Pictures!

I know, I know, I haven't posted any pictures yet. This post will try to remedy that. This is me with my Malawian Host sister (for training) Jessie. Doesn't the grandma in the back sort of look like a vampire though?? :-)



Three of the four quadruplets from my host family. We called them the Children of the Chimanga (corn) because when the other PCVs and I went for walks, they would follow us from different paths, so we would see one, then turn around and see another identical one, and on and on. Creepy but cute.



Learning borehole maintenance at IST.

Itty Bitty Kitty Committee

So I have a cat, which is news because in America I was really allergic to cats. But after several months (and tentative feline encounters) in Malawi, I have come to the conclusion that I am somehow NOT allergic to the cats here. Don’t ask me how that works, I don’t know. But there is just no reaction here.

 Palibe vuto. Pepani.

So after being in Chiwamba for awhile, I started asking around, theoretically of course, about how one might obtain a kitten if one so wished…..you know, in case I develop a rat problem. Not because I’m lonely, no…..not at all J Several weeks went by and I forgot all about it. Then one Sunday coming back from church, I was flagged down by my neighbor, Wilfred.

“Alfred came by your house with a package, but I told him you were gone so he just left it with me.”

This ‘package’ was a 50 kilo grain sack which had been recently used to carry charcoal and was covered inside and out with soot. It appeared empty, but was tied at the top.

Oh yeah, I thought, this is my new baby.

Only it wouldn’t come out of the sack.

After a while I ended up dumping the bag upside down, releasing a plume of soot and one tiny gray, ashy furball, which immediately ran under my bed.

Alfred came over to check on it.

“It’s an azungu cat,” he said. Once it licked itself clean I could see what he meant. Most of the cats here are all black, but this one was mostly white with black spots.

“I picked it out just for you,” he grinned.

After a few hours, the furball let me hold it and it lapped up warm water and bits of dried fish (usipa). It cried when I put it down and slept tucked under my arm that night. I started calling it “she”, because in my mind, all cats are female, and also because it was so small, I honestly couldn’t tell what it was. And I didn’t want one of our first bonding moments to be a thorough anatomical search.

Wilfred came over and dubbed her “the luckiest cat in Malawi” after watching her eat nsima and usipa. I tried to think of a name, but I couldn’t settle on one. I just called her Kitty. This was of course short for her full name of ‘Itty Bitty Kitty Committee’.

For awhile I kept Kitty just inside, but after a month of staggeringly fast growth (she wasn’t Itty Bitty anymore), I grudgingly decided that she should get to know the outdoors. Her first venture outside was thwarted by one of Wilfred’s hens, wandering through my garden. Kitty saw the hen and darted back in under my bed, hyperventilating. It took a couple weeks before she realized that the hens were in fact supposed to be afraid of her, not the other way around.

One thing she always remained afraid of, though, was strangers. Wilfred found it hilarious that she could be rolling around contentedly in the dust one second, but as soon as he appeared, she dashed away.

“Your cat doesn’t like Malawians,” he said.

“That’s impossible, she’s a Malawian cat.”

“I mean she doesn’t like black people,” Wilfred laughed.

Oh goodness, I’m a terrible parent, I thought, I’ve raised a racist cat.

A racist, gender confused cat. Because of course kitty turned out to be male. But I still call it ‘she’. Force of habit.

Itty Bitty Kitty got bigger and bigger until my friends were all making jokes about how for sure I must be fattening her up to eat her. Now instead of bits of usipa, she can eat a whole handful in one sitting. I still cook her nsima, if only so I can truthfully tell people that I DO cook nsima. Wilfred gave me a bag of ufa wa chimanga- homegrown maize flour- to feed her. When that ran out I tried to buy more ufa in the market. As soon as she heard it was for Kitty, the seller just laughed and handed me a bag, no charge.

“That must be the luckiest cat in Malawi,” she said.

Today, after a marathon session of clothes washing, I was relaxing in the house knitting and listening to the BBC. Just like with a toddler, once I realized I hadn’t heard Kitty in a while, I started to worry. I headed outside to find her having cornered a toad by my latrine, thoroughly entertained by the fact that she could make this thing jump just by tapping it with her paw. She wasn’t hurting it, just tap-tap-tapping as it jumped around.

“Good job kitty! You discovered you can hunt! (Sort of).”

I scooped up the toad and moved it out of my yard, releasing it into some bushes. Last week, I had heard people yelling outside my fence, and turned around to see a three foot long orange snake winding toward me from the garden. The people were trying to warn me that it had entered my yard. Kitty was unfazed, and trotted behind it like a sheepdog herding it’s charges. She herded the snake right though out the other side of my yard, though I have a feeling that’s where it was headed anyway. Kitty got extra usipa that night.

