2+ Weeks at Site

So, I've been living at site for over two weeks now.  A lot has happened in those two weeks, but not all of those events are worthy of being shared on this public forum (ask me sometime, a few are pretty funny).

Well, we all swore in as promised on the 29th.  Did some more shopping in Lilongwe then we made our way back to Dedza and the next morning we all departed the college for our sites.  Those of us that are lucky enough to live north of Mzuzu have a two day trip to get to site, even leaving in the morning, so Donald and I spent the night at Mzoozoozoo, which is great cause I got to stay there and see Mzuzu during site visit but Donald didn't go on site visit due to a medical hold, so now he got to see it.  I think we both thoroughly enjoyed the little bit of R&R.

Then, we got to site.  Donald told me about that some PCVs, after being dropped off at site, run after the Peace Corps vehicle as it drives away.  I can proudly say that was not me.  I think I was in a little bit of shock about being alone.  Well, I spent that day unpacking a little, hanging my mosquito net, and just generally in a daze.  For dinner (and breakfast the next morning), I ate apple pie thanks to Caitlin.  The next day I spent painting my living room blue!  Well, the bottom half of the walls at least, covering up the boring and damaged yellow.  That took a lot longer than expected using only a 2” brush.  Well,  I made it about 3/5 through the room and through half my paint and called it a day.  J was in town, and wanted to hang out, so I spent the afternoon chilling with him (and discovering all the things I needed to fix on my bike).

The next day, I did not paint.  The thought of more painting made me a little sick after the huge undertaking the day before, so I just unpacked, cooked a wonderful and complex meal of pasta with soy sauce (the first meal in months that I actually got to pick), and just chilled.  The next day school started, but thanks to the wonderful Ministry of Education and my teaching only Forms 1 and 3 (9^th and 11^th grade), I had no students.  See, to pass 8^th or 10^th grade, they must pass a national exam, and even though they took these exams in July, and this being September, the Ministry of Education still had not finished grading them.  So, the students can’t start school till they know if they are actually in that grade or not.  Yay!  I got to spend the day finishing painting, the next day shopping in Uliwa, and then the teachers “felt bad for me” and “didn’t want me to get bored” so they so kindly let me guest teach the Form 4 students Nuclear Physics and Ecology.  Yes, those are actual topics on the curriculum, as well as organic chemistry and others.

Onto the weekend!  Weekends are the best, if you didn’t already know that.  All that free time to do fun things like laundry.  Well, that weekend I just chilled.  Took a swim in Lake Malawi, well, actually a bath (soap & shampoo), which is like the greatest way to bathe ever!

The next week, Form 1 started.  Yay, teaching (sarcasm).  So basically, I had a ordinary week, but I am getting a lot better at starting a fire and cooking over it.  I also got two 20L buckets for fetcher water, and one of them has a red lid so it will be used to make my fire water (aka bucket wine).  Ilana also was in Uliwa and brought me an orange tree sapling for me to plant, which is awesome.  I hope it makes it!  Saturday I did laundry, which took forever seeing as I had a ton of dirty clothes, some still built up from Dedza (I only did half of it last week, then it kept building up for some strange reason).  I had 4 buckets full of clothes being washed, but now they’re all clean!  Even the extra sheets that are going to be turned into curtains.

Finally, the fun part!  We have a meeting in Mzuzu and shucks, it’s in the morning.  That means going to Mzuzu the day before, shopping, and spending a night at the zoo.  A bunch of PCVs staying the night at the same place that serves cold beer?  Sounds like torture.  Well, I’ll try to make the best of it.

So ya, that’s my life.  For the first time in my life that I can remember, I have felt legitimately homesick, and for the first time I have actually questioned why I’m in Peace Corps, but I also am very well aware that I wouldn’t trade this for the world.  During training, they showed us this funny graph that was the emotions of a PCV, and the first few months after moving to site was the lowest of the lows, and I think I’ve been pretty ok.  I’d say the lowest blog-appropriate moment was when a mouse ran across my foot while my new cat, Tako, laid hiding under a low table.  The cat was delivered to me in a sack tied shut, so basically it’s no surprise she was scared for a while.  After the mouse incident though, I found it only appropriate to name her after a Chitumbuka curse word meaning butt.  Now, the cat could not be any clingier (Microsoft Word just corrected me; apparently more clingy isn’t correct grammar).  It doesn’t like to go outside, so I guess I have an indoor cat.  It’s ok, because one night I was laying in my room being kept awake by the shenanigans of the mouse, like every night, and all the sudden Tako comes tearing into my room, running around like a bat out of hell, across the foot of my bed, then out the bedroom door.  Next thing I hear is the distinct sound of a cat eating into a fleshy critter.  Ever since then, I have not been kept awake or woken up by the mouse (instead, Tako wakes me up in new and creative ways). 

