To begin, I just want to clarify a point that I made in my last blog about some of my culture frustrations. I’ve been getting a lot of emails and questions about it and I don’t think I phrased things right in my last entry. When I say that me and my family disagreed about the best way for me to get better, I mean that they took VERY good care of me and were always pushing me to go back to the hospital, take lots of medication, and eat extra nsima. We disagreed because after it was confirmed that I didn’t have malaria I didn’t want to take up anymore of the doctors time, I just wanted to let whatever I had pass through my system and I certainly didn’t want to eat even more nsima. Looking back on it now a lot of my frustrations seem foolish, but when you’re sick and in a different culture the little things can sometimes get to you.

Since everyone seems so interested in Malawian culture I decided to dedicate this entry to sharing some of the cultural things I’ve experienced or noticed since I’ve been here. I don’t want to make any generalizations about Malawi or “Africa” so my observations are based solely on my own personal experiences in Thyolo and some other parts of the country.

I’m going to start off by telling you about greetings and teaching you the greetings in Malawi. You always greet people you know when you see them and when you get visitors or visit people you always greet everyone who is present. Basically whenever you have any kind of interaction with someone, you greet them. The most common greetings I’ve experienced are “How are you?”, “Good morning” and “good afternoon”. I’ve listed the greetings below in this order. After greeting someone, both people end the greeting by saying “Zikomo” which means thank you. Most people shake hands when they greet each other and it is pretty common to continue shaking hands until the end of the conversation. I found it pretty awkward at first because people would continue to hold my hand a lot longer than I would hold someone’s hand in Canada. Anyways, the greetings are:

Muli Bwanji?
Ndili bwino, muli bwanji?
Ndili bwino

Mwadzuka bwanji?
Ndadzuka bwino, kaya inu?
Ndadzuka bwino

Mwasewela bwanji?
Ndasewela bwino, kaya inu?
Ndasewela bwino

I’ve also noticed some things based on the way people dress and the importance of dressing well here in Malawi. For the most part women never wear skirts above their knees; they either wear a longer skirt or they wear a chitenge. Sometimes in the cities women wear shorter skirts, but for the most part you never see their knees. Malawians also take great pride in the way that they dress for work. You will be hard pressed to find a Malawian working in an office who is not wearing a dress shirt, dress pants, and shoes. Malawians make sure their shoes are always polished and their shirts are always wrinkle free. Children on the other hand will wear pretty much anything. I’ve noticed that a lot or children don’t wear shoes, however I think this is due more to the fact that they don’t like wearing shoes rather then that they don’t have any. This is definitely the case with my family. All of my sisters have loads of shoes, but they usually only wear them to school and church.

On the subject of church, everyone I have met here belongs to a church. When I am first getting to know someone one of the most common things they will eventually ask me is what denomination I belong to. Most people in Malawians are Christians but there are also some Muslims. The most common denominations in Thyolo are Catholic and Seventh Day Adventist. People attribute their successes and blessings to God and they trust in him to provide for their families and to protect them. I’ve spent a couple bus rides listening to priests pray for the protection of the bus for the first 30 minutes. This usually only happens on bigger buses though, not on minibuses.

Finally, one last thing I’ll share with you is that the pace of life is much slower here. I took me a while to adjust to this at work; technically work is supposed to start at 7:30, but people usually start coming in anywhere between 8 and 9. Mr. Nzengo and I usually come in around 8:15 and we’re always the first people there aside from the Water Officer. Lunch is usually a 2 hour affair and the day ends around 5:00. Some days feel very slow but it can still get quite busy here sometimes. Outside of work I really like the slow pace of life here. No one ever seems in a rush to get anywhere, everyone takes the time to greet people and have conversation. It gives Malawi a very chill and relaxed feeling which I quite enjoy.

Anyways, I could go on and on about the differences I’ve noticed between Malawi and Canada, but I’ll stop here. These are some of the bigger things I’ve noticed (and can think of right now) and I’d love to hear your thoughts on them. I’m trying to keep track of lots of the smaller things as well!

