In an (albeit incomplete) Venn diagram comparing Abu Dhabi and Malawi, the central over-lapping section might include these commonalities:

lots of sun, few trees, Islam, high-heeled women, bodies of water inextricably linked to economy and local pastimes, former reaches of the British Empire, relatively conservative dress

On Malawi’s side, consider the following:

old vehicles, no fuel, nsima, a shortage of bottle caps to package beer and soft drinks, lots of dust, one-story buildings of mud brick and thatch, few resources, great weaves

And, alone in Abu Dhabi’s ring:

9% of the world’s oil reserves, global cuisine, vending machines selling bars of gold, the world’s largest flagpole, lots of sand, towering buildings, glitz and glamour, cars not exceeding the age of five years

Abu Dhabi means “father of the gazelle”—as the story goes, Bedouin men found the island in the eighteenth century, led by a gazelle in search of water. In the 1930s, the economy there suffered heavily when Japan’s commencement of pearl manufacture created an industry-wide recession. But, in the 1950s, oil was discovered and the kingdom became rich overnight. A Cinderella story: the oil money was redistributed, every young man inheriting a piece of the pie.

The result is an incredibly high standard of living for everyone. Or, almost everyone.

Again and again, I was surprised by small kind acts of strangers; the notion of Arab hospitality is not exaggerated. On the plane, a young woman insisted on putting away my carry-on bag. The flight attendant paused to explain—helpfully, not didactically—the Arabic word for coffee. Later, observing my bafflement at a coin-free phone booth, a man hurried to lend me his calling card.

Amel, my gracious hostess, is a building conservator in a place obsessed with new. Old buildings are discarded layers replaced by taller, swankier towers in a perpetual effort to outdo the last. Abu Dhabi claims the world’s largest flagpole, biggest carpet, biggest pearl, third biggest mosque, a Formula One racetrack, and an application to become one of the seven wonders of the marine world. Next year, they will build a Guggenheim and Louvre. It is a place bent on redefinition, at the same time shaped by and clinging to its traditional past. The new Sheikh Zayed Mosque, looming bubbly on the horizon, borrows unapologetically from a plethora of architectural traditions: Indian domes, German chandeliers, palm-tipped column capitals, Turkish tiles; more than 38 contracting companies contributed to its design, said our guide, Mansour. Inside, back-lit glass flowers entwine with inlaid mother-of-pearl blossoms vining up the wall, and the design of an over-wrought chandelier is mirrored below in the world’s largest single piece of carpet, hand-woven by 1200 Persian women. There appears to be no concern for over-doing the bling; everything in Abu Dhabi is big, shiny, and glitzy. And yet the city shies to be compared with its gawdier, louder neighbor, Dubai.

Abu Dhabi exports 2 million barrels of oil every day and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future, according to a recent guidebook. No one seems concerned about what will happen when the oil runs out. We did, however, visit Masdar City, MIT’s representation of alternative energy possibilities, a “Reality of the Future” constructed to palliate the complaints of critics who point to the city’s excessive carbon footprint, one of the world’s biggest.

At a swanky bar in Emirate Palace, I hid in the bathroom for a few minutes, taking in the expensive mirrors and lights, sink fixtures, and massive shiny doors, all reeking of quality, and felt ashamed of my nappy blue sweater, stained dress from the “Do Not Want” box, and glue-repaired sandals. Poor choice of color, a cream dress; the crowd was black-clad in heels, sparkly belts, and chained purses. After considering the hilarity of the situation—two nights ago spent in a mud-floored stable, manure and sweat-caked from the farm, tonight gawking at gold bars in a vending machine—I smiled to myself and re-joined the party.

Trying to answer questions about my line of work proved difficult. “Ah, you were in Africa? For two years?” A man’s eyes brightened; charity is a pillar of Islam, and he seemed to believe Peace Corps fulfilled that requirement. “So you are going to heaven!” Everyone laughed.

There are some days that Malawi is unforgiving, especially in hot season, and especially lately when everything seems to be in short supply.

My last day was another rollercoaster, beginning with a well-intentioned but unreasonably early phone call at 4:45 am. The sun was baking by 7, no power to make coffee, no power to print photos at the shop next to Game, no power to print my travel itinerary at the office—but fortunately enough power to shop for shoes at Mr. Price.

Final signatures, hugs goodbye. A queue spilling onto the sidewalks of Shoprite for the latest rare commodity: soft drinks. What will Malawi do without Fanta? The country is also out of forex and fuel. A marriage proposal at the veg market, including an invitation to Mozambique to learn Portuguese. On the hot, cramped minibus ride, my seatmate asked: How long have you been in Malawi? When are leaving? Did you like living among Malawians? When will you come back? Questions I have answered dozens of times in some form or other.

I joined Alex, sun burnt in a twelve-hour queue for diesel, and we managed to walk the length of City Centre 6 times for water, cash, jerry cans, and assistance jump-starting the truck. Back at Nature’s Gift, Wibke and Jessica had taken up work in the medicinal garden, mulching more paths and giving me hope the project is in good hands.

On my last run, kids yelled at me from a mango tree; another group of boys tried to run beside me. After two years, I still haven’t found a zen response for this, only impatience.

I watched the sun set over the empty maize rows and Kumbali forest, took a final bucket bath, gorged myself on Indian food and good company, and—accepting there must always be unfinished business and unsaid goodbyes—put down the pen.

A lot has happened in the past two months!

Most notably, the school year ended and I have moved out of Salima to a permaculture demonstration center on the outskirts of Lilongwe: The Kusamala Institute for Agriculture and Ecology trading as Nature’s Gift Permaculture. It’s a mouthful, so we’ll just call it NGP. My new home is a room in a renovated horse stable, where I am living in a community with six other residential volunteers, as well as the Mgala family: Eston, Carol, and Kelvin. The center promotes sustainable systems and encourages self-reliance as a solution to the problem of dependence on scarce external resources. There’s an organic commercial garden, a permaculture demonstration residence, a thatched-roof classroom, composting toilets, chicken tractors, an outdoor kitchen with a mud oven and other energy efficient cooking options, and, soon, a diverse plot of staple foods.

I’ll be up here until I officially finish my Peace Corps service in November, designing and implementing a medicinal garden and trying to bring in more visits from school and community groups. The pace and tone of life here is idyllic and the days are flying. As daily chores, I’ve been caring for the chickens, worm composting, helping in the commercial garden, and tending the new jatropha nursery which will produce trees for biodiesel for the center’s truck. I’m enjoying it so much up here that I’ve begun to dread making the short journey into town that seems necessary at some point in the week for restocking and random business. I did make it into town last Saturday long enough to have my wallet nicked*, however. (*Living with a mishmash of Brits, South Africans, and Malawians, I am discovering my speech increasingly littered with their lingo, as happened when I lived in Japan and Australia. Things are “a bit hectic,” I find myself “reckoning,” sentences frequently end with “Is it?,” trash is “rubbish,” etc. But much of their influence is good; my tea intake, for example, has tripled since I arrived.)

This Thursday, I accompanied Alex and Eston to town for their weekly class at Kachere Juvenile Prison. As a group we toured the guards’ residential area to identify resources and think of ways they could be harnessed to work together. From an outsider’s perspective, the place was a dump; murky wastewater puddles among piles of rubble strewn with batteries, plastic, discarded shoes, old cans, weeds. But under Alex’s direction, the group managed to find some inspiration despite the bleak scene: the wastewater could be channeled toward plants, old cans used for potting seeds, some of the weeds were found to be edible, a khola could be built for the pecking chickens to roost and make manure to feed the hungry soil. The class was assigned to design a plan for remaking the area using the resources available. Afterward, we visited Peace Corps Education’s Camp SKY for a few hours. Eston talked to the kids about permaculture, then we split the group up to demonstrate composting and recycled paper briquette making. With a mix of crushed dried leaves and old paper soaked for a few days, you can make a pretty decent substitute for regular charcoal, which is a big contributor to Malawi’s deforestation problem. So, Alex and I walked the kids through the process of balling up the gooey soaked paper and drying it in the sun. By the end of the hour, we were surrounded by a mess of shredded paper, but the kids seemed to have fun and learned something.

As you may have read, the political situation in Malawi has been changing recently. People are frustrated by the lack of fuel, scarcity of forex, and inability to sell the big export tobacco. On July 20, demonstrators took to the streets in the major cities and things turned violent. I was traveling in the north at the time and, because of transport problems, ended up a little closer to Mzuzu than I would have liked to be that day. For the few days following the demonstrations, PCVs were told to stay put for a while, which, though it meant canceling our planned hike to Ruarwe, gave me a great excuse to site visit my friend Meg for a while and enjoy the lovely beaches of Chitimba. It was an uncertain time, with little news and lots of rumors. Things seemed to have calmed down in the last month, fortunately. The next planned demonstrations were postponed in order for talks to go forward between the President and civil society. We’ll see what happens.

This week I found myself in Form 4 literature class expounding on Mercutio’s endorsement of the “bros before hos” philosophy of friendship.

Mercutio hates this whole Rosaline fiasco, I tell my students; Romeo’s just mooning around all the time mumbling about brawling love, loving hate, hateful lightness, blah blah blah. Sure, Mercutio digs ladies (high five, wink wink) but Romeo needs to straighten out his priorities. And then, after the big party, Romeo ditches him—again—for another girl. Mercutio would never do that to a friend.

Most of my students watch me with unblinking, confused stares that need no translation: what the hell is the crazy azungu talking about now? As if in agreement, a rooster, which has wandered into the unfurnished classroom and perched on the dusty window ledge, stops pecking and eyes me suspiciously.

Later I make the class stand up and read together the melodramatic scene where Juliet is discovered, seemingly dead. I belt it out: “O woe! O woeful, woeful, woeful day! … O day, O day, O day, O hateful day! ”

“SHOUT IT!” I scream and the rest of the class murmurs nervously and laughs. I should have been in theater, not a classroom, I tell myself.

Then I wonder: does this count as accomplishing Peace Corps Goal Two—promoting a better understanding of Americans abroad?

With less than a term before national exams, the Form 4 literature teacher realized they had left to cover two books of a four-book curriculum, so I volunteered to step in and teach this crash course in Shakespeare. It’s hard to gauge how much the students are getting out of these lessons, and even harder to gauge whether I’m teaching anything they need to know; the national exam writers seem to interpret Romeo and Juliet as if Shakespeare were a Life Skills teacher, not a bard with a dirty sense of humor. Did you know, for example, that a theme of the play is risky decisions? Forget the lovers’ star-crossed fate! Forget Fortuna’s fickle wheel! This is the test to which I teach.

My lasting memory of Mrs. Garrison’s nine-grade English class: we are watching Zeffirelli’s 1968 production of Romeo and Juliet, replete with leggings, codpieces, and shaggy haired hotties. Skin and bare bottom flash just before Mrs. Garrison, screaming “NOOOOOOO!,” has time to dive and block the television with her entire body, as if the nudity, pushing against her, might literally escape the screen and couple with our, um, untainted fourteen-year-old minds.

Remembering this, last month I advised the Head of Department that we pre-screen the film before showing it to the Form 4 students. “It’s racy,” I assured her. She was disappointed when the peep show was little more than a long take of Romeo’s rear.

Of course, the Form 4 students loved that scene best. “JAMBULA MTSIKANA! (SHOW THE GIRL!)” the boys shouted in Chichewa.

I tried to muster my most sour-teacher glare of disapproval.

