Merry Christmas! Happy Boxing Day! Technically, yesterday was Christmas. However, it was unlike any Christmas I have ever experienced. In order to get the full effect I feel it necessary to give a time line of events...
Dec. 24 12:30 PM Alexis and Ben meet me in my village. They see my house, we eat banana bread and mangoes. It is a good start to the day.
3:00PM Arrive in Nkhotakota. Have lunch, take bicycle taxi to Jesi's house.
5:00PM Ten of us have arrived at Jesi's. We are still waiting for 2, but the boxed wine is chilled (sort of) and we have peanut butter balls. Life is grand.
6:00PM First attempt at dinner. Or, first attempts at fire starting and boiling water. How many volunteers does it take to make dinner? Well...
8:00PM Still no boiled water. Boxed wine no longer chilled. Peanut butter balls are gone.
9:30PM The ten of us eat glue that should have been fettuccine Alfredo from 2 pans. Boxed wine makes everything better. Still missing the other 2 volunteers...
11:00PM They are on their way! No bicycle taxis so 5 of us decide we should walk to pick them up...
12:15AM Arrive at the road. Merry Christmas!
1:30AM Back to Jesi's. The 12 of us are together!
2:00AM Sleeping
5:00AM Time to wake up
8:00AM Walk to road to get a ride to Nkhotakota Pottery for Christmas Breakfast
8:05AM Massive rains hit Nkhotakota
8:20AM Find a ride in the back of a truck to the road...in the rain.
8:40AM Get on a bus to the turnoff for NP
9:00AM Thought it was a 200M walk to NP...turns out it is 4k. It is only sprinkling now.
10:00AM Full English breakfast. : ) Delicious
11:00AM We realize we don't have much else to do...so we should probably just hang out until lunch.
2:00PM Delicious lunch. Christmas is mostly about eating, right?
3:00PM Walk back to the road. Find a hitch back to Jesi's road. Alexis sits on a seizing goat, I hold on realizing this is not one of my smarter moves.
4:00PM Walk back to Jesi's.
8:00PM White Elephant gift exchange. Amy and Meg redeem our cooking efforts by making chili and rice and tortillas and guacamole.
9:30PM Fast asleep.
Not a typical Christmas but certainly memorable. I have been so blessed this year with amazing friends and family. I miss you all and hope you know you are with me wherever I happen to be.
loads of love,
elisabeth
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Monday, December 21, 2009
When it Rains, it Pours
I had a discussion with another teacher about the weather in Malawi. "We have three seasons-from August to the middle of December it is the hot-dry season, then from December to the middle of May it is the hot-wet season where everything floods and we have a lot of mosquitoes. In June and July we have winter." (I believe that is the loosest term of winter ever used.)
I have a tin roof, for which I am very thankful because it helps keep the wildlife and I from co-existing. However, having a tin roof in the hot/dry season is like living in an oven and having a tin roof during the hot/wet season is like living in a metal plan with popcorn kernels constantly falling on your head. I am sure June and July will be really nice.
I am slowly getting my village life together. This week has been tough (for a variety of reasons) but there have been enough smiles, welcomes, mangoes, bananas, pineapples, and amazing sunsets to make things okay. I have been falling into a routine of waking up around 5 to run, it is an incredibly beautiful place so it is a treat every morning, I get to see the sunrise, the mountains in the distance, and I often have an impromptu running club with the kids along the way. After I shower (via a bucket) and go to school (around 7). I have been spending the days at school reading books on training teachers, classroom observations, and how to create school and classroom improvement I found at the Teacher Development Center. I spend the afternoons at school or at the library (I tried to translate The 3 Little Pigs in Chichewa for a large group of children-it was pretty ridiculous). In the evenings Vinnocent (Vinny), my 5 year old neighbor sit on my porch sometimes dancing, sometimes coloring, sometimes I sew, but mostly just sitting. I have also had some interesting conversations with my other neighbors about America (they LOVE Obama and think America is great), religion, and food (eating snails = unimaginable and I had to convince them that Chinese cuisine does not include humans). Vinny's mom, my new amayi takes good care of me often bringing mangoes or nsima or whole fish (if you have any tips on cooking entire fish please send them my way). I read for a while and go to sleep before 9. Sometimes I feel like I am in Beauty and the Beast and want to start singing "There goes the baker with his tray like always..." But it is pretty stress free (minus fire starting and the occasional encounter with insects the size of my hand) I am certainly learning to love it.
This weekend a group of us are going to celebrate Christmas at Jesi's. I am really excited to see everyone (it is so strange going from spending every moment with the same 20 people to a few texts throughout the day). It doesn't really feel like the holiday season, trying to explain snow to Malawians reminds me of Cool Runnings--they get a very worried look on their faces and ask if the cars move. Though I miss bundling up and trying to find the perfect present (okay, I miss Target and lots of good food) it is kind of refreshing to be so removed from the commercialization of Christmas. Mostly, I miss you all and hope you are enjoying the good things of the season. Merry Merry Christmas.
loads of love,
elisabeth
I have a tin roof, for which I am very thankful because it helps keep the wildlife and I from co-existing. However, having a tin roof in the hot/dry season is like living in an oven and having a tin roof during the hot/wet season is like living in a metal plan with popcorn kernels constantly falling on your head. I am sure June and July will be really nice.
