EuroTrip, Take 2

Some events and characters have been dramatized for effect.

Act 1, Scene 1 – Open on a haggard, hung over, smelly-looking girl with her face glued to the window of a 767.  She’s obviously been wearing the same clothes for days, clothes that belong in a much warmer, dustier place.  She’s staring out at whatever windmill-speckled ocean shore borders Denmark (who knows which ocean, she’s tired and doesn’t really care at this point).  Her face, though lined with exhaustion, is lit up in eager anticipation of soaking up the First World and eating everything.  Everything.  She’s practically bouncing in her seat.

Stacey’s voiceover (SV): “Haha. Africa, you silly continent.  You’ve been around the longest and you’re still a mess.  Ya know, you’re just a few hours in a plane from the Western World.  Just saying, ya might wanna pop on over here for a few pointers… and some sushi.  SUSHI!”

Captain, on the overhead:  “Flight attendants, prepare for landing.”

SV: “Yeah! Land this thing!”

Cut to baggage claim area.

Baggage claim attendant:  “Sorry, ma’am, you’re bag has been lost, maybe in Kenya, where the most incompetent and mean-spirited airport attendants in the business work.  If it turns up, we’ll let you know.”

Stacey, eyes glowing red with anger: “Damn you, KENYA!!!!!!!”

Outside baggage claim, Stacey’s parents and sister wait, looking at their watches, worried that their daughter might still be stuck in the black hole that is the Kenya International Airport, where family vacations go to die.  But, wait.  Is that…? That dirty, cracked out, underdressed hobo in sandals looks a lot like…Stacey!!!

A touching, long-awaited, well-earned, tear-streaked family reunion commences.

Scene 2 – Denmark

Montage!

Begins with a smiling American family riding around a foreign city on white bikes with baskets in the front.  The bike lanes are wider than the car lanes and the whole city seems to be on bikes too.  The sky is bright, the trees are tall and full, everything is old-looking and made of stone, and the canals are full of colorful boats.  Castles surrounded by beautiful parks pass by, dogs run without leashes.  It’s 10PM and it’s still bright and sunny!

Cut to a theme park, I forget the name but Disneyland is based off of it.  Two sisters are on a rollercoaster.  A rollercoaster!!! I wasn’t expecting this!  Cut to all-you-can-eat-sushi night!  Cut to another theme park ride involving spinning and high speeds.  Cut to Stacey making a face like she’s really about to puke.  Like really.

Cut to eating steaks and Stacey feeling really uncomfortable with how much things cost.  Cut to feeding swans, pictures at the famous Little Mermaid statue, eating hot dogs in a cobblestone square, trapped on one side of the street because of a marathon, a street market of organic, sustainable products.

Cut to family drinking canned Carlsberg beers sitting next to the canal and laughing about European’s obsession with their crazy dogs.  Stacey is amazed that more than the three types of Carlsberg found in Malawi aren’t the only types of Carlsberg.  Callie, the sister, explains about the Danish concept of “getting hoogily,” which essentially means spending hours at a meal with your friends feeling comfortable and chatty.  She also explains that the healthcare is free, kids are paid to go to school, minimum wage is a million dollars, and the workday ends obscenely early.

Cut to family driving sadly away from Denmark.  Stacey makes a mental note to live there for real one day… It’s the greatest country in the world after America (duh).

Scene 3 – Berlin

This writing style is taking too long.  Berlin was great, but paled in comparison to Copenhagan.  I really fell in love with that place and their hoogily culture.  In Berlin we replaced my Berkinstocks that were lost with my luggage.  I got an upgraded version from the pair I had, and they were genuine German, so I felt super duper.  And I was clean and wearing new clothes and eating bagels with cream cheese and lox.  I was quite the happy camper.

In Berlin we drank German beer from a corner shop, went to a beer garden and ate sausages, saw some castle gardens, I ate a lot of cheese and salami and shopped at H&M, the ultimate one-stop Peace Crops clothes shop.  All the cheap yet fashionable clothes (and cleaner than anything I own) I bought there came back to Africa with me to die.  None of them will last past this year, which cuts down on what I need to pack out!  We saw pieces of the Berlin wall, one section of which was graffiti’ed with “Next Wall to Fall, Wall Street.”  We saw the sights, ran through the crazy Holocaust memorial, and I got to eat some Chinese food.  Great success! 

Scene 4 – Prague

Pan up from a dinner table covered with mostly finished glasses of beer, mostly eaten plates of fried cheese, meat with gravy, mashed potatoes, dumplings, and schnitzel to the family slouching in their chairs with the top buttons of their pants undone, looking as if they’re about to puke. 

