Practicing Photographing Wildlife

Doug's Puppy

Experimenting with Blurry Background

tots did it on accident.

Experimenting with Landscape and Light

It's hard. Can't really figure out how to make them work together very well yet...

Dude's house.

Kandoli Mountains

My Next Door Neighbor's House on Laundry Day

30 Day Challenge - Round 4: Picture Safari!

It’s December, you know what that means?!  PRESENTS! 

This year I’m giving myself a trip to Zambia.  Beat that!  Plan is to spend a week going from the capitol, Lusaka, to Victoria Falls, then the last 4 days of vacation on SAFARI!!! I actually think I’m most excited to spend some time in Lusaka.  They have THREE malls there!  With multilevel parking garages!  I don’t even like malls!  But Rob is in desperate need of new clothes and I just might get myself a pedicure.  I’d LOVE to get my nasty Africa feet into the hands of a professional… I’ll tip well.  We’re gonna go see a movie in a movie theater with popcorn, and get Thai food, ice cream, a Subway sandwich (they have Subway there!  It’s a novelty to me.)  It’s been 6 months already since Europe with the fam, I could use a little faux-First World action.

To prepare for the trip, the safari specifically, I’m gonna brush up on my picture-taking skills, of which I have none. This month’s 30-day challenge is to study up on digital photography, maybe some editing, and take at least one decent picture a day.

Today’s pic:

My running route

Thanksgiving

Rob and I hiked up to Lukwe to meet our buddies Renee and Trason for Thanksgiving.  Steak and wine!!!  Small, intimate, lots of thankful dinner toasts, took some naps.  Just a lovely time.

What I was thankful for on Thanksgiving, after a few glasses of wine:

Loving parents

Health and the ability to climb the mountain we’d climbed to get to steak

Steak

The guy who stopped in his car driving down the mountain and gave us bottles of water, which we’d run out of, and a bag of potato chips

My beautiful site and wonderful life in Malawi

Doug and Kitty

Good friends to share the wine with

Having Rob in my life

And finally, we’ll be going home soon

So thus concludes November’s 30-day challenge.  I ended up really appreciating having to write 3 gratitude’s a day.  It made me really take notice of something in my day when I realized I was grateful for it, because I knew I’d have to write it down later.  And I’d have to take special care in noticing things I was grateful for, because by the end of the month it was definitely hard to write down three things which I’d hadn’t mentioned before.  It was actually really cool!  I think I’ll try to keep doing it.  I was forced to skip a few days in my journal writing/gratitude lists because of the crash and unexpected excursion to Lilongwe, days which I had to make up when I returned to my journal.  But here are a few honorable mentions from the latter half of the month:

November 19:

1. Getting phone calls from home

2.  The feeling of being fresh and clean after a shower, especially if then you get into a bed with newly cleaned sheets!

3. Glasses of wine at night

November 21:

1. Exceptional teachers teaching very important things (blog post about teaching a feminine hygiene workshop to come)

2. Open minds and receptive students

3. Beautiful views you’re compelled to just stare at

November 24:

1. Our unbelievable luck in our spill over the ditch, that it wasn’t any more serious

2. Frozen chicken and advil

3. Mr. Tewu and his drivers (the guys who came to the rescue)

November 25:

1. Making it to a final destination. Ahhhhh!

2. Chinese food feasts

3. Air conditioning

4. Ice cream (I was feeling especially thankful this day)

November 29:

1. Fans at night, I like the white noise

2. I guess I’m actually thankful for the UN vote to allow Palestine in as an observer member.  That Israel-Palestinian war is just ridiculous.  It’s about time someone did something productive about it, even if it is just a symbolic move.  It’s still pretty major.

3.  Getting into bed after a long day.  Sometimes, that’s why I wake up in the morning - so that I can get back in bed at night!  Such a great feeling!

And Jill Came Tumbling After...

So if you didn’t know already from facebook or word-of-parents’-mouth, I was in a car accident a week ago.  No serious injuries, but it was still pretty ugly.  Just in case a PC Malawi admin happens to be an avid follower of this blog, I’m gonna leave out a few details to protect the innocent.  But they probably aren’t or I’d have been kicked out by now for being out of site illegally for practically half my service.  But, just in case…

I was coming home from a lovely Thanksgiving at Lukwe.  There’s usually only one car going home on Saturdays and none on Sundays.  So, it being Saturday, I was anxious to get to Mzuzu on time to catch it.  Luckily (well, unluckily in hindsight), I was having fantastic hitching luck.  Grade A hitching, dude.  Get to Mzuzu right on time.  But the pick-up scheduled to make the trek is PACKED.  We’re used to unsafely packed motor vehicles over here, and usually board them without a second though, but this was nuts by any standard.  Even my buddy the Reverend (who, as it happens, was also with me on my last major Chikwina transport adventure when we broke down in the rain in the middle of the night and had to hike 10km in the mud) was saying he’d probably sit this one out and wait until Monday if a second car wasn’t recruited.  Smart man, that one. 

Anyway, I cram myself in between a man and a woman with her baby.  I manage to keep myself from drowning in the stacks of maize sacks and buckets and keep my head clear of the sheet metal strapped on top of the truck.  Katundu is everywhere, with people on top, standing wherever they could fit a single foot or sitting on top of the cab.  I raise my eyebrows as they try to shove even MORE people into the truck bed.  I actually say out loud, “wait, this is crazy…”  If your gut is telling you something is crazy so loudly that your mouth says it too, it’s probably crazy.

