My One-Year Mark

I can hardly believe it. I’ve made it through one year! Another year seems so long, yet I know it’s not enough time to do all that I want to do.

It’s good to be back again. I was initially wary about coming back, but once I saw my counterpart, the youths, and the babies, I was content. A part of me was still saddened, because I had lost my best youth who was my best friend (for a good cause though! like nursing school) and my other confidant/tutor/friend who was a teacher at the mission (also for a good cause! like teaching at another school). It seems that everytime I befriend someone, he or she leaves me for a better cause.

I’ve only been back at my site for one week before having to take off again for another 2-week trip. This time, it’s not pleasure. After attending a few Peace Corps demos and a really early 4th of July celebration at the Ambassador’s house, I’ll be back at my old training ground for our Mid Service Training and meeting the new health group. I can’t believe I was in their shoes just a year ago. It literally seemed like it was just yesterday (I still remember that sense of bewilderment very well, or maybe it’s just because I still feel it.)

After cleaning up my cat’s potty messes and taking cold baths due to lack of electricity, I got to thinking about my projects again… and that was when the waves of doubts started hitting me. There were a few issues.

As some of you may know, I was helping my church (in Malawi) raise money for their new church building, and I was enthusiastic about helping them. But when the time came to buy the materials, I started wondering if I really was doing the right thing. After thinking about it some more, I decided that I am. The church had been raising funds for the last 7 years and all I (and other gracious donors) did was to help cover the roofing portion.

Then I started wondering if I should also be writing this proposal for a shelter. After a youth suggested for a permanent shelter to use (we’ve been using an assembly hall that’s not always available), I discussed with my medical in-charge and counterpart, who also suggested that the shelter be used as an under-five clinic. Technically, all health centers are supposed to have a shelter where mothers and children can wait and be weighed, but mine lacked one because it was part of a private clinic. Initially, I was excited at the thought of a shelter for the youths and children, but when I came back and learned of the low attendance in our youth club, I started doubting. It was when I went to my youth club on Friday that I remembered how much I enjoyed their company and appreciated the great things they’re doing, no matter how slow they’re going or how few they are. I still have my doubts, but I try to remember of my love for the youths and children. Even if the youth club completely falls apart with not a person left, at least I know there will always be children and mothers in need of vaccination to use and appreciate the shelter come rain or sun.

I guess in the long run, I want to make sure that I’m not being more detrimental to my community by letting them think that we foreigners have the money and the solution to all their problems. I don’t want to take away the “sustainability” of their own skills and resources. The moment I cross that line and do their job for them is the moment I’ll know that I have failed my job as a Peace Corps Volunteer.

But until my next update, let’s hope I can still do something right! J

Tiwonana,
Elaine

Supporting Burma and China

Dear friends,

I know that some of you may be sitting at home anxiously wondering how some of the world’s leaders will respond to the disasters taken place in Asia, while wondering how you can assist yourself. I’ve thought a bit about how we can best support the displaced by following the news and donating to organizations that can place your funds most appropriately:

www.irawaddy.org (an independent publication of Burma and southeast Asia)
www.chinadaily.com.cn
(I don’t know how reliable these sites are but you’d get more information about the countries from their perspectives)

www.unicef.org (based on what I’ve seen in Malawi, they seem to give to established institutions, i.e. schools, health centers, and sometimes local organizations but doesn’t monitor the distribution of funds)

www.wfp.org (same as unicef, they seem to only give to established institutions but not much to local organizations)

www.redcross.org (it seems that Red Cross has the most leverage in terms of getting access and support to refugee camps)

If you would like to support other NGOs, I highly encourage you to go to www.charitynavigator.org and evaluate their ratings and effectiveness.