Dad: “Ya know, Prague is the number one city for microbreweries in the world, second is San Diego (or something).  Most of these little restaurants brew their own beer in back.”

Stacey:  “And we will try all of them…”

Cue weird accordion background music.

With a beer in one hand and a fried doughy sugary thing in the other while waiting for the clock show to start, Prague easily takes the number 2 spot on the trip.  We cram onto the tram up to the castle and see castle things, I indulge in Prague’s famous hot chocolate, and we end up at an outdoor café on the river drinking beer and eating a cheese plate.  Cheese!  Castles and history are cool and stuff, but I’m definitely there for the food.  The Charles Bridge was a bridge with beggars on it.  People beg differently there, bent down on their knees and elbows with their heads down.  It’s a very degrading position and probably really painful and embarrassing for the beggar to have to sit like that for hours.  I actually kind of appreciated it.  If you’re going to choose to beg, it should be humiliating, and not obnoxious and in-your-face to those you’re begging from.  Beggars in America and here in Malawi just make people feel uncomfortable and upset and objectified.  Not a mood that usually puts me in a giving spirit.

Anyway, Dad took me on the Prague Ghost Tour, which was cheesy (cheese!) and adorable and not scary at all.  But the Jewish graveyard with all the graves stacked on top of each other was cool. 

I think I’m forgetting something we did in Prague… Is that where we ate ice cream (ice cream!) and Callie and I went to the underground absinth bar that, to our surprise, doubled as a marijuana café?  I think so.  Damn, absinth is NOT good.

Scene 5 – Vienna

Outside an old cathedral there is a street fair celebrating some type of new seasonal beer.  There are wine tasting booths, a marching band, chocolate stands, and most importantly, massive amounts of fried food.  Vienna was a CLOSE third behind Prague.  I’m gonna go ahead and say it was tied.  I get tipsy off of wine and we all split beers, schnitzel, sausages, some oily potato and meat mash dealy.

Vienna is home to the restaurant that serves the largest schnitzel known to man.  We didn’t eat it, because we’ve been full for over a week, but we did stuff an impressive amount of other schnitzel into our mouths, and by “our mouths” I mean just me and Dad, really.

Vienna is also known for a bunch of stuff like opera and Mozart and other famous stuff like cappuccinos and tasty little cakes.  There’s so much famous stuff in Vienna we could have spent the whole trip there, and one day we probably will, but for our two nights there we opted for one of those hop-on hop-off busses.  It was a nice little breeze through the city, and I got to catch some z’s on my daddy’s shoulder.  I never get to do that anymore.  About half way through the day we had to make the biggest decision of our lives, buy evening tickets to see an opera or symphony or whatever or to see the famous Lipizzaner war horses perform.  We chose the horsies.  Duh.  They were super duper!  Also, right before the show we got famous Mozart-recommended cappuccinos, so I was straight wired and the horses were extra cool!  Apparently, these horses are specially bred and train for something like 12 years and are the best horses on the planet.  The performance was like a horsie dance.  They pranced around and marched in place and spun around each other.  They also did cool jumping karate kicking moves meant to take a person’s head off in war.  It was very exciting.

Finally, for my last big hurrah of the trip, Dad took me to the movies, something I’ve been craving since I got to Africa.  We got a huge tub of popcorn and settled into a terrible Johnny Depp movie, where he plays a vampire in the 70’s.  It deserved its terrible reviews, but I’ll still remember it until my mind starts to go mushy from Alzheimer’s. 

Director’s Cut

It was unbelievably good to see my family again.  And seeing them in Europe was the best way to do it.  Not only did I get a EuroTrip, but I got to be in the First World without the pain and confusion of going home to America.  It made leaving easier; I would have been a wreck if I was leaving San Diego again.  Also, it just made Europe that much better.  Ten days of Europe sandwiched between two years in Africa makes Europe so much more epic.  If you want the most bang for your European vacation-buck, first spend a whole lot of time somewhere that sucks. 

But it was also easier leaving this time because I knew what I was going back to.  Leaving for the unknown the first time almost killed me.  I was a mess, I was frantic, and I was panicked.  And I remember being angry at nothing specific.  But this time I got to appreciate, truly and undeniably appreciate the luxury of West and my family’s presence – every bite, every beer, every hug.  There was no rush and anxiety this time, not knowing what I was going to miss, frantically trying to hit all the bases.  This time, I knew what I needed and I was aware of the time limit.  And when the trip ended, I was sad and instantly homesick for my family and physically painfully aware that the 12 months ahead of me would not be with them.  But I expected it, I’d done this before.  I was still breathing and I knew I wasn’t boarding a plane destined for a black hole.  On the contrary, I had a dog and a cat waiting for me at home.  I had a best friend ready to meet me at the airport on the other side.  I had keys to a house that was mine and a stack of papers waiting for me to grade.  This assurance allowed me to just enjoy being with my family, eat good food, and drink good beer without panic – which is how those things SHOULD be enjoyed.  It was ten wonderful days far far from Malawi, but not so far that I had to miss it.

