Dan in Malawi

Back to Work in Mwazisi

2010-02-07T19:15:00.002+03:00

I got back from home leave a little less than a month ago. It was great being home! I saw lots of people I love, played in the snow, and fully enjoyed the variety of creature comforts, food, and beer that America has to offer. But a month of leisure in the USA left my hands soft, my skin pale, and my heart a bit restless. I was happy to come back to Malawi in the midst of the chaos of the rainy season, and jump back into a full routine here.

I’ve said it before; I love the rainy season here! Life seems to spring from every hole, the landscape changes from brown and dusty to green and lush. Everybody is busy working away in their fields. Before sunrise I find my neighbours in the moonlight sleepwalking to their fields, jembe in hand, and sleeping baby strapped across their back. They’ll stay out their building ridges, planting, and weeding until a heavy rain falls, or the sun starts glaring down on the wet soil in all its steaming humid fury. Then most people will head back out to continue their work just as soon as the rain clears, or the afternoon sun cools enough to bear. Nobody seems stressed or rushing to get everything done but as their grain storages start to empty and Nyengo ya ngana ( time of hunger) sets in you can see a new determination and sense of urgency to produce food. This is when I most realize the difference between me and everybody else. For me farming is more of a pleasure and an ongoing experiment, but if my fields fail I’ll still be okay, but for everybody else it literally is their very livelihood.

I spent my first week back catching up on the rainy season work with my trusty helper Sam (my former secondary student, who started living with me while he finished up his last year of secondary school). We cleared the grass around my house that had grown up to my chest level and tilled new garden beds that we sowed vegetable seeds in. In the field we weeded all the maize and beans that we sowed before I left, and applied a chicken manure tea that has been curing for several months as a top dressing fertilizer for them. We finished ridging the other half of my field that I hadn’t gotten to yet. I inoculated about 5 KGs of cowpea seed with rizobium bacteria, which helps legumes to fix nitrogen into the soil. It occurs naturally in the soil, but there’s very little of the right bacteria for cow peas here because so few people plant them here anymore, despite the fact that it’s a very useful native crop. I planted cow peas in the rest of my ridges because hopefully it will make a great green cover crop that will continue growing and bearing fruit late into the dry season. I’m also going to try planting inoculated Pigeon Peas, though it’s a bit late for them. I think Pigeon Peas would be a great legacy to leave in my field; they grow as a tree that will live for 3-7 years, so if my replacement chooses not to farm, at least the land will still be productive, and the soil anchored.

Once I felt a bit caught up at home, I rounded up the guys and got back to construction of the office. We have worked hard for the past week and a half, 7:00am until sunset everyday, with just a short break for lunch. The long days have paid off though because we have made great progress. We have managed to finish the roof and all of the brick laying for beam filling minus about 39 iron sheets and about 100 bricks (I’m actually on my way to Mzuzu tomorrow to try to organize the last of the materials needed with the department of agriculture). We literally used every single last one of the 8,000 stabilized soil blocks that we moulded last year, so we will have to mould another hundred on Tuesday. I’m pretty impressed with how close our original estimation of the number of bricks was...we sure aren’t wasting materials here.

These past several weeks of work have really felt good. My old calluses are back, after a few red necked sunburns my old bronze has returned, and at the end of every day I turn on The Voice of America, to listen to my favourite music show “Border Crossings” while I scrub clean with a hot bucket bath, I don’t think there’s any better sensation in the world! Sam and I are both usually too tired to talk much while we wolf down soy pieces and nsima, or rice and greens.

I usually sit out behind my house while I brush my teeth before bed. I sit and scratch my dog Lucy’s belly while I look up at the stars, or watch the distant flashes of an oncoming thunderstorm. That’s one of my favourite rituals here, and it’s usually a time when I feel most appreciative for my life here. Before I left a returned Peace Corps volunteer told me to always remember the phrase “this too shall pass.” It works for all occasions; during the bad times you realize that they are going to pass soon so no need to worry, during the good times you know they are temporary, so really try to get the most out of them. Well now I’m realizing that my whole life here is going to pass. In three months I will no longer be a Peace Corps volunteer, and who knows if I’ll ever get back to Malawi again. This place that has been my home through good times and bad for the past three years will soon just be a memory to me. I feel like that realization has elated my senses. I try to memorize the sweet taste of every mango I eat from the tree in my field. I listen closely as the rain starts tapping on my tin roof at night anticipating the build up that will turn into the roar of a temporary downpour, and will just as quickly squeeze off its final trickle, leaving only the peaceful din of the crickets. I try to make the most of the warmth of every smile from my closest friends here, because I realize that the number of times I will feel that warmth from these individuals is now limited, and every night I spend a few extra minutes outside trying to imprint the glow of a perfect Mwazisi starry night in my mind.

Culture Shock

2009-12-30T09:22:00.004+03:00

In the weeks leading up to my month home leave (a free trip home as a sort of prize for extending for a third year) it seemed everybody was telling me about the culture shock I was going to experience once I got back home. "You're going to freak out when you get back and see all the excess and waste...Nothings going to be the way you remembered it.....You won't even know how to talk to your own family and friends." I hadn't really thought much about any trouble readjusting to America, but the more people told me about it the more I began to feel a tinge of anxiety. It's been almost three years since I've been outside of Africa, I guess I could see how it's possible for me to have a hard time going back to the richest country in the world and slip right back in.

The culture shock came when I got to the Lilongwe airport. I was sitting in the terminal waiting to get on my first airplane since I came to Malawi. The TV on the wall was talking about Tiger Woods' personal life, and I was surrounded by white people talking about their 9-5 jobs, wedding plans, and the NFL playoffs...a big change from life in Mwazisi. As i started thinking about the trip I was embarking on my heart began racing, my breath got short, and I started thinking "oh man they're right, I'm not going to be able to relate to anybody. What am I going to do for a month if I can't even talk to my own friends." Then, other irrational panics came over me..."I'm going to miss a connecting flight along the way and get stuck in Johannesburg, The department of homeland security is going to bust me for the honey in my bag." I suddenly got very shifty and felt that everybody around me could see my extreme discomfort, and were judgeing away. I didn't say a word to anybody in the airport.

It wasn't until I was forced into conversation with my neighbors on the four flights home that I started to realize just how silly and comical my panic attack was. I had great wandering conversations about nothing with a whole assortment of good folks along my way. I was advised by a lovely thirty-something private investigator from Florida about what movies I needed to catch up on first. I talked to a young man from Wisconsin who had been backpacking all over Africa with his brother about his travels. I also chatted with a newlywed middle aged couple from Alabama who were on their way to Jackson Hole for a honeymoon, the sweet lady shared strips of beef jerky with me while her new husband told be about his beef ranch and how they fell in love as he brought his cattle to her family owned slaughterhouse. I listened happily as a hospital consultant from Minnesota told me all about her three sons that clearly were the light of her life. On the last leg home I talked to an environmental engineer from Grand Junction about fly fishing and and skiing.

With every conversation my anxiety seemed sillier and sillier. No matter where you go people are people, and you can always find a connection with a little effort, espechially when those people are from your home country. Talking to these folks about nothing really made me feel at home and cleared awayany nervousness. Americans are a mixed bag of people, and that's what makes us so interesting, in one flight you might have a western slope rancher on one side of you and an east coast civil rights lawyer on the other.

The past two weeks of being home have just been one great big confirmation of how much I love my home. Since coming home the highlights have been many, an ugly Christmas sweater party on Colfax that reunited me to many long lost high school friends, watching the Griz play in yet another national championship, a great week of skiing at steamboat thanks to the generosity of my brother, dancing in the dumping snow at a free Big Head Todd concert, randomly running into old friends and being able to fall back into our old banter without missing a beat, late night games of 500 with my family, holding my nephews in my lap while I help them put together great Lego creations, and spending time with my Aunt Kathy who doesn't let advanced MS or repeated trips to the hospital keep her from laughing and giving me hell. Just spending time with the people I love has been the main highlight....I've been away an awful longtime and it's good to be back.

So to other Peace Corps volunteers worried about going home and fitting in my advice is don't sweat it. I think the reverse culture shock hubub is bunk. I think ex-pats make a big deal about it so they seem more exotic and worldly. At least for me I feel like I've come home with a new appreciation for my home.

Last night I sat down with my parents to watch the Kennedy Center Honors on TV. I think it says a lot about America's appreciation for the arts when the President of the United States takes an entire night to honor a dedicated actor like Robert Deniro and an innovative Musician like Dave Brubeck. It also says a lot about our ability to find humor in anything that Mel Brooks the man who wrote songs like "Springtime for Hitler" for his play "The Producers" was also honored. We can see the beauty of our melting pot in the honoring of Grace Bumbry, a black women from St. Louis who sings classical opera. And finally we can see how much value we place on freedom of expression with the nomination of the boss Bruce Springsteen, because it's not so much his musical talent that makes him a legend but the way he writes songs that represent the left behind Americans. Songs like "Born in the USA" (people forget that that's a song about a Vietnam Vet who is mistreated by the government that sent him to war). I thought the whole show was a great example of what I love about America, we value our freedom of speech, our diversity, and our arts very much. The past three years in Malawi have showed me how rare it is to live in a country that holds those values sacred, and just how important those values are to me. So it's nice to get a little taste of that while I'm home.

Camp Nyika Day 4- Field Trip Day

2009-11-17T15:09:00.002+03:00

The teaching was finished for us, so it was a great day for us to just sit back and watch the students have fun together. It's great to see after just 4 days together, how close the students who come from all over the Northern region have become. On the matola ride to Livingstonia I watched the students laughing and singing as they held onto each other for dear life as the truck hurled up and down the hills of the Phoka valley. Between songs Shadreck would lead the group in screaming random cheers like “Nyika camp is so beautiful!” or “Mr. Dan Ho-Yeaaaa!”We were entertained by Shupe Mzembe's sassy facial expressions as she reacted to every cheer before she buried her laughing face into her new friend Leah's shoulder. The truck driver had to make a stop at the Livingstonia hospital to pay a debt, while we waited Juma Nkhoma one of the smallest boys in the camp spotted some beautiful college aged nursing students, and reluctantly approached them with the encouragement of his friends. We all watched with great anticipation and cheered wildly when he managed to earn a smile from the very professional looking young women, and came running back with a smile of triumph.

Our first stop in Livingstonia was the beekeepers cooperative where the students learned about processing and marketing honey. We then went over to the old stone house museum for some history since it was the first time all of the students had been to Livingstonia aside for the three youth councilors who were with us last year. We took lunch at an overlook over Manchewe Falls. It was a great way to enjoy beans and rice, with the 300 foot plus waterfall on our left and the stretching lake shore below and the escarpment climbing up on our right,.

After lunch we visited the home of Leeza Dupree an expert in Permaculture design, Her assistant Alex gave us a detailed tour of the entire garden which contained many plants the students didn't know, but also many they knew very well, and planted themselves but never inter-cropped with so many different things. The main thing they all noticed was the abundance of perennial trees and crops that don't need replanting every season but continuously provide food so long as they are cared for.

From there we went to visit a similar farm of a Malawian women named Nya Bwindee who also relies on perennial crops like coffee trees, and Pineapple bushels. In fact her farm has over 2,800 pineapples, if they are sold at an average of 100MK, she's making a pretty impressive annual income from something she doesn't have to recultivate each season....sure beats tobacco. She originally acquired the land for free because everybody said that it's rocky soil and steep hillsides are useless, so she covered those hills with apple, peach, and lemon trees that provide a steady income as each different fruit comes into season. I think her place was one of the most useful sites we visited for the students, it really shows how anybody can make a good living from the land if they work hard and are willing to think outside of the box a little.

The whole idea of the camp was to bring the brightest and most interested wildlife club members together from all around Nyika and provide them with some useful skills and get them thinking about how they can live more in harmony with their land instead of degrading it. Hopefully they will take what they have learned back to their home communities and the ideas continue to spread.

The last morning as students were loading up on a Matola to head back to their various homes Atupele came running up to me with a folded up piece of paper; it was the poem she had read at the talent show, it cracks me up and deeply touches me all at once, here it is:

Bye, bye Dan
The night sky I have observed
The seven sisters not brothers
In the sky I have known and
I will not forget them.

Bye, bye Davie
How to plan I have known
Good record keeping I will do
The good work you have done
No one can believe it.

Bye, bye Mathias
Grafting crops I have known
That sugarcane can not be grafted you have taught me.
Quality fruits all over Malawi because of your knowledge.

Bye, bye tenley
Nursery making I have known
That chibuku packets can be used
Instead of polythene
The knowledge I have it's yours.

Bye, bye Devin
Fish farming I have learned
Scientific names of fish you have taught me
That zooplanktons are small animals
from seeds I know
Although they drive me crazy I will never leave the knowledge behind

Bye, bye Alinon
That a place is good if there is fun
I have believed in you
You really are a Fun-gi.

Bye, bye Nyika camp teachers
With different friends of different cultures we have met
Because they say no man is an island united we have stayed as one.
Ignorance you have buried.
I will never cut down trees carelessly
because it conserves soil
No words can express my cries.

Atupele Mbukwa

Not only did the students pick up some valuable lessons this week but they also had a lot of fun, and none of this would have been possible without the financial support of our family and friends who donated to the camp. I thank you all from the bottom of my heart.

Camp Nyika Day 3- Banana and Bee Day

2009-11-17T15:05:00.000+03:00

I started the day off in the classroom teaching beekeeping theory; including the benefits of beekeeping, as well as how to make a budget for getting started, the demensions of a 29 top bar box hive, and selecting an apiary to hang hives in once they are ready. I also talked about using local materials like maize sack suits, and bamboo hives instead of expensive planks.

After teaching theory we went outside and made a local materials hive as a group. We split bamboos and attached them to two end plates with rina (the wires pulled out of used tires) and nails through bottle top washers to permanently fix them into place. We baited the top bars with melted bee's wax and made a cradle out of eucalyptus branches to hang the hive. After finding a good site in a near-by forest we hung the hive and made a mixture of clay and cow dung to seal any gaps between the bamboo. After putting grass on the cover to keep the black plastic cool, and applying grease to the wires to keep the ants out, our hive was ready to be occupied! We snapped a few kung fu photos to celebrate.

Unfortunately my beekeeping took most of the day (I even teach at Dan speed!) So Matt only had a couple hours to do Banana propagation, which luckily was all he needed. He presented a very clear and straight forward demonstration of how to do split-comb propagation. He dug up a mature banana tree that hadn't fruited yet and cut it down to the core of it's root base. He then started hacking it into small chunks that we planted in a nursery with the same side facing up. After about 3 weeks of watering the nursery at least 10 shoots should have sprouted, each a clone of the original banana tree.

That night after dinner we had the Camp Nyika talent show, and Alinon decided that Elijah the natural born entertainer should be the MC for the event. Elijah did a stellar job, as did all of the students. Some of the most memorable performances included Shadrick Mwakasangira's word for word rendition of the Nas song “I can be whatever I want to be”, Paulina Gondwe (our only Form 1 student at the camp, who everybody called baby Paulina) smiling from ear to ear as she danced and sang a Chitumbuka church choir son, The Kaporo CDSS students doing the electric slide, the Mwazisi CDSS students doing a drama about fidelity, and a poem by Atupele Mbukasa thanking us for the camp. It was a very sweet poem and her kind words got me all misty eyed in front of the whole camp. The students weren't the only ones to perform. All of the teachers showed off our talents at once; Tenley worked out quadratic equations on the blackboard, while I reached back to my high-school basketball days to do some fancy dribbling with old soccer balls, Devin did his gangster crypt walk to an Akon song, Alinon juggled onions, and Matt pulled out his dentures to make the creepiest hand puppet I have ever seen. We were a 5 ring circus of odd Azungus! Then Alinon had the whole room hooting and hollering with an animated telling of the nursery rhyme “The old lady who swallowed the fly.” At the end of the show Al congratulated Elijah for being a great MC by giving him the giant straw top-hat he had been wearing the entire week with a slip of paper tucked into the brim's ribbon that said “Happy Fungi.”. Elijah wore it for the rest of the week with pride.