... and felt very sore afterward.

A new roommate. Despite appearances, not housetrained.

Would you believe a brand new batch of Education Volunteers are headed this way in mid-June to replace my group leaving in September? Time flies... (sort of)

Chances are they're the only ones reading this blog, and they're asking themselves just how exactly one packs for a two-year adventure in Africa. Here is an incomplete list of the things I'm glad I brought, as well as some items that weren't worth the extra weight. Of course, everyone's "necessities" are different. If you're not sure, don't worry--you'd be surprised what you can live without and what you can find in-country. The most important thing to bring, as cheesy as it sounds, is an open mind and a *very flexible* attitude.

Coffee press (Planetary Design), and a few pounds of ground coffee Quality veggie peeler Headlamps (bring 2 or 3!) with rechargeable batteries (Princeton Tec is better than Petzl)

Battery charger (you can buy this at Game in Lilongwe too) Adapter plug(s); converters aren’t necessary as most computers have them Laptop computer (yes, you'll use it, small and inexpensive) ipod speakers (essential! recommend ihome brand) Insurance for computer and camera (worthwhile--what with power surges, theft, acts of God, you are likely to use it) Extra memory cards and batteries for camera Nothing, including electronics, you aren’t willing to part with Relevant information about teaching subject Movies and music and exercise videos (if that’s your thing) on an external hard drive Veggie and herb seeds Full coverage sun hat

High spf face sunscreen Solar battery charger Keens Yoga mat (if you’re so inclined; available in Malawi, but expensive and of poor quality) Hiking boots or sneakers Running shoes (if that’s your thing) Tent (for use when visiting friends, hiking, and as a budget lodging option when traveling. You can also usually buy one off of a volunteer that’s leaving) Light sleeping bag Jeans and clothes that make you feel normal Safety pins Concrete nails Ladies: frumpy exercise clothes for running (Nothing remotely form-fitting; I wear a calf-length skirt and leggings. You’ll still get annoying stares for jogging, but you can at least avoid any extra negative attention.) Bananagrams Puzzles, cards, hands-on games, or coloring books to play with your host family that don’t require much conversation

Construction paper, markers, crafternoon supplies Protein powder and multi-vitamins (some of the latter available from Peace Corps) Purell Padlock Luggage locks Gifts for host family (earrings, nail polish, obama gear, calendars, candy, etc) Professional clothes for teaching (blouses, closed-toed shoes, that don’t have to look REI-practical): Malawians dress up 3 or 4 broom or wrap skirts or dresses that fall well past the knee even when sitting down A few blouses or dressy looking shirts that don’t have special wash instructionsNo white clothes, or anything you can’t wash in bucket One or two skirt slips, preferably cotton because of the heat Leggings for under skirts while riding bikes Comfort snacks for homestay: dried fruit, luna bars, beef jerky—also good to request in care packages High-lighters and red pens (for your own teaching, or as gifts and prizes) Cheese packets (pasta is available) and spices Readily available in country: colgate toothpaste and toothbrushes, flipflops, novels for trade, clothes (just bring the basics, don't worry about two years' worth), laundry soap, macaroni and spaghetti, hot pepper sauce, citronella coils, toilet paper, nail polish remover, dove soap, candles, matches, Mzuzu ground coffee (mediocre), string, mirrors, gin and vodka, oatmeal Provided by peace corps (though distribution of the non-necessities isn’t immediate, so plan accordingly: Sunscreen (body) Insect repellent Condoms Tampons Every kind of medicine you can imagine Water filter (some volunteers bring a small filter for travel, but most people get along fine without one using Waterguard)

Completely unnecessary: solar shower. If you're in a place hot enough to heat it adequately, you're hot enough to enjoy a cool shower.

... and this year's organizers, the first-year Education Volunteers, are looking for support. Here are some of my pictures and stories from last year's camp.

And, a plea for funding assistance:

Since its inception in 1964, the Peace Corps Partnership Program has helped thousands of Peace Corps Volunteers implement community-initiated projects worldwide. Now the First-Year Education Volunteers of Peace Corps Malawi are taking on a new Camp Sky project that needs your support.

Camp Sky 2011 will bring together 150 students, teachers and Peace Corps volunteers from all sectors (Education, Health and Environment) for 8 days this coming August. Our Theme for this year is “From the Classroom to the World.” Our goal is to prepare Malawian student for their exit examination from secondary school and help them apply their education and skills to everyday life. This project, developed to address a pressing community need, will be implemented by both PCVs and local partners. This project will benefit the people of the community for many years to come. In order to begin implementation, Volunteers must raise $12,000 from friends, family and other interested donors. They are asking for your assistance to turn this project into a reality. The easiest way to donate is to use this link, 614-229, or visit www.peacecorps.gov/donate and search by the project number, 614-229. Although, the web site is the quickest way to make a donation, you may also make a check payable to Peace Corps Partnership Program and send it to: Paul D. Coverdell Peace Corps Headquarters Peace Corps Partnership Program, OPSI 1111 20th Street NW Washington DC 20526 Be sure to indicate the project number, 614-229, on the check so it will be applied to the correct project. Also, if you’re looking for ways to make your donation go even farther, check with your employer to see if they have a matching gifts program; many companies match donations dollar for dollar. Furthermore, consider forwarding this email to anyone else who may be interested in supporting Camp SKY. Remember that gifts supporting this project are tax-deductible! Please feel free to contact our office directly at 202.692.2170 or 1.800.424.8580 x2170 with any questions you might have. Your support will go a long way to aid the Education sector's efforts in Malawi. Best,Lara FederovPeace Corps Partnership Program

"Kilimanjaro is a snow-covered mountain 19,710 feet high, and is said to be the highest mountain in Africa. Its western summit is called the Masai 'Ngaje Ngai', the House of God. Close to the western summit there is a dried and frozen carcass of a leopard. No one has explained what the leopard was seeking at that altitude." - Ernest Hemingway

No sleep, no air, lots of cold, and six hours of climbing ahead.

Thanks for Christmas present, Uncle Jim! No blisters : )

(Pictures coming soon, I promise.)

So we survived Kilimanjaro! Not a verb of conquest, you may note. But we climbed up 5,895 meters of that mountain and all the way back down, and without a single blister. It is a much pleasanter accomplishment to consider after the fact. Standing on top of Africa, watching the rising sun, taking in the white-lit glaciers—now that I’m back down in warm and oxygenated Salima, with feeling in my toes, my mental camera takes time to appreciate the awesome occasion. In the moment, however, numb with cold and over-medicated with altitude pills, on a third day without sleep, and my face encased in a frozen sheet of snot, I barely had the presence of mind to take a photo. In fact, it was our guide, Issa, who unzipped the pocket of my anorak (my eighth layer), unhooked my fingers from my second pair of gloves and helped me turn on my camera, just as he had assisted me for the last six hours, when I was unable to perform basic functions like putting sugar candy in my mouth or unscrewing my water bottle. If anyone is to be congratulated for our summit success, it is more likely Issa and Stanley, our guides, or possibly the 12 porters who were required to accompany us on the 6-day journey, schlepping our packs like sherpas as we ambled along with daypacks of water and snack bars. Our group (Elisabeth and Ashley from the Peace Corps, and Jeff and Catherine, A’s friends from home) started off from Arusha on a Tuesday, passing through Moshi town and the green coffee fields at the feet of Kilimanjaro. The first day of climbing, a few hours through tangled rainforest, was brief and entirely lovely. I noticed with mild concern that no one else seemed to be cringing with chest pains as we started up, but armed with altitude medication and a grim desire not to prove the weakest link in our group of five, I gritted my teeth, slowed my pace, and willed my heart rate to slacken. The two days that followed were incredible: we camped above the clouds in the looming shadow of snow-tipped peaks, hiked past the tree line through arid desert and craggy rocks, up to Lava Tower at 4000 meters on an acclimatization day, then wandered back down through a dreamy mist to Barranco Camp on the third afternoon. In the evenings we sipped tea and cocoa in the green kitchen tent, played Bananagrams, ate soup and matoke, and swapped stories with Trevor and Laurie, a Canadian couple on the same path (Machame Route). I got up on the third morning exhausted after a miserable night of altitude insomnia and congested with a head cold. It was another beautiful day of climbing, up and over the Barranco Wall, though at this point you can begin to trace the fade of my smile in everyone’s photos. I started taking fewer pictures, popping more Diamox, and talking less, to save my breath and because I didn’t have anything cheerful to contribute. We clamored up to Barrafa Hut in the late afternoon; at that point I was sitting every few minutes as my chest squeezed my heart like a bellows. We collapsed in our tents, hoping for a few hours of rest before the summit push, but sleep wouldn’t come. Around 11, we emerged with pounding headaches, mummied in every stitch of warm clothing we brought with us. And then, in darkness, for six hours, at the snail’s pace set by Stanley, we slogged up, headlamps illuminating only the boots in front of us. There were seven of us climbing, and in the cold and quiet darkness, we took very separate journeys to get us through those awful hours; Ashley had mental conversations with her friends and family, Elisabeth traveled around the world, but it never occurred to me to leave the moment. I thought only about making the next step and managing not to vomit. Six hours was plenty of time to consider the relative merits of mountain climbing, as well as the number of other ways I might have invested my time and money. Here I was, frozen and leaning into gale winds, willing my lungs to open, all to reach the top of a mountain that plenty of other people had summited—and most of them were smart enough to take the easier way up. What exactly was I accomplishing? I thought about childbirth, and going to war, our tenuous grasp of mortality, people I know and love demonstrating strength and determination in ways that life throws at them. Climbing Kilimanjaro was a Disney experience; others seemed more worthy. Or maybe it was just the Diamox talking. Occasionally we would stop to suck at frozen water from our bottles, only briefly because of the cold. No one could talk much, except maybe to say the time. And then we were almost there. Without vomiting or turning into jelly, we had all made it, and the realization of success took me by surprise. Piece of cake, I told myself. It wasn’t that bad. The sun appeared as we walked the last snowy stretch from Stella Point to Uhuru Peak. We snapped photos and high-fived, savoring the summit for only what seemed like a minute; then, groggy and airless, we turned and headed down, barreling toward oxygen, warmth, and sanity. ****

Zanzibar As due reward for our hard work and stupidity, we headed on to the spice island of Zanzibar, famous formerly for its central role in slave trade, and now for long white sandy beaches and green-blue waters. Unfortunately getting to that paradise involved another hellish day of African public transportation. Though I wasn’t sitting next to a vomiting child on the 10-hour bus ride (as I had been, for 20 hours, en route from Mbeya to Arusha), we still managed to lose our brakes and spend a sweltering hour sitting by the side of road during repair, arriving too late to catch the last ferry from Dar es Salaam. At the suggestion of our friendly swindling cab driver, we caught a flight instead, bartering the price down from 75 to 45USD (yes, in Africa you can haggle for plane tix) to his dismay. Smelling, exhausted, hungry, and in short tempers, we arrived finally at Dude’s (pronounced Du-day, we discovered after a frustrating hour wandering lost in a cab) Guesthouse and fell into the welcoming arms of a whole glorious contingent of Peace Corps Malawi volunteers. For a few days we swam and snorkeled, sunbathed, and feasted on prawns and lobster and coconut fish. At its ebb, the tide recedes more than a kilometer, and we wandered in the shell-strewn wasteland of starfish and kelp, watching local women gather seaweed farmed in underwater rows and sent to Japan. It was a brief respite, then a quick morning in Stone Town, a nauseous ferry ride back to Dar, a dusty afternoon circling the city searching unsuccessfully for bus rides straight to Lilongwe, a joyful discovery of a real Subway (evidence, we decided, of Tanzania’s successful development), and then, this time with Jesi and Ashley (Elisabeth smart enough to opt for a flight back), we began the journey home. As it happened, I spent eight of twenty days of vacation on a bus. I don’t recommend this to anyone considering a trip anywhere, ever. Returning, our first bus was delayed by city traffic, and we arrived in Mbeya five hours later than expected. On this pass through the border town, we opted not to room again in the brothel next to the bus depot. Though the 2 dollar price was tempting, beds were available this time at a more respectable establishment next door, with running water and toilets to boot. (During our visit through two weeks before, everything was booked because of the school Easter holiday and because, we were informed, at this time of year people head to the mountains for a baboon cure. Whatever that means.) Three days of buses later, I arrived in sunny Salima, and I intend to stay put for a while.

