Seasons greetings all!
I hope everyone is doing well and enjoying the holdiay season in their own way. I thought I would send a quick update about life so far in Kalumbu Malawi!
With training over and done it feels like I am actually working now but still enjoying everything about life in Africa. Swearing in was wonderful if not sad since I had to say goodbyt to my host family since I won't see them for awhile.
I moved to my house in Kalumbu about 2 weeks ago and have been spending a lot of time setting up my home, classes, and life. I have really wonderful neighbors and the fellow teachers (there's only 5 teachers btw) are fabulous. They're all very motivated and work exceptionally hard which is really wonderful to see. With so few teachers, so many students, and the new school calender that was only recently released (making this school year from from Dec-Aug!) there are plenty of challeneges that we face everyday but having a really hard working staff makes it far more bearable.
My classes on the other hand have been incredibly challenging. There are 130 students so-far in my form 2 class and more come everyday there re no spaces for us to walk in the classroom and we have had to remove the desks to make room for the students. It is also incredibly challenging to have students who are learning english as a second language, many of whom really don't know enough to understand anything I am saying in a room with so many other stuents. Some days I feel like I am just wasting my breathe but get motivated by a student who is really understanding. My other classes are really great and a much more managable size. I am also the form teacher for form 3 which I'm sure will pose all sorts of other challenges and inspiration.
In other news I have been traveling this week to visit friends for Christmas. We were given 3 days of special leave (since we're not meant to leave site for the first three months) to visit one another for the holiday which is very much appreciated. I traveled on the worst hitch to Lilongwe (we had a slowly deflating tire that the driver tried to inflate with a bike pump every few km). It took a few hours to go the 30km to the city where I had to sit in the back of a pickup with 16 new friends. Arriving in Llw I had to make the long trek to the post office where I was ecstatic to find a few wonderful although heavy packages that went on top of my head for the rest of the 5 hour trip! We arrived Thursday to Jesi's house which was wonderful. We had quite the evening trying to cook smoe pasta (much more difficult than we thought since none of us are used to cooking for 12 over an open fire and after quite a bit of celebrating tyhe holiday...) After cooking for hours we had some burnt spaggheti which formed a giant ball with "alfredo" type sauce. It wasn't exactly edible but our standards have certainly lowered after the wine and being in Malawi. Also the adventure of walking 12k to pick up the last 2 travellers in the middle of the night made us more fammished. All in all x-mas eve was hilarious and wonderful.
Yesterday we headed to a nice beach lodge for breakfast and lunch. Should have been an easy walk up to the road but involved getting absolutely drenched, hitching in the back of a pickup (ie second shower of the day) and then walking another 4k to the lodge. We were all soaked when we arrived but throughout our 5 hours there and 2 meals we dried out. After more adventure getting home on the back of a flat bed truck we were all exhausted. Christmas dinner was some delicous guac homemade tortillas and chilli followed by a fun white-elephant gift exchange. More details of our crazy Christmas can be found on Elisabeth's blog (http://www.elisabethbenoit.blogspot.com/). She has included a great timeline of the madness that should help paint a picture of our wonderful weekend.
I am heading back to site soon where I have a week off from school for the holiday which will be nice. I will use the time to explore, bake bread, do laundry, and lesson plan! Hope all is well with everyone back home. Please continue sending letter's. They're really wonderful and I love hearing what everyone is up to at home!
Much love from Africa!
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Happy Thanksgiving from Malawi!
Greetings from Malawi! I hope that you are all well with you. It seems like time is just flying since I was back in California!
