In Food Coma

FOOD!

Food was pretty awesome! I only ate half my plate (dude, I gotta eat more) and half my desserts. What a bummer. There was a whole pig laid out on a platter but I didn't get to take a picture. Sorry. The day at the ambassador's was pretty awesome. The nicest house in all of Malawi... and probably one I'll never own even in the states. Anyway, I played some pool (I sucked as usual), grubbed, and played some rough n tumble. OMG. These boys are freakin huge... 6 feet tall, 200-pounders, larger-than-average homo sapiens. One of my teammates told me, "Just stand there and look cute. They won't hit you cuz, you know, you're small." Dude, he was so wrong. These guys were like bodyslamming me! Anyway, but it was still good to let out some energy... especially after all that grubbing.

Ambassador's House

Here are some pictures of the beautiful house that I'll never own in this lifetime.

-The chair on the left is a Chief Chair.

-There's a beautiful grand piano that I so love, a volunteer playing his violin, and some volunteers dancing.

:)

Folks

Anyway, I'm in a picture with probably the cutest baby in all of Malawi (he's my neighbor)... Too bad you can't actually see his face! haha He's staring at me because he thinks I'm an alien. Well, now he doesn't. haha The women keep trying to get me to breastfeed him. No way jose.

(I'm standing in the assembly hall where the president comes every year to celebrate Chilembwe holiday. My house is right behind. You can probably even see my papaya tree.)

My site periodically receives visitors from the states, because sponsors from the National Baptist Convention want to assist the mission. The most recent were 3 men from Chicago: a retired English professor, a preacher, and a... I'm not quite sure what he was. (I think they're from Alpine Church... apparently the pastor of their church is Barack Obama's spiritual advisor.) The preacher was my age and he wanted American food so bad, so he tipped the driver to take us and my site mate to the nicest restaurant in town for a good ol' American meal. He's a funny guy. He said that his grandfather (a former congressman) never looked at the menu, so when we arrived at the restaurant, he asked to talk to the chef and encouraged him to cook real American food. haha (I captured the moment because I thought it was so funny.) The meal was pretty sweet. The best and probably only burger I'll have in Malawi. :P

These are my site mates (other Peace Corps Volunteers). Eric (on the right) is an Education volunteer who lives 5 minutes from my house. He always makes me cook the chickens. Linda (on the left) is another health volunteer from my group. The one in the middle... that's Mini-Me. :P Look below for another picture.

We were a little traumatized.

Mua Mission

During training, we went to a cultural museum called Mua Mission. It was gorgeous, probably the most beautiful places I've seen in Malawi. I was absolutely blessed to learn some historical and cultural issues... because unfortunately, most Malawians (the younger generations at least) don't really know the culture and history of Malawi anymore. Now I'm on a quest to find an elder and learn as much as I can to preserve as much history about Malawi as I can.

OK, that's it for today! I'll come back again tomorrow! I'll be in town until Monday...

Happy Thanksgiving!

... from a place where we don't celebrate Thanksgiving. What Malawian has heard of Puritans?






Anyhoo, all the volunteers cooked up a storm last night and I am SO ready to grub a dub dub! (Since we're on a volunteer's budget, we're not really paying for the food of course.) But it ain't the same without the Boston Market ham!




Oh Malawi...

at the border of Mozambique

This is my new Atomic Black! Say bye to my Atomic Blue (Honda Civic '06) and hi to my new Atomic Black (Trekker)!





I've ridden it about.... 3 times? haha

I'll be riding it more often now since I'm going into the villages and district more often.

(eachpicture took 5 minutes to upload... I'm gonna be stuck here forever)





It's true when they say that distance makes the heart grow fonder... Oh, watermelons, peaches, grapes, oranges, honey dews, strawberries, blueberries, blackberries... how I miss you so!


OK, I'll be back again tomorrow! :P

Pictures!! And World AIDS Day...

Yay! Pictures can be uploaded! But only when I'm at the Peace Corps office where there's faster internet speed...

My host family... aren't they beautiful? :) My grandmother with 17-year-old Dorophy, 14-year-old Chisomo, 9-year-old Marisela, and the baby niece.

This one is the newly named "Elaine" or "Ellen". hehe Ain't she a beaut? :)

The albino chicken I helped kill and eat. It was delicious. :P I'll try to post the video when I can... will probably have to do it from the U.S. via my brother.

This is my site... Providence Industrial Mission (PIM), the home of the revolutionary fighter, Chilembwe. I'm trying to figure out which village he's actually from. This is the PIM Church he built... The original one was destroyed but some of the remains lay maybe 100 meters away. I'll try to post a picture of my house next time... or should I say "half house"?

Last picture for the day... It took me over an hour to upload these pictures and send my emails. Hopefully I'll have more time this week to upload more pictures.