I’ve already gone ahead and did some research for some NGOs within China and Burma you can support from the ground. You can click on the link and view the ratings and websites of each NGO. These are the best NGOs (four stars) suggested by Charity Navigator:

CHINA:
· ACCION International
· Islamic Relief USA
· Mercy Corps
· Operation Blessing International
· PATH
· Project HOPE
· World Relief
· Kids Alive International
· Global Volunteers
· Doctors of the World-USA
· Half the Sky Foundation
· Church World Service
· Himalayan Cataract Project
· ADRA
· International Institute of Rural Reconstruction, U.S. Office
· China Care Foundation

BURMA:
· Action Against Hunger-USA
· Save the Children
· World Vision
· Kids Alive International
· Church World Service
· ADRA

And last but not least, sometimes the only and best thing to do is to pray which would never go unheard.

I hope this helps to make giving less stressful!

Blessings,
Elaine

Images of My Life in Malawi

Finally! Some pictures of my life in Malawi! Enjoy!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/26853368@N04/

A Hiatus from Malawi

After 11 months in Malawi, I took a vacation with my family. We spent the first few days in Hong Kong before jetting off to Egypt. I would describe Egypt in one word: awesome! It was such a privilege to see a glimpse of the ancient life in Egypt. The moment we stepped off the plane we immediately started our tour. What better way to start than seeing the Giza pyramid and the sphinx? Our next stop was at the Cairo museum where most of King Tut’s 5,000-year-old relics remained on display, from the coffins that contained his internal organs to his golden mask. I practically came face to face with the man… because his mask was supposed to be an exact replica of his face so that his ka (spirit) would recognize him in the afterlife. Even though we spent our first night riding in a train from Cairo to Aswan, our accommodations on the Nile cruise was spectacular. During our 4-day journey on the Nile, we stopped at various ancient temples to admire the ruins and hieroglyphs. The Valley of Kings, where all the ancient rulers including King Tut were buried, was yet another site to be enjoyed. The stroll through the underground tunnels was hot and sweaty, but to have my nose almost touching the walls of pictographs was well worth it. Afterwards, we spent one night at the Red Sea… which wasn’t actually red. The water’s as clear and beautiful as it can be. Then, we went to visit the most popular temples in Luxor – Karnak being the largest in all of Egypt. Finally, we returned to Cairo and visited a mastaba, the original and oldest pyramid (believe it or not, the originals were ziggurats). It’s such a shame that so much of Egypt’s history has been damaged by the Crusades, colonization, globalization, but they’ve done more to preserve their culture and history than other countries have. I’d say the highlights were seeing these ancient relics that mystified the world for ages and watching the stories come alive on the walls. I could only try to imagine what life was like 5,000 years ago…

Then it was off to Singapore for 2 days. The Merlion is best known for its food, reflecting the conglomeration of Indian, Malay, and Chinese roots.

I’m nearing the end of my vacation. It has been such a pleasure to be able to eat Chinese food again… to drink soy milk that I don’t have to make from scratch… to be able to show my knees without worrying that others might think me promiscuous… to actually feel like I can breathe again without people gawking at me all the time… It’s nice to be able to step out of that environment and really appreciate the things that are taken for granted. The obvious is being able to eat the food I’ve grown up with all my life (not McDonald’s... I barely touched that stuff save for a few hashbrowns). For one thing, it feels nice to take hot showers… not pour cups of scorching hot water on myself when it’s 20 degrees out (in the winter). And actually use toilets that flush (the hole in the ground is not as bad as it might seem but it is when someone else uses your toilet and misses the hole). And I was finally able to catch up with all the world news… instead of receiving my Newsweeks a month or two late.

It’s hard to believe that I have another year left in Malawi without stepping foot on U.S. ground. I know it’ll fly by fast, because I have so much planned for this year. I have these to look forward to:
-my daily task of administering vitamins and recording children’s weights
-a proposal to USAID for building a shelter next to my health center, so that we can have shelter during hot and rainy seasons while weighing children and to provide a recreational center for youths
-providing technical assistance to a local community-based organization with HIV/AIDS, health, and income-generating activities
-my weekly meetings with our Youth Friendly Health Service Club and its committee
-teaching Life Skills (i.e., self-esteem, goal planning, relationships, communication skills) to secondary students
-working with the Debate Club and facilitating a tournament with 5 other debate clubs in our district
-introducing and implementing the Positive Deviance Hearth program to malnourished children and their mothers
-implementing and evaluating my nutrition program with the health workers and underweight/malnourished children
-facilitating the Sisters’ Club (a mentorship program) for at-risk primary girls
-organizing and implementing recreational activities at Camp GLOW (Girls Leading Our World)
-cooing at cute little babies J

That’s it for now… I’ll just end this post with a link to view some pictures from my trip to Egypt.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/26853368@N04/

Enjoy!

