Dumb Things My Students Write on Tests and Papers

On a getting-to-know you Q&A assignment:
Question – “What do you like to do in your free time?”
Answer – “I am fine, how are you?”

Various Biology exams:
Q – “Name two characteristics of mammals”
A – “1. Medium, 2. Size”

Q – “What is the natural diet of a dog?”
A – “Nsima.”

Q – “Marasmus is another name for the deficiency disease called _________.”
A – “Photosynthesis” (actual answer is starvation)

Q – “List three differences between lipids and carbohydrates.”
A – “Lipids is not a food.”

True or False:
Q1 – “Nsima has all the nutrients we need to have a balanced diet”
A – “Energy”
A – “Force”
A – “True”
A – “Two”
A – “Carbohydrates”

Q2 – “A child does not need protein in his or her diet”
A – “Sunlight vegetables”

Q – “Name one food source where you can find the mineral you named in question 26A”
A – “Banana is found in mulanje”
A – “It can be found in PUFF”

Q – ‘Explain three ways in which glucose is used by the plant”
A – “1. Plant are used by hoe and axes, 2. Clearing the land, 3. Lipid”

Fill in the Blank:

1. Blood flows through the heart millions of times before being pumped to the body.

2. Repeated attacks by flowers causes permanent blockage of lymph vessels.

Costco and the Other Ridiculous Things We Fantasize About

Just got off the phone with the rents. They are heading out on their usual weekend trip to Costco. When they told me this I found myself seething with jealousy. Literally, just yesterday Robert and I were day dreaming together about future weekend trips to Costco when we get back to the States. We drooled over our imaginary order of Costco hot dogs and huge slices of peperoni pizzas, washed down with churros and chocolate-vanilla swirl froyo. But that would just be the beginning. Oh yes, just the beginning. Then we’d get one of their shitty shopping carts that never roll in a straight line and take turns pushing each other in circles around the huge Costco warehouse filled with massive amounts of everyday necessities sold in bulk and cheap assemble-it-yourself home office equipment. We’d visit every free samples station at least twice, even the dumb ones, like the health food energy bars and mixed nuts ones. We’d push our way to the front of the impatient growing crowds forming around a station that recently ran out of samples but is soon to put out more. We’d squeeze past the moms and dads toting their squirming tots, equally anxious to get their hands on free bite-sized microwaved food. We’d elbow the elderly out of the way and shoulder in front of those respectful shoppers observing considerate free-samples etiquette (suckers!). Doesn’t matter who showed up to the sample station first, we intend on grabbing as many samples as we can as quickly as we can, then bolt. Ooh! Maybe we can dress up as evil sample-stealing supervillains. We will be feared throughout Costco, leaving a trail of empty Dixie sample cups in our wake! And we won’t buy ANY of the advertised samples!!! Mwahaha!!!

Other things my PC friends and I fantasize about include:
1. Sneaking feasts into movie theaters and propping our feet up on the seat in front of us.
2. Waiting in lines at Disneyland. It’ll be awesome because after chilling for an hour or so, just hanging out and messing with the people standing around us we get to go on a Disneyland ride! Also at Disneyland is overpriced food, themed restaurants, and fools dressed up as Disney characters!
3. Sushi dinners. When we talk about sushi we tend to itemize each roll we will order and how we will dress it in soy sauce and ginger before sticking it in our mouths.
4. Driving around our respective towns. I’m usually delegated to the passenger seat in these exercises, because most people here claim to be better drivers than I ever claim to be.
5. Going to Souplantation with a bunch of games and stay there all day playing and eating.
6. A Caribbean cruise (keep in mind these are daydreams). I would like nothing more than a quintessential American gluttonous experience of a cruise! Eat all day at the all-you-can-eat buffets, sit around the deck in a bathing suit with other Americans with disposable incomes, constantly drink overpriced fruity drinks and dirty vodka martinis, get all dressed up for dinner, walk into tourist traps in third-world port cities and not give a damn or write a single grant proposal or form any women’s groups, play bingo in a bathrobe, and sing karaoke and compete in stupid games like ice carving competitions. By the end of these two years I think I will have put in my time trying to help and make friends with developing countries. It’ll be time to go back to just contributing good ol’ American tourist dollars, one exotic cruise destination at a time. Just for a week! One freaking week! I would love that.
7. Most of us are planning cross-country road trips when we get home. So far, my favorite places to dream about include Maine (for the lobsters), New York (for the food and plays), South Carolina coastline, Atlanta (best food in America, next to New York), New Orleans, Orlando (DisneyWORLD and Universal slash Harry Potter Land), the Grand Canyon, Seattle/Portland, San Francisco, take a wine tour in central California, a brewery tour everywhere else, and duh, San Diego. San Diego!!!
8. Within San Diego I dream about my house (specifically how it looks and feels in the morning after I’ve slept in), carne asada burritos, Katie Rider’s house (especially the view from the kitchen), the drive south on the I-15 and the I-5, the Mongolian BBQ place in the food court of the mall, the yoga studio I go to right on Solana Beach, the Sushiya place next to the PartyCity and the Sand Crab Cafe with my parents, everything at all connected with Ocean Beach (especially the hobos that cheer and yell “encore” at every sundown), nights in Pacific Beach with friends, beer pong in Katie’s garage, the western side of Point Loma (like Nimitz Drive and stuff, with the killer Santana’s, which has tragically become Fresh Mxn Food. Lame.), downtown Escondido (for some reason, the only place I really go to there is the doctor’s and the bank), the San Diego Wild Animal Park, Sea World, Mission Beach by way of Sea World Drive, the art shows downtown, that terrible improve theater also downtown, my car, Big Red (which has sadly been disposed of since my time in Africa), Old Town Café, where they make tortillas right there on the outdoor patio. Oh man, 12½ months and counting!!

