Camp TIECH and the end of Oct

Camp TIECH in Chelinda was fantastic! I spent 3 nights in Rumphi town with fellow volunteer Christy who was one of the coordinators. We went to Rumphi ahead of time to collect supplies, arrange transport to Chelinda, and generally prepare for the students arrival in Rumphi. Christy headed up to Chelinda a day early while I waited for the students to roll in. They arrived Sunday morning, and through a whirlwind of activity we managed to get the matola loaded with all of our supplies and food, and also get 30 students fed. (matola is the word for a big flatbed truck – the one that would carry us up the plateau) Nothing ever goes perfectly here and of course we had a hiccup with the driver and his funds not being released by the owner of the truck.

            Finally on our way, and only running a half hour late we hit the road. Mind you, we had packed everyone gear and all of the food quite well, to prevent anything being crushed – apparently they had issues last year. One hour into the drive it starts to rain heavily on us (unusual this time of year!) and we have to scramble to cover everything with a large tarp. Later we would find that much of the fruit had been crushed in the process!

            The ride from Rumphi to Chelinda took us about 4.5 hours with a stop in Thazima to check out the information room. We were accompanied by Harry Kapira, an education and extension officer from the Karonga district side of the park who had worked in Chelinda for several years prior. He went through the info room with the students and would prove to be a fantastic resource throughout the week.

            We did have another unplanned stop inside the park when the semi became stuck in the mud and all of us had to pull it out! We saw one elephant off in the distance and many antelope as we drove the remainder of the way. All of us were very excited, but quite exhausted arriving in the dark. Thankfully Kay and Christy had arranged for dinner to be ready when we got there, and after a meal and short meeting we headed to bed for a very cold night of sleep.

            The students would be in class from 8 am to 5 pm each day of camp. We took all meals with them and spent the week teaching about a variety of health and environment topics. Some of these included: HIV/Aids and Malaria education, healthy sexual choices, composting, agroforestry, diet diversification and nutrition, etc.

            On average, counselors started the day around 5 am and ended around 9pm. It was a great time for all of us to bond with each other and build on existing or create new friendships. Luckily we all also had plenty of time to appreciate our surroundings. Nyika is full of breathtaking views and interesting animals (as you may remember from my earlier posts). Bushbuck antelope are ever-present around Chelinda and we also got to see our share of reedbuck, roan and eland. I also got to see zebra, duiker, klipspringers, toucans, turacos, one jackal, and countless other plants and small animals.

            Two animal encounters in particular stand out to me. One night while walking from the guest house where the counselors stayed to the youth hostel where the students sleep and have classes Kay and I spotted a leopard! I had my headlamp on, and about 20 meters ahead of us I spotted large, wide set, brilliant green eyes flash back at me and suddenly crouch down. After a moment the leopard decided we were neither a meal nor a threat and stood up and turned to our right, slipping behind a small hill. I caught its full silhouette before it disappeared. Damn. Those things get big! We kept watching and would catch a glimpse of its eyes as it looked back at us between tree stumps as it wandered away.

The second was at the end of the week as we left the park. We were riding in the back of the matola and as we rounded a corner we came upon the same elephant we spotted at a distance coming into the park. Apparently he is a large bull that roams around on his own. We must have startled it because he came charging at the open truck bed, ears flapping and truck held high in threat display. Luckily he didn’t come to close – Either the driver spotted this, or simply never noticed the animal, we didn’t even slow down to watch it as we usually did when spotting an animal.

That day the camp ended, we took the students from Chelinda all the way to Mzuzu so that they could visit the university and see the SMART Centre for water and sanitation. They received a tour and demonstrations on several appropriate technologies for Malawi, including water catchment/ pump systems and composting toilets. We had dinner and breakfast with them before finally sending them home the next morning. The hope is that students will begin to initiate activities they learned over the course of the week at their home villages.