I have been in Malawi for about 2 months now and just finished up my time at home stay. I was staying with a really wonderful family in the village of Mpalale. My host family consisted of my amayi (mom), a five-year-old girl and a two-year-old boy. I met my abambo (father) for the first time when I had a few days left at home stay because he works far away from the village. The culture here is matrilineal so most of my amayi’s family lived very close so I also spent a lot of time with my amayi’s sister and her children a 7-year-old girl and a two-year-old girl. They were a very welcoming family and I learned a lot about culture and life in Malawi. The purpose of home stay is for us to learn how to live without electricity, going to the boar hole for water, cooking over an open fire, and washing our clothes in buckets. I also enjoyed teaching the children in my family some English and by the time I left they were able to tell their name, where they lived, and other random words in English. It was a lot of fun playing with the baby who was very scared of me when I first arrived but cried a lot when I left. When I went back to the village a week after moving out my amayi told me that for the first few days after I left he would stand on my porch yelling "Ode!" which is the Malawi form of knocking on the door.
The 20 trainees were spilt amongst three villages so we had some company in the village but spent most of our time with our families. Our first day in the village, which we had been warned was going to be awkward ended up being rather fun because there was a wedding in the village. The 7 of us Americans quickly found one another in the sea of African faces and spent the afternoon observing the festivities and unfortunately making babies cry. Most of the children were very afraid of our light skin since most of them had never seen white people. Thinking back to that first day makes me wonder what I could have talked to my host family about since my Chichewa vocabulary did not extend far beyond “my name is Jaimie” and general greetings. When we first went to the village we had only been in the country for 6 days and had only had 3 days of language class...ie we didn't know anything! Luckily by the time I moved out of my host family’s home my Chichewa was much more extensive and I could communicate about my opinions, daily activities, and my hopes for the future.
We also spent our time in home-stay teaching at the Community Day Secondary School (CDSS) in the village. The secondary school system here has many levels which students test into after Standard 8 (8th grade). The brightest students attend conventional government schools or boarding schools, while the students who performed poorly attend the CDSS. Other students who do especially poorly on the exam are not allowed to go to any of the subsidized government schools. There are options for students to continue their education even if they did poorly but it requires them to pay much higher fees. The CDSSes charge about MK1500 per term (about $10) and there are three terms per year. For most families in the village this is a lot of money. Unfortunately for the families that are willing to sacrifice a lot to send their children to school many of the students at the CDSSes do not pass their form 2 exams and cannot continue with school. Those who miraculously do pass face a even more difficult exam at the end of form 4. It is very sad but I hope that I will be able to help some of the students. I know I will have to work very hard outside of the school day since it is so short and the school calendar has just been shortened.
For the next two years I will be living in the village of Kalumbu just south of Lilongwe working at Kalumbu CDSS as a math and science teacher. We have agreed that I will teach three forms (grades) of math, one form of physical science (chemistry and physics in one) and lead the girls club. With only 7 teachers for the 160 periods/week and 250 students it is difficult to say no when I am asked to take on a lot but I know I will be a more effective volunteer if I am not completely stressed! It is shaping up to be a full schedule with just those 4 classes but I think it will be nice to be busy and useful.
This past week I have been at my new home in Kalumbu where I met Jeanine the volunteer I will be replacing. She has been there for two years teaching Math and Biology. She left after spending one day with me getting me acquainted and I was left to fend for myself cooking-wise and drawing water. It seems like a very safe village and everyone has been very welcoming. It has been difficult for the children in the village to distinguish our names as Jeanine and Jaimie are very similar to non-English speakers. I think they will eventually learn but it will be challanging. However I prefer being called Jeanine more than "azungu" which means both white person and rich person. I am looking forward to continuing a lot of the work that she did with the girls club as well as tutoring adults who would like to retake their exams, but hope to start some new projects that will be helpful for the sommunity.
