MALAWI

Moni Nonse! Hello everyone!

I apologize that it has taken me almost three months to rely any information home from Malawi. Now I have a lot of catching up to do. Here it goes. I’ll try to be better next time.

I’m an education volunteer for the Peace Corps and I’ll be working at Mphande Community Day Secondary School (CDSS) located in Mwanza, Malawi.

I arrived in Malawi on September 27, 2009 with 20 other education volunteers. There was a crowd of about 25 other Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs ) and staff waiting at the airport to greet us. After our arrival my group was rushed off to the PC training site in Dedza, Malawi to begin a 10-week training program. Training consisted of technical, culture, language, and medical sessions. Within the first three days of training one of volunteers opted to return home to the U.S. so now we are 20 pamodzi (altogether).

My first week was spent in training sessions from 8:00 am to 5:00 pm everyday with two very ridged tea breaks (each 30 minutes a piece) that could not be skipped. At first I found it hilarious that we would break for hot tea in the middle of a day that was 90 degrees, but now (3 months in) I’ve learned to love my tea breaks.


Home Stay

Weeks 2-7 were spent living with a Malawian family in my home stay village of Mzengereza. I lived with the Kambatata family which consisted of abambo (father), amayi (mother), achimwene atatu (3 brothers- Anderson 12, Charlie 10, and Frankie 7ish), ndipo achemwali awiri (and 2 sisters- Linda 14, and Lenyia 15 months). I love my home stay family. My amayi was amazing! She literally did everything around the house (cooking, cleaning, washing clothes, chopping and collecting firewood, etc) because my abambo worked from the early morning to the late evening at Dedza Pottery (a bwana (boss) restaurant and potter for azungu (rich person/white person)). I taught Linda, Anderson, and Charlie how to play Frisbee and by the end of home stay they were better than me at frisbee. No joke. Lenyia made me smile each and every time I saw her because she’s the cutest and happiest child I’ve ever met. A typical day in Mzengereza Village went something like this: Each morning I’d be woke at 5:30ish by sweeping outside my window (Malawians sweep the loose dirt off the hard dirt on their compounds everyday. I’d personally don’t see how necessary this sweeping dirt off dirt is, but I hear that it keeps snakes out of the yard). Then I’d take a warm bucket bath that my amayi had prepared for me. Next, I’d eat breakfast in the house alone (for whatever reason it’s a custom for the men to eat first, and if the man of the house, my father, wasn’t present then the other men eat together without the family. Being the only other man in the house I ate all my breakfasts and lunches alone while the rest of the family ate on the ground outside the house). After breakfast my group (6 people in all) were taken into Dedza by galimoto (car) to Mchisu Community Day Secondary School (CDSS) for teaching practice until noon. CDSSs are equivalent to High Schools back in the States. Students progress from Form 1 (Freshman) to From 4 (Senior). At Mchisu I taught Form 3 Biology for 8 periods a week. Each period lasted 40 minutes. After teaching practice my group was shuttled back to the village for lunch were I sat alone again and stared at the UNICEF calendar on the month of October the read “An older man tries to woo a young girl into a relationship for money”. This was accompanied by a hand drawn picture depicting the scene and the current HIV/AIDS statistics for girls ages 14-19 being at a higher risk of HIV infection when compared to boys in the same age category because of situations as described above…sorry, I digress). After lunch I went to three hours of Chichewa language training. Language ended around 4:30 or 5:00 then it was time to decompress after getting owned by Dyna (my language trainer) in Chichewa. Darkness fell about 6 o’clock so I would either take another bucket bath or study by candle light in my hut. Lastly, I’d eat dinner (this time with the whole family) and then if was off to bed. Basi! (No more).