I stayed in Mzuzu for the counselor dinner that Sunday night and then returned to site in Thazima briefly before returning to Rumphi town to attend 2 days of the Nyika/Vwaza Trans Frontier Conservation Area conference for Zambia and Malawi with my supervisor. The conference tried to fit far far too much into too small of a period and was even called short – the Zambian officers had to leave early due to the unexpected death of the countries president. In spite of all of this I still gained quite a bit from the event. It gave me a far more complete picture of the issues facing the Malawi and Zambian parks and the communities surrounding them. I also got a better idea of the efforts already in place to help reduce poaching and human – animal conflicts. Overall the event really reinforced for me my role in my community. It also provided possible opportunities to work more closely with the park system.

 Later that weekend I went to Kande Beach for Halloween celebrations and to visit Ripple Africa, and NGO that operates in the area. Halloween was fun, though I was a party pooper and slept early both nights, as I had exhausted my energies in the sun during the day. At one point we paddled out to a small nearby island where I got to see a fish eagle up close and a water monitor in the wild! Better still, I got to put to use some climbing shoes I had lucked into finding at the market in Rumphi. That’s right, I got to check deep water free solo climbing off of my life list! It was a huge rush and a ton of fun, I look forward to doing it again soon.

Though I really enjoyed seeing my friends and a very busy 2 weeks, I was also very happy to finally get back to site and start working towards the coming planting season. I will be working with a few very interested farmers to teach about contour ridging and I am also building a demonstration plot at my house for conservation agriculture and reclaiming/rebuilding soils using agroforestry species. Somewhere in there Prince and I hope to do some more cookstove work. It is so dry right now, it is hard to imagine that the rains are just a month away!

Catching Up - Oct 14

 

Wow, it has been a while. A big part of that is that I have been downright busy, another part of that is that it is harder to write about life when the little things no longer seem novel. My mother keeps hassling me to write another blog update, if only just to fill people in on what I have been up to. Here is the rundown on the past few months!

August
Got tree nursery built and ready to work on, Didn’t get supplies (tubes to plant, seeds, watering cans and hoes) until the very end of September. I had given the tree nursery committee some tubes and seeds and told them to start without the supplies, all they need is a bucket and small cup to start watering, but they insisted on waiting until the supplies were given to them… oh well.

I attended Camp GLOW (Girls Leading Our World) as a member of the ‘Manel’ a five person man panel consisting of 2 American men and 3 Malawian men. The intent was to give the young Malawian women attending the camp an honest and uninhibited opportunity to ask men any question they wanted – This would be very culturally taboo here and is something that we take for granted in even casual conversation in the US. Here in Malawi it would be incredibly culturally inappropriate for a women to ask most of the questions we were asked. Many were with regards to sex, behavior, and relationships – The intent is to give them answers that are based on reality and scientific explanation. This is to help combat many of the often dangerous local myths/beliefs regarding sex and sexual behavior. I found the experience incredibly rewarding and moving. It was fantastic to see the other activities going on during the camp. I think that it truly served as a starting point to empower the young women that attended and is one of the best things that Peace Corps Malawi has going. I hope to have the chance to be a part of it next year as well. Check out the video that one of the volunteers made regarding the camp and the status of women in Malawi.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbIjZ-Kwj9g

Near the end of the month I finished building and drying my improved cookstove (check out the photos below!) Unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to use it until over a month later. The last Saturday of August I did some work with the tree nursery – filling over 320 tubes, ready for planting! Unfortunately, I then had to leave a week early for In Service Training for a few different reasons.

September
IST lasted for 2 weeks starting with all the volunteers arriving on Saturday the 7^th. 

It was fantastic to spend the first week catching up with the other volunteers – Many of whom I had not seen in 4 months. We spent the day (8-5pm) in classes, furthering our PC training, and often stayed up late catching up with each other. Being so excited to see each other and to share our experiences we often stayed up quite late (much later than the typical post-sundown village bedtime) and we were all short on sleep for the entire two weeks.

During the second week of IST we were joined by our counterparts. Khunga came down for the whole week of training. We had a good time catching up – this had been the longest I have been away from site! When we greeted each other, we both said "I have been missing you!" as is common in the local vernacular.

