November in Malawi

1 November 2008

So, I’ve been a bit behind in these updates…my journal is in the same state of neglect. The past weeks have been characteristically rollercoaster-ish – but more extreme than usual.

I guess, in short, I’ve been feeling like a shitty volunteer. So I became a bit of a hermit – I isolated myself; from my neighbors, my fellow teachers, my students and the kids around my house. But as is the case with these things – that just made me feel worse. Part of it, I think, is Peace Corps pressure on us to have what they call ‘secondary projects’. And I haven’t started any outside of teaching. I teach math and biology at the secondary school which amounts to about 25 periods a week…and then twice a week I teach math and biology to teachers and community members that want to rewrite their exams in an attempt to move up in their career. And of course there is the toil of everyday life: fetching water, doing laundry, cooking…and so on. But I don’t have a knitting group, or school clubs, or peanut butter project. I haven’t dug any wells or built any bridges. The closest I’ve come to the elusive ‘secondary project’ has been this electricity endeavor. So, I’ve just been feeling useless and purposeless these past few weeks – and holing up in my house wasn’t helping.

Then this thing with the school committee constitution happened. The grant proposal I’m working on requires that I explain how the school committee constitution will ensure that its oversight is thorough. But the man that apparently was in possession of the paper lived in another village. So Madame Keller climbed on her bicycle in order to retrieve it. The first day she was foiled because Mr. Chimtunga was in the field. So, she mounted her bike a second day…managing to get caught in the seasons first rain along the way. Getting there was hilarious…I was welcomed by Mr. Chimtunga and his wife and then proceeded to meet his entire family. I meet sisters, aunts, grandchildren, ancient parents and grandparents…and they gave me nkwani [bean leaves] and 4 guinea fowl eggs since I couldn’t eat dinner with them. The best part was, when he left to go bathe [I will never understand the Malawian idea of bathing before ‘escorting’ someone on bike], and I was left with fifteen of his various female relatives and their children and we were just chatting. They thought it was the greatest thing that I found their house at all [miracle of miracles it seems that I can ask for and interpret directions]. That was good for my soul and reaffirmed my faith in my Chichewa speaking ability [which has been lacking recently]. I think it’s that the more I learn the more afraid I am of making mistakes…whereas at first I didn’t even realize that I was making mistakes, now I notice them all the time and that makes me self conscious about it. But these encounters [like getting held hostage by a Malawian family to chat for three hours] have gotten me back out of my house…so I am hopeful!

In other good news, I’ve learned how to use the schools ancient duplicating machine…and am now permanently stained black up to my elbows thanks to the rather inky process. But now, if ever our finicky copy machines in the states decide to revolt, there will be at least one American capable of making copies without electricity. See, I am learning practical skills here!

15 November 2008

As we’re doing CampSky I’m oddly reminded of SHARE, the Salvation Army summer day camp I worked at during high school and college. Of course the kids are completely different, the setting is entirely different and the things we are teaching are far beyond SHARE, but the meetings, student issues, activities, volunteer interactions – are all reminiscent. And it’s been going wonderfully well – the first day was remarkably smooth – considering it was our first day, the American Ambassador decided it would be an ideal day to visit AND the new teaching volunteer trainees came to observe how we work. So, we had 98 kids, 25 extra volunteers, and a public official…and it all went off without a hitch. Of course, the nsima was a bit runny, we were low on greens and there were room complications with some of the mosquito nets…but I had expected far worse.

Teaching here has been glorious! To have a class of 20 students [when I’m used to having anywhere from 45 to 90] is such a lovely change. I already know all the students names [after 2 days] and can actually address individual student confusion in class as we work through problems. And on top of only having few students, those students are the brightest in all of their respective schools, which makes teaching them far more enjoyable. It’s also great to see the kids get excited about their elective classes. We decided to do a ‘track’ program for the camp this year. Each student is in a track; either business, health sciences, fine arts or environment and each of those tracks has specific elective classes. For example health has parasitology, natural medicine, nutrition, and life skills; environment has wildlife, composting, kitchen gardens, papermaking; business has economics, computer classes and they run a small tuck shop where students and volunteers can buy biscuits, fruit, sodas; and the fine art kids get creative writing, knitting, jewelry making, and ballroom dancing. I taught a papermaking class to the environment kids earlier this week and we had a blast. Part of the class we split them in two: one group went o a ‘nature walk’ to find fibres, leaves and flowers for their paper and the other group stayed inside to learn some origami – which was so fun! The hardest part was getting the kids to actually fold the paper ON the desk for clean creases…they’re so used to not having desks that they tried to fold their butterflies in the air. I have the fine arts kids for math class everyday and in class yesterday I was thrilled to see students become leaders, explaining a difficult assignment to their fellow students, IN ENGLISH! I felt proud watching them grow so confident in their math skills.

So that’s what I’m up to for the next week. We have one more week of CampSky…and today all the kids are at Liwonde National Park looking at animals for today…so we volunteers that didn’t have room on the bus get a day off. I’m heading into town [to post this] and buy some fruit and then heading up the Zomba Plateau to do some hiking. I hope that ya’ll are well and hope to hear some news from you soon!