The old scrap-metal truck can’t take it.  First, it refuses to start.  Then, hills prove to be such a struggle that bicyclists are passing us (at this point, the driver is getting jeers from his passengers).  This is exacerbated by the fact that our goodwill from other countries since Joyce Banda has taken the presidency has run out, along with their supply of goodwill petrol.  We’re back to petrol crisis mode and drivers refuse to put more petrol into their tanks than is absolutely necessary (or even less than necessary, which might have added to this particular journey’s downfall).  Thus, it takes us an hour to go fifteen km.  25km to go.  We’re all dying in the back, being choked to death by the discomfort of numb feet and butts and a newfound hatred of everything.  It’s gonna be a long ride.

Finally, FINALLY we all sigh in relief as we pass over a bridge that marks the last leg of the trip.  5km to go and one hill.  One single hill!  It’s a notorious hill, however, with switchbacks, sheer drops off the road, and a particularly steep turn.  Last year in rainy season I thought that one turn would be the end of me as we slid uncontrollably in the mud down it (that was the LAST time I traveled out of site in rainy season in a village car, thank you very much).  Well, as you can imagine, the Little Engine that Could just couldn’t.  We stalled on the uphill, and lucky us, the brakes weren’t working.  We rolled backwards, just slowly enough that everyone could work up a good panic as we saw the edge of a 10-foot ditch approach.

The men that were standing desperately tried to scramble out, but there wasn’t time.  Everyone else was too wedged in to even move.  I remember hearing screaming women and apparently (I was informed after the fact) I said something intelligent like “Oh. Shit.” I saw the right back tire take a sudden dip over the edge and that’s all I remember until I was trying to stand up (memory loss courtesy of my Brand New Concussion!).

People were everywhere, sprawled out on the ground, on top of each other, yelling each other’s names, covered in glass.  One old lady found herself on the bottom of a dog pile and looked like she couldn’t move, someone screaming her name.  I thought the worst, but she was just stunned and managed to get herself up.  I think she ended up with a broken hand.  The mom and baby sitting next to me were perfectly fine, having landed on the top of the old-lady-dog-pile.  Another lady seemed to have been thrown during the fall and had to be hauled out, I think with a broken arm or rib.  A small boy, maybe 8 years old, definitely had it the worst.  He face planted when we went down.  Both eyes, his right cheek, and a massive bump on his head swelled up immediately.  I mean a massive bump, like a second head.  Unbelievably (well, I’m sure it was just major shock), he just pulled himself up onto a ledge and sat there, not making a sound the whole time.  That is, until we tried to get him into a car going to the hospital.  He was NOT ok with getting into a car that didn’t lead to home.  I’ve never SEEN such a tantrum.  That poor little kid, man!  Luckily, I had splurged in Mzuzu on some frozen chicken, which he held to his face to ease the swelling.  Also had some advil to pass out for people in the most pain and THANK THE LORD BABY JESUS the health center’s medical assistant was in the truck too and was able to perform African Bush First Aid a hell of a lot better than I could, with my expired lifeguarding credentials… and a concussion.

I got off pretty easy.  Just a bruised cut to the leg, some scrapes, and a cut on my foot from stepping in glass, whiplash and a small head injury.  I wasn’t worried about the head injury until my vision went blurry and I got nauseous and after a call to a PC nurse friend who said I shouldn’t go to sleep or be alone. 

Help arrived unbelievably quickly to the scene.  Two MUCH better trucks came to the rescue from Chikwina faster than any ambulance response I’ve ever heard of in America.  We were trucked up to the Chikwina Health Center within fifteen minutes, where the Nurse was already waiting.  Then the really injured people were loaded up and taken to Mzuzu Hospital.  The Peace Corps Med Office bade me stay overnight in the hospital and then called me to Lilongwe the next day for a CT scan and a neurological exam (both clean.  But let me tell you, the LAST thing you want to do after an accident, sore from whiplash and jonesing for your own bed, is get in a crowded African bus for 5 hours.  MAN, that sucked hard).  I went back to the scene later to take a picture, but they'd already hauled it out.  I'd draw a picture, but my artistry is abysmal.

We got really lucky though.  Really Freaking Lucky.  That crash could have been so much worse.  We could have rolled off the other side of the road, which leads into a deep valley, in which case we would have rolled and all died.  The ditch was perfectly truck-shaped, but if we were going any faster, the truck could have easily tipped over to rest on the other side of the cliff and trapped us.

