Elections

Last Tuesday, May 20, was Malawi's first ever tripartite elections. And in typical Malawian fashion things turned out to be confusing, chaotic, and altogether ineffective. The three main candidates were: The current president Joyce Banda representing the people's party (PP), professor Peter Mutarika with the democratic progressive party (DPP), and Lazarus Chikwela for Malawi congress party (MCP). Election Day went smoothly enough. Voters 18 and over took their IDs to the polls, got their fingers printed, and cast their vote. It was a good turnout and the voting stations stayed open late into the night. The next day everyone grouped around their radios as results started trickling in. As numbers started being announced it seemed that Mutarika  was sweeping the board. In all districts he was receiving significantly more votes than the other two candidates. But still less than 30% of the votes had been counted so no official result could be announced. A day or two into the counting, accusations of rigging started surfacing. People were accused of hacking phones to cast more votes. At one point it was discovered that in some districts there were more votes cast than there were registered voters in that district. Stating that it was because of the "irregularities" surrounding the voting, president Joyce Banda called for the whole election to be nullified and another election take place in 90 days. She also said that in the redo she would be running. Many people thought that this was an attempt to make Mutarika lose. Banda had previously tried Mutarika with treason when he attempted a coup to take over the government.  Now people believe that Banda is afraid of the revenge Mutarika might take if he gets office. Especially due to the fact that there was a major corruption scandal while Banda was in office that she could be held accountable for. Anyways, the nullification didn't happen as the Malawi electoral commission (MEC) decided that it was somehow unconstitutional. Instead they decided to do a manual recount of the votes. Mutarika got his lawyers to try to stop the recount. MEC said they couldn't recount yet anyway because the original votes weren't even counted yet. Meanwhile, there have been riots in some of the major cities, burning of party headquarters, and attempted suicides of ministers and government officials (one successful). As of today the news is that results from the original vote will be announced Friday. After which the recount will maybe take place. How that will be possible I don't know. The votes were turned in on pieces of paper and collected in baskets. Most votes have probably been lost or ruined at this point. As its looking now, it will probably be a while before we have a new president. 

Update: May 30th around 11pm Prof. Peter Mutarika was announced as the winner of the elections. Before the announcement there were more riots, fighting in the capital, and a shooting. I am very safe in my village and far away from any discord. Mutarika is definitely the people's favorite but seemed to be causing some problems within the government. So we will see how this announcement will affect things. And hopefully it will be the end of this election chaos. 

In response to the question, "what's a chitenje?"

The amazing, versatile chitenje!

Now, for a limited time, only 1,200 kwacha! ($3)

Nothing embodies the culture of Africa quite like these beautiful two meter piece of printed fabric. They come in all colors, designs, and patterns. Mostly worn as wrap skirts or head wraps, chitenje (plural zitenje) are all-purpose fabrics that can be use in 100+ different ways. 

Forget your bag at the market? No problem! Wrap up your items in a chitenje for a quick makeshift sack. 

Can't afford a baby carrier? Use a chitenje to tie your baby to your back. 

Too cold? Wrap a chitenje around your shoulders like a scarf or shawl. 

Use zitenje as towels, blankets, window curtains, diapers, tablecloths, pillow covers, book bags, cleaning cloths, chair covers, flags, advertisement, decoration... The possibilities are endless! 

Or, bring the fabric to your local tailor and get beautiful, custom designed chitenje clothes made just for you! You will look stylish and trendy sporting the national fashion of Malawi. 

So quick! Act now, before these amazing, versatile cloths sell out. 

But wait! There's more! Come to Malawi to visit me and we'll throw in an authentic Malawian chitenje completely free! (Limited time offer) 

Camp Sky (+anamed and vacation)

Warning: this is going to be a long one, a ton happened in the month of April. Also sorry this is so late. I haven't had Internet recently and haven been able to post this. I'm going to break this post into three parts; ANAMED, Camp Sky, and vacation. 

ANAMED- I left my village on March 30th with my Malawian counterpart to attend a training about natural medicine and how to use local plants to heal and prevent disease. (ANAMED= action for natural medicine). We spent about 4 days working in the garden, making teas, ointments, oils, medicines and soaps. We also learned about nutrition, permaculture and composting. The weekend was pretty much what I pictured peace corps would be like- working outside, creating products from local tropical plants. The training center we were staying at was at the base of a mountain and during free times, a few friends and I would go on hikes. One day we found a waterfall. Another day, the training coordinator took us up the mountain and we saw ancient rock art left from the Chongoni tribe. 