Unfortunately for me, I found IST to be rather uninformative and unproductive from a professional standpoint – A significant portion of the training was detached from the skills that would be useful in a village setting, or were simply a direct repeat of PST when we arrived in country. I know I am not alone in this and I hope that the feedback many volunteers provided will improve future trainings. I do however think that the training was of great benefit to my counterpart. It was good for him to hear the things I have been saying come from other professional sources as reinforcement, and I think he was further motivated. I am very excited about this aspect of the training and look forward to collaborating with him on more of our work.

After IST I returned north to Mzuzu for a meeting on the camp TIECH. TIECH is a weeklong environment and health camp for secondary students (think high school, but due to the education system here ages can vary from 14 to 26 for these camps). It takes place next week (Oct 18-25) in Nyika National Park – Right in my Backyard! (Sort of) At the meeting, we discussed the lesson schedule and responsibilities leading up to the camp. I am pretty excited to be a part of this camp, and have hopes of being one of the coordinators for it next year. I am joined by fellow volunteers Ian, Brittany, Lea, Meg, Rachael, Matt, and coordinating volunteers Kay and Christy. We are even going to be visited by the new Country Director – I hope she is ready for the long and bouncy ride to Chelinda from Rumphi town. Overall this promises to be a rewarding experience. (Plus more time deep in the park will result in some fantastic photo ops for wildlife and landscape)

After TIECH meeting, midweek, I took some vacation time and headed back down south to the Mangochi lakeshore for The Lake Of Stars Music Festival (Way south for me – the furthest south I have been). I got lucky on transport both in and out of the fest – hitching resulted in some good rides with some cool people and saved some money + time over minibus travel. I stayed for 2 of the three nights before heading back up north. It was cool and very interesting to see an event like this unfold in the heart of Malawi. Many great artists from the southern Africa region played and there were about 3000(?) people there. It felt good to cut loose and swim in the lake again. I actually got in a little bit of bouldering with another volunteer. Mangochi was beautiful, even in the blistering heat of the season. There were giant Baobab trees everywhere, and I can imagine how nice it would look in the wet season with leaves on all of the plants. Thazima/Nyika NP still remains my favorite part of Malawi though!


October
Travel takes a bit here of course and even though I left Mangochi on a Sunday, I didn’t get back to site until the Wednesday 1st. Let me tell you –I missed home! I promptly got back into the swing of village life and reconnected with my friends and counterpart.

October highlights so far:

Fired up my cookstove for the first time and now I use it all the time, holy crap this thing is awesome and I often joke that compared to cooking on a 3 brick fire is like cooking with electricity (it isn’t, but is a helluva lot better).

I helped the tree nursery to plant their first seeds – we filled 300 tubes with Moringa and Senna spectabilis.

I noticed how nice my tiny house looks at night when it is all lit up with candles.

I adjusted to the realities of being in full swing of dry season – While away my nearest shallow well dried up and I have to walk over 1km for water now, carrying 22 liters on my head at least once a day (not as bad as you would think once you get used to it).

I have been fighting with the 2 carpenters I have contracted for work. One of them finally came through and supplied me with a set of shelves and planks for making an A frame. The other one skipped town without doing any work more than a month after I paid a hefty deposit. Turns out his references were not as solid as stated. This means I still have an unsecure house – Front door is basically plywood and back door is held shut with a bent nail. Things I wish Peace Corps had taken care of before I moved in! – I now have no idea when I will be able to find someone to do the work. ug. Luckily I have great neighbors just next to me and I do feel safe, and in 5 months at site, nothing has been stolen from me. This is not something that many volunteers here can claim.

I have finally gotten a back gate for my yard – this means that the goats are no longer eating the trees/plants in my nursery and yard! Finally my plants can start growing uninhibited. Unfortunately it may be too little too late for my nursery to give good sized seedlings for the rainy season coming in December. We will see.

I have started more home improvement! Using the extra bricks I bought for the cookstove I have started to outline and pre dig more of my yard. I plan on it being a permaculture haven by the time I leave. I will go crazy with planting and gardening during the rainy season.

I have also gotten to explore the nearby areas in the park a bit more including finding a new area to look for elephants and a hiking trip with Prince Mhone, one of my good friends and the chairperson of the community tree nursery.