Now that I think about it, I really outta take it slow when I get back. I’m gonna have severe sensory overload just touching down on American soil, not to mention reverse culture shock, weird tastes in my brain, vertigo, and sea legs (for no particular reason, I can see it just happening, a natural PC backlash). Better stick to the small stuff at first, like remembering how to drive (period.) to Rrrrroberto’s for some chicken flautas with guac and extra red sauce (!!!). Maybe just dip my toe into the Costco experience. Limit myself to one slice of pizza and enter the warehouse labyrinth of free-sample insanity at a later date…or not!

Things You Can Do With Electricity

All that hype about getting electricity and mourning the loss of my candle-lit dinners. Turns out all electricity really does is allow cooking to go faster and makes me stay up later. Here’s the complete list of what I can do now that I have electricity:

1. Stay up all night reading or writing or doing nothing
2. Make tea in less than ten minutes
3. Buy a fan and have it turned on all night! I love fans!
4. Switch lights on and off in quick succession and have a rave
5. Charge your computer and watch movies ALL DAY if you want to
6. Charge your phone, for free!
7. That’s it, actually. Aside from efficient cooking, I don’t really see what the big deal is.

Nap Time

Nap Time

It’s rainy season over here, which translates to a lot of napping. Today I slept the whole afternoon. Which, in turn, translates to late nights and restless hours. I really like rainy season. When it downpours, no one does anything and everything is called off. It’s a lazy person’s dream! Usually, I feel guilty after naps. I don’t like sleeping during daylight hours and, ya know, not contributing to society. But sometimes, when I feel like I’ve accomplished something already that day, like the dishes or the laundry, I can enjoy the nap a lot more. But I hate waking up when it’s dark out, or almost dark. I think it’s one of my least favorite feelings that exist. When it happens I feel like a total bum, like I’ve completely wasted one of my earthly God-given days. But when I nap right, like when I sleep for an hour or two and it feels like a full night’s sleep and I wake up and there’s still plenty of daylight to do stuff and one day then feels like two different days, that’s the best. Like I’ve doubled my money at the poker table.

Today I didn’t mean to fall asleep. But I’d already taught my classes at school and cleaned the kitchen, so I didn’t feel too guilty. And the sky was pissing like a racehorse for a good two hours and I happened to be reading in bed with a little baby kitten curled up on my chest. It was a recipe for disaster (read “solid nap”). Now I’m up and refreshed with the cat bouncing energetically around the room chasing bugs…and it’s the middle of the night. Great.

Kids on the Block

I realized I write about my neighborhood kids (read “iwe’s”, translated to “hey you’s”) all the time. I have great iwe’s in my neighborhood. They adore me and most of the time I love them. And they’re so helpful! They’ll come to my door asking to sweep my house and give me avocados. They play with Doug and help in the garden. When the water is off they’ll line up to receive my buckets and carry water for me from the borehole in exchange for m’sweeties. They come over almost every day to play with my cards on my porch as an excuse to hang out with me, handing over their infant siblings for me to coddle. Yesterday they went nuts over a bottle of bubbles I gave them to play with. Like I said before (I think in the Mother’s Day post), I don’t think they get a lot of attention from adults. But I haven’t really given them the attention they deserve on this blog. So, a belated introduction:

