Looking Forward

So, 2 weeks of preparation for the new volunteers is through. We had a blast working together to get ready for their arrival. I am blown away that I have been here almost a year, and I am so excited to greet them as they come off of the plane. I look forward to seeing the excitement and apprehension on their faces as they soak up all the newness.

I remember arriving and thinking about how little I understood about life abroad and the Peace Corps, and I also remember thinking how interesting it would be to sit on the resource volunteer side of things watching all of it unfold as new volunteers get a grasp on their new life.

I love it here in Malawi. I love the work I am doing, and I love the potential it has to impact even just a few people’s lives, no matter how hard it seems we have to fight for it at times. I really, really hope that some of that rubs off on the new group of trainees. They are a diverse and talented group, and I already want to be friends with ALL OF THEM!! (We resource vols have had the chance to read up on them a bit – new trainees, if you are reading this, we promise we aren’t creeps!... uh, at least not much :p )

          All of the Resource vol's hard at work prepping for the new trainees arrival in March

All said, it has also been a tricky time as I look forward to the next step of my life. This last year will move every bit as fast as the one I just left. Already there are friends from the group before us that I am getting sad to see go – they are readying for COS in april. (COS = Close Of Service). I really don’t know what I will do after Peace Corps, and it is not for lack of interest or options. I literally want to do ALL OF THE THINGS.

Every possible life path and career path that I have been interested in seems open to me. It is just too hard to decide on or plan for at this midpoint.

As a result, when people have been asking me what I want to do after Peace Corps, I have narrowed down to only 3 things that I can realistically think about for the time being.

1. Spend some time catching up with the people I love. I eagerly look forward to seeing my parents, sister, and brothers – I am sure it will be a tear fest of happiness. I also plan on couch surfing for a few weeks or month to visit my MANY good friends around the country.

2. Mountain Biking - duh, I love this shit. I plan on spending more time trail riding with my good friends – I also plan on putting more effort into racing.

3. Rock Climbing - As much as I love mountain biking, I have come to realize that this is the personal passion I want to chase the most. Short term goals after getting back are Redpoint 5.12 outside, and onsite/flash  5.11b and V6 outside. I also want to work on traveling to competitions more. Long term goals are to redpoint 5.13 outside and to travel for climbing as much as possible. I also want to do my part developing in the crags that are near my hometown.

That’s it. That is as far as I have thought. And I am ok with it (for now). Kind of single minded, but these are all ‘gimmes’ given my passions. I have a lot to look forward in the next year of my Peace Corps service, and I am excited to see where the projects in my village go and what new ones develop.

I want to open up to those of you reading this. Have any specific questions about my service? The work I am doing? What it is like to live in a tiny brick hut in the mountains without power or water? What my favorite color is? ASK AWAY! I will do my best to share questions on here and answer them as openly as possible.

What to look for in the coming months

- My parents experience here (They are visiting Malawi for 6 weeks, 2 of which are going to be traveling and visiting with me)

- Pictures of travel down south to meet them

- Climbing in Malawi!

- Featured villager of the month, this will be tied with sneak peaks of my portrait of Malawi photo project

- More pictures!

Mphalata

22 Jan 2015.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of watching my very good friend Prince build a trap for Mphalata (Large edible termites). I watched with a smile as he dug on top of a large termite mound, the result was a slanting pit leading down to half of a plastic jug that had been buried in the clay. The whole pit was probably 2 m long and 1 m wide and about a foot deep. Long arching branches spanned the top of the pit, these are then covered with banana leaves and piles of leafy branches cut from nearby trees. The purpose of this is to darken the inside of the pit to encourage the termites to come out and eventually fall into the jug.

I am not sure why the termites act this way, but Prince was excited at the possibility of catching them – the resulting sale of the termites would bring a much needed boost to his income at a difficult time of year. One tin of termites (~20L) brings between 6,000 and 15,000 Malawi Kwacha (about 12 to 30 USD). Considering that the average household in Malawi currently earns around 80k to 150k kwacha a year, this is a noticeable chunk of potential money. (as of this writing the MWK to USD conversion was around 500 to 1)

I had come to find Prince so that we could plant some Moringa trees at his house – we were planning ahead for some live fence posts to use for a shed he was hoping to make next year. I left him to put the finishing touches on the termite trap while I went to retrieve the last of the Moringa seeds from the treasurer of the community tree nursery. When I returned I found him smiling ear to ear with a toothy grin as he dug a hole under one side of the termite mound.

