New site and all that shniz-noz

by Dom on May 25th, 2007

I don’t know what shniz-noz is. Anyway, I did get a new site. It’s a lot better so far. I like it a lot. It’s a tinier house but real cozy and a good bit cleaner. I’m real close to the road now, and pretty close to the luwawa forrest lodge. It’s reall cool to have somewhere like that to be able to get away easily. I have cell service at site too. Still no running water or electricity though, but whatever, who needs it. It’s over-rated…The school is cool. Headmaster’s real nice, real accomidating. Also, the house technically isn’t finished. So while it’s perfectly livable there are little things like how the gutters will go that I appreciate having a say in. So things are going good. Now I’m just trying to make my house more home-y and comfortable. I think I’m doing a good job. I have a guy at the curio’s making me a table with bao on one side and chess on the other.

Tire swing

by Dom on April 30th, 2007

So Dora called, but I was asleep and when I woke to answer the phone she said I sounded bad and let me go back to sleep. I’m a little nervous about what she has to say, because I want to just stay here until friday because there’s a shin-dig for heidi, the pcvl of the mpoto, and I don’t want to be running all around between sites and happy and sad people right now.
In other news I decided the house up here needed a tire swing and hooked it up. It’s pretty awesome. The place I got the tire from gave me one for free, it’s something that would go on some blinging benz with like 24’s so it has a huge hole for me to fit in, is light and really stiff. Then the rope I got is this sweet neon green. priceless. So there’s some good in this whole peace corps thing, hehe.

Site and the like

by Dom on April 28th, 2007

So I’m still here hanging out in Mzuzu. I’m trying for a site change and the wheels of peace corps, like normal government agencies, are slow. Then tack on the third-world communications slow ness and well, again, here I am.
I went and checked a school out yesterday, it had some flaws but it also had all the other stuff I was looking for in a school. But since it was a friday and all that, they can’t do official stuff until monday, and teusday’s a holiday. So who really knows what will happen, or when.
If I go to the new place, it will be closer to the road, have cellular service, be a little more central, and a little smaller, quieter school. The house is tiny, but cleaner and with a better porch, and I think everyone knows how I love my porches. So hopefully all will go well and it will work out.

5 weeks

by Dom on February 3rd, 2007

Monile, yeah yeah. 5 weeks. That’s how long it’s been 5 weeks. I’m glad to be back near some “civilization”, i.e. internet, electricity, etc. Also glad we got paid again, I was definitely running low, definitely. My daily routine has become:

5:30am - waking up, breakfast
7:00am - school
1:35pm - “knocking off” schools out
3:00pm - work out
3:30pm - bathe
4:00pm - start dinner
5:00pm - clean dishes
8:00pm - bed

That’s my general day. In my free time I play guitar a lot. A lot. A lot. I put new strings I got from chris on just before comeing here last time and they are noticably dying. I’ve written six songs. They range from crappy to mediocre but I like them all and that’s what really matters. It’s a lot more fun to play your own stuff I’ve determined. Food, I eat real healthy, not. I did get 4 packages yesterday, mostly foodstuffs, thanks mom and dad. That will be huge. My diet currently lacks a lot of protein. For breakfast it’s cookies and peanut butter and a cup of tea. Lunch is three peanut butter and honey sandwiches. And dinner is rice with tomatoes and onions, and whatever spice I feel like using, curry, lemon pepper, etc. Water for drink, and no snacking normally. I’ve probably lost some more weight but there’s not a scale around.

Teaching is a lot of work. Not as fun as I was hoping but still enjoyable. It’s hard when they don’t understand the question you are actually asking. For instance it’s hard to get across the concept of estimation, that you DON’T want the correct answer, only something close. They take a lot of time working out the correct answer and then wonder why it’s not actually “correct.” I’m glad when those days are over.

I teach forms 1 and 3(freshman and juniors, respectively) math and form 1 physical science. I’m not the biggest fan of the physical science text book due mostly to it’s lack of depth, but it may be appropriate, I don’t remember much about high school physical science. One particular gripe is the fact that newtons laws aren’t mentioned at all. I know I’m moving a lot faster than I expected to, in it. My math classes are pretty good though, I’m going over quadratic equations in form 3 and approximations in form 1.overall they don’t ask too many questions but when they do I normally go off on some crazy tangent than they don’t really comprehend, such has friction heat due to air at high speeds of the space shuttle during re-entry. They didn’t follow that one. I don’t really feel like I’m that great of a teacher, but I guess I’ll get better with time.