Camp Nyika Day 2 Agriculture Day

2009-11-17T15:03:00.000+03:00

Devin Rippner my site-mate from Vwaza started the day off right with a very professional theoretical session on sustainable agriculture. Devin looking very dapper in his suit jacket and tie talked to the students about the value of good soil, and the benefits of maintaining its fertility and structure by adding compost and inter cropping nitrogen fixing trees. He talked a lot about the economics of conservation farming, and how they could save money by using compost and rotating a variety of crops instead of fertilizer and other inputs to grow just one crop.

After Devin's inspiring lecture the students visited a near-by lead farmer named Fredrick Msiska so they could see conservation farming in action. Mr. Msiska practices a wide variety of sustainable farming techniques in his fields and the students got some hands on experience as he invited them to help him mark the contour lines of a field using an A-frame with a line level across its top. They also got to make Bocash compost a Chinese method where they mix chopped maize husks, soil, wood ash, yeast, and water for fast decompisition in only about 21 days.

Mr. Msiska also showed us his demonstration plots where he mulches like a mad-man, intercrops nitrogen fixing trees and marks all of his boundaries with money making trees, like coffee or macadamia. He also showed the students his two chamber composting toilet which allows one side to decompose for 1 year while he is using the other side, when that side fills he clears out the decomposed chamber and starts using that side again. He also showed the students his liquid manure made by soaking chicken manure in water for 21 days, then dilutes the resulting tea with fresh water 20-1. He then uses that as a nitrogen rich top dressing for maize and tomatoes. It was really great for the students to see a Malawian who doesn't let anything go to waste on his farm, hopefully they take back some of these ideas to try and use in their own homes.

The afternoon was all about fish farming, and was mostly lead by Mr. Masukwa the Nchena chena fisheries extension officer. He started out by giving the students a long and detailed theoretical session that explained how to select a site for a pond, dig it, lime it, manure it, and stock it. He also talked about different types of fish as well as diseases that might become a problem.

After Masukwa's talk we went down to he research center's ponds to see the real thing. These ponds were first dug by the British in the 1950s and they are still very impressive today. There are over 20 ponds, the largest one is about the size of a football field, while the smallest one is about 5x10 meters. The ponds have a constant flow of water into their main inlet canal that allows water into each individual pond through a floodgate called a monk. Each pond also has angle jointed pipes that act as an overspill outlet, or can be turned down to drain the pond completely into the outlet canal. All of the ponds are stocked with talapia. The students were mostly impressed with the sheer size of the operation, the ones who were most serious about fish farming went back to the classroom afterwards and watched my compass II fish farming videos until dinner was ready.

After dinner our Ambassador of Fun Al organized a version of the game “Mafia” with a wildlife twist on it. He called it “Poacher Mob,” the Mafia were replaced by poachers, the sheriff was replaced by a forest guard, the doctor a traditional medicine man, and the citizens were different animals and trees of Nyika. I was amazed how fast the students picked it up, in no time they were tossing back and forth accusations and frantically trying to defend their innocence, “ I couldn't have killed the zebra he's my friend, and besides Moses is the real poacher.” The teachers only lasted a few rounds before Alinon turned the role of God over to Elijah Chipeta one of our outstanding and most gregarious youth councilors. I woke up a few hours later to go to the bathroom and still heard accusations flying in the classroom, “You killed the Msangu sangu tree! I can see it on your face!”

Camp Nyika Day 1- Buisness Day

2009-11-17T14:59:00.000+03:00

Yesterday the students arrived throughout the afternoon to be greeted by our enthusiastic “Ambassador of fun” Alinon Arpin, a country boy from Ennis with a smile as big as his home state of Montana. The shy and somewhat nervous students were immediately drawn to his welcoming aora, and left feeling at home in this strange place. Al brought the whole group together for an ice-breaker. We tossed a Frisbee around so the bearer could give their name, number one environmental interest, and favorite dende (dinner dish). The rest of that night we let the students get acquainted with each other and get settled into their dorms.

This morning instead of jumping right into the environmental activities we had Dave Jock teach the students a few basic business skills. I introduced Dave to the kids as the smartest guy in Peace Corps (he's on his way to Harvard Law next fall), so the students were very happy to pick through his brain with a barrage of questions. Dave explained how to make a business plan taking into account any externalities, fixed and variable costs, and how many business cycles it would take to reach the break even point for a variety of businesses. Most of which we are teaching the skills for this week such as fish farming, beekeeping and soap making. His main advice for the students no matter what business they would embark on was to keep good records, and always plan to reinvest.

The second half of the morning was led by Nya Tembo a Malawian women who generously offered to teach the group how to make soap from palm oil. She taught in the matter of fact even keeled sort of temperament that Malawian women always seem to operate in....never too enthusiastic or too dour, always somewhere in the middle just working their way through whatever task is at hand. Making soap is just one more thing to add to a long list of things she's getting done. I thought it was really great for the girls at the camp to see a women who has found a business that nobody else in the community is practicing and make herself an expert in it so that she can carve out her own money making niche.

After lunch it was all trees! First Tenely Scofield a PCV who traveled all the way from Mulanje taught the basics of tree nurseries, then Matt Jones a “bad-ass logger” from Idaho taught the students how to graft fruit trees. Between Tenely's ever positive attitude and ardent support for everything the kids do, and Matt's hands on approach to teaching allowing each student to practice grafting themselves I think just about every student is ready to go start their own tree nursery.

That night after dinner I took advantage of the break in the clouds to lead the students in some star-gazing, I walked them through the northern constellations with my own rendition of the Greek story of Queen Cassiopeia and King Cepheus and their daughter Andromeda who was saved from the sea monster Cetus by the hero Perseus riding on his flying horse Pegasus. We also tried to spot the rings of Saturn through my binoculars, and took a closer look at the glowing wonder of the seven sisters. Many students stayed out well after the others went to bed asking me questions. I was all to happy to try to answer their curious questions and encourage them to let their imaginations roam about what might be out their in the infinity of space. I was also happy to stay up to see Orion rise so I could share with them my all time favorite constellatioion.

Still Need Money

2009-10-01T17:36:00.000+03:00

I'm really begging for money now, the camp is only a month away, and I can't buy any supplies until all $1,200 is in. It's a worth while cause, that's tax deductible. Even a $5.00 donation is appreciated, it adds up! Just go to www.peacecorps.gov/contribute and search my name or the project number 614212.

Bringing My Vegetables to Market

2009-10-01T17:19:00.001+03:00

As I said in the previous blog my greatest sanctuary these past few months has been my garden down in the river valley. In June and July I often went there before sun-up and remained there all day tilling with my jembe, spreading compost, and planting new beds. I usually packed a lunch and took breaks throughout the day to eat sugar cane while I sit and chat with Mr Mkandawire (the old man who keeps the garden next to me). My afternoons were usually spent transplanting the young seedlings to bigger beds.

It's very therapeutic digging my hands into fresh black soil with the late afternoon sun on my back, the aroma of well-cured compost in my nostrels, and nothing but crickets and the cackle of a lilac breasted rollers chasing their mates for backround noise. At the end of the day as I walk back exhausted and happy from a good days work, I turn my hat backwards so I can watch Venus chasing the sunset in the west and the moon rising in the east as the first stars of the night begin to pop out.

I originally started this garden with the hope that my wildlife club would share the labor and sell the vegetables at the local market to raise money for the trip to Nyika National Park that they are constantly begging for, but as the school year got more busy, and the students afternoons got occupied with more pressing matters such as playing checkers in the trading center, or looking cool as they walked back and forth on the road through town I realized that it would just be my garden. I was fine with that since I had much more free time then I wanted, and it always makes such a great escape. I have gotten occasional assistance from my young roommate Sam and my friend John Gondwe who always get pleanty of vegetables in return. In July I bought a treadle pump with Mr. Mkandawire and Mr. Zgambo (my counterpart from the department of forestry) so we can water all of our gardens much easier. So now I have help from Mr. Zgambo's 3 sons once a week as they pump the stair stepper style pump and I man the hose.

The garden is full of a wide variety of vegetables this year thanks to all the seeds sent by good people back home like Carol Suzdak, Bill and Kay Shrenk, and of course my good old Mom. Sam and I have a big salad with every meal and have experimented with several different ways of cooking greens. We share with our neighbors and I always fill up a watering can with lettuce that I hand out to ladies on the path from my garden to the house, but there's no way I can use everything that is growing in my garden, so last week I decided to fill up two large maize sacks with vegetables and take them to Devin Rippner's (the closest volunteer to my site) Saturday market. It's a big market and I figured it would be a good way to show the kids in my wildlife club the profits they missed out on by not helping out in the garden. When I told people about my plans they mostly laughed and said “nobody in the village is going to buy strange vegetables that they don't know how to cook.” I said “they will once they've tasted them.”

Of course when we got to the market and unloaded the veggies from our bikes, everybody gathered around to see what the heck the Azungus were up to. I think the Azungu circus effect was the secret behind our initial sales, we probably could have unloaded a sack of eucalyptus leaves and people would have bought it just to eat what ever the Americans were eating. I used this to my advantage after I laid out a pile of lettuce I stood up and was at least half a foot over every bodies heads and said in Timbuka, “Do you see how big I am? It's because I eat this!” Most people laughed but some teenagers dug in their pockets for ten kwatcha to buy a pile.

A group of ladies were cooking nsima and goat meat to sell to the vendors who come from all over Rumphi west to sell their goods. I went over and gave each of them a pile of Indian mustard greens, and told them to cook it up with tomatoes and onions to add as an extra side dish to their meals. They could have them for free so long as they told everybody where they came from.

When things slowed down in the afternoon Devin made a big salad for sampling. We soaked the vegetables in Watergaurd the day before to kill any parasites and rinsed them. I mixed chigoona red lettuce, arugula, buttercrunch lettuce, mustard, beet greens, broccoli, chopped some onion chives, sliced two kinds of radishes, and one tomato to give people a little taste of everything. Devin cheated a bit by adding some vinegar and oil. People were very hesitant to eat uncooked vegetables, but I reassured them they were safe as I ate a little myself. You'd think I was serving cow dung by the look on the first women's face as she picked off a tiny leaf and slowly lifted it to her mouth, but her eye's grew as big as saucers when the salad dressing hit her tongue. She buried her face in embarrassed laughter when she saw my acknowledging smile. She came up nodding to the crowd and a wave of hands reached in for their own sample. It was hilarious watching people share the same reaction as the first women again and again. Granted a lot of people will be disappointed when they realize they can't recreate the taste of Devin's salad dressing without olive oil, and a dressing mix sent from America, but at least they're tasting some different vegetables for once.

In the late afternoon we got some help from Devin's friends Mackford and a Rasta who goes by the bold title of “God.” They stood behind my piles of veggies eating the salad with embellished moans of ecstasy saying, “Mmmm, kunowa chomene. Zie kuno gulani iyo.” (very delicious, come here and buy this.) I knelt by my heads of lettuce and piles of produce telling people how to cook the different greens; “fry the radish greens with peanut floor, cook the lettuce in in tomatoes, onions, and oil just for a minute, so that it doesn't turn into watery mush. I cut up radish slices with my leatherman and handed them out to everybody that listened.

It all payed off in the end, I was the first vendor to finish off what I carried, and at the end of the day we had either eaten or sold off every last leaf! I made over 2,000 kwatcha in 10 kwatcha increments, but unfortunately a 500 kwatcha note had fallen out of my pocket at some point in the chaos...zimachatika. We used some of the money to buy sweet potatoes, milk, sugar and biscuits to make a celebratory sweet potato pie for dinner.

The next morning in Mwazisi I had no shame in gloating about the profits we made and the fun we had selling them. Benidicto says he's coming with me next week to sell his tomatoes, and he will plant a wider variety of vegetables next year.

Finally out of Limbo

2009-10-01T17:14:00.000+03:00

For the last several months my biggest project the agriculture extension office has been stuck in the ninth circle of bureaucratic hell waiting for materials. Last year we we got the project off to a good start; the community quickly made use of the funding that I secured from USAid to get the 10,000 stabalized soil blocks molded, but according to the agreement I made with the Rumphi department of Agriculture, the rest of the materials for the building would be provided by them. But no matter where you are, Malawi or America, things always move slower once they are left up to bureaucrats.

We built up to the window level by the end of last February, then not having any window frames our momentum came to a screeching halt. Ever since then I've become the most annoying fly in the department of agriculture's ear, “Is the money ready yet? Where are my window frames?” To which they always reply “Check back next week, should be an time now.” Back in Mwazisi I kept myself busy with my bee keeping projects, fish ponds, and tree nurseries but was aching to get back into construction mode. My garden down in the river valley became my greatest salvation. I have spent many hours there, tilling, planting, weeding, doing pull-ups on the branches of the mango trees, or just reading in the shade when it gets too hot to work. It's nice having a quiet place away from the village where I can work and think. When things have gotten especially frustrating then I listen to old “This American Life” and “Prairie Home Companion” podcasts while I work. I let the soothing voices of Ira Glass and Garrison Kheeler remind me of home.

Finally a couple months ago I decided to take a different route to getting the money. In my project proposal I stipulated that the funding for the construction of the building would come from the Malawian government, but not necessarily the department of agriculture. I found out about the Member of Parliament's constituency fund that can be used for any development they would like to make in their district. I called the newly elected Member of Parliament Hon. Austin Jatura Mkandawire, and told him about the project, I explained that this would be a very highly appreciated development in a part of his constituency where he got less votes in the last election (the other candidate was from Mwazisi). His reaction was awesome! He came to Mwazisi the next week to see what we had done so far, and promised to use his fund to pay for the window frames which are one of the most expensive items left for completing the construction of the building. I had to write another proposal then get it approved by the Village Development Committee, Area Development Committee and the District Assembly.

I was actually surprised how fast the money came from the constituency fund! The window frames actually arrived in Mwazisi yesterday. As luck would have it the department of Agriculture also just now came up with a large sum of money that we are buying other building materials with, and some of the iron sheets for roofing(which is why I'm in town today). We will start building again on Monday! . It's going to feel so good mixing cement first thing in the morning again Monday.

A Hike with the Good Lawyer Revisited

2009-09-21T16:36:00.002+03:00

Now is a good time to recount one of my favorite Nyika trips as I beg my family and friends to donate money for a camp that is meant to influence the people living around the park to take a greater stake in protecting it (see previous blog). I think the way we feel about places has a lot to do with the people we associate it with, and I certainly associate Nyika with the man that first introduced me to it; a former Peace Corps volunteer and retired lawyer named Greg Doer.

He invited me on one of his adventures to Fingira rock when I first got to country. I was impressed to see the hiking strength of this 60 year old man, but most of all I admired his appreciation for the nature that surrounded him. Over the next year we became good friends, and he became a great source of advice as I was starting out as a Peace Corps volunteer. Greg and I shared some great debates, and plenty of laughs, but I saw him at his happiest in Malawi when we were hiking in Nyika. I was very happy when he invited me on his last hike before the end of his service.

