Garbage, Offerings and Possible Hippos

First of all, I need to give a shout out to Amy . I think she gets MVP for letters and care packages. As Brian addressed in the entry below, she asked us to blog about what we do with our garbage. I just wanted to add to what Brian wrote that the waste we do produce here is significantly less than what we produced in America. While plastic bags are everywhere, things aren't packaged like they are at home. I would also say that a large portion of our waste is organic and is just thrown into the compost pile. We also try to reuse things like peanut butter jars and powdered milk tins to put things in. We may also start planting seedlings in them. So really the moral of the story is, for all of you who really want to send us M&Ms, send them in some type of reusable container. Ha!
We have been enjoying this time off of school. We had some friends come to our site for Easter. It was fun to have others in our group see how we live and compare stories.
We also made it to Good Friday and Easter services, which was really nice. No need for pipe organs here. This singing is incredible. It almost makes up for the other hour and half of sermon and announcements in Chichewa. I am still processing a situation that happened to me on Sunday. Knowing there would be an offereing collection we thought ahead to bring some money. We were each planning on putting 200 Kwacha (about $1.50) in the collection plate. While that is not a lot at home, it is a lot here to both villagers and us on our Peace Corps stipend. Since we had only been to church once since we got here and it was Easter we thought we should give a little more. Anyway, I had tucked the bill into my friend's little English Bible because I had no pockets. Brian told me I was going to loose it but I was determined to proove him wrong. During the middle of the service our headmaster's three year old daughter came and squeezed in between me and my friend, Angela, causing the bible to fall on the floor. The people behind me picked it up and gave it back to me. When it came time for the offering I noticed my money was gone and it was nowhere on the floor. I was really upset that someone would steal my offering money at church of all places! I have made peace with it as Angela reminded me that it is still an offering and to whoever took it obviously needed it.
After Easter, we traveled to our friend, Spencer's, site in Kasungu. We spent a couple days there with Spencer's girlfriend who just came from the States, Jessica and Ian. The climate in Kasungu is much nicer than Salima and I was very excited to actually need my sleeping bag at night. After we leave Lilongwe we are also planning on traveling with this same group to Liwonde National Park, Zomba Plateau and Blantyre. Keep your fingers crossed for some hippo pictures on the next post.

Assuming there is no recycling and waste management company collecting refuse here, some friends were wondering what we do with our packaging when we receive goodies from home. The grill you see, which is welded rebar we commissioned a business owner to make, is our spot for trash fires, removing the grill first, of course. I've had two trash fires so far, and they are not pleasant. I'm not used to seeing green smoke and flame, but there seems to be no alternative. If we don't burn it, someone else will do it in a pit created for such events, and we prefer to do it ourselves, not wanting people to get curious about our trash. The ashes go in the chim. It reminds me of our trash burning conversations in the boundary waters with Brad and Lonnie. What do you think will happen to the trash if you pack it out? It'll be burned or buried either way. Zoning might be better though.

We purchased some wicker furniture from a co-op that a Japanese volunteer organization started. It's pretty good stuff, and now we feel ready to entertain visitors.

Matenje's football and netball teams, and fans, pile into a matola on our trip to Mvera for a match. After a 3 hour ride, we found out that there was a bad auto accident in the area, so the game was cancelled due to a funeral. This image is typically how an organized group of people get around. We've seen truck loads of choirs going to partner churches for competition, also. It is a social event for cheering, singing, and posturing. Though the match was cancelled, students still had fun, even when the rains came and drenched them. Afterwards they had a dance in one of the classrooms, with electronics playing music powered by a car battery. When it comes to field trips and flirting, kids are kids no matter where you go.

It was pointed out by a neighbor that our tomatoes were all diseased and would not yield what we wanted. The leaves were turning a reddish tint (a closer look showed tiny red bugs.) So we succumbed to chemicals. We bought some insecticide and borrowed a sprayer from a colleague. We added 20-25 ml of the stuff to 10 L of water. All we did was pump and spray. Not our proudest moment since we have been working hard on our compost and wanted to be chemical free.

This field of sunflowers is just across from Matenje's football pitch. We didn't notice it until the bush that was hiding it was slashed. I slashed our grass in the back yard with a slasher I borrowed from the school. A slasher is a knee-high metal blade with a plastic handle. It has a 45 degree curve at the end, and its edges can be sharpened like a hockey skate. I practice my golf swing with the slasher while slashing grass. That's my slasher story that began with a story about sunflowers. They will be harvested to make oil. Eating the seeds as a snack is a foreign concept.

Typing, Meeting, Hitching

No pictures to upload this time. Sorry. Kristy mentioned our early school closing. So we managed to administer a few end-of-term exams. I was on the timetable committee which meant I and two other teachers gathered under the shade trees to schedule the exam times. Each class is supposed to take a test for each subject. So we did that scheduling and determined who would "invigilate" the exams. Terminal exams are typically formal, except I noticed during exam time that some invigilators left their post periodically. Also, it was important for each student to have a paper exam in hand, which meant I used a type writer with misaligned and sticky keys to write my English exam. I typed on stencil paper which produced a carbon copy that could then be duplicated for multiple copies. I made a lot of mistakes on my first try, so I threw it away and tried again. My fingers were sore after this exercise because with a type writer you really have to punch the keys hard. I don't want to do it again, so I may try pushing for alternate ways for student assessment, which I should be doing anyway as teacher developer. The exams that students didn't get a chance to take must now be taken when they return from holiday in four weeks. What are the odds of retention?