I’ve also started a math club. It meets wednesdays and really messes up my routine but it’s a nice way to divide the week. What happens is, they’ve given me topics they want to work on, and I come up with a problem from one topic in each from. Write it on the board and give them some time to work on it and then I solve it. It really feels more like a magic show because no one asks questions and when I solve a problem they all clap. Though I don’t think they are clapping for me, more for themselves because they got it right, but it feels like it’s for me because I pulled a rabbit from a hat or made someone levitate. It’s nice

I read a lot of books, Crime and Punishment was excellent, not at all what I expected and I’ve borrowed The Idiot so I can see if I like the rest of his books. Dostoevsky, or something like that. Also The Count of Monte Cristo was great. I had an abridged version though and I would like the read the unabridged now.

I’ve also got some tentative vacationing plans. I am considering cliff diving during the first break with some others, and going to Zanzibar on the second break. I think those should be a nice change of pace and a way to make the most of my current geographical situation. There was also a bar that you have to hike to I’m considering hitting up, but I don’t remember the name of it right now.

Also, the anti-malaria drugs were really messing with my head, depression, insomnia, seeing “things.” So I’m on something different now. What that means though is that I don’t really know how accurate my experience in the past five weeks has actually been. Hopefully it will be like the good days always on this new stuff but I doubt it. We’ll see. Oh and seeing “things” means too many double takes a day. Like when you thought you saw something out of the corner of your eye and then you look and it’s nothing. I would do that 2 or 3 times for the same thing, only like 20-50 times a day. Anyway it should be better now.

I want to thank everyone for their letters and continuous suppport it’s huge, especially on the bad days. I always appreciate hearing from everyone so feel vely flee.

Site

by Dom on December 27th, 2006

Here I am, back again, at a computer. I do feel a bit bad because I told my headmaster I would be back yesterday, but since I stayed I’ve gotten a lot of other stuff done. Like I bought a phone, even though supposedly my site has no cell coverage. We’ll see.

So site, yeah, site. It’s still pleasant. I moved into my house. Though on the day I arrived the teacher that was living there was at a funeral and all her stuff was still inside. So The cleaned out one room and put all my stuff and a bed in there. I slept in my tent that night inside, because I couldn’t hang my mosquito net. No nails or hammer, and the walls were too far away. The next day though they came and moved her stuff out to her new place and swept and mopped my floor, then I went and got my table and they brought my chairs and I moved my bed into another room and went out and bought nails and borrowed a hammer and hung my net. The best hanging job ever mind you, it’s like a little room.

The house is concrete. There is one main room with a small room behind the main room, off of the hall that flows from the main room to the back of the house. Then two similar quarter-house sized rooms on the other side of the house off that hall and main room. Both my exterior doors lock and are solid but I only have one door on the inside, but it locks too. So I keep my stuff in the lockable room and kind of live in the others. I bought some vitenje to make doors chapatali style for the remaining doorways. In the back there is a kitchen with small adjoining storage room, and the baffa where I wash myself, clothes and dishes. All those are connected in one building and connected to the house with a wall and a courtyard. Behind all that is a chim, where all the business takes place. The place sports some pretty sweet thumb sized roaches and silver dollar sized spiders. I haven’t really killed either of them yet. Partly due to the mess I think it will make and partly because I want to see those suckers battle it out atleast one time. I did wake up one morning to find one dumb roach just laying on it’s back kicking. I decided to leave it to see how long it would take to die, but I accidentally stepped on it later that day, so I swept it out.

Time wise, I have a plethora. I’ve never seen seconds move so slow. Way worse than detention. I got up one morning, though I can never figure out why, cooked breakfast, played guitar, wrote some letters, stretched, tried yoga, tried meditating, read 40pgs and then it was 9:30am. When I go back though I’m going to start working on school stuff more seriously. I’ve glanced over it a bit so far and reorganized some stuff, the typical procrastinating beginning, it’ll get done though. School starts the eighth of January. I’m teaching math and physical science, to what would be freshman and juniors in America. Math to both and physical science to the freshman only.