Greg planned an epic trip for his finally that included climbing Nkhonjira mountain, fishing the Rumphi river and visiting Nyika's ancient Juniper forest. It would be all the more of an adventure since we would hike in the heart of the rainy season. He also asked the other two people I most associate with Nyika for the hike; his counterpart and Nyika game scout Manuel Gondwe (a certified bad-ass), and Greg's friend from Jumbi an ex-poacher turned Natural Resource Committee member Kondwani; a man that can best be described as the smiliest man in Malawi, as his name suggests (Kondwani means happy in Chitumbuka). Kondwani dubbed our crew the big four, and it seemed to me like an ideal group to spend my New Years in the mountains with.

Our first day of hiking was a late start because of a long heavy rainfall. We took shelter with a friend of Kondwani's that lived at the foot of Nkhonjira mountain. They generously cooked nsima and eggs for us, which gave us the strength to do one long hard push up the mountain when the storm broke. We agreed that Manuel and I would hurry ahead to set up camp and start the fire before sunset since we got such a late start. I had a hard time keeping up with the five foot tall hiking machine, as he moved up the ridge line at a fast steady pace.

As the sun set over Nkhonjira's shoulder the clouds and mist we were climbing through changed pink and purple. The whole scene became surreal, quiet, and beautiful. There's something truly magical about the calm after a big storm, and it was made all the more amazing by the sunset and the setting. I was already happy being up on the mountain above the noise of daily life in the village below....no screaming children, no blaring music from the beer dens. I only heard the occasional rumble of a thunderhead over Bolero, the wind through the miombo forests, and the call of a falcon that floated on thermals on the other side of the ridgeline which was a sheer drop-off that went down several hudred feet. I stopped and watched him as he hung suspended, and lifted a bit from an updraft then pointed his shoulder blades down and plummeted through the pink haze. My heart was pumping with adrenaline as I got back to climbing.

We slept under a tarp next to a creek that came from a primal forest near the top. After tea and rice porridge, we explored the forest a bit. It was a dense old growth forest brimming with life, vines hung from the branches of ancient towering trees that three of us could not wrap our arms around together. We took some pictures and caught up to Greg who was enjoying the view, of the bolero valley and beyond to where you could even make out the mountains over Mwazisi in the distance.

We hiked down the backside of the mountain through grassland and some extensive Musuku forests until we got bogged down in another heavy downpour. We wrapped ourselves in our tarps and waited it out for a while, before pushing on to Hana cave, a rock shelter that sits just above the Rumphi River. Greg found a huge bunch of large headed white mushrooms that we made into a delicious soup that we ate our Nsima with.

That afternoon Greg fished the Rumphi with a spin rod and lures. Supposedly there are still trout in the Rumphi from the dams that were stocked by the British in the 60's, but the river was way to high to catch anything in the heavy current where Greg was fishing. Kondwani jimmy rigged a small bamboo pole with some extra line and a lead weight, we baited it with crickets. I found a deep calm pool upriver just before sunset and managed to pull out 5 small catfish. We spent our new years eve eating mushroom soup and smoking the fish I caught in the mouth of the cave while greg played his penny whistle before sneaking off to his sleeping bag in the back of the cave. Kondwani, Manuel, and I stayed up late listening to Kondwani's wireless radio as news came in on BBC about the election violence in Kenya. I curled up in my sleeping bag and watched the Southern Cross rise between the horizon and the lip of the cave, as I thought about hopes for a more peaceful world, and the changes I wanted to make in my own life in the coming new year.

We awoke to a rainy and overcast 2008, and took our time enjoying a catfish and rice breakfast before we hiked 5km upriver so we could cross at a point just beneath a falls where the river dives beneath a boulder field that allows for easy crossing. We spent the rest of the day hiking up game trails, and bushwhacking up and down ridges, hillsides, and innumerable small valleys. Throughout the day we found ourselves in vast Msuku forests that slowed us down significantly as we were all hunched over sampling a few plum-sized fallen fruit before moving on to check the flavor of the next tree. As Greg said we were traveling at “Msuku speed.”

Around 5:30 we came across a poachers camp where they had just finished drying wild pig meat on a rack over the fire. The fire was still smoldering when we arrived, and they left various parts of the pig; they must have seen us coming up the valley, and took flight. Manuel went ahead a bit to see if he could catch them and confiscate their guns. We took over their camp and made a shelter out of tarps since it had been drizzling all day, but after sunset the clouds cleared out and the stars were absolutely beaming. I showed Kondwani all the constilations I could find. I fell asleep still watching the hot belt of the milky way turning overhead.

We ate a leisurely breakfast while we dried our socks and boots over the fire. Manuel extracted the tusks from the jaw of the wild pig the poachers left behind and Greg kept them as a souvenir. We spent the morning hiking up grassy hillsides, and scared up a common duiker, and 3 Kilspringers along the way and got to the Juniper forest around noon. There was an old dilapidated watchman's hut there that we took shelter in for the night.

The juniper forest was amazing. Some of the trees were up to 18 ft in circumference and they all towered high above us. We found one fallen juniper that had a kachere tree (a parasitic tree) growing in the middle of the trunk. The kachere tree was massive, at least 10 ft in circumference, but the fallen enormous juniper underneath it still hadn't even begun to rot showing what an incredibly hard wooded tree it was. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the Junipers were over 1,000 years old!

That afternoon Kondwani, Manuel, and I attempted to climb Kasaramba mountain while Greg stayed back at the watchman's hut resting his feet and cooking us beans for dinner. We failed to reach Kasaramba as we were chased back to the hut by an impressive thunderhead. As we hurried back I got some good pictures of a double rainbow at sunset. We fried up the last of my catfish and mixed them with the beans for dinner as the rain pounded on the tin roof of the little shack and thunder clapped all around the plateau. Kondwani did his best to patch the holes in the roof with chunks of Nsima (use # 101 of maize paste!).

We spent the next day hiking back to gregs favorite spot in Nyika, Fingira rock. It was a long hike over Nyika's vaste grasslands and through overgrown river valleys. We tried our luck fishing another spot on the Rumphi river around lunch time, but nothing this time. We saw two more bush bucks and spotted two mystery animals watching us from the ridge line silhouetted by the ominous storm clouds behind.

Though there are rock shelters actually at Fingira rock we always sleep down the hill in Mavungu rock shelter which is much closer to a water source. We found yet another patch of Mushrooms that we mixed with Lentils for our last meal on Nyika. I brewed a pot of coffee, and made it Irish with some Malawian gin. We toasted the New Year, and another successful adventure.

My only regret was that we didn't climb Fingira Rock to enjoy the view from the top. Since my first trip to Nyika two and a half years ago that is still my favorite spot in all of Malawi. But on that trip our feet were too sore and waterlogged, and the rock was too slippery to make the precarious 300M+ scramble.

I recently made the exact same trip with Manuel and my friend Mike Fong. We followed the same route but managed to make it to the top of Nkhonjira and descend to Hana cave in one day, then get to the Juniper forest the next day where we met up with four Peace Corps ladies that were hiking from the Eastern side of the park with my friend Dan Zgambo who I organized to guide them. Then all of us hiked over to Fingira rock together. It was an awesome trip, and Mike was the perfect hiking partner. We keep the same pace hiking, he's up for anything, and was ever positive (even when we meandered off of the correct path a bit on long 10 hour days of hiking). Not to mention he is an impressively light packer; he only brought a small day pack and a blanket roll, which was more than enough to support his simple needs. He kept Manuel and I entertained with his songs around the campfire each night. I really enjoyed sharing the brilliance of Nyika with my friends, the same way Greg shared it with me.

The last morning before we hiked out to Jumbi I insisted that we all hike up Fingira. I was the last one to get to the top as I was helping one of my friends get through some tricky spots. I found everybody enjoying the spectacular Panarama, with the wide open rolling grass lands of Nyika on the east side (it's like being up on pride rock in the Lion King). To the west my eyes followed the miomba woodland covered escarpment falling away to Jumbi and the long valley to Bolero, then north to the Mountains surrounding Nkhozo estates tractor plowed fields and on to the mountains that surround my house in Mwazisi. I thought back to my many trips to nyika; hiking, biking, and visiting with Malawians. When I stood on the very top and took in the grand view it sent a shot of adrenaline down my spine and I let out a WHOOOOEE that rang off of every corner of Nyika...I smiled at Manuel and said “I love this spot.”

Gearing up for another Nyika Wildlife Camp

2009-09-21T16:31:00.000+03:00

Last year one of the most successful projects I took part in was the five day environmental mini-camp for teenagers living around Nyika National Park (see my blog from Nov 2008). Which is why I decided to organize another camp this year. The idea of the camp is to provide young people living around Nyika plateau with skills that they can use to improve their communities livelihood without poaching or otherwise destroying the parks resources. We also want to impart an appreciation for Nyika's uniqueness, and value to the environmental health of the entire Northern Region,.

This year we will teach the students about business skills, soap making, beekeeping, fish farming, and Jam making. There will be a focus on sustainable agriculture since farming makes up about 98% of rural Malawians livelihood. We will take a field trip to visit a Permactulture farm in Livingstonia, and also visit another Malawian lead farmer who is practicing a variety of sustainable techniques. We'll also teach practical sessions in compost making, contour line ridging and tree nursery propagation. But as I said the main idea of the camp is to impart a greater respect for the park itself, so we will have a lecture from a Malawian bird expert, and he will lead the entire group on a bird walk. We will also hike to Manchawe falls, and will be discussing Nyika's value as the Northern region's primary watershed the entire week.

Nyika is so unique in Africa, because most of it's 3,000 sq km are a grassy plateau that rises over 1800m. It supports a wide variety of birds and wildflowers that aren't found anywhere else in Malawi. More than 200 species of orchid have been recorded in the park, and 27 of them are endemic to Nyika alone. Sadly many people living around the park see orchids value only as a food delicacy. One of my friends working as a game scout, recently told me about catching a villager who had already dug up 9 buckets full of orchid bulbs that she was intending to sell in Chitipa where she can get as much as MK6,000 (about $40) for 1 bucket. This shows the lack of understanding people living around the park have for the uniqueness of this very special place. Which is exactly the issue that our camp is trying to address.

This is also a great opportunity for those of you who are interested to support one of my projects. I wrote the grant to fund the camp through Peace Corps Partners Program, which takes tax deductible contributions from friends and family of Peace Corps volunteers to put directly into our projects. All you have to do to donate is go to www.peacecorps.gov/contribute and search for either my name or enter the project number 614212 and make your contribution. I appreciate any support anybody can offer.

An Evening with Lucius Banda

2009-09-01T09:03:00.005+03:00

This is an article I wrote for the Peace Corps magazine about my epic birthday with Malawi's best musician

Matt Zald (env 2009) and I were lucky enough to stumble upon a Lucius Banda concert in Mzuzu on a recent Sunday night. We heard the music blaring from the Mzuzu Sunbird hotel in the afternoon and decided to investigate. Little did we know that our wonderings would turn into an epic night in Malawi.

We actually didn't know who's concert we were walking into until the door man told us that Malawi's most famous Musician Lucius Banda would be playing. Anybody who has been in Malawi for more than a couple weeks knows Lucius Banda. He is essentially Malawi's national musician, any ewe you find outside your local village bottle store can recite hits like "Survivors" or "Malawi Wokongola" word for word for you as they shake their booty out of their loose fitting shorts. The man is so popular that he was elected to represent Balaka district as a Member of Parliament, but he quickly got out of that game.

The concert started mellow and easy around 3:30 and went on for over 3 hours. In the warm Sunday afternoon light, it seemed like a family picnic concert, as people who didn't manage to get a seat sat around the stage on the green grass. Children danced on the front steps and Banda crouched down to sing directly to his mini-fans, which made them absolutely loose their minds. One brave boy didn't loose his cool though he stepped up on the stage in front of a smiling Banda with his make believe microphone and lip-synced every word.

After the sun set things took a wilder side. When "Pa Mtengo wa Kachere" came on the whole crowd got to dancing, and really only stopped to watch the mesmerizing gyrations of one of his stunningly beautiful dancers. Banda brought some local Mzuzu rappers on stage to do a freestyle that had the crowd howling.

Our favorite stage dancer was a man in his mid-forties with a little pot belly and a missing tooth. He didn't look like one of Madonna's dancers, but he could dance anyone of them out of a job, and I'll guarantee you've never seen anybody who enjoys his job as much as that man. He smiled from ear to ear the whole show, and any time we made eye contact he threw us an enthusiastic thumbs up. During the last song he finally pulled Matt on stage so he could dance with the "Soldier" himself.

At the end of the night as the crowd was shuffled out we decided to take a shot and see if we could go and talk to the star. We were shocked when he pulled up two chairs for us and gave us a full interview. For the most popular musician in Malawi I was extremely impressed with his modesty and down to Earth nature.

He told us about growing up in a poor family in Balaka. His first introduction to music was his brother Paul's homemade guitar, made from a jerry-can, a stick and wire. Paul made Lucius into his Rhythm section, having him clap hands to keep rhythm. As Mr. Banda got older he found inspiration in Malawian Jazz guitar great Ungani Mkandawire. He also acknowledges the influence of South African Reggae legend Lucky Dube, and Micheal Jackson on his music. He admitted that he was brought to tears when he heard about Jackson's death.

Mr. Banda is finally gaining a bit of recognition beyond Malawi's borders. In fact he and his band recently returned from their tour of the UK, playing in the Splenda festival, as well as shows in London, Nottingham and Glasgow. He still hasn't made it to America but has had many requests to play in Indiana where there is a large Malawian population.

One of his proudest achievements is the work he has done to help other Malawian musicians get started in Music. As an MP he convinced the director of finance to allow all incoming instruments to enter Malawi Duty-free. He's helped many up and coming Malawian musicians to get established, such as Billy Kaunda, and Luscious Sakalu just to name a few. He thinks he's getting to old now to still expect to hit it big on the international music scene, but he holds out hope for some of the young Malawians he has helped along the way. He still worries that many of Malawi's young talented musicians don't develop because they lack quality instruments.

He became very interested when we told him about fellow volunteer Matt Jones' (env 2008) Malawi Music project that is trying to help introduce young people to music, and get them instruments. He even agreed to come to the upcoming Malawi music project camp if he is available.

Mr. Banda has a soft spot in his heart for Peace Corps volunteers; he had three Peace Corps teachers in secondary school all of which he could remember the full names of. He told us that he even bought his favorite teacher Chuck Thatcher's hiking boots when he went back to America for 200MK. These turned out to be the boots he stomped on his first stages in as a young musician.

After we snapped a picture with him he shook our hands and said "I really appreciate what you Peace Corps volunteers do in my country, I've been to Europe and seen the luxuries you give up to come and live in the bush for two years. It's no joke."

I'm Older Again

2009-09-01T08:57:00.001+03:00

Well I've had my third and final birthday in Malawi. I had a great time with Peace Corps friends in Mzuzu. We ate cake, drank beers, saw Lucius Banda, and danced hard. I was happy to have been able to talk to my whole family. But as is more and more the case with every passing birthday (I'm now 28…gettin on now!) I start to think more and more about which direction my life is going. Especially being in my third year as a Peace Corps volunteer, the reality that has been my whole world for the past three years will be ripped away from me, and I'll be dropped back in the alternate universe that is America and have to figure out what the heck to do with myself.

I have decided that a farming apprenticeship would be the best transition from my life in Malawi to the life I want in America. I took advantage of being in town and having computer access to fill in applications for the two apprenticeships I am most interested in one on the Alan Chadwick farm at UC Santa Cruz, and the other at the La Boca Center for sustainability in Durango Colorado. I'm mulling over some other possibilities but these are the most appealing options so far. I actually put a lot of thought into the essays, because they were essentially asking me what I'm going to do with the rest of my life…uh ohh Dan and deep thinking are a bad mix. I want to post some of my essays on my blog because I'd like my friends and family to know that I really do have some direction, I'm just taking the long way around in getting there….It's kind of how I operate.

