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!

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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