Patricia – She’s the ten-year-old girl who lives just next door at the Nurse’s house. The Nurse is her grandmother, and Patricia wants to grow up to become a nurse just like her. She’s actually my favorite of all the iwe’s, but don’t tell the rest of them that. She speaks English really well (for a Standard 4 student, that’s the year they start learning English in school) and likes to tell me what she’s learned at school that day. I actually didn’t really notice Patricia much until Robert came to visit a few months ago and commented that the girl next door seemed to really look up to me. She has a pretty good home life, upscale house with a steady income and a grandmother who is a solid influence (and intimidating, she scares the crap out of me). But her mother is working in South Africa and not around, I haven’t heard about any father, the only other woman in the house is her 17-year-old aunt (by marriage) with a 1½-year-old baby. She has an equally young husband (nurse’s son) who comes around sometimes, usually drunk and belligerent (just last week there was a massive scene in the middle of the night where he was high and beating everyone in the house. He broke their television and then slept through the next day). There’s also this other random guy who lives there. I don’t know his name and I’ve never heard him talk. I think there might be something up with his head, but he has good dental hygiene. I see him brushing his teeth every morning outside. Anyway, as far as I can tell, next to the nurse, Patricia is the sanest member of that household. In that light, it kind of makes sense that she would look up to me and my quiet household of almost-sanity and my appreciation for her help around the house. As the female iwe, it falls to her to do the washing and the cleaning and the household chores and all. It’s amazing that they can get the iwe’s to do all that stuff without complaining. I can’t imagine American kids carrying buckets of water on their heads every day without causing a fuss. But she does it, and then sometimes she’ll come over here and do it for me too. But at my house she gets candy out of the deal. She can often be found toting her 1½-year-old cousin, Junior, around.

Junior - He’s hands down the cutest kid in Africa with a toothy little dimpled smile that lights up the day. He’s my prime entertainment when I go outside. Everything he does is hilarious. He’ll spin in circles around the clothes line pole, he’ll squeal excitedly at chickens running past, he’ll play long-distance hide-and-seek with me, hiding behind his house peeking out while I’m hiding behind mine doing the same. My favorite is his outdoor bath time. Babies also bathe in buckets, except they do it in the yard (less clean-up involved). He’ll cry and scream when his teen mom washes him down and he’ll desperately try to escape his watery bucket imprisonment. But when she’s not looking he’ll jump up and down and splash and make vroom vroom noises and try to tip the bucket over. F’ing adorable.

Crispy – Patricia’s 7-year-old brother. Crispy is a surprisingly common Malawian name. It might actually be Chris B, but there’s no way of actually knowing. He’s a sweetheart, really, but he’s at an age where he’s starting to be too cool for stuff, like being personable to the Azungu next door. He’ll greet me, but he won’t look me in the face anymore, and he’s becoming increasingly shy with me. Sometimes he’ll forget that he’s too cool and I’ll find him on the porch with the rest of them or taunting Doug with a ball in my yard. He was one of the first to blush when I gave him praise for his drawing of a car a few months ago. He was so eager to please, but since then he’s been off-again-on-again. I actually think last time he was in my house he may have stolen a good handful of money off my table, showing off to his visiting cousin. I brought it up with the Nurse, who was receptive, but no dice. I wonder if that’s when he started to get weird with me…

Virginia – I think she’s about 11. She’s unbelievably beautiful and a perfect genetic mix of her mother and father. She’s the daughter of the Senior HSA (Health Surveillance A…something), who is technically my supervisor and lives two doors down. He’s the one who mostly spearheaded this Health Center building project we’re doing. She and Patricia are best friends, but it recent months I think Virginia has taken over as leader of their little neighborhood iwe pack. Her English isn’t great so I don’t know a lot about her, but she’s really helpful and sweet.

Chisomo – Virginia’s 2 or 3-year-old sister. Chisomo is a chubby rolly-polly kid, almost the size of her sister, who totes her around. Chisomo is kind of a cry-baby and likes to be taken care of, even though she’s one of the biggest ones, considering her age. Her sister definitely got the looks… But she’s also a sweetheart. She’s very shy but likes me a lot. She’s terrified of me and terrified of Doug up close, but get a few feet between us and she’s all smiles and waves. Chisomo’s first English words were “how are-a you?”, which she still asks me a hundred times in a row, like that knock knock joke in which the knock knocks just keep repeating themselves until you get an “orange you glad I didn’t say banana”. Sometimes I’ll get her punch line of “I’m fine” in her tiny little voice from across the safe distance of the yard, at which point she’ll start all over again. “How are-a you?!” She and Junior are best friends. They toddle everywhere together, flailing their little arms for balance and bouncing up and down on their chubby little legs when they have excess energy. They love when I come home from school. They are usually happily sitting in a pile of mud or sticks on the side of the road until I turn the corner. Then they’ll jump up and wave excitedly “Stacia! Stacia! How are-a you!?” Well, Chisomo does most of the talking, Junior is still getting the hang of his tongue. They’ll giggle uncontrollably and wave until I disappear into my house.