The "Layover and Take It"

So I’m writing my blog post about my trip to Europe with my family and I want to give the trip and my insights about it justice.  However, the first major experience I have on the trip is, while a good story, pretty negative.  So instead, I’ll separate the two and allow my rant to flourish without guilt:

It all starts in an airplane.  I’ve been in an airplane since I’ve come to country, but it was a small airplane leaving a small airport and landing in another small airport in Mozambique.  This new airplane landed in the Kenya International Airport, in which I was met with massive well-lit duty free stores, bars, white people, leather chairs, and a restaurant that serves burritos and not-Carlsberg beer.  Everything was so bright and the burritos were so delicious that my eyes may or may not have teared up.  However, the novelty, unfortunately, was about to wear off.  I’m in line to board my next flight for Amsterdam (!!!) when I’m stopped at the gate.  I’d been flying with tickets all day from Lilongwe to Lusaka (Zambia) to Kenya with a misprinted boarding pass.  Instead of Stacey Neilson, my mother’s name, Sheri, appeared.  It hadn’t been a big deal, in fact, no one noticed, myself included.  Until its 10PM in the Kenya airport, which, I might add, Peace Corps Volunteers are not allowed to leave because of the political unrest, and I’m refused entry to the plane.  Well, shit.  Also, I’m out of cash and my means of communication are absurd AND my parents are already in the air flying to their connection to Denmark.  So, I turn all my powers of persuasion on to the gate crew.  I play nice and innocent, I play angry and blame them and their counterparts in Malawi and Zambia, I call the manager, and then the supervisor, I threaten and guilt trip, and eventually turn on the tears (this has never, EVER failed me before, and because it DID fail me in Kenya for the first time, I will forever hold a vehement grudge against the country as a whole).  So now I’m really desperate.  They refuse to fix my name, even upon my production of several forms of ID’s and the confirmation and sales receipt of my ticket.  They check their records and sure enough there is a reservation in my name that has been mysteriously canceled and replaced by one with my mother’s name as the passenger.  I finally throw a fit like no one has ever seen me throw a fit before.  And it’s one of those kinds of fits I didn’t know I could throw and you probably never ever want to be on the receiving end of unless you want to be physically blown up with the force of anger in my eyeballs.  It was ugly.  I made a lot of enemies in Kenya that night.  Then the plane takes off and I’m sitting at the gate, pouting, stranded in a stupid over-lit International Airport with overpriced not-Carlsberg beer.  Long story short, I buy a new ticket for the first flight out in the morning and finagle my way into the first class International lounge to spend my night drinking a lot of free South African wine and stealing a bunch of those little mini bottles of booze they give you on the airplane.  I also stuffed my bag with their first-class International morning pastries.  So THERE, stupid Kenya!

The Dentist of Doom

So it’s officially mid-service (well, this post is pretty late in being published. We're actually on month 17 over here with 9 more to go and counting). We’ve been here over a year, which means it’s time for a checkup! We all had to go to a dentist to make sure our teeth were still in our heads and to get a cleaning.

I usually love to go to the dentist because I like how clean my teeth feel sans plaque. But this particular trip was filled with anxiety. All week I’d been hearing from volunteers coming from their appointment that they had 9 cavities, 10 cavities, 13 cavities. Ridiculous amounts of cavities! I am proud to say I’ve only had one cavity in my whole life, baby teeth included, and I was not psyched to have my record smashed by an oral hygienist in Africa looking to bill the US Peace Corps for unnecessary fillings (this had become the theory among the volunteers).

The dentist office looked just like any dentist office I’d ever been in – florescent lighting, off-white upholstery, instruments of oral torture, floss. I sat in the fancy leather dentist chair sweating and giggling nervously as the assistant clipped the bib around my neck. The nice talkative Indian dentist came in to tell me about his most recent safari. I couldn’t listen to a word he said, I was much too preoccupied praying to the god of teeth for a brief checkup and only a handful of cavities. The dentist took a look at my teeth with one of those cavity detector gadgets, still talking about how he saw a lion take down a zebra. He looked up and finished his story with a “…it was very gruesome. Do you want to see the pictures? Now you may follow my assistant into the next room for your cleaning.” Wait, what? That’s it? But what about my mouth full of cavities? Aren’t my teeth rotting out of my skull? “No, Ms. Neilson, zero cavities!” Hooray!! Unfortunately, none of the volunteers believe me. Now that I think about it…maybe he forgot to turn on his detector gadget while he was so busy telling me about his witnessing of the circle of life.

