Observation. Family. Connections. Dancing. Leaving. Thanks. Written: August 4, 2008

I’ve been intrigued by the art of observation in the last while. Living in the village, I was not able to communicate verbally with either of my parents or with the majority of the people in the village. It’s a completely different form of learning. Living with Sarah, I was learning tons from having long conversations with her about Malawian politics, history, NGOs, poverty, etc. But there is something very interesting about sitting back and just observing, and only becoming involved when it just kind of happens. I’ve had to interpret feelings and thoughts of the people around me without the use of words. I’ve been able to observe other’s interactions and actions and learn how my own interactions and actions fit into the community. I believe that we sometimes rush too fast into doing what we think is “right.” We walk into this situation where food is cooked for us, clothes are washed for us, and hot water is prepared for our baths and automatically feel that we should not be letting others do this for us. I’ve taken the approach of just letting things happen, and it’s been rather fascinating. It’s also been really interesting to observe how my community interprets my actions and expressions, and how they have begun to recognize how I feel based on my non-verbal expressions. I’ve enjoyed observing this process of building trust in a community through various activities and interactions. One process is the cooking of nsima. I’ve always shown interest in cooking in the village, and started out by sitting and watching while my mother prepared the nsima. One night she called me over and taught me to scoop the flour into the pot while she stirred. This then became my official role at dinner time. Then one evening she decided to hand me the stirring stick and taught me how to stir the nsima, I now had a new role in dinner preparations.
I initially thought I would have to live in a house with a family in order to become a part of a family, but my thoughts have changed. I’m living in the Freshwater Resource Centre at the moment (I got sick in the village, and now Mr. Banda won’t let me go back). There is a pastor and Mr. Banda’s 24 year old son living there too, and it’s been neat to create this family atmosphere with them. Every night we cook together and sit around the kitchen and talk. We have visitors every so often that either just stay for dinner or stay overnight as well. People are constantly in and out of the resource centre during the day, so I’ve been able to interact with a ton of people. I honestly feel like we’ve created a family, just a very diverse one, but still one that I trust and love being around. At first I was just waiting to go back to the village to get my things so I could move back to Sarah’s, but now I have my things and keep postponing my move back to Sarah’s.
So I moved my stuff out of the village about a week and a half after I stopped living in the village. We had been telling them that I have to work late and can’t bike home when it is dark. The decision was to say the same thing when I moved my stuff out for good. I realized that it would be difficult to leave the village, and difficult to explain to my family that I wouldn’t be living with them anymore, but I had no idea how emotionally difficult it would be. In basically 2 weeks of living in this community I have become so emotionally attached to all of them, and them to me. Alex from the office came with me to the village to explain that I was moving out, but when I walked into my room with my mother to pack my things she pointing to the bed and said “sleep here tonight?” To shake my head and see the disappointment in her face hit me really hard. It hurt me to hurt them, but there is also this part of me that just loves being around them and being a part of their community. As we drove off all the kids just stood there with sad faces and waved, and my friend Doris was the last and all I could do was wave and yell out that I will see her soon. I don’t think I’ve ever met a group of people who were so open and caring, and whose smile and positive energy could brighten you up at any point in the day. I plan to visit them on my last few weekend afternoons, but it just won’t be the same; I’m no longer in the house as part of the family.
On a brighter note; I attended a Malawian reggae show (The Black Missionaries) on Saturday night with Alex from work and Mr. Banda’s son. The lead singer of the band is Mr. Banda’s eldest daughter’s husband, so we had the luxury of getting in for free. I was initially fairly nervous of how far outside of my comfort zone the night was going to be (this fear came about by knowing how amusing my dancing is to my friends in the village). I thought I would be like the white kid spectacle and the evening would become very uncomfortable and awkward. But the evening was none of those things. I had quite a few people coming up to me wanting to say hello, but never did I feel starred at or judged. There were actually points in time that I completely forgot that I was the only white person there, and it was just like I was at a good show dancing with my friends back in Canada. I don’t know if it is just because I really feel comfortable around Malawians and feel a part of the Chileka community, but all in all it was a pretty neat feeling.
I’m leaving Malawi in 3 weeks and there is only this tiny part inside of me that wants to come home. The tiny part is excited to see all my friends and family again and to start sharing my experiences with Canada. However, there is this huge part of me that just isn’t ready to leave. I’ve grown really attached to the people here and I think they have grown pretty attached to me. Philemon and Dorothy told me the other day that they are going to hide me in a closet so I won’t go home. I’m feeling like I belong here, and that’s a pretty hard feeling to have when you know you are about to leave. But I’m making the most of everyday; still building up relationships instead of focusing on closing them quite yet, still pushing forward with my impact plans for Freshwater, and still just taking in my surroundings and learning.
I’m going to try and write one more mass email, but if I don’t have the time, I would like to thank you all for being so supportive and encouraging while I’ve been here in Malawi. Your emails have brightened up some of my days, and it’s been an awesome feeling to know that people back in Canada are getting something from my experiences. I truly look forward to speaking with each of you when I get home.

