Bad luck

by Dom on January 27th, 2008

So back in Lilongwe yet again. VAC was boring as usual, but it’s nice to be in the loop. I looked up some science experiments I might be able to do in the village. We’ll see how those go. Hopefully they’ll work out, people will show up and it’ll be fun. I think I lost my knife at some point. I hope I just left it in my house, but I think I left it in the transit house. Bummer. We’ll also see about that. That is after I left my broken umbrella in the truck bed of my hitch in to town. Just not having good luck this weekend. Heading back north now, but first to the market to get another umbrella!

MST and then some

by Dom on January 19th, 2008

So back in Lilongwe. MST was fun in a stressful boring kind of way. Glad it’s done, but wish we would have stayed in Dedza last night, as much as my dining room chair was I think my quiet bed would have been preferable. Back to site tomorrow. Yay. Atleast I got a hitching buddy. We’ll see how it all works out. So much going on.

Oh yeah, happy birthday Stephen. We went out for Indian last night. It happened.

Term 1 ‘08

by Dom on January 11th, 2008

So Mid Service Training is next week. This past week I started teaching. I teach Form 1 Physical Science, Form 2 Math and Form 4 Math. It’s really amazing how much Form 2’s English came along because I’ll tell you, Form 1 doesn’t know squat. It’s so difficult. They don’t answer questions, write notes, even look at you like your from earth. I’m also the Form 4 Formmaster. That means I take role. Yay.

We also moved the plantain trees that I planted; they were getting too much water and rotting. I also tried to plant some seeds. I know I did a poor job, but it was the most effort I could muster. I planted cucumber, loofa, onion, and tomato. Something might grow. We’ll see. Otherwise, just looking forward to next week. Today isn’t that great. I still have loose stooles, as they say. I doubt I spelled that technical word correctly but we’ll see. Thanks for the dictionary mom, it’s in Mzuzu. Shephards pie for dinner, think I’m gonna go buy some beer.

Mothers Day

by Dom on October 8th, 2007

So here I am back again. Gots loads of stuff to do from shirt designs, passport applyin to bike repairs and seein’ Jenn. So far it’s been nice because there’s not many people here so I can take my time doing what I want for how long I want.

However I can’t do too much because today is Malawian mothers day. So Happy Mothers Day mom! So most stores and resteraunts aren’t open today. But that’s fine. I don’t mind a little forced leisure time. More time for guitar.

Our fundraiser dinner is coming up. That should be interesting. I’m gonna bring the puzzle and music box Chloe gave me to try to entertain these children with. I found some other nik-naks at the house that someone had donated as teaching material. That might go over well…Seriously though there is like a big clothe blanket checkers set. I have no idea about age or amount so it could be easy or horrible. We’ll see.

Got my school an email account. They are partnering with a British school for pen pals I think. I don’t really know. It was funny, they told me maybe I should get this email address in Mzuzu because it was closer, they don’t go to Lilongwe much…

I did get a game of softball organized with the JICA volunteers down the road. That should be a good time too. Too bad I won’t be able to be there because summer school is so close to when it will be. It was there idea too.

In Lilongwe

by Dom on September 27th, 2007

Isn’t it fun. Not as fun as it could be but what can you do. Just got here on a lovely hitch. The guy worked for World Vision. He’s from Mzimba, but now he’s in Lusaka, Zambia he was back visiting his family. He dropped me before where I wanted to be though, bummer. Had to walk, but I had my (walkin)boots on so it was no problem. Got a VAC meeting tomorrow. I’m the(gonna be anyway) t-shirt guy. Should be cool, I hope. Anyway, not much going on today. Newbs come in I guess that’s big news. I’m pretty much a second year now. I’m not, but almost. Every group we all cross our fingers and quietly say a little prayer “I hope they’re cool.”

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.

General Good Times.

by Dom on May 27th, 2007

So had to come in to lilongwe. Had to do it, so I did. There were “summer school” meetings, or Camp Sky, as it’s being called. It’s this “secondary project” where we invite kids from our schools to come to like a crazy peace corps volunteer run “school” that’s only like a week and a half long where we do harder stuff than normal and offer interesting electives, like film study and star gazing. woohoo. Anyway, I’m in charge of picking where to do it at. Good times in general but nothing real specific.