I am slowly getting my village life together. This week has been tough (for a variety of reasons) but there have been enough smiles, welcomes, mangoes, bananas, pineapples, and amazing sunsets to make things okay. I have been falling into a routine of waking up around 5 to run, it is an incredibly beautiful place so it is a treat every morning, I get to see the sunrise, the mountains in the distance, and I often have an impromptu running club with the kids along the way. After I shower (via a bucket) and go to school (around 7). I have been spending the days at school reading books on training teachers, classroom observations, and how to create school and classroom improvement I found at the Teacher Development Center. I spend the afternoons at school or at the library (I tried to translate The 3 Little Pigs in Chichewa for a large group of children-it was pretty ridiculous). In the evenings Vinnocent (Vinny), my 5 year old neighbor sit on my porch sometimes dancing, sometimes coloring, sometimes I sew, but mostly just sitting. I have also had some interesting conversations with my other neighbors about America (they LOVE Obama and think America is great), religion, and food (eating snails = unimaginable and I had to convince them that Chinese cuisine does not include humans). Vinny's mom, my new amayi takes good care of me often bringing mangoes or nsima or whole fish (if you have any tips on cooking entire fish please send them my way). I read for a while and go to sleep before 9. Sometimes I feel like I am in Beauty and the Beast and want to start singing "There goes the baker with his tray like always..." But it is pretty stress free (minus fire starting and the occasional encounter with insects the size of my hand) I am certainly learning to love it.
This weekend a group of us are going to celebrate Christmas at Jesi's. I am really excited to see everyone (it is so strange going from spending every moment with the same 20 people to a few texts throughout the day). It doesn't really feel like the holiday season, trying to explain snow to Malawians reminds me of Cool Runnings--they get a very worried look on their faces and ask if the cars move. Though I miss bundling up and trying to find the perfect present (okay, I miss Target and lots of good food) it is kind of refreshing to be so removed from the commercialization of Christmas. Mostly, I miss you all and hope you are enjoying the good things of the season. Merry Merry Christmas.
loads of love,
elisabeth
Sunday, December 13, 2009
On becoming a REAL volunteer...
I am no longer a Peace Corps trainee, now I am a real volunteer. To you, all that means is a PCV behind my name rather than PCT when sending mail. To me it meant saying goodbye to my closest friends in Malawi, many whom I will not see for at least three months. It meant frantically running around Lilongwe shopping for all the things I could possibly imagine needing for my new house in an incredibly frantic three hour window. It meant swearing in as a real volunteer with the American ambassador to Malawi, it meant watching the Gule Wamkulu (the traditional Malawian dance = a HUGE treat), it meant packing up everything I have accumulated the past 10 weeks including a bike and a mattress and loading up Peace Corps transport to our new homes.
I moved to my site with friend Jesi, who is a short 30 minute bus ride away in Nkhotakota. I have managed to stay fairly busy setting up my house, trying to find the bore hole, carrying back water from the bore hole, getting lost carrying back water from the bore hole, having a small army of children lead me back to house carrying water from the bore hole, trying to start a fire, cooking over a fire (so far, I have made french fries, banana bread, and scrambled eggs with pumpkin leaves, tomatoes, and onions, along with salsa and a lot of peanut butter sandwiches), making curtains, scoping out the market, chatting with my neighbors, and reading. On Saturday one of my site mate's, Jillian came to visit. She is a health volunteer and lives about an hour away. She is going to America for the holidays but it was really nice to have a visitor.
First impressions of Mkaika = incredibly hot. After making dinner the first night I realized I have been less sweaty after a workout (yeah, I was pretty gross). I have great neighbors, the Amayi next door takes good care of me-perhaps because I gave her the banana bread, but I'll do whatever it takes to have an Amayi on my good side, and I found Pineapple in the market. It's not such a bad place.
I am going to begin work on Monday, slowly I think I will fall into a routine and I am looking forward to the time when this place feels like home. Also I have a new address, I am not sure how reliable it is, but I want to see if it works. Of course, the Lilongwe address is always good it is just a matter of me being in Lilongwe.
I hope you are all enjoying the holiday season. I would love to hear from you soon! Miss you all!!!
loads of love,
elisabeth
I moved to my site with friend Jesi, who is a short 30 minute bus ride away in Nkhotakota. I have managed to stay fairly busy setting up my house, trying to find the bore hole, carrying back water from the bore hole, getting lost carrying back water from the bore hole, having a small army of children lead me back to house carrying water from the bore hole, trying to start a fire, cooking over a fire (so far, I have made french fries, banana bread, and scrambled eggs with pumpkin leaves, tomatoes, and onions, along with salsa and a lot of peanut butter sandwiches), making curtains, scoping out the market, chatting with my neighbors, and reading. On Saturday one of my site mate's, Jillian came to visit. She is a health volunteer and lives about an hour away. She is going to America for the holidays but it was really nice to have a visitor.
First impressions of Mkaika = incredibly hot. After making dinner the first night I realized I have been less sweaty after a workout (yeah, I was pretty gross). I have great neighbors, the Amayi next door takes good care of me-perhaps because I gave her the banana bread, but I'll do whatever it takes to have an Amayi on my good side, and I found Pineapple in the market. It's not such a bad place.
I am going to begin work on Monday, slowly I think I will fall into a routine and I am looking forward to the time when this place feels like home. Also I have a new address, I am not sure how reliable it is, but I want to see if it works. Of course, the Lilongwe address is always good it is just a matter of me being in Lilongwe.
I hope you are all enjoying the holiday season. I would love to hear from you soon! Miss you all!!!
loads of love,
elisabeth
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