... after four days on a bus.

We probably should have consulted this monthly rainfall chart before scheduling our Kilimanjaro climb:

At the Tanzania border crossing:

The view in Malawi these days... maize.

My backyard: tomatoes, cucumbers, bananas, peppers, basil, and a pumpkin patch.

Posh corps livingroom.

The invincible habanero that thrives despite neglect and goat attacks.

For a while, the neighborhood kids were coming by every night to draw and play on the porch. They took most of their own art home with them, but various PCV visitors left theirs to decorate my bare walls.

The maize is rising around neighborhood paths: more green, more quiet, more privacy.

Moringa! My fence and my dinner.

My regular sunrise visitor.

Well, I’m 30, and life continues to be good in Malawi. Apologies to anyone who's tried to call or write in the past few days; Salima has been a network dead zone.

Projects going well: Teaching literature for Form Threes this term, and I’m really enjoying it. We moved at a snail’s pace through the first story in “Looking for a Rain God,” a collection of African short stories, but the work has paid off; after establishing a routine and a literary vocabulary, we sailed through five more stories in four weeks. Permaculture continues to move in fits and starts. Planting happened, but the rains have been sparse. At the primary school, the teachers have been motivated to keep moving, but at the secondary school, it’s two steps forward, three steps back. Last weekend, I visited a permaculture group in Lilongwe that was generous enough to donate seeds, so maybe things will pick up when we plant them. The problem seemed to be getting everyone together to sit down and plan. So we had an Action Plan meeting a few weeks ago, but the results were a little vague about responsibility. I’m concerned what will happen when the rains end in April. Teacher development work at the cluster level is at a standstill because the Ministry of Education has tinkered with financial policies so that schools have ZERO access to their own tuition funds, and therefore no way to pay for workshop participant transport, allowances, Fantas, etc. While the situation is frustrating, it’s given me the chance to turn my attention elsewhere, and to work on areas of greater personal interest. I’m looking into putting together a workshop on natural medicine and gardening for the nearby secondary and primary teachers, who couldn’t get enough information about this topic during the Permaculture training in September (and thus won’t demand allowances that their schools can’t provide). Also, I’d like to take a few teachers to a training in Lilongwe on integrated pest management and seed saving. And I’m still assisting the Domasi distance learners, a group of 20 teachers who come to Salima every Friday to work on their assignments toward a diploma (like an Associate’s degree) in education. At the primary school, I’ve been helping set up email accounts for teachers, so they can exchange stories with colleagues at their sister school in Biggin Hill, England. Last weekend, Ashley, Jamie, and I took the GRE in Lilongwe, along with a roomful of Malawians who had never encountered a Scantron test before, so you can imagine the kind of fun that ensued. Needless to say, the four-hour test scheduled for 8:30 didn’t even start until 10 in the morning, and we did a very thorough job of celebrating its completion. Yes, even with jello shots. I have two new site mates! Terra, a Peace Corps Response Volunteer, who lives a half mile away. And, at Thavite, Annette, just reassigned to Malawi after Niger was evacuated. Lots of things to look forward to: this weekend, a trip up to Kande Beach on the lake for my birthday party. A week-long holiday at the beginning of March, and then a trip to Tanzania in April. And somewhere in there, the end of term exams, which I am responsible for typing—again.

Recently my Form Four Life Skills students have been studying “Communication and Media in the Global Village,” a subject in their curriculum which would be a lot more interesting to teach if we had internet access. Unfortunately, all of the dinosaur computers donated to the school have ceased functioning in the last few months, so I was left wondering how to tackle this topic. First, I brought in all sorts of books and magazines for them to peruse and consider in terms of readership and significance: Newsweek, Lonely Planet, WorldView (a Peace Corps publication), the New Yorker, Vegetarian Times, the Economist, Glamour. And wouldn’t you know they liked the last one best, especially the silky hair advertisements. A few boys asked to borrow it. As faithful readers may recall, I am linked with a Coverdell WorldWise Partner teacher in America (who also happens to have been a close friend for 20 years). Basically, the partnership program is designed to promote Peace Corps’ second and third goals of advancing mutual understanding between countries. Anyway, Sammy, who teaches seniors at Annandale High School, and I agreed to have our students exchange questions with each other so they could learn a little bit about the daily lives of their peers on the other side of the world. My kids, who were stoked about this idea, wrote up their questions last week, I typed them up and emailed them to Sammy, and today shared the responses she sent back. Rather than just read the answers aloud, I drew a big Venn Diagram on the chalkboard and we compared my Malawian students’ answers with those of the U.S.A. seniors. There were, unsurprisingly, quite a few similarities among the teens. Here are some of the answers: Eugene asked: What type of behaviour do you want your friend to be? USA: honest, loyal, funny, nice Malawi: honest, kind, faithful, tolerant, moral Moses asked: I want to know what kind of music do you like? USA: Go-go, Lil Wayne, Justin Bieber, Wiz Khalifa, Nicki Minaj Malawi: Reggae, hip-hop, Lil Wayne, Justin Bieber [Sigh.] Noel asked: What do you want to do when you finish your studies? USA: Some people go to “Beach Week” after school ends. [Okay, that was a tough one to explain to my morally upright and temperate students. I compared it to celebrating at Lake Malawi.] Noel also asked: What things do you do to keep your body strong and healthy? USA: Martial arts, running, basketball, American football, swimming. [Malawian kids LOVE martial arts, or at least what they call kung fu. They practice it on each other behind the school—diving, jumping, and spinning into the soft bed of grass and straw that lines the abandoned pits for burning rubbish.] Malawi: football (soccer), netball, bathing, swimming, running [I’m not sure I believe that one; I’ve never seen a Malawian walk faster than 3 miles per hour. They failed to mention their bodies stay pretty strong and healthy just going about their daily lives, carrying buckets of water or firewood or sacks of maize on their heads, and working long hours in the fields.] Kelvin asked: What country do you live in? USA: All of us live in America, but many of us are from different countries, like Germany, Cambodia, Vietnam, Ireland, France, Pakistan, and Sierra Leone. [My class gasped. “I want to go to that school!” said Emmanuel.] Frank asked: What are your hobbies or things you like to do on weekends? USA: Hang out with friends, watch movies, part-time jobs, play games, going to the mall, parties, homework Malawi: Chatting with friends, watching movies, homework, dancing, church [They were surprised nobody from America mentioned church.] Tamala asked: What foods do you like in your everyday life? USA: Cereal, spaghetti, pizza, kabob, hamburgers, French fries, pho, Chinese food Malawi: Nsima, chicken and chips, thelele (okra). [They were a little confused when I explained pizza, some had tried spaghetti, all very interested in pho, and excited to hear that French fries and chips are the same thing.] Chifundo asked: What is life in America like, to you? USA: Very good for some people, but hard for people who don’t have jobs. [This answer surprised my students, who described life in Malawi as very hard.] Blessings asked: Do you want to visit Malawi? USA: Yes, if someone can pay for it! [Malawian students laughed.] Blessings also asked: Who is your role model? USA: Oprah, Taylor Swift, Bruce Le [many cheers from the Malawians!], JFK, Obama [more cheers], James Bond [cheers again], Michael Jordan [some kids had heard of him] Rabecca asked: What would you like to be in terms of your career? USA: physical therapist, voice actor, nurse, engineer Malawi: nurse, lawyer, engineer Gabriel asked: What are your likes and dislikes? USA: We like girls/boys, Facebook, cell phones, music, Taylor Swift, TV, motorcycles, having a driver’s license. We dislike: bullies, Myspace, liars, homework, cold weather Malawi: We like girls/boys, football, dancing, movies, chatting, the lake. We dislike: liars [They said more, but I didn’t get a chance to get them down] Antra asked: What do you do when you wake up early in the morning? USA: Most teenagers wake up at 6 am on school days, but on weekends we wake up from 11 am to 2 pm. [Malawians wake up, it seems, around 3 in the morning, on their own accord, so this was very confusing for them. It also confuses my students when I suggest that knocking on my door or calling me at 5 in the morning is unacceptable. I began enforcing this policy when I began distributing condoms from Peace Corps, and the students are still baffled at my queer desire to sleep until 6 (or even 7!) on the weekend.] Andrew asked: Do you have a boyfriend or girlfriend? USA: 2 out of 14 students have a boyfriend/girlfriend. [Malawian secondary students aren’t technically allowed to be in relationships so none of them wanted to volunteer that information, but it is safe to say, based on the condom requests mentioned above, that a fair number of them are.] So, it was a productive and entertaining exchange within the global village. And we are looking forward to some questions from the American students next week.

The Malawian powers that be are considering making farting in public illegal.

Thanks to a number of interested readers for sending queries regarding this important piece of legislation.

On a related note, my Life Skills students told me last week during a game of DealBreaker that they would never get involved with a person with b.o. Considering the olfactory offenses that permeate crowded public areas around here, they may have reason for concern.

Happy new year all!

I arrived back in Salima safe and sound, and found everything green and growing after my holiday adventures across the way. It's good to be back.

Exciting permaculture news: planting is in full swing at the primary and secondary schools. I stopped by Msalura L.E.A. the other day and found the students busy working on their plots in front of the headmistress's office and around the school.

Last week, the Education 09 group got together in Dedza for our Mid-Service Training, and everyone was delighted to benefit from the contents of a package of candy and trashy magazines and other goodies from Angie. (Elisabeth, below, catches up on Taylor Swift. I'm not actually sure who that is.) Thanks, Ang!

At MST we learned that, because of last year's change in the Malawian school calendar, our early Close of Service date in September has been approved by the powers that be. So, unless I extend here or in another country, you will see your LooBird back stateside just a little bit sooner than expected.

Also, I had a chance to visit my homestay family, the Bvumbwes, who were stoked about the pictures and photo calendar I printed for them in America. I cannot emphasize how much Malawians love calendars. And photos of themselves. We chatted about the past year, laughed a lot, and played with the new baby, Peace. And then they loaded up my bags with ripe plums from their orchard and red grapes--very tart, the first I've seen in-country.

On our way back from Dedza to Lilongwe, traffic stopped when the presidential fleet (including a Winnebago?!) passed by heading south. Everybody unloaded the cars to wave at Bingu.

Storm clouds were brewing.

Since the whole group (minus Esther, sadly home for a while on medical) was together just one last time, everybody spent a night together hanging out in Lilongwe, and even splurged and went out to a real restaurant.

