Hello, My Name is the Princess of Machinga

Ok folks - today is the 17th of August and I'm at my site visit! I'm placed at St Mary's CDSS (community day secondary school, where pretty much all education pcvs in Malawi go), in Ntaja, in the Machinga district, in the Southern region of Malawi!!!!!

I can't tell you how excited I was to finally get my site placement - literally up until the moment they told us, I was asking pc staff and current volunteers for clues. The current education pcvs were at their mid-service training during our announcement, so they drew a map of Malawi on the ground in flour, blindfolded us all, and led us to our locations - and since I was the most persistent  antsy, and probably annoying, they led me first. I have some pretty entertaining photos I hope to upload here eventually someone took for me, with all of us trainees reaching out towards each other blindfolded.

Back to my site - it's awesome. I didn't know much before I got here, although I got a few pictures in an envelope of my house, but my house is in the pastoral center of St Mary's church, in a large fenced in area. I'm supposed to have electeicity (!!!!!!!) although the electricity company has currently stolen my fuse box for some reason... Hopefully that all gets sorted out before I move in, but it's all on Malawian time, so who knows when it'll get fixed. But anyhow, there's a big yard area and borehole between the church and my house, so I think I'll have a fair amount of privacy, except on Sundays. My house is pretty big - 3 bedrooms, plus an outdoor storage room, chicken coop, kitchen, bafa, and chim, with a little seating area in the back. I have a few fruit trees right outside my house, including papaya and mango, which I'm pretty psyched about. The school I work at is a few minutes away walking, although once I get my bike I may start biking over. My head teacher lives in one of the school houses, so he's lretty close to me, and inside the fenced area of the pastoral center close to me is the catechist (btw if anyone knows what exactly a catechist is, please tell me because I'm pretty fuzzy on that).

The pastoral center is literally right on the tarmac road, so I'm really lucky that I don't have to drive on a dirt road or take a bike taxi to my site. The minibus stop for Ntaja is right in front of the little market across the street from me, and the big Ntaja boma/trading center is just 3 km down the road - close enough that I took a bike taxi to see it and walk around yesterday. Seriously a prime location - it'll only take me 5 minutes or so to bike there, so restocking will be pretty convenient. I went there with both my head teacher and site mate (who I'll get to in a minute), so I met lots of store owners, saw the police station and hospital, checked in at the post office (get ready for a new address soon, since I can use the church's po box), and even visited the beverage distribution center, where apparently you can buy a crate of coke, fanta, or carlsberg. Supposedly one of the shops there has internet, so I imagine I'll be checking my email and facebook and such there from time to time.

Ok back to my site mate - PC has this policy where they try to cluster volunteers together, so we can be each other's support systems and whatnot. My site mate is named Matt, and he lives in Namandanje, a village maybe 20 to 30 minutes away by bike (one way is uphill), and he's a health volunteer at the health center that's run by the same priest who opened St Mary's church and school that I'll be at. I guess he worked with the school to apply for a volunteer. He suggested that I stay at the priest's house instead of my house, since it's still being fixed up and is totally empty, and let me tell you, that is the best decision I've made. Fr Salmono (or something? I don't know for sure) is this Italian dude who's been in Malawi for 30 years, and has built churches, secondary schools, the health center, everything. And he has a pretty sweet house with a bunch of guest rooms, so I'm staying in one of them. Here I was, worried I'd be sleeping on the floor of my brand new house, and I was set up in a room with a bed, desk, dresser, and my own bathroom (!) with running water! I eat with Matt (who lives in a house close by), the father, and whatever guests he might have that day. Even though he's been in Malawi for 30 years, the father does not eat nsima. He eats soup, chicken, fish, potatoes, beans, vegetables... I've had actual salad for the first time since I've been in country, and real coffee at every meal! I'm 100% spoiled right now. But I don't feel bad, since I'll be moving into my own house soon enough.

I'm sure I'll be updating about, my house and site more once I move in, but for now it's off to Blantyre for a meet up with local volunteers, then back to Dedza for the rest of training for a couple weeks, then swearing in at the end of August!

................

It is now the 28th of August, the day before I swear in as a volunteer. I recognize that this is probably the most confusing blog ever, what with some of the posts being all out of order and a bunch of them having multiple days' writing, but oh well. I figure if you care you'll figure it out, and if not, you'll stop reading.