Explain your interest in an farm apprenticeship and how it applies to your future plans: The practical training I will receive from an apprenticeship is the best way to start down the path of achieving my dream of eventually running an organic farm. I have been an environmentalist and activist all of my life; but, a life of activism and dissent against obscure powers seems futile and meaningless if you remain dependent on the systems those powers put in place. I believe the best way to fight the excesses of greed and exploitation is to build a vital community outside of our current state of total consumerism, while simultaneously interacting with the larger populations that could most use a revival of agrarian values

I have a great deal to learn before I am ready to start the operation that I envision, and I have always learned best by doing. An apprenticeship on a farm that shares my same philosophy is the best way to get started gaining the skills I need to establish a farm in the community in which I eventually settle. Through my apprenticeship I intend to become an expert in organic horticulture, sustainable crop systems and rotations, animal husbandry, running and maintaining all necessary farm equipment, preparing harvested produce, and finally, getting it to market. If possible I would also like to gain more skills in agricultural extension, because I want a farm that is a place interested people can come and learn about sustainable agriculture, as well as how to produce food for themselves and their own community. After my apprenticeship, I would like to spend several years working on other farms that share the same philosophy to learn as much as I can about the logistics of running an organic farm.

I want to settle on one piece of land with people who share the same vision and start a farm that is a positive influence on the greater community. Instead of following the Earl Butz model of overproduction of commodity crops that is destroying our land, water, and farming communities, this farm will produce a variety of crops in a system based on the sun that rotates vegetables with legumes, deep-rooted grasses, then livestock, returning all waste to enrich the soil. This will be an excellent example of how organic farming can revive the degraded land and make a profit by connecting to niche markets to sell at a premium. Since the 1950's farming communities have rapidly failed as corn prices have fallen. We now have more prisoners in America than Farmers, and the dwindling numbers of farmers that remain are married to a horribly misguided system based on monoculture. This reliance on corn and soy farming has based our food system on fossil fuel. As Michael Pollen explains, when you add together the natural gas in the fertilizer to the fossil fuel it takes to make the pesticides, drive the tractors, harvest, and transport the corn, you find that it takes about fifty gallons of oil to grow one acre of corn. Put another way, it takes more than a calorie of fossil fuel energy to produce one calorie of food. There needs to be more examples of how eco-agriculture provides an alternative for farmers.

The farm I visualize will be a Community Supported Agriculture close to a large urban population not only to be near Organic produce markets but also so it will be accessible to the people who have become the most removed from the land from which their food comes. I want any farm I live on to be a place where city school groups and anybody else interested in agriculture can come and learn about organic farming. I want this farm to be a base for sustainable agriculture extension that will reach sections of society that otherwise would never have access to that sort of thing, such as the urban poor and paroled prisoners. These outcast members of our society who have become dependent on our broken food system only have cheap, highly processed, and unhealthy food available to them. They have become progressively more consumptive and degraded because of that system. Organic farming will not only provide these populations with a good source of safe and healthy food, but it will also give them a better understanding of the natural systems on which they depend. It will also pass on a valuable skill to many people that have little access to jobs. It is a disgrace that so many of our citizens living in the cities are unemployed while so many of our farms rely on illegal immigrants to harvest the food we eat.

I believe in Wendall Berry's philosophy of thinking little: focusing on ones own community and understanding the land they live on, what it offers, and what it requires from them. I believe sustainable organic farming is the best way to improve a piece of the world while spreading the joy of growing your own food to the people with whom you live and work. An apprenticeship on an organic farm is the best way to prepare to make that difference.

Describe your recent work experience: The past two and a half years as a Peace Corps volunteer have been the most transformative experience of my life. I am surer now of the direction I desire for my life then I have ever been. The joy of good hard work done with intention and in a community is unmatchable.

My day-to-day work in Malawi varies greatly, but it usually starts around 5:30 with me heading to either my garden or field depending on the season to till, weed, or harvest armed only with a Jembe (a local hoe). I usually head to the borehole around 9 or 10 am to collect water and prepare breakfast. On most Mondays after breakfast I go and work on a tree nursery with a women's group, Wednesday's I meet with the secondary school wildlife club, sometimes I spend my day building bee-hives with a local carpenter, other days I can be found at the fish ponds digging with a club of farmers who want to start as many ponds as they can before I leave. For the last several months I have spent most days mixing cement working with my team of five builders constructing our agriculture office. I usually return to my garden by late afternoon, and get back after sunset to have dinner with my neighbors, who I eat with to save the time and firewood that would be wasted just cooking for 1 person. I read or write by candlelight for maybe an hour before I start dozing, and am usually in bed by 8:00pm. I love my work in Malawi because I take it as it comes working on the task at hand, and it always has a practical use that I can see. I never have a day where I can't tell you what the purpose of my days work. Working outside every day with my hands is what I love, and as Anna Coomaraswamy said "Pleasure perfects work."

Before Peace Corps I worked for Open Space Mountain Parks near my hometown Boulder, Colorado on the Trail maintenance crew. My work included restoring existing trails, surveying and building new trails, construction of water bars, retaining walls, rock steps, fencing, and when the winter started forest thinning and clearing snags with a chainsaw.

Describe any previous farming experience: I have kept backyard gardens all of my life, but it wasn’t until after I graduated from college that I formally worked on a farm. I went to Scotland to play rugby and found work on Torrance farm an organic dairy farm with about 60 Jersey and Holstein cows. I helped with driving the cows, milking, weeding the pasture, mucking out the barns and milking biers, and spreading slurry on the pasture.

Douglas, the farmer I was working for, introduced me to WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) and I spent the next 7months moving from farm to farm all around Europe. During that time I did a variety of work, everything from work as an extra hand on a traditional family dairy farm in Parmigano Reggano Italy, to living in a tent and helping a community of squatters establish a newly acquired piece of land into an organic vegetable garden near Barcelona, Spain.

I am currently a Peace Corps volunteer working in the environment sector in Malawi. During my service my projects have focused on agriculture from bee-keeping to tree nurseries that include fruit trees and agro forestry trees like Gliricidia Sepium. My biggest project is an agriculture extension office that we are building out of stabilized soil blocks. The office will be manned by an extension worker appointed by the ministry of agriculture who will advise farmers on how to make the best use of their land, and maintain a variety of agricultural demonstrations around the office. We have already established some of those demonstrations including rainwater collection ponds, a fishpond stocked with tilapia, contour line ridging, intercropping maize with Tephrosia Vogelli (a nitrogen fixing tree that doubles as a natural pesticide against weevils), growing Rizobium inoculated soybeans to rebuild soil fertility, and a demonstration vegetable garden done with the near-by secondary school's wildlife club. I have also been growing most of my own food since coming to Malawi. In the rainy season I mostly grow maize, pole beans, sunflowers, soy, and peanuts. In the dry season I keep a vegetable garden in the river valley where I grow a huge variety of vegetables, melons, and fruits.

Describe your experience with cooperative living and working, and what you consider the advantages and disadvantages of it: My most memorable experience working in a cooperative living and working situation was WWOOFing on a communal farm in a mountain forest of Summerset England called the Tinker's Bubble. There are about 15 permanent adults and their children living and working there, with an assortment of volunteers working from a couple weeks up to a couple years. The community lives in a group of structures that were built on forty acres of woodland, pasture, garden, and apple orchard allowing them to be completely self-sufficient. The community avoids using fossil fuels whenever possible; cooking on a wood stove or open fire, using wind and solar energy for light, and a workhorse named Sam for any heavy moving or framework. The Tinker’s Bubble residents manage the woodlands harvesting trees that are milled with a steam engine and used for building all of their own structures. Almost all of their produce is grown organically in their numerous gardens, two poly-tunnels, and a single greenhouse. The community also has several cows from whose milk they make yogurt and cheese. Each member of the community contributes about 30.00 pounds a week towards living expenses. Most of the residents earn extra money from cider making, working in private gardens, and wood furniture crafting. Every Monday the community has a meeting where they decide what jobs need to be done that week and they divvy up the work.

I really enjoyed working on this farm, and felt like I quickly fit in as a useful part of the community. The primary disadvantages of cooperative living and working are that it can sometimes be difficult to find consensus so planning can become deadlocked, and of course when people are working and living so close together sometimes tensions can get high and personalities inevitably conflict. But I think all of these problems can easily be overcome with a little patience and understanding; as far as I saw they always were at the Tinker's Bubble.

I think the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages for living and working in a Cooperative situation. Living and working in a cooperative is just like being in a community, it is a support network. Work becomes far more efficient when it can be divided out amongst many people. Working cooperatively allows every individual to fill their own niche in the farm, putting their skills towards the progress of the whole. Wendall Berry explained the goodness of good work in a cooperative setting best; "It brings us home from pride and despair, and places us responsibly within the human estate. It defines us as we are: not too good to work without our bodies, but too good to work joylessly, selfishly or alone….Community are the bonds that give our individuality a use and a worth; it is only to the people that know us, love us, and depend upon us that we are indispensable to as the person we uniquely are."

A Rambling on Social Change

2009-08-19T10:05:00.003+03:00

My good friend Sarah Stance is doing her Master's degree at Stellenbosch University in South Africa, and recently asked me to give her my perspective on Social Change as a Peace Corps volunteer in Malawi. As it turned out I ended up talking mostly about my friend Benidicto Gondwe who I have pegged as a "posative social deviant". So I thought I'd share what I wrote to her, because it shows the cream of the crop of the people I work with in Mwazisi. People like Benidicto are the ones that make me feel so lucky to be doing what I'm doing.

In my experience as a Peace Corps volunteer in Malawi social change needs positive social deviants to initiate the shift in thought. Somebody who is willing to break away from the crowd and try something different. I would summarize most change that I have seen as follows: it starts with an original positive social deviant or even a group of social deviants who first question the way everybody around them is doing things or sees the world. After realizing that something needs to change, the social deviant starts putting a better way into practice for themselves. Sometimes doing things different can cause a person to be isolated from their peers, but if they stick to their idea they start setting an example for the people who have ridiculed them. The change really starts to happen when people see the success of the original deviants and start adopting the new idea. The more examples start to crop up the more people see the benefit of the change and adopt it and the idea snowballs from there. Eventually the change becomes the norm and anybody who does things the old way is the social deviant.

As Peace Corps volunteers our job is essentially to become just another member of the community and try to be that positive social deviant. Unfortunately that isn’t as realistic as I hoped because no matter how long I am here, and how hard I try, I will never be just another member of the community in this rural Malawian village. To think that eventually I will blend in and be seen as something different then the Azungu would be just deluding myself. I will always be different and I can deal with that. The problem is that I can’t be a positive social deviant when I am coming in as a very strange outsider. Anything that I do that is out of the ordinary is simply dismissed as the madness of the crazy Azungu by most people.

It takes the communities own innovators who are willing to give new ideas I try to initiate a try to initiate the real change, often times adding their own ingenuity to improve on it. My friend Benidicto Gondwe is a great example of one of those necessary social deviants. With out Benidicto I don’t think I could have been effective in initiating any new ideas here

I can’t say that in my two years I have seen any significant change in the communities behavior or way of thinking towards environmental issues, which is what I am here to work on. But I have seen small shifts in a variety of aspects of life in the village, from the way people garden to where they try to earn their money from. I hope that these small shifts in daily life add up to be an overall change in mentality towards the local environment down the road.

One specific example of a small shift is beekeeping. From the very beginning of my service I have been trying to encourage as many people as possible to take up beekeeping. It’s a very profitable business for the community and it’s a fantastic way to protect the existing trees that the hives are hung from. I encourage Kenyan Top bar hives made from timber planks instead of the local hives which are made from a hollowed out tree trunk. The plank hives are far less destructive to produce, and they are a far more efficient way to manage the bees.

Most people say they would prefer to have the plank hives but they are too expensive. So I tried to present ways to make the same hive less expensive. I used a design from the Nkhata Bay Small Beekeepers Research and Development Association to build a top bar hive that had split bamboo on the sides instead of planks, then I plastered over the spaces with mud. This design used less than a quarter of the amount of planks needed for regular plank hives, but the hive was far too heavy to carry up the mountains to hang. Benidicto still saw the merit in the design of the hive, and used the same design to make a hive that was plastered with paper-mache made from soaked waste papers mixed with cassava flour as a glue. His hive was much lighter, and once dry less susceptible to cracking. The community really took to his design and lots of people helped in constructing many more that have all since been sold or hung. But it first took Benidicto’s openness to try a different idea that everybody was closed to for him to bridge the gap and make my idea useful for a larger group of people.

Another example of gradual changing mentalities is mulching a garden during the dry months in order to hold in the grounds moisture. The year before I started my river valley garden I noticed that absolutely nobody put mulch on their garden. The next year when the farmers in the gardens next to mine saw me mulching my vegetables, they said “you will invite termites and other insects that will attack your vegetables.” Of course the opposite was true, mulching kept the ground around my vegetables constantly moist, and therefore made for strong resistant crops. While the others had problems with pests, because their vegetables quickly dried out and were unhealthy. Again my friend Benidicto was one of the first people to take up the idea. He chopped up Sugar Cane waste grasses and put them all around the base of his tomato plants. He bragged that one heavy watering once a week was enough to keep his tomatoes watered for the whole week.

Benidicto is a great example o a positive social deviant , he is constantly looking for new and better ways of doing things. In addition to the previous examples I can say that he was the first person in Mwazisi to start using a treadle pump, to plant sunflowers in the rainy season, to start growing climbing vines on his house to make it cooler in the hot months, and many other things.

I’ve seen him laughed at and made fun of for being different pleanty of time but he always smiles, shrugs his shoulders and says “We shall see.” Often times people see that he was right, and that’s when they start making changes. It takes somebody like Benidicto to first be willing to be different and try something that might not work to pave the way for change. I may not be the great social innovator that I hoped to be when I first joined Peace Corps, but I am happy to keep feeding ideas to Benidicto and see where he can run with them, without him and people like him I can’t imagine how ideas would evolve in Mwazisi.

Project: Mwazisi Beekeepers Workshop

2009-08-09T13:45:00.003+03:00

This past week we held our first serious Mwazisi beekeepers association training. The idea for the training came to me when a friend of mine from USAid gave me a set of instructional beekeeping videos in Chichewa. The videos were produced by an NGO called Compass 2 that were trying to provide Malawian beekeepers with technical training to build the business country wide. It’s over six hours of videos explaining how to build a top bar hive, the equipment needed, transferring from traditional hives, colony management and division, harvesting, processing, and business.

My dilemma was that my beekeepers come from all over the mwazisi valley an area spanning over 20km. I can barely get people to come together for an association meeting once every few months, so getting everybody together to watch several hours of video would be a challenge. I decided to turn it into an all inclusive three day workshop, where the videos would be mixed with practical sessions where we would go out and do some of the things we were learning in the videos. I also asked Mwazisi's best beekeeper Village Headman Magogoninga to add some theoretical sessions to supplement the videos information.

I had two planning meetings with a handful of association members beforehand to get everything organized. We decided to make it as low budget as possible. All of the participants would carry a plate of maize flower and 150 mk to cover lunch. We figured this would weed out the people who weren't really serious about beekeeping, but were expecting the handouts and allowances that usually come with NGO trainings (a very crippling method of development in my opinion). We set the dates for August the 3rd through the 5th, the week after a major football tournament that has a prize of MK50,0000 for the first place team. This would surely dominate the attention of the entire community, so I didn't want it to conflict with our training.