A Canadian Retreat Followed by a Malawian Wedding. Written: July 12, 2008

On Friday June 27th I headed to Lilongwe with Binnu to meet up with the rest of EWB’s Malawi volunteers. We hopped on a true Malawian coach bus; three people per row, people standing, and lots of chickens, and drove for 6 hours to Lilongwe. On most long trips the driver will stop at the markets along the side of the road and people will come running to the vehicle with fruit, potatoes, vegetables, drinks, biscuits, etc. for the people in the bus to buy. This probably adds about an hour to the drive, but is pretty awesome: food right to your window!
We were meeting at the same resort type place that we went to when we first got to Malawi, and Binnu and I had a few troubles getting there. Including: getting on the wrong minibus, Binnu falling out of the minibus and getting the wind knocked out of her, me figuring out how I was going to make sure she didn’t pass out as we got into a minibus heading the right direction, and finally getting in a cab and paying way too much to get to the resort. We got there right on time and were greeted by most of the Junior Fellows and Long Term Volunteers. It was awesome to see everyone back together again, and people’s energy was booming. We got on a minibus for a 2 hour drive to Senga Bay, an area right on Lake Malawi. The weekend consisted of the usual EWB stuff: lots of discussions, sessions, and conversations that hurt your brain, but are completely awesome. It was neat to see how far everyone has come in the last one and a half months, and to share some of our experiences and learn a whole lot from one another.
We left Senga Bay on the Tuesday (Canada Day!) and headed back to Lilongwe. Duncan, one of the Junior Fellows, had met a couple people who are working with the UN and had invited us to come with them to the refugee camp in Malawi. I decided not to go because I didn’t want to change my headspace that much, and I don’t really know a whole lot about refugee camps. Apparently it was nothing like anyone was expecting. It was basically a village with people from all over Africa. The stories that some of the EWBers heard were pretty rough, and there was a lot of talk about waiting for someone to come and help. While they were at the refugee camp, Janelle (another Junior Fellow) and I headed to the Lilongwe market in search of chitenjes and a good market experience. We headed to a market that isn’t really known by tourists. It is set up in a fenced in area, and the entire market is kind of divided into different sections. Produce and food, household brooms and cooking utensils, fish, cooked food, and chitenjes all have their own areas. Once we found the chitenje area (after asking about 4 people), it was like a gold mine! I have never seen so many chitenjes in one area. There were tables lined with fabric and you just walk along and choose the ones you want to see and buy. The even more awesome thing is that they were all at a fixed price, so we didn’t have to go through the hassle of bargaining. I bought a lot of chitenjes! We had lunch at a table set up in the centre of the market area. Rice, beans, and vegetables for only 100 kwacha; probably the best 100 kwacha I have spent.
We slept at the resort in tents and Binnu and I headed to the bus station in the morning to head back to Lilongwe. It turns out we picked the wrong coach bus, because about 30 minutes outside of Blantyre it ran out of fuel. We were stranded, and the driver had to run to the gas station about 5 km away to bring back gas. We waited for about 30 minutes then decided to catch a minibus that was heading to Blantyre. We got in, went out for pizza (a final Western hit), and caught a cab to Binnu’s house just outside of Blantyre.

