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.

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.

Yesterday

by Dom on April 6th, 2007

So the bike training was…interesting. It was in my homestay village and the language trainer’s were at my house. It was crazy. I said hi to “the a-team” and he gave me some beans.
The training was kind of shoot-from-the-hip. They gave me the “bike manual” and I basically sat and read all the policy to them with some peace corp admin standing right behind me. Kind of awkward and boring. Then I got to the actual, work on bikes part. Which was cool. It was kind of all over the place though. I think we got through everything from stuffing your tire with grass, to never touching your limit screws. Then there were snacks in my old courtyard. But I didn’t get to enjoy them. They were yelling at me to get back in the car so we could drive back. I think I spent a total of 15min of there-but-not-teaching time. And that was with them waiting in the car with it running. Let ‘em wait.

It was cool, as I was finally leaving “the a-team” was on the porch and one of the new trainee’s said “Anyone ever tell you we call that guy ‘Burt Reynolds’?” I informed him that we called him “the a-team.” It was a lovely cross-group-bonding moment.

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.

I’m still around, I’m still around

by Dom on April 3rd, 2007

Baby, I’m still around… - Second shift I think? So yeah, here I am in Malawi. Still here, for a little longer atleast. I’ve had to come to grips with the fact that we aren’t here to try to come up with creative solutions to problems we see. We’re here to teach. And teaching is what doesn’t really interest me. So that is the dilema. I was told to think of this more as “study abroad for adults” and that seems to sum things up nicely. However having this greater understanding doesn’t make it satisfy me more. So yeah, we’ll see come what may.

Anyway, I’m here now using the free internet(sweet) and I’m off to do the bike training for the new environment group tomorrow. So that should be cool. Then we have our in-service training, then it’s off for a little touristy trip of the country. So I’ll be on here more often in the coming weeks.

Getting here was a pain. I went to Yorgos’ to try to cut the trip in half, but from there I only made it to Gretchen’s before it got to late to continue, so I had to call here up and stop there. Thankfully all went smoothly with that or I really would have been screwed.

So that’s all for now. I just got in and I’m a little tired and 2 days of traveling has caused me to need a bath and maybe a beer or two.

Ride Ride Ride, Hitching a Ride

by Dom on November 22nd, 2006

So today we got to hitch. Basically they took us out to the side of the road, 4 pairs at a time. Dropped us off along with a trainer. Gave us a destination and then let each pair of us flag down whatever we could and head to the market, which was our goal.

Yorgos (my partner in the pair) and I ended up going to Dedza Pottery for a good meal before we headed back. It was pretty awesome. I got a ploughmans lunch and a sandwich and a coke. I ended up dropping about a KG (that’s a grand of kwach{so kwacha is the malawian currency and I’ve slangified it by dropping the a}). Anyway, after that we got another ride back to the boma. It was pretty sweet all in all, we rode in two minibuses, which are basically haggard old minivans and a ride from some NGO’s in a sweet SUV.

Oh and I feel like I should also mention this near by bar that gets hit up from time to time. Ed’s place. It’s really sweet with a dark wood checker board, a deck of cards, and a bawo board laying out, comfy chairs, african carvings and the greatest selection of carlsburg available. It’s pretty great. And so is the bartender. He taught me some bawo strategy. There’s a sign hanging inside, written in blue pen that says “Respect a fool to avoid noise.”

Explaination and then some.

by Dom on November 19th, 2006

Alright so I’m back here’s the situation. We are in training and they have decided to let us use the internet as a priviledge so I can’t say how much I will actually get to use it.

So I had some other stuff but then it got erased and now I’m mad. So anyway, hmm. Let me see what I can remember.

So the best story I think have is the one where Jessie and I walked up to this store on the highway to buy some absurd shirt. After the purchase we noticed the abundance of kids in the shop with us, not especially strange but what was was the fact that they weren’t looking at us. They were staring outside at the “traditional african dancers.” It was getting dark so we had to go but there was definite hesitation as they were all dressed up in pom-pom like things and canvas masks with clubs and machetes. So we tried to be discrete. It didn’t work. They immediately saw us and came over. I was quite apprehensive, but it was relieved when they stuck there hand out asking for five kwacha. I laughed, told them I didn’t have K5 and asked them to give me K5, so they asked Jessie. She did likewise right back to them. And so it began some stupid bickering fight between four people on the side of the highway in english and chichewa back and forth asking for K5 and telling them not to beg. Until finally we all started laughing at the absurdity of the situation and just walked away. I think my final question for K10 went over the line and we parted ways.

From then on there was a mutual ignoring. There would be children running screaming past us down a dirt path and here would come this random shirtless guy with a mask and a machete chasing them and our conversations wouldn’t skip a beat. I guess that’s Africa for me.

Some other things you might be interested in, Grass roofs make no noise in the rain, and washing clothes in the river stretch them out.

I’m trying to put some pictures up but right now I’m having issues, but I will definitely keep trying.

Africa Baby…

by Dom on November 18th, 2006

Yeah, so I’m here. I have been here now long enough that most of the things aren’t really new. So bear in mind this keyboard is not well and that I don’t have much time, so here we go.

We got dropped off for our homestay and I imediately picked out my “dad” by his crazy facial hair. He had sideburns that went straight into a mustache. So there was lots of singing and dancing.

The village was really neat. There is a small river that runs between it and another and that’s where we would wash clothes. It was really small and so we could hang out daily. Basically I would wake up at 5am, just because, hang out until 6, take a splash bath, eat breakfast of white/brown bread, or boiled potatoes or african cake, never at the same time. Go pile into the PC land cruiser to be shuttled to class. I taught math at a freshman level for about 5 weeks. It went well. After class we would come home for lunch and then language, I have to learn Chitumbuka. Which sometimes made the homestay extra hard because the village only spoke Chichewa, so I got a little of both.

There were some really sweet sunrises and sunsets and we hiked up a couple of nearby mountains, and went shopping in the market and had to shake a million hands.

That is all in past tense because I just got back from the village fairwell. I’m done. I lived in a mud hut in Africa, and spoke the language and ate the food. Sima, mmmm. The fairwell was really cool, we sang “Lean on me” and they did some singing, dancing, drum playing, acting, etc. etc. The ambassador came out as well as the country director. It was definitely a good time.

Again, not many details but have no fear I’ve kept a very detailed journal that I plan to transcribe digitally when I get back that will have more details than you could want.

Hey, and since Internet and definitely going to be scare, really great packages and letters are always appreciate. Honestly any letters are appreciated.

Ok so I really really appreciate all the comments. They keep me sane. I also know exactly the town I’m going to be in so if you want to know, you need to get in contact with the family. They should know. Tumbuka’s only spoken in the North fyi. Sorry there’s not more.