Peace Corps.

by Dom on October 8th, 2008

Yeah so Peace Corps being Peace Corps. It’s great. I think I’m coming home even earlier! They can’t connect me between Atlanta and Augusta on the 17th. So they said either the 16th or the 19th. Why not the 18th I asked. Apparently it’s all crazy, I’d have to fly through Blantyre and leave late or something ridiculous about money too. Whatever. I was curious if I was even technically allowed to leave a day earlier, but a short call to the country director relieved me. So now I just have to tell someone I want the 16th so it can be finalized before Peace Corps happens again. hehe.

Really

by Dom on August 29th, 2008

I got a pretty sweet ride up, part way, yesterday. It was in this truck bed, tiny little truck bed, that was completely full with onions and a few baskets of tomatoes. It was awesome cause it was just such a nice day. Such a nice day to be lying on a pile of produce with my barefeet kicking in the breeze. Reminded me of why I came; for days just like that. Of course, then I sat for two hours and saw only eight cars before getting picked up. That includes a couple of busses. I just sat there waiting. Sitting on the pavement to keep warm in the cool breeze. Playing guitar on a gaurd rail pylon. Swinging at weeds with peices from a broken basket. Waiting. I did eventually get picked up it was an okay ride, nothing special. But I’m here now…

At site these past couple of weeks was nice. The weather was interesting because it only got better. When I first got back it was cold and overcast and by the time I left it was clear and warm. One of those in between days I was sitting on my ever-so-awesome porch enjoying the weather when this lady approached me. (First, let me prelude this little story with a comment. This lady did not seem to my crazy in the clinical sense at all. A bit distraut and emotional, but very sane.) She asked me if I was such-and-such, someone I have no idea of. I tell her no. I ask who this person is. I think she says her spouse. That’s not a word locals use often so I doubted it even then. I forget how she segued to the intersting part but it was something to the affect of, she was in South Africa when she found at that all this persons belongings became her. This included the Mzuzu Hotel, the nicest hotel in Mzuzu if not the north. So then she tells me that theres a man there, a worker. He does like working with whites(the kind of people), I believe are the words she used. So she says he beats and kills them. Now unfortunately I don’t remember the details, I was a bit busy refraining from laughing at the time. However she goes on to tell me that this person is Osama Bin Laden, or his friend or something. Like I said about the details…He had plastic surgery to make him look like a black man somewhere, wherever he was before he was here, but it was definitley finalized here, or so she said. Keep in mind I wasn’t ready for this conversation, I was in the middle of reading a book. I was still holding my page with my finger while she was talking. She continues, she informs me that if such-and-such(a different such-and-such) comes here, my house, to talk to me that I should protect myself. It’s not actually that person but actually Bin Laden(or his friend, I can’t remember) and he’s lying. He’s had plastic surgery don’t forget. I asked if I should contact the police. She said that would be futile, not her words, since this person was brought to the country on the presidents helicopter he would obviuosly be able to get around the police. I think she said he works hand in hand with the president. Her words. She then asked if I would help look for this first such-and-such; the one I was mistook for. He was taken to America, or the UK(she just swapped between them at random it seemed). She said he was supposedly working for the New York Fire Dept. and asked if I could therefore just check the listing of Firemen. I declined telling her that I doubted that was accessible. Before she left she told me one more anecdote. She went to the hotel; possible to confront this bad person. She then had the police called on her and was escorted off the premises and the hotel worker she was dealing with told her never to return. She speculated to me about the absurdity of the owner not being allowed on their own property, and scoffed. Then she left.

Now some peripheral comments. She asked if there were any other guys like me(white) in the area. I told her of the VSO that lived nere. She said she already talked to him, that’s how she found out about me, he’s not the one. That means she’s told this whole story to someone else. It’s been refined. Also, she almost started crying a few times. I also had to refrain from laughter the whole time, but it was especially hard a few times. And these bouts of tears and laughter on our respective parts seemed to coincide. Hers following from mine I suspected. So I felt bad. Also, I suspect she felt herself very well grounded in the physical realm of possibilties. However she neglected to still see the absurdity of it. My speculation is she probably felt this was very legit in compared with shrinking people and flying winnowing baskets. I’ll give that to her. Atleast all of what she said is theoretically possible. But really? Anyway, as an update, no mysterious persons came knocking at my door after that.