Martha – She lives with Mrs. Liz Usisya, the Hospital Attendant from across the road. Mrs. Usisya’s household is very confusing to me. She’s told me a few times, but I can never remember which kids are hers and which are other people’s. If Martha’s her kid, Martha would be the middle child. Yeah, I think that’s it. There’s her Standard 7 or 8 daughter, Ducas, who I don’t see very often, I think she runs in an older iwe pack in another part of the village. Then there would be Martha, who I think is about 10-years-old. Then there’s Precious, the 1-year-old daughter who was born almost the same time I came to country (which is pretty cool, I can watch a human grow who has been here the same amount of time I have). Sometimes there’s an older boy who is here, but I haven’t seen him in a good long time, and right now there’s also a younger boy, who hangs out a lot with Crispy, but I can’t remember his name. He’s also a sweetheart. Martha is really pretty too, and essentially fearless. She’s kind of like an African female version of Tom Sawyer. She takes care of herself, she’s not afraid of the scary foreigner (me), she’s a dare devil, and I don’t think she’s much for the rules. A real go-getter. But she’s also very nice and helpful. She’s the one whose sold me all of my chickens and also takes care of them for me because they’d rather live at her house than mine. Everyone knows Martha. I can walk through the villages and hear her being called from everywhere. “Martha!!!” Usually it’s a grownup calling for her very loudly, which I feel happened to Tom Sawyer a lot too.

Precious - As one of the best babies I’ve ever met, she also warrants a little paragraph in this post. She never cries and she’s very friendly and inquisitive. Whenever Martha brings her over, she is promptly dropped into my lap for play time (or to be babysat while the other kids play). She’s really cool, you can see her big eyes looking at you and figuring things out, learning how to react from your reactions to her. She’s the only one who is completely unafraid of Doug, and in fact, calls all dogs Doug. Well, she calls all dogs “Duh!” She likes to chew on his tail.



Chrisy – She’s the oldest daughter of my next-door neighbor, Chitani, another Hospital Attendant. He’s kind of like the handy-man janitor of the Health Center, and is always looking out for me and my house. He was most excited when I got electricity because my security lights outside light up his wife’s kitchen and his front yard. He’s also the only one in the neighborhood who comments on how rich I am compared to him, which makes me really uncomfortable. But he also always makes sure there are no snake holes in my garden and keeps the grasses cut outside so no snakes can hide there either. I’m sure it’s because he’s got three kids running around out there, but I appreciate it. Anyway, Chrisy is maybe 9. I’m not sure, she’s very small and age is almost impossible to tell here. They moved here about the same time I did and we were all new kids on the block together. So she’s just now warming up to me and realizing I don’t bite. She has this very calm and pleasant temperament with an exceptionally kind and patient smile. She’s actually really amazing. Her mother is constantly calling for her, to me it sounds like “Eli! Elisay!!” She’s the iwe that does all the work that her mother needs help with in her house. She also takes care of her two younger siblings. The youngest is constantly strapped to Chrisy’s back. The baby is a little under a year and just learning to toddle. The baby adores her siblings and copies their every move. Every spin, every fall, every giggle. It’s really sweet. I have a strange power over her though. Doesn’t matter how far away I am, I can smile and wave at her and she’ll go berserk, throwing a crying fit that will last for hours. My current record is about 20 feet. Chrisy’s brother is about 4, and in the top 5 of the cutest kids in Africa. I don’t know his name (scratch that, just learned his name is Gracious), he is still terrified of me and the #1 crybaby of the village. I can’t get within two feet of him without him dissolving into a puddle of tears. Every time he falls down or his sister is mean to him he’ll throw a fit. But I love watching him play. He likes a good puddle splash and he’ll spin in circles until he falls down. He idolizes cars. He can turn anything into an imaginary car. I have a log outside in my front yard that he pretends to drive. He has a wide array of car sounds he can make. His noise-of-choice right now is a high-pitched “mee mee!” He’ll load his friends behind him in his favorite game of “mini bus”, ask them where they’re going and demand they agree to his price. He is the picture of youthful innocence and it’s obvious he’s the heart of that family. His mother adores him. I can tell even with the language and our front yards between us.

Wisdom – He’s my counterpart, Anna’s, almost-4-year-old son. Best friends with Chitani’s son. Wis has always been really shy with me and won’t speak to me directly. But occasionally he’ll show up at my door and wander around my house for a while. He’s afraid of Doug but tries not to let on. He’ll hide behind Anna’s legs and poke Doug in the nose repeatedly saying “iwe” each time. I think it’s his attempt at breaking the ice. He’s more of a cat person. He’ll follow the kitten around crouched down with his little hands outstretched trying to catch her and pet her. She’s always just out of reach… Wisdom is showing early signs of being a highly competent hip hop dancer. He’ll dance in front of Anna’s tv or on a chair, which he always wants turned to the music videos channel or an old-school poorly-dubbed karate movie.