I hung posters advertising, and over fifty people had registered by the week before the training was supposed to start. Unfortunately that weekend there were two funerals near Mwazisi. A funeral brings everything to a halt. Even if people aren't close to the deceased, and don't go to the funeral they close up their business, or stop any public activities out of respect. This is why the football tournament was stopped in the quarterfinals and postponed to Monday, the first day of my training. At one of the funerals I asked some of the beekeepers if they thought I should postpone the training. They said "No, if people want to watch football, then let them go, people who are serious will come." So we left everything as planned; 8am-4pm Monday through Wensday.

Come 8:00am Monday morning I find myself sitting outside a locked classroom by myself. Fuming mad I head over to the teacher's house who promised to unlock the classroom powered with solar panels before 7am. When I get there he tells me that another teacher brought the TV screen home to watch on his car battery, and he's gone to Rumphi and locked the house so we can't get it. I rush back home to get my laptop. On the road I see one of the members and ask "mulutenge?" (are you going?) He looks at my watch and smiles "8 yakwhana yayi" (8 isn't o.k.). I hang my head and mutter "this god damn town."

By the time I get back a few of the participants are waiting with Mgogoninga. I let them in and try to set up the laptop to occupy them with the introduction video while we wait for others to come. I run up to Benidicto's house, who's also supposed to teach a few sessions. By the time I get back I find there are about 15 participants, and Mgogoninga has started teaching. When I ask why they stopped the video, they say there is no power…I'm baffled, I made sure nobody used the battery over the weekend, so that the batteries would have a chance to get a full charge. It takes me about twenty minutes of trying different converters, and fiddling with the invertor before I figure out that students plugging in their cell phone chargers in the next door classroom has shorted out the system. So finally I am able to start the video on hive construction.

I run over to give the women we hired to cook lunch the pots, and food. I spend the next half hour running errands for them…"get more salt…cooking oil…onions…firewood." When I get back I find the video has finished and Bwana Mizito, the carpenter we assigned the task of teaching how to build the hives practically is taking everybody out to the workbench. He teaches efficiently and effectively, by lunchtime we have a completed hive, and has even let the participants try their hand at making top bars with his plain.

Magogoninga teaches theory most of the afternoon, and is absolutely the star of the show. He's a teacher by profession, and teaches from organized lesson plans. He shares his knowledge on everything from choosing selecting an apiary, to bee behavior. I was amazed, watching the whole class fully engaged, and diligently scribbling notes in their notebooks, and asking questions. I begin to regret my early morning blasphemy.

Each successive goes more smoothly as we fall into a pattern, people show up closer to 8:00am and we follow each video with a practical session to keep it from getting to cumbersome. Mzito finishes the first hive, and teaches everybody how to make top bars from palm fronds to save money on planks. Benidicto also teaches sessions on how to make beekeeping cheaper, by showing the group a beesuit made from maize sacks that my friend Greg Dorr gave him two years ago. He also shows the group a cheep model of a hive made from bamboo and sealed with mud plaster another friend Elihu Isele taught me to make last year. He then has the entire group take part in a session where we build a lighter version of the same design using waste paper and cassava flour paper-mache.

Sadly yet another funeral in Mgogoninga's home area meant he couldn't come to the last day, but we still have a jam packed day anyways. Mrs. Kataya the wildlife extension officer for Vwaza comes with two visitors a Malawian PhD student studying Environmental Studies at the University of Budapest, with his Canadian professor who is conducting surveys with communities living around game reserves about their interaction with the wildlife. They sit in on a session that I teach about business, budgeting and grant writing in Chitumbuka. Afterwards the Proffesor said "that looked mentally exhausting." Hell yeah it was! Most of these concepts are pretty new, and wouldn't have a direct translation, even if I have mastered this language, which I certainly haven't. Mentally exhausting seems like a pretty good description of every day for me…maybe that's just the result of youth full concussions.

In the afternoon we baited one of Mzito's hives, and took a little field trip to hang it on a nearby mountain. Our last lesson is a disscussion about the way forward in Mwazisi. We decide that it's best for everybody to remain in their family groups or small local clubs of 10 or so people, and work on getting up to ten occupied hives per person. The Beekeeper's association is more of an informal gathering where we can share information, and bulk all of our honey so that processors can buy it larger quantities. We manage to finish the last video around 5:00pm.

I was walking on air afterwards. It was the most successful gathering I have organized as a Peace Corps volunteer, and it didn't take any outside money. I'm sure I taught less then a quarter of the sessions. Bwana Mgogoninga, Benidicto, and Bwanna Mzito all turned out to be spectacular teachers, and never even thought of asking for anything in return for all of their time and effort. It's people like them that made my decision to extend for a third year an easy one. I think the football tournament was a blessing in disguise. Because it weeded my large pool of participants down to just the most serious and interested individuals. We had 25 to 30 people each day coming from a variety of areas. I know I can work with any of these individuals and expect the same seriousness and genuine effort, and that makes me pretty damn hopeful for my next few months here.

Back in Mwazisi

2009-07-03T23:13:00.001+03:00

After being away for close to two months I was actually a bit nervous about going back to Mwazisi. Would people feel like I had abandoned them and left all of our projects hanging in the air while I went to go play on bikes in Mozambique? I felt a streak of my families catholic guilt, for leaving so much of my work unfinished for so long. But actually it was the perfect time to take a break. I wouldn't have gotten anything done while everybody was busy bailing and taking their tobacco to the auction floors. The Agriculture office construction is on hold while we are waiting for money from the department of agriculture so we can install the window frames.

I felt stupid for worrying about coming back because everybody welcomed me back with warm smiles and open arms. It feels a bit like coming home, being surrounded by familiar people and places again. Everything just feels good, the genuine glow in peoples eyes when they say “Machona Danny” (You've been missing). It doesn't feel like a guilt trip, but instead a sincere concern for when I'd be back. There were a lot of rumors that I had decided to leave and go back to America, because I was frustrated with the holdups in all of our projects. But others knew I would be back, and quelled rumors. I am happy to have proved them right, and came back energized and anxious to get back to work.

I was happy to find things pretty much as I left them. The pond is still full, and fish are healthy. The trees we out planted have grown significantly since I left. For the first week it felt like everything was a rediscovery; running up the hills that lead down to Mwazisi at sunrise; the ear to ear smile on the face of Sara (my favorite mandazi lady) as she greets me with her best American impression “HI DAN!”; all of the other women selling tomatoes and dried fish trying to keep up their stony faced aloof persona, but eventually relenting a smile to my broken Timbuka teasing; sitting on my front porch eating peanuts and chatting with my best friends Kavisepo and Benidicto; and the satisfied fatigue as I walk back from a good days work in the garden chewing on sugar cane at sunset. I didn't realize how I missed my daily routines until I rediscovered them.

I've also rediscovered all my old frustrations as well: no show meetings, the trapped aggravation every time a drunk corners me into a conversation on the street, being the only person who shows up to work on a project that is supposed to be a group project, the endless delays and lost paperwork that I deal with every time I go to town to try and work through the bureaucracy, the general disorder that makes getting anything done seem impossible.

Then whenever I get to my wits end with frustration, somebody always seems to go above and beyond to help me or do something nice for me, which makes me feel silly for being so dang pissed off. I guess you need those frustrations and low points to fully appreciate the good things. You need a drunk to call you an azungu and demand your money, in order to be astonished by the hungry kid on the matola who offers to share his greasy bag of chips with you.

Inhambane and Surfing Tofo Beach

2009-05-25T15:55:00.006+03:00

From Masinga we rode to Maxixe where we loaded our bikes on a dhow to cross the bay to Inhambane. We had the sun setting behind us and a nearly full moon rising over Inhambane cityin front of us; a beautiful setting for the slow calm boat ride across the bay. We checked into a Pensao after sunset and found a little seafood restaurant where I had a huge Barracuda steak. We took a walk around Inhambane's empty streets afterwards. It's a really nice sleepy waterside city with a mixture of modern garden lined avenues and old colonial style architecture. I was amazed how clean and well kept the city was. It was probably the most well developed and well cared for small city I have seen in the past two years.

It's also a city full of history, as one of of Mozambique's oldest coastal towns. The next morning we checked out a little cultural and city history museum. Apparently Arabic traders started coming to the area as early as the 11th century for the textiles, and by the time the Portuguese arrived in the early 16th century it had a very well established cotton spinning industry. I think this early exposure to outsiders might explain why Southern Mozambique seems so much more developed than the North and other countries more inland. By the mid 1800's Inhambane became a primary port for exporting Ivory and then slaves. Soon 1500 slaves were passing through its ports every year; a really dark chapter in the areas past, but also the time when it was most thriving. The slave trade is what made Inhambane into one of the biggest ports in Mozambique at the time, but with abolition Inhambane began it's gradual decline which increased dramatically when Maputo passed it up as the main trade hub. Now Inhambane has become a really charming quiet little city, but Wiz made the prediction that in a few years it's going to become a huge tourist draw like Zanzibar.

From Inhambane we rode to Tofo beach. We were excited to go there for diving, but I was a little disappointed because it was such a different experience than our nice chill dive with Denis in Vilanculos. Tofo is a big destination for divers to come and see big stuff like whale sharks and Manta Rays. Unfortunately on our dive we didn't see either and I felt like it was a dive factory. They were just getting as many people down to the reef as possible and back up to get their money. Although the dive became worth it for me because of another awesome encounter with a loggerhead turtle. I saw his massive shell coming towards us from about 15 meters away in the dark. Wiz must have been right when he said turtles are attracted to him because the turtle literally swam right through the middle of us. I think it would be more accurate to say the turtle was attracted to me though, because at one point it veered off of it's course and swam up and over my shoulder. I tried to remember to breath as my heart stopped and I stayed perfectly still to try to not scare him away. That was enough to make the dive worth it, but we decided not to take any more. Scuba Diving is an awesome experience, but unfortunately I think its a bit too expensive of a sport for me to do much of.

Surfing on the other hand is much more up my alley and apparently we were in the right place for it. We were camping at turtle cove, which is a big surfer hangout. The characters we met there completely fit the image of surfing that I have in my surfer wannabee head. The most unforgetable character was a man named Bruce Gold; an old time surfer that looks like a cross between Gandolff the Wizard and one of the Beach Boys. He always keeps his long beard tied in a knot under his chin and dawns a tattered straw cowboy hat that makes him look even more gandolffish. He and his friend Shawn were in a big tent across from ours. They had clearly been staked there for an extended period of time. I later found out that Shawn was actually traveling with Bruce to film him for surf movies...apparently Bruce has quite a following of fans who live vicariously through him by watching his surf adventures on a website called "live the life". He was never around during the day obviously because he was chasing swells, but at night he could ussually be found reading by candlelight in his tent or blending bizzare mixtures of food into super meal drinks.

One night I went over to talk with him while he had dinner. He was drinking a solution of ground up legumes mixed with ginger, honey, coconut milk, and some other things that I missed in his South African accent. Wiz and I were preparing to go out to a full moon party on the beach, so I had a bottle of Tipo Tinto (cheap local rum) that he took a cap full of and mixed into his concoction. While he told me some stories about the surfers that had rolled through his hometown of Richards Bay, he sipped on his dinner and chomped on a bread roll that made his beard swing back and forth between sentences. Most of the time though Bruce just wanted to hear about our bike trip, and what I was doing in Malawi. He was really excited to hear that I am beekeeping in Malawi. He wanted to know all about what the different honeys tasted like based on what flowers they were pollinating, and generally about bee behavior. He was an interesting guy to talk to and incredibly modest. When I left I told him that I have only surfed a handful of times a couple years ago but I had a blast once I got up and am really eager to surf some more.

Sure enough the next morning Sean was outside my tent bright eyed and bushy tailed calling me to go surfing. I had a late night at the full moon party, so I was a bit less than enthusiastic, but I didn't want the to miss the opportunity to surf with these guys, so I downed as much water as I could, ate a fried egg and hopped in the back of their truck to go out to Tofino beach. I had only surfed 3 times before and that was three years ago in Ireland, so it took a while to get the hang of it again. Bruce and I stuck together making a circle taking turns paddling out and against the rip tide then paddling into a wave. He watched me and yelled out advice; "get your nose down into the wave," " when the wave grabs you get your weight back and let it pull you." When it was his turn to catch a wave, I watched with amazement how smoothly and easily he paddled into every wave. When I said that to him, he grinned and said "I paddle with intention!"

I took my fair share of complete wash-outs, but after a while I really started to get the feeling. My paddling got more efficient and I could get up and ride the waves all the way back in. The more I got the hang of it, the more addicted I was and the more stoked I was to paddle back out and catch another. The feeling of the wave grabbing you, and pulling your board is an unmatchable sensation. I can see why it's so addicting. I can also see why so many people idolize Bruce. He's found his passion, and he lives it every day. I would definitely say that he is "living the life."

The End Of a Great Ride

2009-05-25T15:30:00.005+03:00

From Tofo we rode down the Inhambane peninsula where we stayed with Anthony a health volunteer from New york. He fed us spaghetti and we got a good night sleep before riding about 90 km to Quisicco to stay with another Peace Corps teacher named Molly. Molly is a biology teacher living in probably one of the most beautiful peace corps sites I have ever seen. She takes her morning swim in a series of large fresh water lagoons next to her school. She lives in a nice little house next to the catholic church. Her yard is full of exotic plants and well kept gardens. We ate our dinner out in her garden patio, while we listened to the church choir practice next door; a great way to enjoy our meal.

The next morning we got our earliest start yet, we were able to cover 140 km despite having to stop to patch a flat tire, and replace two more broken spokes. That was our longest day so far, which was good preparation for the day I was planning for myself the following day. Wiz decided he was going to spend an extra day in Xai Xai and take a bus to Maputo because our allotted time in Mozambique was nearing an end, and we both wanted to have a couple days to enjoy the big city. I agreed we needed to get to Maputo, but decided I wanted to give myself one more big challenge to cap off the bike tour. That night we stayed with Zach our last and most mind blowingly generous Peace Corps host of all. From Zach's house in Changuen to Maputo was bout 225km...85 km longer than our longest day up to that point. My plan was to leave at four in the morning, pack a lunch, and ride all day to get to Maputo before sun down. If I didn't make it, I knew Peace Corps volunteers that lived just before the city limits I could stay with. So the night before I greased my chain, patched my spare tires, and got my rear tire as true as I could get it. I made three peanut butter and honey sandwiches and loaded up my saddlebags before getting to bed early.

That morning I actually woke up a half hour before my alarm was supposed to go off at 4:00 am, and was actually spry enough to start riding early. I rolled out of chenguen with a beanie and a headlamp stuffed under my helmet into the cold dark quiet. The sun hadn't even rose yet and I had been riding for over an hour when I got my first flat tire just outside of XaiXai, but I was able to patch it fast and get back out on the road by 6:00 am. I stopped on a bridge to take some pictures of the sunrise over the Limpopo river.

The warmth from the first glimmers of sunlight energized me. The shoulder was wide and there were almost no cars on the road so I started listening to my I-pod. I found myself in a rhythm and everything seemed to be working in harmony, my leg muscles were in direct unison with the bikes gears, and my tires glided over the smooth pavement just like they were set on rails. I must have kept an average speed of over 25 mph for over 2 hours. I didn't feel any fatigue, the music bumping in my headphones seemed to surge directly into my legs and my peddles pumped in harmony with the flying violins, and piano of the Amalie soundtrack, or the bumping hip hop beats of Blackalicious. Before 10:00am I realized I was almost to Macia which is over a third of the way to Maputo, I was way ahead of where I thought I would be and I still felt great.