Don't we clean up nice? (Below: Meg, Elisabeth, and Jerrod, my Katsekaminga buddies.)

Tomorrow... back to Salima and the belated start of Term 2. In addition to Form 4 Life Skills and computer classes for teachers, I'm taking on Form 3 Literature this term, starting with a book of African short stories, "Looking for a Rain God."

***And, speaking of books...I don't get out much. (After dark anyway.) Which means I've had plenty of fruitful reading time in Malawi, especially during the two-hour window from 6:00 dinner to lights out around 8:00. Here's a breakdown of the books I've read so far, beginning with the most recent, with an asterisk next to the ones I've really enjoyed and would recommend to anybody.

Currently: Kitchen Confidential (Anthony Bourdain) *

A Man Without A Country (Vonnegut) *

Anna Kerenina (Tolstoy) *

East, West (Rushdie)

The Wind-up Bird Chronicle (Murakami) *

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Angelou)

The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Kundera) *

The Year of Magical Thinking (Didion) *

The Executioner's Song (Mailer)

Disgrace (Coetzee)

28 Barbary Lane (Maupin)

Interpreter of Maladies (Lahiri) *

The Awakening (Chopin)

The Picture of Dorian Gray (Wilde) *

The Botany of Desire (Pollan) *

Winesburg, Ohio (Anderson) *

Ullyses (Joyce)

A Lesson Before Dying (Gaines)

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress

The Screwtape Letters (Lewis)

She's Come Undone (Lamb)

Angle of Repose (Stegner) *

The Secret Sharer (Conrad)

Heart of Darkness (Conrad)

Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)

Mere Christianity (Lewis)

There's No Toilet Paper on the Road Less Traveled (compilation)

The Fountainhead (Rand)

Mountains Beyond Mountains (Kidder)

The Optimist's Daughter (Welty) *

The House of the Spirits (Allende) *

Bel Canto (Patchett)*

The Friday Night Knitting Club (Jacobs, as bad as it sounds)

The Red Tent (Diamant)*

The Art of Racing in the Rain (Stein)

Say You're One of Them (Akpan)

Atlas Shrugged (Rand)

Smouldering Charcoal (Zeleza)

A Personal Matter (Kenzaburo Oe)

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind (Kamkwamba)

I Capture the Castle (Smith)

The Alchemist (Coelho)

Another Roadside Attraction (Robbins)

Three Cups of Tea (Mortensen and Relin)

My back yard in July...

... and December.

We planted about 200 trees around the school grounds at the end of the term. Above, a row of jatropha, and also papaya, guava, acacia, and more.

The primary school was under water for a few days.

Eunice and Shameem often come by in the evenings to hang out on my porch, draw, and tell stories.

We added a map of Malawi to the geography classroom in September.

Currently in bloom.

Bats escape the heat of the tin roof. Notice the one with vampire fangs.

But first, a weather update: November is the height of hot season in Salima. It is like living in a dog’s mouth.

My water consumption has quadrupled and still I barely ever have to pee. Every inch of my body is constantly slimy. Mangoes are in season, and I am up to six a day. I have taken up weekend residence at the lake with Sally. It is HOT.

***

Once again, I am typing exams for the end of term. Last week, one of the teachers submitted the following story as a Reading Comprehension passage:

Once upon a time there lived a woman named Mbereka-Miti (“mother of heads”), who was married to a man called Tate-Miti (“father of heads”). When Mbereka-Miti became pregnant for the first time she gave birth to a living head. Annoyed at this, she killed it and threw it into the bush. But the same thing happened over and over again, six times in all. On the seventh occasion she decided not to kill the head but to keep it, as she would probably never have a normal child.

Now the head possessed all the normal faculties: two eyes, two ears, a nose, and a mouth. It could see, hear, smell, eat and talk. The one thing it could not do, however, was walk, for it had no legs. When it came of age, Mbereka-Miti put it in a basket and, together, with her husband, set out on a journey to look for a girl who would be willing to become a wife.

They went from village to village and saw lots of girls, but no one of them wanted to marry the head. Here they were received with insults, there people chased them away or cruelly beat them. But they doggedly went on and in the end found a girl who said she would marry the head. Her name was Matola-tola, that is “she who picks up anything.”

The girl went along with them, together with her younger brother, and they and the head were given a house of their own. The boy and the head shared a room while the girl had one to herself.

It sounds incredible, but during the night the head would change into a European, who moved through the house suddenly ablaze with electric lights and furnished in the most lavish manner, the way Europeans like it. Now the little boy, waking up one night, happened to see this, and the next morning secretly told his sister. She would not believe him and told him he had been dreaming. But the boy said he would tie a string to his ear so that when it happened again he could wake her up by pulling it.

Night came and when the events repeated themselves the boy managed to wake up his sister, who was able to see everything for herself. The head was still in its basket, but as long as the European moved about, it looked lifeless like a wooden mask.

The girl and her brother now made a plan. They decided that, on the next occasion, the boy would get hold of the white man while the girl smashed the head to pieces. Night came and everything went according to plan. The white man could no longer change back into a head and everything in the house stayed as it had been during the night. There were lovely chairs and tables, a couch, a refrigerator, a TV set. The girl changed into a white woman, her brother into a white boy, and even Mbereka-Miti and her husband became white people.

At day break, the whole village flocked to the house, everybody exclaiming in surprise. The girls who had refused to marry the head and who had even mocked it were now green with envy. Some tried to undo their mistake by using witchcraft against the family, but failed, as whites cannot be bewitched.

(Adapted from: “An Anthology of Malawian Literature for Junior Secondary.”)

***

Lastly, a gem from a Peace Corps magazine’s “Achievements of Our Community” section a few months ago. For the past nine years *** S*** has intentionally lived his life without using money. He has spiritual reasons for avoiding any form of currency, but he also does it as a statement against a system he believes is corrupt. S*** lives in a cave, which holds the few things he owns. He finds everything else he needs, including food and clothing, in trash receptacles in Moab, Utah.

I’ve been to two funerals in Malawi, both in the last month or so. This number is pretty low, another difference I can chalk up to living in town instead of the village. In the village, all business stops and everyone goes to a funeral. Here in town, life carries on.

In September a seven-year-old girl at the adjacent primary school crossed the road after school and was hit by the District Commissioner’s car. The next day, I went to the funeral. The men sat separately from the women on the dusty ground around the thatched-roof house of the little girl. Everyone was very quiet. Sometimes women would break out wailing, but mostly we just sat, cross-legged and hushed, baking in the sun, looking at the small coffin. Her little friends stared at it fidgeting in their pink and green school uniforms. Eventually, a sort of service began: a man stood and told what happened, a representative from the District Education Office offered his condolences, a representative from the District Commissioner’s office did the same. No one seemed angry when he spoke. A family member spoke again. Later, I asked what was said and was told: this is God’s will. Dressed in white, the men of the dead child’s family stood before the coffin, maybe they were facing Mecca, and chanted Allahu Akbar. They sang soft sad songs. And then we parted our sea, and the men carried Ayisha through the crowd, away to the graveyard.

I go to another funeral

The school watchman, Mr. Ngoma, passed away suddenly from pneumonia last week. He was, as you might remember, charged briefly with my own security after The Burglary Incident and we had a friendly relationship that mostly consisted of nodding, saying thank you repeatedly, and laughing. I was sad, but more in sympathy for my new watchman, Mr. Ngoma’s brother, Ernest.

Classes were cancelled and the entire staff piled onto the back of a large lorrie, along with a stack of firewood and maize sacks and buckets, for a bumpy ride to Khombedza, the watchman’s village a few miles north up the lakeshore road. We arrived to find men and women wailing outside of the widow’s house and, very briefly, we stepped inside to pay our respect. Groups had come from villages all around and established their day’s territory to cook and eat. The women teachers from my school did the same, setting a series of fires to begin preparing a vat of nsima and various ndiwo (relishes)—the usual suspects: cabbage, tomato, goat, usipa. The men disappeared somewhere (presumably to the funeral service) and reappeared only hours later to eat and head home. As it happened, none of the female teachers left to attend the service; they spent the whole day cooking and laughing at my efforts to help. “I don’t know if you noticed, but everyone was laughing at you when you carried water on your head,” one of the teachers told me the next day, sincerely thinking I might not have noticed two hundred people doubled over in laughter at my expense. Ha. Scorched by a day of sun and full of nsima, we loaded the lorrie and headed back to Salima.

Ups:

My Dad came to visit a few weeks ago, and despite one rough night in a hot, cramped hostel, he seemed to enjoy seeing my Malawi. We swam in the lake, staked out some wild animals, and stationed ourselves directly in front of the shiny oscillating fan he purchased after suffering one night of Salima’s stagnant and sultry air. I certainly enjoyed his company, though it has made the weeks since his departure something like post-Christmas blues. Fortunately, I have the fan for my solace.

Sally’s birthday was this weekend, on Halloween, so we enjoyed cake and good company at Senga Bay. It is good to have her in the neighborhood.

In September, with leftover supplies from the World Map Project, we painted a map of Malawi next to the bigger map, and it came out pretty well if I do say so.

I’m still teaching Life Skills and next week we’re showing the whole school a made-in-Malawi movie about decision-making that I think they’ll really like.

In October, Elisabeth and I visited Jerrod’s school in Ehehleni to lead a two-day literature workshop. His house is five miles down a dusty dirt road, sitting at the end of a path on a plateau looking out over Zambia. Serene. And quiet. I have to admit I had site envy. On the first morning, Elisabeth and I led a long and entertaining sexual health class with the Form 2 and 4 girls, who came up with some pretty creative questions for the Q and A session. The next day I woke up with a runny cold and hacked my way through the workshop; still it was better to be sick in good company. We ate delicious meals, baked lemon bread, and watched stars appear in the big big sky.

And Downs

At work, some of my projects feel like they are stagnating. Waiting on decisions. Going to unproductive meetings. Having an Action Plan meeting to schedule the next Action Plan meeting. Cancelling classes because of National Education Day. At the start of the term, I was excited to learn that my schools wanted to start organizing cluster teacher development activities (but wasn’t I already doing that?); somehow, though, we could afford only one one-day workshop this term since the bulk of the school-contributed funds was spent on Fanta refreshments during the five(!) planning meetings.

I keep waiting for the fog to lift, and if the past is any indication, it will eventually. So this week I am waiting for that Malawi magic.