Kitty was righteously angry with me for taking away her toy toad, until she saw the dirt beckoning and forgot all about me to take a nice dirt bath. Every night she licks herself clean and snuggles back under my arm. That’s my sweet Kitty.

Bats Bicycles and Bruises

Two weeks ago I decided to start the final assault on my house’s bat population. One of the four rooms has been locked for three months because even after the application of dubious nameless pesticides by my friends, the bats were refusing to leave. I put my bike in that room too, figuring it was the safest place in my house since the door was always locked. (I haven’t exactly been a cycling enthusiast here).

            Every once in a while I would unlock the door just long enough to say, yup, there’s an ever growing pile of bat manure, and it still stinks of bat. Bats have a very pungent smell. I didn’t realize it at the time, but when I moved in, my whole house stank of bat. It smelled bad, but I couldn’t put my finger on why. After lots of cleaning and cooking and living, the house finally just smells like me. But when I open that fourth room, the memory of my empty house floods back. Even the Peace Corps doctor, when I had pneumonia a few months ago, commented on it. After he came out for a site visit, he remembered the smell.

            “Are you airing out your house?” he had asked, when he was starting my IV, “I remember your house had this weird, musty smell…”

            So last week I got a new idea- to fight smell with smell. If the bats liked their acrid, musty smell in that room, then I would change it. First I sprayed some Doom in there. It wouldn’t kill the bats, but it stunk like hell. Then I sprayed a healthy dose of perfume, which made it sticky sweet. I forced open the creaky windows in the afternoons to try to waft in human smell. It started to work! I swept out the droppings every few days so that I could gauge if the amount was decreasing. The first sweep was dreadful. There were two dead bats on the floor, plus one that appeared in the last throes of death, convulsing whenever my (very long) broom touched it. The worst part? My bats have TAILS. Little spiky, inch-long black tails. Yuck.

            This past Saturday I found another stinky weapon. I had bought Cobra floor polish when I moved in, because I had heard that well polished cement floors are easier to keep clean. I polished once or twice that first month, but now I barely even bother to sweep (terribly unsanitary by Malawian standards, I know). Cobra, ostensibly, “Lavender scented”, smells like commercial grade floor wax with a big cheap bottle of perfume mixed in. I smeared it liberally on the bat room floor. It did make the cement shine. And ever since, the bat droppings have decreased from handfuls per day to only a few pellets. Only the room still smells bad. Just Cobra-polish bad rather than bat-bad.

Stay away, you flying rats with radar, stay away.

            Of course I had to take out my bike from the bat room before smearing the floor. And there was something about a brand new bike just sitting there, a little dusty but still shiny, that made me think, maybe I like riding bikes after all? Maybe I have gotten so much more in shape since I moved here that I won’t tucker out ten minutes from home? Oh yes, the bike was beautiful and Malawians ride bikes all the time. In fact, I was probably hindering my integration by NOT riding one.

            I dug through my clothes until I found my tight black capris, and folded my chitenge in half so that all the last vestiges of forbidden thigh were covered. I threw on my helmet and sunglasses and wheeled out the door. The neighbor kids were playing outside, and they squealed in delight to see my bike. I hopped on and wobbled out to the dirt road. My neighbor, Nelly, was out there, chatting on Martha’s stoop. She looked really worried.

            “Mukupita kuti??”- Where are you going?

            “Sindikudziwa!” –I don’t know!

            I rode past the Primary School in the direction out of town that I rarely took. In fact I had never been far this way except by car. I was surprised to see how quickly the landscape changed back to ‘rural village’. The trading centre where I had been doing most of my work really was a tiny oasis of development. I started huffing and puffing pretty hard. I was messing around with the gears but no matter what I did, pedaling seemed to get harder and harder. I had to stop several times, to the utter delight of the dozens of kids who had started running along side me. One of the times I stopped, I took off my sunglasses and tucked them into my chitenge. Of course as soon I started riding again, I heard a crunch, and looked back to see my sunglasses, which had managed to survive five months in Malawi, in three pieces. The lenses were ok though. I looked out at the kids and saw a girl, about five, who had a lazy eye. It was really profound- one eye looking straight ahead and the other gazing out sideways into the bush. I called her to come towards me but she freaked out and hid behind another girl. It took several minutes to get her to trust me, and I handed her the glasses. An older kid grabbed them out of her hand and I grabbed them back. I pointed at her.

            “Basi,” -only her.

            I got back on my bike and huffed and puffed for another 100 meters. The kids were keeping up now just by walking. Other bikes whizzed past. 

            That’s when I noticed that my tires were flat.