I'm looking forward to my first Volunteer Action Committee (VAC) meeting. Our education PCV class of 2007 elected Angela and me to it. I hope for action, but worry there'll be a lot of talk. I've heard Ben, our VAC Chair, runs a tight ship though.

I met with some Head Teachers in the Salima District cluster of secondary schools the other day. I arrived an hour and a half late to the meeting because I was notified about it via text message the night before, and I was already in Lilongwe. I was talking to Mom and Dad on the phone when the text came through. So I packed up again and went back to Salima early the next morning. I got a great hitch from an English Ex-patriot who owns a bar/theater in Lilongwe. He was travelling to Salima in search of some good wood for his bar. He's been here for 12 years so he prefers "First Generation Immigrant" to Ex-pat. "Ex-pat" carries negative connotations sometimes, but I digress. Despite my lateness, I arrived at the meeting before any other teachers, waited a while until some came but not enough for the meeting to take place. It was cancelled. I did, however, achieve my agenda in that I was able to distribute school assessment and teacher opinion survey forms that I created to begin my teacher development duties. The next morning I worked with some teachers who are upgrading their teacher qualifications through a distance education program through Domasi University, and then returned to Lilongwe to reunite with Kristy. Again I got a great hitch straight to the transit house. However, I did have to wait in the afternoon sun about 2.5 hours for it. I'm a beggar and a chooser whenever I take on this endeavor. Example, I noticed a mini bus full of American backpackers. They had hired the mini bus to take them direct from Nkhata Bay to Lilongwe, so they paid twice the amount it would normally cost. I thought they were going to agree to give me a free ride. I was wrong. I got off and waited some more. My eventual hitch passed the mini bus along the way (I had thoughts of making some kind of face to rub it in, but I just smiled internally). So I made it back and ended up going out with KB and Kristy and a Feed the Children NGO worker. I didn't put the two together until I noticed the aforementioned First Generation Immigrant, but we were at his new bar/theater he was talking to me about on the hitch down to Salima. During the course of the night, I said hello, introduced Kristy to him, and pointed to the other two I was with. Before dropping me off in Salima he did say to stop by the bar and tell all my friends about it. Nice, huh?

End of Term 1

Online again...We weren't scheduled to come back into Lilongwe yet as our school term wasn't supposed to end until next week. Due to a food shortage, they were forced to close school a week and a half early because they were unable to feed all the boarders. The price of maize, which is used to make nsima, went up and they were unable to compete with other villagers to buy it. So here we are reminiscing about how it was just about a year ago that we also unexpectedly had some days off school from a snow storm. Not that it is at all the same. We were trying to think of what reasons they would close school in America - snow, severe storms, no electricity (this being the most amusing to us now as we are without electricity everyday), school shootings...never a food shortage. Once again reminded where we are.
As I reflect on my first term of teaching in Malawi, I find myself comparing things to home. It is not fair to do so. My sources of stress are different here. The pace of life is so much slower. Time is just felt differently. Nobody is rushing (even when they should be...like students coming late to class), but nobody is stressed by not having enough time. I recently moved my desk out into the library, which is nice as I am co-Librarian. I really like being surrounded by the books, even the few and random ones we have. Instead of checking my email or just googling something I was wondering about, I go to the 1994 donated set of encyclopedias. I now find my self gathering bits of information in alphabetical order.
Anyway, I feel like there are less demands from my job, but then I realize that the only demands are the ones I put on myself. Those moments of realization are when I feel stress. I could just show up to class and teach from the textbook (textbook singular, not textbooks plural), or I could let the bigger picture effect me. Like school closings due to food shortage. Or the fact that more than once a day a kid comes up to me and says "Give me money" or just "Madam, Give me". They haven't mastered simple greetings in their English classes, but somehow they know "give me". There's also the little boys who play ball(plastic bags wrapped in string) in front of our house whose clothes can barely be called clothes because they are so threadbare and reveal more than should be revealed.
And then there's HIV/AIDS. It feels like I have known about AIDS my whole life, but I don't know if I have ever even met someone with AIDS...maybe I have and didn't know it. Here people aren't exactly walking around proclaiming they are HIV Positive or anything, but just about everyone has been effected by it somehow. Funerals in the village seem frequent. Many of our students have lost both or one parent to it. Yet there are still cultural practices that reinforce the spread of HIV/AIDS, like the belief that having sex with a virgin will cure you of the disease. I never thought I would be teaching human reproduction or sex ed, but I have forced myself to go beyond my comfort zone in front of a classroom to field such delicate and private questions that my students really would have no one else to ask.
I should also write about some positive and interesting things that have happened. We've had a couple cool animal sightings- some monkeys and a huge iguana. Didn't have the camera either time. We've also had some weird howling at night that I swear was a hyena, but nobody believes me. Last weekend we had our headmaster and his wife over for an "American" dinner. We made them pasta, homemade marinara sauce with sausage...okay the sausage was a little sketchy, but we fried it really well. We also had breaded eggplant and garlic toast. It was really fun and I think they really enjoyed it. We've also been making some other meals from scratch- tortillas, beans, rice and fresh salsa, and fish grilled on the fire. Okay, I feel a little guilty writing that as I started the blog describing the food shortage...
But alas, here we are in Lilongwe to enjoy some cold water, hot showers and the internet.
Much love and peace...