace Corps) volunteer named Daisen, both of whom know the area very well. I attend lots of meetings and have been explaining the extent of my work to people in many different villages. I’m saying I’m basically a multipurpose development worker, with a concentration in environment and agriculture. I hope to help people identify some problems in their areas and then work towards solutions, and its looking like there is the potential to start some IGAs (income generating activities), and do lots of work with sustainable farming and tree harvesting. It’s exciting to begin work here, but also at times overwhelming at the amount of need.

Next week the 19 other volunteers that are in my group and I will travel back to Dedza for our in-service training. I look forward to this 2-week period of continued learning, now that I have a better idea of the area I’m living in, their resources, needs, and problems. Hopefully I will soon begin to find where I can help and fit in here!

Muli uli?

So, I’m here in Malawi. I can’t believe it’s been two months since I left. Very soon I will be sworn in as an official Peace Corps Volunteer. In the time since I left, I’ve been busy in training with the other volunteers. Life is great here - very different from America, but awesome.

We arrived in Lilongwe after stops in Dakar, Senegal, and Johannesburg, South Africa. About half of us got none of our luggage, and we proceeded to the Malawi College of Forestry for our first week of training on basic safety and security. Two days later our bags made their way to us and we continued to prepare for our homestays with local families. The first week was great as the group of 19 of us got to hang out together in a relaxed environment. We were spoiled with electricity, hot showers, and wonderful kitchen staff who cooked traditional Malawian foods like sima, a thick porridge made of ground maize that nearly all Malawians eat every day. They like sima so much that sometimes people say they “haven’t eaten” if they didn’t eat sima that day. It’s funny. We also got a bunch of shots to prevent us from getting things like rabies. We got to know the training staff who made us feel confident that they’d prepare us well for life in Malawi.

At the end of this first week, we were dropped in two nearby villages, Chicanda and Mzengereza. In Mzengereza, the village I stayed in, we were welcomed by a large portion of the village singing and dancing at the Group Village Headwoman’s house (she’s the chief of several villages, and pretty cool since she’s a woman and a chief, which is rare). My host mom and dad were there to greet me, grabbed my bags, and we headed to their family compound, a short walk away. We all stayed with our families in the village for five weeks, learning the intricacies of Malawian life, and such skills as the bucket bath, proper hand washing, using the chimbudzi (the potty), and the importance of comfortable silence. Each day we reported to our trainers houses for language, cultural and technical training sessions. I was assigned to learn Chitumbuka, the language of Malawi’s northern region, with four other special individuals. Ten of our class was assigned to learn Chichewa, the most widespread language, and three have been learning Chitonga, spoken mostly along the lakeshore.

During homestay, we had technical sessions where our host country trainers introduced us to the basics of many environmental activities we may choose to do while here, such as beekeeping, mushroom farming, planting a kitchen garden and composting. We had sessions from trainers in the health and education sectors (there are health, education, and environmental volunteers here) on HIV/AIDs and the education system, and representatives from the Departments of Forestry and Parks, who updated us on the conservation efforts and state of natural resources in Malawi. Each Thursday we traveled back to the College of Forestry for more shots, and each week current environmental volunteers visited with us to help answer all our questions.

Those five weeks were very structured, but in between scheduled meetings I had time to have lots of fun with my host family. My host mom was 26 and had three kids, 6-year old twins, and a 2 ½ year old. She, like most Malawian women, is a very hard worker. She collects firewood, cooks for the family, bathes the kids, does laundry, teaches at the village nursery school, and does countless other household chores everyday. She treated me as one of her own children, even though I’m only two years younger than she is. Families here are of the highest value, so for that and many other reasons, women here generally get married and begin having children very young. My host mom heated bath water for me twice every day, and on days when I had to go to classes early she seemed slightly disapproving that I didn’t want to take a bath that morning. She cooked amazing food and sent me to classes with a snack like a boiled egg or mandazi (delicious donut type thing) in something like a Tupperware container. I attempted to cook with her some nights to learn how the Amayis here do it. Amayi is the Chichewa word for Mom, Abambo is dad. (I’ll be saying neither of those in my site up north where they say Bamama and Badada). Household chores take lots of time here as most people that live in the village have no access refrigerators or washing machines or things like that.

Lots of afternoons I climbed the guava tree with my host brother and sisters and we would just sit up there eating fruit. At night they taught me traditional Malawian songs and dances, and we all spent lots of time laughing. Mostly they were laughing at me, but I think next time I get to visit I will show them my sweet dance moves. We got to go hiking and walk to the Dedza Pottery shop to eat “cheesecake” and do other fun things too, like put on bee suits and steal honey from bees, which was scary. You use a smoking tin of poo to scare the bees into thinking there is a fire, and they eat so much honey all at once that they can’t really sting you because they get so lethargic. Ironically I was bitten by fire ants. I carried the bucket of honey from the hive, followed by an angry swarm of bees, and as I wove my way through the maize fields I sort of got lost, but it took a very long time to lose all those bees anyway, except the one that was caught in my face mask. Then we were supposed to try to process the honey, but we mostly just ate it straight out of the bucket. Beekeeping is fun.