On to less dubious affairs. I have my form ones doing a project. I gave them a list of topics under two categories, community and physical science(that’s the class I teach). The former included such topics as HIV/AIDS, Teacher housing and community development, Deforestaion and Good farming practices. The latter included things like, Force, Work, Energy, Molecules, Chemicals and Acids/Bases. I put them in groups two weeks ago and make them choose a topic from each category. Now when I return on Monday I am going to start picking groups and making them give there presentations so hopefully they’ve been researching this whole time like I instructed. I told them they could present however they wanted, a lecture, song, drama, etc. I’m real real curious to see how it turns out. In the other classes I’ve just been reviewing all there material.

I’m suppose to write a fake test, a mock exam they call them specifically here. It’s suppose to be as close to the the real thing as possible. That means a lot of grading later, a bit annoying. The thing I found amusing though was that my headmaster showed me a test he’d given my form fours while I was at COS conference. He said he did this to prepare them for their mock exams. So it was a preparitory exam for a preparitory exam for a real exam. These people could design a plane, what redundancy!

In terms of COS. The conference was a good time. We played a lot of charades. I love that game. We’ve become quite good at it too. We had to choose dates. I know a lot of people have been asking. The date I am trying for is October 17. Keep your fingers crossed for me. The country director has to ask DC if it’s permissable. It’s espeically early that’s why. That’s really not much time left here. I’m gonna be busy busy busy, as bokonon might say under different circumstances.

Bike Training

by Dom on June 1st, 2008

I was approached over a month ago by another volunteer asking if I would lead a training or workshop on bicycle maintenance. He had some questions, thought it would be great if I could get some of the tools from lilongwe to show him how to fix his bike, and maybe invite some others. I said sure no problem, I’d love to, sounds great. So some time goes by and we figure a date, this friday, would be best for us. It was the earliest I wasn’t busy. So this week I’m down in lilongwe for my term break and I’m thinking “Great, I can get the tools myself and bring them up so I know we’ll have them.” My plan then is to leave wednesday for mzuzu so I’ll have thursday to relax, friday for the training and travel again saturday and sunday. Well I decided to take teusday morning off from school research and internet to try to think what I want out of a school. However the transit house manager then approached me to help them maintain bikes because it’s my holiday and I’ve helped before. That wasn’t the plan so I’m not really pleased, but I go. We make a plan on how to handle the returned bikes, which to maintain and keep and which to get rid of. And we begin some maintenance.

Right, so this makes me see, yet again, how large this problem repeatedly is. So I go to talk to the GSO, the person in charge of the whole bike program. We discuss the current situation but he’s also curious about my training. I tell him it’s nothing big I just need to borrow some tools. He’s like ok, could you just talk to your APCD(kind of boss) about it. Sure why not. And he asks if I’ll do it again next week when there are a lot more volunteers around in lilongwe. I tell him probably, though I have reservations since Jon will be here. We schedule but I’m still not sure if I’ll keep the appointment or not. We’ll see. I digress. I am then called in by my APCD to the GSO’s office to talk with them. See we emailed the CD to clear the second training and they had questions about the whole affair. So I’m called in and told that they’ve decided to cancel my training in mzuzu…

I sit and think…how to respond.*

So I go on to explain the utility of the training and they understand that. Which was great. We’ve worked out a plan for the future based on this idea; which is a partial answer to the bigger bike problem. Fantastic. However, I’m still going north, and people will probably still be there, so now they’ve just not let me have tools. Which means problems go unfixed until this better solution can be enacted and performed, which in all it’s bureaucratic honestly probably won’t be until long after I’m gone. Unless I decide to care about the office’s problems and push it myself.

See, this is an example of how a seemingly innocuous request can become a huge ordeal and then even get nixed. Truly inspiration is what it is. Just not in a good way. Ah, policy.

