Kristi laughs like a middler schooler

This post is dedicated to my dear friend Kait-ie :)

So recently I've been breaking out into hysterical bits of laughter that no one seems to understand and if I keep it up people might start referring to me as that 'crazy azungu'...oh wait.
The following are two examples of this:

So earlier this week I had a community meeting. This meeting consisted of 148 Malawians and four health workers leading a discussion on why I'm here, who I am, and what projects I want to help with, ect. A good time to be on my best behavior since I was the star of the show. The guy sitting next to me is talking and everyone is paying attention to him, he's speaking in Chichewa so I am getting bored and not really paying attention. (yes, this would be a good time to be alert and practicing language but that's not reality). The man proceeds to sit down and is rubbing his face, for some reason I'm still staring at him and someone else starts talking. All of a sudden I look more closely at this mans hand- and he has a crack nail. (an extremely long pinky fingernail) The Malawians are pretty diligent about keeping their fingernails short so this isn't an accident. I'm not implying this man does drugs at all- that actually would he absurd, however I immediately burst into laughter. Partly because of the fact that he has this nail and partially because i cant stop remembering the time kait bust into my house one winter morning telling me how she lost her crack nail sometime that night. (kait also is drug free just to clear that up haha)This laughter catches everyone off guard. By the time I gain control of myself everyone is staring and I have to wait another twenty minutes before I can ask this man about his nail. He tells me 'it's for decoration- people love it.' I ask him if I can take a picture of it and he responds 'in two months- ill grow it out really long for you'. Needless to say I laugh uncontrollably for another five minutes.

This second example is embarrassing given the nature of my job here. I am in a high school two days ago with my counterpart and we are taking turns talking about safe sex and stds/HIV. A student asks my counterpart a question about transmission of stds and my counterpart starts talking about sex. Then he gets this puzzled look on his face and starts almost yelling at these kids about how stds can be transferred during oral sex. I'm not sure why but I start giggling like a twelve year old that just heard the word penis. The student notice that this awkwardness is funny so they coyly ask him 'what's oral sex' this throws him in a tizzy, he's going on and on about oral sex and I literally have to step out of the room I'm laughing so hard. I'm not sure what went over me, why I thought this was so funny, maybe a combination of my counterparts theatrics and the amount of stress I've been feeling lately. I'm glad he didn't mention my behavior and I hope I can hold it together more.


Unrelated pictures:

Kasinje questions

So many people have been asking me questions like: 'what's your job like' 'how's your living situation' 'what are you eating' ect. So here's a run down on all the details.
1) work- interesting concept I must admit. Going into peace corp I thought that it was going to be cut and dry, here's your village, here's your project, you will work from 8-5 everyday. Yeah- that's not even close to reality. Peace corps has a great philosophy on projects and as much as I hate it, it makes total sense: you will move in to the community, research for 3 months, find out what the community is doing to improve their lives (health, sanitation, education, ect) what projects they want to start and how they want you to help. As much as I feel completely lost I understand that if I just jump into a project the community isn't going to be interested or involved unless it's something they too think is important. This motto is really testing my patience, but I'm following the 'rules' and not starting projects until I completely know my community. Sidenote: in order to fully integrate into my community I am living in the community, making the same amount of money as people here, living the same lifestyle in the same housing and I'm not 'allowed' to leave for the three month research period. Which brings me to my next point...
2)housing. My house is actually really nice, since I'm working for the health center I am living in health center housing. In order to attract doctors and nurses to live in the village the houses are nice. My house also got electricity about two months before I moved in, which you might say 'oh awesome, life is good and easy then' well in theory this would make sense except electricity here is NOT reliable. I have a blackout about every other day and it's always during dinner time- which means I either wait for the power to come back on or skip dinner- cooking over a fire seems like a lot of work and I lived like that for 5 weeks already. Also in order to buy units for electricity (its prepaid) you have to be super flexible and patient, not my strong suits. So when I went to the city to the electricity provider, they were conveniently having a blackout and apparently you can't even buy units there you have to go to every gas station in town and see if there are any left. Needless to say I havnt been buying them because it's too frustrating of a process. I'll have to beg my neighbor to buy me more. I also don't have running water, it comes from a borehole about 30m from my house and I pay my neighbor children to get it for me. (refer further back in my blog to find out why) I bucket bath, and my bathroom is a pit latreen or in basic terms- a hole in the ground. Yup- this is Africa.
3) food- yum. Well everyday my market has tomatoes, onions, and cabbage. People eat nsima everyday (carb patty made of corn flour) with these vegetable as side dishes. I however didn't grow corn so have no corn flour so I eat rice or potatoes as my carb patty replacement. I also have been buying pasta in the city which is nice but expensive. I eat tomatoes and onions and on Thursdays when it's market day there is a wide variety of veggies: tomatoes, onions, cabbage, beans, and sometimes a choice of one of the following: eggplant, peas, pumpkins. I'm always hungry, eggs are like 50 cents and when you're making 4 dollars a day that's a pretty big part of your budget. So it's usually an egg for breakfast, veg and carb for lunch, leftovers for dinner. My protein consumption is dwindling, I find myself craving meat hard core- which if you know me is very strange. I dream about beef and eating every animal I see, I even contemplate killing wild goats, it's that bad.