See!!! I’ve made friends in Malawi! They’re just all under the age of 12 and half of them are afraid of me…

The Tale of the Night That Changed My Peace Corps Service

Scene opens on me standing dejectedly in a downpour in Mzuzu (about two months ago), trying to hitch a ride to Mpamba. Loaded down with katundu (luggage), I am desperate to get home to my warm dry bed with my dog, who has been missing me for over a week. I’m not feeling so hot, scratch that, I am feeling hot, which is precisely the problem. I just wanna go home. Time’s getting tight, the Mpamba matola up to Chikwina leaves in 45 minutes. If I miss it I’ll have to wait another 24-hours to get home, missing yet another day of school and draining my increasingly thinning wallet. Thankfully, a 5-ton lorry pulls up and hauls me into the truck bed, katundu and all. As we speed recklessly around the switchbacks the rain picks up and everyone crammed in the back huddles together and throws a tarp over our heads, so we don’t drown, duh. The cardboard box carrying the contents of my parents’ most recent carepackage has, by this time, disintegrated and the dye on the soaked pretzel M&Ms is leaking out and tye-dying the muddy truck bed. I’m praying we’ll get there soon and that the crazy drunk guy next to me will soon run out of steam and stop trying to engage me in broken English conversation already. I’m not in the mood.

Finally, we reach Mpamba and I am unceremoniously cast from the truck. Thankfully, the matola hasn’t left yet…wait a minute, is it stuck in the mud?! Where’s the driver?! Where’s the right rear tire?!?! Dear god, please don’t tell me it’ll be impossible to make it up the mountain tonight. The citizens of Chikwina, all waiting for the matola, are huddled under the roofs of tuck shop porches trying to stay clear of the pounding rain. No one knows if the matola will go up, and people are worried that even if it leaves, it won’t be able to make it up in this weather. Half the road is washed out and the truck is no match for the mud, even if hadn’t rained that afternoon at all. My instincts at this point told me to call it quits and get myself to a room in Nkhata Bay or see if my PC buddy Christian is at home and crash with him. Looking back on it all, that’s exactly what I should have done. But oh no, I had to get home…

The driver eventually shows up and reattaches the right rear tire as the rain finally lets up. Things are looking good and 20+ of us pile into the back of the beat up Toyota. Among the passengers are a handful of drunk men, another handful of not-as-drunk men, the Reverend who lives in Jumbo, two babies with their moms, some elderly women, my counterpart, Anna, the driver, his conductors, and myself. We set off with smiles on our faces and hope in our hearts.

We make it about 4 km before the men have to get out to push and pull the truck up a muddy hill. Another half km goes by before they have to repeat the process. This goes on for about 2 hours, every km or so they deplane to bail out the truck. Anna keeps reassuring me that at some point, we will make it home. She, of course, is wearing a motorcycle helmet for safety as the truck slips from one side of the road to the other. It’s about 7pm when we’ve still gotten nowhere and find ourselves well stuck in a mud pit, which we have made worse by trying to back out of. Some guys borrow a hoe and dig the tire out. We reload, travel about 5 meters and immediately get stuck again. This is getting ridiculous, but we’ve gone far enough that walking back to Mpamba would be just as foolish as walking up to Chikwina. The men are able to free the truck, but at the expense of something important in the engine and blah blah, whatever it’s a breakdown. Its 8pm, raining, cold, muddy, and we’re stuck there on the side of the road for the night. Wait, what?!?! I don’t think so! No way am I staying out here tonight with crazy people and drunk men and mud and rain.

Anna comes up to me and says, “ready to go walk up?” I laugh, thinking she’s joking. We’re about 10km down the mountain from Chikwina, and it’s the middle of the night with a storm coming in… Turns out she wasn’t joking.

A small group of us who refused to subject ourselves to unnecessary misery all night chose the lesser of two evils and began our ascent. The Reverend, a lovable curmudgeon, grumbled the whole way as the moms and babies shared the single umbrella. Some of the not-so-drunk men helped me with my katundu, and Anna wore her motorcycle helmet. I didn’t talk much. Too much effort and I was back in my “I’m not in the mood” mood. Along the way we lost some of our companions to exhaustion, as they left the road and banged on friends’ doors to crash there for the night. Two to three hours later, drenched, muddy, exhausted, wanting to f’ing die, I unlock my front door.

I have this ritual whenever I come home from a long trip. I’ll open the door, throw my stuff into the house, call for Doug, and flip the light switch. Nothing ever happens when I flip the switch. I do it as just kind of a sarcastic reminder to myself that the highly corrupt and useless government electric company, ESCOM, has not yet come to hook up my half of the neighborhood, which has been waiting for electricity for three years now. I do it to confirm that while I was away, they have not come to finish the job, despite my efforts of pestering them weekly, via phone calls and office visits, reminding them that we are still out here in the bush waiting for their attention. I don’t really care about electricity. In fact, I prefer living without it. I enjoy ending the day when the sun goes down and marking the beginning of the night by lighting a candle. Cooking takes a lot of effort and I have to really think about what I want to eat and if I’m really hungry enough to start a fire. I’ve deserved my meal by the end of the whole process. Charging my phone and computer is a hassle, but you win some you lose some. Really, I pester the ESCOM office because I know that if I don’t do it, they will never ever come out here. Never. And whoever lives here after me (hopefully a qualified health professional who can really contribute to the health of my village) will never get the benefits of electricity and will, most likely, ask to be transferred as soon as they move out here. And so, I have carefully constructed a relationship with the ESCOM director of this region, in which I barge into his office, inform him that he’s failing Malawi and is a disgrace to his profession, and he agrees with me and offers me a ride in his company car to wherever I need to go in Mzuzu. It’s actually a solid friendship. But I really never expected anything to come of it, at least not so soon.