Gentle Reader, I must apologize for never leading you on a tour of my humble abode in Salima. Tucked away among the teachers’ houses at the secondary school, I am parked very much in the center of town, in close proximity to a community football pitch, a quick walk to the markets, just off the tarmac, and a short stone’s throw away from my nearest neighbors. Lest when I say town your mind conjures urban images of parking lots and sidewalks and convenience stores, I should note that my house is surrounded by fields of maize and the most common visitors to cross the threshold of my fence are goats and chickens. Last night at 3 a.m., however, I discovered a visitor of another sort lurking within my sanctuary: a man. It started when I awoke to the sound of rustling and scraping within the house. Since I live with approximately 34 lizards, 3000 spiders, and who knows how many roaches, such sounds are not unusual, though this was slightly louder than normal. Presuming a rat, I stumbled out of my bedroom to check if I had left food out. Crossing the living room, I flipped on the light switch near the front door. It was while standing there that I could see, behind the door to the half-open spare room, a man’s arm. Suddenly I heard a low, seemingly drugged, guttural voice screaming: “Get out of my house! GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HOUSE!” And then a few seconds later, I realized it was my own voice shouting, and I had crossed into the room, grabbed the man by his shoulders and was unlocking the door to shove him out. He was limp as liquid and moved dumbfounded as I screamed and screamed and screamed. I locked the door and kept on yelling… at him, the roaches, anybody else who might be hiding in the yard… it didn’t matter. Then I called Hector. Hector is the Peace Corps security officer and a wonderful human being, who told me sensible things like: call your closest neighbor, drink some water, and you are okay now. He then called the police. A whole troupe of neighbors, including my headmaster, came over and surveyed the scene, which included: one rattled Peace Corps Volunteer, three open windows, zero items of property missing, and on my front stoop a belt embossed with silver images of Mickey Mouse. (This afternoon a teacher told me he suspected this belt was a critical part of the intruder’s witchcraft, which was enlightening since I had imagined he merely forgot it there when he removed it to slide in through the window.) Of course I should mention all of my windows have burglar bars and it is not uncommon to leave some of them cracked during hot season. As it turns out, unfortunately, no one had noticed the burglar bars to the kitchen window were wide enough to fit the body of a man. The school watchman was brought to stake a post at my house and, though I certainly didn’t sleep for the rest of the night, it was a comfort knowing he was there. My Dad chatted with me on the phone for a while, and calmed me down until I was able to convince myself that, despite my agitation, I was physically safe. The day dawned, and I began to clean and purge. Only thinking back on it later, I realize my morning’s efforts began by sweeping outside under the kitchen window (where the intruder entered) and immediately next by attacking the space behind the spare room door where I found him. That room, mainly used for yoga, is also the home of my bicycle and an ever-growing pile of difficult to throwaway items that I had been storing, in vain, for the day when the recycling truck would show up to haul away used light bulbs, Priority Mail boxes, empty cartons of Jungle Oats, and yogurt containers. Separating the few things I thought I might actually use, I took the rest to the trash pit and set them ablaze in a bonfire of catharsis. As for the culprit, I suspect I scared him as much as he scared me. He is still at large. I have spent no small amount of time puzzling about his intentions. Why was he in the mostly empty spare room, when he had passed my laptop, camera and wallet untouched? He was holding a white cloth in his left hand, which in my hysterics I assumed was covered in chloroform. Do criminals use chloroform in Malawi? Had he mistaken that room for mine, after tiptoeing past the open door of my own bedroom? What kind of criminal wears a white t-shirt and a Mickey Mouse belt? I did not recognize him. Since crime is more likely during the start and close of one’s service, why did he target me now, after so many months here? Last week he may have noticed me at the markets, some of which I rarely frequent, buying large quantities of food for the below-mentioned Permaculture Training, and maybe he thought I was loaded with cash. Or maybe he just liked my bike. Most of all, I wondered: Did I grossly miscalculate the karmic value of the chicken’s life I took last week? Was this my payment? Anyhow, in the evening a day later, I have some new burglar bars, better hung curtains, and the comforting presence of the school’s watchman just outside the door. I have replaced the whistle next to my bed with a deafening personal alarm. This week I will get a reinforced door, hire a watchman just for my house and also hopefully have some lockable screens installed so that in the hot season I can breathe… safely. Much gratitude to all of you folks for your love and concern. I was a bit shaken but am doing just fine.

Sorry, vegetarian readers.

It took a few years, but I have now accomplished my Michael Pollan-invoked duty: to kill and prepare my dinner. (Or, for the sake of accuracy, lunch.)

It all happened Thursday, the penultimate day of the permaculture training we’ve been holding all week for teachers of Msalura primary and secondary schools. The participants learned about water management, land design principles, nutrition security, and medicinal gardening, and additionally they enjoyed delicious lunches featuring a variety of local foods from all six of the Malawian food groups. Thus it was that I spent a large chunk of each day biking here and there for menu items: goat at Takumana market, three chickens at Kamuzu Road, bananas and fresh chambo near the bus depot. I spent a lot of time with the facilitator’s wife, Mrs. Chawawa, and her very competent assistants, Charity and Mrs. Chimpeni, who took pleasure in improving my Chichewa and teaching me how to kill and pluck a chicken.

At the start of each day, Mrs. Chawawa listed the foods Ieft to track down and bring back to the cooks. On Thursday, she sent me to the market for “nkhuku atatu” (three chickens). “Tambala!” she kept repeating to my confusion; tambala is the smallest denomination coin here, virtually worthless. I have since discovered one face of the coin features a cock, and we eventually established that she wanted three “amuna” (man) chickens. So, I peddled away to Kamuzu Road market, strapped three fat local tambala to my bike rack, and made my way warily back, finding it difficult to maneuver the bicycle very far without getting my skirt or the chickens’ heads caught in the rear-wheel spokes.

For some reason, it was decided that I would dispatch one chicken and Mr. Simphire, a teacher participant, would kill the other two. The need for a halaal method was debated and eventually discarded, since no one in the group was Muslim. And so, Mrs. Chimpeni (whose name means “knife”) led us behind the back fence, apparently a more hygienic place to do the deed. Holding the wing of my bird, I felt it grow still as Mr. Simphire began on the first chicken, pinning its feet and then pulling back its neck so he could pluck away the throat feathers. He cut it quickly and yet the bird’s body shuddered for a few minutes as the blood seeped out of its throbbing neck. He wiped the red knife on the white feathers and handed it to me. Mrs. Chimpeni demonstrated how I could pin down the wings and feet, and then I pulled at the tufts of its neck feathers and severed the neck, holding the quivering body as the life ran out. After we placed the three beheaded chickens in a basin, they continued to jump and flutter for a moment.

Mrs. Chawawa led us to a pot of boiling water, in which we dangled each bird, the hot water loosening the feathers from the pimpled skin. She showed me the three kinds of chicken feathers, tufty white fluff under the joints, long black feathers on the wings, and smaller thin feathers underneath. We plucked and pulled, peeling away the extra layer of skin on the feet, dislodging the beak and tongue. To remove the last remnants of hair and feathers, we singed them in the fire, and finally they came away too. Behind the fence, neighborhood dogs snarled for a share of the spilled blood.

And that was how I killed and plucked a chicken. It was a surprisingly emotionless affair at the time, such an everyday and matter-of-fact event for Mrs. Chimpeni, the chickens, and the hungry dogs. After a few days of contemplation, I feel a little sad thinking about my conscious participation in the death of an animal, though I know I participate in that process every time I eat meat, and at some point or another I should come face to face with the extent of that act. I think, however, it will be my first and last experience in killing chickens, or anything else for that matter.

As for the permaculture training, it turned out to be a big success and a good sign of things to come. Though some teachers started off a little wary of some concepts (no sweeping, as you’ll remember, seems especially threatening to Malawians), they were all converts by Monday afternoon.

Mr. Chawawa, the facilitator, brought with him a huge collection of handouts and books, and designated a teacher as a librarian for the week to maintain these on a resource table every day. He began the week with the lesson that Malawi is rich in resources, but lacking in memory and imagination of how to use them. Participants went out and found items they consider useless and then they were shown that most “trash” can be put to some kind of good use. The first two days were spent discussing food and nutrition security, and how healthy living is achievable with locally available but often forgotten foods.

Mrs. Chawawa and her team, over the course of the week, prepared a series of delicious teas and juices: bwemba, malambe (baobob), papaya, lemongrass, chitimbe, chidede, and others, each with the ability to remedy some ailment or another. As I mentioned above, she also orchestrated the preparation of healthy and delicious lunches, with varied examples from each of the six food groups in Malawi. (I was playfully shamed a few times for having misgrouped certain menu items; soya is not a protein here, it is a legume). The teachers were delighted to rediscover certain foods and learn that wild basil, widely considered a useless weed, is in fact an edible, nutritious, and valuable herb. That last quality—value—really seemed to hit home with many of the teachers; Mr. Chawawa emphasized that they could improve family and student health and, at the same time, save money or even supplement their salaries with a year-round kitchen garden.

On Tuesday, my friend Kennie, a volunteer at the NdiMoyo Palliative Care Clinic in Salima, shared about the medicinal qualities of many common plants and herbs. He distributed recipes for the home treatment of a variety of maladies, and remained for the rest of the week to supplement Mr. Chawawa’s sessions with information about medicinal gardening. He has promised to visit the schools regularly and assist as we are planting the garden; he will be a big help.

On Wednesday, the group traveled to Mr. Chawawa’s home in Mchezi, to observe permaculture in action. “Your disorder is my order,” he laughed as we disembarked from the minibus and looked upon a bushy front yard, full of trees and brick-lined pathways that, not swept bare, were instead strewn with a mulch of thick green banana leaves. Although Malawi is in the height of dry season and the rest of the country is dusty and dead, Mr. Chawawa’s home was lush and plentiful with ripe foods. He introduced the teachers to the concept of “guilds,” plants grouped together to support and sustain one another: a guild can have diggers, supporters, climbers, and protectors. Behind the house, we found an immense plot of gardens dotted with a series of fish ponds, some of which drain in the dry season and serve as nutrient-packed soil for vegetable beds. For three hours we tromped through the maze of paths surrounding the Chawawa home, learning about plants and design, sampling stalks of sugarcane, and seeing how very possible it is for Malawians to grow enough to eat plentifully and thrive. Mrs. Chawawa then served the sun-worn group a feast of cassava, banana, ngaiwa nsima, beans, fried cabbage, eggs, and an assortment of other foods grown on the homestead.

The following day, after lunch, the group began the practicum aspect of the training at the primary school. They hauled bricks and rocks from around the campus and then constructed a mandala design with key-hole pathways around a young tree near the headmaster’s office, each path of the circle varying in height in order to catch and control water. After the paths were made, the teachers found leaves and ash and manure to feed the soil. On Friday, in the afternoon—it happened to be the first incredibly HOT day of the season—we visited the secondary school garden site and began preparing the soil and laying brick designs there too.

Afterward, we gathered for distribution of certificates of participation (Malawians LOVE certificates!), and for final comments on the training. We encouraged the teachers to implement what they learned, and to support one another like a guild as they bring these “new” ideas back to their homes and school communities. The teachers left inspired and very excited about the possibilities of permaculture at their respective schools. You can guess it was gratifying to see some of the same teachers that mocked our permaculture efforts a few months ago offer support and encouragement to the project. Envy can be such a hindrance to success here, and it seemed to be holding many of the secondary teachers back from getting involved. By opening the training to so many interested teachers, no one could be upset that they were not included from participating, and there was a real sense of camaraderie at the end. I am hoping it keeps up.

The training was sponsored by Biggin Hill school community in England, and especially through the help of Martin Pullen, a friend of Msalura primary school. He visited Salima a few months ago and helped spark interest in the school garden project when my own hope (because of the issues mentioned above) was flagging. So, a very big thank you to Biggin Hill.

In other news: on Thursday, Sally, my new health sector site mate, moved to town, and I stopped by her house to welcome her. The sun, which has been kindly mild for a few months, returned keenly to welcome her as well. Salima is hot again.

“I killed a chicken today,” I told her.

“Oh. I’m a vegetarian,” she responded. So much for my dreams of a Salima pork party.

She forgave my faux pas, however, and l’m looking forward to future fun and adventures with my new neighbor. Next weekend: a beach day at Senga Bay and then homemade dumplings!

... is finished, and I am pooped. Stories later, but here are some pics:

Field trip!

A visit to the new Parliament building

... and the airport!