The worst part by FAR was just how insanely shaken up and scared I was.  I was crazy shaking after the accident, from shock.  But after that, I refused to think or feel anything about it until a few days later, in Lilongwe.  I mean, we talked and debriefed and exchanged thoughts on it, but eventually, when I was far enough away from the incident, physically and chronologically, I was overwhelmed by my feelings of lack of control over the whole situation.  Just total helplessness.  I couldn’t chose my transport method.  It was that matola or wait another two days to go home, and even then, I still might be in the same situation.  There was no phone service, no way to call 911, no option for a seat belt, no way to free myself from a doomed car once in motion, completely at the mercy of the man driving up a road that isn't a road, just a dirt path, in a car that could barely handle tarmac.  And this is every time I have to leave or come back to site.  It's enough to send you into a panic every time.  And after all that, I'm STILL not in control of my own existence.  I was informed by the Med Office that I WILL go to Mzuzu for observation, I WILL come to Lilongwe for a head scan.  Fine, I probably would do that in America.  But that's another story.  Going to the hospital in America is a walk in the park.  Do you understand how hard it is physically and emotionally to travel 40km back down to Mzuzu, and then another 5 hours in a bus to the nearest passable health care?  I knew I was fine, I just wanted to go home.  But I, again, had no control over my transport and no control over my healthcare, which was impossibly far away.  I know this is a Malawian’s reality, it’s all they have, no other option.  Which is terrible.  But if this crash had been serious, it would have been devastating.  And there was nothing anyone could have done about it.  If my injuries had been any worse I would STILL have to make that same 2-day journey to Lilongwe.  And that scares the hell out of me.  Probably also scared the waiter at the chinese restaurant, where I finally broke down and started crying at the table while he was trying to take my order.

Something to be thankful for in America - more control over our own disasters.

#7 Doug

I wasn’t too happy with Malawi today.  I couldn’t come up with something to love about it because I was just too finished with it already.

But then Doug jumped through the window.  This is normal.  The window is his dog door.  He jumped in with his dopey doggy face and his floppy ears and his tail wagging mightily upon seeing me.  He was so happy I was home!  All he wanted in this world at that moment was to lick my leg, have his ears scratched and pass out at my feet.  Well, Doug is in Malawi.  And I love Doug.  So, there you have it.

Doug through the ages:

Bopa'ing Doug to the vet as a little puppy

He was such a little munchkin!

My baby, all growed up

My happy little Africa family!

#6 Lake Malawi

I was snorkeling in the lake this morning watching the bright little fishies do their mating dances when I was struck by how freaking lucky I am to be doing this.  The lake is unbelievable!  Don’t believe me?  A few years ago National Geographic named Lake Malawi the most beautiful lake in the world.  And those guys know their lakes!

Just a passing view.
I'll put up more later to attempt to do the lake justice.

 The colors are so bright it’s like their irreverent of any of the other colors.  Especially those boastful blues.  They have every reason to be boastful, the rest of the color wheel doesn’t even stand a chance.  You could be in the ugliest part of  Malawi, but if you’re in sight of the lake, the scenery is instantly gorgeous.  And the waters are warm and so clear!  I learned to scuba dive in them without a wet suit, it was so warm, even 15 meters down and at night.

I do not have the words of the narrative ability to eulogize the lake as it deserves.  But I will at least always remember the first time I camped on the beach and woke up for the sunrise over the lake.  It was insane!  And our first bonfire that turned into a mass night swim.  And playing Frisbee in the shallows and drinking wine with our toes in the water and running on the beach with Doug when he was a puppy.  And bathing and doing dishes in the lake as the sun sets behind the mountains.  It feels more natural and calming than anything in the world.  I can’t imagine what my service would be like if it weren’t for the lake.  There would be a lot less to love about Malawi and we’d have to get really creative with our time-outs and get-aways from the village.  Just being near the lake is like breathing again.  I want to give it a hug!

Way to go, God!  You really outdid yourself with this one!

#5 My Little Corner of Heaven

My little village of Chikwina is really my own little corner of Heaven.  I just love it here.  I can’t describe how beautiful it is up here in the mountains.  You’ll have to just come and see it for yourself.  Just my walk to school is breathtaking (literally and figuratively, that is NOT an easy walk to make).  I mean, this place really is of the highest caliber.  The air is pristine, there’s no traffic, all the food is grown locally by my neighbors, the kids are respectful (mostly) and helpful.  My favorite time to walk around the village is late afternoon.  That’s pretty much social hour here, but it’s also cooler and the light is the prettiest (well, tied for first with early morning). 

But what I really LOVE is walking around in all this beauty and knowing everyone’s name.  Well, a good portion of names.  It’s this unbelievable feeling of camaraderie to walk to the market and call out “how are you Mr. Phiri!” or “good afternoon, Mr. Banda!” or “hey, Darlington, are you selling honey today?”  It’s like a freaking episode of Leave it to Beaver, but set in Africa.  It’s great knowing who to ask for eggs or charcoal and who sells the best tomatoes.  I feel like I’ve got “the in”.  I wish this were still common in America.  It really is something to feel good about – the cliché suburban neighborhood.  It’s the ultimate warm-fuzzy feeling.

On my way to school

A Chikwina sunset

Daily Gratitude Lists

So far it’s about half way through November - gratitude month.  Of the positivity training requirements, I’ve only really been good about writing in my journal daily.  It hasn’t had much of an effect on my positivity since I haven’t been good at adhering to the practices.  Mostly, I only workout every other day and then I only meditate after I work out.  And my random acts of kindness don’t really happen because after school is usually when I hide in my house until late afternoon as to avoid being laughed – doesn’t leave a lot of time for me to do nice things randomly for others…so I’m pretty behind on bettering myself. 