So, after two+ hours of hiking up that damn mountain in the mud and rain in the middle of the night with a thousand pounds of katundu, I unlock my front door, throw my stuff into my house, call my dog, and flip the light switch, expecting the usual nothing to happen. But not this time. I honestly thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. I must be going crazy after that whole insane travel ordeal. Somehow, my living room was bathed in artificial florescent light. I unflipped the light switch in my surprise. On cue, my living room erased itself into blackness. No way! No f’ing way!!!

Immediately, my neighbors, the Nurse in the house to the left of mine and Chitani the Hospital Attendant in the house to the right of mine come rushing over. Mind you, its 11pm, at this point, it was like they were waiting up for me to come home. They were like a pair of kids on Christmas morning who just found the half-eaten cookies left out overnight, proof that Santa had been in the house. They both rushed excitedly to inform me that I had electricity. I know! I can tell! They were way more excited than me, but that’s as it should be. Who am I to get excited about electricity when I’ll go home in a year where power cuts are unheard of and most people don’t know how to make cooking fires? It’s a big deal to them. Electricity at my house means that my outside security lights will light up Chitani’s front yard, the Nurse might get a health professional to help her at the Health Center and fewer people will come to her house asking to charge phones for free. I, however, actually felt a sort of loss. I will miss the candles and the burning charcoal and the cooking effort…a little. Some part of my Peace Corps experience ended that night, or at least changed drastically, it’s a turning point that deserves to be marked.

But, on that otherwise miserable night I heated bath water on my hot plate and made soup for my tired body and soul, thankfully all in under 20 minutes. I fell asleep in my nice warm bed with my dog at my feet. That night also happened to be the night I realized mefloquin was legitimately making me strange. The next morning I made a call into the office and switched over to malerone. And in the end, looking back on the last month or two, that was what really changed my service, not the electricity.

Doggie Depression

Doug is displaying classic signs of depression – loss of appetite, loss of engagement in things that used to bring interest, loss of energy, increase in amount of time sleeping, morose attitude. He’s hardly touched his nsima for over two weeks and he’ll only play with me and his Frisbee for 5 minutes before losing interest. He doesn’t come when he’s called and he won’t move a muscle when the cat hunts his tail. I don’t know what to do!!!

I thought it started when I put his flea medication on his back and he ingested too much of it. But that was almost three weeks ago. He might still be jealous of and feel replaced by the cat. But how do I fix that one?! It’s still Mommy-and-Me time when we go to school and I’ve been giving him treats and attention and let him sleep in the bed with me when he isn’t so dirty. But he still won’t eat! I haven’t seen him wag his tail or growl at the cat in so long! Any ideas?!

Schooooool's Out For Never!

I come to Africa and somehow find myself back in high school. Didn’t I just leave school? Isn’t this supposed to be what I do after I put in my 16 years of education? When I signed up for all this, school was the last place I expected myself to be. I didn’t plan on teaching, I chose Peace Corps over Teach for America for a reason (it wasn’t so that I didn’t have to teach every day, but that was honestly a plus). But here I am, teaching three courses, five days a week, which is actually more than the average PC Education volunteer teaches, and with zero teacher training.

I’m on my second term of teaching Form 1 biology and Form 3 math and biology (equivalent to high school freshman and juniors). I took a self-designed crash course in teaching by visiting two Education buddies who were in their second years. One, Melissa Small, is a teacher back in the States and was able to give me a step-by-step lesson organization lesson and how-to-discipline-and-classroom-manage guidelines. My other buddy, Garret, is a science teacher at his school and hooked me up with all his old lesson plans and tests. Since then I’ve stumbled and grumbled my way to semi-competency. It’s a great accomplishment for me, but the success is a little sad knowing that I am by far the most qualified person at that school to teach and I can get through more material and higher quality material than any other teacher at that school on any given day (to which I show up, my attendance isn’t great). That’s actually not true for my Form 1 class, but the Form 3’s are excelling. Excelling!

It all really started during our site visit week during training. Mr. Phiri, the Head Teacher, was waiting for me to arrive on the evening matola my very first night in Chikwina. He immediately pounced and informed me that I “will be teaching our students math!” Oh, will I, I thought. He was really desperate for teachers. At the time there were only 4 for a student population of 200. At the time of the matola incident, I really thought, no thanks, I just moved to Africa, need a minute. But man is that guy persistent. At the start of the next term he had me working at my requested 3 days a week and whenever I had time to come in. Initially he wanted me to take 4 classes, become a member of the PTA, and be a chaperone to the student’s away football games. But I had to draw the line at 3 classes, basi. I had no idea at the time that that’s already more than volunteers usually teach. Somehow, since then my official schedule has become 5 days a week, almost full time. Whenever I point this out, Mr. Phiri has a remarkable ability to tune me out. I’m gonna have to give this guy a talkin’-to before next year. It really is taking up all my time, and it really isn’t my job.