            Because of course they were.

            I turned around and tried to coast on the slight incline back into the trading centre. The bike wouldn’t even coast. The kids trotted along side me, lazy eye girl holding the glasses to her face, as I huffed and puffed to go downhill. Ten minutes later I was headed past my neighbor again. She stared at me, looking more worried than before. In the middle of the trading center is the bicycle repair district. There are two main shops equipped with pumps, scrap metal bits, homemade (literally) welders, and LOTS of men just standing around. Fortunately I was still going downhill, so I did my best to roll off the dirt road over onto the dusty space in front of one of the shops. These guys had never seen me on a bike before, and I was definitely the center of attention. There was a wide ditch between the road and the repair booth, and I barely made it up the far side when I put my feet down to dismount. But I was still on a slope, and my right foot didn’t make contact with the ground. I tipped over to the right, and rolled back down the ditch, bike over body.

            Lovely, I thought, as my indecently-covered legs splayed out in an involuntary cartwheel.

            I hopped up again as quickly as I could, and wanted to say something like TAA DAA! But I didn’t know the Chichewa words for that. So I just smiled like a dope, covered from head to toe in dust, in front of the completely silent mass of men. I picked up my bike and wheeled it over to the guy with the pump, pointing to my flat tires. He pointed at my elbow, which had gotten scraped up and was bleeding. I shrugged.

            “Palibe vuto. Zoona.”- it’s no problem. Really.

            He looked at my tire and said he didn’t have the right pump. Check the shop next door. So with all the eyes silently following me, I wheeled over ten feet to the other shop and presented my tires. A three-man team, including a young bike repair apprentice, was soon fixing my tires. The head guy asked, in skeptical, halting English,

            “Who was it that taught you how to ride a bike?”

            “Oh,” my mind was blank, “um, I think I learned in school.”

            “Oh. Ok.”

            My tires were full again and I asked what I owed him. He laughed and said no charge. So I hopped back on and thoroughly enjoyed the 50 meter ride back to my house, passing my neighbor for the third time, this time dusty, sweaty and bloody. Riding suddenly took a lot less effort. I thought about heading back out on the open trail, but the prospect of hot tea at home suddenly seemed a lot more inviting.

            I decided to lock the door again to the bat room, to concentrate the smell of the floor wax. And for good measure I locked my bike away again too.  

Manure Hunting

It’s starting to feel like the logo for Peace Corps Malawi should be something like: ‘Homesteading on a Shoestring’, or ‘Little House on the Savannah- the Next Generation’. Although the work of community health assessment continues, my attempts to turn my dusty, scorched-earth yard into an African Eden (or at least more green than brown) are intensifying.

            When I arrived in Chiwamba, it wasn’t yet the season for harvesting the grass reeds used for fences, so the health center staff used cardboard to create a little courtyard for my privacy. But then it became grass season, and I was ready to do some full on landscaping.

            I got out my khasu (like a short hoe) and started hacking at the ground, not really accomplishing anything. I built a rickety hand-washing station and a dish drying rack that had to lean against my house (and still fell over sometimes).

            “What am I missing?” I asked Chancy, my counterpart.

            “You have to wet the ground first, it’s too dry.”

            I tried to dig a rubbish pit, pouring my used dishwater in the hole each night to soften the earth. And it worked, to an extent. But not well enough to dig garden beds.

I was in Lilongwe that week and asked a veteran PCV there.

“Get a pick-axe,” he said, “the heavier the better.”

I found a nice huge pick-axe in town and had a lot of fun getting it back to my village. Hitchhiking was a no go- I looked like the grim reaper in a Chitenge. But even the axe couldn’t break the earth without first soaking it.

I needed a TON of water, and I couldn’t carry it all myself.

            After mapping out where I wanted my garden to be, I headed to the health center and talked to the guardians. These are women who travel with pregnant relatives who live far away. They come to the health center three weeks before the due date and sort of camp in an outbuilding, waiting to go into labor. The guardians take care of them before and after the birth.

            I hired two women to carry water from the borehole and soak the area that I wanted to plant. They were a little perplexed as to why I was planting during the dry season, but they were glad for the job. Then I took my pick-axe and khasu and hacked away at the earth until I got blisters. My night watchman, Botoman, found me covered in sweat and dirt. The beds were still only a few inches deep and my hands were bleeding.

            “What are you doing?” He asked in his baritone voice.

            “I want a dimba,” I said ”I want to grow my own tomatoes and onions.”

            He shook his head and made a tsk tsk sound, then took my axe and hoe. We made a deal that he would dig that night for some extra money. His wife is pregnant, so odd jobs are welcome. I heard the whack, whack of the pick-axe all night, but in the morning, there were my three garden beds, each a meter deep.