Some funny experiences during my visit included a very scary bike-taxi ride from the main road into the village. The trip is about 30 minutes but it seems much longer when you are sitting side-saddle on the rack of a stranger's bike with your luggage on your lap and nothing to hold onto. Since the road is very hilly there are long stretches that you must walk since it is too difficult to ride. Very interesting indeed. Alsdo interesting was a 2 hour bike ride on the back of my headmasters bike to the big town near us. He wasn't as sure of himself on the bike as the "professional" bike taxi drivers and I have the bruises to prove it. Leaving Kalumbu today I hitched a ride with a truck that was taking empty soda bottles back to Lilongwe. It was much nicer than the cramped mini-busses but also a little scarier since you are simply sitting in the back of a truck as it flies down the freeway. Regardless I arrived safely in Lilongwe. Some fellow trainees and I enjoyed a delicious thanksgiving lunch of burgers, fries, and a coke (heavenly after months of porridge and rice). We head back to Lilongwe for "Thanksgiving" on Saturday at the US Ambassadors house and then will finish up training!
There are about 3 weeks left of training, for which I am somewhat glad and somewhat anxious about. It has been difficult having my schedule made by someone else, but it will also be very sad to see so little of my friends I have made here. After Thanksgiving at the Ambassadors, we will travel to various places around the country again for our language intensive week (really only a few days). We will be with our small language groups at various villages where we will have language class all day. We have been working on presentations about HIV/AIDs in Malawi in Chichewa that we will share with the community members as part of our obligation to educate Malawians about the disease while we are working on our language. We are required to be at a language level of intermediate high. We had a mock language interview a few weeks ago and I did well. I hope that my break from living in the village will not hinder my language skills. It is difficult when people assume you either know nothing of the language or that you are fluent and ramble at incredible speeds.
Other funny happenings that you might find ammusing include me getting hit by a cow one evening. I was standing by the kitchen hut at home-stay chatting with my amayi while the young boys unloaded the potatoes that they had farmed from the ox-cart. The cows were minding their own business when I got home but as soon as I looked away from them to talk to my amayi one of the rammed into my leg knocking me over. It was quite painful but other than a bruised quad I was okay. I didn't think it was funny since it hurt so badly until I told the story to a friend and realized how ridiculous getting hit by a cow sounds. Also when I was at one of my many meetings in Kalumbu where I was introduced to various community groups one of the men stood to say that I was "mostly welcome" in Kalumbu. I never noticed how much a slight change in a word can change the meaning so much! Another scary but funny event was when we were traveling to our sites I was sitting in the back row of the very crowded mini-bus (luckily no chickens on that one) and my luggage was in the trunk area behind me. After stopping to load more people in, the conductor did not close the trunk all the way and as we drove off the luggage went flying out the car. Surprisingly my reflexes were quick enough to grab the strap of my bag but it was very scary!
Regardless of the challenges I am enjoying my time here immensely and hope the next two years will pass as smoothly as the past two months have . The bugs and heat don't bother me much anymore and I am managing with my cold bucket baths and outdoor restroom! I know I will have big challaneges once I am all moved into my site and teaching full time but know I can manage! If you haven't already, please send me your addresses as snail mail is the most available form of communication for me. Getting letters is a wonderful thing when your half way accross the world! :)
All my best!
I have been in Malawi for about 2 months now and just finished up my time at home stay. I was staying with a really wonderful family in the village of Mpalale. My host family consisted of my amayi (mom), a five-year-old girl and a two-year-old boy. I met my abambo (father) for the first time when I had a few days left at home stay because he works far away from the village. The culture here is matrilineal so most of my amayi’s family lived very close so I also spent a lot of time with my amayi’s sister and her children a 7-year-old girl and a two-year-old girl. They were a very welcoming family and I learned a lot about culture and life in Malawi. The purpose of home stay is for us to learn how to live without electricity, going to the boar hole for water, cooking over an open fire, and washing our clothes in buckets. I also enjoyed teaching the children in my family some English and by the time I left they were able to tell their name, where they lived, and other random words in English. It was a lot of fun playing with the baby who was very scared of me when I first arrived but cried a lot when I left. When I went back to the village a week after moving out my amayi told me that for the first few days after I left he would stand on my porch yelling "Ode!" which is the Malawi form of knocking on the door.
