Kwathu ndi ku Malawi

There are some weeks that are hard to talk about and maybe don't make for the best blogs but they are part of my life.  On Monday I woke up around  4:30am  to the sound of wailing and crying close to my window and I knew immediately that one of my neighbors had died. I got up and dressed by  5am  and went next door. When someone dies, the word goes out fast and the entire village comes over to that persons house to sit and some women to cook. Men normally sit in one location and women in another. In my Muslim community, inside the house where the body normally is, only men go. So from about  5am to 6am  I just sat in the backyard with other women watching the sun come up and watching the endless array of neighbors come by. Even if you didn't feel a particularly strong bond to the one who died, the looks of agony on other's faces and their wails can bring anyone to tears.  I left to get breakfast and then packed some food to bring over...

The past months myself and a counterpart from the health centre, Alfred, have been working in a village about 5km from the health center with a Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) mother group of 33 lactating and pregnant women. We have been learning about nutrition using emotion-based learning, food group surveys, improved agriculture techniques, proper breast feeding and weaning practices, cooking demonstrations, and home gardens. Recently we went to visit some of the women who invited us to their homes to appreciate their backyard gardens where they are growing vegetables. These small gardens are important during this season since food gets more scarce and families sometimes start running out. As we went to one house where several mothers are working together on a garden there was an Agogo (grandmother) standing nearby. She started to tell us that she was so inspired and impressed by her neighbors starting home gardens that she built a fence on her own, prepared bed...

I've lived in Malawi for 19 months now. And today I was just reflecting on how once difficult tasks are now so easy. I was discussing with a fellow PCV about making brownies and it dawned on me how normal it felt to not even consider an oven. So here's a Q&A blog featuring 10 questions on how things get done kuno ku Malawi (here in Malawi).  1. Where do you get water? - A few yards from my house is a borehole. This is basically a long pipe reaching down into the ground that you must manually pump up and down to get water. I collect it in buckets and take it home. Most days my neighbor kids are more than happy to help do this for me. Occasionally the borehole can break down in which I would have to go about 1km to find water. Did I mention I share this 1 water source with hundreds of people in my village? The bucket lines can be long.   I have a water filter provided by Peace Corps that makes the water safe to drink once I pour it through.  2. How do y...

It has begun. Today was officially, in my book, the first genuine day of hot Malawian summer. And it is hot! But that doesn't stop us. It's really true that your second year of Peace Corps is just the best. So, as I sit sweating in my hot Malawi house, let me introduce you to Mr. Chilembwe Juma.   Juma is one of my counterparts who leads projects with me. He has been with me from the start and is a village pillar. He has gone to two Peace Corps trainings with me: Action for Natural Medicine and Behavior Change Communication/Go Girls! He is a husband, father, member of the Health Center Committee (HCC), farmer, trilingual, and knows more people than I can count. He helped me conduct a nutrition training for 10 members of a HIV Support Group, translated two 10 page nutrition guides into the local language, built a gazebo for me in my backyard, helps me teach people living with HIV/AIDS about nutrition and food groups on Fridays and lastly, he is a strong partne...

Today was a great day. One of those days in the village that makes you never want to leave. For about the past 2-3 months I have been traveling a lot and this past weekend was one of the first times in a long time I just spent in the village doing different tasks and chores.  One of those tasks was to prepare for a program I was facilitating today. Where I live in Malawi it is very flat, dusty, and hot. About 7km from my house is the huge Shire River stemming from Lake Malawi. Just the kind of place where you would expect to see elephants, crocodiles, impala, warthogs, hippos, etc. It is known as Liwonde National Park. At the end of the long, dusty street I live on you find a wilderness safari camp where people from all over the world come to stay and see animals. But since I live and volunteer here I regurarly get to visit the park for free. So any average Monday can easily turn terrific! Today I biked the 7km from my house into Liwonde Nation...

Right now Ebola is a media sensation and for a good reason. People are dying and there's not really a cure. One good thing is that Ebola is a relatively hard disease to get as it requires direct contact with bodily fluids. But I don't want to write about Ebola. I want to write about Malawi and what I work on here that's maybe not such a media sensation but its a huge part of my life and the lives of those around me.  In Malawi we don't have Ebola yet. But we have other things. Here my life goes like this: every night as I lay down to go to sleep, I also tuck in an insecticide treated bed net called a LLIN around my bed and under the mattress. Every hotel I visit also has these hanging from the ceiling. Everywhere you go they are there. The "why" is this: in Malawi many people die from malaria (malungo in Chichewa) each year and WHO estimates "around 1 million" die around the globe every year. Children under 5 years are especially vulnerable and ...

So here's an honest assessment. I get a living allowance of $185 dollars every month from Peace Corps to live here. I use that to travel, for rent, to buy food and clothes, to buy cooking materials and household goods, etc. And at the end of every month the stipend is always running pretty low even though I live alone and my responsibility is just for me.  In Malawi, what I make is an average, common salary for hard working teachers, clinicians, forestry officers, etc and sometimes much more than those engaged in only subsistance farming. But these people many times do not live alone. They have spouses and children to care for and extended family to help. They have expenses such as high school which is not free but instead another fee. My stipend is far more than many here make and yet my neighbors and friends are always very generous. Many times much more so than I.   The privileges I've always had are becomi...

Mountains. Lakes. Rivers. Animals. Programs. Camps. Kids. School. Minibuses. Food. Painting.  School let out for the summer in July and I was done teaching my Life Skills class until September. We finished on a semi high note with every girl in the school having completed and sewn their own reusable sanitary napkins and undergoing Sex Ed. Several girls from surrounding Primary and Secondary schools also got a chance to make these pads as I did guest sessions at their schools as well. Also our AIDS TOTO club wrote poems and sang a song in the school assembly. I prepared everyone for their exams while also teaching them some other topics concerning malaria, nutrition, water safety, and sanitation.   Summertime began but here in Malawi summertime is cold as its our winter season- such a relief from all the heat. I finally could wear jeans and a sweater in the house! To start the break I headed to the capital city of Lilongwe to attend a 1 week Behavior Cha...

When I sit for dinner, I'm surrounded by many things and many people and many beliefs. One meal here in Malawi can contain a Muslim, a Seventh Day Adventist, a Presbyterian, an atheist, and an agnostic. One meal can contain a Malawian, an American, a German, a Latin American and a Dutchman. One meal here in Malawi can contain someone who is gay, straight, and bi. One of the most beautiful things my masters degree and Peace Corps have done for me is given me the privilege of dining with so many different people. In Turkey where about 99% of the population are Muslims to Malawi where over half of my community is Muslim and were the Baptists denomination is rare if hardly found. And volunteers here in Malawi come from around the whole world! I've gotten to see life through the eyes of those who didn't grow up like me in America. Who didn't grow up in the "Bible Belt." Chatting with people who are so different from me but getting the chance to hear about who ...

A little cartoon that went "mini-viral" on Facebook. It claims to help people gain perspective but from what I see, the cartoon is a typical how Americans view Africans- misinformed, outdated.  To begin, these children are all seen with no shirts on and somewhat tribal looking bottoms. Not all kids in Africa, actually most, do not look like or live like this picture suggests. They don't roam naked in tribes in the jungle all day.  Secondly, most children in Africa DO sit in school for hours of the day as well just like North American children. Except there is no aircon, normally no posters on the wall, no toys, no crayons, not enough desks, not enough teachers, not enough classrooms. Oh yes, African children sit in class all day but they sweat, its 90 degrees, cram 4 into a desk for 1, have 50 students per classroom. And maybe kids in America are overdosed, but kids here, they can die from not having access to drugs. Kids in America take m...