Game count

The first weekend in October I got the amazing opportunity to participate in game count, a Peace Corps and wildlife office organized survey of large mammals in Liwondwe National park. About 40 Peace Corps volunteers were there and we paired up with park rangers to do walks through the park and count and record the animals we saw. The 20 second year volunteers got to stay at Mvuu camp, a nice resort in the park right on the river. We camped there for 2 nights and had to wake up at 4am both mornings to do transect survey walks. Each morning we got in a safari van or the back of a truck and were driven to different places in the park to start.

The first day's transect walk we saw very little. We walked about 12 kilometers and saw a few warthogs, impala, and common duiker. We also saw a green mamba in a tree which was pretty awesome. Apart from the animals, we also found a lot of evidence of poaching and took down at least 15 wire snares.

The second day was a lot more exciting. Our walk was along the river and we got to see more animals. At a few points we got really close to groups of hippos. We also saw a huge crocodile sunning on the shore and at least 10 more crocodiles in the river near it. We saw more impala, bushbacks, sable, warthogs, and even found an elephant skull.

The walk ended at a clearing near the river that had a huge hollow baobob tree covered with a thick vine. We had to wait there a while for the truck to pick us up and bring us back to camp, so obviously we decided to climb the tree while we waited.

While the walks were fun, we saw the most animals during the drives around the park and just hanging out at our camp on the river. On the drive into the park we passed a group of elephants less than 100 meters away from the truck! Sitting by the river we saw even more elephants with two baby elephants drinking and were close enough to a warthog to almost touch it. Another time driving around the park we saw a herd of buffalo. It was an amazing, once in a lifetime experience and I'm really happy I got to do it.

Natural medicine project

Sorry I have been majorly slacking with writing posts recently. Classes started up again about 2 weeks ago and I have been pretty busy lately. I'm teaching math form 2 and biology form 3. So far it's going really well. In addition to teaching I have two other major projects I will be working on this year.

In August I applied and was accepted to be the logistics coordinator for Camp Sky 2015 😄 That means me and 3 other coordinators are in charge of planning, organizing, and running the camp next year. I wrote about Camp Sky in April. It was the best week of my Peace Corps service and I'm so excited to be able to help lead it this year. Currently we have booked an awesome venue and are working on writing grants and planning. I'll write more about this later when we have more figured out. 

The other project I've been working on is a natural medicine project in my village. In April I also wrote about a training I went to called ANAMED. It was natural medicine workshop where I, and my Malawian counterpart, learned about health, different plants, and how to use plants to make medicines. We realized that the information we learned would be very beneficial to our village and decided to use it in our community. We are about 15km from the closest hospital and the road to get there is in very bad condition making transport difficult. Because of this, most people don't go to the hospital when they get sick.  We thought that we could use the training we had to make natural medicines and immune boosters for people who could not get official treatment. We started a group of 8 people from my village and a few surrounding villages. The first few meetings we taught our group about plants, how to make the products, and about business. Within our group we appointed a chairman, secretary, and treasurer. Every week we meet to make products that the villagers need. About once a month our group also travels to surrounding villages to give a presentation about health, how to take care of yourself, what natural medicine is, and what products we sell. Some of the products we make include a eucalyptus tincture for cough and sore throat, chili ointment for rheumatism and sore muscles, and moringa leaf powder which is a great nutritional food additive and immunity booster. Our most popular product is anti fungal soap and ointment made from cassia lata and neem leaf powders. We sell all of our products for k300. About 75 cents. The profit we make from selling the medicines is used to buy the supplies we need to make more medicine.  

These are a few members of the group working in my backyard making anti fungal soap. 

My counterpart showing some of the leaves he is drying. Once the leaves are dry we pound them into a power and put the leaf powder into soaps, ointments, or tinctures. The medicinal properties in different leaves are good to help cure different ailments. 

The project is going really well and has been well received in my village and even many of the villages around me. We are currently working with a group of American college business students to make the project more official and sustainable. Eventually we want to start a stand in the local market or at the health clinic to sell our products.