Food in Home Stay

The food in Malawi isn’t all that bad. The only issue was that in home stay I had to eat what was given to me. No one in my family spoke English and I sure couldn’t speak Chichewa very well, so I had no say with regards to the menu. Breakfast was usually one of the following: french toast (more like toast soaked with cooking oil and an egg on the side), boiled irish potatoes (basi, just potatoes, but it’s better than boiled cassava), boiled cassava (I challenge any of you reading this to boil some cassava and eat it plan for breakfast), rice porridge (which used to by my least favorite meal until I got really sick and could only eat porridge for 3 days. Now I love it), hard-boiled eggs, or African cake (made of corn flour and delicious when dipped in tea). Lunch and dinner were usually pretty similar: Nsima is at EVERY meal. Nsima is the staple foodstuff in Malawi. It’s a flour made from corn meal (basically corn starch) that is cooked in water to a very thick mashed potato consistency (I’ve learned to like it, but I can definitely live without it), rice, pumpkin leaves, mustard leaves, cabbage, chicken, soy “meat”, goat meat, and beans. I was force feed for the 6 weeks in home stay, yet I still managed to lose about 15 pounds. Now I’ll segue into the next topic which will describe how I managed to eat three large meals a day and still managed to drop a weight class…or two.


My Sicknesses/Medical Issues Thus Far

- Six days of open stomach (code name for diarrhea) and vomiting the second week of home stay. Everyone thought I had Giardia due to the characteristic “sulfur” burps I had but I think it was something else.
- Bed bugs that bite me all over my stomach and legs, which I finally eradicated after two power-washing sessions of my sheets/clothes.
- Thousands of army ants ransacked my hut at midnight. They came up from the floor (the floor was made of mud) and I woke up with ants biting me all over my body. I then packed some of my stuff and stayed the night with a friend.
- In week 4 of home stay I was diagnosed with dysentery (I personally think this was the same ongoing sickness from the second week) that lasted for another week or some.
- Currently, I’m on medical hold in the capital city of Lilongwe with and eye infection. I’ve been on hold since December 7. I’ve been pumped with antibiotics and now, a week later, I’m ready to blow this popsicle stand!


What’s Next?

I should be medically cleared on Monday, December 14 and move to my permanent site in Mwanza, Malawi on Tuesday. I’m living in a small house on a the Gowa’s Family compound (I rent my house from the Gowas) in the Mwanza boma. A boma is a place where government buildings are located, so it’s equivalent to a small town. I, along with about 3 other volunteers in my group, have electricity in my home. I was expected to be cooking over a fire and reading my candlelight, but it turns out my house is Bwana (boss). On top of electricity in my house I also have a small refrigerator that the volunteer I’m replacing had purchased and left in the house. So I’m going to be able to have cold Fantas at my house! Which I will need because my site is SUPER hot. The southern part of Malawi is the hottest part in the country. Mwanza is a small town in the southwestern part of Malawi about 15 Km from the Mozambique border. On a map if you find Blantyre, Malawi head straight West and you’ll be able to find Mwanza. There are mountains surrounding my site, which will make my weekends pretty eventful. I’ve already been warned not to climb the mountain behind my house because “a white man died on it”. Well a white man just got killed by an elephant in one of the national parks here so does that mean I can’t go to national parks? Not at all. The mountain is climbable, so now it’s just a matter of time. Around my house Mango trees are EVERYWHERE and right now they are in season. Then in about six months Mwanza turns into the tangerine capital of the world. Ok, maybe not the world, but there are a lot of tangerines there.

I’ll be teaching at Mphande C.D.S.S. as a Biology, Physical Science, Life Skills, and Computer teacher.


I hope this gives you some idea about what I have been up to here in Malawi. Since I have electricity I’ll be trying to keep up with my blog as much as possible, but I might not be able to post things very often. So I might be posting a bunch of different stuff all at once.

I hope you are all doing well back home! I’d love to here from you so SEND ME A LETTER and PICTURES from home. If you have read up to this point you know what I’ve been up to and now your obligated to send me an update about you…or a plague will devastate your family! Not really but that witch craft stuff really works here. I’ll try to talk more about that at some other point.


Jordan Harris
C/O Mphande C.D.S.S.
PO Box 211
Mwanza, Malawi
Southern Africa


Packages: If by some chance you decide to send me a package (which is always a good idea) please don’t say the package is worth more than $20 USD or I’ll have to pay taxes on it before I can pick it up. I don’t have any money here to pay for import taxes so I hate to see a package with my name on it that I can’t take home.