Right now though I’m in Mzuzu. There is a Peace Corps house here that we are allowed to stay at so I Came here for Christmas. I’m going to try to come here once-a-month-ish. So hopefully that will facilitate this whole blog/staying in touch thing.

Christmas here was pretty sweet. They killed a turkey and we had that and stuffing and mashed potatoes, it was good. I was the only one from my group that was here though, which was a bit weird at first but turned out to be better in the end I think. Especially because yesterday some people from my group showed up and that’s another reason I decided to stay another night.

So anyway, the plan is head back later today, maybe after lunch. Maybe before, we’ll see. I’m not really looking forward to the two hour minibus ride back, but what can you do.

Oh and Vitenje is the plural of chitenje which is basically a peice of bright colored fabric. They use them for everything here. So I hope life on the home front is going well.

Things

by Dom on December 12th, 2006

So I’m using the internet now in Lilongwe. Tomorrow we swear in and become real volunteers, and then it’s off to site. Thursday that is. The schedule is pretty slammed and the internet was down the entire last week at the training site. So I guess a brief recap is in order.

Site visit. Well I can honestly say I know what the craziest experience of my life is. So I hitched with Mary Cate, since her site was on the way, to my place. It was an on-and-off trip of great fun and a lot of walking. Well maybe 7km total. We ended up doing most of the time in the cab of a truck with a driver named Simian that’d been driving for 9yrs and hoped to go to America one day to drive tractor trailers. Or so he says. I guess only time will tell. One thing I found amusing, when people flash their lights at you it isn’t because a cop is right around the corner. It’s because they know you and are saying hi. That’s how many people drive trucks here.

The adjective I decided my site merited was pleasant. I can see Zambia on the horizon and the sunrise from the other side. There are tons of fruit trees, orange, lemons, mangos. Mmmm, mango’s. My school has less than 150 at any given time, and my class size is pretty much the total divided by 4. So quite reasonable compared to what was previously expected. My house is nice too, four rooms, with a courtyard, an outdoor kitchen, a baffa and a chim. The standard set up. So much so actually that Chris and I have the same layout and we’re in two different districts.

After site visit, I went to see the summer school put on by first year education volunteers, which we will be in a year or so. Then I decided to take the lakeshore road south because it seemed like the same distance, M1 or M5. I was warned that the M5 was slower and that there weren’t many cars. I figured I had all day and there should be some tourists. No tourists. I left Mzuzu at 8:30am and got into Lilongwe at 10:30pm. That includes the hour I spent in Salima, which is probably the worst hour of my life. Bar none(that I can think of right now). The ramen noodles Jessie let me have were thoroughly appreciated.

Then it was back to training to process our visit and have our headmasters come so they could find out what we are actually suppose to be doing at their schools. It was a good time.

Now I just got my passport, which is awesome because I live so close to Zambia. And I just bought a guitar, which is also awesome because I’ve been playing Chris’ so much recently. I paid about $140 US, or like K19.5 Malawian. It’s no sparkly red sub-fender awesomeness but it’ll do. Hopefully if someone comes to visit they will walk mine over as a carry on. It’s possible, that’s how Chris got his here.

Speaking of visiting. Come. Seriously, I can show you around, you can stay at my house, we can go see the sites. However, my site doesn’t have running water, power, or cell phone service, so make sure you send the letter or email way in advance if you want me to be waiting for you at the airport. However if you feel comfortable using Malawian transport, have at it. I do like surprises.

One last thing, I have some updated addresses for people. I’m going to send an email. If you don’t get the email, ask someone, they may have, if no one got it, still use the old one. It will always work.

Oh and if you want to send me stuff, besides the stuff already below, gray shirts, decent flip flops(that fit), and wash clothes would be awesome. I guess frisbee’s and a yoga mat, and other trivialities would be nice as well. Oh and cheese products of any kind. Really anything you send is greatly appreciated.

After this don’t expect to see much up here for a while. Thanks.