Belated Blog Posts

Hello everyone,
I'm Jocelyn's brother and am supposed to responsible for managing her blog while she's away from computers. Anyways, due to some extenuating circumstances, I'm just getting to put the things from Jocelyn's first three letters onto the blog. I promise things won't be so spotty in the future.
Here are the entries, starting with the earliest:

10/1/08: Entry and Arrival:
Getting from the states to Malawi was a long journey. For us, it started with 4 hours on a bus from Philadelphia to JFK airport, followed by 19 hours on an airplane from New York to Johannesburg, South Africa - though we did have a 2 hour delay getting out of JFK and a 1 hour stop in Dakar, Senegal, to get ourselves another flight crew and drop off/pick up some passengers. We stayed overnight in Jo'Burg and flew out the next morning (2.5 hours) to Lilongwe. As we took the steps from the plane to walk towards the airport, we were greeted with a large sign, "Takulandirani (Welcome) to Malawi" and the cheering of current Peace Corp Volunteers (PCVs) and administration, including our country director and program directors. After getting the luggage, we loaded up on a bus to travel to our training site.
My first impression of Malawi is that this is a beautiful country. There are beautiful flowering purple trees called Jacqueranda trees (check spelling on that though). The roads and sidewalks I saw were either smoothly paved or hard packed earth. The traffic was practically non-existent - most people either walking or biking. The houses are mainly mud brick - or mud - with either thatched or tin roofs (for those who can afford it). The people are friendly - the children in particular - and the domesticated animals one sees most often are chickens, cattles, and goats.
Since it is the middle-late period of the dry season, it is dry and dusty. There are also water shortages this time of year, so the only places where farming is happening at this point is in the flood plains and low lands (at least from what I've seen, it may be different in the South or by the Lake); however, almost everyone seems to have their fields plowed and furrowed, ready for the rains that start in November. This is, apparently, the time of year that people burn their fields to clear them, replenish nutrients, and get ride of snakes.

10/13/08: Getting into a Routine
Today I taught my first class in Dzeneza Secondary School. I have 67 students. It's sometimes quite a bit difficult to wrap my head around the fact that I am living in a village and taking over a freshman biology class (I will teach for 3 weeks and then administer and grade exams) - I have only been here 2 weeks after all. But so far I am very happy with my students, my homestay family, and even the rustic village life I'm starting to adjust to.
The subject of my lesson was the human digestive system - more specifically, an introduction to enzymes, and the physical and chemical digestion of carbs, fats, and protein. To demonstrate enzymes, I used a pair of scissors to cut a piece of paper with "substrate" written on it. For homework, they are supposed to pick two foods (one of them starch-based, like nsima), and write down their initial observations and observations after 2-3 min of chewing.
Let me describe homestay:
Though I am not part of Amayi's family, I have my own nyumba-a mud hut with a thatched roof. It is a very nice place. The mud keeps it cool, and there are two windows with glass panes (though the house is still very dark), a door with a padlock (for my safety), and some furnishings. The house is divided into three rooms; my bed is farthest from the door (just a mattress over a straw mat, under a mosquito net). I have one room for storage, and then the largest room has a large straw mat for eating on, a little 3-legged table I managed to procure a few days ago to use a desk, four chairs, and my water filter. We do not have electricity. After nightfall I use my headlamp or a parafin lamp (kerosene). We also don't have running water, so I have often followed my Amayi or others to the borehole (a five minute walk) to fetch water. I can't say I'm very adept at balancing the bucket on my head yet. I shower via bucket at least once a day - daily baths are the norm here - and the bafa (shower) is hidden with thatched walls, so it's private. The chimbudzi (toilets) are outside and they actually differ quite a bit. The one at my house is like a mini mud house, with a thatched roof and a deep, deep hole in the middle. Others are just walled off with straw, like the bafas, and in the open air.
I have a bit of a routine, after a week of living here. I wake up around 5:00, when the sun rises and roosters start crowing. There are domestic animals everywhere in the village. My family keeps pigs, chickens, goats, and cows. The cows have calves, the goats have kids, the pigs have piglets, and there are adorable little chicks that I have to chase out of my house every so often. Other families have guinea hens (most annoying sounding animal ever), turkeys, cats, dogs, etc.
Anyway, I leave my house at 5:30, generally after greeting my Amayi and the family/neighbors, in order to meet Margaret (another PCV in training) to run together. Then I help my Amayi with some chores, fetching water or getting breakfast, and take my bath... Afterwards, I use the remaining water to wash clothes, eat my breakfast, and rush off to school or training or language class - they generally start at 7:30. After classes in the morning, I go home for lunch.Then, I go to my teacher Dyna's house for 3 hours of language lessons. Since I usually have a ton of questions about "How do you say..." or "I have heard this.... what does it mean?" the language sessions are a great way to augment my Chichewa learning. The fact I take what I learn in class and immediately use it at home or in the village really helps with retaining new vocab also.
After class, I usually have about an hour before it gets dark. I spend this time doing different things. I've been learning Bawo, the national game, which is like a more complicated, more strategic version of Mancala; I've also been learning some of the songs and dances from the kids, or I just sit and chat with neighbors (I have made a friend who lives next door and is a Form IV student, and there is also a grandmother who loves to talk to me though I really have trouble understanding her) and I also have gone into the kitchen to watch Amayi cook.
Once night falls I have to light a lamp... I usually move into my house at that point too, to make lesson plans, journal, do homework for language class, and sleep. I try to be in bed by 9:00, which is usually the time everyone else in the village goes to bed.