I have some serious rants about this guy that I’ll spare you. Well, except that he never tells me when it’s a holiday (which we have one almost every week), so I’ll show up to school and find it deserted before I figure it out. He’ll also never tell me when it’s a half day, which was a real problem this one day when I was just getting into my groove in a Form 1 lesson at noon when all 50 of them got up and left very loudly and disrespectfully. I was pissed. Oh man, and this one time, it was hot season and I’d just gotten to school (located down one mountain and up another, good 30 minute hike) and I, the only female teacher the school has ever had, walk into the teachers’ office all sweaty. In front of all the other male teachers he asks “are you sweating because it’s hot, or are you sweating because you’re fat?” I was livid. I could have taken off his head right there. Like I’ve said before, I know being called fat here is a complement, but in no way is it ever appropriate to very publically comment on a woman’s physical appearance in her place of work in front of her co-workers, especially when they all happen to be men. And c’mon, it was f***ing hot season, a**hole. What were you thinking?! Wow, I just got really off-topic.

So anyway, except for the administrative drama, teaching is a pleasure. Except for Form 1, I hate those guys. It’s not their fault that I hate them, I hate them because I’m too impatient to take the time to get on their learning level and like them. The language barrier is just too much for them to grasp anything I throw at them. And in Biology, it just makes no sense that they have a teacher that can’t translate the concepts into their language. They end up not listening, fidgeting, talking in class, not learning, not answering questions (which makes me look dumb when I ask a question followed by 5 minutes of silence), failing every test miserably. In turn, I end up dumbing down the lesson into words they can understand, but then they don’t get all the material they are responsible for because the lesson is so ridiculously watered down. It just doesn’t work. I’m gonna have to bring in a translator next term, otherwise they will have a year of biology completely wasted.

But my form 3’s! They are gems!!! True gems! And I get to spend at least 2 hours a day with them! They can understand me and their class is small (because everyone who can’t cut it or can’t pay fees has dropped out by form 3), so I get to know all of them. We have a goofy rapport and mutual respect. [Most] work hard and want to please me. They aren’t used to a teacher who gets excited when they get questions right or recognize them just for participating. In an educational tradition of rote memorization, my class periods of very public praise and enthusiasm are a highlight. I get so worked up when I’m teaching them I find myself yelling about logrithms and osmosis. And it’s contagious. When one of them gets a math question right on the blackboard some of the more outspoken boys will jump up on their chairs and cheer. Really, they’re just being asses, but they’re definitely paying attention. They still can’t think critically for their lives, but they’re catching on.

There’s this one clown in form 3 who, as I leave after every lesson, says to me very solemnly “god bless you, Madam.” (They call me Madam). Since he’s the clown, I just assume he’s being a sarcastic sh*t, but they all get such a kick out of it when I call back “god bless YOU, Vincent.” I’m pretty sure they like me. Yesterday, before it got rained out, my form 1 and form 3 students teamed up and challenged the form 2s and 4s to a game of football in my honor. Haha! Bless their hearts.

But after all that, my greatest skill in all of teaching is my capacity to come up with great punishments. Cheating is rampant. And stupid. They don’t even try to cover up that they have shamelessly copied their neighbor’s work. It’s word-for-word and usually completely unbelievably wrong. For the boys, I have them come to my house and fill my buckets with water. As carrying water is a woman’s job, they can’t stand it. Its hard work and emasculating. I prefer them to do it while the rest of the school is at sports practice right by my borehole, so everyone will see. Any male student I’ve inflicted this particular punishment on has never again been caught cheating (so at least they’re cheating better, I’m teaching them something!) Once there was a mass group of Form 1s who didn’t turn in an assignment. Long story short, it was all very disrespectful. They were trying to send me a message that I wasn’t the boss of them. I split them up into groups of 3 and had them pick up trash from the Health Center to the market, a very public section of road, so that all the Ama’s would see them. Humiliation is the best way to get my students’ attention. It pretty much does the punishment for me. The act of picking up trash really isn’t that big of a deal, but once the Ama’s know it’s a punishment, everyone in all the villages will know which kids are misbehaving in school. The rumor mill in Malawi is infamous. Anyway, all the kids’ parents found out and turning in assignments have since been much less of a problem. Once, a group of kids got in BIG trouble with me and I sent a note home to their parents advising them to keep their 2000kw school fees and use it to feed their other kids because it would be a better investment. Not only has that group not given me trouble recently, but to show their support, some of those parents have spearheaded a science lab building project at the school (which is desperately needed). I’m helping them write a grant to get the funding for it. Anyway, next kid who gets in trouble has to give Doug a bath. Haha! I’m actually looking forward to it.

