CampSky

by Dom on August 25th, 2007

Here’s a letter from my education group. I thought this would be more effective than an individual email to people.

Greetings from the Peace Corps Education sector! As August comes to a close, most of us have returned from various vacations and projects to begin teaching Term 3. The weather is finally warming up and we are eagerly anticipating mango season, as well as the arrival of the new education volunteers at the end of September. It’s an exciting time for the 1st year education volunteers, as our first full year teaching comes to a close, secondary projects start to take shape, and our annual summer school rapidly approaches.

As many of you know, our job of teaching in Community Day Secondary Schools all over Malawi isn’t easy. These schools have very little money to spend, and as a result the classes are overcrowded, many teachers are under-qualified, there aren’t enough books for students to use, and most have never had access to a science laboratory or a computer.

In response to this, every year, Peace Corps Education Volunteers in Malawi host a two-week summer school. This program offers students from Community Day Secondary Schools the opportunity to attend classes that complement the subjects they are taught during the traditional school year with access to materials and resources that otherwise they would never get to use.

The theme for this year’s camp, “Tsogolo la Achinyamata,” or “A Future for the Youth” captures what we hope to give the students who attend. The Chichewa word “Tsogolo” means both “future” and “horizon,” and our planned curriculum aims to prepare students for the future while expanding their horizons. We’ll offer advanced core classes in preparation for the government exams that determine students’ options after graduation. We’ll also seek to broaden their sense of what’s possible, inviting successful Malawians from a variety of vocations to share their work and life stories.

Camp Sky is an independent creation of Peace Corps Volunteers and their communities and, as such, is not funded by Peace Corps. Fundraisers are necessary for the running of the camp so that we can buy essential items like chalk, paper, glue, and chickens. Donations from home, no matter what size, are crucial in making Camp Sky possible. $100 pays for food, lodging, and transport for one student. Donations are tax-deductible as well (doesn’t get much better than that!). To contribute, visit www.friendsofmalawi.org and click on the Summer School icon. You can donate with any major credit card via Paypal, or send a check to:

Friends of Malawi
c/o Lance Cole (FOM treasurer)
7940 SW 11th
Portland, OR 97219

If you decide to mail a check, be sure to specify that you want your contribution to benefit the Peace Corps Summer School project.

We appreciate very much any help you are able to offer our program and, most especially, our students. We look forward to sharing with you the successes of Camp Sky 2007.

Nkhata Bay and Likoma Island(or Chizimulu)

by Dom on August 24th, 2007

So I went and got scuba certified. Pretty sweet. Went at this place called Aqua Africa, supposedly the cheapest place in the world. So I’ve now done six dives in Lake Malawi. It was really sweet. I did it in hopes of doing some even better stuff in Mozambique and Zanzibar when I finally make it there.

Jenn and I went out to Likoma island. That was a bit of a trip. We got on the boat, The Illala, at 6pm on Monday, it left Nkhata Bay around 8, and we got to the first island, Chizimulu, around midnight. We stayed at that island until 6am and then went the last hour and a half to Likoma in the daylight. A good bit absurd I thought, but whatever. We got lucky and met an former VSO couple that was doing it right and had bought a cabin to likoma but decided to get off at Chizimulu and so they let us stay in their cabin the remaining time. We didn’t realize it would be another 8 hours until Likoma so we kept waking up in a panic only to find out that the boat hadn’t left. Then we get there, there’s only two ports with an actual pier so they drop the life boats to ferry people to shore. It’s everyman for themselves at that point and what a pain. Jenn got a fishhook threw her foot while waiting to get on the little boat.

We finally get to shore and have no clue where we’re going. So we start asking how to get to Mango Drift, the backpackers lodge we hoped to stay at. (I say hoped because there was no means of contacting them for prices or reservations so you just have to hope it all works out). It turned out to be almost an hour walk. But we made it with the help of a random kid guiding us. It was kind of hidden tucked up under a little ledge right behind a few village houses. I’m not sure what we were really expecting but the place was sparce. There were a few huts with nice concrete floors and bamboo walls and one big straw roofed pavilion where the bar and tables were. The only people staying there were the seven of us that just walked up.

The staff turned out to be less than pleased to help and, we found out later, there was an electricity problem on the island and so there wasn’t much food to be had. So after the un-welcomeing welcome we decided to try to get back to Chizimulu because it sounded much better. But it turns out we couldn’t use credit cards at this place, which honestly does seem a bit ridiculous but we were so reassured we believed. So therefore we were a bit strapped for cash and couldn’t afford the ferry over and just decided to go back and suffer through.

