Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

by Dom on December 31st, 2007

Back in Lilongwe. New Years is tonight I guess, woohoo. Almost forgot about it. I’m a bit more excited because Jenn comes back tomorrow. However right now I have a Gastro-Intestinal Tract Infection. Which means I have lots of cramping and other things that most people don’t like when I say.

Christmas at Paiges was good though. Played a lot of bored games, went swimming and had duck. Bought it off this lady who claimed she didn’t have any, but there were like 10 waddlin around her. So we got one, for K500 too. She said we had to pay more because we were white though and we did the whole, I’m-gonna-fake-walk-away-cause-I-know-you-want-the-money-more-than-the-duck trick. It worked. She buckled, we paid, but it was still over priced. Apparently ducks are like 3 or 4 normally. Whatever. It was good. We ate it with potatoes.

After that I went to visit Jessie for a bit in Nkhotakhota. We basically just ambled around town. Helped her turn an old chicken coup into a dog house. By that I mean I moved it into her courtyard. Her place was pretty snazzy. However I think that’s where I got my little belly viper, I mean GI Infection.

All that said, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Stop-over

by Dom on December 21st, 2007

So I went back to site finally. It was nice to be back but it wasn’t nice getting back. I should say travel was ok but my house was a bit distressed, to use a parlance of our times. There was mouse crap all over my bed. Like all over. I tied it and tucked it in before I left(which I did this time too) but they ate a hole through my net right behind my pillow. Talk about gross I couldn’t handle it. All I could think of was how MC told me she came home to find a mouse nest under her pillow once. Disgusting. I got my headmaster to come help me hunt out the mice. There weren’t any I’m happy to say. We then got some students over to sweet and mop and all was well. The funny thing was the only thing I found that was eaten by the mice was my bedside candle. Oh well. That was the idea initially leave no food for them and they won’t come. Only they came, just didn’t stay, which I guess is almost as good.

I spend the remainder of the week debating whether it would rain too much any given day to do laundry on that day(I got those sheets washed) and marking papers. Now I’ve come up to Mzuzu so I could email this school in England my school has the “educational link” with, and hang out until Christmas-ish time to head to Paiges, on the lake. She’s having a shin-dig.

Bored

by Dom on December 16th, 2007

Man I am so bored. I am heading back to site today but I just feel like there’s something I’m forgetting to do here online before I leave. I honestly can’t think of it and it feels like I’ve done and seen everything. I mean they are selling those $100 computers for $500 on ebay, facebook is played, I’ve started categorizing my old posts on here, and it’s no use even knowing other things like bike parts or new albums or any of that. I’m done, I’m done. Now I just need some roll or something for breakfast and I’ll hit the road back to site to clean all the termites from my door frames and spiderwebs away from my bed and dirt and mouse crap out of my house. I was stupid and forgot to leave the poison out. Got laundry to do too. Oh what a life…

World Bike

by Dom on December 15th, 2007

So while washing clothes at CampSky Pace said what he thought this country needed was a better bike. He suggested I try to design a bike for $100 like the computer thing. I agreed thought it was a great idea. David Wu caught me online and sent me the link to WorldBike, apparently it’s not a new idea. I liked their design for the most part. I emailed them some suggestions but I also explained my position and I hoped that we could open up communications so that maybe I could be of some service to them, since I’m here an all. We’ll see what they say. If I was home I’d definitely offer my services for that website, that thing is difficult to navigate.

Also, it seems like they’ve had different iterations of their idea starting with this augmentation system that seems neat and is available for sale. Otherwise I only saw one other thing for sale was the mundo utility bike which was a bit too much.

$100 Computers

by Dom on December 15th, 2007

So I’m trying to get one of these “$100 computers“(that aren’t $100, who knows…). The idea is that we have this “educational link” between our school and this school in England, where we communicate about differences in culture and curriculum and all that other business. Except the mail and phone systems are crap and so email is the only semi-reliable thing there is.

The problem with email is that it’s a 2hour bus ride away and costs money per minute for usage. I’ve gone once with my headmaster, now about a month ago, and that’s where I saw how he’d never dealt with a computer before, let alone the internet. So the costs he would incur by trying to learn or be taught how to use a computer and the internet would be quite a large chunk of his pay or the schools income. Yeah, I can travel for free and use the computer a lot faster and thus save a lot of money but in a year when I’m gone that won’t help anyone, and thus it isn’t “sustainable”(this international aid buzz word). I need someone else to know how to do what I’m doing.