But my journal entries including what’s been going on, my gratitude lists, and what I like about Malawi are pretty up-to-date.  So, thought I’d share a sample of my daily gratitude lists from the first half of the month with you.  Sorry if these aren’t interesting to anyone but me.  But it IS interesting to note how these lists would be different if I were anywhere but the Third World.  You wouldn’t think so, but I’ve found it really tough to hammer out three a day without overlapping too much and also retaining some semblance of seriousness in the project.

Thursday, November 1:

1. Pooping, real good pooping

2. Rob cooked all meals today, I got to stay out of the kitchen the whole time!

3. Rain water filling up all my buckets with zero effort on anyone’s part!

Friday, November 2:

1. Having water to flush down the toilet

2. Dinner by candle light when the electricity is out

3. When the electricity comes back on

Saturday, November 3:

1. Saturday morning sleep-in’s slash reading the morning away in bed

2. A newly cleaned kitchen. Ahhhhh.

3. Rain storms.  I just love them.

Monday, November 5:

1. Naps with the cat when Robert’s here to make sure the house doesn’t burn down, turn away visitors, and wake up to.  ESPECIALLY when those naps are only like, an hour, and I wake up feeling totally refreshed.  AND Rob’s done the dishes while I was asleep.

2.  Rob took Kitty’s half-eaten dead mouse out of the house for me.  And yesterday he also took out her dead snake.  These are things I very much don’t do (and if I DO have to do them I agonize about it for hours and gag and yell whilst doing it) and I am thus immensely grateful to him.

3.  Foot rubs. Man, good day today!

Wednesday, November 7:

1. Good writing!!! There’s so much crap out there, I’m sure I’ve ranted about this before.  But so many of these dumbass authors think their thoughts are worth our time!  Like the dummy who wrote Twilight.  Dude, if I were her I would never show my face outside again.  Or I’d change my name and never ever mention the fact that I was the idiot mind behind that detestable series.  After I read her dumb books my brain wanted to take a long scalding shower to scour away the dumbness.  Anyway, it’s so nice when someone writes something truly worthwhile.  Thank you, Barbara Kingsolver, for not writing crap.

2. Really delicious food, especially of the meat variety

3. The views on my walk to school

Saturday, November 10:

1. Having a sibling.  I think that’s gonna turn out to be really important.

2. Endorphins after a good workout

3. This freaking lake, man!  It’s unbelievable!

Sunday, November 11:

1. Mac and cheese.

2. Doug and his wagging tail

3. No traffic, no road rage, no frustrated honking.  On the same note, no constant buzz of a refrigerator or incessant background noise of a television.  Just humans chatting in the daytime and bugs chatting at night.  Nothing unnecessary.  I think the phrase I’m looking for is “peace and quiet”.

Monday, November 12:

1. This house I live in that has totally become my home.  I really love it here.

2. Mom and Dad for all the usual things I’m grateful for towards them

3. Cool breezes after climbing tough hills on a hot day

Wednesday, November 14:

1. Bug spray and mosquito nets

2. Free mangos! Way to go, fruit-bearing trees, you’re awesome!

3. I’m honestly grateful to be a (Western) women, I get grow and give birth to a life and then feed it from my own body.  I think that’s really f’ing cool.  Sucks to be a guy and miss out on that whole unique experience.  Well, sucks to be a guy in the West, where there is increasingly fewer benefits to being a guy. 

(4. Rob.  It IS his birthday today. Gotta give a gratitude shout out.)

Friday, November 16:

1. The sunrise and sunset.  Every time we take the time to watch them we think they’re really cool.  But they happen every day, they’re actually happening somewhere in the world all the time, constantly!  But we only notice them some of the time.  It’s too bad, because, like I said, they’re really cool to watch.  The sky puts on a daily show for us and we only think to watch if we’re not doing anything else.  Man, Chikwina has the best freaking sunrises and sunsets.  Grade A.

2. When my kids come to my house to ask for math help

3. A solid, well-timed, well-deserved high five that validates the bonds of friendship.  One of those that’s right on target and leaves you with a feeling of accomplishment.  Like, that was a solid high five.

Don't Cry Over Spilled Water

Today at school we did another creative writing assignment.  Today’s prompt had to do with Malawian sayings.  I gave the English example of “don’t cry over spilled milk”.  They got all excited about that because they have a similar one, except it’s “don’t cry over spilled water.”  I have TOTALLY cried over spilled water.  At the time it was dark out but still hot and I hate carrying water and I tripped and dropped the bucket and the bucket broke.  Then I cried.  That water shit it is valuable!  You can’t water your crops with milk. You crazy?!

Anyway, I had them write their sayings first in the local language and then translate it to English and tell me what it meant.  I wanted to see if Malawian sayings rhymed or had a cadence like a lot of ours do.  A lot of the saying my students wrote are the same as our English ones.  A bunch of students wrote “birds of a feather flock together” and “early bird gets the worm”.  Makes me think a lot of these sayings came over with colonialists and missionaries.  A few of them wrote “make hay while the sun shines,” which would be a very appropriate saying for Malawi…if they grew hay.  Five bucks says they don’t know what hay is.  The “hay” they grow is not called hay, nor is what passes for hay here translated to hay.  They don’t grow hay.  Here it is “grass”.  Just grass.  Sometimes “glass”.  That saying is not Malawian.  But when I brought these issues up to them, they vehemently shot me down.  “No, no Madam!  These are Malawian sayings!” Alright! Alright! Sheesh.