I moved back into my home in the village on Friday afternoon and already the preparations for the Monday wedding were starting. The bride and groom, Grace and George arrived on Saturday morning from Blantyre where they both live and work. Grace is the daughter of my host mother and father, and George’s mother and father live in a village about an hour outside of Lilongwe. George speaks English very well, and Grace speaks enough for me to communicate with her, so it was nice to be able to ask them questions about how a Malawian wedding works. My host mother is Roman Catholic and my host father is part of the CCAP church, and Grace is Roman Catholic. Both of George’s parents are part of the CCAP church, as is George. In Malawi, it is very common for the wife to convert to her husband’s religion before marriage. Apparently it’s in the bible, but I’m not entirely sure about that…
On Sunday is when the real festivities began. When I awoke the women of the village had a huge container (it looked like toxic waste containers-but I’m sure it wasn’t) sitting on top of three flat rocks with a fire underneath. In between each of the rocks they had put long dry grass to keep the fire going. Once the grass begins to burn, you push it underneath the container into the fire. Inside the container was water which you bring to a boil and add maize flour. Once that has come to a boil you take it off the fire and let it cool. The next day you put it back on the fire and bring it to a boil again. This makes a kind of starchy drink that is very filling. I’m not too fond of it, and even with heaps of sugar I find it hard to gulp down.
All throughout the day we had guests arriving. Most of the guests that arrive the day before the wedding are the close family of the bride and groom, but that does not mean that there aren’t a lot of them! As women and men came they went right to work helping with different tasks. The women were mostly responsible for collecting firewood and water, cooking the food, and greeting everyone. They also did a lot of singing, clapping, and dancing. It was mainly the older women who would stand in a semi-circle around the fire, with younger women and some children standing behind them, and the older women would lead the song and dance. The men were working on a pergola type shelter which was made of logs with a thatched roof. They also had the job of killing the 4 goats and chickens that were purchased for the wedding. The groom had the responsibility of doing the initial kill of each of the goats. I had initially thought it might be neat to watch this, but I’m kind of glad I didn’t…
The food on Sunday was almost overwhelming. I think I ate more that day than I usually do over the course of a week. For breakfast I ate with the bride and groom, the grand daughter who is living with us, and my grandmother. We had sweet potatoes, African bread (banana bread made with maize flour), and tea. For lunch we ate nsima and beans, and at around 4:30pm we were given chips (sliced potatoes in oil). Dinner had quite an interesting set up; we had three mats set up in the main room of the house. On one were the men (my father, the groom’s father, and the groom’s uncle), on another were the grandmothers, the granddaughter, and me, and on the other were the sisters and a couple of the granddaughters. We all had our own dishes of nsima and chicken, and ate in our separate circles.
Then the party started. Speakers were brought out onto the front porch of my house and blasted with Malawian music and everyone in the village and all the guests were outside in front of my house dancing all night long. I was exhausted by this time and my mother was quite concerned with someone coming into the house and stealing my belongings, so I didn’t stay outside for too long. Also, as a white person I stand out quite a bit, and me dancing is always good laugh and sideshow. So I put my earplugs in and attempted to have a fairly good sleep in spite of all the noise.
There were people sleeping everywhere on Sunday night, we had mats and blankets set up in the main room, and all around the back of the house.
On Monday morning all the women woke up at around 4am to fetch water, and start the preparations for lunch. I was brought into the main room for my breakfast, and I think that moment was probably the most uncomfortable of the entire weekend. I was put right beside the bucket of raw goat meat and handed my plate of rice pudding. I’m not entirely sure how I got through the plate, but the point in time when my mother reached her hand into the bucket and started scooping out the meat into separate buckets was probably the worst.
The groom had asked me to come to the church service on Monday morning, so I went along with my father, and the groom’s father and uncles. I initially made the assumption that everyone would be attending the church service, but I was very wrong. Almost all the women and younger men stay at the house for the morning preparing for lunch and the afternoon. Even my mother didn’t come to the church because she was busy preparing for lunch. I’m not sure if she didn’t come because she is Roman Catholic and it was at the CCAP church, or if she needed to be at the house. In her place, her sister went and sat beside my father. My father and I walked to the house where the bride and groom were getting ready. They had about 15 girls as brides maids, 4 boys, a best man, and a little boy and girl in their wedding party. The girls were dressed in shiny purple dresses with white shoes, and the boys in black suits with blue shirts. The bride was wearing a very traditional white wedding dress and the groom was wearing a beige suit. The bride and groom drove to the church in a car and the rest of us squeezed into a minibus. The minibus ride was quite the experience. All the girls and the women were singing the whole way. The actual wedding service lasted only an hour and consisted of the bride’s maids coming in 2 at a time in a choreographed dance and the bride and groom being escorted by their best man and best woman up to the front, while dancing. The priest preached for quite awhile in Chichewa, there were a lot of amen’s, and he married Grace and George. There was no kiss though, but public displays of affection are not seen as appropriate in Malawi, so I’m going to assume that that was the reason.
We drove back to the house and were greeted by everyone who had stayed behind. The food has been prepared and we ate right away. There was rice, nsima, goat, and chicken, and tons of people!
After lunch we gathered under the pergola on plastic chairs and the children all stood around the outside. It really brought out the realization of how many children there are in comparison to the number of adults. There were a few adults under the pergola (mostly guests), then there were adults from the village and surrounding area along one side, and children all along the other three sides. The bride and groom sat on a couch at the front. Then began the “true Malawian tradition;” the throwing of money. The bride and the groom each stand up with a large woven plate and music is put on they start to dance. Guests come up and dance and throw money, usually 20-100 kwacha bills. This goes on for about 3 hours, with the bride and groom coming up on their own, the mother and father of each side coming up, the group village headman, and the bride and groom coming up together. I went up once to throw money to the bride and groom, and got quite a few giggles. The white person dancing and throwing money is always quite a sight!
At about 5pm the ceremony finished and everyone began to clear out. The only people left were the close family who had been there since Sunday and the people in the village. We ate leftovers from lunch and went to sleep. The bride and groom slept in the house behind ours, the grandmothers slept in our main room, and all the other family slept on mats outside.
On Tuesday, the groom took his new wife, her parents, and his parents to his house for lunch so that the bride’s parents could agree to let their daughter live there.
And that is a Malawian wedding, or at least one version of one. And don’t worry, for those of you that are visual learners, I was able to take quite a few photographs that I would love to share when I return!