Spicy Thai Noodles

A great in-a-hurry or i'm-too-hungry-to-form-a-sentence dish. Total cooking time, 10 minutes (if you've got a HOT PLATE! What up electricity!!! Add at least 30 minutes to cooking time if fire is required.)

A serving of your favorite Chinese noodles (I prefer egg noodles for this one)
3 cups water
1 green pepper, sliced
1 medium onion, sliced
1 carrot, sliced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tbsp ginger
3 tsp crushed red pepper or chili powder
1 tbsp sesame seeds (optional)
Splash of cooking oil
½ tbsp sesame oil
½ tbsp soy sauce
½ tbsp rice wine or white vinegar

Cover noodles with boiling water for 3 to 5 minute or until tender. Drain, rinse, and put aside. Lightly sauté vegetables, ginger, and red pepper or chili in cooking oil in a saucepan. Either pour vegetable mixture over noodles and mix or return noodles to saucepan with vegetables to reheat the noodles. Mix in sesame seeds, sesame oil, soy sauce and vinegar. Best served chilled but also great hot.

SCUBA Dooba Doo!

I can’t believe I haven’t written a post about this yet! It’s hands-down the most worthwhile, awesome thing I’ve done in country to date.

There’s a lakeside resort between Robert and Melissa’s sites, called Kande Beach. It’s a popular spot among PCVs for big parties, and coincidentally, where we spent most of our time back during our Language Intensive week in training (its steps down the beach from where we were staying). Somehow, someone in Tonga Land got wind that the owner of the dive school at the resort, an ex-PCV, was doing research on the cichlid population in the area and needed help with the bimonthly underwater surveys. Cichlids, in case you didn’t know, are freshwater fish, and Lake Malawi is famous for having the most species of cichlids of anywhere. Anyway, as PCVs living nearby and sticking around for a good chunk of time, we were his prime candidates for helping him with the surveys. He doesn’t have time to run the dive school AND keep up on the surveys. We, of course, jumped at the opportunity at the intense envy of every other PCV in the country.

Robert and I spent our Christmas holiday break getting dive certified at the resort, which was AWESOME in itself. Justin (the owner) gave us a great deal ($180 usd for the course) and let us crash for free in his guest house. I got to take impromptu cooking lessons from his wife, Joy, who made the most unbelievable BBQ’d pork chops. That week an Overlander (a huge tourist truck Azungu foreigners pile into and take across Africa, mostly as a drinking tour) had brought in a bunch of cases of Tanzanian beer, called Kilimanjaro, which was an amazing break from the Carlsberg shit we have here. And learning to dive in the lake was perfect! No scary man-eating or poisonous things to freak me out, no salt water getting into every orifice, familiar water. Oh man! And the cichlids!!! They’re everywhere! And they’re awesome! So many, and in the most impossible colors.

One of the most memorable dives during the training was when Justin took us out to see an old jeep the previous owner sunk with a huge tree trunk. A fishing net had gotten tangled around the branches of the tree and a huge school of small white silvery fish were weaving in and out and all around us. The effect was like a really beautiful lonely underwater snowfall. I wanted to paint it! I can’t paint!

But the surveys themselves are also really awesome. We’ve all spent the last few weeks learning to identify all the different species of cichlids in the area (there’s about 40 to 50 we need to know for this time of year). We dive down in pairs and take turns slowly swimming along a transect line for about ten minutes, ticking off the fish we see on our underwater fish chart (with a pencil, actually! Pencils work well underwater). Each person does each transect twice before surfacing, with a total underwater time of about an hour, depending on how much air you use. It’s really awesome knowing the fish I’m seeing. It makes me feel like I’m not a tourist in the water either. And helping Justin out, it’s a project I can do in my service with tangible results that are legitimately helpful. So much of what I do in Malawi is guesswork with questionable lasting influence and possibly useless or detrimental effects. The data I help collect for Justin helps him find overfishing and climate change trends. He’s in the process of trying to put together a long-lasting sustainable cichlid study, instead of the 2-5 year studies that are common. Me helping him do this, while unbelievably awesome in itself, is also surprisingly satisfying in terms of my service. It can be converted into numbers on a spreadsheet with a total at the end and a smiley face, a little dose of definitive Western order. Try doing that with my other projects. No total at the end of “how many people have changed their attitude towards condom use as a direct result of your presence in their village for two years”. And a smiley face? Forget about it.

Diving could very well be the highlight of this whole Peace Corps Malawi deal. And we’ve brought Justin a lot of business. A group of southern volunteers are coming up next month to get certified with him. And diving has become high on our list of things to do while traveling anywhere. Next month we’re turning a small trip to northern Mozambique into a huge trip to southern Mozambique to hit up some of the best ocean diving in the world. We’ll be swimming with whale sharks! More to come!