Some of them, however, were more likely from their own language.  For example, “love is in the hands”, which means you show your true feelings through your actions.  There was also “what comes does not beat a drum”.  My students disagreed with what this one meant, but I think it’s something to do with how many things are unexpected.  No one could offer me good or comprehensible explanations for “it’s all fish that you catch in the net” and “even as the rain falls the smoke will not stop,” but they’re still cool.  One interesting one was “never let a handshake pass the elbow.” I think this has something to do with how we shake hands here with our left hand supporting our right elbow to show we aren’t hiding weapons.  There’s also “charity begins at home,” “latecomers always eat bones” (too true here), “an empty tin makes a lot of noise”, “once a thief, always a thief.”  And the more culture-specific obscure ones: “if your friend’s bed is burning, help him stop it” (sounds better in their language), “once you cry for the rain you will also accompany the mud” (be careful what you wish for, essentially), “prevention is better than cure”, “how beautiful is the fig but alas it is filled with ants.”  Finally, my favorite “all days are not Sunday.”

#4 Full Water Buckets

When the kids come and fill my water buckets in exchange for candy.  Man, it just warms my heart having buckets full of water that I didn’t have to carry.  And those kids just love candy!!

Health Center Building Update

Things are really starting to happen with this health center building project!  I just received word from PC Headquarters in America that we were officially approved and should see the money by the end of next week.  On Saturday we are choosing our contractor (from a final pool of 3 people vying for the job) and selecting our building site.  The building site I’ve been imagining in my head looks like it’ll be a difficult place to build because we’d have to get the devil Escom out here to move the power lines.  But someone suggested a site slightly up the hill from the current Health Center, where there are no other interferences and an ample amount of land and a beautiful view of Nkhata Bay.  It would also leave the current land open to further development later.  We’ll have to do an environmental impact survey before we approve it, but I hadn’t even thought of that area!  The District Health Officer sent a surprise representative to approve our project and to inform us of how his office can help.  From him we’ll get some transport for materials, help with plumbing and electrification, some amount of specialized labor and brick layers to keep the building up to code (whatever that means in Malawi).  By the end of next week we expect to have the building site cleared and the foundation dug!  It’s happening!!!

The villages have come together and over the last two weeks and molded 109,000 bricks.  Only 49,000 to go!  Here’s some pictures of Monday’s brick burning bonanza:

So first they stack all the bricks so to leave
openings at the bottom for  the fires

This guy's stacking the bricks on the top of the structure.
And its a bomb picture.

This is Village Headman Chipayika.  What a sweet old man, posing with his bricks!

Then they cover the structure with mud and build huge fires
in the  spaces underneath the structure.

This is a baby, named Mercy.  She was playing in the pile of unstacked bricks.
They wanted me to take a picture of her because they were laughing that she represented
child labor...it WAS pretty funny.

Mixing the mud to cover the structure

Smoke coming up through the cracks in the giant brick super-structure.
The top isn't too hot yet, so they men are quickly stacking the last of the bricks.

Guy in foreground is smearing mud.  Two oldies are stoking their fires.

I also took some videos, for Dad.  Can't load them though.

#3 "Yes! It is Very Simple!"

This one isn’t specific to Malawi, but since teaching is a significant portion of my life here, it gets added to the gratitude list.  My favorite thing about teaching math is when the students get it.  Seeing a room full of light bulbs go off above their heads in a school bereft of actual electricity gives me such a rush!  They’ll all nod in agreement and shout “yes! It is very simple! We are together!” It’s especially great when the concept is actually pretty difficult.  Today we learned how to solve quadratic equations by completing the square, something I never fully understood until I taught it to my own students.  They picked it up on the first try.  Not to toot my own horn, but it is SUCH a feeling of accomplishment when I’ve explained something well and they really understand it!  It’s a rare occurrence, usually they just look at me like I’m speaking another language…oh wait.  But today, the stars aligned and squares were completed!

I can see my new Form 3 students getting more comfortable with me.  We’ve gotten into a math-class groove.  Now they’ll see me coming down the aisle looking over their shoulders at their work and instead of giving me the evil eye like “what do YOU care what I write on my paper” they’ll shove it to the edge of their desk so I can see it better and have one-on-one’s with them.  They understand that when I’m walking around, they’re allowed to confer with each other and consult each other’s work.  When I stand at the front of the class and toss the chalk from one hand to the other, it’s time to shut up and see how I would solve the class work problem.  When they get the same answer as me, fists are pumped and shoulders are slapped.  They know I’m kidding and still think it’s funny when I tell them I’ll murder them if they forget the negative sign.  When I ask one of them to explain to the class how they did a problem correctly, they know to explain it in the local language, to help everyone understand, not just the exceptional English speakers.  Math class is just so much fun!  And they’re starting to get that!  Math doesn’t have to be the scary untouchable subject that no one understands and no teachers know how to teach!  Of course, they’re still way behind.  Today we also had a lot of trouble coming up with the correct answer for -2 divided by 2.  But, hopefully, they’ll eventually invest their brains in the subject and pick it up in time for the national exams at the end of their Form 4 year.  It might be possible!!!!

Doug was helping me grade math papers.
He doesn't have the attention span of my other students.