Peanut Butter

The rains are over and I’ve just brought in my groundnut harvest from my back garden. So many peanuts! They grew the best out of everything I planted. Actually, most of what I planted was seriously overrun by weeds and died while I was away. But my groundnuts! Doug helped me dig them up. A combination of his favorite things, peanuts, digging, eating dirt, and getting filthy. How to make delicious homemade peanut butter: 1. Spend about a year of your life cracking the shells and taking out the peanuts. 2. Roast peanuts over dry heat for about 45 minutes until they start to sizzle as the oil comes out. 3. Pound the crap out of the roasted peanuts with a mortar and pestle until you develop several blisters. To make creamier peanut butter, pound in extra oil. 4. Add a wee bit of sugar and salt and enjoy! 5. Allow doggie to lick the bowl.

Kids on the Block, Live and in Technicolor

This is Precious, the only being in my village not afraid of Doug.

This is my favorite village kid, Patricia, and her little cousin Junior.  They live with the Nurse next door.

The whole gang, posing for the camera.  Virginia in the back, Second row (left to right) Patricia, Chrispy and Gracious, the little guys in the middle are Chisomo and Junior, Martha is crouched in the front, and the guy in next to her, I have no idea.

Fixed the Blog!

Recently I clicked "view blog" to see it in all its beauty.  I stared in horror as I found that all my carefully placed paragraph spaces were stubbornly ignored by the blogging dealy.  So I went back and fixed most of them. they're much prettier and easier to read now, you're welcome.

Also, I've added even more pictures to the posts with pictures now that I've figured out how to post pictures efficiently.  Check 'um out!  I'd love to read your comments, too!

Cooking over a mud stove.
Yes, I know I'm the coolest person you know.

Doug. A Collection of Observations and Anecdotes about the Bane of My Existence.

Let it be known that I love my dog very much and I don’t know what I would do without him (except maybe clean less and sleep peacefully through the night more). But over the last year and a half Doug has taught me to reevaluate my stance on animal abuse. Kicking dogs and throwing rocks at them are still heinous crimes, unless I’m the one doing it to my own stupid dog, who has done something stupid and is asking for it. If you’ve never had an unruly young dog yourself, don’t judge.

It’s 3AM. Doug just woke me up crying with his tail swinging low and his nose down looking up at me through his dumb little puppy dog eyes. Uh-oh, that’s his “I did something bad” look. Sure enough, the living room is covered in glass shards. The dummy jumped through the glass window trying to get outside and join the nightly barking contest with the other village dogs. Don’t worry though; I got a good kick in before he could escape through the gaping glass hole in my house.


Today Doug looks like he partied hard last night. He’s all dirty and matted and passed out half inside and half outside the front door, like he couldn’t make it all the way. Kitty gave him a disapproving sniff and left him for dead.

There’s a new crazy drunken hobo in town. He’s taken a liking to the solo Azungu and has started peering in my windows and sitting on my front porch. F*ing Doug is useless because the hobo pet him once so now they’re friends. F*ing Doug. I think he just likes that I’ve started yelling at something other than him. Today

Doug found a dead rodent. I’ve never seen him jump with such glee! He was prancing around the front yard with it flopping around in his mouth. If you listened close enough, you could actually hear him giggling with delight. He stopped every few prances to drop it on the ground and roll on top of it happily. Whatever, just don’t bring it inside.

F*ing Doug! As if I don’t feed him enough! Tried to make chapatti today, left the kitchen for one minute and returned to find Doug chowing down on the dough from ON TOP of the counter. How did you even get up there?!

When he’s in a playful mood, Doug likes to chase anything going faster than a walk. Especially bikes. He’ll hear the sound of a speeding cyclist coming from up the road and wait expectantly on the edge of our property with his ears perked and his tail stopped mid-wag. I’m sure he’s also holding his breath in anticipation. When the unsuspecting cyclist gets close enough Doug jumps out barking with his tail wagging wildly and tries to bite the bike’s rear tire. The cyclist, no doubt terrified of any dog at any time, reliably starts yelling and screaming at Doug and tries to kick at his face while simultaneously trying to keep the bike upright. Doug takes this as a challenge and playfully nips at the flailing foot. Eventually, the bike outruns Doug, who gives up and instead stalks the nearest chicken into a squawking desperate chase. He LOVES chasing chickens. He’ll never bite them (he learned that at a young age with many sharp kicks by not me) but it still freaks everyone out. I always know when Doug is on his way home as the chorus of squawking and villagers’ yelled protests grow closer. I tried to stop these bike/chicken chasing tendencies in the beginning, but no matter what I did I couldn’t break the habit. I tried throwing rocks and chasing him down (never caught him, he’s way too fast), I tried the positive reinforcement method and tried training him to resist a rolling ball (he just jumped out the window and went out to play for real). I tried chaining him to a tree, which he broke a hundred times. So I gave up and now take immense amusement at watching him try to take down bikes and chase running screaming kids out of my yard and keep the chickens out of my gardens. But not that damn hobo! He won’t chase the damn hobo!!! If only I could lure that guy onto a bike…

Why do dogs insist on barking to each other at night?!?! C’mon!!!