So since I've come back from site visit, I haven't really done a lot. Last week was mostly committed to studying for the dreaded LPI, the language proficiency interview, on which we needed to score at least Intermediate High to pass/supposedly swear in (although I'm pretty sure they wouldn't send us home if we didn't pass). In a,move unprecedented for the past few years, my entire training class passed! I got a score of Advanced Medium, which I'm super pumped about , since I didn't feel like I studied much. Needless to say, we were extremely excited to find out!

This week we're doing mostly housekeeping things to get ready for swearing in - banking, shopping for our houses, visiting the PC office in,Lilongwe (where I'll post this in a few hours), having bicycle training, etc.

For now, I'll leave you with a list of Malawian cultural observations we trainees made into a skit for our trainers (they thought it was hilarious):
Handshaking for an entire conversation
Not talking or making eye contact during meals, but jumping into friendly conversation as soon as a meal is finished
The never-full minibuses, with drivers shouting for passengers to hop in from the side of the road, even as current passengers are so crowded, they are literally sitting on top of each other
Children appearing out of nowhere to watch us do nothing but sit and read a book, and then seemingly multiplying in number every time we look up
The incessant rumor mill in the villages, through which trainees in the other college got caught (by an amayi, no less) at a bar after being there for about 10 minutes
Five year olds playing with machetes and fire
Amayis carrying a baby on their backs and their weight in firewood on their heads still stopping to bend their knees in greeting
Dragging a goat by the leg, instead of a rope around the neck

Reasons Why Today, Aug 5, 2012, Was Pretty Much the Best Ever

1. Got up early, and my bafa water was ready when I was. Nothing like a hot bucket bath on a chilly (but not freezing) morning, ready and waiting.

2. Had excellent chigumu (African corn flour cake, almost like cornbread but a little sweeter) for breakfast. Because my amayi loves me, there was no banana in it.

3. Peaced out of homestay-village life by 7:30, in Lilongwe by 9. Saw most of the PCVs of PC Malawi, and much of the staff as well. Couldn't get anyone who knows my site to tell me, but at least I'll learn it on Thursday, and I'm reasonably confident I'll like whoever lives around me. Not that I was worried about not liking people who joined the PC, but it's always better to know for sure.

4. By 10 or so, we were all at the super-bwana Ambassador's residence! I could seriously live there happily. We were shoved off to the "lower gazebo/tennis court area", and the restrooms (with toilets!) were in the pool area. Let's just say I'm excited for my swearing in ceremony at Jeneane's house (that's Madame Ambassador to you folk).

5. The security/logisitics people running the Hillary meet and greet were actually really entertaining! Sure, Dave, the dude in charge, told us that if we stepped over the chalk line we'd get tackled by security, and for awhile it felt like we were in that episode of 30 Rock where Matt Damon keeps telling the plane he's piloting that it'll be another half hour before takeoff, but there was also a security man in a cowboy hat, and I was literally standing 15 feet from HRC by 1pm. And she shook my hand, and when I told her I was excited to meet her, she told me she was excited to meet all of us (PCVs). I got a couple pretty sweet pictures if her shaking hands with my friends, and I'm pretty sure I'm in a bunch of official photographs because of my awesome positioning skills.

Also, fyi, Hil (as we who've met her call her) is the first Secretary of State to visit Malawi, and she told us she was excited to come since Bill comes every so often for his foundation work. She gave a really nice speech, with a few Peace Corps shout outs, which was awesome.

For the record, Hil looked super fly - royal purple tunic, black pants, longish hair, and giant sparkly necklace. And she shook my hand.

And that wasn't even it:

6. I saw Rachel, my friend from home who's randomly in Malawi (not for the PC) for the year! Apparently the song didn't lie, and wherever you go, there really is always someone Jewish. Anyhow, Rachel got invited I think because of ngo connections (I think? Super not clear), and it was fun to see her and catch up for a little bit.

7. Cookies and diet coke as post-Hil refreshments? I think yes, and well done, American embassy.

8. Post-Hil stop at the PC office, where I got my first Malawian internet! I was able to upload some blogs I had stored onto my phone that I'd drafted, check a little email and facebook, and message the parents, although I didn't get to stay too long. Bummer, but I think I'm actually going to look into getting an internet phone, since using apps on a data plan seems cheaper than calling or texting America. No promises, but I guess by the time I lost this I'll know one way or another.

9. Off to a shopping center for an extremely late lunch; instead of pizza, this time I went for a chicken wrap. Not quite a burrito, but seriously good.

10. The drive home took awhile, with a stop in the middle for the president's motorcade to drive by. What a day full of politicians!