When I got to Macia I realized that I broke two more spokes. I decided to take a break and fix them while I had access to a good pump. I didn't want them all to start going out on me while I was out in the middle of nowhere. I put in the new spokes and gobbled two sandwiches and got back out on the road by 10:30. I got back up to a good pace again and had been riding for about an hour when I blew my rear tire Again!! Damn! I was absolutely in the middle of nowhere, and cursing up a storm. While I was taking my tire off a very kind Mozambican lawyer named Helder stopped and offered me a ride. He could throw my bike in the back of his truck, and he was going all the way to Maputo. The cyclist in me wanted to patch my tire and press on, but not bad enough to trump the Peace Corps volunteer in me that couldn't pass up such a dream hitch. It turned out to be the right decision; Helder was the most shining example of Mozambican hospitality that I encountered the whole trip. Not only did he drive my bike and I all the way to Maputo in his brand new truck, but when we got there he took me to his favorite seafood restaurant for lunch and even took the time to drive me around and give me a quick tour of his beloved home city.

In the end I didn't achieve my big 200km epic day, but I wasn't too broken up about it. We weren't really riding for the bragging rights. We rode our bikes through Mozambique because we wanted to see the country at our own pace, unbeholden to any pushy minibus drivers, or unreliable bus schedules. Also you see a place in an entirely different way when your traveling through it on a bike. You can make eye contact and share a smile with the people you pass along the way. Not every encounter was so rosy; there was the obnoxious drunks screaming for money, or the ill-mannered teenagers entertaining their friends by calling us Mulungu. But those encounters were far and few between when compared to the good ones. The good encounters I won't forget:

-Passing by a waving smiling group of children, and making them squeal with joy
as I let go of my handle bars to give them a two-handed wave.
-Flashing a smile and a hang loose sign at the slack-jawed starring boy, to remind him that he is actually looking at a human being, which he responds to with a giant
grin and an enthusiastic thumbs up.
-Seeing the appreciation on an old women's face when I slow down to tip the brim of my bike helmet like a cowboy hat, and show my respect with a “Bon Dia Donna.”

Those are the encounters that are most important, and they certainly wouldn't have been as frequent if we were traveling by planes, trains, or automobiles.

Another great benefit of biking was the feeling I felt that morning. I guess you could call it a bikers high. The feeling when everything just clicks and peddling no longer feels like a labor, but a rush. I've had similar feelings on the football field or basketball court; where you no longer feel like you need to think before your muscles act, your legs just fly beneath you, and every tackle or shot just feels effortless. It's the same feeling the writer has when the words just seem to write themselves, in one flowing stream of thought to pen. Or for the musician who's melody just comes pouring out of their instrument in perfect tempo and rhythm. It's the feeling of life flowing at you and being fully in the moment. I never thought I'd get such a high from riding a bike, but I felt it that morning with palm groves whizzing by and birds cruising along on my pace, I felt as alive as I've ever felt...and it felt good!

Our last few days in Mozambique were spent enjoying Maputo with great people. After two years of being a huge spectacle in a small African village it was really nice being anonymous in a big city. Zach and Ali came to town with us to play host, and they were awesome at it. During the day I entertained myself riding my bike up and and down busy streets named after communist leaders from around the world (Rua de Mao Ze Dung or Karl Marx Boulevard). I felt like a bike messenger trying to keep up with the flow of traffic, weaving around buses, and dodging opening car doors. I saw many of the museums and tourist sites by biking during the day. At night we were in Zach's hands, which is good because the man has his thumb on the pulse of Maputo's social jugular. We went to all night open air dance parties in backwater alleyways, drank beers and rode bumper cars with the dutch ambassador, and made friends with cool and interesting people all along the way.

I would have loved to have spent a few more days in Maputo, or even continued on with Wiz to South Africa, but riding through Mozambique took longer than I thought, and my vacation time was finished. I have a garden to tend to in Mwazisi, and I'm ready to get back to my home away from home. My last night in town a British ex-pat approached me, and said she heard I had a bike I might be willing to sell. I hesitantly acknowledged that I did. The purple people eater and I had been through a lot together, but it was silly to haul it back to Malawi especially when she was offering to buy it for the exact same amount as I bought it for. When the bike was sold the trip was officially over. I hugged Wiz goodbye, and got on a 4:00am bus that took 36 hours to get back to Tete. I crossed the border just in time to see Malawi celebrating a peaceful and successful election. It was a great trip, and Mozambique has etched out a big place in my heart, but it's really nice to be back in Malawi. After my first official vacation since starting as a Peace Corps volunteer I feel recharged and ready to dive back into my work.

Chimoio, Vilanculos, and Partying with Peace Corps Moz

2009-05-24T11:32:00.004+03:00

From Gorongosa we made a little detour to Chimoio to meet up with the dynamic duo from Dedza: Rob and Jason. We knew we wouldn't catch them on the coast because they were passing through Mozambique faster then us...obviously we're on bikes! But it was real nice spending a few days kicking around Chimoio's streets with old friends from Malawi. Chimoio was a really charming little city with Portuguese style cafes and theatres mixed with your usual crazy African Markets. We had a lot of wandering around the street markets and playing against the locals on the curb side Foosball tables.

The following day we knocked about 400km out of our trip, by loading our bikes on a bus to Inhassoro where we got our first glimpse of the Indian ocean. From there we rode to Vilanculos, but I had my first major bike problem along the way. The weight of my saddle bags started causing spokes to start breaking on my rear tire. I was cursing my head off because it was getting late, we were in the middle of nowhere, and I didn't have any spare spokes or a spoke wrench, but I was saved by the kindness of complete strangers. A trucker picked me up and brought me to the next town where I found a bike parts stand, when a guy saw me offload my bike, he asked me what was wrong? When I showed him my broken spokes he ran off and came back five minutes later with his friend a bike mechanic who had a spoke wrench. In no time he had new spokes in and the tire trued. Since the sun had already set, the owner of the bike shop offered us a room in his house. His family took good care of us feeding us and giving us a warm bucket bath. Unfortunately the problem of breaking spokes persisted, but with repetition I got better at replacing them and truing my tire. It seemed like all of our breakdowns were chances to see Mozambicans at there most generous...I was amazed how much everybody wanted to help us when we were at our most vulnerable. I certainly won't soon forget the kindness of the people of Pambarra.

Vilankulos was the tropical beach paradise that we were waiting for with it's long white beaches lined with beched dhows and palm trees. The beaches are a short dhow ride away from the Archipelago of Bazaruto; a string of islands and reefs that make up the WWF protected Bazaruto National Park. We went out to the Islands with a French dive master named Denis to dive on Two Mile reef. It was full day excursion; we did two long dives and rode around in the afternoon checking out dolphins and dugongs (a rare sea mammal, like a manatee). The Islands themselves were amazing, We climbed the biggest sand dune to see the whole island. The half of the island that we landed on was nothing but fine white sand stretching into the bluest clearest water I have ever seen. On the other side of the dune was dense green tropical forests beaming with life. It was the type of Island that I thought only existed on TV or in pictures.

The diving was also amazing. The visibility was crystal clear and the reef was beautiful. Diving is still very new to me so the sensation of just floating through the alien world under the sea with the sound of my own slow breathes in my ears is still a very cool and meditative feeling for me. So when you mix that with the bizarre and beautiful wildlife of the reef it seemed like a very lucid fantastic dream to me. Swimming trough schools of bight colored butterfly and angelfish, the moray eels creeping out of their holes in the reef to give us a silent hiss, realizing that the rock i am swimming over is actually a giant camouflaged potato grouper longer and much thicker than my leg as the big fish lifted up from the ocean floor startled by my bubbles, watching two big devil rays glide out into the deep blue, poking around the reef to spot lionfish and scorpionfish with their dangerous but decorative quills. My favorite was the two massive sea turtles that glided passed us with grace and ease. They were like the wise old Buddhas of the reef. They slowly paddled through the water with no particular panic or rush wearing their collection of barnacles to show their seniorty.

We stuck around Vilanculos for the weekend because we knew all of Peace Corps Mozambique would be descending on Baobabs for the annual beer olympics. It was a battle between the Southern Saboteurs, and the North/Central 24 hour warriors. The 24 hour crew adopted us because we are in Malawi, and that's practically central Mozambique. The events included dizzy bat, flip cup, slosh ball kick ball and shotgun beer duel. By the time the games got finished everybody lost track of the points, and the southerners managed to steal the trophy, so they were declared the winners. It was nice seeing that Mozambique volunteers get together occasionally, to blow off steam the same way we do in Malawi. We had a lot of fun hanging out with them, and ended up dancing through the night at Baobab's bar. Many of us went back down to the water late night to cool off and were in awe when we realized that there was photosynthetic plankton that made little glowing tracers with every movement in the water. It was asureal ending to a great night spent with good people.

One of the great consequences of sticking around for the party is that we met a whole lot of people that lived all around the country, and we could stay with throughout the rest of our trip. In fact our next two stops were with volunteers. First we stayed with Rachel and Amy two teachers at a mission in Mappinani. They stuffed us with chicken soup, and avocado salad. The next day we stayed with Patrick who is teaching English and art at a World bank school in Masinga. He made us a killer chicken curry. Every peace corps volunteer looked at our visit as an excuse to cook a special meal. We generally provided a bit of wine or chocolate as a thank you for the great hospitality. An awful small price to pay for such wonderful accomodation and company.

Mount Gorongosa

2009-05-02T10:07:00.004+03:00

Climbing Mount Gorongosa was at the top of our to do list since reading about all of the mythology associated with it, but it proved to be much more difficult even to find somebody who would guide us to the mountain. But the whole process turned into a great adventure.

After a couple days of asking around Gorongosa town and the national park we finally found Montinho, a wirey soft spoken young man, who was 20 years old but looked more like 15. He turned out to be a great guide, and quickly became our friend. Montinho told us that we had to go visit the chief to get permission to climb the mountain before we went, and that we also had to buy supplies for the chief to perform a ceremony to bless our journey. He needed two meters of black and white cloth, a bag of leaf tobacco, 2 packs of cigarettes, a box of matches, a jug of wine, and a bottle of rum. Sounds like a hell of a ceremony, I guess the Regulo has to have a party in our honor before we hike. The chief was named Regulo Canda, and he seemed like a good guy, although a bit hung over. I was disappointed he didn't share any of the booze, but before we left he pointed to the mountain with a smile and said paridiso, which made me really want to get up there.

We rode our bikes about 27 km to actually get to the mountain. We left our bikes at a base camp at the foot of the mountain, and cooked lunch before we started hiking. I was glad the no shoes rumor was bogus because the grass was so tall and the trail was so overgrown that I couldn't see my knees let alone what was under my feet. but it was a beautiful hike through the golden grass meadows at sunset. We arrived to a dense forest just after sundown, and set up our tent there for the night.

The next morning we got to see just how beautiful the forest actually was. It was much denser than most of the forests I've seen in Malawi, and Wiz said it actually reminded him of the rainforests in Hawaii. It seemed like there was life absolutely everywhere, all interweaving and climbing over each other Some of the trees must have been hundreds of years old because they were massive, and looked all the more ancient because all of the layers of vines growing over them. It was a bit of a slippery walk over the wet logs, and moss covered rocks. The forest went all the way to the top, and then seemed to stop abruptly at the top of the mountain.

The top was actually a massive plateau with wide open grass meadows and clouds that were right on top of the grass pushing across the field through to the distant peaks. We climbed the the nearest peak to us, which was the highest and had a radio antenna on top. The last section got real slippery and sketchy with big cliffs on all sides, so that was the only section that I did barefoot. There was a watchman living at the top living with his family. I found there secluded lives up there fascinating, kind of like an old man living up in the lighthouse. It would take a very content soul to live that life, and certainly seemed that. He had a warm welcoming smile, and he leisurely walked up to the top with us. We shared a few bread rolls with peanut butter and honey with him as we lingered to enjoy the view. A couple times the wind pushed some holes in the clouds beneath us so we could just how far we had climbed. It was magnificent!

We climbed down the other side which was an even denser forest. The trees weren't as tall but it was much bushier, so it seemed like the trail was a tunnel bored straight through the forest. That was a long steep down hill hike, but the reward came at the end with a huge three tiered waterfall. We took a long break there to climb around on the rocks and play around in the mist.

Then we rushed to get back to our bikes before it got to late. We ripped down the dirt paths on our bikes racing the sunset, and got back to the tarmac road just after dark. The last eight km on the smooth road were very welcome after the long day we had. We stayed with Jared and Tara a Peace Corps couple in Gorongosa, and shared the stories from our hike over a hearty pasta meal. We were surprised when they told us that they nor any other Mozambique volunteers still hadn't climbed the mountain yet, which made us feel all the more proud of having checked it off our list.

Catapu Forest, Dinner with Sr. Tejas, and Gorongosa

2009-04-21T15:51:00.010+03:00

From Caia we were on the tarmac for a beautiful ride through the Catapu forest at sunset. We were passed by maybe four cars during the three hours of riding, and it was mostly down hill so I kept an average speed of about 20mph. It wasn't all roses though, I got my first case of Mozambican diarrhea during this ride which got progressively more violent that night, but I'll spare you the ugly details, any Peace Corps friends reading this can look forward to that story over a beer next time we meet.

We read about a cool forest lodge in lonely planet that turned out to be an awesome surprise. It was tucked away in the Catapu forest and is run by a company that is making furniture from the native forest, I don't know how sustainable their business is, but the forest surrounding the lodge and all along the road looks pretty virgin. The lodge was really nice, like one of the high end chalets in yellowstone or Yosemite, but with very few visators, and we got our own bungalow for $12. Wiz ate a fantastic dinner with good Beer, while I stuck to rice and soup. The restaurant had a great ambiance, it was outside and warmed by a fire pit. The owner came and talked to us, and when he heard we were heading to Gorongosa he told us he had a truck heading that way in the morning, and offered to load us and our bikes in the back.

We're no purists about riding our bikes so we took the 270km ride to Gorongosa town, which gave me a chance to recover from my stomach ailment, and gave us a full day to search for a guide to take us up Gorongosa Mountain, which is known for it's spirits and needs a series of ceremonial rituals in order to climb...hence the guide. We had no luck finding a guide and decided to proceed to Gorongosa National Park, before we attempt to climb.

That night we had dinner with an extremely interesting old Mozambiqan man of Portuguese decent named Mario Tejas. His father moved here in 1905, and he was born and raised in Northern Mozambique. He loved telling us the stories of his life and travels to the Americas, where he worked in the cruise line industry. His eyes were full of expression, especially when talking about women; "Oh that Mexican women! What can I say?...She was truly like an angel...I'm saying she glowed!" He explained to us that red wine keeps mosquitoes away. And told us the story of the South African couple in a pristine Cadillac that found him when he was eighteen and had him get a mining license. They went to a remote corner in the bush and they walked out with a small bag of rocks the women called crystals. They gave him a small sum of money that seemed like a fortune to an eighteen year old, and dissapeared. It wasn't until he was in Miami many years later that he realized that they were uncut diamonds and the couple walked away with a real fortune. He went back to the same spot years later, and nearly died from Malaria while looking for diamonds. He said he promised God he would leave and never come back if he could live. A promise he has kept, until now. He's almost eighty years old and when we saw him he was on his way back from Maputo with another mining license heading back to that same spot. At the end of dinner he said, "When I look back at my life I'd say it's been 85% suffering, and 15% enjoying...you know with women and wine and dancing." When I asked him if the 15% was worth the 85% he simply shook his head and said "naw." But something about the smile on his face told me he was lying.