Come for a stay in a Malawian village. A brief introduction to a new lifestyle. Written: June 21, 2008

My stay in village Nkata began last Tuesday. I arrived at the village with one of my coworkers after work with all of my belongings and my new bicycle. I was quickly greeted by the village headman, my host mother and father, and the 50 or so children of the village, all of whom were more than eager to shake my hand and greet me in the traditional Malawian Chichewa manner. Plans were discussed in Chichewa while I sat and smiled at the 50 children sitting and standing around me starring. I was told by my coworker that I should be calling my host mother amayi (mother) and my host father abambo (father) and that they are very happy to have me in their home. Dinner was prepared already and we sat down to eat. In the house there are my amayi and abambo and one of their grand daughters. During meals the women and children sit on a bamboo matt on the floor and the husband sits at the table with his own bowls and food. Each person gets their own dish for their nsima (maize flour cooked to a firm consistency and scooped into pieces) and the relishes (ndiwo) are communal. To eat nsima and ndiwo you take a piece of nsima in your right hand and form it into a ball in the palm of your hand. You use that to scoop up your ndiwo from the communal bowl and eat the two together. The first night we had okra, which is prepared by cutting up the okra into small pieces and adding sodium bicarbonate so you get a kind of gooey consistency, and mtemba (small dried fish that are cooked and eaten whole). During dinner the 5 year old grand daughter become too overwhelmed with an azungu (white person) being in her home and just started crying. That was kind of my first hit with the realization that the people in this village rarely see white people let alone live with them.
It was 7pm and time for bed- Malawians tend to go to sleep very early as they wake up at about 4:30 or 5am every morning. I have my own room in the house, it is about the size of a double bed plus a couple feet in the length. It has an entrance with no door and a small window. For my first couple nights I slept on a 2 inch mattress that was placed on one of the bamboo mats. I had little trouble falling asleep with little awareness of what was to come my way. At about 10pm I awoke to the feeling of a couple insects biting my face. At first I thought they were mosquitoes but soon realized that they were these awful red ants with large pincers that like to grab onto your skin and take a nice chunk out of you. I quickly picked them off of my face, assumed that only a couple were around me, and that I had gotten rid of them. However, they continued to bite, and it took me about 30 minutes of them trying to bite me before I decided to turn my flashlight on to see what was the damage. They were EVERYWHERE! All over my pillow, my mattress and my mosquito net! I pretty much leapt out of my bed and stood overtop of them wondering what I was going to do. I decided my best bet was to call my mother. She awoke and helped me bang and pick them off all my bedding and assisted me in moving into the main room to sleep for the night. The rest of the night consisted of me waking up periodically with the feeling of the ants crawling all over me, when in reality there was nothing. Definitely not the best start to my village stay.
I awoke at about 5:45 in the morning and was quickly taken to the pit latrine for my morning release of urine. Pit latrines are the village form of a toilet, and it’s not every household that has one. They are small, brick buildings with grass roves and a hole in the ground on the inside. The entrance is a short, skinny opening that you kind of have to push yourself into. Surprisingly, it doesn’t smell which is due to the strategic placements of small openings to allow for adequate airflow.
I exited the latrine and found my amayi waiting with a bar of soap and I was then brought to bathe (samba). The bathing room is a grass-walled enclosure with scattered bricks laid across the floor. To bathe, you are given a basin of warm water that you are to splash on yourself to rinse off the soap. It’s quite an art, and I think I’m starting to get the hang of doing it. The basin of water, I believe, is used for the entire family so I have to be careful that I leave enough water. I am now successfully able to clean my entire body (including my hair) with about 6 cups of water- talk about water conservation. Every time I bathe I think about how much work it was for my mother to get this basin of warm water for me. She wakes up at 4:30 every morning to go to the village borehole to fetch water which she carries back to our home on her head. To warm the water she walks to chop and collect firewood and carry it back, and then make the fire and heat the water. All of this just for 1 bath. You would think with this amount of work having to go into bathing that they would bathe rarely, but it is common (and expected) for everyone in the family to bathe twice a day- once in the morning before breakfast and once in the evening before dinner.
Next step of the morning is breakfast. My first breakfast in the village consisted of a slightly roasted sweet potato (mbatata) and a cup of Malawian tea with about 6 teaspoons of sugar. Malawians love sugar in their tea, and I’ve come to question why they even put tea leaves in it because all it tastes like is hot sugar water.
By 6:40am I was ready to head out to work. My amayi walked with me along the paths to the main dirt road (main dirt road is njira in Chichewa) to ensure that I wouldn’t get lost. There is one stream that I have to cross to get to work, and I have just mastered the art of carrying my bicycle while stepping on the wobbly rocks to cross it- there’s been quite a lot of wet feet while learning this process. It takes me about 20 minutes by foot and about 10 minutes by bike to get to the main dirt road. From there I ride my bicycle for about 25 minutes (mostly uphill) to get to work. Bicycles are one of the main forms of transportation in Malawi; they are used to get to and from work and the field and to transport goods. Leaving so early in the morning, I pass the Malawians carrying large bags of charcoal to sell in the market on the backs of their bicycles, I pass children walking in purple and blue uniforms to school, and I ride alongside men riding to work and various other places.
I was able to spend the next few evenings in the village with some of the children. The eldest grand daughter of my host parents, Doris, is a 14 year old girl who is so full of energy and positivity that you just want to smile every time you are around her. She is one of the lucky girls, in that she has had the opportunity to attend school. She is currently in Standard 6 (the equivalent of our grade 10), and has learned enough English in school that she is able to communicate with me fairly well. She has made sure to include me in all of their skip rope games (these kids are intense skip roppers- I pretty much made a fool of myself) and has taught me some of the Malawian hand clapping games. I’ve even been invited to play football with them one day, which I’m pretty pumped for. Doris’ little sister is the girl that is staying in my home, so after she saw that her older sister was getting along with me, she thought I was pretty alright. Now she greets me every time I come home, dances around the house and has a constant smile. The children are awesome at encouraging me to learn Chichewa. They get a huge kick out of teaching me how to say things, and giggling when I try to pronounce the words they are teaching. I’m starting to learn a lot from them. I don’t know if I mentioned this, but my host mother speaks almost no English and my host father can only speak basic sentences, so learning Chichewa is going to be a necessity.
Last Friday I got pretty sick. I ended up vomiting every 15 minutes from about 7-11pm and my mother slept in my room to make sure that I was alright. It’s taken me up until Wednesday to get back to normal and I’ve been sleeping at my old host mother’s house since Saturday. There are so many exciting, interesting, and eye-opening things to learn in the village, but I’ve realized that it may come at a price. My organization, Freshwater Project, is working at promoting sanitation in villages, but most village households still have so far to come. The use of soap, something we almost take for granted, is simply not understood. The thought is; why would we pay to buy soap to wash our hands, soap is for washing clothes and your body. Hands are simply washed with warm water in a communal bowl before and after eating.
I’ll be moving back to the village when I return from my Engineers Without Borders retreat with the other Junior Fellows in Malawi on July 2nd. This time I’m going to have to pay extra close attention to the foods that I eat and how they are prepared to ensure that I don’t get sick again. There’s no way a few days of sickness is going to stop me from having this remarkable experience though!