So all in all, today was pretty awesome. I could really deal with knowing my site location, and I'm still gaining confidence at model school (let me tell you, 40 minute periods are an aweful idea, especially if you're me and teach the first period, which includes a 10 or so minute assembly on Mondays). But this week should be good - aside from model school and getting our site placements on Thursday, we have our village appreciation ceremony next Saturday, where we'll be thanking our host families and communities, and I am the training class's representative who gets to read a speech in Chichewa. Hopefully I'll get a complete host family photo! Then on Sunday we move back to the college for the last few weeks of training, and our site  supervisors show up for supervisor training! The next Wednesday we'll travel to our sites for site visit for a few days, meet up with fellow volunteers who live in the area, then back to Dedza for the rest of training! And we're not allowed to leave for site visit without phones, so sometime in the next week and a half I'll get one. Woohoo! It's about time.

All right, this long day pooped me out, so it's time for my 8 pm village bedtime. Hopefully I'll get to post this and talk to some of you soon!

Kuno Ku Malawi!!!!

 Wrote this one awhile ago when I first got here... apparently it didn't publish when I thought it did!

That's Chichewa for "here in Malawi" for all you Chizungu speakers. Yes, after not quite a month in Malawi, I already speak fluent Chichewa!
[and now we pause for 10 minutes for all of your hysterical laughter to subside, since obviously I sound like an idiot trying to speak Chichewa. At least that's what I assume because of the dozens of children in my homestay village who laugh everytime I speak]
So yes, I made it! 14 hours on a plane will apparently get you from New York to South Africa, where if you're lucky, you'll have just enough time for a mad dash across the airport to hop on a plane to Lilongwe! That all was about a month ago now, but it feels much longer. I'm writing this on my phone on July 16, in the hope of saving it and making it to an internet cafe sometime in the near future, but who knows for sure. I figure I can at least add a few things to this draft every few days and update it eventually.
So yes, 3 and a half weeks ago I flew to Africa with the 21 other people who are currently being forced into being my friends, ending up at a college for trainibg where I lived in a hostel/dorm situation for a few days to begin training before being sent off to my homestay. Dedza is a beautiful place, and even though it's currently winter in the coldest region of Malawi, it's not too bad. Those first few days were a shmorgasbord of meeting the majority of the Peace Corps Malawi office, getting shots, starting malaria meds (I'm on mefloquine for those of you who are connoisseurs of malaria prophylaxes), and not appreciating electricity and real toilets as much as I should have. All too soon, we were assigned our permanent language study groups (only 2 groups aren't learning Chichewa, which although one of the official languages of Malawi, is not spoken by the entire population; those groups are learning Chitumbuka and Chilambia, and their members will be heading to the north, while Chichewa speakers will be in central and southern Malawi), and separated into 2 homestay villages.
So hello from Mpalale! My amayi (host mother) would love you to come visit so she can make you nsima. It's weird to not see the 8 trainees living in Katsekaminga every day, but I've grown really close to the Mpalale group, and we see everyone else a couple days a week when we train together. They may have more English speakers and electricity in their village (someone even has a refridgerator!) and be walking distance from a big market, but I really do like  Mpalale. We're walking diatance from the college where we train on hub days as well as several mountains my comrades convince me to climb every weekend.
Remember that hysterical laughter from early? You can continue it now, as you imagine me climbing mountains. I have patented the slide-on-your-butt technique of going downhill steep rocks, rather than "shimmy" as has beeb suggested. Still, the views are beautiful, and it's good to get outside and see a little piece of Malawi.
Some details on homestay life:
I live with an amayi, abambo (father), and 2 brothers, Yosefe (who's 11), and Melodi (who's 8). My abambo is a farmer, like many who live in Mpalale, and I think he mostly grows Irish potatoes. My amayi's extended family lives in the compound next to ours, so I see some number of aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandmothers every day. My family lives in a brick house with a tin roof, while I stay in a separate building that I think is normally used as a storeroom. My room is pretty tiny, with a dirt floor and thatched roof. There's badically only room in it for my mattress (on a reed mat on the floor, covered by my mosquito net), a tiny table with my water filter on it, and all of my crap sitting on the floor next to me. A few of my friends have cement floors or bedframes in their houses, either of which would be awesome for keeping my stuff not so dirty, but oh well. The kitchen is also a separate room from the main house, as are the bafa (bathing room) and chimbudzi (pit latrine, aka the bain of my existence). My family also has a goat house with 6 or so goats, a pig pen with 2 pigs, and 6 dogs (including 2 puppies) who run between our compund and the compound next door. Occasionally chickens also run through the area, but I don't think they belong to us.  I think I live the farthest from the main training house among the trainees, since it takes me 10 or so minutes to walk to that area since I greet a lot of people along the way. Until a week ago that's where I got water, too, but a brand new borehole just opened right near my house! It's especially amazing since now the number of people laughing at me carry water in a bucket on my head is effectively quartered. Score one for team Allison! This morning I even was able to lift my (child-sized) bucket onto my own head and carry it home, with minimal spilling!