Best,
Elaine

HIV/AIDS in Malawi Continued…

So, in my last update, I talked about transmissions of HIV/AIDS in Malawi. This time, I want to talk about this program I’ve been conducting with my Malawian counterpart, a healthworker from my health center (he’s named after Davie Jones! Haha)

Anyway, we decided that we wanted to present the Hope Kit to 10 villages within and around our catchment area. The Hope Kit consisted of fun activities that explain how HIV spreads, how it works in the body, why people with HIV should not be stigmatized, etc. There were many visual and physical demonstrations and we chose the ones that were most fitting for the villages. We targeted 10 villages with risk factors of cultural practices that contribute to HIV transmission and/or low school attendance. We spoke to the chiefs first and invited the youth clubs, the Village AIDS Committees, and a parent from each household to attend the event.

Little did I know what we signed up for.

There are moments when you think, “This is what Peace Corps is all about.” I had quite a few of those Peace Corps moments because of this program. I should’ve known that there were reasons that these villages were at risk, meaning I had to trudge through muddy roads, rain, rivers, and jungles to get to these places. We visited one village where we tried to take the short path with our bicycles but the path wasn’t meant for cycling. (It turned out that the longer path was actually faster with our bicycles too.) I kept running into the maize stalks on my bike, and I fell a couple times, especially when going down some rocks. Then we went up, up, up the hill, then down the hill, then up again, then down, then up… Then there were the rivers. Two of them. O.K., they were more like streams, but being the klutz I am, I couldn’t avoid slipping into the water. And that wasn’t my first time. I slipped in another stream going to another village. You’d think the adventure ended there, but actually… we had to cross another stream to get to our next destination. But there were no stepping stones this time. Since my socks and shoes were already wet, I was ready to walk through the stream, but the chief wouldn’t allow me, so he picked me up and carried me across! Oh man, by the end of the day, I really had to laugh because I wasn’t expecting any of it.

I don’t regret any of it, though. These villages were remote and isolated, so they were probably neglected by a lot of their community workers and NGOs. Some villages were not even assisted by NGOs, so I knew they gained much from our presentation. My initial thoughts about the presentation were that it was too juvenile and seemed somewhat repetitive to a group of people who already knew about HIV/AIDS. But my Malawian counterpart explained to me how they were actually beneficial. Our first activity, “Fleet of Hope”, involved using pictures of people (father, mother, schoolgirl, witch doctor, etc.) to tell stories in which they are “sitting” in one of the boats of the ABC - Abstinence, Being Faithful, Condoms – or in the water with HIV. He told me that this activity allowed people to share messages with their spouses and communities without having to confront them since Malawians are non-confrontational: “This man is a farmer and has a wife. When he comes home from the gardens, he is faithful to his wife so they don’t have to use condoms and can avoid HIV transmission.” I was somewhat amused by one man’s “This man isn’t abstaining or being faithful but he uses condoms every time!” Our last activity, “HIV in the body”, uses people to represent the white blood cell, HIV, opportunistic infections, ARV, and the ABC, and mobilizes them to show how each functions in or around the body. This was perhaps the most educational activity, as most people are uneducated and have never fully understood the works of HIV and ARVs. But I think the most satisfying part for me is the Q&A. I’m amazed at the kind of myths and misunderstandings people have, and the Q&A is the opportune moment to debunk them. (I don’t want people to think that I’ve been doing all the work; I want to credit my counterpart for doing all of the work in Chichewa. I just sit there and look pretty! haha)

Malawians are fond of meetings, but I know that this was a special kind of meeting they’ve never attended before. All the meetings I’ve attended in Malawi have been - for lack of better words - boring. People really like to hear themselves talk, so they can talk for hours on end without ever making a point. So I was not surprised to find some villagers sulking (and even looking unhappy!) when we first appeared. But by the end of each and every presentation, despite sitting for 2-3 hours, the villagers were laughing and singing. The smiles beaming from their faces and their inquiries about our next visit are all the thanks I need. These are the moments when I think, “This is what Peace Corps is all about.”