The 20 trainees were spilt amongst three villages so we had some company in the village but spent most of our time with our families. Our first day in the village, which we had been warned was going to be awkward ended up being rather fun because there was a wedding in the village. The 7 of us Americans quickly found one another in the sea of African faces and spent the afternoon observing the festivities and unfortunately making babies cry. Most of the children were very afraid of our light skin since most of them had never seen white people. Thinking back to that first day makes me wonder what I could have talked to my host family about since my Chichewa vocabulary did not extend far beyond “my name is Jaimie” and general greetings. When we first went to the village we had only been in the country for 6 days and had only had 3 days of language class...ie we didn't know anything! Luckily by the time I moved out of my host family’s home my Chichewa was much more extensive and I could communicate about my opinions, daily activities, and my hopes for the future.
We also spent our time in home-stay teaching at the Community Day Secondary School (CDSS) in the village. The secondary school system here has many levels which students test into after Standard 8 (8th grade). The brightest students attend conventional government schools or boarding schools, while the students who performed poorly attend the CDSS. Other students who do especially poorly on the exam are not allowed to go to any of the subsidized government schools. There are options for students to continue their education even if they did poorly but it requires them to pay much higher fees. The CDSSes charge about MK1500 per term (about $10) and there are three terms per year. For most families in the village this is a lot of money. Unfortunately for the families that are willing to sacrifice a lot to send their children to school many of the students at the CDSSes do not pass their form 2 exams and cannot continue with school. Those who miraculously do pass face a even more difficult exam at the end of form 4. It is very sad but I hope that I will be able to help some of the students. I know I will have to work very hard outside of the school day since it is so short and the school calendar has just been shortened.
For the next two years I will be living in the village of Kalumbu just south of Lilongwe working at Kalumbu CDSS as a math and science teacher. We have agreed that I will teach three forms (grades) of math, one form of physical science (chemistry and physics in one) and lead the girls club. With only 7 teachers for the 160 periods/week and 250 students it is difficult to say no when I am asked to take on a lot but I know I will be a more effective volunteer if I am not completely stressed! It is shaping up to be a full schedule with just those 4 classes but I think it will be nice to be busy and useful.
This past week I have been at my new home in Kalumbu where I met Jeanine the volunteer I will be replacing. She has been there for two years teaching Math and Biology. She left after spending one day with me getting me acquainted and I was left to fend for myself cooking-wise and drawing water. It seems like a very safe village and everyone has been very welcoming. It has been difficult for the children in the village to distinguish our names as Jeanine and Jaimie are very similar to non-English speakers. I think they will eventually learn but it will be challanging. However I prefer being called Jeanine more than "azungu" which means both white person and rich person. I am looking forward to continuing a lot of the work that she did with the girls club as well as tutoring adults who would like to retake their exams, but hope to start some new projects that will be helpful for the sommunity.
Some funny experiences during my visit included a very scary bike-taxi ride from the main road into the village. The trip is about 30 minutes but it seems much longer when you are sitting side-saddle on the rack of a stranger's bike with your luggage on your lap and nothing to hold onto. Since the road is very hilly there are long stretches that you must walk since it is too difficult to ride. Very interesting indeed. Alsdo interesting was a 2 hour bike ride on the back of my headmasters bike to the big town near us. He wasn't as sure of himself on the bike as the "professional" bike taxi drivers and I have the bruises to prove it. Leaving Kalumbu today I hitched a ride with a truck that was taking empty soda bottles back to Lilongwe. It was much nicer than the cramped mini-busses but also a little scarier since you are simply sitting in the back of a truck as it flies down the freeway. Regardless I arrived safely in Lilongwe. Some fellow trainees and I enjoyed a delicious thanksgiving lunch of burgers, fries, and a coke (heavenly after months of porridge and rice). We head back to Lilongwe for "Thanksgiving" on Saturday at the US Ambassadors house and then will finish up training!