Much love,
Maria

I feel like it’s been a while since I last blogged, but my last few weeks have definitely been eventful! Things are starting to get pretty busy at work, I’ve set up weekly training sessions with 7 people in the district for the water monitoring system and hopefully we should be collecting some data on water points in the district very soon.

I spent the weekend at a music festival called Lake of Stars. As the name suggests it took place on Lake Malawi, in Mangochi, which is about a 5-6 hour minibus ride from Thyolo. It was my first time seeing the Lake and it definitely lived up to my expectations. Lake Malawi is huge! I’ve heard that it takes up approximately 20% of the country; it is very beautiful! There is white sand and palm trees everywhere, the water is the perfect temperature for swimming, but is it ever hot! I thought it was hot in Thyolo but it is much hotter in Mangochi!

The Festival was nothing like anything else I have experienced in Malawi. I met up with the rest of the EWB team at the Lake and we built a shelter out of chitenge’s and bamboo and slept on the beach all weekend. The festival was a very different experience because half of the people there were white and the other half consisted of decently wealthy Malawians. It was different, but it was a great experience; I got to see and hear lots of Malawian and African music! It was a nice break from being the only white person in my village.

I think I finally hit the bottom of the culture shock curve when I came home though. The last few days have been pretty physically and emotionally draining. I had a bit of a Malaria scare my first day back after the festival. I woke up feeling pretty sick, luckily though I got a blood test done at the hospital and I am still malaria free! I spent two days lying in bed though feeling pretty rotten. I also got quite frustrated with some cultural aspects as me and my family disagreed quite a lot on what was the appropriate way for me to get healthy. I don’t want to get into in on my blog, but email me up if you’re interested in discussing Malawian culture; things I enjoy and things that frustrate me. I am feeling better now and I am trying to jump back into everything that is going on at work.

I cannot quite believe that this weekend marks the halfway point of my placement. It seems to be flying by! The rainy season is also getting ready to start really soon. Apparently while I was in Mangochi it rained twice in Thyolo and it has already rained twice since I’ve been back. When in rains in Malawi, It pours! In St. John’s we just get disgusting rainy drizzle for days on end, in Malawi when it rains it just starts really quickly, pours for about 20 minutes, and then stops altogether. This will probably change a little bit though once the rainy season truly starts. It is still a bit early for rain and the season won’t really start in Thyolo until mid November. When it rains in my house though it’s all you can hear! We have a tin roof and so the rain just pounds on the roof drowning out all other thoughts.

Anyways, like I said before, it was a bit of a rough week so I’d love to hear from people at home! My phone number here is +265 991 764 034, it’s decently cheap if you want to call me from skype. Apparently Walmart has some decently cheap calling cards as well. Erica managed to get one for $20 that has 113 minutes on it. So yeah, I’d love to hear from you guys! I have also been enjoying the questions, for those of you that posted questions, I have been going back and responding to them slowly in the comments, so check it out. Also, if there’s anything you’re interested in hearing about in my blog let me know, I’m thinking about maybe writing a blog about my family or my experiences with poverty here, but I’d like to know what you guys are interested in reading about as well.

Much love,

Maria

I couldn’t decide on one topic to write on for this week, so I decided instead to write a few short stories for you. They’re all pretty random but I hope you enjoy them!

It’s a long way to Lilongwe

Two weeks ago I spent the weekend in Lilongwe for a team meeting with the rest of the APS team from Malawi. Along the way I discovered my general dislike for traveling throughout Malawi via bus. The thing about the buses here is that they do not leave at scheduled times; they leave when every seat is full and there are people standing in the aisles. On my way back to Thyolo I was forced to wait for two and a half hours for my bus to fill up only to have it break down 25 minutes outside of Lilongwe.

I ended up having to sit on the side of the road for about an hour until another bus showed up, however this bus was already half full and had to fit another full busload of people on it! I’ve never experienced so much craziness trying to get on a bus before! As soon as the bus arrived everyone started running towards it; men started jumping up the sides of the bus to crawl in through the windows and women started passing their bags and children into the bus through the windows! The door was just a huge pile of people not really moving anywhere; so many people were trying to get through the door at once that there just ended up being a jam of people stuck halfway through the door. Luckily I managed to get a seat and spent the next 5 and a half hours crammed between the person next to me and the dozens of people falling around in the aisles.