I met my future puppy (name to be revealed after I know the thing is going to live to 6-weeks when I’ll take it, but I got a glorious name picked out).  Funny story about the puppy.  I went to this house of a random guy in my village that had two litters of puppies.  He said I could have whichever one I wanted.  One puppy, the smallest one, immediately came up to me and I knew this must be the one.  I checked it over and it was a boy, which I was hoping for (cheaper to get neutered).  So I said “I like this one, and it’s a boy which I was hoping for.”  They guy goes, “oh, you can’t have that one, we need a male dog to make puppies with its mother since we don’t have one.”  First of all, you said any puppy I wanted!  Second, have you ever heard of incest?  Well, I saw another puppy that was clearly the misfit of the group and had the most random color pattern, and took a liking to me, so I told him to put that one aside if it was actually available.  I’ll pick her up at the end of the month when she’s old enough.

Well, that’s all for now.  I would say stuff is going pretty well though.  Remember to keep writing those letters and feel free to stuff printed pictures in them.  I want to decorate my living room with pictures, but so far I only got about 4 feet of the wall covered.  It is nice to look over there and see all those happy Americans.  Just don’t include pictures of cheese or draught beer in the pictures, cause that is a little more teasing than I want to deal with.

Quick Update

Just a super quick update. I'm at site, have a cat (that ate the
mouse, so I do not have a mouse anymore), but no dog yet. My cats
name is Tako (translation, butt, also a curse word, pronounced like
the best food imaginable) because on its second night in my house, it
sat there and watched as a mouse ran across my foot. Ordered
furniture, saw the Malawisaurus, and my students will arrive on
Monday. Basically, stuff is starting to come together. Palije Suzgo
(No Worries).

Site Visit

So I went for site visit last week.  This means that I went to my future site, stayed in my house, met the teachers, and such.  It was a really good experience!  My house is huge and needs a little work, but overall I gotta say it's an amazing site.  The top preference I requested pertaining to site placement was a new site, and I got that.

So first about my site.  I live on the school grounds in an institutional house.  That means the school owns my house, which is great since my rent is minimal.  My only neighbor is my headmaster, who lives in an identical house right next to mine with about 10 yards between them.  He's living there with his family (3 kids and a wife, I think).  My house has three bedrooms, a big living room, a back courtyard, kitchen with storage room, bath room, and of course, the chim (pit latrine) our back.  There is also a little front porch, where much coffee will be drank.

Getting to site was...interesting.  Transportation in Africa as a whole could have entire books written about the interesting stories you will experience.  We loaded into a big bus in Lilongwe (Peace Corps drove the headmasters and trainees there) at around 7:30a.  The bus left the depot at 10a.  This is because buses here don't run on a set schedule, but the move when their full (meaning people are standing in every free inch of space).  Luckily, since we were early, I got a window seat.  Well, around 4p we got into Mzuzu, where we immediately boarded a mini-bus (mini-van that you cram about 20 people into) and we set off.  I was quite cramped, and due to the long ride on the big bus, my body was over the riding in vehicles.  Well, we rode in this mini-bus for several more hours getting into Uliwa at 9p.  We then caught a bike taxi, meaning you ride on the rack on the back of a bicycle, to the school.

The first day at the school my headmaster showed me around Uliwa and Chilumba.  I met the police chief so he would know who I was, met my site mate, Ilana, who was in town for a program she was running, and met countless other people I don't remember.  Funny story about that day: I was talking with Ilana and my headmaster went over to a bar to get a beer.  Well, when I was done talking with Ilana, I walked over to the bar so we could head back to the school.  I sat next to him while he finished his beer, and this big Malawian man walks up, looks at me, says "Fuck You, Azungu," sits down next to me, and doesn't say anything else.  Not quite sure why this happened, and he didn't really seem that interested in me after, but still weird.
The second day of site visit was quite chill, just spent around the school and my house.