I set a new PR descending the plateau to visit Ian on my bike, and finally made the ride/walk back up the mountains. Getting to Bembe where he lives (16km away) takes me ~40ish min (I think I can break into the upper 30s). Biking back up took over 2 hours including a 15 min rest and walking the longest, steepest sections. Ug, doing it in the heat of the day didn’t help, but I was downright exhausted by the time I got back. Not sure how motivated I am to try and improve on that time...

Lastly, the local HIV/AIDS Communnity Based Organization reformed and elected committee members! I hope to find some activities to do with them - mostly permaculture to improve the lives of those living with HIV/AIDS

That’s it for now! Khalani Makola! (Stay Well!)

Slowing Down

7 August 2014
Apart from big events, I am finding it harder and harder to find things to write about. Life here is…. mellow. We finally made the tree nursery fence and I am certain we will receive seeds and tubes to start planting the nursery before the end of the August. I have also finally located the bricks I need to make an improved cook stove at my house. I want 100 of them – they are bigger than the ones you will find stateside and locally made. The stove only calls for at most 60, but I want to use the extras for other projects. To make the bricks they find a termite mound, dig it up and make the bricks from the clay the termites build with. They painstakingly form each one, dry it in the sun, and then build a large shaped pile that they fire with a huge amount of firewood. Unfortunately the process of making them contributes readily to deforestation, but the intent of the cookstove is to offset that with a more efficient mode of cooking. I have to haul the bricks over a kilometer to my house – I already moved half with a borrowed wheelbarrow two days ago (exhausted) and hope to finish today.

Remember when I said patience is a virtue here? Well, my limits of patience are expanding all the time. It took nearly 3 months to get the bricks and has been more than that since I ordered some shelves to be built - My house is tiny and it would be nice to move some things up off of the floor in the name of saving space. You get used to things taking a while here. Transport can take hours longer than expected. 'Programs' (as they call any activities and events here) are always late, postponed, or cancelled. I always have a book on hand to fill dead time, that is unless I have read them all....

All being said, I am becoming more and more comfortable w/ the community and my daily routine. I am also finding more that I will want to work on in the next two years. It will be frustrating - habits are hard to change and I can already see so many cultural issues that will come into play.

It is tough, you try to take it to heart when they tell you during training that even small things will take time. Even though I remind myself of this regularly, you can't help but get frustrated with just how slow the process can be. But then, sometimes seemingly out of nowhere something will click; Someone will just 'get it', or the tree nursery committee comes together and makes an excellent fence with their own time and resources, or someone comes to you with an idea for the community that you know they are serious about and want to follow through with it. When this happens I get all smiles and excitement. (well, maybe just more than I usually am)

I am still trying to decide just how much is too much to take on, what the right balance of my time and skills will be, and exactly what I am wanting to get out of my time here - but I feel it coming. In Service Training is next month and my big community meeting to discuss possible projects is at the end of August. Both of these events, I expect, will help me get a better idea of what the area both wants and needs.

Camp GLOW is this month and I will be traveling to Lilongwe for the Man Panel that takes place on the 16th. Will definitely fill you in on that experience as I expect it to be a good one.

Quite a hike

26 July 2014

For the last month my bike has been stranded at Ian’s house. I kept getting lucky with transport and had no need/means to get to his house to collect it. This morning I sucked it up and walked the 16k down through the mountains to his house with the plans of riding back up. I left bright and early with nothing but my mp3 player and camelback. It took 3 hrs and 6 minutes door to door. So I guess now I know that. The walk was very relaxing and just what I needed. I got lucky again and by chance caught another ride up the beat up mountain road with my bike in the back of a park vehicle that was passing by.

I expect that this hike, both up or down, will happen often in my time here - apart from park trucks and the odd tourist, there is no regular public transport that comes to my site. And while it isn't too terribly hard to get in and out of site most of the time, I hope this gives you a feel for how out of the way Thazima is.