The weekend was very informative and my counterpart and I plan to start workshops at our village clinic to teach our community about what we learned. We were given seeds and a few saplings and we have already started a garden to start growing some of the useful plants. 

Camp Sky- First, a huge thank you to everyone who donated to camp. It was by far the best and most encouraging week of my peace Corps service so far. The official description of camp sky is that it is a week long camp to help promising form four students study and prepare for their MSCE (national exam). Peace Corps teachers could send the top 2 students in their school. To me that sounded kind of boring and I expected it to be something like regular school, but during break. It was absolutely nothing like I expected. 

The schedule each day was pretty much the same. In the mornings (before lunch) were classes. I taught 2 periods a day. The first two days I taught reproduction and the steps of meiosis. The last two days I taught the lymphatic system. Class sizes were only 20 students (as oppose to the 100 I usually teach) and all the students could speak English! It was so much fun and a completely different experience to teach such smart, motivated students. My lessons went really well and the students seemed to enjoy them. For the lymphatic system I drew a picture of a capillary bed on the floor of the classroom and students had to act like blood plasma, walking through the vessels and explaining how they became lymph fluid. They did very well and it was a lot of fun. 

 After lunch each day the kids went to lab, then had evening activities. I helped lead the biology lab which was one of my favorite parts of the week. Many of the students had never been inside a real laboratory before or worked with any lab equipment. I got to help them test for macromolecules in food and titrate an acid to neutralize a base. It was incredibly inspiring to see how excited they were about science. 

The evening activities were different everyday. The first night a musical group came and helped the students be creative and create their own music. The second night we watched the Romeo and Juliet movie, then acted out the famous balcony scene with a few adaptations to make it culturally relevant to Malawi. It was hilarious. Another night we did an egg drop, the students had to use their knowledge of physics to create a container that would protect an egg when it was dropped from heights. Some groups did so well, we dropped their eggs off the water tower and they still didn't break! We also had a talent show and, on the last night, a dance. 

After dinner every night the students broke up into small groups and had reflection time. The groups were organized by planet names (the whole week was space themed) and I was the counselor for ten campers in group mars. During reflection we talked about their favorite part of the day and discussed our daily theme (inspirational message such as 'sky is not the limit' or 'nothing will prevent my success'). 

One of the favorite parts of the week was the field trip we had to the resource center at the US embassy. There, the students learned about applying to colleges in Malawi and America and they learned how to use a computer. For most of the students it was the first time they had ever touched a computer so we had to explain the simplest things like how to move and click the mouse or how to put a space between words when typing. I was helping one girl named Mphatso. She practiced typing her name and changing the font and size. Then we attempted to open and search the Internet. I told her that she could type a question or topic into google and it would give her an answer or information. She didn't fully understand because she typed the question "will I pass my exams?" Later that night, as I was doing reflections with my group, one of the girls said that her favorite part of the day was sitting on the chairs at the embassy that had wheels and could roll around. Oh the simple things we take for granted in America.  

In addition to all that, we did the typical camp-y fun things. We sang songs, played games, I taught the campers the cup game, we played ultimate frisbee, and so much more. It was a busy, exhausting, rewarding week. 

I could go on and on about this camp, how incredible the students were, how much fun the activities were, and how much we all learned. If you want to see more pictures my friend Cam wrote a great blog about the whole week: campskymw.tumblr.com. There are also a ton of pictures on Facebook and I think camp sky has its own page. 

Vacation- After camp a big group had planed to take a trip to the northern part of the country to do some hiking and see the mountains. Unfortunately that fell through so we had to make other plans. Me and two friends decided to go to the lake. (Because I will never pass up a chance to hang out at the beach). We spent the week swimming and sleeping, recovering from a sleepless week at camp. On Easter, the scuba place was organizing an underwater Easter egg hunt. A friend and I decided to get involved. It turned out that it was only a snorkeling hunt, and mostly kids participating, so we decided to do an official dive. It was beautiful. We found a prehistoric crocodile tooth and saw a lot of fish species I hadn't seen before. 

I am now back in my village and readjusting to life here. While I was at the lake it was still really hot, but here in Mulanje it's actually started to get cold. I've been wearing sweaters to class! Term three classes started on Monday and I am currently working on grading exams to return to my students. My next big vacation is going to be with my aunt and cousin! My first visitors from America!  I can't wait :)