#2 Outrunning Rain Storms

I love rainy season for so many reasons.  For one, all bets are off.  Staying inside all day and expecting zero human interruptions is perfectly acceptable.  For another, I love the sound of the rain on my tin roof.  Also, my gardens are being watered and buckets are being filled with no effort on my part.  It’s just wonderful, the lazy person’s dream.

But sometimes, even during rainy season, some amount of responsibility is still expected of you.  Like going to teach your classes at school.  Rainy season isn’t like the rain in the Pacific Northwest, which is a constant rain with no end in sight.  Malawi rainy season involves huge amounts of water hurled from the heavens above for about an hour tops, then a respite, lasting anywhere from a few minutes to hours to days.  You can see the storms coming from miles away.  Usually they’re blown in from the east, over the lake and pushed through the mountains.  You can watch the clouds rolling in and swallowing up the hills as they go, turning the sky white, then gray, then black.  It’s one of my favorite things to do here, watching the storms come in, trying to read the sky. 

Sometimes they come in really fast though, and all of a sudden they’re on top of you.  You can usually gauge how much time you have to find cover by how fast the first wave of darker white clouds obscure the cell tower down at the market.  It’s a fun game, really.  Today I had about 5 minutes and a kilometer to go to get to school before I was completely destroyed by a massive black hole of a storm.  It was not at all my first storm here I’ve tried to outrun.  You’ll often find yourself miscalculating and taking refuge, soaked to the skin, in an abandoned half-roofed building with a pile of other Malawians (usually kids) who have likewise miscalculated.  Today, my adrenaline rose along with wind and the speed of the oncoming deluge as Doug and I raced the storm cloud to school.  We arrived just in time, me drenched with sweat instead of rain, as the buckets began to pour.  Success! 

I’m reading this book right now, Poisonwood Bible, about a missionary family in the Congo during the 60s.  It describes rainy season from the point of view of one of the young daughters:

“When the rainy season fell on us in Kilanga, it fell like a plague.  We were warned to expect rain in October, but at the close of July – surprising no one in Kilanga but ourselves – the serene heavens above began to dump buckets.  It rained pitchforks, as Mother says.  It rained cats and dogs frogs bogs then it rained snakes and lizards.  A pestilence of rain we received, the likes of which we had never seen or dreamed about in Georgia.”

…Just how I like it!

#1 Greeting with a Smile

This is just something I love love love!  While it gets super unbearably annoying sometimes greeting every single person all the time no matter how shitty your mood is and no matter how hard it is to contort your face into a smile-grimace, the practice really is beautiful.  I think I hate doing it half the time because it’s not something we do in the West.  We just don’t smile as easily at each other over there.  We like our bubbles and stop trying to make eye-contact with me, creep!  But here, greeting comes with a smile, and not forced like mine often are, a legitimate, sincere smile that crinkles around the eyes.

Today I was walking home and started approaching a man walking in the opposite direction with a sullen expression.  He was at an age where his skin was betraying where exactly his face would melt into a mass of wrinkles in the coming years.  His eyes were on the ground and his mind was obviously elsewhere.  But at the last moment, he looked up to greet me in his language, as is customary.  Even before he saw it was me, the village white freak show, his face completely transformed into this glowing smile as if to say “this is a human being I am fortunate enough to meet on this road of all roads”.  And, oh man, wrinkle smiles are just the best.  More loose skin, more to smile with.  It was just one of those smiles that your heart sees with your eyes, and you can’t help but return it.

And when you’re in the right mood to see them, they’re just everywhere here!

30 Day Challenge - Round 3: Gratitude

For November, in honor of one of my top 3 favorite holidays ever, Thanksgiving, this month will be about gratitude (the other two favorite holidays include a rotation of Passover, Sukkot, Christmas when it’s done right with a Favorite Things Feast, the occasional Halloween, and Leap Day, which isn’t considered a holiday but should be).  I was watching a TED talk about the benefits of “positivity training”, and the concept really peaked my interest.  Positivity training involves journaling about one thing that happened in the last 24 hours, listing three things you’re grateful for, meditating, exercising, and performing a random act of kindness every day.  All these things sound lovely, and all the research I’ve seen on stuff like this seems pretty conclusive.  But it also sounds like a huge commitment.  We’ll see how these next 30 days go.

This 30-day challenge also coincides with a text I recently received from another volunteer, Shelley Whittet, who has urged the other volunteers in our group to write or blog about one positive thing we love about Malawi for our final 180 days of service to help us get out of here on a high note.  That’s right, exactly 6 months left!!!  It’s another lovely, lofty goal, but I’ll try.

So here goes: …see tomorrow's post….

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.

Creative Writing 101

So we’ve started another year of Secondary School.  I’m teaching math and biology to Form 3.  But I’ve added a little something-something to my personal curriculum for my own amusement.  Every week (or more than once a week if I don’t feel like actually teaching) we will write for 20 minutes on whatever prompt I choose.  This little exercise will work on a number of levels.  It’ll encourage them to write their thoughts and think about things they wouldn’t usually think about – these guys are in desperate need of critical and creative thinking practice.  It’ll also require them to write in English, which I can then correct and help them with on an individual basis.  And it is a perfect excuse to get them to tell me everything I’ve been so unbelievably curious about but can’t ask in any normal conversation since I’ve been here.  For example, I can’t wait till they trust me enough to honestly answer the question “explain local initiation ceremonies and how you feel about them” or “why don’t you think men and women are equal in Malawi” or “do male teachers really take advantage of their position with the female students” or “write about a rumor you’ve heard about someone with AIDS” or even just “tell me some Malawian sayings or proverbs”.  I know I’ll get at least a few honest answers out of them.  And I told them that I’ll be only one reading them (unless they expressly tell me not to read a particular entry), that I’ll keep them locked in my house when we aren’t using them, and that I won’t post anything they say online without their permission.

