30-Day Challenge - Round Two: Sweat On Purpose

It’s October, which means hot season is in full swing over here.  H-O-T, Hot.  It’s at least a million degrees.  You wake up sweating, you go to sleep sweating, you sweat moving from one room to the other to the porch, you sweat sitting.  Luckily, my site really isn’t that bad, all the way up here in the mountains.  But once you leave here, maybe about 5km down the mountain, the head will hit you like a brick wall.  I remember last year feeling really low energy all the time during hot season, especially down at the lakeshore, due to a complete lack of motivation to move and cook, and thus eat.  I don’t think I did a damn thing this time last year. 

So to remedy the doldrums this year, October’s 30-day challenge was to sweat on purpose every day.  My goal was to sweat not just because I was breathing, but because I was up and doing stuff, using energy and staying productive.  Turns out, this challenge was a little too easy this month.  Maybe I’ll redo it once the rains come and it’s not only hot, but humid and suffocating.  But between walking to school every day, down one mountain and up another one (I didn’t go consistently this time last year…), and all the traveling around the country we’ve been doing, I found it easy to work up a legitimate sweat each day.  No doldrums here!

Traveling: 

1. Started with Rob and I heading down to Liwonde Game Reserve for the annual game count.  This year, as big, bad second year volunteers, we were allowed to camp at the super swanky in-park resort.  There was a pool!  And elephants that trampled through the camp!  We participated in the 4-day waterhole count, where 20 of us PCV’s took 4-hour round-the-clock shifts in hides at waterholes to count the animals that came to drink.  We saw everything!  It was nuts!  In one of my shifts, something like 25 elephants came to splash around the whole time, not 15 feet from our hide!  They were playing and tackling each other and spraying themselves and rubbing against trees and yelling at each other!  We saw rhinos, hippos, warthogs, zebras, a herd of 125 buffalo.  Once, riding through the park on transport to our hide, we met a pair of rangers on bicycles who had to abandon their bikes and were hiding and aiming their rifles at an elephant who had gotten too close and personal, a little too curious about the animals on wheels.  We helped scare it off, no shooting necessary.  Super awesome experience!  My hide-partner has all the pictures, but I’ll try to post a link to them.  Also, let it be known that in regards to this 30-day challenge, it was still way too hot to cook and eat.  It’s freaking hot.

2.  Then there was Lilongwe for the GRE.  Check that one off this list!  I choked on the verbal because no matter how much I studied, I just cannot comprehend those damn reading comprehension sections.  But it was definitely a respectable score on verbal.  I killed it on the math!  Just destroyed it.  All in all, I don’t think I’ll ever have to take the GRE again.  Scores come in 6 weeks, cross your fingers!

3.  Halloween was spent at a resort called Maji Zuwa, about 2 hours north of Mzuzu with about 20 other volunteers.  I went as Mitt Rom-mummy.  Pictures to come.