He was my host nephew... Lumen... He's a cute lil' brat! :D

Anyway, o.k., I will finally talk about what I’ve been working on. For the last few months, I didn’t really know what I was gonna do. But now I have an action plan. For the next few months, I’ll be working on nutrition programs for children, increasing the distribution of immunization to Under-5 children and mothers, planning with OxFam (a UK aid agency) on health and environmental programs, establishing links between youth groups and PSI/Malawi (Population Services International). The youth group I’m working with (comprising of 18 villages from OxFam’s catchment area) are preparing a song, a drama, and a traditional dance for Chiradzulu’s opening ceremony for World AIDS Day (December 1). This year’s theme is leadership… I honestly believe that these youths are the leaders of our future, because they serve as role models to the kids and as comforters to their parents (or grandparents for those who’ve lost their parents to HIV/AIDS).

So, in light of World AIDS Day, I’d like to dedicate the rest of this post to HIV/AIDS. Sometimes, we get so caught up with our own lives that we forget the impact that HIV/AIDS can have on people. I start to lose sight of its reality when I get used to the people who travel up to 2 hours to come to my health center for ARVs twice a week.

But then I’m reminded by the skin thrashes… the swollen ankles… the weight loss… persistent coughs (usually TB)… just the overall weakening of the body and even their soul sometimes…

Nothing can sober you even more when you realize that among the people milling about waiting for the routine check-ups and ARVs are actually your own co-workers and people from your community.

And when I see the kids and the babies, I think that sometimes life’s just not fair. What if they don’t grow up to see their own children grow old? What if they die before their parents would? I can’t imagine the guilt the parents feel… Sometimes it might take just one act of infidelity to infect the whole family.

Here’s the reality: 14% of Malawians are HIV positive, but I think realistically, the rate is higher… maybe even closer to 30%. I say this because every single village I went to are dealing with deaths, loss of production, orphans, youth drop-outs to provide for their families, etc. My district probably has one of the highest HIV rates in all of Malawi (20-something% compared to Malawi’s overall 14% rate). During the National Testing and Counseling Week, my district rated the second highest of HIV positives, most likely due to the close proximity to town where girls can prostitute themselves, the high population of the villages that allows for infidelity, and I think it’s one of the poorest districts since people often commute to town to sell their crops leaving our area at a low development rate (also has a problem with the highest malnutrition rates). Many of the youths here face the pressure of preserving their “cultural traditions”, such as sharing the same blade for circumcision during initiation rites, polygamy, wife inheritance, “hyena” death cleansing (a widow is to “cleanse” of her grief by having sex with a man the night of her husband’s death), fisi (a woman is to “cleanse” herself by having sex after she gives birth), having sex with as many men or women to achieve “adulthood”, etc. So, you can see my work is cut out for me.

But I just gotta take one step at a time right? Sometimes I think it’s so hard to think that anything I do can make any kind of impact… but who am I to think that anything I do can make an impact? Come December 1, I’m going to remember why I’m here and what I’m here to do and most importantly… that none of it’s for me.

Rats, rats, go away, don’t ever come back another day!

I hate rats. With passion. They stress me out. Even more than the begging.

That’s it! I’m getting a cat. At first, I didn’t want a cat, because I thought they’d be more cumbersome to take care of than the rats. But I don’t want them to keep breeding and chewing on all my plastics (and eventually my clothes). And I figured, I’d probably miss the cat more than the rats when I leave. Maybe it’ll be good to have a cat. I don’t know the first thing about taking care of a cat (where the heck does it defecate?!). Maybe it’ll be good for me to take care of someone… or something. I don’t even know what to name it. Maybe I’ll just call it “Pussy” (Chichewa for “cat” haha).

As trivial as it sounds, the rats are probably one of the most stressful issues here.

Happy OINK OINK day!

All yall may be feasting on that fatty pheasant for the holiday...

I'll be grubbin' on a FATTY MS.PIGGY at the US Ambassador's house! Arkansas style! Yeah! (whatever that means)

And hopefully I'll get to play a lil' football to let out some of that rage in me.

OK, will update soon when I have access to free internet!

Happy Zikomo-day! :)

WAWAWAWA!

I'm back in Lilongwe for a 2-week training.

So...

let's see...

You know how I usually love kids? I hate them here... or at least just the primary students (the ones 6-14). Why? Because they're punks. I don't know how to explain it... but they frustrate me here. Just try to imagine 50 kids swarming around you every single freaking day, staring at you, calling you "azungu" (which is more of my first name than my second name now), laughing at you... every single freaking day. And their parents don't teach them how to do right, because they don't listen to their parents, so they especially won't listen to anything I say... like "stop asking for money" or "stop calling me 'azungu'", which is pretty much equivalent to calling a black person "nigger" or a Chinese "chink" or a Latino "sic". I know it's vulgar, but that's exactly the kind of feeling it provokes in me every single day. I could start a whole essay on that alone but I won't.