Until the next Peace Corps moment,
Elaine aka “Ellen”

My Malawian counterpart and a villager sharing a story during "Fleet of Hope"

They're "greeting" (which symbolizes sexual transmission) in "Wildfire"

A woman trying to figure out if this man has HIV/AIDS or not

As for my cat...

I decided to name her "Wosaka" as in "Hunter". :)

She still has to learn to not poop and pee under my bed though...

and to live up to her name... HUNT down those rats and eat them!

It’s a vulture! It’s a toucan! It’s a…

vul-can with a mohawk?

I’m not talking about the Star Trek best known for “Beam me up, Scotty!”.

At first I thought the bird was a vulture because it was huge in size and had a neck that arched like a vulture’s. But the second time I saw it, I thought it was a toucan because it had a huge beak shaped like a toucan’s. But then I looked again closely the third time and it turned out the “beak” was actually a mohawk. I don’t know how else to describe it. It’s a huge bird with a mohawk. And I don’t know if he was trying to be funny, but a man said that its name was “Abambobobo”. (“Abambo” means “man” or “father”.) I tried to take a picture of it when it was in my backyard, but it didn’t come out well.

Something I do want to take a good picture of, though, are the baboons. I heard there are baboons in the trees around my area (though not near my house because I don’t have trees big enough to fit them), so I told my agogo (“grandmother”) that she would have to show me one day because I’d like to take pictures! I also heard there are alligators/crocodiles (same thing!) around my area too that wander from the river to eat the chickens! And hyenas are supposedly around looking for carcasses to feast on but I have yet to see them.

None of the baboons or alliga-codiles have made an appearance in or around my house, though I’ve seen a good number of other critters. There was an ugly toad in my house that wouldn’t leave even after I chased it out with a broom. I think it wants my cat to kiss it so it can turn into a prince, because it seems to keep coming back to her water can. (All she does is meow and drink next to it. I thought cats were supposed to torture anything that’s alive and moves!) Then, there are the lizards. What can I say? They like to eat the flies and poop anywhere they please. And last but not least, the cockroaches – the reason I don’t urinate for 12 hours straight. Well, I’m pleased to announce that they’ve been annihilated! I actually mixed water with the drug that we use to treat our mosquito nets and dumped it into my “toilet”. Next thing I knew there was a diaspora of cockroaches all over my backyard! When they kept trying to come into my house, I freaked out and ran to get my agogo. By the time I came back, they were either plopped over dead or eaten by the chickens (surely they had diarrhea after their meals). But now they’re gone! I still don’t use the toilet that much at night though because of other critters, like snakes, scorpions (one bit my medical in-charge), and… well, you get the point.

Anyway, there’s a lot I want to share because I’ve been thinking a lot about… a lot. Education, HIV, gender equality, famine, genocide, prostitution, rape, witchcraft… which I can’t possibly go into all at once, so I’ll start with HIV/AIDS. I know I mentioned it briefly in some of my updates, but I wanted to go into a little more details so that hopefully you'll get a better understanding of the plight that Malawians face.

According to National AIDS Commission of Malawi, 790,000 of HIV-positive clients are 15-49 year olds, roughly 14% of the total population, and 440,000 (12%) are 14 years old and younger (the high rate’s mostly from mother-to-child-transmission). 58% of adults infected are women. About 80,000 die every year due to opportunistic infections caused by AIDS. 46% of orphans are orphaned by AIDS. The number one death of HIV clients is TB, and the number of TB cases have tripled since 1990 because of HIV/AIDS. As of 2003, my district had a confirmed number of 18,000 people infected. You can go to http://www.aidsnac.malawi.net/ for more statistics and information.