So, all in all, homestay was a wonderful way to learn the language and culture of Malawi, even though it had its very challenging and awkward moments! After five weeks, we all had to say goodbye to our families and I had to leave behind the half-collapsed attempt at making a mudstove that my class had made at my house two weeks earlier. (We were trying to promote more fuel-efficient methods of cooking, since the preferred method here is the three-stone fire). Our mudstove was a disaster. For our departure there was a big party in the village. The US ambassador and other important people came, there was lots of dancing and drumming, and even an appearance by some masked traditional dancers, which was crazy! My host family calls me at least once a week for a quick check of how I am doing. They are amazing.

Just before leaving homestay, we all found out what our sites would be for the next two years. I’ll be staying in Malawi’s northern region in Mzimba district. My region is Champhira, which is on the western edge of Malawi not far from Zambia. We all went off to shadow current volunteers to see what PCV life is really all about. Another volunteer and I visited with a health volunteer in Mzimba. We cooked some good food and visited with the staff of her health center and many of her neighbors. We also got to spend a couple days at one of the transit houses in Mzuzu. From there we made our way back to the Mzimba boma. This boma is the hub of activities in each region, and there we found our District Forestry Office. We couldn’t find it at first, but after asking at another office we were escorted by a Malawian. This type of hospitality happens all the time, so it wasn’t that much of a shock when our District Forestry Officer volunteered to take us all the way to our sites for our own site visits. We hung out in the market pretty much all day, chatting with people and eating bananas and sima. I found a button up shirt for roughly one American dollar, which the other trainees make fun of me for because it looks like a boy shirt (it’s not).

Since we didn’t leave until about 5pm, the DFO guys decided to take me first since my site was closer, and in about an hour we had arrived in Champhira, a moderately forested area set among a backdrop of small mountains and hills. We pulled off the paved road and came to the Champhira trading center in two kilometers, and my compound in another three. We were greeted by about 50 of my future neighbors and lots of kids. People were singing and dancing and I had to shake hands and exchange formal greetings with everyone before myself and the Forestry Officers were instructed to be seated outside a large, white, tin-roofed house. Some chiefs and elders of the village gave short welcoming speeches, as did the forestry guys. I did my best to greet my village in Tumbuka! It was getting pretty dark at this point, but they showed me the house I’d be staying in and then had us all sit inside the big house, where we ate dinner of sima and chicken. Sima comes in patty form maybe about as big as 1/3 pound of ground beef, and this sima was really hot. You eat with your hands and I remember thinking this was the time I almost burned my fingers off. Malawian moms can take pots off fires with their bare hands. I hope to acquire this skill. After we ate my forestry friends left to return to Mzimba, and I spent time hanging out with about 20 kids from the village. I stayed the night in the house of parents of the village chief (so they were grandparent-age…Agogos), which is in the same compound as the house I will stay in. The Agogos stayed there as well as the teenaged granddaughter who slept in my room. I think she was supposed to serve as my bodyguard or something.

I spent two days at my future site, visiting with people, eating lots of food, and shaking lots of hands! It was maybe the most mentally exhausting two days of my life. Some people spoke English, but I was really challenged to use my language skills to communicate. I got to learn many new words and start to pick up on the nuances of the local dialect and how it differs from the Tumbuka I’d been studying in class. Some of the more interesting things that happened during those two days include: being showed around the trading center by the wife of the Senior Group Village Headman (SGVH = bwana, or boss), watching Zambian music videos at my counterpart’s house, (each volunteer has one of more host country counterparts working with them. My counterpart is a Forestry Extension Agent who rides a motorbike. According to Peace Corps policy I am not allowed to ride motorbikes. Motorbike in Tumbuka is “mutututu”). We ate boiled corn and pumpkins with his wife and cut sugarcane from his field. I was too full to eat mine so I carried it the whole way home through the trading center and shops we went into and gave it to my little sister/bodyguard. I was really full all the time those two days because everywhere I went people wanted to feed me. It’s harvest time now, so there’s lots of food, but I am constantly amazed at the generosity here. People started calling me “Lynnie Sibande.” Sibande is the name of my village. Most Malawians pronounce can’t pronounce names without adding I’s or Y’s or O’s. Cool.

