Question box

I got the idea from a peace corps friend of mine to start a question box in my classroom and it's been a huge success. It's a simple cardboard box with a slit at the top where students can put any question they have about school, life, America, or anything. When I have extra time left in a period I use it to answer the questions. It's been a great way to share American culture and teach the students about topics they typically don't learn in school or things they are curious about. It also lets me know some of the things they believe and what they are thinking about. I get a lot of questions about American musicians. Even more about Obama. And I constantly get asked if there are black people in America. Here are some of my favorite questions that I have found in the box. And in italics some of my thoughts about them. 

Q: Can you fly? 

I wish!

Q: Are you a satanist?

A: No

Q: Are you a Christian? If you are a Christian why you don't respect yourself about dressing? Sometimes I see you while you are in leggings. Are you normal? 

Good to know that my students think I dress scandalously and also think I'm abnormal (it's culturally inappropriate for women here to wear anything besides long skirts). I spent a good 15 minutes answering this one and explaining that in America it's okay for women to wear pants. Even to church. They were shocked. 

Q: In America where do you put the people that died?

This wasn't too odd of a question but as I answered it I realized how odd of an answer it was for them. They completely followed and understood when I explained about putting dead people in a coffin and burying it in the ground- they do the same here. But then I explained that some people choose to be cremated instead. I told them that these people decide they want their dead body set on fire until it turns to ashes. Then we usually throw those ashes in a ocean or outside somewhere. As I explained what cremation was I got a lot of gasps, wide eyes, and unbelieving faces. They definitely think I'm a satanist now. 

And this is, so far, my all-time favorite question:

Q: White people they use plastic cups in order to avoid to be burnt their lips. So why has you given is a steel cups? Do you think that we cannot burnt our lips?

 

Ummmm. What? I have never used a cup during class, give a cup to any student, or seen a steel cup anywhere in Malawi. This one stumped me. Where do they come up with this stuff!? 

I love the question box. It leads to a lot of laughs and some really interesting conversations with my class. 

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. 

Graduation

I'm officially finished teaching my first school year in Malawi. The students have taken their final exams and a few weeks ago the form four students had their graduation ceremony. I was on the commitee to help plan and organize the graduation so I knew it would be a bit different than American high school ceremonies, but it was even more unusual than I imagined. Graduation day started at around 7am. All the form four students came to the school in their work clothes to begin cooking and decorating for the celebration later that day. About 10 fires were started to cook nsima, rice, cabbage, and chicken that we would eat for lunch. Meanwhile, other students worked to set up the ceremony "pavillion" created from thick bamboo poles and old white bed sheets. I was happy to be able to contribute decorations, thanks to Mrs. Leers' amazing first grade class who made beautiful carboard flowers and sent balloons for my students. The gifts really brightened up the ceremony and the students were very grateful. A huge thanks to Mrs. Leers' students! You guys are awesome!

Around noon, guests started showing up. Teachers from other schools, parents on the PTA, and village chiefs were invited early to join us for lunch. Afterwards, the students went back to their houses to change and get ready for the actual ceremony. Unlike a lot of schools in the area, the students at my school were not required to wear their school uniform to graduation and instead could wear any nice clothes they liked. This led to, what seemed like, a competition for Malawi's most stylish student. Dressing fancy in Malawi reminds me of children playing dress-up with their parents nicest clothes. Many of the girls wore traditional African dress but a lot also wore buisness style skirts and jackets and a few wore secondhand prom dresses or overly fancy evening gowns. Instead of the school required close cropped hair cut, many of the girls got weaves or wigs and had their hair in crazy styles. They also put a large amount of glitter in their hair to match whatever color dress they were wearing. The boys dressed in oversized suits, usually with bright or busy collared shirts and unmatching ties.

When all the students were dressed and assembled back at the school we had a short time to prepare for the ceremony and take pictures. As ususal everyone wanted a picture with the weird white teacher, so I had to pose and smile while the entire form four took turns taking a picture with me.

Finally the official ceremony began. It would take place in a field behind the school buildings, which happened to be right next to my house. The parents, teachers, and village members sat in chairs under the tent that had been set up. Around the perimeter of the field all the children from the village gathered to watch. We rented a microphone and speaker setup for the occasion and started to play music as the students, not walked, but danced onto the field. Halfway through their dancing procession the speaker system broke and the students walked out and refused to come back in until the music started playing again. Someone was able to fix the system and eventually the graduates made it to their seats. Then the system broke again. A few people gave speeches. Which we couldn't hear due to the microphone not working. After the speeches from the village chief, the head boy, and the guest of honor someone got the music working again and the ceremony turned into a giant dance party. Occasionally, while the students were dancing, they would dance up to the chief who gave them a certificate of completing secondary school. Then their family would dance around them and throw money on the ground for them or give them gifts such as a bundle of sugarcane.