Chelinda

20 July 2014

After waiting for 2 days for the park to have a vehicle that could take me and the university students into Chelinda, I got lucky and found an early morning ride on Tuesday with two Swiss tourists and their 3(!) safari guides/drivers. They had room in the covered bed of their pickup truck and were leaving again in two days. I laid back in the bed and enjoyed the luxury (no joke, this ride was awesome compared to most).

This ended up being a smart decision. I arrived at the small village and ‘resort’ before noon. Transport was largely uneventful except for some zebras close to the car as we neared Chelinda (no time for a photo ) The university students arrived near 10 pm, were cold, and their trip took almost twice as long.

The views on the drive in are fantastic. Scenery slowly shifts from seemingly endless Brachystega woodland to rolling hills of short grass interspersed with towers of bare rock and forest in the damp parts of the valleys. By the time you reach Chelinda it is nothing but grassland as far as the eye can see, with one very prominent exception. The Chelinda area sticks out like a sore thumb.

The village has ~200 people not counting the guests (currently very few). The whole area backs up onto a tremendous pine plantation, and the village area is scattered with blue gum trees (Eucalyptus). The weather is damn cold and regularly misty for hours. The village houses are constructed from great pine planks, layered like shingles – very un-Malawi like. The upscale (in cost) Chelinda lodge looks as though it belongs in the Swiss Alps. The whole scene is surreal given the context of location and feels as though it has been plucked from an entirely different continent.

I get to spend my nights in the simple youth hostel for free. It is decorated with paintings of animals from the park and has three old elephant jawbones that are speckled with lichen sitting outside one of the huts. I have brought some rice and sweet potatoes to hold me over for the time I am there. I buy some mpangwe (mustard greens) for 20 kwacha to accompany my dinner.

I have come to meet with the assistant park manager, who is also the research manager, in order to discuss the possibility of conducting my own ecology research project in addition to my other Peace Corps duties. I also want to talk about another possible project with the manager of the safari company. Wilderness Safaris currently holds the park concession at Chelinda for the tourist lodge and camp and I have some rough ideas for an eco-tourism project that could benefit the people of Thazima and also the safari company. I will keep you posted on this if any of it seems feasible to pursue working on.

Unfortunately the manager of the safari company is busy and leaving early the next day so I will miss that opportunity and with the research officer also out I have some time to kill. I am limited in the few areas that I can access by myself on foot but over the next few days I explore all of them (though I am later told that as a park employee this restriction does not hold for me).

Here is a short list of the things I see: Roan, Sable, Eland, Reedbuck, Zebra, Bushbuck so close I could tackle one should I choose, some large buzzards, and a day old leopard kill that is gone the next day along with leopard scat and foot prints but no leopards! Next time I hope….

  I also walk through the pine plantation. It is so vast and the trees so large that the sky darkens as you enter and all you can see are the trunks of trees. Exceptionally few animals can use the pine woods and no native plants grow there. The wind howls in the treetops and the trunks sway and creak. It is beautiful, haunting, and slightly depressing. The pine and blue gum are over 50 years old and are monstrous in size. I shudder at the thought of one tipping and squashing me flat – I have been told they collapse on occasion and it has caused damage to buildings in the area.

My meeting with the research officer is productive and it seems like I will get to come up with my own project for studying the reptiles/amphibians around Thazima and I will also get to contribute to other research projects in the park when time and transport allows. I will now have to think up a project.

After 2 days and nights of shivering and spending the time with a constant cold in my fingers and toes I am eager to get back to my village. The same Swiss couple that gave me a ride in also share a meal with me and  provide some very pleasant conversation. I am quite grateful as they are willing to give me another ride back out early Thursday morning. Overall it was a great experience and I look forward to braving the road in the rainy season when over 200 species of orchid are in bloom.

I have come to Mzuzu for the weekend to get some work done for Peace Corps and to use the good internet to update this blog. Next week I hope to build an improved cook stove at my house in order to teach my neighbors, counterpart and supervisor. I also hope to take the community elected leaders of the tree nursery into Rumphi for meeting with Total Land Care! This is particularly exciting to me as I plan to make agroforestry one of the main focuses of my time here.