*What they fail to see is they are completely irrelevant. They knew nothing about it two hours earlier for a reason. We saw no need to explain it to them. We need nothing from them except tools. So their “veto” is effectively meaningless. But how to put that tactfully was the problem.

Funny Stories

by Dom on June 1st, 2008

I remembered a funny story, and funny enough at the same time another funny story happened, to a lesser degree at least. First as I walked from a gas station there was a minibus filling up with fuel. It was empty of people but it was shaking. I didn’t know why. As I passed by the rear of the bus I saw the attendant with the nozzle in the bus and two guys beside him standing there heaving the bus back and forth. I didn’t even ask why, it’s almost normal. In a hitch once they used a piece of bamboo to hold open the little door so they could put gas in, I don’t know why. Alright so I can’t remember the story I started the post intending to tell. Sorry. I’ll try to think of some others then for compensation. Tonight was kind of a funny story I guess. I went to dinner with Danni and Ali and they ended up getting hit on. As we were leaving apparently they were talking about Danni so she said hello then they got to chatting. This super drunk British dude was like you look fantastic, staring right at Danni, then realized how awkward a statement he made and tacked on, all of you, you all look really great…I said thanks. I was flattered, haha. How preposterous. The drunk guy was explaining how his son has a phd in mech engineering but got a job as an electrical engineer. He thought that was funny. He bought us a round and had his driver bring us home, so it wasn’t all awkwardness. Though they’re trying to get us to go to Nkhata Bay tomorrow.

I traveled up to Mzuzu today. I got a ride with peace corps. It was nice. We stopped at a PTC grocery store on the way up and I bought some boiled eggs, three, from this kid outside. K30 a piece I gave him a hundred. He tried to tell me he didn’t have change. I was like no son, took his eggs, and made him find me change. That fool thought I didn’t care about K10. That’s a banana in Lilongwe, or a tomato at my site, or like 10 guava, or two small packs of biscuits, etc. Then I got in the care and the staff person I was riding with gave me an egg sandwich.

I was taken in a hitch once to his fiance’s house. Or at least his fiance-to-be’s house. He proposed while we were there and then took her with us. It involved a lot of discussion with the parents outside while we sat inside watching some Easter special mass on TV from Nigeria. That was ridiculous. There were these white people, missionaries maybe, doing interpretive dance with wands and stuff. The mom was the head nurse at the clinic at my old site too. I thought I recognized her. Fortunately the recognition wasn’t reciprocated.

Alright so another funny story, the story I started this post for actually. So I was riding back from Nkhata bay with Jessie in a minibus. We were sitting across from this Malawian with this piece of luggage clutched in his arms. It was this molded foam piece with a zipper and a plastic handle. Fairly standard, except that this man had put a lovely purple plastic padlock on his to keep his zippers together. The kind of lock that’s about the size of your thumb that you might buy at a dollar store and whose key’s you normally lose within 5 minutes. I asked Jessie what she thought about that lock, or more what she thought he thought about that lock. I wasn’t satisfied though so I asked what she thought he’d do if I seized it and acted like I was going to rip it off. She said she didn’t know but wanted me to. I was like yeah right…and then I did. I grabbed hold of it and just shook it with a wild look in my eye. That man was frozen in his place eyes wide, stunned, for a solid second or two before he started to move. Then I released it and laughed. Everyone laughed, Jessie almost died. From laughing. The man said something about a false sense of security or how it was just for looks. I concurred. He was wary the rest of the trip. Needless to say, I was amused.

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.

Peace Corps

by Dom on February 16th, 2008

So I was sitting at site the other day and I came up with what I thought was a pretty good analogy for what peace corps service has been like so far.