This week’s was a tame prompt, to get them used to the idea.  The question was “what do you want to do with your life after you finish Secondary School”.  I got a lot of “I want to be a doctor” or teacher or car mechanic.  But I also got one girl saying that she wants to be a medical assistant in a hospital.  However, she is worried she is setting her goals too high because she is an orphan living with her aunt and many other children, all of whom depend on her aunt’s single income.  Even if she can pass her national exams and get into University, school fees will be unattainable and she’ll have to stay in the village and get married.  Another guy in the class had very realistic expectations, which I really appreciated after ten future doctors couldn’t spell “doctor”.  He wants to become a soldier, have a good family, and then he wants to build his own house.  If he has money left over, he will buy a bicycle to ride to work.  Solid.  Way to go, kid.

Any prompts you’d like to suggest??

Perspicacious

Perspicacious.  Having or showing penetrating mental discernment; clear-sighted.  Synonyms, see Stacey Neilson.  That’s me!

Took another practice GRE today.   It was a doozy. I chose to take the one the official GRE website has as an example of the new paper-based test.  And damn, that thing is WAY harder than the practice questions in the study books.  WAY harder!  Most of their sentences in the verbal section don’t make sense at all.  And half of it is reading comprehension passages, which I do NOT comprehend.

But I owned it!  Well, not the verbal, I’m still missing 16% of the questions on that one.  But I kicked ass on math!  I missed 3 out of 50 questions (or 6%).  Which, if the equivalency charts comparing the new scores to the old scores are correct, I’m in the 94^th+ percentile, which is actually equivalent to a 790-800 on the old test (the best score you can get)!  It’s HUGE!  And even though I’m not performing as well as I’d like to on the verbal, I’m still in the 91^st percentile, apparently.  I’m gonna own this thing next month!  Suck it, grad school!

Chikwina Health Center Gets Solar!

About two months ago we had a health center staff meeting, where the Nurse talked about how difficult it was to deliver babies in the middle of the night with only flashlights and candles for light.  Someone (I think Chitani) said they already had a 50W solar panel that they would give to the health center if we bought the rest of the equipment we needed.  No problem!

Friends of Malawi is an organization of returned volunteers and government workers from all over the world who used to work in Malawi, and they have a lot of money.  They give grants of up to $500.  We only needed about $350 to get our solar up and running, and thankfully, they approved my grant I sent to them that said as much!  Once they sent the money, Mr. Phiri and I wasted no time in going to Mzuzu to pick up our supplies.  Lights were switched on for the first time 24 hours later!  We win!  It’s the first legitimate lasting thing I’ve done out here!  I’m sure the parents would disagree with that, but it IS really nice to have a physical manifestation of my efforts.

If you haven’t seen the pictures on facebook yet:

Health Center during the day

Health Center at night, pre-lights (with a camera flash)

Health Center at night WITH lights!

Electrician hooking us up!

Day...

and night!

Our first patient treated under the lights! Gracious got a little
excited when he heard I was taking pictures and fell over a rock
running over.

Medical Assistant is open for business!

Vitiate

Vitiate; meaning to corrupt, put wrong, spoil, or make worse.  Upon further GRE research I have found that the programs that I really want to do post-PC, I mean the ones I’m studying my ass off for, have recently decided that the GRE is now “optional”.  In other words; obsolete, nugatory, superannuated, and/or obviated.  <Insert imprecation here!> Furthermore, I’ve also recently read that they’ve changed the scoring of the test, among other things.  Now, instead of verbal and quantitative each scored out of 800, they are now each scored out of 170.  While this may not seem to be very important, it means I have NO IDEA what I’m shooting for anymore - NO IDEA how to compare my previous GRE tests and NO IDEA what a good score even is.  It’s very disorienting.  And so, my initial motivation to kick ass on the GRE has been vitiated (dunno if I’m actually using that word correctly, but the GRE doesn’t test on that, so I’m sticking to it). 

But regardless, I am continuing on with my 30 day challenge.  I had to take a few days off for a little weekend get-away at the lake, but I think I’m officially on day 12 and going strong.  I took a full length practice test today and only missed 10% of the math questions, which is almost on target (now that I’m making up what a good score is, I’m shooting for 5-8% missed on math), but I missed 17% of the verbal.  What are getting me are these new multiple-multiple choice questions.  They’re dumb.  Oh, and reading comprehension.  That’s always been dumb.  But on all the verbal and quantitative sections I finished with 15 minutes to spare consistently.  Maybe this first test in the book was just super easy to increase our confidence, but if that’s what all the tests turn out to be, I’ll definitely have the time to make sure I’m getting correct answers. 