So my idea is get one of these super sweet and cheap laptops to try to teach him atleast how to use a computer and maybe some theory behind the internet and then when he goes to town to email he won’t have to ask how to erase, or backspace I should say.

The problem is I can’t afford the $400 for two, and honestly I would like both to come to me if I was going to pay that much, but that’s not how it works. So I’ve sent them an email explaining my circumstance and asking if they can just assist me, to be Malawian about it, and let me purchase a single computer to be sent here. Keep your fingers crossed for me though, because they claim to not be able to answer all emails. We’ll see.

Swearing in, again

by Dom on December 13th, 2007

So the new education volunteers swore in yesterday. That means that I am officially a 2nd Year Volunteer. Congratulations Dom.

Jess is having a baby!

by Dom on December 10th, 2007

Yeah, for those of you who don’t know the sister right above me, Jessica, is pregnant. Congratulations Jess. I hear she’s also looking for names. If you’re gonna make suggestions, make them boy names, maybe that will break the curse…haha.

Blantyre

by Dom on December 10th, 2007

So it’s raining now. Like those hard tropical rains that make you have to turn your movie up or go make sure your house isn’t flooding. I got out just in time. I’ve just been sitting here decompressing, some might say, after CampSky. The plan is hang out until thursday cause the Carlsburg tour is wednesday. This morning I watch some south park and then I, Robot. It was nice, but now I’ve come out because I need to get some groceries so I don’t have to eat out so much, and maybe save some money. Apparently I spent quite a bit in Mozambique. I’m also getting a cobbler to fix my flip-flops currently. Having him sew the sole back on. We’ll see how they turn out tomorrow. I’m sure he’ll use like some horrendous color of thread but it’ll be fine they are all black. I guess more what I’m worrying about is somehow the people in this country never seem to be able to do things just like I want, no matter how well I explain it. Who knows. Played some hold’em last night, and some weird mystery role-play games like mafia and murderer the night before. They were fun. Otherwise just been hanging out trying to relax to the max. That’s right, I went there.

They did an EAP, emergency action plan, test the other day where they try to contact everyone. They called while I was teaching, I knew what they wanted. I figured I’d wait till they called back, no use wasting units. They sent me a text at like 5am telling me I needed to call them. Ridiculous. Whatever it got handled. They are giving phones out now because they’ve decided it’s important for safety that everyone has one, except they only work with one network provider and not everyone has them if any at all. A nice gesture none the less. Peace Corps also on this big small camp kick, they supposedly have about $15,000 to give for these. A max of $1000 for each, just have to write a proposal. I think on my way back through lilongwe I’ll see what template they have for the proposal. Thinking, still, about these weekend big experiments. I’ll probably also try to look some up online to try to do, but if anyone has suggestions I’m all ears, or eyes in this case, leave a comment chonde(that’s please).

Marlo’s kid, a girl names Rilla, got baptized, congratulations! And Jon is married now, congratulations to him too!

The last few weeks

by Dom on December 9th, 2007

These last few weeks out of site have been fairly enjoyable, but honestly I am kind of ready to just get back and relax for a bit. Jenn’s left to go home for Christmas, kind of lonely now. Though I guess it shouldn’t be any more than normal. Mozambique was awesome, maybe I’ll move there. Still a it sick from it somehow. I started getting sick in Tofo and it had pretty much gone away a few days ago but now the runny nose is back strong. Annoying. Maybe I should eat better but that seems the story of my Malawian life. I found myself singing a Christmas song the other day and remembered that it is in fact almost Christmas. I had forgotten. I’m not the only one, it’s just not a big deal in Malawi. I’m also kind of curious how much I spent in Mozambique. I haven’t been on the internet in so long and it’s kind of hard to follow when your pulling out in foreign currency. I might need to develop an IGA(income generating activity) for my trip to Zanzibar. Jon congrats on the wedding. I haven’t been online in so long and my call back isn’t working and I don’t know your american number to send a text to or I would have contacted you sooner. My apologies, I hope it was fantastic. I just had one of those it’s-weird-to-grow-up moments…I hope life at home for everyone else is going well. I hadn’t heard from a lot of you in a while, send me an email or leave a comment.