Doug is curled up in the fetal position. He’s all sweet and innocent when he’s asleep. It’s weird that sweet little Doug was once inside of another dog. Science.

Awww! Kitty and Doug are totally spooning right now!

So we just got back from a meeting with an HIV support group in another village. Doug, of course, followed me and then promptly passed out in the middle of the gathering. Literally, in the middle. Everyone looked at him uneasily and no one would touch him, they aren’t as used to him there as they are here in our village. We went around the circle introducing ourselves. “I’m Mirium, from village Thanula,” “I’m Joseph, from village Kangoyi”, “I’m Stacey. And this is Doug, from village Chikwina.” They laughed, but I was serious... Still no one touched him, but they decided they were no longer afraid of a sleeping dog from village Chikwina.

I woke up this morning with Doug attempting to join me in bed. He was filthy! He looked like he tried to put on war paint with his hind legs and his eyes closed. Gave the little devil a bath today. Mwahahaha! Take it, dog! Just take it!

Did I ever tell you about the time we were watching a football match with all of Chikwina’s surrounding villages at the playing field behind my house and Doug, still a puppy at the time, decided he wanted to play too? He ran onto the field and bit the heels of the running players and tried to fit the whole ball into his mouth. All of Chikwina laughed. We left the game in disgrace. Luckily, the next day, a goat decided to pull the same stunt and all was forgotten.

Doug brought home a puppy. I don’t know whose puppy it is, but it’s certainly not Doug’s. No Doug, you can’t keep it. I don’t care that you already named it Skeeter and you promise to walk it every day…

Mom and Dad sent me a package of shredded beef. Robert and I ate the bulk of it and gave the package to Doug to lick clean, as is his birthright. Doug got a little over zealous about it. The package ended up completely covering his head and he was desperately trying to eat bits of beef off the bottom as he blindly ran into walls. It was funny.

Garden Update

Spice Rack

New set of gardens out back.  We got lettuce, cabbage, green peppers, strawberries, and other stuff...

Strawberries and Artemisia

I grew these!

Indian Cooking Class

My favorite cuisine is a three way tie between Indian food, Chinese food, and sushi (notice Malawian food did not make the cut). These three cuisines cover roughly 2/3 of all the food in the universe, look it up. So, really I just like good food, I’m not picky. Of the three, in Malawi you can find Indian food easily, and Chinese food if you wanna drag your ass to Lilongwe and shell out 2500 kwacha per plate (that’s less than $10, but that’s a good chunk of cash for one meal here). I, however, would eat either one for every meal of every day for the rest of my life without complaint. You can find all the spices and ingredients you need in country, the trouble is reproducing it like the pro’s at home.

So after a particularly satisfying Indian meal at our favorite restaurant in Mzuzu, A1, I asked if I could have a chat with the chef to give him my heartfelt commendations. They brought him out, a sweet little Bhutanese man, who spoke God-knows-what-but-certainly-not-English. I was surprised, he was not who I expected to meet at all. How did this guy end up as an Indian food chef in Africa? I tried to tell him about my host father in India, who was also from Bhutan, and was a hot sauce connoisseur. He didn’t get it, but the next day I found myself in the kitchen of A1. He showed me how he baked the naan and yelled at me in his indecipherable language about all the key Indian spices and having me taste each one, so I would know the difference. He gave the Indian names for the spices, which I’m trying to memorize and translate so I can keep up in the kitchen. Since then I’ve had about 3 cooking classes with him. I order and buy the meal, and he shows me how it’s done. He’s showed me how to make chicken tikka masala, paneer palak, and yellow dal. He’s also showed me how to debone a chicken and how to make paneer from milk and how to work chapatti. In the last lesson he’s let me entertain his kitchen staff by trying to do the actual cooking myself. I looked like a baby taking her first steps blindfolded compared to him at the stove. But I’m having so much fun back there! I’m getting to know the staff and the chef (whose name I still don’t know) and I are working on our sign language system. I still can’t reproduce the dishes at home though. I’m getting much closer, but the sauces still allude me. Most of the masala dishes require tomato gravy and onion gravy that I’ve never seen the chef make and I can’t seem to figure out just knowing the ingredients. He showed me, start to finish, how he makes his chapatti dough, so I’m gonna try a big batch of that tomorrow to go with a cauliflower curry I’ve mostly figured out. And the bread is a huge part of it all. But I’m excited and anxious to pin down the gravies! Then it’ll be Indian food for every meal of every day!!!