            “Great job, Botoman- they look like empty graves!” He smiled.

            That week the fence was also expanded, with the cardboard taken down and replaced by tall, dry grass. It enclosed my empty garden perfectly, shading it on three sides. Following one of the books on tropical vegetable gardening provided by the Peace Corps, I started filling the beds with organic rubbish, one at a time. Lots of leaves, paper, fruit peels and eggshells went into the pit. THEN the fun started. Once the rubbish was a few inches deep in the pit, I started going manure hunting.

            I began in the maize field between my house and the borehole. It belongs to the headmaster of the local primary school. I had him and his wife over for dinner and when I told them about my plans, they gave me permission to gather cow manure from the empty field. So every afternoon, when I ran out of other things to do, I took a bucket and trowel and went out gathering cow dung. It was pretty slow work, but after a few days, a woman on her way to the borehole took me to her house, where there were eight cows. I met the family and they said to take as much manure as I wanted. I carried six buckets back on my head that night, until the hole was filled with several inches of dung, and the rubbish was no longer visible. Then I mixed the soil that had been removed, and replaced it in the pit, topping it off with several inches of mulch. Every evening I wet the mulch, and now after a week and a half, the bottom layer has begun to rot. Soon it will be ready for planting.

            Now my rubbish is going into bed number two. And after all the careful observation of how the fencemakers plied the ground to make sturdy fenceposts, I tore down my rickety hand-washing station and dish drying rack and made new, firmly planted ones. I started a nursery beneath my hand-washing station, germinating cucumber and tomato seeds. Every time I wash my hands, the water drips on the nursery, conserving every drop.

            As much as I appreciate my neighbor with the cows, I don’t want to wear out my welcome. Plus I really enjoy the afternoon walks, exploring new trails, searching for dried poo. I discovered a really nice field behind the primary school where cattle had obviously been grazing recently. I can’t go near the school during classes, because seeing an Azungu stirs the kids into a frenzy, but there was still a teacher’s meeting going on. One of them leaned out the window.

            “Eliza, what is it that you are looking for?”

            “Ndikufuna manure! Ndidzkhala dimba!” I yelled back.

            “Oh.”

            A few seconds later I heard the room full of teachers roaring with laughter.

During training an experienced PVC told us that we will inevitably do so many culturally strange things during the first few months at site, that the people who are going to think we are nuts will probably come to that conclusion no matter what.

I take that as consolation when I am surprised by someone overhearing me talking to the manure, saying things like, “oh, you’re a nice big plop, yes you are! Hold on maggots, this is MY cow pie now!”

After a few days of this “wild” hunting, another neighbor saw me and led me to his pig farm, and said I could have two bucketfuls of pig poop. I was so excited that my Malawian pastor overheard me from the nearby trail. He helped me carry the manure home and looked intently at the garden beds.

“This is totally different,” he said “I think I may have to try this.”

I lent him a book on permaculture in Chichewa and went back out hunting.

Today the manure in bed two is basi- enough. I will go out and fill in the bed with soil, cover it with mulch, and start tossing rubbish in bed three. When all the beds are filled, I will make a proper compost pit and start planning the magnificent herb garden I have envisioned for the other side of my house. In the meantime, word is spreading about my garden. Nearly every day I get a shy visitor who wants to look at my different way of preparing the soil. I guess the proof will be in the vegetables, though.

Today, as I look out at my no longer scorched-earth yard, I am thinking- “How hard could it be to raise chickens???"

Elizabeth goes on Med Hold

So in the two and a half weeks since I arrived at my site in Chiwamba, I have been sick all but about five days. It started as a cold, which morphed into a coughy- tight- chest thing. Being sick is no fun when you have to draw your own water and cook over fire- no spending the whole day in bed! Plus it was frustrating to finally be somewhere where I could actually do something and instead feel too weak :-(
After starting on some antibiotics last week, I felt better for long enough to walk out to some of the nearby villages where the HSA's were doing child nutrition campaigns. I helped measure children to screen for malnutrition while the HSA's gave out vitamin A and mebendazole for worms. We were able to identify several malnourished children who were then referred back to the Health Centre for supplemental feeding. After about three days of this, though, I started feeling crummy again. Two nights ago I had a fever and called the doc bac, who had me come into Lilongwe first thing yesterday morning.
I hitched out from my village to the main road with some missionaries (thank you!!!) and rode in the back of a truck into town (not fun- we were stopped at a police checkpoint for almost an hour...). The doc found me lying on the steps outside the clinic, out of breath. Some new meds and a bit of IV fluids later, I felt a little better. I told the doc that I hadn't eaten in two days and he took me out for a milkshake!!
So I will be in Lilongwe for a few days until I am fully recovered.
And then....hopefully....starting actual work in Chiwamba...