Cooking class: crepes

Foods of Malawi, thanks to Stacia Nordin and the Ministry of Education

Nditha Sports

Staff Room SHARK ATTACK!

Soon-to-be-PCVs!

Physical Science lab

Jerrod and I led a creative writer's workshop.

Goat dissection: heart.

Learning to make mud stoves

Apparently, when instinct kicks in, I opt for the former.

I'm in Lilongwe to shop for school supplies and tie up loose ends before Camp Sky starts next week in Kasungu, and the last 24 hours have been pretty weird.

Last night Elisabeth and I played ultimate frisbee and saw a man hit by a car on the way home. We were riding with a doctor, who tried to stop the growing mob from touching the man, but it was too late. They picked him up like a sack of maize and tossed him in the back of a car, his body twitching in his last breaths. Car accidents are fairly frequent here, but it doesn't lessen the shock of seeing them. No ambulances show up in 5 minutes, no EMTs with backboards, no policemen arrive on the scene to calm the crowd and take notes. A mob collects, surrounds the involved parties, tempers rise and then slowly dispel. There won't be a notice in the paper.

So we were contemplative this morning, crossing the bridge of last night's accident, as we embarked on a hellish three hours of market shopping. I have never been a shopper. Inevitably, my blood-sugar levels plummet an hour in and I morph into a impatient animal on a ravenous search for peanuts or sugar. Unfortunately, this morning that happened at the very moment we were accosted by a large crazy man who followed us around the streets of Lilongwe. We weaved in and out of stores, crossed the street, walked zigzag and still this man was a step behind, mouthing kisses and mumbling incoherently.

Well, Elisabeth booked it and I lost it, unleashing a loud and long slew of pointed directions as to where he should go and how he might arrive there. It was quite a scene we made there, in the electronics shop next to the bus depot. I think my reaction was a result of the stress of the night before, and of pent-up frustration at the barrage of unwanted negative attention that women receive here. Anyhow, after my rant, we ducked, ran, and dove behind an idling car, and (to the amusement of its passengers) waited and watched until our pursuer rambled away, and we escaped safely into the depths of the chaotic clothes market.

Some deep breaths and big lunch later, I'm writing off this trip to Lilongwe as a bad dream, and looking forward to better days ahead: a stop tomorrow at the health sector's Camp Glow where I'll be talking to the girls about writing, then a fondue-inclusive visit to Jen and Kris's site on the way north to Kasungu, and then 10 crazy (the good kind of crazy) fun-filled days of camp after that.

Before I came to Malawi, I considered myself a friendly person. Sure, I’m inarguably an “I” on the Myers-Briggs test, and I plug in my earphones immediately upon finding my airplane seat, and I always get a little embarrassed and irritated when my mother chitchats with random people in the grocery line. But I do like people. As evidence of my friendliness I point to a sizable number of friends, two years of bartending (job requirement: friendliness), and a generally affable disposition in the company of strangers.

Malawians, however, are friendly to an incomparably higher degree. It is a country full of people like my mom in the grocery store. Or I could say a country full of chatty airplane seatmates who don’t seem to notice the earplugs. Everyone, everywhere, all the time, stops each other to ask: “Where are you going? What is your name? How are you? How did you wake up?” Strangers I pass on my bike, children 60 meters away, travelers heading the opposite direction, bike taxi drivers, women selling fruit: everyone shouts a greeting or a question. People can greet each other three or four times a day and it never gets old. Not just “hello”, mind you, but the entirety of a greeting like this: “How did you wake?/I woke fine, and you?/I also woke fine, thank you!” Some days, I love this aspect of the Warm Heart of Africa. A friend compared the greeting ritual to Belle’s morning walk down the country lane in Beauty and the Beast, as the butcher and the baker (and the rest of the town) pop their heads out to shout “Bonjour!”

But the friendliness can be exhausting too. I limited myself to early morning runs to cut down on the number of people, especially shouting children, I pass and greet; even so, I counted sixty such encounters one recent morning. “Where are you going? Why are you running? Do you want a ride? Where do you live?” they’ll ask as I jog by. Though the greetings can be tiresome, by the end of many runs I come home smiling and encouraged by the enthusiastic hellos of the early-rising passersby. I find myself shouting good-mornings to women in the fields, bicycle passengers, and the man setting up his market stand. Accustomed to, though sometimes weary of, all this friendliness, it’s been very hard to deal with occasional but very real unfriendliness in the community. This has come in the form of steel-faced stares, mimicry from groups of women and children, or just insensitive laughter at the ridiculous sight of the crazy azungu out running again. To be fair, I can see how jogging is absurd in a country where most people are in peak physical condition from going about their daily activities to live and provide for their families. Still, laughter stings. A few weeks ago, a group of older teenage boys waited for me after I passed and began running next to me on my return route, not greeting, not talking, and not being friendly. I refused to stop running, but had to fight back tears. Thankfully my former home-stay running buddy, Elisabeth, visited overnight the next week and helped me summon the will to get back on the trail again. Running with someone else, I forgot about the stress of greeters (and non-greeters) and had the chance to notice the purple beauty of the sun rising over Salima, the receding green along the dusty path, and white herons resting on bare branches. Running wasn’t a chore, it was a pleasure again.

Whenever my Dad visits Charlottesville, Virginia, where I’ve lived off and on for the past 12 years, he makes a crack about the ubiquity of joggers on every corner. “I can say I’ve been in Cville now,” he’ll always say. “There’s a jogger!” To run alone, unharassed, in the quiet beauty of the landscape. To run up Monticello Avenue or Carter’s Mountain, and to see the Blue Ridge tipped with red sun. It’s a luxury just like fresh produce and good health care and clean air, something I appreciate every day here in the friendly Warm Heart of Africa.

*All above references to my parents are made with affection (and apologies).

If my camera still existed, you would be looking at a photograph of a crayon-drawn AIDS awareness poster, a mountain valley painted with wildflowers, a brilliant blue butterfly wing, and a chalet tucked in the folds of Mount Mulanje's rolling plateau. Sadly, the camera and a number of other items were casualties* of an attempt to summit the third highest mountain in Africa during Easter break, so you will just have to imagine.

Mount Mulanje is in Malawi's southern region, near the city of Blantyre. After leading a teaching workshop last weekend, I met five friends in Blantyre and we embarked on a three day adventure on the mountain, along with our silent but trusty guide, Jonathan. If other people do this, I recommend they also hire porters. We did not. Also, I recommend they wait until someone introduces the concept of "switchbacks" here. Anyway, we arrived finally, sore and happy, above the clouds in a spectacular mountain pass overshadowed by the craggy grey rockface of Chambe peak, at a chalet where we passed our first night on the mountain.

The second day began pleasantly enough, with a three-hour hike around the plateau. We climbed through valleys of shaggy grass and brambles and wildflowers, and we danced over rocky plains. We were happy, we sang, we laughed, we felt like the Von Traps. Around 11, we arrived at a camping hut, dropped off our packs, and began the three-hour trek up to the mountain's summit, Sepitwa. The climb is what guidebooks would probably call a "rocky scramble." I would call it a "great way to break your ankle or fall quickly to your death." The trail, again, was straight uphill, but this time we had to search for footholds in smooth mossy rockface, and fling ourselves from boulder to boulder, clinging to whatever vines or clumps of grass might sustain our weight. The climbing was treacherous but exciting until the rain started, at which point it became scary. Forty minutes from the summit, Jonathan, in an exemplary display of Malawian understatement, gently suggested we turn around, considering the wet rocks, and the race with coming darkness. But the group pressed on. In an unusually lucid moment of clarity, as I slid three feet down a steep slab of rock above a craggy ledge and then watched my camera take its final great leap, I decided that continuing up the mountain would be a poor decision, and stayed behind to huddle in the cold rain below a rock with Elisabeth. It became colder and wetter. We were soaked through in the most literal sense. Our teeth chattered and hands began to lose feeling. I started thinking about John Krakauer disaster books, and all of the warnings we'd received about the Brazilian hiker who died last year of hypothermia on the mountain. Sepitwa is considered by Malawians to be a place of spirits; they do not generally climb to the summit. We started counting minutes, and discussing unfinished life business. Time slowed. It seemed silly, and inconvenient, to be dying on this mountain of all places.

The summiting group finally returned triumphant and we began the long descent down the mountain. But the mountain had turned into a series of waterfalls and the path was a stream, and our only means of fording it was by crabwalking slowly and carefully, downward, for three hours, in dusking light. We slid down on the seats of our pants, until I had no seat of my pants, or skin underneath that. Our hands were shredded by the rocks, ankles and knees pounded, and wetness prevailed. Darkness came finally, and we continued down slowly to the valley. The clouds cleared, and we saw the Big Dipper rising, Orion, the Southern Cross, a dotted sky. The hut appeared, and there was chocolate and brandy, a snapping fire, dinner… and Aleve.

On day three, we descended, ate pizza, and showered.

*Our final casualty tally included: three pairs of trousers, two pairs of shoes (one pair burned, one gone missing), two pairs of underwear (one burned, one shredded), two cameras (one engulfed in the mountain, one waterlogged by rain), and some socks.

This is the end of rainy season, when all is lush and grasses are waist high. I am receiving my karmic payment for torturing Catherine (my former, incredibly tolerant roommate), who endured three years of lawn mowing with only an electric weed whacker in the name, I insisted, of environmental responsibility. Well, here in Malawi, there are no weed whackers, or other machinated options for cutting grass, only brute strength and a dull metal tool like a hockey stick: the slasher. On Wednesdays, a few hours are set aside for general cleaning at school, and the students can be found slashing away at the seemingly endless expanse of green overgrowth. Truant or otherwise errant students risk hours of disciplinary action in this form. On my return Sunday, after two weeks away from site, I discovered a jungle of vines obscuring the long driveway that once served as a path to my house; in its current state, its passibility was in grave doubt, especially considering the serpentine wildlife that love this kind of habitat. Moreover, I had created an eyesore for my neighbors, whose culture expresses a strong distaste for such untidiness. So I had my first go at slashing. Thirty minutes later, hands blistered and ego bruised, I could at least claim success in entertaining the neighborhood. The driveway, though, showed no visible sign of my toil; at my current rate, I might expect to finish by the next rainy season. So, when a man called at my fence an hour later, eying the tangled yard and asking for piecework, I accepted his offer, and at the same time, the limits of my desire to prove self-sufficiency.Busybusybusy. Things I have been doing. This is the first week of Term 2! Hard to believe how fast the first term flew by, and with it my first three months at site. Much of the last term was spent visiting the eleven schools in my cluster, getting to know the teachers there, and conducting a teacher survey that will help me plan the next two years in Salima. Initial school visits took more time than one might imagine, since I had to cobble together third-hand directions to each school and then attempt to find my way there via foot, bicycle, cheetah, or the back of a pickup truck. Some of my best days, though, were spent winding through villages on bumpy dirt roads, trying to keep my skirt dry while biking through a river. At the end of the term, I hosted a very successful lesson-planning workshop, which was unfortunately followed by three hellish weeks of exam typing and printing, a task that had me briefly questioning my entire purpose in being here. But new terms bring fresh starts and there are a lot of projects in the works that I am very excited about: This week we broke ground on a school garden that will be tended by Home Economics classes and any other students who are interested in participating. It is the kind of project I’ve been hoping will take off, but I was even more delighted when the plan was suggested by one of the teachers rather than by me, since it is more sustainable if the community has ownership of the project. This term I will be teaching a Form 3 Life Skills class. Life Skills is sort of a mishmash of topics relating to sexual health and decision-making and career-planning. I have also been assisting a group of teachers completing their degree through a distance education program who convene weekly at my school to work on assignments; mostly I help them with improving their writing skills. Also, this term I am supposed to begin teaching computer classes, both to students and teachers (a result of overwhelming requests from the survey). This has been delayed by the fact that the computers have been locked away in a closet since they were donated, and they won’t be released until the school saves enough money for stronger burglar bars. A temporary solution may be implemented: storing the computers in a closet after every class and setting them up again the next day. Really. I am also trying to create a writing club and reactivate the Edzi-Toto (AIDS) club but extra-curriculars like these mostly exist in name only; by the afternoon, students—justifiably—are more interested in going home for their first meal of the day, rather than sticking around another hour. This is the main reason I’m trying to raise community interest in a school feeding program. There are some permaculture groups in Malawi taking this on, mostly in primary schools, but I’m hoping to find a way to implement it in at least some of the secondary schools in the cluster. [Since I wrote this we had our first AIDS club meeting and it was awesome. So, yay for progress!]