The third day of site visit I went to a program Ilana threw and hung out with her and J all day, another one of my sitemates that is a little further away.  Once again I met more people that I will ever remember.
The next day, I went to VSV (Volunteers Supporting Volunteers) in Mzuzu.  J is on VSV, so we rode together.  We got crazy lucky that a guy that owns one of the local hostel/resorts on the lack and loves PCVs was going that way, so I got to ride on the back bench seat of an old Toyota Fire-truck (pick-up truck that was used as a fire-truck) going up the escarpment.  Since on our way in going down the escartment it was night, this was my first time seeing the escarpment and it was in the best possible fashion.  For those of you that don't know, the escarpment is a stretch of road about 10miles long that takes you from the mountains down to the lake shore, and it involves a lot of checking roads and some of the most incredible views you can imagine.

VSV was a lot of fun.  It was basically all the northern trainees and a bunch of northern PCVs sitting around Mzoozoozoo (a hostel) drinking beer and eating great food.

So ya, that was site visit.  Pretty incredible for me, but I'm not a good writer apparently, meaning it probably doesn't sound as incredible to you.  Hopefully my next blog entry will be more entertaining.  And of course, I'll keep everyone posted on how the home improvement projects come along.  I bought paint for the inside of the house, so it'll be colorful and fun.  I also have some good ideas for furniture that I need to talk with my carpenter about.  If you want my updated address, it's under the "Send Me Stuff" tab.  I am officially lifting the hold on care-packages, so let them fly.  Please don't send stuff to the old address as it will be quite difficult getting stuff from Lilongwe to my site.  Thanks in advanced for all the great stuff!

Well, today is swearing-in day!  I'm sitting in the Peace Corps office right now waiting on our ride to the ambassador’s house so we can swear in as PCVs.  Exciting stuff!  I could not be happier to be swearing-in along side such an amazing group of people in such an amazing country.

Quick Update, More Soon

So when I used to read these blogs, I would see a post like this and be like "yay, more updates tomorrow."  Now that I'm in this situation, I understand that "soon" is a relative term, so while I have every intention of making a big post and putting it up here tomorrow, I also realize that if it doesn't happen for a week, it'll still feel like "soon" to me.

Training is going.  A quick fun story, all of the education volunteers' headmasters/mistresses came to Dedza to meet their future volunteers and travel with us.  After a two-day workshop, we had a soccer match, Malawi vs America.  The Malawi team was made up of trainers and Headteachers, but with the likes of Cam in goal (the dude that wrote the Chibuku article) and Lauren at striker, for the first time in Peace Corps Malawi history, America won.  We limped off the field very proud.

Anyways, just thought I'd let everyone know that site visit went great, and most importantly, this will be my last blog post (or day) as a PCT (Peace Corps Trainee).  Tomorrow morning is swearing-in and myself along with 21 of my new best friends will all become PCVs (Peace Corps Volunteers).  All 22 of us passed the LPI (Language Proficiency Exam), which is quite impressive and has not happened in anyone's memory.  Basically, Ed12 is the best training group ever.  In case you're keeping track, I did say 22 people passed, meaning we reached our goal of 100% swearing-in.

Tambala No More

So, we find out our sites on Thursday!  It'll be really cool seeing as the Ed'11 group will be at the college for MST (mid-service training) and we'll be there for a "Hub Day" so we will get to find out and then pick the brains of those that live close to our future sites.  Then we move out of home-stay on Sunday.

Anyways, I got a funny story from this week.  A couple days ago, after dinner, I was talking with my family about the chickens around our compound.  Our conversation went something like this (spanning three languages, but for your benefit, I have translated everything to English).

Me: "So the rooster woke me up last night at around 2am and I was like 'Ahhh, silly rooster!"
(Side-note: the chicken coop is next to my room)
Bambo (father): "Ohhh, roosters are very loud.  I do not like them.  They make you wake up and do work."
Me: "I don't want to wake up.  I like sleeping in."
(Side-note: by sleeping in I mean 6am)
Mayi: "Hahaha, you like to sleep."
Bambo: "Sleeping in is good."
Me: "I will not have any roosters when I get my own house."


So, two days later, I wake up about 5am and was oddly disturbed.  Something was off...no roosters in the yard all morning waking me up.  I'm oddly intrigued by this lack of noise.  Thinking they simply silenced the roosters somehow, by putting them inside the storage shed or chicken coup, I assume nothing is wrong.  That is, until lunch.  Guess what was for lunch?  You guessed it, CHICKEN!!!


Well, there were in fact two roosters.  The other one was not near as vocal.  That evening, I see Bambo shooing the rooster into the storage shed.  I guess this is a good way to keep your last rooster alive without causing noise.  Lucky guy dodged the knife, right?


Wrong.  This morning, there was a rooster plucking in the kitchen.


The moral of this story, don't annoy me or my Bambo and Mayi will make me eat you.