11/5/08: Thunderstorms and Lizulu Market
Thunderstorms and Rain
It rained while I was gone one day. When I came back, the soil everywhere was darker, there were suddenly swarms of insects everywhere (dragonflies/cricket/grasshoppers... can't tell the difference, a stag beetle? (maybe), and flying termites - more on those later), and mud, loads of mud. I found I wasn't too fond of the mud or the sudden increase in bugs, but I did like the freshness of the air, the lack of dust everywhere, and the change in scenery.
Living in a mud house with a thatched grass roof can be a gamble in a rain storm though. If water comes through, the floor melts into mud. Fortunately, my roof leaked only in a few areas where I didn't have any stuff... others weren't so lucky. Another PCV's house apparently flooded... well, not really, but her bed and some papers did get very muddy. The flying termites also deserve some mention. When it rains, the termites fly out of their holes/hills and Malawians snatch them out of the air and eat them. It's apparently a delicacy, and kids have a lot of fun with it. Still, I think that live, flying insects may be a bit too much for me... I'd eat them dead and cooked... but not straight out of the air. :)
It hasn't rained since Thursday, but colossal, puffy cumulo-nimbus clouds have built up on Friday and over the weekend and lead to some pretty impressive lightning displays. Visibility is also really good where I live, so it can be really disconcerting to see lightning in a far off storm, but never hear the thunder. So far we haven't had any thunderstorms over our village, and I get the feeling that experiencing one in my mud hut may be a bit scary, so that's all right. I do love storms from a distance though. My nearest PCT neighbors and I all congregated outside to watch the storm, and chat, on Friday night. We've all gotten quite close in this past month, they're a really interesting and fun group of people, and I guess the similar experiences we're going through now have brought us closer together. Christmas plans are starting to be discussed among us at any rate.
Lizulu Market
Picture an open air market about a city block long with a road through the center and some small stores at the outskirts and pack it full of people and you have Lizulu. They sell fresh produce: mangos, beans, tomatos, onions, carrots, cucumbers, masuko - a green fruit with large pits and a soft skin that tastes a bit like a soft pear..., bananas, garlic, a variety of flour, corn, wheat, rice. They also sell some livestock: goats, cows, and chickens, and household/kitchen items - like baskets, basins, soaps, pots. There are also food vendors that sell chippies (like french fries), bread rolls, donuts (mandazi), and fish - and everything you want to buy, you bargain for. The nice thing is usually, after the bargaining, you feel good that you talked the price down, and the vendor also feels good that they got a good price. I brought mangos and carrots and helped the people learning Chitumbuka to bargain for the things they wanted. A lot of people got Chitenjes with interesting patterns to have them made into dresses for swearing in, but I'll wait until I get to my site I think - if I get too much stuff, I won't be able to move all of it. The other thing that is nice about Malawian markets is that people don't chase you down to try to get you to buy things, and there was no one begging for money, that I saw anyway.

All right, that's it. Be sure to check back more often for more regular posts in the future.