CampSky

by Dom on December 9th, 2007

So far the camp has been a pretty great success. It started off kind of rough though. The school claimed that basically we weren’t paying them enough for them to actually be accomidating and we could just leave if we didn’t like that. And they just continued to be particular for a couple of days, saying things like we shouldn’t give out all of the newer covered mattresses to the students but also the ones that the cloth has ripped off and is just foam. It was really just one dude, who wasn’t even the headmaster, he was also complaining that too many different people were coming to him to ask things, that we should have one person that we use to liase with. The problem was, this guy wasn’t anyone real special so no one knew when they were talking to him. We also had some problems with keys, as in, there was only one per room and in the beginning we weren’t allowed to hold them for the most part. Which was ludicrous, how can we have a camp when we can’t get into the rooms.

So anyway we set up the staff room in these two skyboxes overlooking the hall and stage. Those were the two rooms that the school permitted us to be ours and didn’t really regulate how we were in them. I surmise the school never really used these rooms. They were pretty fantastic for what we were doing.

Originally I didn’t want to teach but I got conned into teaching Math and Bike repair. Math was kind of a last minute thing, but bike repair I had no excuse for not being too prepared. The camp was a two week thing and some electives, like bike repair, only are for a week. Some of the other electives are songwriting, pottery, sewing, ANAMED(natural medicine), journalism, sexual health, dance, accounting, art, permaculture, etc. What I ended up doing for bike repair was pretty much pure theory. I had two bikes, a Malawian single speed and a Peace Corps’ Trek 3700. So the first day I brought the PC bike and asked what they wanted to cover. They seemed a lot more interested in the Malawian bike. So we went over the difference in gears, hi versus low. They seemed to enjoy that. Then I brought the Malawian bike in and went over chainline. I also went over power-loss to flex and the fork, and a bit of wheel theory, truing, and tensioning, and the gyro effect of a spinning wheel. I enjoyed it. A few of them seemed to. In math I went over a few ways of solving/factorizing quadratics and then I started a form 4 topic, Vectors. That seems to be going well. The only problem I had was that I had to use a method I didn’t teach to prove the general solution for a quadratic and one kid really wanted to learn that method. Dem’s da breaks I guess.

We also had some really great events too. We had a game of capture the flag, and a goat disection, a talent show, and went to Liwonde game reserve and ticked off some elephants. That was amusing because afterwards the kids were so scared. They just kept saying “we should go sir.” “Can we go sir.” Still planned are a disco or dance party and and a career day where we will take groups of kids to different places like businesses and the hospital and prison to see other jobs they can do besides driver or nurse(or farmer). We also had a sports day where I played basketball. That was alot of fun. I played with all the girls, the boys sucked. Netball is a similar sport here and it’s a woman’s only sport, pretty much too, there’s no dribbling though, so they knew how to move the ball around. One girl was even diving out of bounds saving balls. It was pretty amazing. I packed the crap out of her twice and proceeded to circle the court screaming in victory. It’s fun playing small people who don’t know the rules. I think I jammed her thumb the second time. She kept playing; we gave her an ace bandage, but the next day she had it on the wrong hand…

It hasn’t really been tedious, but just long. Wake up around 5:30 and am fairly busy until the end of the evening meeting around 10-ish. It’s really working out well. We don’t have too many solidly assigned positions, but it’s worked out where whoever has a chance picks up the slack in whatever needed area. The food here is getting a bit tiresome. It’s good for what it is. I mean, it’s well made but basically it’s a combo of sima or rice, beans or soya and greens. And well I’m just tired of it. I don’t actually get full off it, I just start to get sick. Kind of like what happens with the beer, I don’t actually get drunk I just get ill. Or not ill, it just starts to taste disgusting, like the food.

Today we’re having field day and we have events like water balloon toss, sackrace, dodgeball, egg race. I’m watching the sackrace. Should be pretty straight forward.

Update:So the field day got a bit rained out so we brought them all into the hall and played a huge game of musical chairs. It was pretty fun. They liked to not move and just stand in front of a chair so I would go around pushing them. I didn’t play, more of a coordinator. After the rains stopped we went out for a huge balloon toss and egg relay. Overall it went well.

The next day was career day, I went with Yorgos and his group to the city planning place and the ESCOM the power company. They were a bit confusing saying things like they produce a total of 278megawatts of power and that on any given day Malawi uses about 240MW. But the highest he’s seen has been like 260MW. Then someone asked about the blackouts and he said the load can get up to 310MW…wait I thought the max was 260? The kids enjoyed the loud noise the 1100V breakers made in the faults room. Then we went to these Botanical Gardens for lunch and I headed back to the school. The rest went on to two colleges. I was tired but I didn’t get a nap, had to make a photo slide show for the disco. Everything, the graduation, the dinner and the disco went quite good that evening too. Glad to be done though. Hopefully the kids make it home…haha.