The Third Day in Chiwamba

On the morning of the third day at site, I was woken up by a gaggle of kids outside my window.

            “Eliza!, Eliza!”

            They were yelling something else in Chichewa that I didn’t understand. I looked at the clock- almost 6am. I should be getting up anyway.

            “Mwadzuka,” I yelled back out the window- “good morning!”

            I pulled on a Chitenge and fumbled with my keys. When I got outside there were 8 children beaming, including one boy bursting with excitement. He was holding a terrified hedgehog, which he then pushed into my hands.

            “Where did you find this?” I asked, as I sat down and let the hedgehog uncurl and crawl around on my lap.

            “Alipo,” he shrugged- “just around.”

            I had seen a hedgehog before in Mkonkera, and was told they were very rare. The hedgehog woke me up well; 90% prickly spines, 10% fleshy belly, with a long nose and black bead eyes. I gave it back to the boy.

            “I have something to show you too,” and I dashed inside.

            The day I had arrive in Chiwamba, to a house that had sat unoccupied for several years, was a blur. I was helping to sweep it out when I spotted a bat clutching the wall. I yelled to my neighbor, who hit it with a broom handle and carried it outside. When we finished sweeping, I went back to the spot where we had cleaned up massive amounts of droppings and looked up. There were dozens of bats sleeping on the backside of a rafter.

            With the squeaks and the droppings, I had assumed that my house was infested with rats, so I had loaded up on rat poison and traps in Lilongwe, but I had no clue what to do with bats.

            “Watch out,” my neighbor said, “ there are a lot of nyerere.” Ants. Biting ants I would soon find out.

            The bat room was where I had been planning on sleeping, so I moved all of my things to one of the back storage rooms. By the end of the day, I would be carrying water from the borehole and scouring my new bedroom, only to find that no amount of elbow grease could remove the years of grime on the cement walls.

            I decided to heat some water for a bucket bath, but I couldn’t light the charcoal. I soaked the briquettes in paraffin and fanned the tiny flame until my arm cramped, but the water only got lukewarm. I took a lukewarm bucket bath and went to bed.

           

            On the second day, I knew that I had to do laundry. I hauled a 30 liter bucket filled with dirty clothes to the borehole and started scrubbing.

            The borehole is a great place to meet people, since it is on a major path out to the maize fields. I greeted everyone who walked by in Chichewa, often explaining who I was and what I was going to be doing in Chiwamba.

            “You wash your own clothes?” Many people asked, “Who taught you do to that?”

            I realized as I finished that I didn’t have a clothesline yet. I had to dig though the endless bags of supplies from Lilongwe to find it. I had to move quickly-I was going to be late for a staff meeting at the health center.

            The five minute walk from my house to the health center turned into 15, as I stopped to greet a group of local chiefs. (“You always, always have time to greet the chiefs,” I had been told in training.) Of course the meeting started an hour late, so I shouldn’t have worried.

            Every few minutes, the head of the clinic would pause the Chichewa and ask me in English if I was following what was being said, then give me a big high five if I answered correctly. We laid out plans for my first few work days next week, observing some health workers in the field who were conducting a village assessment. After the meeting, there were still several hundred patients to be seen in the clinic, plus dozens more in antenatal, since the nurse was out for the day.

            “Come on,” the Medical Assistant grabbed me, “there is a woman bleeding.”

            I know that as a Peace Corps Volunteer I cannot do hands-on care, but the nurse in me rushed to see what was going on. A woman was lying on the delivery table, moaning. She was five months pregnant and hemorrhaging. I could smell the blood. Someone had already called an ambulance, and it pulled up just as we entered the room. Malawian ambulances are just cars with one driver, however, and the drive to a hospital would be at least an hour.

            “Can you start an IV?” I asked the MA.

            “Lets just get her in the ambulance and go.”

            We moved to the prenatal exam room where I observed a basic visit. I felt the belly of a very pregnant woman. In nursing school, I always had trouble finding the lay of the baby, but on this slim Malawian, I could feel the curve of the head, the shoulder, even a leg as it moved. The mother smiled.

            Suddenly there was a gasp outside. While the bleeding woman was being carried out to the ambulance, she had given birth. The MA ran out to help, and I started praying under my breath. I gave them a minute and then ran out to join them. I didn’t want to get in the way.

            “Is it alive?”

            “Yes, for now.”

            I looked though a tiny window into the car to see the mother lying on the floor. Another woman was holding a tiny wet bundle. I could see a head move a little.

