Retirement Plan

I could retire like this... in about 40 years. haha I love sitting on my porch, looking across the lake and seeing the silhouette of Mozambique's mountains bleeding into a pale shade of orange and blue. I'd sit with a good book and watch the orange fade as the mountains blend in with the blue. I had a good bite of chocolate cake yesterday with a sip of my orange Sobo. The roosters would occasionally crow and the chickens cluck in my yard. Sometimes you can hear the pounding of buckets in front of my house and the splash of water filling up the buckets with children and women chatting. As the night falls, the sound of cicadas fill the air and then it's just pure silence except for the humming of my refrigerator. Every morning is just as amazing too: the sunrise surprises me with the same beauty every morning and it's too hard to resist taking pictures. It's always quiet in the morning without the sound of honking cars or rushing vehicles. As I walk on the dirt road to the hospital or somewhere else, I would see women carrying bundles of firewood or a block of things wrapped with a chitenje, or women sitting on the side selling mandazis or bananas. The goats would be busy eating the grass on the side with a leash on their neck tied to a nail in the ground. Everyone who passes me would stare at me and are taken back with a smile when I greet them "Muli uli?" It is just too beautiful here and I feel so blessed to be here.

Like I said, I could retire like this.

Is poor without water?

Sometimes I forget what poverty really looks like. I tried not to take all my comforts at home for granted and tried even harder not to take the water I have for granted, but it's hard. As I walked through the villages and interviewed various people for my work, I realized that asking them "Why don't you use safe water?" involves more than just turning on the water faucet. For some, they have to walk miles and miles to get water - and sometimes their closest water source is the river. Some have told me that the people upland don't have latrines, so they defecate in the river or in the bushes nearby. They know the water is bad, but what can they do? For others, even if they get water from the tap, the water itself is not treated. Over half the people I interviewed said they don't boil or treat their water in any way because they lack the money or it's just plain laziness, they said. As much as I want to tell them that this simple task of treating their water can reduce diarrhea incidences by as much as half, I knew that most of them could not afford this method. And so the search continues - many people all over the world continue to seek solutions to resolve this issue. But the good news is that now at least 10 villages will now have access to over 60 water taps where at least the water is not contaminated by feces.

Empanadas

Yesterday I gave my cook a recipe for making tortillas and he ended up making empanadas with the intention of making meat pies! Guess what I’ll be eating the next few days.

I also learned that my counterpart has 13 children and 17 grandchildren. His youngest son is the same age as one of his grandchildren. One of my counterparts has 8 children - 6 boys and 2 girls. "It means you're healthy and powerful," he said, but of course it meant that he had some difficulty providing for his family for awhile. Fortunately, the government has recently started promoting family planning recently within the last few years.

Anyway, hopefully the pictures were uploaded! (Sorry for all the delays but the internet's operating at 54 mbps!)

Some more history on Livingstonia: History of Livingstonia

Livingstonia

(This is the sunrise I see every morning over Lake Malawi)

Welcome to Livingstonia! This mission was named after David Livingstone, a famous missionary, where I can see the beautiful Lake Malawi that Livingstone “found” during his ambitious Zambezi expedition.

My current internship involves the evaluation of a water and sanitation health education grant in 10 villages here. Since diarrhea is the primary cause of death for children under five, water and sanitation are the primary entry points for combating diarrhea and my role is to assess whether the grant’s activities are achieving improved knowledge and behavioral changes in water, sanitation, and hygiene.

Rotary Club and Water for People’s presence here are strong, as they have worked tirelessly to provide a safe water system for the mission and the surrounding villages. The 100+-year-old gravity-fed water system was failing, so Rotary Club stepped in and replaced it with a safer system. With the new system, 10 villages can now have access to over 60 water points. Despite this amazing feat, the challenges here include the battle over community’s ownership of the water system versus azungus’ “responsibility” of the water system, and the privatization of water (whether water should be free or paid for). For 100+ years, the community members had free water and failed to see the necessity of paying for their water, but the Water Development Officer is pushing the community to take ownership of their water system and not rely on the azungus to always provide and take care of the Malawians’ needs.