1. Find a spice bottle
2. Take the lid off the spice bottle
3. Find a chair in a corner
4. Sit in said chair for an hour with the spice lid
5. Get up and tell people you made the world better

Now I don’t think it’s 100% accurate, as in if you do the peace corps you probably actually do help the world. Sitting in a chair won’t, unless your homicidal. However the whole feeling of boredom, what am I doing, why am I doing this is probably pretty similar. It’s a very unsatisfying feeling that is hard to overcome. And then once you do overcome it, you almost wonder if you’re even better off now? Is it better that you don’t mind boredom, or that you’ve become satisfied with being unsatisfied? I guess that doesn’t necessarily have to be the case, you could get motivated and start projects and stuff but I think for a lot of us, maybe most of us, that just isn’t how we work. I personally hate boredom. It seems like the anti-life to me. Not death, boredom. Living death. But maybe you don’t get used to the boredom maybe you don’t get used to being unsatisfied but start to really notice all the little things that seemed inconsequential. Maybe even start to appreciate them, so much so that they alone can satisfy you.

I wrote a short essay, at dillon’s half suggestion, about the most reliable positive thing I see us doing here, which is living with locals treating them as equals. That and how I think all aid should pull out for a while. It just seems like the people here believe me to be inherently better than them because I’m American. Which is absurd.It can be fun to tell them how wrong they are sometimes, but othertimes, most times, it’s just tiresome. But it’s life. I meant to bring the essay but I forgot, maybe next time. Everythings life. It’s alwayslife, just life. If you’re here or there, the excitement is likeacceleration. It’s only in the beginning and then wears off. (that’s afantastic analogy).

as an ammendment, after some discussion with yorgos it was decided maybe a full pull out wouldn’t be the best, but still necessary to a certain degree. More later.

Poor Technology

by Dom on January 12th, 2008

So those one laptop people emailed me back. I guess I shoudl be happy about that. The reply though, kept saying they wouldn’t just give me a laptop and that they may have some extras from their first production run but those will be given to

“a few of the poorest countries on earth: Haiti, Rwanda, Afghanistan, Cambodia and Mongolia.”

Hmm last I checked Malawi was like THE poorest country, whats up whats up!? So apparently it’s only 164, out of 177 in the Human Development Index Or this Wikipedia Version Lets see though Haiti: 146, Rwanda: 161, Afghanistan: data unavailable(I wonder why), Cambodia: 131, and Mongolia: 114. I think we got’m beat. Geez…some people!

No Camo

by Dom on April 5th, 2007

I’m told that it’s peace corps policy that we aren’t allowed to wear camouflage. So I’m not allowed to wear my cut-off shorts. That sucks. They have so many useful pockets and they hide dirt so well and they are so comfortable. Now I have to go put on some clean shorts or jeans which again sucks because I haven’t bathed in like 2 days. The plan was do it tonight because I am going to get nasty today, but now I’ll have to get nasty in clean clothes and thus have more to wash and less to wear. Stupid policy.

In the midst

by Dom on March 1st, 2007

So things didn’t go well with the country director. I’m amazingly dissapointed. I still have one more meeting with the education APCD but I may be seeing you guys sooner than later.

The Malawi Song

by Dom on February 3rd, 2007

This is the first song I wrote and it’s my perspective on life here along with a lot of inside jokes.

Here I am in Malawi
Playing this box, just happy to be
Here to help all these chillin’
out kickin’ back and having a beer

Ready to rock let’s have some fun
In this land of lake and sun
been here too long can’t wait to sima
-ther, father, loved ones

1,2 or 3 years who can say
Right now I just want to eat drink and play
Sessions and processing always suck
I’d rather be eating sima, carrying water on my head and doing a malaria slide all at the same time

Waking up to the rooster’s crow
I want to kill it by the afternoon
kid’s yelling through the market
“Iwe, azungu, AZUNGU!”

Life ain’t fun but that’s ok
Cause their’s no one making me stay
Things aren’t so bad though for me
Hmm, mmmm, mmmmmmmmmmmmm, form 3…

A-A-Anxiety
Sure won’t let me feel very free
But my brain is just reminding me
That it could be the mef and not just me

Spiders and scorpions
We all know aren’t very much fun
So we asked Dr. Max, are we doomed
You know what he said? PAIN PAIN PAIN! PAIN FOR YOU!

So yeah, that’s pretty much it, It’s fun and easy. Maybe I’ll play it for you one day.