It turns out the only real problem with the place was the staff and not all of them at that. The hut was fine, the beach was beautiful, and the food we could get was pretty good (no cheese, no fruit, no oatmeal…) we ended up just getting the same thing every meal, except dinner. Dinner was a one kind thing meat or vegetarian, and everyone got the same thing.

After a day or two the others who had come with us had gone off on further travels to Mozambique or to Chizimulu and so we had the place to ourselves. It was really nice, I did absolutely nothing. There supposedly was a really nice cathedral on the island, never saw it. The most I did was go to the other really nice resort twice. Once to complain about the staff where we were and the other to get first-aid stuff for Jenn. She had the good fortune to almost rip her pinky toenail off from hitting a rock in the water. She’s doing good now though.

So she did that on the last day we were there, so I guess that’s some kind of luck…then we were waiting for the Illala again. It’s suppose to arrive at 4pm. We paid K600 to be ferried to the Illala whenever it does decide to show. We ended up getting on around 3am, after another stop in Chizimulu we finally made it back to Nkhata bay around 5pm. So our 12hr initial trip was trumped by the 14hr return trip. yay. There were 10′ seas coming back too that boat, though fairly big was rolling.

The VSO couple we met came to Likoma a few days later and also realized the error they made. The stories they told of the other place with it’s two bars, one for day and the other for night, and it’s multiple little paved alcoves to lay out in at different times of the day, and more food options and cheaper prices made us realize what to do next time. Chizimulu’s a shorter trip on the boat both ways too. I think the highlight of the unwelcomeness was when we asked to get a fire started under the water in the outdoor shower and the guy said only if there was already water in it because he wouldn’t get water for just two people, and then, I guess there was enough water, he yelled at Jenn in Chichewa to help him carry firewood. Good times.

All in all though it was still a solid vacation and if we wouldn’t have gone we’d still be wondering “what about Likoma” but now we know. Chizimulu’s the place to go.

Lilongwe still

by Dom on August 2nd, 2007

So a bit tired. I did a lot of walking and talking today. Went curio shopping for a few hours and had the wannabe rasta’s cuss at me for offering them K100 for a necklace. Whatever they’re fools. Finally fairly done with the bikes. I built all the new ones for the newbs last week and this week I’ve been assessing and repairing the old returned bikes to see which ones are usable and which are bunk trash. There’s still probably half of those to go through. Tired of working on them, and ‘teaching’ goes too slow and really I’m just all around tired right now. I think I’m going to head back to site tomorrow and then maybe on up north the next day or something like that. We’ll see. Ahh term break. Did some summer school, campsky stuff too, it was great.

Had three kids begging for money at the curios too. I started begging back, following them around asking for K100. Finally one of them gave me K10. I gave it back though. Then they started giving me like 10 tambala coins and bottle caps and such. I gave all that back too. I had some guy walk up and give me an empty water bottle, so I gave them that too. Theres no telling how old they were though, age is kind of hard to guess here with malnutrition and the like.

I don’t want to die tonight…

by Dom on August 1st, 2007

So got back from Liwonde. It was pretty awesome. Saw a whole lot of sweet animals. The place we stayed had a porch that overlooked a lagoon on the Shire river and we could just sit there and see hippos and crocs and all kinds of birds and warthogs and lizards and all that stuff just go trotting by, drinking, and trying to eat other. Real sweet. Went on a couple safari drives saw some elephant too, just not really by the room. Ran up on three coming back from dinner the last night though, that was a bit scary, but still awesome. And then walking back to the room that same night there was a hippo and it’s kid chillin like 30 yards away staring us down. Went into the rino sanctuary and almost might have seen one. We scared something big gray and fast, but I just heard it two others saw the thing move. Thats were we also saw the water buffalo and all the different kinds of antelope. Saw so many impala we just stopped stopping to see them, it was like “Oh, impala…” Went on two night drives too, the driver was pretty good at spotting stuff. One time he stopped so we could look at this thumb sized chameleon he spotted, in the dark, at night under a moving spotlight while driving. We then spent like 20 minutes trying to figure out where he saw this thing. All in all though it was real awesome. There was a dead hippo too, just floating down the river like some evil carnival boat ride, pretty disgusting. It just looked fake. We were told by the others who saw it the day before that crocs were attacking it but it’s skin was still too tough. Oh yeah, saw a ton of monkeys and baboons too. Like all over the place, up in the room and at dinner trying to steal our stuff. Good times, good times. I’ll try to get some pictures up eventually…I think we all have seen how this will probably go though. Sorry.