Some other exciting updates:
I went to a Malawian football game last Saturday with a few of my coworkers and Binnu: Malawi vs. Egypt. From what I hear, it was a pretty important game. The stands were packed full of energetic, rowdy, and cheering Malawians and you could pretty much pick me out of the crowd from a mile. We ended up scoring the only goal in the last 5 minutes of the game and the crowd went crazy. Everyone was singing, clapping, dancing, and screaming. We basically had to push our way through the crowds to make it back to the car. People were running down the streets screaming. Definitely an interesting and once in a lifetime experience.

A Mount Mulanje adventure. A village stay. A church visit. And a low-down on the Malawian attire. Written: June 7, 2008

Last weekend was quite an adventure. Binnu (an Engineers Without Borders friend who is working around Blantyre as well) and I decided it was time to get away and explore a different part of Malawi. We took off on a 3 hour minibus ride on Friday afternoon to Mount Mulanje. Mount Mulanje is the largest mountain in Malawi and is known for it’s many tea estates, wonderful pineapple and bananas, beautiful waterfalls, and cursed hikes. Curses are a large part of Malawian culture and there are stories about people getting lost and never being found on Mount Mulanje and spirits leaving food for people to eat on their hike. We arrive at the town in Mulanje around 3pm and are told by a Malawian gentleman that we would be able to walk to the lodge that we had decided to stay at, “1.5 km” is what he said. So we start walking and soon acquire quite a group of us walking. We had children, and men on bicycles asking us if we wanted a ride to the lodge. Thinking that it wasn’t too far, we refused. We walked with a couple of guys who worked for the forestry department and were heading to the same place as us. It soon became about 2.5 hours that we had been walking, and their responses on how long the journey would take kept changing. We figured we better flag down a car and get a drive there as it had already turned dark (the distance was actually 11km). It just so happened that the car we flagged down was the owner of the small lodge we were staying at. She was more than happy to give us a ride. She is a woman born in Jamaica who moved to Malawi in the early 1980’s when she married a Malawian. She now lives in Lilongwe with her husband and children, leases and runs the lodge, and works with a tobacco company. We had a fabulous dinner with her cooked by the staff at the lodge and heard a lot of really interesting stories and points of view on Malawian culture.
We were told by everyone we met that we should hike up Mount Mulanje the next day. So on Saturday morning we headed to the forestry office to check out the trails. There are a few huts up Mount Mulanje that you can pay to stay in which sounded pretty sweet to us. A guide for the trails is strongly encouraged, but is quite pricey. The man at the office said we would need a guide to go up, but would have no trouble getting down on our own on Sunday, so this is what we did. We headed out around 10:30am with our guide, Peter, and started the hike. The thing people neglected to inform us about was the intensity of this “hike”, in my opinion it is more of a climb. For 2.5 hours we were going constantly uphill to get to the top of the peak where our hut for the night was located. There was definitely a couple points in time that I thought I wasn’t going to make it, but what kept me going was seeing several men climbing down the mountain with planks of wood on their heads. About 20 years ago, the government of Malawi thought it would be a bright idea to plant pine trees (not a native plant) on Mount Mulanje to replace the trees that had been deforested by the located for firewood. There is a timber wire line that used to take timber from the top down close to the bottom, but that broke down 5 years ago. Now, men are hired to climb up Mount Mulanje one day and bring down already cut planks of pine the next.
Mount Mulanje is known as being one of the coldest places in Malawi. The man at the forestry office had asked if we were bringing sleeping bags up with us. We didn’t have any and didn’t really want to carry them up if we weren’t going to use them. When we asked how cold it would get, the reply was 18 degrees. Our reply… “18 degrees! That’s warm! We’re from Canada, we can handle the cold.”