            I grabbed the driver, who I knew spoke a little English.

            “Tell her to wrap the baby in at least two more blankets! It has to stay warm!”

            “OK,” he grunted as he drove away.

            I poked my head back in the exam room window and told the MA that I was going home.

            “Eat first!” He pointed to a bench with nsima and fried fish laid out. I didn’t have an appetite. I grabbed an attendant and told her that I was very sorry to miss lunch, but I needed to go home.

            I got out to the road just in time to see the “ambulance” disappear over the crest of a hill.

            Looking down, I saw a bright green chameleon on the packed dirt. It was the first one I had seen in Malawi. I kept an identical chameleon as a pet in Uganda and name him True Love. This would be True Love 2, I decided, as I picked it up. It hissed and turned brown in self-defense, but soon calmed and sauntered up and down my arm as I walked home. I put it in a cardboard box with some grass and water. After a while, I “hunted” three grasshoppers and put them in the box, watching as True Love 2 shot out his long, elastic tongue to devour them.

            Realizing that I hadn’t yet eaten that day, I tried to start a fire. I was terribly slow, and an hour later I had only some very soggy rice. I cleaned my house a bit more, took in my laundry, and had another cold bucket bath.

            On the third morning, I wanted to show the hedgehog kids my chameleon. The girls shrieked as I brought True Love 2 out.

            “It will bite you!” the said.

            “No,” I laughed, “chameleons don’t bite. Let’s hunt grasshoppers.”

            We tromped through the field next to my house, catching grasshoppers for the chameleon’s breakfast. But though they were big and juicy, he refused to eat. I noticed that the nyerere had gotten into his box.

            “Let’s let him go.”

            The kids and I spent 15 minutes searching for the perfect spot, then we said goodbye as True Love 2 slowly walked back into the bush. We let the hedgehog go too.

            I took the kids back to my house and showed them my hand-washing station- a must for proper sanitation without running water.

            We sat in a circle and played the Chichewa version of duck-duck-goose; khuku-khuku-g’nombe (chicken- chicken- cow). We had a great time.

            Eventually I shooed them all out, realizing that I needed to cook something. I started the fire a bit faster this time, and filled a pot with water and pasta. But it still wouldn’t boil. I threw the soggy/crunchy pasta out behind my house, where some hungry dogs had been waiting for my latest failed attempt at cooking to get tossed.

            I plopped down in my very grimy living room, exhausted. I needed to scrub the whole room, but it was so hot, and I hadn’t eaten in a while, and I had no energy.

            Three of the boys from that morning were still hanging out in front of my house. I got an idea, and tried my best in Chichewa to explain-

            “You scrub, I pay 50 kwacha.”

            It took about three attempts before they understood and agreed. We went through three big bucketfuls of water, half a bottle of lavender castile soap, five sponges and a lot of dripping sweat, but finally I felt that my living room was habitable. In fact I was so happy that I gave them 100 kwatcha each. (In retrospect, probably a mistake, forever sealing my reputation in their minds as the rich American.)

            Remembering how hungry I was, I walked into town to get chippies (like homemade French fries) and a Fanta.

            I was still putting the finishing touches on my living room when the kids came back. The youngest, my four-year old neighbor, presented me with a handful of grasshoppers she had caught for me.  I think she must think that hunting grasshoppers is a hobby of mine!

            I told the kids that I wanted to start a fire.

            Together we soaked the charcoal in paraffin, just as I had done before. But again the fire wouldn’t last.

            “Put some grass on it.”

            I went out to get some grass.

            “No- this kind,” he showed me the thick reeds I had seen as thatch on people’s roofs. He broke it into pieces and shoved it into the charcoal, fanning the mixture until it was glowing red. I put a pot of water on top.

            Every few minutes as we watched the fire, they offered more advice.

            “Put more grass on.”

            “Fan it a little more”

            “Just wait.”

            And then suddenly, the water was boiling. And for the first time in Chiwamba, I had a hot bucket bath.

            I had heard from a fellow PCV that the kids are always the first to accept and teach the new azungu in town, and it’s true.  When I shooed them away that night, I told them to be sure and come back tomorrow.