4th of July

The quintessential American holiday, where a bunch of drunk people get together, eat meat, and blow shit up. Unfortunately, for some reason, our new Peace Corps Country Director, the head honcho from Washington at our office, decided that the 4th was not going to be considered a holiday for Peace Corps Malawi. He didn’t give a reason, and it was a highly unpopular decision. Malawi’s Independence Day is July 6th, a Saturday, which the Country Director said WOULD be a holiday for volunteers. Well, duh, it’s a Saturday. We were VERY annoyed that he would put down our own country’s favorite holiday in favor of Malawi’s holiday, which no one in this country really cares about. It goes without saying that we were rather offended. But no worries, we all got together and celebrated anyway.

View of Phoka Valley

This year the 4th coincided with the end of the school year, so I decided to draw out the festivities. I went up north to Rumphi district and traveled into the Pokha Valley to stay with my buddy Trason for two nights. Trason is living a wonderful Peace Corps life - very isolated up in the mountains with only one neighbor. His house is airy and well lighted with lots of seating and space. It looks like one of those fashionable adobe houses you’d find in New Mexico and Arizona. He brews his own wine and landscaped his yards. It was very peaceful. My new friend in the new Health group, Leslie, came out on her bike to spend one of the nights with us, which got the festivities really started. It was a good time.


Trason's House




This is Trason.



Rob on our hike to Livingstonia



Trason lives about 25km from Livingstonia, an old colonial town on a cliff overlooking the lake. He lives on a road with very little traffic, less than one car a day, so Robert and I hiked it. We took three nights and had ourselves a right little vacation. We stayed a place called Lukwe, in a camp-luxurious chalet overlooking the valley (I’ve booked one for my parents when they come, it’s a must-see). The place is run by a guy named Auke (pronounced “Oak”), who has lived on the spot for 12 years and has the most beautiful gardens I’ve yet seen in Malawi. All the salads served at the place were straight out of his garden and all the dressings and most of the vegetables were made/grown by him too. He also served his own coffee and grilled us massive steaks ($10 steak meal, I think so!). We spent the day reading on a porch swing and napping. It was perfect! The best two nights we’ve had in Malawi yet. I’ve definitely aged about ten years since moving here...



View from Lukwe,
Maji Zuwa is on the right side of the bay



The morning of the 3rd, Auke drove us down to Maji Zuwa (Water and Sun), which is a new lodge right on the lake, run by a young guy from Dayton who was hosting the 4th festivities. About 35 American’s came and danced on the bar and drank and ate too much. The first night was my friend Renee’s birthday. The second night we blew up our beloved fireworks. We only had a few, and none of the showy ones, but we did them one by one to draw them out. However underwhelming, it was very exciting for us. The grand finale, which was really just the last firework we had left, was cheered with a round of “U.S.A! U.S.A!” One of the best fireworks shows I’ve ever seen. And I’m not gonna lie, I felt extra good about it when I heard that the San Diego fireworks show had a glitch and all $200,000 worth of fireworks went off at once and the show ended in a few seconds. Not that Malawi and the US are competing, we all knew who would win that one, but it’s nice to win once, if only by accident.

The Chikwina Health Center Maternal and Child Health Building Project, Or Not.

November of last year began the struggle to build a new wing at my Health Center. As I think I’ve said before, my current Health Center is falling to pieces. It will literally fall if you look at it wrong. There’s no running water, no electricity, one co-ed patient ward (NOT ok in Malawi), one examination room (where everything from wound dressing to consultations to drug dispensing occurs). There’s no privacy, no patient-doctor confidentiality, and no transportation to get someone to a hospital that does have these things. It’s a sad little place. So once this building project was introduced, there was a huge surge of support and approval from the community and I knew this was going to be a successful and legitimate project. I fell in love with it. It’s my Peace Corps Salvation, the project that makes the whole thing worth it.