“Have you ever tasted the honey of this animal?” he coyly asks.

Confused, I ask a few questions and watch as he eventually unearths the beginnings of a small hive of a tiny species of stingless, communal bees. The hive was buried deep in the bowels of the termite chambers. All of the digging has unearthed loads of guard termites – 1cm long insects with huge heads and pincers that can easily break skin. Comically the body seems like an afterthought as the sole purpose of these blind termite warriors is to attack anything that threatens the termite nest and to block tunnels from further enemy entry by stopping them up with their chunky noggins. Apparently the teeny bees are always found in termite mounds, they must take some advantage of the protection offered by the guards.

I laughed aloud many times as I watched Prince gingerly try to pick his way around the termites in his attempts to reach the cache of honey. He poked & prodded and unsuccessfully flicked the offending insects away from the slowly pooling prize. I watched as they aimlessly wandered blindly in circles, vainly trying to find the offending predator that has opened up their home.

 I winced sympathetically as he finally took my advice.

“I think you are just going to have to suck it up and shove your hand in there.”

Into the fray his hand went. He got the worst of it in the first wave, and after pulling many tightly clamped pincers from his skin, he was able to scoop the rest of the honey out of the ground and into a small plastic container. During the process I yelped as a few stray warriors latched onto my bare toes and fingers.

It was clearly worth the effort, Prince licked his honey soaked fingers and palms clean. We laughed and smiled together as he started to take bites of the humorously small honey comb. With eat bite he ingested honey, wax, bee bread (stored pollen), larvae and bees alike. You bet I tried it as well. The honey was delicious, though still no match for the best honey taken from proper hives up on the Nyika plateau. The comb with the pollen was, however, unworldly. An exceptional variety of rich, flowery flavors swirled my tongue. The sweet taste was so intense that only the smallest bit was needed.

Shortly after this the sky darkened and light rains started in around us. Because of the weather we were unable to capture the mphalata, but it was still easily one of my favorite moments with my friend Prince to happen so far. I do look forward to eating termites with him, as those little critters are surprisingly tasty once salted and fried up.

The Rains

It is wet, very wet.

Jan 21, 2015

Dry season has been fully over here in Thazima for a month now, we received rains weeks before the rest of most of the country. Showers take place daily, often replaced with heavy rains at night and in the early morning. The temperature has started to drop again and I am reminded by the regular chill that I live in the mountains.

(*note, this was originally written prior to the devastating floods that have taken place in other parts of the country.)

So it has been a few months, sorry friends! Zimachitika (It Happens)!

November and December saw the end of the dry season. Uh… well sort of but not really. While hot season temperatures soared elsewhere in Malawi, the avg. daily temperature remained fairly mild here in Thazima – one of the benefits of living in the mountains. That isn’t to say that it wasn’t sunny and parched enough to make my early start on a permaculture garden difficult at best. My daily routine involved at least one ~3k round trip to the borehole to carry 20L on my head - the water I used for cooking, cleaning, bathing, and watering the few seedlings that clung to life. My water routine was frugal, to say the least, and every extra drop went to the few plants I was able to establish.



Slow Start in the dry season

 

                                     Dry season at the lake - During Lake of Stars Music Fest

                                    Dry Season on the Nyika Plateau - During Camp TIECH

Malawi has been burdened by a month long delay in the start of the rainy season - a problem that will affect food security in many parts of the country. It is estimated that at least 650,000 people will need food aid. Fortunately several governments and NGO's have pledged support in advance.

Thazima (and the Nyika Plateau in general) is unique in that annual rainfall levels are consistently high and even in the dry season, there are once monthly light showers. Local farmers have still had cause to stress about the very noticeable delay in rains. Locally the rainy season typically starts in late November -This year we saw 3 days of showers, and then weeks of patchy and insufficient rains until the very end of December. Finally the skies opened up and light but consistent rains allowed farmers to begin planting their maize and tobacco just before Christmas.