After the graduates all recieved their certificates, the music continued and the rest of the guests and children joined in to dance and celebrate. At this point is was about 5:00 and I decided to leave. Unfortunately the event was directly next to my house so even going home I couldn't get away from the horrible quality speakers playing awful Malawian songs on repeat. The annoying music, screaming, and hoards of children running by my windows continued until about 8pm. Finally everyone decided to go home and graduation day came to an end.  

Mt. Mulanje hike

After over a year living in Malawi and seeing Mt. Mulanje everyday from my yard, I finally went out and climbed the thing with my boyfriend. Over the course of three days we hiked over 40 kilometers reaching an elevation of around 9,000 feet. The hike was brutal. The first day alone we walked for 6 hours uphill, climbing over 6,000 feet, to reach the first cabin we were staying at. The views along the way were incredible.

We stayed that night at the cabin at the base of the highest peak, Sapitwa, and the next morning planned to surmount it. Sapitwa, in Chichewa, means "don't go there" and we probably should have headed the warning.

We woke to a blanket of fog covering the mountain. After waiting for about an hour, the fog wasn't clearing and we decided to attempt the climb anyway. The hike turned out to be even harder than the day before. Most of the hike required us to crawl, climb, and scale impossibly steep rock cliffs. The fog never lifted, so we couldn't see more than 40 feet in front of us; it felt like we were climbing forever with no clear destination ahead. When we started, the terrain was all rock and small shrub trees. Further up the mountain we entered a weird valley that had conditions more like a rainforest. Everything was wet and green, moss and ferns coated everything. Our clothes were wet from the strange fern gully as we climbed out to reach the final ridge before the peak. And then the wind began. We were not prepared for the cold that we then experienced.

After over 2 hours of climbing in the cold wet conditions it became too freezing for us to continue and we had to turn back. We got within about 400 ft of the peak but could not physically continue without possibly losing a finger to frostbite. So we climbed back down to our cabin and sat by the fire for awhile to rest. After lunch we continued with the next leg of our journey, a short 2 1/2 hour walk to another hut.

Going down in elevation, it became a lot warmer and the weather cleared up. The hike was enjoyable and we made it to our next cabin without any problem. The next day was our final day hiking. We took a beautiful path down the mountain, going by rivers and waterfalls.

We finally made it to the bottom. It was a difficult, crazy, fun adventure. I am glad I did it, but it might be a while before I attempt it again.

The New Englanders take on Malawi

Two weeks ago I had a very special visit from my aunt and cousin from America. 

The trip had been planned since before I even moved here so I had spent almost a year anticipating them coming. They are the first, and possibly only, Americans to visit me in Malawi and it was very exciting being able to show them my home and have them experience how I live here. After greeting them at the airport we went to the Avis desk to rent a car. As is typical of Malawi, it did not go smoothly. They didn't have the car that we had reserved and we spent a long time trying to remedy the issue. It was confusing, chaotic, and stressful- a perfect introduction and representation of Malawi and my life here. We finally got it resolved and headed to the lake for a day, then down to my district of Mulanje. The rest of the trip went much better. Only a few bumps (some literal-the roads are awful), and some bad weather, but overall everyone had a great time. The highlight was definitely going into my village and introducing my family to my friends and neighbors. We had a traditional Malawian lunch of nsima and ndiwo on a reed mat in my friend's house. We took a tour of my house, my school, the health clinic, and even dipped our feet in the river that serves as the border of Malawi and Mozambique. We met and talked with a lot of people and I had to convince my cousin she couldn't take all the children home with her. 

All too soon we were driving back to Lilongwe where they would board a plane back to America. I really enjoyed having visitors here. They got to understand a little bit more about how I live and I got to see Malawi through a fresh and excited pair of eyes. I also got to see family who I hadn't seen in over a year and missed very much. That calls for a carlsberg! :)

Another important event happened for me recently. June 20th was the anniversary of me being in Malawi for one year! Time has gone surprisingly fast. On the 21st I was at the airport yet again to greet a new group of education volunteers just starting their peace corps service. It was strange being there and remembering what it was like being in their shoes one year before. When we got off the plane we were excited, exhausted, and had no idea what life in Malawi would be like for us. Welcoming the new group I could see just how different I am now and how far I've come since arriving here. 

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.