This is the first time I've been able to access the internet since I've been in Malawi. Right now I'm in the Peace Corps office in Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi. In two days I'll visit Ntchisi for a week - the site where I will be living for two years.
I am still technically a "Peace Corps Trainee." I will be sworn in as a Peace Corps Volunteer on September 1 - a day before I turn 27! Our trainee group is made up of 35 future education and health Peace Corps Volunteers.
For the first month of training I lived with a Malawian family in a village called Chipazi in the district of Dedza. Eight other health trainees also lived in Chipazi and we went to language and technical sessions together. The language that I am learning is called Chichewa and it is the most widely spoken language in Malawi. In technical sessions, the other trainees and I learned about participatory community analysis tools, common health problems in Malawi and how to do simple demonstrations about things like mosquito net dipping, nutrition, water sanitation, and hygiene.
Besides this general information, it's hard to know where to begin so I'm going to let my pictures do most of the talking.
These are some of the members of my homestay family - the Jika family - posing for a picture on their property. Behind them is the dish drying rack and a shelter for animals. The woman in the front is my host mother and I call her "amayi" (mayi means "mother" and the a is for respect, like "madam"). The girl with the purple dress is my host sister ("achimwali" = sister). Her name is Talita and she's 18. The boy is my host brother ("achimwene" = brother). His name is Asaki and he's 17. I also have a host father ("abambo" = respectful term for a man and also "father"), and two other host sisters - Ana is 15 and Doro is 9.
This is Doro, my nine year old host sister, posing by the outdoor cooking fire. The main cooking fire is indoors in a mud hut.
Here is an example of a vegetarian Malawian meal. I ate this a few nights ago at the forestry college in Dedza (also the Peace Corps training site.) Rice, beans, greens, tomato sauce, and garlic hot sauce with some pineapple on the side - yum!
My host family loves this monster stuffed animal that I brought with me. They love him so much that they wrote his name on the outside of their cooking hut with a corn husk. They also often asked me questions (in Chichewa) like "How did Gumpy sleep?" and "Is Gumpy happy today?" This is my amayi (a poor picture of her) with Gumpy.
Doro stapped gumpy on her back the way women and girls strap babies.
Gumpy on the clothes line... he's my version of a "travel gnome..."
...And one more of Gumpy in the window of my homestay hut.
Here's my homestay hut's interior. It has a wooden frame, mud walls and a thatched roof.
Shoes, water filter, trash box, and pee bucket.
Paraffin (for my lantern), toiletries, medical kit, jewelery box, rain jacket.
Baby goat! Also "Irish potatoes."
Some children in the village.
More Chipazi children.
A child taking the kernels off corn with the strange orange creature my mom bought at Target on her lap.
A calf that the Jika family owns.
The Jika's cows.
The Jika's hog.
Adorable piglets resting in the sun.
My clothes on the clothesline.
The village farewell ceremony. The Chipazi women are dancing. My amayi is the one with the American flag socks on.
A dancer in the "Guliwonkulu" (big dance) in Malawi. These dancers are called "animals." They danced for our village farewell ceremony.
Another dancer.
I think this guy is supposed to be an owl.
More dancers.
This was the finale - a two person goat costume.
