#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.