The next morning the ride to the Park Gates was beautiful. Over the sound of our own tires on the path we could hear Baboons barking in the distance mixed with the birds singing in the trees over head. As we got closer to the gate the forest got denser and more tropical looking. We couldn't bring our bikes into the park, so we locked them in an office and loaded our katundu into a passing park truck to get to Chitengo camp.

We camped at Chitengo and did a game drive this morning with a local guide. It was the first real Safari I've taken in Africa and it was incredible. Gorongosa is beautiful, and even though most of the animals were poached during the long civil war by Renamo troops which were based near the park, it is now making an amazing comeback. Mostly thanks to a foreign consessioneer called the Carr Foundation (No relation). They have been working very well with the surrounding communities to rebuild animal populations, reforest the area around Mount Gorongosa, and generate income for the people who have been living here.

Now Gorongosa is an up and coming National Park that I would recommend to anybody passing through Mozambique. We saw tons of Waterbuck, Warthogs, cCrocodiles, Baboons, Vervet monkeys, Oribi, Nyala, Impala, and Reedbuck. We also saw Lichenstein Hartebeest, and Sable which are very rare in Gorongosa. They are both massive muscular animals. Watching their fluid bounds in between the trees was really like watching poetry in motion. We also saw some amazing big birds like fish eagle, marabou stork, and white backed vultures that were preying on a giant tortoise carcase. It always gives me a big rush when I see big birds like that spread their wings and take flight.

The Safari was worth every penny, and afterwards when we were telling our driver about our trouble finding a guide he told us that there are no organized guides going up yet, because the park is still negotiating with the local communities, but he hooked us up with a guy in Gorongosa town who knows the mountain real well, so tomorrow we are going to back track a bit and go see the chiefs to do the pre-climb ceremony. All we know so far is that we are supposed to bring wine, tobbacco, and cloth as offerings; we can't wear red on the mountain, and we have to do the two day hike barefoot. So that will be our next adventure!

Out The Tail of Malawi, and Over The Great Zambezi

2009-04-21T13:42:00.006+03:00

I made my last post in Blantyre Malawi, and we are now in Gorongosa Mozambique, so we have covered plenty of ground since then and experienced a lot along the way.

From Blantyre we rode down another big escarpment to Chikwawa, which was a lot of fun for Wiz but kind of sucked for me because I was testing out my new spare foam tire that is puncture proof. It seemed like a wise purchase because I can't find any spare tubes in Malawi with a small enough gauge to fit into my rear tires rim, but the foam tire is ungodly slow. It's kind of like riding on a flat tire, so it just sapped all of my energy and made the day hell for me. It also didn't help that the temperature kicked up about ten degrees when we got to Chikwawa. We crossed the Shire River and got to Ross Perkins' house. Ross was the last Peace Corps volunteer we stayed with, and he spoiled us like all the other volunteers with a great dinner and hospitality. Needless to say the first thing I did was take off that God Forsaken tire, and put back on my tube.

We were a little worried about biking through Chikwawa and Nsanje districts because they are known for being the hottest and most desolate districts in Malawi. We managed to cover both districts in one long day of riding...but man that was a long day! I'm still not sure how accurate the computer on my bike is, but it showed that we covered exactly 75 miles in one day, and much of that was on dirt roads. We got into Chikwawa around 7:00pm checked into a guesthouse, had a hearty meal of goat and rice after washing the layer of dirt off of us, and crashed out for the night.

The next morning we were pleasantly surprised to see that Nsanje boma was nestled into a beautiful little valley with forests and mountains all along the border, while the rest of Nsanje and Chikwawa were flat as a pancake...I'd say the landscape is very similar to East Texas (I probably also draw the comparison because the main industries there are cattle, cotton, and sugar cane). We had another thirty kilometers on the dirt road before we reached the border. We realized what a podunk border crossing this was when we stopped in one of the border towns for tea and saw how shocked everybody was to see travelers passing through. A crowd of children surrounded our bikes and stared at our katundu, and a guy who we had tea with, said that the last tourists to come through passed in January. The border guards got a good laugh when we told them we were biking to South Africa, and with that we shot out of the absolute bottom of Malawi.

It was just as bush on the Mozambique side, we got the same stares of disbelief from the villagers we passed by. The immediate differences were a lot more abandoned buildings Freelimo flags instead of DPP posters, Bon Dia instead of Muli Bwangi, and beer in a can instead of a bottle. So Wiz and I decided to celebrate our border crossing by shotgunning a Laurintina Negro at ten in the morning. There was nobody around to witness our spectacle, but the dark beer had a much stronger affect on our riding ability than we expected.

We took a break just outside of a large refugee camp to get some shade and eat some bread rolls and peanut butter for lunch. We still haven't figured out what the inhabitants were refugees from but the UN tents were old and tattered, So it seemed like they have been there for quite a long time. Everybody we talked to was very nice, and patient with our limited Portuguese mixed with Spanish and Chichewa (Chisena is the local vernacular and its another Bantu language close to Chichewa).

We got to Mutorara around 3:00pm and decided to stay at a Pension run by a really awesome old couple that took very good care of us. We took an evening walk to check out the Zambezi which we still hadn't seen but knew it was on the other side of the hill. We got off the path that the Senhora at the Pension told us to follow as we followed the sound of a church choir. When we realized we didn't really know how to get back on the path we climbed up a big rock to see where the heck we were.....Bam! holy cow there was the massive Zambezi river in all its glory glowing underneath a beautiful sunset. It was an exhilarating moment, we were overlooking the entire town tin shanties and mud huts mixed with abandoned Portuguese buildings, and modern houses that you would never see in an equivalent sized town in Malawi. Everybody beneath us was carrying out their evening chores; The fishermen were bringing their boats in with the days catch, women were carrying baskets of clothes on their heads they had washed in the river, naked children were bathing and playing in the rivers inlets, and the last few travelers from Sena were pushing their bikes across the 2.5 mile long bridge that we would ride across in the morning.

Most of all we were blown away by the sheer size of the Zambezi river. It seemed to me to be every bit as wide as every section I have seen of the Mississippi. The bridge that spans it is Ponta De Donna Anna. It is an industrial marvel built in 1934 with just a railroad track and a small catwalk. riding our bikes across was a trip; weaving around women carrying fruit on their heads, and having motorcycles weave around us on the narrow catwalk. We stopped every now and then to look for crocodiles and hippos, and just admire the skyline; from the Zambezi wetlands to the Mountains off in the distance. The rest of the day was the long hot ride to Caia, on an empty dusty road.

Malawian Push Bike Tour

2009-04-14T12:09:00.002+03:00

We have biked over 260 miles since we left Lilongwe on Wednesday. We are still in Malawi bee-bopping our way down the country staying with Peace Corps volunteers all along the way. The ride has been beautiful, and all of our hosts have been overwhelmingly gracious. Staying with Peace Corps volunteers is the way to go. Everybody has wanted to cook elaborate meals for us and share their goodies from home and booze... It’s great!

Our first day was a late start, which meant that we were stuck riding after sun down on the M1. It was more than a little bit sketchy with the traffic, but we decided to continue on because it was a bright full moon. We were held up even more by a flat tire, so we got to Jason Colvin’s house sometime after 9:00pm. Jason had a visitor and they were kind enough to cook a Polynesian Pork stew that was wonderfully reviving after our rough start. We learned our lesson and certainly will not be riding again after dark.

The next morning we set out after a quick stop at Jason’s favorite tea house. On the road we met a small convoy of travelers that saw our saddle bags and pulled over to talk to us. It was a couple on motorcyclists being trailed by two Australians in a little car. One of the motorcyclists was a Swiss man who had been traveling on his bike for the past 22 months, and had already crossed Australia, and brought his bike by Ferry to South East Asia. He traveled all through Asia, including East Timor, which he said was a very welcoming country where people were just happy to see travelers in their country. It was great chatting, and sharing traveling advice with them. We gave them the phone number for some Peace Corps volunteers in Liwonde, whom they stayed with that night.

Most of the riding trough Dedza was uphill and slow going, but the payoff came when we got to ride down the Escarpment from Dedza to Ntcheu. The view from the top was mind-blowing, you could see all the way to the lake in the North, and to the south was a perfectly flat landscape with scatterings of mountains that really stick out of nowhere reminding me that I’m still biking down the Great Rift Valley. We started down the steep road slow, stopping often to take pictures and enjoy the view, but as we got more comfortable with the idea of controlled falling, we let gravity take over, and enjoyed the ride. It was an awesome sensation flying around hairpin turns, with nothing except the sound of the wind rushing by you. That’s one of my favorite things about traveling by bike; it’s a silent mode of transport. There is something very exhilarating about flying down a hill at forty miles an hour, and not having a motor drowning out the world around you. I still hear the bird’s call above me, the water flowing over the waterfall below, even the sound of the air rushing by. It feels very natural. The closer we got to the bottom the more comfortable we felt letting momentum take control and stopped braking. I guess it felt safer because we didn’t have as far to fall. The fastest I noticed my bikes computer get up to was 48 mph, but I felt like I was going much faster.

After finishing our rollercoaster ride down the escarpment we felt the temperature heat up about ten degrees and moved pretty slow over the long flat stretch to Jenny Keller’s house in Bwange. Jenny is hosting a new Trainee named Jake who will be an environment volunteer in Salima, but this week he is doing a shadow visit at Jenny’s house to see what day to day Peace Corps life is like. They cooked us another great meal, egg and Potatoe soup, as well as some Macaroni and cheese Jenny had gotten from home. As it turned out the night we stayed there was the first night of a drumming festival for the church of Zion (possibly to celebrate Easter but we didn’t really get a straight answer from anybody). It started around 7:00pm and went off and on until about 5:00am. We thought it was pretty cool at first and went to watch a couple times, but it was literally 10 feet from her front door, so it became less cool and more annoying as the night went on. I wanted to go out and ask them, “Aren’t your hands getting tired?” but my Chichewa isn’t good enough.

The next morning we had a short ride to Balaka with the drum beat still in our heads. We had a bit of a crosswind so riding was slow. In Balaka we stayed with Erin who is a Peace Corps Response volunteer (they are people who have already served as regular Peace Corps for two years and do a shorter contract where they have a more specific job). Erin is working with the District Assembly in Balaka to do HIV and AIDS coordination. We had a great leisurely afternoon with gin and tonics along with a late lunch. (Interesting fact I learned from Erin, gin and tonics were invented by British colonialists, because Tonic water contains quinine an anti-malarial, so they just added the gin and lemon to make it more palatable…So I’m even more protected from Malaria then I thought.) We rode our bikes to meet Erin’s friends for happy hour at the four way bar. I was really surprised to see how many foreign nationals are in Balaka. There is an Italian mission in town so Balaka has a lot of Italians, but also an assortment of American and British Professors and Graduate Students doing research in everything from public health to anthropology. We went back to Erin’s house early to cook dinner and bake a cake for Wiz’s birthday the next day.

We got a full day of riding in the following day, with a brief stop off in Liwonde to meet Sarah Swenson and Bryan Payne (Peace Corps volunteers working with the game reserve) for lunch. As we rode across the long bridge over the Shire River Wiz got a great birthday surprise. A car full of women we met the night before in Balaka rode along side us as they all sang him happy birthday. Wiz is sure to be the only guy on his block who can say that he was serenaded by a choir of beautiful women over the Shire River. After lunch it was mostly uphill to the Zomba Plateau where we stayed with D’Lynn a health volunteer in the Boma. We celebrated Wiz’s birthday with D’Lynn, her roommate, Erin Clark (Peace Corps/Nurse), a box of red wine, and left over cake from Balaka.

The next morning I had a bit of a wine headache, but we still got an early start and had a great day of riding. The road leaving Zomba is a long gentle downhill that is lined on both sides by massive Eucalyptus trees. The weather was perfect and it was a fantastic sensation just coasting down the empty streets. There were very few cars on the main roads because it was Easter Sunday. I loved seeing everybody we passed wearing their Sunday best as they walked to church with their families. It was the first day I used my I-pod while riding since there was no traffic. I listened to Guy Clark, Greg Brown, JJ Cale and Robert Earl Keen, all of which seemed fitting for riding on this quiet country rode.

It may sound corny, but I can’t think of any better way to spend Easter Sunday than appreciating God’s creation, and that’s just what we did. The holiday gave me an excuse to notice things a bit more. I feel like I was more grateful than usual for everything around me; the giant granite cliffs and rock outcroppings that surround Zomba, The smell of Eucalyptus leaves under my tires, the green pastures along the road, the sensation of riding with no hands, and every smiling women or child that waved to me as I rode by. I’ll never forget the high I felt as I sang along with Robert Earl Keen “The road goes on forever and the party never ends”, with a grin on my face as I looked across a beautiful landscape that seemed to have no end.

Calypso and the Purple People Eater set sail

2009-04-08T11:07:00.002+03:00

It's official I've been approved for a third year extension. I signed the contract for my third year yesterday. I'm really excited to see how I can build on the foundation I have laid over these past two years. But first I'm going on vacation! That's right I have two months of saved up vacation that I'm going to lose if I don't use it by May. So I'm blowing it all in one shot, and joining my friend WIz on his COS trip (close of service).

Our plans are vauge and the road ahead looks long, but we are determined to ride bikes all the way to South Africa. We both bought new bikes; he has a trek 3900 that has been dubbed calypso after the Caribbean goddess of the sea, and mine is a big purple GT hybrid that I bought off a German ex-pat. Wiz rode from his sight to Lilongwe, while I replaced the shifter on my bike, and made some fun modifications with Mike Fong in Mzuzu(now its the frankenbike).

I rode down the Vipya escapment to Nkhata Bay last week to get my Scuba certification. Malawi is the cheapest place in the world to learn to scuba dive, but it is also a fascinating place to dive. during our eight dives we saw all sorts of siclids; like mouth breeders which swim around with there babies in there mouth, only spitting out the school of tiny fish when they want to eat, then when a predator comes they swoop in sucking up all the little fellas...pretty awesome to see in real life. A lot of the things featured on the Lake Malawi section of BBC's Planet Earth, we got to see throughout the course. And now I have my open water padi card, so we can both go diving in Mozambique.

From Nkhata Bay I rode to Dwambwazi to stay with Alex Coburn a health volunteer who hosted me graciously. The highlight of the that ride was flying down the hills in the rubber tree plantations. there wasn't a sole for most of it, and all I could here was the wisping of the wind through trees...hauntingly beautiful. I got stuck in the rain a lot, so the next morning I took an early morning Axa bus from Dwambwazi to Salima, where I started riding again. It was a 100km ride, but the hills made it seem endless. I got to Lilongwe at dusk and took a much needed bath.

We've been here the last couple days, preparing for the journey, but now we are setting out for the big trip south to the coast of Mozambique. I'll make posts when ever I have access, but I'm sure my writing will be rushed and difficult to decipher. So bear with me, I look forward to sharing this adventure, so please check in on my blog every now and then... and enjoy!

Mama Carr comes to Malawi

2009-03-23T15:29:00.004+03:00

It finally happened... somebody from my family finally managed to make it to Malawi. My Mom touched down in Lilongwe March 5th. Though she was only here for two weeks, I think we did a pretty good job of making an all inclusive whirlwind tour of the warm heart of Africa for next to nothing. My Mom's so sweet she didn't even want to kill me after bouncing matolas, sketchy stick bridges over flooding rivers, or the hundredth mini-bus ride.