Sex is the main mode of HIV transmission in Africa, especially Malawi. Unfortunately, many of Malawi’s cultural practices involve in sexual intercourse, such as:
-Chokolo is “wife inheritance”, which is commonly practiced in Islam (a few girls were telling me that Muslim women were not allowed to refuse men when they wanted them to be their girlfriends or wives)
-Kulowa kufa is “death cleansing”, which involves hiring a man to have sex with a widow the night of her husband’s death to “cleanse” her of grief
-Chinamwali is the initiation rite for boys, which involves women (usually sex workers) for them to have sex with (the idea is that they have to be “experienced” as adults)
-Fisi is “hyena”, which is an initiation rite for girls where “fisi” is hired to have sex with the girls to remove the “dust” from her body or else they would have “unsmooth” skin
-Hlazi is the giving of a man’s sister-in-law to his brother to thank him for caring for his wife properly
-“Entering oven” happens in the more rural areas where they believe that to bake bricks well, the bakers should sleep with young girls the night they’re baking bricks
-Tattoos done by witch doctors by use of razor blades (this one’s not sexually transmission but it’s common enough to be discussed)

And there are proverbs that even encourage people to indulge in sex while they’re young, such as Mkazi sachepa (“The girl is always ripe enough”) and Okaona nyanja anaona ndi mvuu zomwe (“When one visits the lake, he/she also visits the hippos”).

The good news, however, is that since Malawi recognized HIV/AIDS in their country in 1985 and the current president allowed international aid agencies to return in recent years, there has been a good amount of education and awareness about the cultural practices that contribute to HIV transmission. The most common one that’s still practiced in my catchment area is the initiation rite. Despite their awareness of how HIV can spread, some parents still believe some of the cultural myths and that they must “preserve” their culture by forcing their children to participate in the initiation rites despite their protests.

But there’s still much to be done. Now that they know how their cultural practices can transmit HIV/AIDS, there’s still a need to learn about other modes of transmissions. Apparently there are still myths and rumors going around, such as:
-Mosquitoes can transmit HIV because they suck people’s blood and insert them into other people.
-Condoms can cause cancer. (This might’ve been triggered by the onset of cancer cases when spermicide was introduced. It’s now banned.)
-A person can get HIV when a witch “magically” has sex with someone without his/her knowledge. (This one’s complicated.)
-The barber can transmit HIV because he uses the same clipper or razor to shave people’s hair. (There’s not enough blood to be transmitted through it.)
-Peanut butter is a medicine for HIV like ARVs. (It has been used as a nutrition supplement but does not directly repress HIV.)

And there are still more myths that I’m learning about on a continual basis. I know I’ve typed a lot of information here and I don’t want to overwhelm you, so I’ll save my update about the HIV/AIDS awareness outreach for next time.

Here's a picture to entertain you:

Think it's a normal ball? Usually it'd be made of plastic bags. But when I visited a village and we inquired about the contents within it, we learned that there were condoms within the ball. Ohhhh so THAT's where all the condoms are going! (But I was also kinda disturbed where the little kids got the condoms from.)

And one last thing – I’ll be traveling to Hong Kong and touring to Egypt in May! J The thought of Chinese food, Starbucks’ caramel frappuccinos, McDonald’s apple pies and yogurt parfaits, udons and chow mein and vermicelli and NOODLES (and a good number of other items I’ve requested from America) excite me like never before! Oh, that and seeing my family of course!

P.S. I don’t know if I’ve sent my recent address out because I’ve been losing a lot of mail through the previous address, so here it is:
PO Box 74
Chilembwe, Malawi
Central Africa

And for those who inquired about calling, you can go to http://www.callingcardoutlet.com/ and get a $20 phone card for 5 hours I think. And my number’s 001-265-947-67-54.