I've concluded that I only like babies. Just babies. The wee ones that don't speak. Because they never ask anything from me. The adults always ask me for money. The kids always ask me for sweets. The babies just smile (or cry haha)! :D

O.K., I know I gotta do a better job at describing my African life here. Umm... I don't even know how to begin... I just sat here for a minute not knowing what to type...

I greet about 50 people a day with "Mwadzuka/Mwaswera bwanji?" (I hate greeting. I'm so anti-social. haha)

Uhh... o.k., I'll start with my health center. It's this tiny little place - not really a hospital - with a maternity ward, a female sick ward, a male sick ward, and a consultation room. It's actually kinda nice because it's like being an outdoor center, so I'm not in some enclosed building. Then, there's the Under-5 Clinic room (about 10 feet x 10 feet) where all the government health workers work (which is where I'm supposed to be too). Every morning, the mothers would come to the clinic, line up to weigh their babies, and get the immunization shots (DPT, Polio, BCG, measles, TTV). As for the babies, they just wrap them with a chitenje (a piece of cloth) and hang them off a weighing scale... meaning you can drop them if they're not tied appropriately. (I haven't dropped one yet... knock on wood.) Then, they go into this tiny little room to get their shots (I'm not allowed to give the shots for liability reasons). And they'd just record the data in a book (record-keeping is really poor here and incredibly inaccurate). I've also been going into the villages for the first 2 months to evaluate and assess their problems and needs, as well as developing an action plan before submitting them to OxFam. Just this past week, I went to the villages for a home-based care training (groups of people who take care of the sick in their villages) on soya beans. (I was drooling sooo much when they made soya mince and fresh soy milk from the soya beans but I was too weak to ask to try it!!!)

(I miss fruits sooo much. :( But I heard there are watermelons in April! And I'm starting to see peaches!!)

Yeah, sounds fascinating, right? That's why I don't really bother trying to type up what I do. haha

Well, here's an interesting fact I learned awhile ago regarding natural medicine. Sesame is known to help treat sterility. SO... every time you consume sesame (seeds, oil, etc.), just think, you become more fertile! HAHAHAHA And I found out that turmeric treats flatulence, so you know exactly what you need when you get a case of gas! (You know who you are! :P)

Umm... let's see... I still don't really know what I wanna do yet. I've been focusing a lot on this newly developed youth club that involves 18 villages in my area, so that has been pretty awesome. The most difficult part is not being able to speak the language, but I'm trying everything I can to learn their language so I don't have to rely on the few youths that speak English or even just on my co-worker to translate. But they're worth it, because they're the ones that are always overlooked. The adults are always trained in caring for the sick; the children get all the free immunization, free education, and free food; the youths in school are getting an education. But the out-of-school youths are stuck with unemployment, prostitution, and pressure from their parents to engage in early marriages or cultural practices that lead to unwanted pregnancies and HIV transmission. I've been working mainly with the committee on leadership. I'll talk more about that later.

I still feel like a celebrity.

And it sucks.

I hate being a celebrity. I hate the fact that my status of beauty and my status of wealth is determined by one factor: the color of my skin. I hate the 50 pairs of eyes staring at me everywhere I go... to the market, to work, to my home. But even then I don't even want to go home because there are a couple pairs of eyes spying on me through my grass fence (those darn kids). I don't get any privacy here. I hate it when people ask me for money or food or sweets or just anything I have or even just to take them back to America. Even though some of them are living better off than me. I hate being in this weird position where the people I work with think I'm some kid so they don't treat me seriously, yet people of high positions treat me like I'm some goddess (even better than they would a chief). I hate how the men treat women here.

But I don't hate being in Malawi. I know I have much to learn and much to gain. I've met few people here who amaze me and bless me. There's an 80-year-old lil white lady living near me who's originally from South Africa, had 11 kids, and lost 9 of them to malaria here. Oh yeah, and she killed 2 chickens for me. haha She's sweet. :) Then, there's my Chichewa tutor aka my best friend here aka my only Malawian friend. He is nothing short of amazing yet I know few people recognize how truly amazing he is. He's one of the people that I know will succeed in every way in this life despite all the obstacles he had to go through in this life (and there's a lot, believe me). Then, there are a few people I work with who are truly hard-working and gentle people. They've helped me out so much and been so patient with me for learning everything so slowly. Then, there's the baby. His name's Hope. He's my substitute for Joshua Lee (but definitely not his replacement!). :P He's sooooooooo cute. Everytime I see him, he makes my day better no matter how crappy the day was.

And... that's about it.

ZABOBO!

Dude. I am so fluent in Chichewa.

*cough*

Yeah right.

But I'm getting there! Everyone thinks I'm learning Chichewa because I wanna get married here.

"So, do you have any promises?"
"*cough* Are you serious?!"

OK gotta jet. Tiwonana!