In conclusion, the GRE is dumber than ever.  Somehow, the GRE Powers That Be have come up with ways to make standardized testing even more esoteric and useless.  And for that, they shall burn in hell.  But at least I’ll probably have a decent score and end up with a worthwhile career that no one will curse me for.  So, suck it.

Microscope Mayhem!

Their first interactions with microscopes!

Two Form 4 students practicing how to focus

So when my family came to visit last month (blog post to come) M and D brought me two little natural light microscopes to use in my Biology classes.  HUGE hit!  The teachers were elbowing each other out of the way to see onion skin magnified at 1200x.  And the kids were just as excited. 

Robert explaining how to make a salt crystal slide.

Robert came over and helped me conduct a 4-day microscope workshop with the Form 2’s and 4’s.  They learned the parts and how to care for the microscopes and how to focus them at different magnifications.  They learned how to make their own slides and dye specimen.  They identified parts of animal and plant cells, which they had previously only seen crude drawing of on the chalkboard.  The teachers even participated in the workshop so they would know how to teach it on their own.

Robert teaching my kids!

Drawing and labeling plant cells

Form 4's and Form 2's teaming up to make slides

  

Me!  Explaining how to dye specimen on a slide

Madam! Is this right!?

Besides the impromptu demonstrations I did last year on how plants work, using wine glasses as test tubes, this was their first practical lab work they’ve ever done!  It was amazing how focused they were the whole time.  I've never gotten them to quiet down so fast and stay on task for so long!

Props to Mom and Dad!

The 30 Day Challenge – Round One: GRE Study

I’m attempting to break up the next 8 months left of my service into 30 day challenges to help me mark the time.  We’ll see how long it lasts.  This month is 30 days of studying for the GRE.  I've made it to day 3!  I’ve signed up to take the test on October 20^th, so really I have 50 days, which is good in case I’m not good at this 30 day challenge thing and need some buffer time to study.

I’m psyched about this GRE, actually.  I’ve been teaching math for about a year, so I know my brain hasn’t atrophied, and I really don’t have that many words I need to learn.  There’s that point of diminishing returns after you’ve learned the GRE testers’ favorite words, so I’m just not gotta waste my time much after I’ve got those down.  ALSO, they’ve thrown out those BS word comparison questions that I’m so terrible at.  Ya know those ones that are like CAT:MOUSE.  I was so bad at those!  AND! And on the paper-based GRE test they allow you a simple hand held calculator. WHAT?! I might very well rock this thing.  But cross your fingers and knock on wood and all that.  Just in case.

Anyway, today’s GRE word of the day is “obsequious,” meaning to be overly eager to please.  The word brings to mind Doug’s puppy, who so desperately wants Doug’s approval that he licks Doug in the mouth as a hello, brings him smelly rags to roll in, and copies his every destructive move, such as digging up my newly planted tomato garden.  It also brings to mind other behaviors I’ve experienced in Malawi when the punch line of a conversation is “give me money.”

The Baby Circus - My Thoughts and Goings On of September 3rd

So I got 8 months left out here – a blink of an eye, really.  I might extend it another 2 months though if my building project requires me to (I hear back from the Peace Corps Headquarters this month about the approval of my Health Center building, the government sent me a letter of commitment for their portion of the funds!).  Plus about 2 month of traveling around Southeast Asia afterwards.  So about 10 to 12 months till I’m stateside!

I know I’m being effective out here because the baby that lives next door who I used to be able to make cry just by looking at her now wakes me up with gleeful cries of “Stacia!” outside my window.  She might just be showing off that she can talk now, but I like to see it as a sign of my acceptance by the community.

Today was the first day of school.  Naturally, only half the students showed up and the headmaster changed everyone’s schedules around so I went from teaching 2 biology courses to who-the-fuck-knows.  This place is just SO silly sometimes.  We DID, however, successfully rearrange the teachers’ office.

Talking about that baby that doesn’t cry at the sight of me anymore – her mom is trying to bathe her in the tap at the health center across from my house and she let go of her for a second to reach for the soap and her naked little child took off running around the neighborhood.  She’s squealing and flailing her little arms and giggling uncontrollably.  Mom’s still trying to catch her.  My village is more a circus of children than anything.  An adorable, hilarious, naked, squealing baby circus.

Said baby and her family.

I’m not proud of this.  I just watched a lizard drown in one of my buckets and I didn’t think to help it out until it was too late.  I watched it give up and die after one last desperate fight.  I feel really terrible!  Like, really bad.  What would the Dalai Lama say?  I coulda done so much to help it!  But it freaked me out and I didn’t want to get too close because I don’t like reptiles.  I coulda put a stick in there so it could pull itself out, or filled the bucket up more so it could reach the edge.  But I didn’t!  I just watched like a moron.  An f’ing moron.  I feel so guilty.  Well, I hope it’s little lizard soul can appreciate that it warranted enough of my attention to be eulogized in this blog post and read by people an ocean away.  Sorry, little friend.  A moment of silence.

Let’s go back to the naked baby girl who lives next door.  Now she is fully clothed and standing in the road outside my house staring at me with a huge smile on her face and an orange m’freezi (frozen flavored ice in a baggie) sticking out of her mouth.  Her mother is standing five feet away yelling at her to come home for dinner.  She’s still smiling, shaking her head so that the m’freezi whacks her on either side of her face.  I love the baby circus!