In Malawi

Hi All!
Hello from the Warm Heart of Africa :-) I've been here now for about six weeks (seven?), going through PST, or pre-service training. In short, everything is going well- the team of trainees is amazing and Malawi is a beautiful and welcoming place.
We arrived in Lilongwe airport to the roaring cheers of a massive crowd of current PCV's welcoming us- another American on the tarmac asked me "Is there a celebrity on this flight?"- nope- just the Peace Corps! We were whisked off to the training center in Dedza, in the forested highlands just to the south of the capital city. There we stayed in simple dorms, getting to know everyone- Malawian trainers and American trainees. Dedza is on the side of a stunning rock face hill; a short hike brought absolutely gorgeous views of the countryside. (Pictures to come! Sorry!).
Weeks two through five we stayed with host families in rural vilages near Dedza. I have pretty much always lived alone, except during college, but suddenly in homestay I was sharing a mud house with about ten people (seven children) and 12 chickens! Thankfully the goats lived in another hut, but I suspect they used to have my room because they incessantly tried to claw their way in. Every morning brought a new heap of dirt right outside my door from the goats' tunneling efforts.
My host family taught me well- I chopped wood, made fire, cooked Nsima, rice, greens, etc...
I fetched water on my head, did my laundry by hand while trying my best to chat in Chichewa with women at the borehole, and swept out my dirt-floored room every day. My family was also enormously comforting during that very stressful time, always ready to just sit silently next to me, using the internationally understood comfort of "being there".
After five weeks we bid a big lovely farewell to our host families and villages and found out where our new homes will be. I will be staying near Lilongwe, close enough to the city for an easy daytrip but far enough away to really enjoy rural life. I visited the site last week, my first big foray "on my own", outside of the protective safety net of the Peace Corps training staff. I will be working with a Rural Community Health Centre, however, my aim is to do preventative health projects out in the villages, away from the Center. There are HSA's (Health Surveillance Assistants) who travel to every village in the catchment area to assess the water and sanitation practices, assess for malnutrition, and do basic health teaching. Over the next few months, (after swearing in), I will have lots of time to shadow these HSA's, conduct assessments of the needs in the area, fix up my house, improve my cooking skills, refine my Chichewa.....yeah there will be a lot to do.
My house is simple, with no running water or electricity, but it is also cool and spacious; I never thought I would be so excited about having cement floors! I can't wait to add all the personal touches that make a house a home. The dust of the front yard will hopefully become a kitchen garden, and the walls will be bare no more.
Today I am off to the West of Malawi for a week of language intensive, which is my last chance to really gain from language trainers' expertise. My community has made it very clear that they want me to speak Chichewa, so I am going into this week with a renewed drive to really communicate effectively.
---Then on the 26th, we all swear in and become REAL Peace Corps Volunteers!---
Last night I had a chicken salad in Lilongwe that must have been beamed down from heaven- REAL ranch dressing?! I am having waking dreams about ice cold sour cream and cheddar cheese. If you can, eat some cold dairy products and think of me :-)

Grace and Peace-
Elizabeth

The Rollercoaster

Four days and counting.
(If you are looking for contact information, open my last post)

For the first time in a week, I am feeling pretty mellow about the way-too-large pile of things sitting in my parents living room, all of which I want to take to Malawi but which of course cannot all fit. All the conflicting packing lists, the ton of shopping over the past few months, and the stress of moving all have come down to this, and I have to be at peace with it, because whether everything fits in that duffel bag or not, I'm getting on a plane on Thursday.

Last week after a wonderful visit with a friend in Boise and her new baby, I brought home the baby's cold and was in a mucousy fog for a few days. Going to the mall and walking around, looking at all the new fashions that will already be passe by the time I get back is made all the more distant, like an anthropological visit, with extra strength cold medicine on board.
When I could think straight enough again to start packing for real, I knew I was in trouble when I had hit the weight limit and only half of the things I wanted to bring were crammed in my bags. "Be Brutal" has been my mantra lately. Be Brutal with giving things away, don't hold onto things you don't need. It seems my brutality toward my things needs to be cranked up several more notches.
What if I can't fit my yarn and can't buy it there? Will I go crazy from not knitting? How can I survive with only one (insert object here) when I have ten of them that I love so much?? I noticed that all of these thoughts were about ME. And I remembered that, while I need some objects of comfort in Malawi, it really isn't about comforting ME. That isn't why I applied to the Peace Corps. For as much as I aspire to not be defined by my STUFF, my baubles, this is a chance to actually make it happen. So it isn't a sacrifice as much as a challenge.
So then when I was pondering this I tripped and spilled out all the contents of my purse and just burst into tears. Real, snotty gross tears. And it was ok. I had to go to a dinner party, and showed up still crying and no one cared. There was a champagne toast to my new adventure, and lots of laughter and prayer and showing pictures, and I knew that I could be myself, on this rollercoaster of emotion, and still be normal.
A few days ago, I was reading in our facebook group for the Malawi team, and one of the current PCV's in Malawi wrote a really touching note that said though it is sad for us to leave home, we are not just leaving a family here, we are gaining a big, crazy, lovely family in Malawi, who are preparing today for our arrival and will welcome us with lots of hugs, and who probably wont care if I start crying again (which I probably will at some point). So I am going from loving family to loving family, and just taking whatever will fit in that duffel bag with me, and I am ok with that today. :-)


Grace and Peace,
Elizabeth

Contact Information

On February 24th I will be flying to Philadelphia for some initial orientation, and then early on the 26th comes the long flight from New York to Johannesburg, and then a quick hop to Lilongwe, Malawi, arriving on the 27th.