The Health Center staff and I went around to the surrounding villages and got approval for the project and a promise to contribute from all the elders. The villages nominated two representatives from each village to form a committee and draw up plans for the building and help write the proposal and budget (huge budget, $12,000 budget). The building would be wired for electricity and piped for water and would include an antenatal examination room, a labor room, a men’s specific patient ward, a Youth Services Office, a Volunteer HIV Testing and Counseling office, a drug dispensary, and an open air lecture area. We identified a contractor, secured the land for the new building, and got the villages to start molding bricks. I spent some time editing the proposal and sent it The Powers That Be. Everything was coming together. Until the Peace Corps office said that the scope of the project didn’t fit into any of their funding categories.

What? It’s a health project. It fits under the Health and Development category, as I indicated in your annoyingly format-specific proposal template.

Yes, but within that category, it doesn’t fit into a category.

Oh! Of course. I’ll go ahead and burn down your office, then.

They said they could consider it if I cut the budget in half and fit it into a “category” – HIV/AIDS, Maternal and Child Health, Sanitation, whatever. Fitting it into a “category” wasn’t difficult. I could easily word the proposal to fit the Maternal and Child Health option. So now the project is called “The Chikwina Health Center Maternal and Child Health Building Project”, which squeezes neatly onto no dotted line in any proposal template, but whatever. However, cutting the budget in half was out of the question. I wasn’t about to cheat our beautiful and wonderfully beneficial project out of anything. Ok, we’ll cut out one of the rooms, but the rest are absolutely necessary. We NEED electricity and water. We NEED to separate the gender wards. We NEED a confidential space in which people can discreetly go and be tested. We NEED an adequate room for labor, not just a metal bed frame covered by an over-used foam mattress in the co-ed patient ward. I will not cut the budget!

So I brought the case to our district government. They loved the idea and recognized Chikwina’s desperate need for an adequate health center. The District Planner took the proposal to the funding committee, promised to push it through personally, and said he’d call with the developments. Three months go by, and nothing. I brought the proposal to NGO after NGO. World Vision came close. They accepted the proposal and then lost it. I went all the way to Lilongwe to their headquarters to get to the bottom of it. There I was told they already did their budgeting for the year, resubmit next year. The U.S. Embassy said something similar. Then inflation hit hard, the kwacha was devalued, and our budget changed. It would now cost $16,000 to do the same project (more than a third of which is being provided by my community, FYI). So, great.

That brings us to this month, July. I called the District Planner at the government offices in Nkhata Bay to talk about resubmitting the project and to find out what went wrong in the first place. Also, let it be known, it is impossible to get this guy on the phone or catch him in the office. He said, “oh, didn’t we talk about this? Chikwina is benefiting from the new hospital being built outside of Nkhata Bay boma. So the proposal wasn’t passed.” Insert Scooby-Doo-style whaaaaaat? here. First off, that hospital just started being built in earnest about three months ago. Second, that doesn’t change any of the problems we face here in Chikwina. That hospital is only about 5km closer than and just as unreachable as the current one.

Time to take this to the Big Boys. I place a call every hour on the hour for two days to our Member of Parliament (MP), Mr. Chiumia, who is even more impossible to get on the phone than the District Planner (who I’m pretty sure has blocked my number). Mr. Chiumia said he knows Chikwina and knows that it very much needs a new health center and he was unaware of a previously submitted proposal. He will personally support our project. Insert Scooby-Doo-style whaaaaat?!?!? Well hot damn! Of course, in the paragraph preceding that last one, I demonstrate just how unreliable such a sentiment is. But still, this is a huge step to get the Nkhata Bay Head Honcho in on this. I’ve reworked the budget of the proposal and my current hope (riding high!) is to get the Peace Corps office to contribute a third and the government to contribute a third to supplement my community’s already securely promised third. Of course, I have my backups. I’ll still resubmit to the U.S. Embassy next year and there’s one Australian pro-bono construction guy who is interested in making Chikwina health center his next major project. Unfortunately, these options would place me square in America when the project is completed. But, by God, this thing will happen. It will happen if it kills me and burns down the office to boot!

Home is Where I Keep My Leftovers

They always say home is where the heart is. But what makes the heart go and then stay somewhere? Family and friends, duh, but my family and friends are thousands of miles away. Living here alone in a rural African village, I’ve discovered the most basic requirements for making a home, in the emotional sense of the word. I, very generously, will share with you this invaluable insight.

The three main ingredients are:
1. Pets

2. A couch

3. Leftovers

There you have, all you need to create a home. Now let’s look at them in more detail.