We made it to the hut in 4 hours and said goodbye to Peter. The hut was more like a cabin with a porch, fireplace, bunk beds, 4 disgusting foam mattresses, a woven floor matt, and a couple chairs and tables. The view was pretty awesome, we were in a bit of a valley with mountains all around us. The sun started setting and we were enjoying looking at all the beautiful stars, then we realized how cold it was getting… We went back in the non-insulated cabin and sat infront of the fire to warm up. The only clothing I had was a pair of pants, a pair of cotton sleep capris, 2 t-shirts, a polar fleece sweater, cotton ankle socks, and a scarf. I put it all on, including my shoes. We decided that the warmest place to sleep would be infront of the fire and we decided the mattresses were not the cleanest things to be sleeping on. So we put the floor matt down infront of the fire place and attempted to curl up and go to bed. 45 minutes later, the fire was out and we awoke to the cold room. We put more logs on and decided to get over the fact that the mattresses were disgusting. We put 2 foam mattresses under the floor matt, loaded up the fire and went back to sleep. We ended up waking up every 1.5 hours to put logs on the fire and warm up again. I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy to wake up with the sunrise.
We put out the fire, cleaned things up and were out on the path by 6:45am. There was an alternate route that we could have taken if Peter didn’t have to go back the same day and we were told that it was not as steep and had a waterfall so we decided to take the route down. We were going pretty good for about 2 hours, enjoying the scenary, the forest, and the downhill walk. We made it to a small water falls area and had trouble seeing where the path was. We finally found a path and took it. We were walking, checking for footprints, going uphill, going in kind of the wrong direction and thinking that something might be wrong. I called the man at the forestry office (the one smart thing we did-get his phone number) and asked if we should be going uphill and he said yes. So we kept on going. We walked for about 45 minutes uphill and really decided that we were going the wrong way. I called Duncan at the office again and questioned him more. It finally came out that we should have reached a large path. Definitely not the right way. I was exhausted by this time and in some pretty bad aching pain. Duncan asked if we wanted him to send someone to get us and we agreed. Someone was to meet us at the waterfall. Little did we know, there was a large waterfall, and by waterfall they meant that one not these little ones. But we thought it was the waterfall a bit further up so we walked the 45 minutes back down to the water, then 20 minutes up to the first waterfall we had reached. I was almost in tears by this point and was wondering how I was going to go on. Then we heard voices… Saved! It was a man with his guide. He asked us why we didn’t have a guide… And we told him our story. He offered for us to go along with him. It turned out that he was from Canada. He is an Indian man who was born in Malawi, but married a Canadian and moved to Canada. He is back in Malawi for the year doing some work with his and his brother’s business. He also lives in Blantyre and just so happened to be heading back that day and offered to drive us. We’re pretty good at this luck thing.
One thing I haven’t mentioned yet is food. We found out about 2 hours before heading up the mountain that we were required to bring our own food. So we headed to the market about 15 minutes from the lodge to find some things to bring with us. This was definitely not the greatest market. All we found were sweet potatoes and cookies. We bought 4 sweet potatoes, and 5 packs of biscuits and had 1/3 of a small jar of peanut butter that I had brought from Blantyre. After a 4 hour hike uphill on Saturday and a 7 hour hike downhill (plus unfortunately uphill) on Sunday, we were starving. Raag (the man who rescued us) took us to a pizza restaurant on the way back to Blantyre, and we both ate an entire pizza to ourselves.
So the weekend that I had in my mind as being relaxing and a good energizer for the coming weeks, definitely didn’t play out that way. Looking back at it though, it was a pretty awesome experience.


Other news! (this may turn out to be a lengthy e-mail). I have a place to stay in a village close to my office! I will be moving in on Monday afternoon and am about a 45 minute bike ride from the office. I purchased my bicycle last week, and it turned out to be quite an investment, 11,000 kwacha! It is a new bicycle, green and has gears (which is good because it looks like there is going to be a lot of up hills on my ride to work).
Mr. Banda (the executive director of Freshwater Project) went to the village headman last week and told him that I am looking for a home to live in. The village headman called a meeting and the village held nominations for who I will be staying with. An older couple whose children have moved out have been chosen as my host parents. On Monday I went to visit them and was greeted by about 20 men, women and children. The couple seems really nice, and the people in the village were more than welcoming.