What else? We are in the early stages of planning Camp SKY, to be held in August. Much more on this soon. And I am trying to put together a five-day training for thirty local primary and secondary teachers to learn how to use the Hope Kit, a resource for talking about HIV/AIDS in the community. The kit includes a manual of exercises, a lot of teaching tools and a wooden phallus for condom demonstrations. I think it will help the teachers broach difficult topics that come up in biology or Life Skills classes. Other Stuff: Thanks to everyone for all of the birthday greetings!! It means so much to hear from home. Birthday festivities included a yummy grilled cheese feast prepared by my awesome site neighbor Ken, and then a birthday party the following weekend at the lake in Senga Bay. The torrential rains let up long enough for us to soak in some sunshine and bonfire and eat S’mores (thanks, Sammy!) Saturday, and then the skies let loose and the next day we had to wade a river to get back to the road, where we shared a hitch in the back of a truck along with a few loosely secured barrels of formaldehyde and a very pungent catfish. I can’t wait to turn 29 again there next year. The first week of term break was spent back in Dedza for In-Service Training, a workshop for sharing start-of-service experiences, discussing project ideas and grant possibilities, and that kind of thing. After IST, a lot of volunteers were in Lilongwe to greet the newest batch of environment trainees at the airport, which was a surprisingly exciting event. It feels like years, not five months, ago that we had to tromp our eighty pounds of luggage through the customs gate. When we arrived in September, I had been fast asleep on the plane and missed the distribution of yellow customs cards. So when everyone disembarked from the plane and pulled out their cards, my sheer adrenaline and excitement from the landing swung into a panicked fear that I had neglected to bring some important paperwork and wouldn’t be admitted in the country. At that moment, in my sleepy haze, I realized I had also lost an earring in flight and, as the Country Director was greeting us and gathering luggage and everyone was all smiles, I had this crestfallen feeling that I had already messed up in Malawi, and this was just a bad dream. Fortunately, all of the new arrivals seemed to have all of their cards and emotional states in order and we greeted them with perhaps more than appropriate gusto, and then they were swept off to Dedza, and I began the second week of my term break, heading up north with a few friends to see the illustrious historical township of Livingstonia, on the edge of the Nhika Plateau. Although the whole trip north probably isn’t more than 300 kilometers, our journey was delayed a day because the bus Elisabeth and I were riding on ran out of gas (not an infrequent occurrence here), and the bus in which Jesi was riding to meeting us got stuck in the mud (Also, not infrequent. And was still stuck when we passed it on the return trip three days later.) In any case, we finally made it north to Karonga, which is pretty much paradise. Historical Livingstonia, as it turns out, consists of about three 100-year-old buildings that house a hospital and a guesthouse (aptly named the Old Stone House). Although the final destination left something to be desired, it was the breathtaking 15-kilometer trek from the lake up to Livingstonia that made the trip worthwhile. We stopped overnight about 12 kilometers up at the Lukwe Permaculture Camp, a collection of chalets floating in the clouds of a mountain, a quick walk to the Manchewe Falls and to an incredible garden that feeds the camp’s guests. There were composting toilets and hot showers overlooking the blue blue lake and we had the whole place to ourselves. It was a nice little vacation.

My holiday involved hiking twenty miles in the pouring rain, hitchhiking in the back of a pickup truck while balancing on the hind quarters of a seizing goat and the sharp toe of a military boot. There was also some illicit Oreo eating, and two pots of gluey pasta that even twelve volunteers failed to be able to cook properly. A ridiculous amount of fun. Happy New Year and lots of love to you in 2010!

Loo

(December 7): Since I last checked in, the end of homestay has come and gone. We've spent the past four weeks traveling around central Malawi: first, I spent four days exploring my future site in Salima, then Thanksgiving in Lilongwe, next to Mchinji district for a language intensive "week" (actually two days), a visit to Camp Sky (run by first year Education volunteers) in Lilongwe, and a few trips back to the training college in Dedza in between. I'm in Dedza again now, enjoying a weekend of relaxation with the other trainees after completing the last major training hurdle, the Chichewa language proficiency exam, on Friday.

We've been living out of suitcases for about ten weeks now, and tempers are running high. Thereís been the predictable frustration of operating within a bureaucratic organization (so much paperwork! so many evaluations and reviews!), and also the suffocating adolescent sensation of not being able to control one's own schedule and to come and go freely. Suffice it to say, my fellow compatriots are very eager to finish up with training this week, swear in on the 9th, and settle in at our sites in the following days.

Site Visit. So, my future site is in Salima, about 30 kilometers from Lake Malawi, just east of Lilongwe, if you feel like GoogleEarthing it. Itís a fairly urban area (by Malawian standards), with paved roads and access to food stores and electricity and running water and internet, all amenities most of the other volunteers do without in their villages. Since I had been getting excited about some kind of agricultural secondary project or a composting toilet venture, I have to admit I was a little disappointed to end up with a living situation so different than that experienced in most of the country. My sister, with perhaps justifiable incredulity, has pointed out I am ridiculous to complain about having a flush toilet and electricity, so I'll stop. I will be working with a cluster of 17 schools, some of which have the benefit of laboratories and libraries and computer labs, while others lack even electricity. So, there will certainly be a lot of potential opportunities to acquire or improve available resources. The best aspects of my site are the headmaster and deputy headmistress, both of whom are engaging, intelligent, and excited about working together. I should also mention, as a warning to future visitors: Salima is hot. So very hot. Hot, hot, hot. Always damp, pillow-soaking, hand-swelling, sweaty sweaty hot.

Thanksgiving. I hope yours was wonderful. We spent the holiday with the rest of the in-country volunteers at the ambassador's beautiful home in Lilongwe, gorging ourselves to the brink of illness on roasted pig, mashed potatoes, and an array of awesome dishes prepared by the volunteers. There were even beets! Six weeks in the village had left us ravenous and chocolate-crazed; the foreseeable results of two years of such living genuinely concern me.

Language Intensive. Our language group of seven stayed at Kayesa Inn, a quiet roadside retreat near the border with Zambia, for a few days, practicing Chichewa, interviewing the community, and finally delivering an HIV/AIDS presentation (in Chichewa) to the hotel staff on World AIDS day. Our audience not only was politely attentive as we probably butchered their language, but also they asked questions about the material that illuminated the scope of the myths spread about this disease. After my partner Jesi and I presented the ABC's of prevention (Abstinence, Be faithful, Condoms Correctly and Consistently), one woman asked if condoms were really safe. If left in the sun, she said, they get oily and grow maggots; wouldn't this also happen inside a woman who allowed her partner to use a condom? Other follow-up questions demonstrated similar misconceptions about the virus and prevention. I am really hoping to tackle these issues by teaching Life Skills at my school or in my community while I am in Malawi. Life Skills is an umbrella course that covers sexual health education, AIDS prevention, gender issues, and decision-making skills to achieve life goals.

Downtime. Despite the hectic traveling and studying schedule, it hasn't been all work and no play. During our time at the training college we've played a lot of ultimate frisbee and kickball, I've read a few books (I recommend The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind if you want to read about Malawi), biked around the local villages, played cards, watched movies, jogged, sipped a lot of orange Fanta and a little beer at the local, and even attempted to make butter toffee and brew mango hooch. Yesterday: an epic battle of Capture the Flag.

So life has been good. But of course I am missing all of you, especially as Christmas approaches and I think about all the things and people I love in Virginia. Missing cold mornings, bundling up, the fireplace at 906, hot cider, and all of those comfortable wintry things. Please do write and tell me about life... or call! (I don't want to post my digits on the internet but I will email them asap). International calls using Skype are super easy and cheap, so please do be in touch.

If you are so inclined to send a package, I would be delighted to receive these things (or any other things):

coffee (ground)

movies and music

oatmeal

reese's peanut butter cups

chocolate

anything delicious

good books or magazines

photos or stories about you

But most of all, I would just be happy to hear from you. Sending lots and lots of love from Africa,

Loo

Where to begin?

Well, hi from Africa, more specifically, from an empty computer lab at Katsekaminga Community Day Secondary School, where I am killing time typing this up while the students take exams. Yes, the school where we’ve been training has a number of dinosaur computers (sans internet)—unusual in Malawi, but this school got lucky. One of my colleagues is blasting Burning Spear. It is a good morning.

This is my fifth (and penultimate) week living in Katsekaminga village, a sleepy little corner of an urban area called Dedza, up in some mountains bordering Mozambique. The landscape is dotted with white gum trees, and acacia trees, and baobob trees, purple blooming trees, and mango and banana trees. There are chickens and goats, mangy dogs, dusty roads, burning piles of trash, and on the horizon, small karst mountains that bubble up every few kilometers.

The people:

I have been living with the Bvumbwe (or Mvumbwe? or Vumbwe?) family, who are taking very good care of me, especially their 17-year-old daughter Fanny, the youngest of seven, who does most of the work around our compound. Homestay has had its ups and downs, as might be expected from spending six weeks as a houseguest anywhere. Since I am learning how to cook and clean Malawi-style, the family is under the general impression that I am like a newborn who has never seen a broom or a frying pan before. They have taught me how to cook rice (and mop, and wash clothes) about six million times. My occasional protestations, that I am capable of doing these things on my own, are greeted with raised eyebrows of disbelief, to the extent that I also begin to question their veracity. The women in the Bvumbwe family are Amazons who carry giant vats of water on their heads, and children on their backs, and firewood similarly, with the same ease as carrying a purse. Their arms are rippling guns. I am impressed. Six other PC trainees, all of whom are awesome, live in Katsekaminga too.

The day:

In the mornings, I wake up around five, sweep (or, displace dust in) the yard, and meet my friend Elisabeth for a run. Fanny or my amayi (host mother) leaves out a hot bucket of water for a bath, and then I eat a quick breakfast, and hike to school on a neighboring hill. The afternoons, after lunch at home, are spent learning Chichewa, which is coming together pretty well. Our free time (45 minutes after language class) is generally spent drinking Fanta at the outdoor market. After dinner I read a little bit and usually pass out by eight. It’s a wild life.

