North East West South!

by Dom on May 26th, 2008

So apparently there was an attempted coup here! Ah interesting news at last…not. It seems there was just some plotting that happened. The former president was arrested though, so that’s serious. Apparently there were crowds of people doing raucous things but I didn’t notice. We went out looking for beer and it was a normal dead sunday. Today seems like a normal monday too. Oh well, I guess if I wasn’t here it’d be more sensational. Like maybe for you guys. Here’s some more reputable people telling the story. Well I say more reputable but…
Seattle Times - Nation & World
Reuters - Africa

Dinner last night.

by Dom on May 25th, 2008

We made raviolli last night. It was intense. In a good way that is. 2kg’s of meat, that’s a lot of raviolli. With a vegetable sauce. And then this quadruple layer chocolate cake with gnoch(I think that’s spelled right). It was good either way.

Mid-term Break and then some.

by Dom on May 24th, 2008

So all of a sudden my school informs me that next week is our mid-term break. We missed the usual times because of holiday swapping. They negated the republic day holiday I think, either that or freedom day, and reinstated Kamuzu day… So here I am. It’s gonna be a busy break, because I feel like I should be using this time to research schools, but I have a bike training in Mzuzu later this week and then I’m picking Jon and Emily up at the airport! I’m real excited for them arriving, but real nervous about applying to schools. Just sitting at site with the days coming and going only being marked by new math topics makes me feel like I’m going to inevitably be late for all my deadlines. If you’re curious, I’m interested in a Masters in Industrial Design.

Last weekend though, I went down to Yulanda’s site and helped her run a workshop on how to teach math and science. It was pretty interesting but I didn’t realize it was going to be all me. I thought there was more going on, or I was just an assistant, but no, it was all me. I didn’t have much, but it was nice because it made me make it more interactive. We just discussed common problems and how to overcome them. I showed them some fun science experiments. The ones I used for my science weekend. I finished up teaching how to change from one base to another. It was a good time though a bit disconcerting initially.

Also, I don’t think I talked about this but I had a student come find me after classes because he wanted to show me a snake he found. He said he found it on the way to school in the morning. He pulled it out of a log. He said it was hit by a car. I asked how big it was and he pointed to a small tree. I was curious. It was like a 40min walk down and across the river along the road. It was obvious where he left it, there was a small crowd. It was reassuring to see the people because he was worried someone would have taken it “some people eat them” he said; alluding to the unscrupulousness of the people who engage in that. It turned out to be about a 6′-7′ python about as thick as my forearm. It was definitely dead. An interesting site nonetheless.

So I raced some form twos. I won. We ran the width of the soccer field. Twice. I beat them both times. HA. They asked me to come to sports later to teach them how to run fast. They actually said you should come to sports to teach them how to run. Except that whole L and R thing made me think he was saying learn. I didn’t understand him for like 5 minutes. It was amusing. I showed him how to do lunges.

One last thing, have you guys seen this madonna video on Malawi? It’s, uh, a bit intense. The mushroom cloud is a bit much. There aren’t any child soldiers here that I know of. There are little kids working in the fields and carrying bricks. That’s pretty standard. And of course AIDS is pretty bad, I can’t say I have much first hand experience though since I’m not in the health field. But geez, dramatic.