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...