So today has been wet and cold! It has barely stopped raining all day.
Rain is good because my tap isn't working right now, so I can collect water in buckets off my roof! However, rain is a pain in the butt too because it means I can't hang clothes or set wood outside to dry, I can't set my solar charger out, and the ground is even more slippery than usual! Thankfully I only fell twice today.
I managed to get a good longer run in today during one of the breaks from the rain! I have been wanting to know how far the walk is that I have to make from the tarmac up to my village, so I decided to run it. It's about 5 kilometers or 3 miles. I also did a little exploring on side paths too. One of which led me to a beautiful tea field with a narrow winding trail going through the bushes. It was one of those "whoa I'm running in Africa" moments. As I approached my village, some kids who were walking home from school started running with me. I decided to add on the loop that goes around my village because they were enjoying themselves so much. My favorite running buddy, Charles, jumped in with us. Charles is about 14 years old and super strong. He ran about 7 miles with me last weekend. He's also under 5 feet tall. As we were climbing up this steep hill in the last 5 min of the run, I started walking because my legs were shot from climbing so many mountains on the rest of my run. We walked for a second, and then Charles encouraged me, "Tiene," he said (let's go). I gave in, and we made it to the top of the incline and paused to wait for all the 4-8 year old kids scrambling behind us. It's funny how tired I was when I was finishing the run originally, but running with the kids gave me that extra boost of energy to make it to just over an hour today. I'm gonna have to do more of these runs because the porters race is in one month exactly!! This is a half marathon (but it's actually 15 mi from what I've heard) that starts on the other side of the moutain and climbs to the highest peak. This year, I'm hoping to just finish it. Next year, I'm gonna race it!!!
After I ran and took a freezing cold bucket bath (like seriously, so cold my fingers were numb after), I met up with my counterpart and we went to a meeting with the Positive Living group in my area. This is a group for people living with HIV/AIDS which serves as a support group mostly. I talked to them about their biggest challenges and asked what I could do to help. It was actually really depressing because their main 3 challenges were: 1. Food Security, 2. Poverty in general, and 3. Discrimination in the community.
Regarding food security, they legitimately couldn't afford a variety of food sources. They knew the 6 food groups, but couldn't buy them. They talked about how they'd eat rice porridge for breakfast and nsima and cooked greens for lunch and dinner. I asked about fruits, and they said they'd sell fruit growing on their trees for money. Let me just emphasize the extremity of this shortage. Two bananas costs 10 kwatcha. 400 kwatcha= 1 dollar. And they can't afford these bananas.
In terms of poverty, they can't afford blankets and, for some, clothes.
Discrimination is a huge issue too. People don't typically come out to the community that they're HIV positive because they are harshly judged. They won't be included in community activities and events and even their families and friends will say things like, "well you're going to die soon anyway..."
It made me so upset to hear this. This group of 20 people faced this kind of stigma on a daily basis. Even though I don't know a TON about HIV/AIDS, we talked about it enough in training that I have an idea of some ways to try to help. I am hoping to train some leaders in the group and teach them about important topics (nutrition, gardening, more details about HIV/AIDS) so that they can teach the group.
One of the big pushes with peace corps is sustainable development. Otherwise, when I leave, everything would fall apart. So training teachers and having them do the teaching for the group empowers people in the group and also the other members are more likely to listen to one of their peers. When I mentioned this to the group, a middle aged woman asked if they had to be able to read and write to be a leader. I said of course not, I wouldn't want to discriminate! We also talked about doing cooking demos and learning about constructing gardens. I plan on starting my garden once I get a fence, so I'm thinking I can use it as an example garden for teaching! Exciting stuff. I can't wait to start. They also gave me gifts when I left, as per Malawian culture, a papaya, a pineapple, and a whole bundle of sugarcane! So sweet! 
The rest of my day has been pretty boring. I slipped and fell going down the freshly dug steps in my front yard when I was carrying a bowl full of potatoes and they fell everywhere, so that was cool. Especially because a whole bunch of amayi's were watching. I turned around and reiterated to them how much I don't like rain and tried to laugh it off haha.
And tonight I attempted fudge. So we'll see how it turns out! That's it for today. My candle is literally burning low.
Usiko wa bwino folks! (Good night)