[this post now continued a few days later...]
Since I'm sure you're all dying to know what my actual training sessions are like, let me tell you: I have training everyday from 8 am till around 5 pm, minus two half hour tea breaks and an hour and a half lunch break starting at noon, although sessions frequently start or end early or late. We have a few different categories of sessions - language and culture (of which we usually have at least one per day, if not two), technical teacher training, medical sessions (usually a couple per week, accompanied by shots; today the doctor complimented my bruises left over from last week), and various safety/security/well-being. While most trainings take place in my village, once a week we train together with the other village group in one of our villages, and another day each week we train together at the college (our original training site, where we'll return after homestay finishes). We do most of our trainings with staff members primarily based in Lilongwe, like medical and security sessions, when we're altogether.
Since many of the training sessions are mandated by PC HQ in Washington, and others are full of Malawi-specific information we need to know, it varies day by day how interesting I find sessions. The days can be long, but by and large, I'm glad for a detailed training, and I hope it's preparing me well for service. I'm excited to start some more hands on activities, though - especially model school, which we start in a little over a week. For 2 weeks, my fellow trainees and I will be teaching a sort of summer school at the local secondary school for forms 1 and 3, the equivalent of freshmen and juniors. It will be my first time teaching an academic subject in a classroom setting, which I'm both nervous and excited for. Since I'm the only bio teacher in my village, I will be teaching all the classes for both forms, which turns out to be 5 periods of 40 minutes per week. The current teachers left notes on what material they didn't cover this past year as suggestions for what to teach, so it looks like the Form 1s will be learning about vertabrate and invertebrate animals as well as parasitic worms, while Form 3s will get some combination of the circulatory system and reproduction. Both are huge subjects I could easily spend more than 6 class periods on, especially with students for whom English is a foreign language, but there you go.
Other things I'm looking forward to in the near future:
Visiting Camp Sky, a camp put on by education volunteers to motivate bright students and help them prepare for their high school exit exam. I hope to be involved next year!
Finding out my site, which we won't officially know until the end of homestay in a few weeks, but I'm hoping to know sooner. I keep trying to bribe my language trainer, the homestay coordinator, current volunteers who come to help out at training, anyone who works in the office... But I still don't know yet!
Making my homestay brothers talk to me more. They're starting to, especially while we play cards, and they'll dance while the radio is on, but I need more Chichewa to communicate more fluently!
Actually learning how to start a fire and cook a meal over it by myself... Definitely not there yet, but my amayi has asked if I can cook American food, so I want to! I have a feeling that soup (the easiest/most accessable thing, and different from pasta) is not going to be a winner though, since it's so liquidy and there's no nsima involved. But if I get some matza meal in the mail, I feel like my family might like matza balls!
Going back to the college to train with everyone together... I love my homestay family, but it's weird to be separated from half the group, and I like wearing pants in public.
Getting some chitenje fabric and going to a tailor to get dresses or skirts made.
Writing and receiving more letters and packages. It makes my day when I get mail, and I miss everyone at home! I'm working on responding to people who have written.

Real Update Coming Soon...

I have a couple posts saved on my phone for when I'm in Lilongwe in a couple weeks, but for now, my new address (!!!!) is:

Namandanje Parish
Allison Hargreaves
PO Box 98
Ntaja, Malawi
Southern Africa

write me!

A Very TALULAR Christmas in July

Grettings from Mpalale, where it is currently July 28, or, as my comrades and I have deemed it, Christmas in July. Here's the backstory:

We're currently a little more than halfway through training overall, and we only have 2 more weeks of homestay, which will be full of model school. This morning we had our mock LPI, or language profiency interview, on which we need to score at least intermediate-high in order to swear in as volunteers (supposedly, although I've heard if you don't pass during training, you just hire a language tutor at site and retake the test a few months later). Anyhow, stress has been a little high, so a few weeks ago one of my fellow trainees suggested we have Christmas in July this week, since it's almost exactly 5 months away. We arranged a secret santa, but instead of buying each other gifts, we decided to utilize the principles of TALULAR (teaching and learning using locally available resources) and make each other gifts!