On a lighter note- I don't think I've bet been so healthy. Also here are some more unrelated pictures

Pictures

I'm uploading this just to show pictures that were totally unrelated to the last post so here they are:
A little background- gwaza village about 5k from my site put on a performance for me, it was lovely! They were talking and dancing about preventing aids!!

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger- or something like that.

Welcome to my second week in Kasinje! It started off a little rocky with the most frightening trip back from the city one could have. As you may or may not know, the transportation here is slightly below par (insert laughter here) due to the wretched economy and the fact that this country has no foreign exchange, thus, have no currency to buy fuel. Well anyway, to get back from the city I must take two busses, it's about two or three hours on each bus. Banking on the possibility that it may only take 4 hours, my pcv friend and I left at 2 (mind you it gets dark here at 6 and there isn't such a thing as street lights). All was going well until about thirty minutes into the trip I found myself with unbearable stomach pains and started breaking into a deep sweat. Thankfully the women sitting next to me noticed I was about to shit my pants and made the bus pull over. A little background info here: mini busses are suppose to hold about 12 people, but on average are holding more like 18-20. Of course I was sitting way in the back and hand no chance of getting out of the car on time, so like James bond or some other action star would do... I jumped out the window. On a straight run to the nearest village, I was then awkwardly trying to speak Chichewa to find the nearest chimbudzi (yea basically a hole in the ground surrounded by sticks for some privacy). I then had my first encounter with a full chim, I could see about a million and a half maggots having the time of their lives in a pit full of waste. Although I felt like a new women it became even more awkward when I had to climb back into the bus with everyone knowing what had just happened. The rest of that bus trip when smoothly but it was getting late and I was worried we weren't going to make it back before dark. The second mini bus was going smoothly and it did get dark, this wouldn't have been an issue if the bus didn't break down right outside of a forest fire (as the Malawians calmly say-'oh they are just burning brush'). So now it's dark- we have no bus, a fire, no street lights, an hardly any language skills. Not scary at all. Well much to our 'luck' a matola pulls up (picture a semi without the walls on the bed= a flat bed semi) and offers to take us back. At this point i start whipping out my Kwacha in attempts to ride in the front of this thing and not on the flat bed. That was quickly turned down. In day light I would refuse this ride, so adding total darkness plus a backpack full of stuff I was absolutely not getting on it...until I did. The ride wasn't totally frightening I was hanging on by a rope that was holding corn down and thinking about the wine I bought in the city and how it would be empty five minutes after I got off the truck, and a baby was drop kicking me every five seconds. but we made it, Eventually, in one way or another and here I am, still alive- week two. Sorry mom.

You can't cross the ocean unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.

It's been an amazing 6 months since I've last made a blog post.  Whoopss.  

I officially leave in 23 days. Although I am dreading the three days of travel it will take to get to Malawi, I am super excited.  

The question I get most often however is "are you nervous?"   I know I stumble over the answer to this question nearly every time I am asked, but to be honest I'm full of so many emotions that it's hard to express what I really feel.  