The food:

Okay, so Malawi cuisine is, as I mentioned previously, pretty much nsima. And a lot of starch. And then more starch. Also: starch. Plus a ton of cooking oil. The Peace Corps has done an excellent job of preparing our host families with the means to meet our nutritional needs. Nonetheless, we are all at the point of insatiably craving things like cheese, and good bread, and bacon and beets of course, and chocolate, and grapefruit juice, and yogurt, ice cream, and cottage cheese, and, more generally, just the ability to control one’s own diet. (I take back anything I said in previous entries about bacon jumping the shark!) I have been eating a lot of goat, and also many animals and their parts that I wasn’t able to identify. Nsima, the consistency of mashed potatoes or grits, is basically just white maize flour and water, a bland base to be flavored by whatever relishes it’s served with. Since nsima is virtually flavorless, it is hard to like or dislike. I am strongly ambivalent toward nsima. It should be noted that nsima, however flavorless, provides the main source of sustenance for most of the children in this country. Interesting fact: In Malawi, they eat mangos like apples!

The chimbudzi (toilet) and bafa (bathroom) (You know you were wondering.)

The chimbudzi is basically a squat pit latrine, just a hole in the floor. It’s scary at night, but perfectly serviceable when adequately lit. My faulty olfactory senses continue to serve me well. The bafa, on the other hand, is a roofless bamboo-walled enclosure for bucket bathing outside. In the morning, when the sky is blue and birds fly close overhead and the sun is rising, I love the bafa. Conversely, when it is cold or when giant bees divebomb my head while I am shampooing, the experience is less pleasant.

The wildlife

At this very moment, a pride of lions is sitting on the adjacent hill, watching in wait as zebras frolic nearby. Okay, not really. Most of my wildlife encounters are with chickens, the occasional goat, and flea-ridden emaciated dogs that wander around the village. Early in my stay I did have a bedroom encounter with a small snake on my pillow, while I was reading with my head on that same pillow. The next night, I killed a palm-sized colorful spider blocking my entrance to the chimbudzi (toilet). I am told to expect more of these run-ins when the looming rainy season finally reveals itself in full. Now, the clouds are gathering darker every morning, and the winds are colder than in September.

The schools

So, during training I have been teaching English Literature to about 75 students in Form 3 (the equivalent of high school juniors). They are good kids. The Malawian school system has a lot of challenges, which I will go into in more detail at a later point. But in brief: from Form 1 (freshman year), students are taught all subjects only in English. The primary objective of education is to pass a national exam after Forms 2 and 4. Because the school system was expanded to include the entire populace recently, there is an extreme teacher shortage, especially of qualified teachers. Exacerbating this, teacher attendance is often a big problem. Textbooks and materials are in short supply, so students may share only a few books in a class of 50 or 100. Some students work hard planting in the early morning and walk long distances to school, without breakfast and without a break for lunch, so their attention wanders, especially during later classes. It’s frustrating. My job, as a teacher development facilitator, will probably include some teaching. Also, I will be working with teachers in a cluster of schools, helping them acquire materials, access teaching resources, and work toward their professional development goals through a Malawian distance learning college available to them. There is also a camp for girls, and a health camp, and a number of workshops in which I am excited to get involved. We are also expected to have secondary projects within our community or at school. More on this later.

Everything Else

There are so many beautiful scenes in the village, and all of them are ruined when you pull out a camera. Everyone freezes, the children huddle around, and the moment is gone. But I hope you will enjoy the ones I have been able to sneak. Not able to post them yet, but very soon I hope.

In the next few weeks, we will move out of homestay back to our training site at the Dedza School of Forestry. Soon, we’ll find out our site locations for the next two years, visit them for a sneak peak, have a week of language intensive before the big Chichewa exam, and then swear in as official PCVs on December 9. Sometime this month I will be issued a cell phone, and hopefully resume more regular access to internet, and get in touch with the ones I love, and all that. In the meantime, I am missing you all incredibly. Please write and send word what is going on in the rest of the world. I would love to know the big and the mundane, including in precise detail exactly what you ate for breakfast and are preparing for Thanksgiving. Lots of love,

Loo

p.s. I've got a terrible connection and about five minutes, so apologies for all of the unanswered emails!

I'm heading to Philadelphia tomorrow for "staging," which sounds like a six-hour orgy of paperwork and vaccinations. Then we'll check out nice and early (2:30am) to catch a flight from JFK to Malawi on Saturday morning. This may be the last you hear from your LooBird for a while; during pre-service training, I won't have access to phone or email. So, for the time being, and til late November, just remember that no news is good news.

But wait! I will still be able to receive and send snail mail, which, though super slow, is better than no mail at all. So, please do keep in touch and let me know how things are going because I will be missing you all very much. In a related note, I am very grateful for all the sweet goodbye gestures, and Mas dinners, and homemade dinners, and taco runs, and baseball games, and trips to the park, and general good times I've shared with the people I love this month.

Au revoir,

Loo

Annie’s Mac and Cheese (shells and white cheddar) powdered drinks (not a huge fan, but apparently they make the water taste better) chocolate snack bars: I like Cliff, Luna, and SoyJoy spices and flavor packets (and cheese!) pictures of you The Economist, New Yorker, or similar magazines dried fruit or other delicious nonperishable items NYT or WaPo crossword puzzles movies games music novels A special note for my pork-minded readers: bacon is perishable, so don’t mail it. Also, I hate to say it, but bacon (in its kitschy forms) jumped the shark in late 2008 or maybe earlier. And, while I would never dain to abandon the occasional blissful moment of porcine excess, you don’t really need to send me that bacon-striped mumu or bakon vodka or whatever it is you just couldn’t resist. Seriously. Unless of course you were thinking of sending bacon butter toffee, which is just simply and undeniably delicious.

(Nsima and relishes, from a wikipedia image search)

A question that seems to be weighing hard on the minds of certain friends and family (read: Dave and Camilla) is what I will be eating in Malawi.

Well, this very helpful website, Friends of Malawi, offers an informative summary of the Malawi diet. The staple food, nsima, sounds a lot like grits, minus cheese and butter and S/P and all that. I am nonetheless excited to try it.

Friends of Malawi also features a page about mailing things to Malawi. Check it out.

Gentle Reader,

At this point, you are probably wondering where Malawi is, and what exactly I'll be doing there. More on the second part later, but here is an excerpt from the Peace Corps Welcome Book:

History

Malawi is a small country in southeast Africa, and is known

for its natural beauty and its warm, hard-working people.

The first significant Western contact began with the arrival of

David Livingstone in 1859. Fiery sunlight glittering from Lake

Nyasa gave the name “Malawi”—land of flaming waters—to an

ancient Bantu empire. Present-day descendants revived the

name when what had once been the British Protectorate of

Nyasaland became independent in 1963.

The country is considered something of a success story

in African political development. In 1994, after 30 years

of one-party, dictatorial rule dating back to independence

from Britain, Malawi quietly and peacefully elected a new

government committed to multi-party democracy. In spite

of the wave of euphoria over their newly won freedom, the

Malawian people continue to face the obstacles of poverty,

drought, environmental degradation, hunger, disease, rising

crime, and illiteracy on their path to social, political, and

economic reform.

Economy

Agriculture forms the mainstay of Malawi’s economy,

accounting for nearly half of its gross domestic product

(GDP). Tobacco, tea, and sugar together generate more

than 70 percent of export earnings, with tobacco providing

the lion’s share (over 60 percent). The agricultural sector

employs nearly half of those formally employed and directly or

indirectly supports an estimated 85 percent of the population.

Malawi has a narrow economic base with little industry

and mining and no known economically viable deposits of

gemstones, precious metals, or oil. As a landlocked country,

transport costs make imported goods very expensive.

Zimbabwe and South Africa are Malawi’s most important

trading partners, and the value of the Kwacha, the local

currency, is greatly influenced by the economic conditions

in those countries. Currently, inflation is running at about 15

percent per year, and economic growth is in the 3 percent to

4 percent range.

People and Culture

Malawi is one of Africa’s most densely populated countries

with a population of about 12 million in a land area roughly

the size of Indiana. The African population includes six

principal tribes. Although there are distinct linguistic and

cultural differences among ethnic groups, geographic region

tends to be the predominate means of group identification.

English is one of the official languages, though it is not

commonly used outside major urban centers. More than 50

percent of the people speak Chichewa, the other official

language, and almost everyone understands it.

Malawi is predominantly a Christian country, but it also

has a sizeable Islamic population, mostly located along the

southern lakeshores. Along with the major organized religions,

animist beliefs are still strong in many areas of the country,

and these beliefs often influence the organized religions as

well. Many religions take different forms than what you may

be accustomed to, as local cultures and historical beliefs

influence the practice.

Environment

Malawi is a narrow country that hugs the western shore

of Lake Malawi (sometimes referred to as Lake Nyasa). At

places, its land area is barely 50 miles wide. Malawi shares

borders with Tanzania, Zambia, and Mozambique.

Malawi’s altitude varies from less than 200 feet above sea

level, at Nsanje in the south, to almost 10,000 feet at the

peak of Mount Mulanje. Lake Malawi, about 1,500 feet above

sea level and 380 miles long, is Africa’s third largest lake and

Malawi’s major tourist attraction. Imagine—the lake is larger

than the state of New Hampshire! Malawi has rainy and dry

seasons. The rainy season is from November to April, with the

heaviest rainfall between December and March. The terrain

varies widely and includes grassy slopes, rolling hills, striking

rock outcroppings, and dense forests.

I’m anticipating many firsts in the next few months. But for the time being, here is the growing mental tally of lasts. Some already done, and others soon to come. Last Bodo’s bagel Last ride in the bug Last meal at Mas* (*there might be lots of these) Last glass of wine on the deck of 906 slapping mosquitoes Last drive on the Blue Ridge Last float down the James Last time printing four colors of perforated paper while entertaining Ignatius J. Reilly filing fantasies Last time waking up early on Wednesday to farm at Roundabout Last time falling into bed late closing down the restaurant Last muddled mojito Last night bartending Last run up Carter’s mountain Last bacon-wrapped date Last ANTM marathon on the couch all day with Catherine Last time strapping on beat-up black serving shoes Last arugula beet salad Last hot shower Last stroll downtown Last above the knee sundress Last drive up 29 Last dip in the Atlantic Last time mowing the entire lawn with a weed whacker Last night sleeping on a deflating air mattress Last time hanging out with friends in our twenties. (ouch.) Last Ashtanga class Last time reading Hayden a book while he’s still two Last bike commute Last drive over the Potomac River on the 14th Street Bridge Last family dinner Last long look at Virginia Last Monday Last Friday You get the idea.

If you want to share any of these moments with me, I’d love to spend some last times with you. (Not the hot shower, Perv).

Well, friends, I am leaving for Malawi as a Peace Corps volunteer on September 25. It is, for those of you who might wonder, not exactly where I expected to land. But, in the words of the late great Mr. Vonnegut, "peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God."** And I tend to find myself in agreement with Kurt, so we'll just see where this bus takes us.

Hopefully, I will have semi-regular internet access and can post pictures and stories and other bloggy items up here, so you can hear all about my adventures and not forget your LooBird.

Also, pretty soon I'll post up a snail mail address, in case you feel an urge to send me things. You know how I love things. Just be sure to mark it "Par Avion" or "Air Mail" or it will take even longer to get there.

And, of course, before I go, I would love to see you and say goodbye and hug a lot and all that. So, let's please do make that happen.

Loo

**That was the first and last cheesy quote you'll find on this blog. Promise. We don't want that stuff here. Except for the very next entry, which might also trend in that direction. Deal with it. And then dance like nobody's watching. Boom. I owe you three dollars.