Bugs

I’ve come to hate ants since I’ve been here. I know they’re small and harmless, but you can’t let them get away with anything or they will invade your space.  I went to the latrine during the night a couple of weeks ago and foolishly didn’t check my flip flops before I put them on. My feet immediately got really itchy but I didn’t think too much of it and continued on my way. When I got back to the house I finally shone my light down on my feet to see that they were completely crawling with ants and that the “itchyness” was actually dozens of ants biting me! I started trying to knock them off with my hands only to have them crawl up my arms and realize that they were crawling up my legs and the inside of my pyjama pants as well. It took me a while to get them all off me and then I spent the better part of 20 minutes on my bedroom floor killing as many as I could. Lesson learned though, never leave your shoes in an ant hill.

I also spent three nights last week being traumatized by the biggest spider I’ve ever seen in my life. The first night I saw it scurrying across my wall (this thing moves super fast and it jumps) and got quite a surprise! I tried to kill it with my shoe but lost track of it and ended waking most of my family up; they were pretty concerned because they thought I was trying to kill a scorpion, not a “harmless” spider. The second night I caught it crawling up the outside of my mosquito net right when I was getting ready for bed again. This time I resorted to spraying my entire room with doom and sleeping with the door open in hopes that it would leave during the night. No luck, the third night it attacked my net again, but this time I managed to corner it and didn’t feel the least bit sorry beating the hell out of it with my shoe.

Mmm, nnnnsima

I had to add multiple n’s to nsima because that is the way everyone says it in Thyolo, you’ve got to drag out a long n right at the beginning. I made nsima for the first time this weekend! My host mom taught me how to make it, it’s pretty easy. You start off with a pot of water, you let it heat (but don’t let it boil) and then you add some corn flour to it. It is still pretty watery and you stir it until it starts to boil. At this point you put the cover back on and let it sit for 5-10 minutes. Then you continue stirring and add lots of corn flour until you have the right nsima consistency.

We started off with the normal sized pot that my host mom always uses to make nsima. Nsima is very hard to stir though! I’m telling you, Malawian women have strong arms from stirring nsima and lifting ridiculous amounts of things on their heads. Anyways, my attempt to stir the nsima in the big pot was quite pathetic. My host mom ended up taking it from me and stirring it around. She wanted to make sure I could do it though so she made me make another lot of nsima in a smaller pot!  This time I succeeded even though everyone was dying laughing at the sad little azungu trying to stir a pot of nsima. In the end it turned out well though and my host mom would only eat my nsima!

Borehole Borehole

Over the last two weeks I got to go to the field twice to witness boreholes being repaired; both of the boreholes were Afridev handpumps. The first borehole had been broken for about a year, but there was another borehole just up the road so the committee wasn’t really very motivated to fix it until they found out an MP wanted to build a house where the broken borehole was. This motivated them to get their act together and fix it so that he couldn’t destroy the borehole to make room for his house. The pipe in the borehole had become completely clogged with rocks and dirt so the pipe had to be taken up and new pump rods installed. The MP ended up being pretty pleased because he will now have a functional borehole right in his backyard; he even paid for spare parts. On a separate note, this borehole didn’t even really need to be fixed because it was in the Boma and there was another one 300 feet away; it’s frustrating that there is an abundance of pumps in the Boma and no pumps in more remote communities.

The second borehole had been installed in 2000 and had been broken for about 4 years. I thought it was interesting that the community was repairing a broken borehole after 4 years, so I asked around about it. Apparently this community did not pay a treasurer any monthly fees for their water, but they would pay for spare parts when they were needed. This borehole had the pump rods stolen though and since these are more costly to replace the community did not replace them or fix the pump. However four years later an MP agreed to pay for the cost of the pump rods for this community since they were so expensive. According to one of the water monitoring assistants, if the community had regularly collected monthly O&M fees (which would be smaller than a lump sum for spare parts) they would have had enough money to purchase the pump rods. I have a bad feeling now that after having had spare parts donated to them by an MP; this community is not going to pay fees anymore for their water because they believe they can get what they need for free.

Hope you enjoyed my stories,
Maria