There was also a “Iron Chef” competition. It was held at Dale’s. Basically we had like 4 groups with a secret ingredient of honey make a ton of food, and then we hang out. Food was good, and it was definitely fun. Ahh peace corps…

Peace Corps made me sign some paper that basically said I had to like my new site or decide to go home. I was “terribly vexed” about that. But it’s cool because I do like it. No worries. I bought this curio table that has a chess board on one side and a bao board on the other, so when I have guests we have something to do other than wait to watch the sunset. I did trade one of my pairs of camo shorts for the pieces to the chess set, but I still have another pair, and the other pair fits better so it’s all good.

Back to site tomorrow, gotta get my teach on.

The good times

by Dom on April 24th, 2007

Things these past weeks have been pretty cool. Probably the best time I’ve had in this country. It began with the wardrobe malfunction during the bike training in dedza. Stupid crappy abercrombie and fitch jeans. Then, on into IST, down to blantyre and mulanje, back up through lilongwe and on to nkhata bay to stay at mayoka village on the lake. That place was awesome, right on the water, awesome atmosphere, good food, cool people, and just all around real laid back. Sergio came with me and we met some others volunteers there. Ended up meeting a lot of real cool people too, some gap year british folk, some irish folk, two sweedish girls, a peruvian and another dude from LA. All of them, save the brit’s, got a minibus with sergio and are headed north (to alaska, goin’ north the rush is on). He should have a good time, I’m sure it’s the trip of a life time. It was pretty crazy to meet people with zero affiliation with the US. It was great though, it really gives a new perspective on everything.

Also, in the midst of a site-change process. I just don’t like my site and it makes me feel ill when I realize it’s time to go back. The same feeling I used to have when I realized I had to do dynamics homework. Not good. Also, I’m going to try a toned down version of “the book” the one for teaching reference, not “the book” for language reference, gunda icho. The latter has actually come along quite nicely. The former however has a long way to go. I think it will be good though. I’m suppose to get a call tomorrow from Dora and we can talk some more, she called me today and we had some discussions but it was more about how my expectations weren’t going to be met, as usual. So hopefully these talks will be relatively fruitful tomorrow.

It’s sad to have chris gone and sergio re-gone, but when I think about the site change and the book, I get a little excited and that’s something that hasn’t happened in, oh say, 7 months. And I know sergio’s going to have a good time, and chris has to be loving it, literally.

Lastly, I’m over 6 months out of date on the music scene, but the eagles of death metal, ok go, incubus, gnarls barkley, and hellogoodbye are still rockin’. Do it.

P.S. Elin, that paper you wrote the email address of that icelandic slaughterhouse on got all smeared in my wet pocket and now it’s un-readable, I’m retarded I know. Anyway, could you leave me that email address again if you have it? tak(?)

Happy Easter

by Dom on April 9th, 2007

So yesterday my goal was to not leave the house. It didn’t happen, but oh well. I ended up going to a vigil mass that was about three hours the day before. The bishop was there, it was solid. Then we decided to have a communal dinner on Easter and it turned into a bbq. We had Steaks(small ones), sausage, Pasta salad, awesome sweet potato pie/cassarole, rolls and rice. I didn’t eat any rice, it seemed pointless. Anyway, that was really cool and then about 10 pcv’s from Zambia showed up and it kind of turned into a party. It was really fun and odd. A good time none the less; we moved all the couches and such outside too so there were probably like 30+ people in all. It was a (very)good Easter.

I corrected the clock.

Guitars and bikes

by Dom on April 4th, 2007

So my clock seems to be about 45 minutes fast. I doubt I’ll get the the time and motivate to fix it but who knows. We’ll see.
Right now I’m waiting (as usual) to talk to admin to find out when I go south for the training. Hopefully it will be soon. Well relatively soon. I would like to get breakfast. Yesterday I adjusted 25 bikes. It was pretty amazing the poor condition of assemblage they were in before. It took the better part of 5 hours and I got it down to about 12 minutes a bike, with test ride. Yeah. Fortunately all the pointless crap was done, like packaging removed, etc. It was pretty great too, I only had a travel tool kit and one wrench that luckily fit the pedals to do it all. Obnoxious. Unfortunately there was no 8mm allen to be found so I couldn’t check the crank bolts. I guess we’ll just have to trust Trek on that one. We’ll see.

I also put some new strings on my guitar, a tansen of some nature. Now it sings beautifully, if only I could play that well. Anyway, it’s time for breakfast.