It should be some time before my next blog post goes up – I won’t have much internet over the next month and hope to be fairly busy. I have been elected to be a part of the Man Panel (Manel for short) of a female youth empowerment camp that Peace Corps is hosting in Lilongwe in early August. I will get to candidly answer anonymously posted questions from Malawian 2ndary school girls (high school age). The purpose is for them to get honest answers to questions that they might not otherwise be socially able to ask of men. Expect more updates around that time and some photos later this weekend.


Cheers!

The woods are my church

14 July 2014

Yesterday my alarm went off at 5am. I hit snooze until I was sufficiently satisfied with my Zz’s and finally awoke at 5:30. I looked out at Bwerumbwe hill, a nearby mountain inside of the park and my destination for the morning. The sky was a dusty ochre hue with highlights of amber. A halo of deep red surrounded the peak. It was still dark enough that I needed my headlamp as I dressed and inhaled my breakfast of cold oatmeal. I was anxious to start my hike, hopeful to see some animals in the early morning hours.

By 5:45 the cloudless sky had turned to shades of pink, peach, orange. I began my 1km walk through town, thankful that it is early enough on a Sunday that few people were awake enough to want to stop and chat. I wanted only the quiet and comfort of a morning spent in the woods alone. As I passed the gate and walked on the path that passes through the park employees housing complex my thoughts begin to ramble… Eager to escape the rising sounds of humanity I pick up my pace.

The ceaseless cackle of roosters begins to diminish behind me and I finally slow when I reach the fire road that descends to the creek that marks the start of the long climb to the crest of Bwerumbwe. Today the air is particularly frigid, lower 40’s. I am bundled against the cold, hands deep inside the pockets of my light jacket and my ski cap pulled tight against numb ears. The sharp chill makes my sunburnt nose feel wet, my eyes water and cheeks sting. I have slowly become accustomed to the morning temperatures, always just cool enough that I start every day with it deep in my bones.
I shake off a shiver as I listen to the birds come to life while the daylight brightens. The fire road borders a long leaf pine plantation on my right and as I walk the sounds of dew falling from the musuku trees on my left repeatedly give me pause, causing me to think I am hearing the snapping of twigs made by a fleeing animal. The path eventually turns to the right, becoming single track, and takes me into the pines. This stretch is eerily silent; the non-native trees give few local animals reason to use this space. The undergrowth is sparse, here and there stunted native plants struggle to survive against the poison released by the pine needles.

I come across an old pile of elephant dung, long since engulfed and then abandoned by termites. It gives me reason to think on why I woke so early. I would love to see an elephant so close to my home and to the park boundary. It is unlikely to happen, but this is the time of day for it. I have already been fortunate enough to see some on an earlier day trip into the park with the local beekeepers group. A family of 8 had walked in line into the bush as our truck drove slowly by. I remember the bull male made an imposing visage, standing guard with his ears flared and trunk held high while the rest of his troupe slipped into the woods.

What I really want to see though is a leopard. Oh how I wish to see a leopard! The locals tell me one lives on Thazima hill, the mountain that my house backs up to, and the last time I hiked Bwerumbwe I found some leopard scat. Apart from some klipspringers that we glimpsed for only a second, scat was about the only thing we found on that hike. I was accompanied by 3 university students who were far too loud to allow for any animal sightings. This time it is just me, and with the day free of obligations, I could take all the time I needed.

It is not long before I am rewarded. Shortly after leaving the pine strip I hear a twig snap and the swish of grass being parted. I freeze in place, waiting for my guest to appear. To my right, 30 meters off, the silhouette of a bush pig comes into view and I immediately drop to a crouch. He moves in short bursts – quickly moving a few feet then stopping to listen. This repeats several times and for a few moments I think he may pass right in front of me.

If there ever was a time I would call a pig beautiful, this is it. He is large, much stouter than I expected. I would guess in the range of 80lbs. His coat is mottled in black spots and a simple but clean reddish/tan fur. Long wisps of hair swirl about his face and give image to a small beard. Suddenly he gives an extended pause, sniffing the air vigorously. I am immediately aware of the steam coming from my breath. He turns away, holds for a moment more, and then vanishes into a thicket.