Let me break it down:   I was extremely nervous and excited let's say around August of last year (right before my last post) when I thought that I was leaving before 2012.  Since things changed so much and so suddenly and I've had all of this "free time" I guess I haven't really let reality sink in.  I'm so excited, I really am, and yes, I am nervous, but I'm more nervous about stupid things, like what am I going to wear, and am I going to be sleeping in a hammock for 27 months, than the bigger picture. (biggest run on sentence ever)  I guess when I face the real reality I will be nervous, or the day I get on that plane in Grand Rapids, or maybe even next week at my "going away party" when I'm crying the entire time.  

I am nervous to leave my cozy little home, and this super small town, binge eating for the last six months and the comfort of my parents (especially since I've gotten really used to being so spoiled), but I'm really ready to get going, to cross the ocean, to really try and make a difference.   Like everyone who has ever been a peace corps volunteer (PCV) suggests, I'm trying not to have expectations, and maybe that is the real root of this un-nervousness.   I guess we will find out in the weeks to come when I do a 180 on my emotions. 
My goal is to make 23 the best year of my life thus far (16 days away) and really embrace a new culture, a new way of life, and new expectations.   I feel really blessed, and I'm ready to try and give that feeling to someone else.   

On a side note, I am going to try to be more diligent about writing posts while I'm in Malawi, so stay tuned, don't lose faith in my blogging just yet.  

On an extra side note, If you want to send me packages, letters, love, ect, my address has been updated
--> and you can send them now, I'll probably beat them there since it takes a multiple weeks for them to arrive.

Lend me your eyes I can change what you see. .

Lots of stuff happening in the life of Kristi Marie. . .

Lets start off with the exciting news that I finally graduated from Michigan State University with a Bachelors of Science in health studies psychology. . . this new step came with a lot of new emotions.  For the first time East Lansing and all of its wonders were starting to look like something of the past for me.   Lets just say East Lansing will always have the key to my heart, there are so many great things about that city, and all of the people who have ever been a part of it.  So I finally packed up my things and moved home- yippeee (big sarcasm there).  

This whole "moved back home" situation wasn't looking so bad since I was about to leave for Morocco or Jordan in September. . . Then big news came. . . About three weeks ago I finally got a letter from the Peace Corps Office. . My program was officially canceled due to budget cuts and I had been reassigned.  The new news: Kristi Goes to Malawi, for sure, officially, March 5th, 2012.  Well technically I go to Washington DC March 5th and board my flight to Malawi sometime around the 10th.  

This news, as great as it sounds has brought about a whole other slew of emotions. . .

1. Malawi has the highest rate of HIV/AIDS in the world, which is exciting, scary, and difficult to imagine all at the same time.  I'm excited to be able to really make a difference.  My job title is a Community Health Advisor and I will mainly be dealing with mother baby health and HIV transmission through birth and breast feeding.

2. MARCH FIFTH?   I guess this is the big one for me. . . what am I possibly going to do until March 5th?
I feel like I've went through a million options through my mind, including, but not limited to, becoming a nomad, road tripping, moving in with my girlfriends, finding another job, and of course, staying home with mom and dad (no offense) none of these options really seem like they are ideal- I guess we will have to wait and see how this plays out.

3. It's official, I mean I've known for sure this was what I wanted for the last year, but it is really REAL now, I've accepted my position, I've gotten shots, I've filled out tons of paperwork, and I'm really leaving March 5th, it's exciting, I'm less stressed knowing an exact date, but it is real now, and it is starting to catch up with me.



Overall this is an exciting feeling for me, I'm sure it's the right step, I've received a ton of support from friends and family, and I'm ready to move onto this new adventure in my life.   Stay tuned for more news, my new Malawi address, and going away party information.

President's Dinner

Wednesday I received an awesome invitation to attend a peace corps "gathering" at the President's house.  Not knowing what to expect, I was awkwardly overdressed, as usual, and super nervous.  Come to find out that it was a great experience and I got to met a whole BUNCH of people who were returned volunteers (RPCV) and people like me who were invited, or nominated.  I heard a lot of stories about other's experiences, what I should and shouldn't be doing to prepare to go, and even received a few email addresses of people going to  my area!  I'm getting super excited to start this experience and I hope I find out some more details soon!