Training in Malawi will last about nine weeks and consist of language learning and technical skills. I will be staying with a Malawian host family for most of that time. In late April I plan to swear in as an official Peace Corps Volunteer (until then I will be a "Trainee") At that point I will move out to my site, where I will be spending two years.

During training I will have no access to e-mail or internet, so I would really appreciate any snail mail, even just a quick letter :-)

My address is:

Elizabeth Karman, PCT

Peace Corps

PO Box 208

Lilongwe, Malawi

Africa

AIR MAIL

Letters currently cost $.98 to mail from the US. 

This PO box is for the Peace Corps main offices, and I will be able to pick up mail there when I am in Lilongwe. After I move out to my site I may get my own PO box that is closer, but mail sent to the above address will still get to me. I will update this if and when I have a new, closer address. 

Here is what the Peace Corps says regarding mail:

---Mail takes a minimum of two to three weeks to arrive, often longer. The Peace Corps advises friends and family to number their letters (so I will know if any are missing or out of order), and include "Air Mail" and "Par Avion" on their envelopes. Packages take six to nine weeks for airmail, and surface mail packages take around six months. If someone is sending you a package, it's advisable to keep it small and use a padded envelope so it will be treated as a letter.---

I went to the post office to price postage- padded envelopes are also much cheaper than boxes to mail! Currently a flat rate international large envelope is $13.95.

Some other Peace Corps web sites and books recommend writing the address in Red ink, and also writing religious symbols or scriptures on the package. 

After I have been in Malawi for six months, I will have to start paying duty on packages valued over $20, which I have heard is very expensive and would eat up most of my salary- so when filling out customs forms, keep this in mind. I would love any package- it's the thought that counts, right?

Many friends have also asked how they can pray during this time- please pray for a safe journey, ease of language learning, and protection from disease, especially stomach problems. Thank you!

Grace and Peace-

Elizabeth Karman

Goodbye Job!

So yesterday was my last night shift before moving to Malawi. I've worked on the same unit in some capacity (aide, nurse tech, RN) for about ten years, so moving on was not an easy decision. It's not just the change in location though. My work in the Peace Corps will be very different than bedside nursing, and despite the many crazy shifts where I swore that I hated bedside nursing, the truth is I know that at some point I will miss it. I will miss writing my name on the wall and telling someone "I'm your nurse". Nurses get to see so many sides of humanity that are hidden from much of the world. They become interwoven in grief, anger, and loss, and are included in the celebrations of small victories. I had never been exposed to so much fear, love, regret, obscenity, hatred, sacrifice, danger, callousness, paranoia, helplessness, and hope as I have here. Now one adventure has ended, and thankfully, it has propelled me to the coming adventure overseas.

Some things that I learned on the floor:

-what a pannus is (and a Fumpus- thanks Amy!)
-to dilute ativan before trying to run it through a 22g IV on a hard stick
-to NOT tell patients that TPA is "like drano" for your line. People think literally.
-to never get between a brain tumor patient and a stairway
-that addressographs wont break the windows but chairs will
-that most people don't realize that oxygen is flammable, and still don't believe it when you tell them
-how to say "I'm your nurse" in Georgian, "I dont speak Russian" in Russian, do a full assessment in Spanish, and how to say thank you in six other languages
-that when you say "I don't speak Russian" in Russian, most people assume it is meant as a joke and continue speaking in Russian...
-to always wear a mask when aggressively unplugging a PEG tube
- that warm blankets are like a crude form of hospital currency
-to wear my hair up and back when doing extensive dressing changes (learned REAL FAST!)
- that nurses running in the halls is always a bad thing
-that patients running in the halls means that its time for them to go home
-that no matter what my ACLS teacher said, compressions alone CAN pop someone out of asystole
-that it is possible to lose two gallon tubs of liquid stool between my floor and the lab
-that nurses are as diverse a group of people as everyone else, and we aren't angels
-that CF sucks and needs to be cured asap
- that running backwards pulling a bed going to the unit is an awesome glute workout

more to come when I think of them. Love to all my co-workers/ friends.....and a thousand big bear hugs to the MoTard :-)


Grace and Peace-
Elizabeth

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