My host mother, Sarah, is taking me to church this Sunday. Church is a really important part of the Malawian culture, and your denomination is quite often one of the first questions to arise upon meeting someone. I’m not quite sure what people think when I say that I’m not part of a church, then go even further into saying that I’ve never been to church. I usually get questioning of “why?” and “how come?” which I tend to relate back to Canadians not attending church as much as Malawians do. I am interested to begin to find out why religion is so important to Malawians and how it impacts their lives on a day to day basis and on a larger scale. I don’t have the intention of finding the answers to these questions, but just gaining even a bit of insight will allow me to develop an understanding.

I’ve been getting a few questions about the how Malawians dress. Appearance is very important to Malawians, clothes are washed on a regular basis, shoes are always polished, and almost everyone owns an iron and irons all their clothing. Men who work or live in the cities wear dress pants, dress shoes, dress shirts, and sometimes short ties. Women are the ones who wear more of the traditional clothing. The printed fabric is called a chitenje and has many uses in the Malawian culture. Women get the fabric tailored into long skirts, dresses, and skirt suits. In the villages, and by the women who work in the field, the fabric is often tied around their waists to protect their skirts from dirt. The elder women of a village often tie a chitenje around their head, and it is used as a sign of respect in a village. Chitenjes are used to carry babies on women’s backs. Women carry their babies everywhere. It’s a common occurrence to see women carrying water on their head, getting into a mini bus, going to the market, selling produce, etc. with a baby on their back.

I’m working at getting some pictures put up somewhere so you can all see them, but the internet in Malawi is really slow, and this is quite a long process. Hopefully I can get a few photos up in the next couple weeks.

Another week of Malawi. Another friendly update. Written: May 24,2008

Moni (greetings in Chichewa),
I’ve spent only 2 weeks in Malawi and am already feeling comfortable in my surroundings. I’m slowly learning Chichewa, with many mistakes and laughter along the way, my stomach is getting used to the food and water, and I am feeling more and more comfortable with my host mother and my coworkers.
I’m working at Malawi Freshwater Project (MFWP), a local non-governmental organization that was started in 1995 and has a high reputation in the surrounding area. To date, they have drilled 1017 boreholes, and lead hundreds of community hygiene and sanitation workshops. Sounds like they know what they are doing, eh? On the technical side of drilling boreholes and training communities on the field, they seem like they know what they are doing. On the office communication, report writing, computer skills, and external communication side of things, they need some work. So that is where I come into play. I’ve been going to the field nearly every day since I started and soaking up the village life and the pure joy you see on people’s faces when they have clean running water, but I’m finding it hard to see where I can be making an impact in the field. That’s why I feel my main focus is going to be on the work done in the office. Information from the field has to get to the Director and the donors somehow, and that link could definitely use some strengthening.
At the moment I am living with an older woman named Sarah. She has two daughters, one in Scotland going to university, and the other in Lilongwe, Malawi with her husband. I’m enjoying living here and learning lots from talking with Sarah, but I don’t think I will have experienced the true Malawian culture without living in a rural village. To sleep on the floor with Malawians, to eat true Malawian food, to learn from them, and to be surrounded by the village life is something I need to experience. I’m currently working at finding a nice home in a nearby village. It helps that MFWP does a lot of work in nearby villages and therefore has some good connections. I should be starting my stay within the next two weeks, and purchasing a spiffy used bicycle to get myself to and from work.
Recently, I’ve been visiting a lot of governmental schools while on the field. MFWP does quite a bit of work at the moment with Unicef, building latrines in schools for sanitary reasons and so young girls are able to attend school. I’m not entirely sure how long it will take me to get used to 50 children standing in a clustered semi-circle in front of me, but at the moment is rather awkward. There isn’t really a lot I know how to say to such a large group of children, and it seems that when I do say something in Chichewa I either get shy responses or blank stares. I would love to know what is going through their heads when a white person is standing in front of them.
I’ve been getting some requests for some Chichewa lessons, so here it goes:
In Chichewa, there is no word for hello (well if there is, no one uses it). A person is greeted usually by asking “How are you?” which in Chichewa is “Muli bwanji?” The proper back and forth responses are:
Me: “Muli bwanji?”
Responder: “Ndili bwino. Kaya Inu?” (meaning “I am well. And you?”)
Me: “Ndili Bwino. Zikomo” (meaning “I am well. Thankyou)
Responder: “Zikomo”

“Zikomo” is used a lot in Malawi. Older women will say “zikomo” while gently placing their hands cupped together and do a bit of a curtsy. To be respectful, you do the same in return.

