Hillary schmillary

I feel like this weekend is one worth writing about. But first a quick update:

July felt like a big scissor kick right in the face. I did nothing productive, in fact the month almost seemed counterproductive. I'm told this is just how peace corps is... Some months you're so busy you can breathe and some months you read a 153 thousand books. (or so it seems). Well guess what August- I'm bored and I'm trying to work here so get ready for persistence.

The problem is meetings get canceled everyday for the most random reasons, it's pay day, the chiefs brother died, a five foot snake is on the loose, the borehole was too busy, a dog ate my homework, you know the usual things... Anyway there is an upside to it all...

July has been filled with awesome adventures, not work related. I visited Lake Malawi, found out that a town 60km from my house makes cheese, my garden is starting to thrive and I met Hillary Clinton.

"Madam secretary Hillary Clinton" visited Malawi on her Africa tour sunday. She was the first secretary of state to ever visit Malawi and the people here were and still are super excited. The newspaper I bought Monday was filled (95% of the Articles) with Hillary. The united states government is giving Malawi 46 million dollars for the feed the future program and people here can't be happier.

Peace corps volunteers were invited to a function at the United States Ambassador's house, where Hillary eventually visited. She was only in Malawi for about 4 hours and had many things to do, she met with the Malawian president, my Joyce Banda, the ambassador, talked with feed the future and usaid and went to camp glow (girls leading our world) a program ran by peace corps! Hillary gave a short speech and shook hands with all the guest, including me, and then made her way to the next event. I feel blessed that during her 11 country visit, she chose Malawi, and made time to see and thank the people that are working here!

I guess that's all I have to say about that... Heres some pictures:

Terrorist attacks. Death by chicken.

So my last post was sort of melodramatic. Sort of. Ha. So I've realized I only write when I am full of emotion. Today's emotion(s): a mixture of fierce pissed-off-ness and humor.

So last night I'm I'm the middle of my nightly routine; forcing myself to eat before the electricity goes out (5:30-8pm daily) even though im not hungry, washing my face, stretching, ect when I realize I'm not alone. I have a huge fence that encloses my back yard so I usually leave my back door open to air out my house, plus I'm constantly outside now that I have this garden.

Before I go onto my unwanted visitor, let's talk about my garden/yard.

Malawians sweep their yards daily so the ground is basically cement consistency and they grow nothing except for during rainy season in which they only grow maize- another story for another day. My market sells tomatoes, onions, and cabbage daily and on Thursday if I'm lucky there is eggplant, or peas. Basically I'm bored with eating tomatoes, I have a lot of seeds, and I want a garden. This has thus far taken a lot of work, and a lot of money.

My yard use to be used for burning bricks, so the ground was not only hard, but full of bricks. I attempted to deal with this solo style and gave up after about seven minutes and pulled out my wallet. I paid someone to till my yard and break the bricks, in the process this man broke three hoes, all of which he expected me to replace- yeah right buddy. After about a month the yard was 'ready'- lets move onto my next problem. Irrigation.

Since bricks were made here I also have a water tank. Or a tank to hold water. Saying Water tank assumes that water magically appears there- it doesn't. I pay two girls to fill it and that's sporadic as they often 'forget'- they would be good friends with my brother. The tank has had its whole slew of issues- ie it's a piece of shit as my supervisor would say 'it's stupid'. (he thinks stupid is the best English word ever) the tank has been re-cemented twice and today I realized the water again has disappeared.

So the garden was at first a stress reliever- now it is a community garden. My yard is big and there's no way I could plant in all of the beds so I mistakenly offered a bed or two to my neighbor (supervisor) and a bed or two to my boss. Now it's like their garden and they're getting all controlling and opinionated and it's no longer a stress reliever- in fact it has become the source of my stress. apparently also offering them a bed meant I supplied them with seeds, so if you love me and my neighbors and boss you can send seeds to me anytime.

So it's been 6 days since I started planting. I have small growth, beans are sprouting, tomatoes are starting to peak out but the biggest 'accomplishment' carrots. Now I love carrots, but not as much as my neighbor. I come outside and see him moving all the mulch around the carrots and building this shade out of sticks and I ask him what the hell he's doing 1)in my yard and 2) with MY carrots. And he says he loves them so much he just wants them to grow- he's WORRIED they aren't growing fast enough. Listen buddy, it's been five days, they are fine. Choka- pitani Get out.

So this now leads me to my unexpected visitor. I'm washing my face in my makeshift sink and I go to dump out the bucket of water and what do I see, two motherfucking chickens. TWO! How did you get in? What are you doing? At first I treat this like any other time I have a chicken break in, I open the fence door try to shoo them out but after about five minutes of chasing them I realize they've had a thanksgiving freaking feast with my new seedlings. Now I'm pissed. I pick up some bricks and I start whipping them at the chickens, one escapes. Good thing. One decides a it wants to retreat to my house- stupid. I beat it with a brick, to be honest I'm sort of scared of chickens, those claws are vicious. The chicken now leaves my house and retreats to the bafa aka the cement building outside my house I bucket bath in. That's it- it's over now chicken. I slam the door and hold it hostage in my makeshift jail.

This is now the funny part- I storm over to my neighbors house and start YELLING about this stupid chicken. First let me tell you about my neighbor, although his English is good, you have to talk really slow and enunciate so he knows what you're saying, two he thinks all Americans have an anger issue and shoot people when they get mad, three, it's not even his chicken and I know that. So my neighbor doesn't have a clue what's happening this crazy white lady is screaming something about a chicken an he'a probably scared I smuggled in a gun from America. Nevertheless his only response 'how are my carrots'?! HOW ARE YOUR CARROTS? When did they become your carrots, and don't worry they are fine, but my beans and radishes? Oh they are gone, death by chicken.

So I finally return the chicken to its proper owner- and threaten that next time I'm eating him for dinner. Which would be quite a feat for me considering id have to kill it and defeather it myself, ect. But I'm serious. This is my yard, my fifty dollar fence, and I will not have chicken intruders without consequence.

Attached are some pictures of my garden/yard/fence. Ps the big plants started growing a few weeks ago because of left over food scraps that morphed into plants.. Enjoy.

Independence day 2x

Greetings from Malawi, and happy independence day USA and Malawi as well. It is an exciting week to be an American, especially one in a country where they are celebrating the same joy and happiness. Malawian independence day is July 6, and of course America's being July 4th not much work is getting done here. Malawians will be taking a long weekend to enjoy themselves and as volunteers from America, one would think we would be as well. Peace corps has three goals- 1) helping peoples of interested countries 2) helping Americans learn about other cultures 3) helping other cultures learn about American culture. In a week where it is traditional that all Americans celebrate, one would think this would be a good time to practice goals 2 and 3, however peace corps Malawi has a different perspective. For the last week volunteers have been getting threatening emails and texts about not leaving their sites to celebrate. Texts insinuating that volunteers will be sent back to America of caught out of site, and emails suggesting that volunteers take vacation days to celebrate the weekend. (even though we are expected to be working mon-fri). My plans for visiting the lake for the first time and celebrating WITH Americans on our American holiday have been severely dented. I am at a loss as to what my new travel plans will be, and extremely disappointed with peace corps Malawi's new policy. I hope all people celebrating in the US are having a wonderful time, celebrate extra hard for me, take in the fireworks, good friends, and have an extra beer for me.

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.