Soon afterwards I cross the stream. It is a simple, elegant thing that steadily burbles as it carves a path through the granite bed. By this time the sky is a milky white, the color of baby’s breath and giving hint to the clear blue sky of day. The sun is barely hidden behind the mountain, surely shining on the other side of the valley. It is warm enough that I can take my hands from my pockets and lift my cap above my ears in the hopes of hearing something new.

Apart from the wonderful views of rocky, boulder strewn woodland, the hike up is largely uneventful. I pause often, half to strain my ears for sounds of wildlife and half for the sake of catching my breath – exercise has hardly been part of my routine lately and my lungs struggle to keep pace with my feet. The view of the peak is obscured by trees and just before coming upon it I hear a strange grunting noise from my right as a bushbuck slips away on my left.

The top of Bwerumbwe is marked by two large rocky outcroppings. The first of which is capped with a stone hut that the park installed along with a relay tower for staff radios. The hut reminds me of images of montane Europe and the relay tower has long since collapsed – its guide wires cut in the night by poachers some time back. I drop my bag and shed my jacket in the rising morning temperature. It is now 7:30 and the sun is well in the sky. The woods are fully alive with the hum of insects. Several times I am buzzed by bumble bees larger than my thumb as I sit on the cliff staring into the park below. I have borrowed some old military binoculars and scan the area.

I discover two bushbucks 1km away on the valley floor and follow them for 10 min before finally losing sight of them. As I get up and take a few steps to the other side of the hut a male klipspringer sprints down the hill and hides behind some trees. He is followed by a female who stops atop a boulder, back to me but neck craned and eyes fixed, ready to flee. She repeats a very loud nasal warning grunt that surprises me given her small size. A tiny thing, weighing only ~25 lb at most. 1/3 of the weight seems to be in the thighs, a product of a life spent jumping from rock to rock.

I am nearly still, the only movement my hands as I scroll with the binoculars. She must be curious to find if I am friend or foe, she has turned to face me. Painted in a raccoon like guise, her eyes are locked to mine. For a full 5 minutes she grunts her alarm call, occasionally supplementing it with a small bounce of her front legs. The resulting crack from her hooves striking the rock echoes a sharp report in the area around me. Her call has been answered by a third klipspringer, another male. Eventually they regroup beneath a tree 50 meters away and linger in the area for 20 minutes before they decide I am not worth their time and move around the other side of the hill.

I spend another half hour or so on the second outcropping, a tremendous monolith with the best view in the area, before I finally begin my descent. I am sweating and in a T-shirt by the time I reach the stream. It is around 10 am and the temp has climbed steadily to the mid 70’s. This swing in temperature is common during the cold season and most pronounced on sunny days like this one.

Before the sounds of humanity reach my ears again I spend the last of the walk contemplating. I think about what it means to me to turn 31, to spend this time on a new continent, the work I hope to do and how I am happy to be here but simultaneously lonely for so many friends back home. Eventually I hear the pounding of maize and the howls of children and my thoughts turn more to the day at hand.

I did not get to see a leopard, maybe luck will be with me this week. This afternoon I am supposed to leave for Chelinda, the camp/village in the center of Nyika National Park. I am going with the university students (they are from the University of Livingstonia, Malawi) for some training on park research and a meeting with the manager of the safari lodge there.

I am bringing my camera this time.

Meetings, Counterparts, Activities and stuff

12 July 2014

It’s been over a month since I have sat down to write. With my counterpart coming back on duty from his yearly mandated leave, and me falling into far more comfortable of a routine, there has been less compelling material for me to write about. Here is what I have been up to lately.

Mid June my counterpart and I did our first community development tool. We had a community meeting to draw a map of Thazima. This is one of the initial tools that Peace Corps encourages us to use early on in our time at site. The purpose is less to give me a map of the Thazima and more to introduce me to the community and to get them talking to each other and thinking about making changes in the area.

We split them into 4 groups: men, women, girls and boys. This gives each group its own voice – that way no group is overshadowed which often happens if done all together. It also highlights the different ways each group functions and shows the different views and uses each group has of the surrounding area.

