Under the Milky Way

January 18 Update on our current “evacuation” situation— So, we have been moved to a lodge in Blantyre which is much better for us because not only is it a nicer place, but we are also able to go into the city during the day to keep us entertained. Peace Corps obviously pays for our lodging and also for breakfast/dinner at our lodge. Thankfully they just pre-reimbursed us for lunch, so each day we get to venture out into the real world for one meal. The only major issue is the lack of water in most of Blantyre! So yeah, we have toilets and showers now, but nothing works! We can’t even wash our clothes which are dirty at this point since we didn’t bring enough to be out of site for this long! The electricity is also in and out, but it’s not been too big of a problem for us since almost all of us are used to living without it anyway. We have our battery packs, and we know how to conserve our laptop and phone batteries. We have definitely been watching lots of movies though! I kn...

It’s been a whirlwind of a week. A giant tropical storm slammed the southern region of Malawi a few days ago with multiple feet of rainfall in 2-3 days. Considering homes and buildings are made of sandy mud bricks around here, lots of rain can weaken these walls and cause walls and entire structures to collapse. Thankfully I was not in my village when the storm hit (I was staying with a friend who knew the storm was on its way), so I was safe. I watched the storm bend palm trees and flop big branches from the safely of a large front porch that overlooked the tea estates. The rain came in waves usually of ridiculously hard rapping on the roof to light drizzling, and we had phases of thunder and lightning. One thing was for sure though—it didn’t stop raining for three days straight. The only discomfort I experienced though was temperamental electricity (which didn’t bother me since I’m used to not having it anyway). Besides that, I spent four days working on lesson plans for programs in...

Hello again! I've been on a few month hiatus from posting on my blog; sorry y'all! There's just been too much happening and not enough electricity to keep my laptop charged ;) Where to begin? I visited South Africa with two of my best friends in November, and we had a blast! Some of the things we did: explored Cape Town, took a 16 hour bus, cage dived with sharks, a wine tour, bungee jumped, rode ostriches, saw penguins at Boulder Beach, took surfing lessons, I got a tattoo, drove along the garden route, ate sushi and other great seafood, played frisbee on the beach, stayed in cool hostels, drove the garden route, went paragliding, walked a cheetah, enjoyed LOTS of south african wine, hiked beautiful mountains at sunset, and overall just experienced so many adventures in 9 days. I began typing up a more specific blog post about the things that we did, but I never finished it of course...maybe someday. After the trip, Abby came back to Malawi and spent 3 weeks here! We a...

October 20 It has been one hell of a weekend.  I had to travel to Blantyre yesterday to go to the hospital here because I have conjunctivitis (pink eye) in both of my eyes. The past three mornings I’ve woken up with one or both of my eyes sealed shut with nasty discharge stuff that comes from this lovely infection. I just received eye cream from the doctor, so I’m hoping that it works fast because right now, I’m embarrassed to take off my sunglasses! In addition to this incident, I also stepped on a scorpion in my house about a week and half ago. My entire house had just been cleaned because the workers who installed my electricity wires and pipes had made a complete mess. So, I thought it would be fine to walk around my house barefoot. Wrong decision. I was walking to my bedroom at night when suddenly I felt a sharp pain my little toe. I thought maybe I’d stepped on a nail or a thumbtack. I jumped back, shining my headlamp and my flashlight on the ground, looking for ...

OCTOBER 14 When I tell people I’m a Peace Corps Volunteer here in Malawi, they always have the same questions, “So what’s a typical day like?” Well, I feel like I’ve been here long enough (it’s now over 7 months!!!!) to approach this question. There is no typical day. Basi. However, today was one of those busy, productive, unpredictable days where everything just seemed to slip easily from one to thing to another. I woke up at half five this morning to go for a run before it got too hot and humid because man , that african sun during hot season is not something to mess with. On my run, I think I probably saw every primary and secondary (high school) school student in my village and the village adjacent to ours on their journeys to school. Most primary students were dressed in blue or purple uniforms and the secondary students wear black on bottom and white on top. The kids typically have track shoe bags for backpacks slung around their shoulders and in their hands they sling a...

September 30 Hello friends!  I am fresh out of IST (in service training) and also from a free weekend spent at a music and arts festival on Lake Malawi.  The second week of our training went well with our counterparts. Although some of the information was repetitive for us, it was good for our counterparts to learn more about Peace Corps and the types of projects we can do. We talked mostly about project design and management and specific ideas for potential projects to do with the community or just at our own homes like nutrition education, permaculture/gardening, the Pad Project, etc. Those are the projects I’m most interested in at least! My counterpart and I are both feeling pretty motivated, and I know what I want to try to get accomplished this month.  The other exciting event of September for me was the Lake of Stars festival that just happened this past weekend. A lot of PCVs attended, and we all shared a beautiful lake house right on the shore of...

It’s been awhile since my last update! I am currently in Lilongwe for our 2 week IST (In Service Training) where we are reuniting with our March 2014 group of health and environment volunteers and learning about the next step for when we go back to site. In case you don't know (I’ve noticed that a lot of people don’t understand the set up of Peace Corps), here’s how it goes for Peace Corps Malawi. We arrive in country and spend 9 weeks in Pre-Service Training living with home stay families. Then we move to each of our sites all across the country and spend the next 3-4 months conducting needs assessments and working on integrating into our rural villages. After those first few months, we come to IST for two weeks to learn more specifics about program design and management, grant-writing, behavior change, emotional resiliency, etc. The first week is just PCVs, but all of our primary counterparts arrived at our venue today, and they’ll be going through the next week of training ...