Needless to say, I had my normal anxiety from the pressures of being crafty and creative, especially because I drew my friend, Kay, who's in my language class and guessed that I had her within about 5 days. People got pretty creative - lots of us used paper from handouts we received, tape stolen from our trainers' houses, extra string from hanging our malaria nets, even candle wax as an adhesive. I eventually wrote Kay one of my favorite quotes about being successful by Emerson (it seemed especially fitting, as we fret about being good volunteers on the daily), and I made a mosaic-y frame out of little pieces of paper I tore up, colored with markers, and taped together. If I ever get on a computer I can upload a picture, but I forgot to take one on my phone before I gave it to her. Whoops! Don't worry, she loved it.

My gift was awesome - my friend Tall Pat (not to be confused with the other Pat in my village) got me, and he made this amazing mobile with 22 paper cranes that he folded and wrote all the trainees' names on. I can't wait to hang it up in my future home! Currently it's hanging on one of the nails holding up my curtain, next to the gourd Sam and her mom sent me for Sukkot!

All in all, it was a great Christmas, and a much-needed break between mock-LPI Chichewa madness, and model school madness. I think I mentioned model school in my last post (not that it's up yet), and I've been planning for it! I have a pretty good idea of how I hopd the general flow of each class will go, but I still need to do most of my detailed lesson planning. Teachers, you all have my respect! It's a lot of work to get ready for school!

Other snapshots of training:
I think I mentioned a visit to Camp Sky in my last post as well. We went to Lilongwe to visit it last Monday, which ended up being an even better day than I initially anticipated. I was able to sit in on a couple classes, including a bio class, and chat with a bunch of current volunteers I hadn't met yet. They all seem really great, and promised to help try to figure out our sites! I'm dying trying to figure mine out -  I know a bunch of our staff knows and just haven't told us yet. I just want to know!

Anyways, after Camp Sky, we convinced our training director to let us go get PIZZA in Lilongwe. Let me tell you, after over a month of not eating cheese (except once at the college, when we had weird fake cheese of spaghetti), it was possibly the most delicious think I've ever had! Even better - there was a soft serve ice cream counter next to the pizza. Amaaaaazing! Needless to say, I didn't eat any nsima for dinner when I got home.

We also got to run into the Malawian version of Target, which was in the same shopping center, where I found pasta to make for my family! My amayi had been asking me for weeks to make American food, and I was really stressed about what to make, since we don't have a ton at the market and tuck shops here, so I was happy to take the easy way out with pasta. I just made it tonight, and faked some sauce with just onions and tomatoes. It was funny to see a bunch of my extended family members taste testing in the kitchen, and my aunt took a bowl for my grandmother to try, but at dinner everyone else still had nsima in addition to pasta. I'm not convinced they loved it, but they said it was good (just needed salt, which everyone dumps on all their food here), so who knows?

Best news EVER

Today is August 1, for those of you keeping track. Today we got some exciting news: Hillary Clinton will be passing through Malawi this Sunday, on her way from Senegal to South Africa, and all PC volunteers and trainees have been invited to a reception withher and her posse at the ambassador's residence in Lilongwe!

Not quite site announcements, but pretty awesome. We'll be treking into Lilongwe again, probably going somewhere for food afterwards, possibly even finding some internet? You'll all know if that happens because this blog will get posted, along with the two I've already written. People who brought iphones will be attempting to get them unlocked. Who knows what crazy things we could do outside the village!

Added bonus: built in excuse to not go to church. All of us trainees went week 1 of homestay, but most of us haven't gone since, and every week at least 5 members of my extended family ask if I'm going. I've tried explaining that I'm Jewish and pray at a temple, and they say they understand, but then they still ask if I'm going to church, and ask if church in America is the same as church in Malawi. I'm going to need some further Chichewa skills to cross this cultural divide.

Another funny moment: even though everyone here knows who the American president is, not everyone knows about Hillary. But some of my friends' host parents knew, so I thought I'd try to tell my amayi and abambo. Much confusion ensued, with my abambo deciding we were going to see the ambassador. In messy Chichewa I was trying to say, yes the ambassador will be there, but this is someone from the government in America, not the president or vice president, but someone very important (this broke down when I couldn't remember the word for important). At least they understood that I'll be going to Lilongwe on Sunday!