As for me, I love being back in Malawi. I forget how kind and hospitable the “warm heart of Africa” is. People love that I can speak Chichewa and wear a chitenje like a real Malawian would. I can’t wait to see my friends and family in the south in 5 weeks!

Although the northern and southern regions are similar in terms of cuisine and some aspects of culture, there are some stark differences. The language is slightly different and I can somewhat understand what people are saying because of subtle hints of Chichewa. The northerners are more educated, because they value education more. In fact, universities have higher rates of students from the north than other regions, which is becoming so much of a problem that they’re currently debating passing a quota on admittances of students from the north. It seems that people are also not as poor. Because of the climate and the less dense population, they struggle less with droughts and food insecurity, so malnutrition is less of a concern, unlike Chiradzulu, my old site, which had one of the highest malnutrition rates in Malawi. I guess people are not as poor in the north (relatively within Malawi), so I don’t have as many people begging me for money or demanding the clothes I wear or the things I own. People here treat me nicer too. I don’t know if it’s because I’m coming here in a different context (“I’m a poor volunteer” versus “I’m an aspiring graduate student”), but the northerners treat me with more respect and don’t bother me as much. I always felt like an outsider at my old site, but I think they get so many foreigners here (missionaries, tourists, etc.) that they’re used to people like me.

Even though I look young to them (one man said “early 20’s” hah!), they know that I’m a graduate student and that somehow leverages my status and garners their respect. One of my counterparts told his wife that “there’s a little girl staying in that house and she can’t be more than 20 years” and pondered how old I must’ve been “as a little girl” when I graduated from college. When I told him my real age, he asked if I was serious (I said “yes”) and then told me I was old. (He said I look young because I have “good hygiene” and I’m not married, because, yes, marriage will suck the life out of a woman, he admitted.)

Oh, how I’ve missed you Malawi. It’s good to be home again. J

Zabo Malawi!

And I'm back in Malawi! I'm doing a two-month internship in Livingstonia, Malawi. I went from living at the home of the revolutionary fighter, Chilembwe, for two years, and now I'm living at the home of the infamous African missionary, David Livingstone.

Day one:
I was sitting at the airport contemplating if I should carry my 50 pounds worth of luggages for 5K and wave down a minibus or pay $25 for a taxi or…. I thought I’d ask the Pakistani man sitting next to me what he thought. Long story short, he was a kind man who offered me a free ride and wanted to marry me so I can run his five container and ice block factories in Malawi and Mozambique despite the fact that he has a wife and family in Pakistan. I almost accepted, only because we got so lost looking for the hostel and I would not have survived with 50 pounds of luggages! The first food I ate in Malawi? CHIPPIES! (Fresh potatoes fried in oil. Yum!)

Day two:
Great day of visiting old Peace Corps staff and old friend at African Bible College! I ran into a man with blood all over his shirt and he kept saying, “My wife, she not ok, she not ok.” I asked him what happened and he couldn’t explain. As he walked away, he had a big bandage on the back of his head. I could only wonder.
Some days later:
I'm finally up at Livingstonia after spending two days in Lilongwe, one day of traveling up to Mzuzu, two nights in Mzuzu, and one morning of traveling up to Livingstonia. We trudged through 15 k of dirt road in a Land Cruiser while the brakes were being held together by some rubber and broke at some point during our journey. Now I'm sitting up here at Livingstonia Plateau with a wonderful view of Lake Malawi and Mozambique as the backdrop. I’m living the bwana life with a nice house with three bedrooms, hot showers, running water, my own cook, a night watchman, and nicer things that I’d never owned in my own life before. Plus I have internet through a USB and the university recently just got internet. This is no longer Peace Corps and it feels weird. Too weird. Pictures to come!