1. Pets. As you all know by now, my little four-legged African family include my dog, Doug (also pronounced Dog, Duga, Duh, Douglas, Dugalas), and my cat, Kitty. Doug and Kitty. I’ve learned from them that human interaction really isn’t all that necessary to my happiness. I just need dopey Doug around to do dumb stuff and make me laugh and sweet Kitty to cuddle (and control the mice). I get all my companionship needs from Doug, who not only follows me to school, but then follows me from one end of the chalkboard to the other. He’s also my running buddy and standup comedian. Kitty takes care of all the physical contact and emotional support. She’s always waiting at the door for Doug and me to come home from school with a hug and meow to ask us about our day. This probably sounds crazy and you’re probably wondering if I’ve prematurely turned into an old spinster hermit who talks to walls and knits animals hats. But really, in the absence of legitimate human friends in my village all my interactive needs are met by these two little dummies. We have our conflicts, like when Doug shattered my window last week by trying to jump through it, and we have our hallmark cards, like when all three of us are doing Downward Dog at the same time, trying to all fit on the same yoga mat. Their furry little faces not only capture my heart, but securely anchor it in this house.

Doug: "Screw this."

 

Kitty, chowing down hard





Me and Kitty on Couch



2. A couch. I have a theory that you can live pretty much anywhere for any amount of time if you just have somewhere comfy to sit. In fact, I told this to my friend Meredith before she ET’ed (early terminated). I’m still convinced she would have stayed if she just invested in a comfy chair. I have a comfy fold-up camping chair that my parents sent me and I used to use the extra bed as a pseudo couch. But I’ve been dreaming of a real couch for a long time, especially because my family is coming to visit in a few weeks and I have only one comfy chair for them to share. Haha! I just imagined all three of them piling on top of my little camping chair. So recently I found a legit carpenter and commissioned a sofa. He charged an immense amount of money (about 150USD, but who can put a price on a home?), which I later found out he overcharged me like whoa. But it is definitely a couch. It’s an overstuffed two-seater with armrests at the perfect height to use as a pillow for my new routine afternoon naps. The carpenter even upholstered it in a soft brown so it wouldn’t look dirty, because he knew Doug wouldn’t be able to resist curling up on it too. Doug, in fact, couldn’t resist and quickly deposited a layer of Doug hair all over it. After weeks of screaming at him to get off of the human furniture, I eventually caved and bought him his own sofa cushion to use as a Douggie bed, which he now guards fiercely. I must say, since the most recent and final installment to my African family, Couch, my house feels pretty complete. I can’t wait to get home after school and curl up on Couch with my kitten and my book and Doug sprawled out on the floor. I can put my feet up and lean back into cushions and sink down into comfort. I know that I am accepted in this space I have created and I belong on this couch I bought for too much money. It’s that quintessential feeling of “I am home”.

3. Leftovers. This one kind of hit me the other night when I was sitting down on Couch with a bowl of reheated homemade egg drop soup. I’d never noticed before, but there’s something about eating leftovers from a meal you cooked yourself in your own kitchen that makes it all feel entirely yours. Firstly, the first time you cooked it, you were in a place you know better than anyone else, your kitchen. In any other kitchen in the world you’d probably have to stop at some point to ask “where do you keep your spoons?”

Not in your own kitchen. In your own kitchen, you don’t even have to look up from the stove to end up with a spoon in your hand. You can navigate your pantry (if you’ve cleaned it recently) in the dark. You can throw something into the trash can with the most efficient of movements. Secondly, when you look into your originally unfinished meal you can confidently think “hell, I’ll just finish it later”, and you know it’ll be there. That way, you can also set yourself up for being too lazy or too tired to cook again later, which is great! Planned laziness, the ultimate comfort. Also, it feels much more safe and comfortable pulling leftovers out of your own fridge (not that I have a fridge here, I don’t), which kind of goes back to knowing your own kitchen better than anyone else’s. There’s something kind of uneasy about eating your leftovers stored in someone else’s fridge. It’s kind of like leaving your toothbrush on the side of a friend’s sink, you take extra care that the head of the toothbrush doesn’t touch the surface (because who know the last time it was cleaned) and that it’s well out of the way. There’s nothing like the guilt of borrowing too much of someone else’s space. Thirdly, they’re your leftovers. You knew they would be there, you planned for them to be there, all you have to do is stick them back on the stove and finish what you started. You know how when you ask someone if you can kill their leftovers and when they let you and you eat them it kind of feels like stealing? It’s not very satisfying, you didn’t earn them. It’s second hand food. Leftovers are so good because they are like a reminder of the original meal. Without the original meal the leftovers are just a grimy shadow of what could have been. And also, who leaves food sitting around your kitchen but you? You don’t leave unfinished food in a kitchen that you’re responsible for and then go out and never return. You would only reasonably leave unfinished food out if that kitchen is somewhere you’d come back to and unselfconsciously pick the spoon up and resume consumption in your pajamas on a Couch. And where else can you do that except your own house, a place you feel so comfortable and without a second thought would let the dog lick the bowl, because emotionally, it’s your home.