So, I am in my final week of training...thank God! It has had its ups and downs, but overall was a very good experience! I stayed in a village for four weeks without running water or electricity and lived with a family that spoke absolutely NO English...only Chichewa. I think that helped me out a lot since I had to really work hard to communicate with them. It is definately an experience to pee in a pit latrine and bucket bathe! I am glad that at my site I will be lucky enough to have running water (cold) and electricity! Downsides about homestay: I got bacterial gastritis, aka awful diarrhea, which I had to take Cipro, an antibiotic, and drink Oral Rehydration Solution for about 5 days. Absolutely no fun, I am happy that I have killed off the extra 1 million and a half bacteria that were taking over my intestines! Hopefully now I have guts of steel! I guess I got sick from untreated water or poor sanitation when my host family was making my food and getting my water. Things are a lot different here than in America. People literally live in mud huts with thatch roofs and are very poor. The exchange rate is $1USD to K146. The currency is called kwatcha. For example, I can buy 6 bananas for K5. I also can buy drinking yogurt for K60 and cookies for K36. Things seem cheaper here, but when you live at the same level as your community, it is a treat to spend more than K60 on something! It is very weird to start thinking in terms of Malawian money instead of thinking how little US dollars it is. The staple food of Malawi is nsima, or a corn flour/water mixture that is like cream of wheat with too little of water, so its paste-like and has no flavor or nutrition whatsoever! It is thick enough that people roll it into a ball and use it like a spoon to grab other things like chicken pieces, greens, etc. It is not as bad as it sounds, in fact, I kind of like nsima! I really liked eating without utensils (minus the whole not using soap to wash my hands), but of course, I am American and won't ever do that at my own place unless I am desperate! There hasn't been much culture shock...just interesting to be called "azungu" or rich foreigner, and having to cover my thighs because they are sexual here. It is hard to see the women do pretty much everything at the house from chopping wood, gathering wood, carrying it on their heads at about 200lbs, carrying buckets of water on their heads, cooking on a three stone fire, handwashing every piece of clothing, all the while having a baby wrapped to her back. The fathers don't really do much except for working in the fields and the occasional re-thatching of the roofs...It is hard to see the huge gender inequality. :-( I am learning Chichewa pretty well...I scored the highest on the Language Proficiency Interview out of my entire training group!!
I just got back from seeing where I will be living for the next two years, it is gorgeous! I have a beautiful mountain in the back of my house and a banana tree and papaya tree orchard in front of my house! It has 3 bedrooms, a living room, dining room, kitchen, toilet room, and bathing room! It is brick with a tin roof....basically an oven for me during the hot season! Wish me luck for that! My village speaks Chichewa as well as Chiyao, so I get to learn another language! I will get a tutor so that I can get good at it! I can't wait!
Everyone in Malawi is so nice! They all tell me, "you are most welcome to be in Malawi." Culture here is different because people will actually STOP what they are doing so that they can ask how your day is, where you are going, where you are coming from, and what is new. They are never in a hurry to hear your answer either. They are definately the warm heart of Africa. I can't even begin to describe how welcome I feel here and how privileged I am to be serving in Malawi.
Well, this is long enough for now...I will write more later! Here is a link to a fellow trainee's online photo gallery since I accidentally erased mine off my digital camera :-(
www.flickr.com/photos/ladyofthelake