When it rains...



It pours.



On the plus side - Things are finally growing in my pathetic soil

It has been wonderful watching the colors shift over the last few months. The first notable move away from dry season came the week I was at camp TIECH in mid-October. 2 unusual days of solid rains sparked the first changes. At this point you could taste the dry season in the air - a layer of dusty and windblown brown and red dirt seemed to coat everything, this was along with the constant ash; dry season is a time of burning in Malawi. Brushfires and crop residues are set alight in very misguided attempts to ward off snakes and prepare fields for the next season, the ashes find their way into your homes and sometimes food. This worst case farming practice is deep rooted in the culture, based on old and terribly outdated slash and burn shifting agriculture techniques. It is probably the most harmful and yet hardest practice to change here.

Anyways, the rains in Oct. allowed the deep rooted trees to tap into that groundwater and come alive much earlier than any of the shrubs and grasses. It was as if they had been given permission to get a head start on the growing season, eeking out inches of growth between Oct. and Dec., the verdant woodlands of Nyika showed a vastly different world than that of the rest of Malawi - One full of life as verdant trees set flower in order to develop seeds in time for the real rains.

                                                 Thazima after the rains had started

During this time I set to work on my small plot of land next to the house. I was given approximately 1/8^th? Of an acre of low fertility soil by Mzikilla, my village headman (almost as if a challenge – “see what you can do with THAT azungu…”). No longer suitable for maize, the staple crop of Malawi, it had been relegated to cassava. The cassava plants leaving large amounts of exposed soil that only worsened the erosion with dry season wind and the first rains.

                                                                      Storms A Brewin'

I set about the task of improving the soil over the next growing season, starting with the sweaty and backbreaking work of creating contour ridges – A permanent feature intended to control erosion and hold more water in the soil. Next over many, many, trips I hauled stacks of old roofing grass I was allowed to take from a nearby house to use as a mulch layer. Over the last year I have allowed natural trees to start regenerating, pruning them along the way for vertical growth, instead of cutting them down or burning them out as is the local practice. With the first rains I planted vetiver grass, papaya, and pineapple suckers along the contour ridges. Pineapple and papaya have been shown in other developing nations to be successful cash crops to supplement erosion control measures when planted in this way.

UH! Dig those contour ridges!

Finally, with the onset of the very regular and constant rains of the wet season I have planted beans for a food crop and Tephrosia vogeli as the primary soil improving plant. Tephrosia is widely used in the tropics and is a locally available small tree that is known for its fast growth, even in poor soils. More importantly, is its ability to improve those soils via nitrogen fixing nodes on roots that grow deep, allowing water to penetrate the soil.

At this point the intent is to improve the soil in the field enough for next season when I hope to plant local maze intercropped with beans and Tephrosia without purchasing fertilizer.

I have also been teaching my neighbor about the benifits of making a compost pile, and the resulting rich soil has been helping us when planting the tree seedlings we have been putting in. He still doesn't quite get the importance of maintaining one, but the concept is slowly sinking in.

It has been quite a learning process. Upon arriving in country I dove into and devoured any literature I could get my hands on with regards to permaculture and improved agriculture techniques – especially ones that have already been shown to work in this country. As my garden grows I have begun to figure out what works in my area and at what time of the year. The next task is convincing people that the changes they can make are worth their time. I need to tailor my efforts in a way that makes teaching and learning the techniques easiest and most likely to be adopted. Hopefully this demonstration plot goes a long way in supplementing those efforts. I am already enjoying the changes the rainy season is bringing – I can’t wait to see what I can do a year from now.

 Thanks for reading my boring agriculture post!

P.S. You may have been following the international news following the heavy rains that have set in and caused extensive damage around the country. Malawi has been called a disaster area by the president and is receiving extensive aid following heavy flooding in Karonga in the north and deadly floods much further south in the country. (later the flooding impacted districts was extended to include almost half of the countries 28 districts) As of the writing of this, the floods have been subsiding and all PCV’s have remained safe. The next year will be tough for the country as efforts take place to recover from the damages, loss of life, and loss of important crops.

                               It feels good to be green again! (my daily walk to the park office)
 

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.