The meeting was scheduled for 8 am.

I have become completely accustomed to what us volunteers now call ‘Africa time’ – That is to say that patience is more than a virtue and things will happen when they happen. You become used to events starting hours later than planned, transportation having unpleasantly long delays, people not showing up etc. etc. People have to take care of their homes and families first: Food needs to be cooked, water fetched, the field tended, the house cleaned or repaired, and the list goes on. My counterpart and I take this time to discuss our current projects and activities, and to plan future community events.

As per usual, the meeting started at 1030, over 2 hours ‘late’. I was lucky as 56 people showed up, most of them youth, but I had enough men and women to make a go of it. The maps turned out well (though surprisingly simple compared to the ones we had our villages make in training) but I gleaned more than a fair bit of information from the activity about community behavior. Surprisingly the young girls, very reluctant at first, ended up really embracing the project and turned out the best map. I think my counterpart was the one to gain the most from the activity though, He claimed it has taught him new ways of viewing and interacting with the villages in his catchment area.

At this moment I am taking advantage of ‘Africa time’ again while I wait on the start of another set of meetings. The first is to make a seasonal calendar for the community. This is another development tool that helps my counterpart and I to better plan projects so as not to interfere with the community needs, to further educate my counterpart on how to initiate development with a new area, and to continue to build community familiarity with my presence and purpose. I am taking advantage of this time to think about possible projects and how to approach them.

The second meeting is to start the committee for the community tree nursery. I am setting up all projects I do so that the community has ownership of them and learns from available local resources so they will be better able to solve problems and manage projects on their own after I leave in 2016. The goal of this is to make the projects more sustainable and impactful. Let’s hope it works out that way. The community is going to elect a committee to take charge of the nursery. They will choose a representative who I will guide through the process of finding local NGO’s that can teach them about starting and maintaining the nursery. This representative will then bring the NGO to teach the community. We are planning on using Total Land Care as they have an office in nearby Rumphi Boma.

With all of these activities I first teach my counterpart what I know and work until it seems he has a strong understanding and then have him take the reigns and lead the activity when it happens – This is so that he can initiate them on his own in other communities and effectively (I hope) create the same sense of ownership we are trying to instill here. He is a good leader and comfortable in the role of public speaker and facilitator, my work would be exceedingly more difficult without him.

About my counterpart… M.C. Khunga is in his early 40’s. (That really is his name – Musandivute Chizizimu Khunga) He is ~5’8" and extremely lithe - maybe 140 lbs and all of it muscle. His voice is deep, gruff, and raspy with a hint of melody. The first time I met him one of my friends said he sounded like the rapper DMX. Except for an extremely thin goatee that comes and goes he is generally clean shaven. When not in uniform he always wears a baseball cap with the number 32, a black button up collared shirt with thin neon blue and green stripes, color matching flip flops, and dress slacks. Everyone here seems to wear dress pants at all times, even when working in the field. When on duty he wears park issue military fatigues branded with the Malawi National Parks emblem and carries an M16A1. A relic of a firearm that likely saw service in Vietnam, branded with ‘property of the US govt’ below the receiver.

M.C. Khunga is an Education and Extension officer for the national parks system. He has worked for MNP since 1991 and has alternated between Ed. & Ext. and Wildlife management throughout that period. He has lived in Thazima since 2006 and for 3 years prior (1997-2000). I am extremely lucky to be working with him. He knows the communities and the areas around Nyika well. He is motivated and eager to learn and is aware that he needs to teach me every bit as much as I am teaching him.
When I first asked him why he wanted to work with the park system he said it was because he had a love for it. His personality feels a perfect pairing for me. He is typically serious and focused - with his demeanor matching his burly vocal affectation – but with frequent bursts of laughter emanating deep from his belly, belying his small size. He smiles big, and when you look at his eyes you know it is genuine.

I have become convinced that we will accomplish much here in Thazima and the other areas that we will work. I just hope that some of it holds up after I am finished and that at least a few people take the lessons to heart.