I’ve encountered a couple ironic coincidences in the last week, some would say they are signs from God, but Malawi hasn’t changed me that much… yet. The first started when I met a man on a minibus (minibuses are 5 row vans that work kind of like the buses of Canada, but not really controlled by the government). So this man and I got talking and I soon found out that he is a Masters student at the University of Malawi in Political Science and has a job working with the Malawian government. We had a lovely chat about fertilizer subsidies from the government in Malawi, and that was that. The next day at work, Alex, a boy who works at MFWP and is doing his diploma in community and rural development at the University of Malawi told me that in his morning classes his professor mentioned in class that he had met a girl from Canada working at MFWP. Yep! His prof just so happens to be the same man I sat beside in the minibus the day before. So I snatched up this wonderful opportunity by asking Alex if he could ask his prof if I could sit in on one of his classes.
The second coincidence happened at the yearly Trade Fair just outside of Blantyre. The Trade Fair is where many governmental and non-governmental organizations, and local Malawian businesses showcase what they are working on. The Ministry of Technology had several new Malawian invented technologies geared towards helping Malawians. One invention was a locking system for the Afridev hand pump that MFWP uses on all its borehole projects. So the coincidence; the day before this, we spent the entire day working with a village to replace parts of their borehole that had been stolen in January. When parts are stolen, it is up to the village to raise the money to replace the parts. This invention could really help out villages whose boreholes have been installed in areas that are not visible and therefore have increased chance of theft. I went back to the office on Monday and am now dedicated to making sure MFWP gets the funding for its projects to have this locking device installed.
My goal is to have an update sent out every two weeks, so keep the questions, comments, and things you would like to know more about coming!

My First Few Days in Malawi. Written: May 14,2008

Hello everyone!

So I have arrived in Blantyre and am currently sitting in an internet cafe taking a break and writing you an email. Our plane landed in Lilongwe on Friday and we spent about 2 days doing some in-country training, which involved many long talks punctuated by jet lag dozing. We were brought to a resort type place, run by a British couple, not quite what I was thinking... but it was a good chance for us to take a rest after our 36 hours of travel. I've had 2 market experiences so far, one in Lilongwe and one in Blantyre today. Let me just say, I am definitely glad to be in Blantyre. Markets are fantastic, so many people selling so many different things. Bananas, guava, onions, tangerines, apples, ground nuts (peanuts), and a whole lot more. There is also a lot of used clothing being sold in the markets (some still with their value village tag). I bought a sweet very retro collared shirt today that will definitely fly well in Canada. I also realized that I needed a pair of dress shoes for the office, so I picked up a nice pair of used black leather loafers (pretty snazzy). The currency in Malawi is Kwatchas, and is about 140 Kwatcha to 1 Canadian dollar. When you go to the bank and take out 20,000 Kwatcha, you are given it in 500 bills, 40 bills is crazy.

Yesterday was my first day at the office of the Malawi Fresh Water Project (MFWP). I was introduced to two members of the office, and to the woman I will be living with. The house I will be staying in for the time being is right next to my office. It is a fairly nice house with running water and electricity and I will have my own room. It is a lovely home, and it is nice that I will have somewhere to live right away, but I am going to try and move to a home in a village close by. I would really like to live in more of a community with a family who have children.

My first day of work involved a 6 hour car ride to and from Mount Mulanje to visit a village that MFWP will be working with to install a new borehole. The long drive was worth the absolutely gorgeous scenery. The main crop in that area is tea, and there is A LOT of it. You see hundreds of women with woven baskets on their backs out in the tea fields picking the tea leaves. Coupled with the rolling hills and wonderful mountains in the background, it was quite the drive. Not many cars or trucks go up into this area, so the drive was a little bumpy. We stopped at one village to ask for directions and about 50 kids came running out and started climbing all over our truck. Once we arrived at the village where the borehole will be installed, we had another 50 kids and older women greet us. I'm going to have to get used to several children just starring at me. To these children, I may have been the first white person that they have ever seen.

We are currently living in the “Family Lodge” right inside Blantyre. For 1000 Kwatcha a night it is pretty nice with comfy beds, etc...People are so happy when you can speak even a little Chichewa, and going out for the last couple days has made me realize how important it is going to be for me to speak even the basic Chichewa.

People in Malawi are fantastic, helpful, and full of smiles. You can ask almost anyone where something is and they will either give you a long descriptive answers, or actually take you to the location. There was one man who took us about 30 minutes to the location we were going.

The food is... pretty greasy. They cook with a lot of oil and salt, which is a bit hard on the stomach at first. A big hit in the markets is to have sliced potatoes cooked in hot oil (the Malawian version of the french fry). Main meals are relishes eaten with Nsima (made with maize and water- and pretty heavy on it's own).

I'd love to hear any questions, comments, or updates from Canada! Internet connection is pretty slow here, and I don't know how often I will be at an internet cafe, so I'm not promising any quick responses, but they will come eventually.

I will be describing more of what my work does once I get into it more.

Miss you all,
Erica.

My Placement.

We have recently received our placements for the summer. I will be working in a rural area just outside of Blantyre, Malawi on the Malawi Freshwater Project. My project involves working directly with a local field officer on monthly project planning, implementation, and reporting. I expect that there will be a knowledge and skills exchange through which we will learn from one another. Luckily, they build boreholes and my Geology class this term has been action packed full of borehole learning! I'm sure to study extra hard for that exam now.

Looking forward to seeing everyone and especially Team Malawi... WHAT!? at pre-departure in a short 17 days.