There are about 3 weeks left of training, for which I am somewhat glad and somewhat anxious about. It has been difficult having my schedule made by someone else, but it will also be very sad to see so little of my friends I have made here. After Thanksgiving at the Ambassadors, we will travel to various places around the country again for our language intensive week (really only a few days). We will be with our small language groups at various villages where we will have language class all day. We have been working on presentations about HIV/AIDs in Malawi in Chichewa that we will share with the community members as part of our obligation to educate Malawians about the disease while we are working on our language. We are required to be at a language level of intermediate high. We had a mock language interview a few weeks ago and I did well. I hope that my break from living in the village will not hinder my language skills. It is difficult when people assume you either know nothing of the language or that you are fluent and ramble at incredible speeds.
Other funny happenings that you might find ammusing include me getting hit by a cow one evening. I was standing by the kitchen hut at home-stay chatting with my amayi while the young boys unloaded the potatoes that they had farmed from the ox-cart. The cows were minding their own business when I got home but as soon as I looked away from them to talk to my amayi one of the rammed into my leg knocking me over. It was quite painful but other than a bruised quad I was okay. I didn't think it was funny since it hurt so badly until I told the story to a friend and realized how ridiculous getting hit by a cow sounds. Also when I was at one of my many meetings in Kalumbu where I was introduced to various community groups one of the men stood to say that I was "mostly welcome" in Kalumbu. I never noticed how much a slight change in a word can change the meaning so much! Another scary but funny event was when we were traveling to our sites I was sitting in the back row of the very crowded mini-bus (luckily no chickens on that one) and my luggage was in the trunk area behind me. After stopping to load more people in, the conductor did not close the trunk all the way and as we drove off the luggage went flying out the car. Surprisingly my reflexes were quick enough to grab the strap of my bag but it was very scary!
Regardless of the challenges I am enjoying my time here immensely and hope the next two years will pass as smoothly as the past two months have . The bugs and heat don't bother me much anymore and I am managing with my cold bucket baths and outdoor restroom! I know I will have big challaneges once I am all moved into my site and teaching full time but know I can manage! If you haven't already, please send me your addresses as snail mail is the most available form of communication for me. Getting letters is a wonderful thing when your half way accross the world! :)
All my best!
Thursday, September 24, 2009
In Philly, Off to Malawi
Pardon my strange expression in the airport picture... I had a lot going on!
Well I arrived safely in Philly. Such a relief to have gotten my bag under the weight limit and be done with my goodbyes for a little while. It was certainly sad to say goodbye to so many people back home, but wonderful to be meeting new people and starting this new adventure!
Anyways I will be in touch when I can. But remember "No news is good news!"
I love you all and will miss you!
Friday, September 18, 2009
Packing, more packing, and care package requests
So with less than a week now the time is really winding down! The things that have been on my mind are...
Ugh packing.... what a challenge! I think I have it all sorted now, but need to take out some nonessentials so I am not quite SO close to the weight limit!
Internet... I have been assured in no uncertain terms I will not have Internet until late November at the very earliest (no surprise there). So snail mail please please please! Heck start sending you letters now so they arrive a few weeks after I arrive!
-Pictures!
-Letters filling me in on you life!
-Nutrition bars (Luna, Cliff, etc)
-Water flavoring packets
-Easy Mac
-New music (country, pop, etc)
-Books (novels, memoirs, anything but history!)
-Magazines (Popular Science, Scientific American, Newsweek, Time, etc)
-Synopsis of my fave TV shows (Grey's, HIMYM, Greek, etc)
-Candy (Hot tamales, M&Ms, etc)
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Leaving in a month...
So here we go! My first blog post and hopefully the least interesting of those to come...
It seems like just yesterday I was starting the Peace Corp application but in reality it was over a year ago!
For those interested... I started applying in July, submitted my app, recommendations and interviewed in September, was nominated in October, dental clearance in Dec, medical clearance in Jan, invited on March 26, and leaving Sept 23! Phew! Somehow it is only a month away from departure time... time to pack, prepare, and say my goodbyes!
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