I arrived at night, so I didn’t really get to see much of the surroundings, so at 7am the following morning, I got up and walked down the dirt road a little way. It was lined with people digging composting pits. This probably doesn’t seem all that cool, but trust me, it is. Most Malawians spend lots of their little money on fertilizer for their crops. Due to the mono-cropping of maize, the soil is often terrible, so to continue to have maize to make sima, they use fertilizer. In general, the promotion of composting methods is relatively new and is something environmental Peace Corps Volunteers are working at. We had trainings and workshops on it the past couple of months. Composting obviously saves a lot of money. It’s easy to do and serves the same purpose as fertilizer. When I say the road was lined with holes, it really was. 1x1x1 meter holes about 5-10 meters apart from each other. They are making 1,000 holes by next week, and are apparently competing with another village. There are rumors the president will come to my village to promote composting methods in Malawi. Pretty cool. I was very encouraged by their motivation, even though it involved someone yelling really enthusiastically each morning at 4am for people to begin digging.

The family who’s compound I’ll live on has a dog named “Polion.” I am sure of this. It is not “Napoleon.” I really tried hard to clarify. Most Malawians do not name their dogs. They are more for guarding and things like that. I think I should not mention that my dog at home in America wears sweaters.

The following morning, I woke up at 5am and walked 5 kilometers to the tarmac road, escorted by the brother of the SGVH and his friend, and we waited for the big bus to come by to pick me up and take me to Rumphi for the week of intensive language training. While sitting there we met this old guy wearing an Obama hat. He had been to a permaculture workshop that a Peace Corps trainer conducted. I got his digits so I can eventually go see how he does sustainable agriculture and get some ideas. Random awesome stuff like this happened a lot during those two days.

I met the rest of my language class and trainers in Rumphi that afternoon and we traveled to Eva De Maya, a health center (and a lot more) in northern Malawi. We stayed in really nice houses, ate awesome food, and had intensive language sessions with native speakers, including giving presentations about various topics to villagers. My topic was nutrition and I spoke to a group of women in a tailoring shop. I learned have a lot of work to do before giving presentations in Chitumbuka. We also met the Paramount Chief of the Tumbukas (very very important dude. One of five most important in Malawi). We went over to his place and he told us about the history of the Tumbuka people. He had a lion skin on the floor.

So, in sum, Malawi is good! I have learned lots of useful phrases so far, like “mwapuisa?” (did you fart?), and have met tons of inspiring people. Wednesday we’ll all be sworn in as official volunteers and Thursday and Friday we’ll travel to our sites. The first three months we’re not supposed to really begin any projects, but spend the time continuing to learn the language and culture, talk with people in the village, identify potential projects based on the needs of our communities, and fix up our houses. My site is new, no volunteers have been there before, so I have lots of work to do. Malawians sweep their mud yards, so the first thing I think I will do is chop up my mud and see if some grass grows.

I hope to write a blog every month or two, depending on how often I can use the internet (it’s 60km away). My new address for my site is:

Lyn Wojcik, PCV

Care of: Dept. of Forestry

P.O. Champhira

Mzimba, Malawi

AFRICA

Thanks for everyone who’s been writing me letters and emails!!

Khalani makola!

Hi family and friends!

I'm gonna do a blog for my Peace Corps experience in Malawi! This is difficult for me since I dislike technology anyway, but we'll see if I can keep it up and then you can just check it whenever you feel like and I won't be bothering you with emails.

At this point, I can't pretend to do justice to Malawi, my country of serivce, or the environmental work I'll be doing there, since I'm not too sure of either one at this point. Here's a feeble attempt though, at giving you some bare minimum details.

Malawi is a landlocked country about the size of Pennsylvania in southeastern Africa. It's near Tanzania and some other countries. Check out the map I've got. It's just south of the equator, and from what I gather, it's got three seasons - hot and wet, hot and dry, and cool and dry. I guess the variety of temperature comes from the variety of elevations. Malawi's got a huge lake - Lake Malawi, as well as some mountains and various other types of terrain. Lake Malawi, from what I can gather, is where a huge percentage of the aquarium fish in the world come from.

Though physically beautiful, Malawi has a very high percentage of its population living with HIV. It is very poor, and the average age is only in the low 40s. Their people are stricken with many diseases, yet the country is still described as "the warm heart" of Africa.

The livelihood of the people is based mostly on agriculture. They grow tobacco, coffee, tea, and other crops.

Just before Christmas I accepted a Peace Corps invitation to work as an environmental volunteer in Malawi. I may get the opportunity to help with farming and gardening, work with parks and forestry, or many other jobs. This won't be determined until the group of 20 of us get there and finish our three months of training.

I'm eager to continue my full time service (after two years in AmeriCorps NCCC - go Fire 1 and Badger 3!) in a new location. I've been reading up on Malawi and studying the local language, Chichewa. (Muli bwanji?) I will miss many things about the US, such as cheese (thanks, Rachel) and dark chocolate (I am cramming as much as possible into my bags). I will also miss my family and friends. For some reason I've just always felt I would go to Africa one day, so I'm not very scared, though I do anticipate some lonely times in my hut. Send me letters!

Tomorrow I leave for Philadelphia for a quick "staging" with the other 20 or so people in my program. We arrive in Philly Friday Feb. 19th and depart JFK for Africa the next day.

Looking forward to telling you more about Malawi in the not too distant future.

-Lyn