Pictures as Promised and My First Few Days at Site

Well, using my offline blog writer has proven to be cheap to post pictures, so first here are these to give you all some visual stimulation to my novel-esque blog posts as of late… Enjoy!

 
A member of the Gule Wankulu (“The Big Dance) from our Village Farewell Ceremony.

 
Me right before class at Language Intensive week.

 
Me and my friend Sarah giving our technical presentation to villagers about the importance of going to Antenatal Clinic, in Chichewa!

Some cute kids in the audience of our presentations. This is not uncommon for children to carry younger siblings on their backs.

 
MONKEY!! These vervet monkeys live in the forest outside the college, so cute!

 
This is a taste of a project I’m working on called “Munny in Malawi.” Here am I and my Munny outside of Metro, the grocery store in Dedza boma where we have shopped frequently.

An incredible rainbow we saw on the drive to Lilongwe for swear-in.

 
Munny and the Malawi flag. hehehe

Those are a few random pictures from before coming to site. I’ve been at site for about 3 days now so let me update you on what’s been going on so far…

My First Few Days at Site

It’s a fairly quite Sunday morning here in my village. Most likely because it is Sunday and people are going to church. I’m sitting in my living/dining room eating oatmeal with dried cranberries and drinking coffee. The sun is shinning, promising to be a beautiful day.

First things first,

My house!! It’s so huge! I have 2 bed rooms, plus a living room. The building on the right is my kitchen/bafa/storage building.

It’s way too much space for one person, in fact my neighbors are in a house exactly the same and 6 people live there! 6 is obviously too many, but 1 is too little as well. Any way, it’s nice and I like it, especially since I’ve been spending some time getting settled and hanging up pictures and making it feel more like home.

My first few days here have been slightly uneventful, mostly just cleaning, un-packing, hanging up things, more cleaning, washing dishes, and making many fires to cook. However that is now changed since my paraffin (kerosene) stove now works thanks to my neighborhood kids. The volunteer I’ve replaced left two paraffin stoves and I could not decide whether they were broken or I was just an idiot. So I’ve continued cooking over open fires and the other day a young girl was over and inside my dinning room and saw the stove and asked, “Stove?” And I said yes but that I didn’t know how it worked. She laughed and told me to pour paraffin in a light it. Duh, but I said I did. I showed her that paraffin was inside it and handed her a pack of matches. She tried to light it the same way I had and failed. Ok, so I’m not an idiot, lol but dang I really do not want to buy a new one because they are like 2,500mk which is about $15. Plus I’m broke, so I decided to mess with it later. Well yesterday I come home and the same girl and a few others are at my house and I’m making a fire to heat up bath water when she asks me why I’m not using the stove. I tell her again that I don’t know how to use it, and again she attempts to light it. Failing, she becomes frustrated, grabs the stove and brings it out to my courtyard where her and like 8 other girls proceed to take it apart and try to fix it.

 
Here they all are huddle around my stove trying to fix it.

And guess what? They did! Now I made coffee and oatmeal this morning on my paraffin stove and I’m elated! Those silly Malawian children actually knew what they were doing, lol.

One thing they don’t know how to do though, is fix white people hair. Exhibit A:

I kind of let them have their way with my hair and this was the end result, lol. It almost looks like something I’d rock in the states anyway huh?

Yesterday I went to visit my closest site mate and fellow former trainer Dre (Adrea). We wanted to go to the market in Mitundu, which is the next biggest trading center before Lilongwe. So I rode my bike the 5 km to her house and got to see her place and then we both got on our bikes and headed out. We met up with another volunteer named Bryan, who Dre has actually replaced and Bryan is extending a 3rd year and has moved to Mitundu. From Dre’s house it is about 13 km to Mitundu. Yeah, I rode my bike 36 km yesterday, plus walked about a mile on top of that to and from Bryans house and around the market. I’m not sure the exact conversion, but I think that is roughly 23 miles.

23 miles on dusty, dirt roads, check it out:
before bath
 

after bath

Lol, yup. Best baffa of my life so far. hahahaha.

Well now my butt hurts like no other, but I managed to ride the entire trip and I know that it will only get easier from here on out. I’m actually really proud of myself for making it.

Things are going well, however, naturally I’m started to feel lonely. I know it’s because I’ve been with everyone during training and now I’m all alone, but it still sucks. I’m feeling more home sick now than ever but I know that once I’ve made friends here in my village and learn the language even more I will feel better.

Ok, talking about it is making it worse, so I’ll end with one last cute picture of an African child, my neighbor Vicky:
 
She loves my Munny and so do all the other children, and now Munny is a nice shade of reddish brown lol.

Well that’s it for now. Hope you liked these! If you haven’t seen the pictures from my home stay experience they are on Facebook.

Any requests for particular pictures of things you want to see or see more of? Naturally a picture tour of my humble-abode will come soon, once I’m a little more settled okie dokie?

Tiwonana!