After a couple days of rest in Lilongwe we high-tailed it all the way up to Mwazisi so we could spend my Mom's 60th birthday with my friends in Mwazisi. It was a hell of a long day of busing, but Mom took it all in stride and just laughed as she was stuffed in a minibus with 20 other sweaty passengers "This is such an adventure", she said to my relief. I had organized for my friends to greet her as she arrived on the Matola with happy birthday signs and dancing, but a couple days after I left to pick her up a friend of mine was struck by lightning, and his funeral was the day we arrived, so thankfully my friends had the good taste to cancel the celebrations. Instead we had a smaller low key celebration inside my house with some of my best friends Nya Nfuni, Nya Mbowe, Mr. Kaiyera, Nya Matika, Nya Nchese, Mr. Zgambo, and Mr. Gondwe. Those names mean nothing to most of you, but anybody who has been to my village knows that's a pretty good mixed bag of Mwazisians. We ate two chickens, a bucket of Nsima, and plenty of good Malawian delecacies. It was a birthday she certainly won't soon forget. Nya Matika's grandchildren read her a poem about motherhood, and we all sang to her which brought her to tears of joy. It was great!

The next couple of days I took her around and showed her all my projects, and introduced her to enough people to make her head spin. The highlights were finding that my fish pond managed to get stocked with fingerlings (baby fish) while I was away picking her up in Lilongwe, planting trees with my wildlife club, and Mom teaching nya Nfuni how to cook eggplant parmigiana, minus the parmigiana. From Mwazisi we went to Vwaza game reserve. We decided to hire one of the local matolas so that we could bring along some of my best friends, and because I'm a cheap skate, and the truck was so big we invited anybody else who wanted to join in if they paid 200 kwatcha, which attracted about 60 people. It turned out to be another great trip to the Game reserve. We only saw a few animals (hippos impala, and kudu), but everybody really seemed to enjoy themselves. The guys played a football match against the park staff, while the ladies played netball with the wives of the park staff, and everybody got their pictures taken in front of Lake Kazuni, and the hippos. Everybody else went back on the Matola while my Mom and I got to stay in one of the park's huts for free since I have been working with the game reserve. It was surreal falling asleep to the groans of hippos on the full moon night.

The next stop was Tukombo on the lake shore, which is my friend Wiz's site. I really wanted her to see the lake, but am too cheap to stay at a lodge, so Wiz was the logical choice. He hosted us great and fed us full. Mom got to swim, and we lounged on the beach for an afternoon which was really nice.

The next day we had an epic day of Malawian transport (we'll just say it was an adventure) to get to Mua Mission, a Catholic Mission in Dedza. The Mission has been transformed into a cultural Museum by Father Paul Boudreux a French Canadian priest who really believes in the Vatican II philosophy of embracing the worlds cultures, and adapting the liturgy to each culture. He has been here for twenty five plus years now, and is an authority in Chewa and Ngoni culture. He is particularly focused on guli wankulu dancing which is sort of a secret society in chewa culture. People talk about the guli dancers in hushed tones, and tell stories about them meeting in the woods, snatching children, and generally partaking in witchcraft, but they have many improtant ceremonial dances for rites of passage, funerals, and such. One of the best things about Mua is the art, the father is an artist, so he has made the mission into a carving and sculpting center. It seemed like everybody living there was a carver, and the mission is filled with beautiful and bizarre statues around every corner.

From Mua we went down to Zomba to stay with my friend Mark who works for USAID and booked the US Ambassadors cabin on Zomba Plateau for the weekend. The cabin was great, and the plateau is incredible, we could see all the way to Mulange on the way up. There are f pine trees that were planted on top, so with the cool weather and lakes, I felt like I was back in Colorado. We just chilled out at the cabin with Mark and some other friends; Bright and Cathrine two other environment volunteers, Tim who's working for the Clinton foundation, and Justin a South African anthropologist. We barbecued rabbit and chicken, got our fill of wine and beer, and deserted on the plateau's array of strange berries. It was great to just chill out with my Mom and friends.

I had one last bash with my Mom and friends at Mufasa's bar before putting her on the plane with a headache. I think she had a great time the whole time she was here, and it was really great for me to have her. I needed a vacation, and it was great spending it with my Mom. Most of all it was just great sharing my world here with a loved one. Now she at least has perspective as to what the past two years of my life have been all about. Sharing it with her, reminded me of how lucky I have been to be where I am, doing what I'm doing. Also her amiability was an inspiration, she must be the most low maintenance person on Earth. Her ever-posative attitude was infectious, and I hope that some of her overflowing kindness wore off on me as I go into my third and final year here.

Another International Steelers Superbowl

2009-02-03T10:35:00.003+03:00

The last time the Steelers won the superbowl I was in a small town hotel in the middle of the Pyranees, yelling in bad Spanish for the night watchman to stop changing the station because our TVs were somehow channel synchronized. This time around I was in a Rumphi bar yelling at drunken rastas in moderately better chitumbuka, “chonde chiwawa!”

I was with my friend Lucy a British VSO who didn’t know the first thing about American football, but was kind enough to keep me company for the big game. I tried not to notice that she brought along a book, but I could see that she was unimpressed with the athleticism of American football players being a devoted English soccer fan. She kept commenting on how fat so many of the guys were. I could only defend them by saying, “You wouldn’t believe how strong those guys are, and they need that weight because there only role is to use their bodies to block the other team from getting to the guy with the ball.” Lucy was also utterly frustrated with how much of the time the players were just standing around between plays. Even I was surprised to hear myself explaining “Well you see football is really a thinking man’s game, and all those guys are really strategizing and trying to read what the other team is going to do in the next play.” I could see the disbelief on her face as in two seconds of action everybody smashed into each other, and the quarterback threw an incomplete pass and seemingly absolutely nothing happened.

Lucy was also shocked by how much of the night we were wasting watching advertisements. Again, I felt sheepish explaining that they were seeing different commercials in America, “that are actually so good that some people just watch the superbowl to see the best new commercials.” In fact I felt like I spent the whole first half just defending football and the superbowl experience not just to Lucy but every completely uninterested Malawian within ear shot. I even started thinking to myself maybe this game I spent half of my life playing is kind of silly. But I promptly forgot those self-doubts as I became a jumping and screaming mad man when James Harrison intercepted a pass on the one yard line and returned it all the way for a Steeler’s touchdown. I shared a smile with the guy behind us as he imitated me in his Queen’s English accent, “Go baby Go!”

At halftime I moved into the connected restaurant to get away from the drunks screaming over Bruce Springsteen. I mean, come on man a little bit of respect for the boss! We watched the remainder of the game with the owner of the place, who prompty fell asleep at the beginning of the third quarter. I found myself apologizing to everybody around me, who I was forcing to watch this game that they clearly had absolutely no interest in. I tried to explain, “This would be like if your favourite team was playing in the FA cup, you’d have to watch it right?” I began to express regret for not accepting an invitation to go and watch the game with other Peace Corps volunteers, explaining “I guess you just have to be an American to enjoy this.”

Then the forth quarter came and Curt Warner led the cardinals back into the game, which became exciting enough for some of the waiters to stop sweeping and take notice. The owner was woken up by my moans of misery as the Steelers gave up a safety making the game painfully close. But now everybody was transfixed by the tension of the game as I broke down the situation between each play “OK the team in red is worried about time now, so they’ve stopped strategizing between plays and are just running play after play, in what is called a no huddle offence. “This is so much more exciting. Why do they ever huddle” Lucy asked, “That’s just a conversation you’ll have to have with Peyton Manning.” She also saw the light of American athleticism as she marvelled at the poetry in motion of Larry Fitzgerld gliding through the Steelers secondary. I had a hard time finding the beauty in it myself.

But my spirits quickly changed play by play as the Steelers marched down the field. My screams attracted the owners wife to come in and see what the crazy Azungu was yelling about. “OK OK, now all they have to do is get within that line with the 40 on it, and they can bring in the kicker to tie the game.” But after the Steelers got within the 20 everybody was asking where’s the kicker, why don’t they tie it? “If they get in the red it’s a touchdown, they get six points! THEY CAN WIN! This time when Santana Moss made a spectacular catch in the corner of the end zone I wasn’t the only one yelling. My cheers were accompanied by congratulatory slaps on the back from the owner. “ I like when they score touchdowns” Lucy proclaimed, as we watched Haynes Ward run to Rothesburger with his ear to ear smile for a big hug. “I’m glad I watched the super bowl” Lucy admitted as we left, and I agreed “I wouldn’t have rather enjoyed it any other way.”

So congratulations to all you yinnsers out there in Black and Gold country. Raise an Iron City Beer for me, and know that I’ll be swinging my terrible towel the whole motola ride back to the village. I'm thinking about you Carrs, Conways, and Morans, I miss and love yins guys.

Sticken Around!

2009-01-22T14:30:00.002+03:00

I think you all know by now by now that I am extending my contract in Mwazisi. I recently submitted my application and one of the sections asked me to explain my reasons for wanting to extend, so I thought I would post my answer to fill everybody in as to why I want to spend another year of my life in Mwazisi.

These past two years have been a whirlwind, and if I left Mwazisi right now I would consider my Peace Corps service to be a successful one. However I also feel that if I left right now and wasn't replaced then many of the projects I started with community members would most likely begin to putter out, and eventually be forgotten. This is just the nature of most community/group projects here in Malawi. Community projects designed to generate income generally need to be pushed through the first few business cycles in order to work out the kinks of working in a group, and give the parties involved enough of a taste of success to encourage them to continue the project. Peace Corps volunteers are in a unique position of being a part of the community, but also still enough of an outsider to provide a more objective perspective. We are also in a good position to take risks without getting burned both financially and socially if things don't work out.

For me two such projects are the continuation of the Mwazisi Beekeeper's association that I helped start, as well as several tree nurseries from Chitanga to Kwaswamesenga. Both of these projects have seen some success and are building momentum, but I fear that if I leave now these projects will stop functioning. I'm sure that a replacement would keep everything afloat, but I don't want to rely on somebody else to finish off my projects. Additionally a replacement would have the period of adjustment, learning, and finding there place in the community to go through. I will be able to just carry on with what I've been doing so far in my service and have the experience of the last two years of working in Mwazisi as a valuable tool. This experience and understanding of the community dynamics will help me to be an even more effective volunteer in my third year.

Another professional reason for me to extend in Mwazisi is the encouraging development of the Mwazisi Agriculture EPA project. I have been very happy to see how the community has come together to make our project goals a reality. I am especially impresed by the dedication of individuals who have been coming to work on the project day in and day out. For example Matthews Kavisepo Gondwe, a leader in the community came almost every single day for about three months to mold bricks, and continues to help with the construction as a builders assistant, and with digging the fish ponds. The little compensation he has received certainly is not equivalent to the time and effort he has put into the project, yet he still comes each and every day because he wants to have an agriculture office with a competent staff of extension workers in Mwazisi, so that he and his children can benefit from seeing and learning new things. I owe it to people like Kavisepo to stay in Mwazisi and see that the project is finished completely and the EPA gets off on the right foot.

In addition to seeing through our original project goals, in my third year I will also have an opportunity to build on what we have started. For example, if this year’s fish ponds turn out to be very profitable, then we will already have the know how to expand and dig more ponds next year, and we could stock them with the fingerlings from our first pond. Another example would be if the universal groundnut sheller generates a lot of income this year than we can reinvest the profits to buy an oil press to make an even greater profit from the groundnuts we buy off of the farmers. Having a designated agriculture extension area will give us a good base to start new projects like the rearing of dairy goats for a heifer project to distribute goats to responsible interested individuals. There are so many different things I would like to do with the positive social deviants I have identified in Mwazisi. Our previous experience working together will make starting new projects together much easier.

Proud to be a Peace Corps Volunteer Under President Barack Obama

2009-01-22T09:30:00.006+03:00

"To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your
farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed
hungry minds. And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative
plenty,
we say we can no longer afford indifference to suffering outside
our
borders; nor can we consume the world's resources without regard to
effect. For the world has changed and we must change with it."

Barack Obama

January 20, 2009

I was in Lilongwe for my group's close of service conference last week and stuck around to watch President Obama's inauguration. I watched it live at the home of the program director of USAID who is a former Peace Corps volunteer and loves watching out for poor volunteers. It was a nice quiet setting to enjoy watching such a historic event.

I'm sure you all saw it so there's no reason for me to recap what he said, but I thought he did an amazing job of capturing the ideals and history that make America such a great country. He also pointed out how we have let those ideals get away from us in the last few years, putting us into all of the problems we face now.

His speech was a call to action for us all as he declared:

"The time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to
reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry
forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to
generation; the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all
deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness."

His words are rousing but they mean nothing unless we collectively decide as a country to live up to them. We all need to be prepared to start living like a country at war and in economic crisis. Gone are the days of Bush where the President deals with national crisis by telling us to go out and buy stuff: we have to learn to start sacrificing the lavish lifestyles we have become so accustomed to.

I thought his speech was also a call to service recalling to memory JFK's immortal inaugural words "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." I think now more than ever we need to look at our own lives and see what we can do to help put our country back on the right track again. No matter how big or small we should all find ways to pitch in, whether that means volunteering at the local food bank, or offering our services to teach for America. Equally important the role of child rearing; we must is to devote our time to raising our children to ensure the next generation will value the ideals that President Obama said our countries success depends on: honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism. We all have a role to play and the time to start is now, as Obama said, "Starting today, we must pick our selves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America."

As I listened, I thought a lot about the people in my own life who I think live up to Obama's call. I thought about my parents who are going through hard times as my Dad was laid off last year. He has since been hanging on to contract jobs. He remains positive and tells me every time we talk how grateful he is every day that he is able to go to work. My Mom still spends every free hour she has from her job as a cook at the local golf course volunteering with the many charities she's a part of, or supporting my Aunt Kathy who suffers from MS. I also thought of my brother and his wife Meta. Mike is literally working on changing the world as a staffer for the Senate Energy Committee. He is fighting for great ideas to build a sustainable energy system that can support our need for reliable energy without destroying our environment. Meta has devoted herself to raising their two sons, is the President of Logan's Parent Teachers Association, and an all around supermom. Finally as President Obama payed homage to our soldiers saying "they embody the spirit of service; a willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves" I thought of one of my best friends from home Bobby, who has already served in Iraq, and is now in Army Ranger training.

The Sweet Pandemonium of The Rainy Season

2009-01-17T03:45:00.006+03:00

I love the madness of the rainy season, everyday is chaos and catastrophe. This is the one time of the year when everybody seems to be just as busy as I am. You don't see nearly as many people strolling back and forth on the road in the trading center, or the boys sitting in front of every shop either playing checkers or watching the grass grow. Now is the time when folks are busy in their fields, transplanting their tobacco nurseries, or applying fertilizer to their maize.

I've been extra busy this rainy season with the construtction of the EPA dominating the last several months, I spend each morning at the construction site mixing cement and carrying bricks for the builders. To keep up with the rainy season my afternoons are filled with a whole bunch of new seasonal projects like out planting the trees from the tree nurseries or digging our fish ponds. This also happens to be the peak honey season, so I have been helping lots of different people harvest their hives and get their honey to market.When I'm not doing these things with the community, I can generally be found hoeing in my field where I'm mostly growing rizobium inoculated soy beans and some maize along with Tephrosia Vogelli a nitrogen fixing tree to show some different ways people can regenerate soil fertility and start saving money on inputs.

Aside from busyness, the other trademarks of the rains are more mangoes than you could ever want to eat, and snakes appearing in strange places now. Every Mango tree has a growing pile of rotting fruit under it, as the kids can't eat them fast enough. And my neighbor killed a five and a half foot long cobra in his chimbuzi (pit latrine). I skinned it and stretched it out to dry in the sun, now I think everybody thinks I'm practicing witchcraft!

A Village Christmas

2009-01-17T01:11:00.003+03:00

It never ceases to amaze me the generosity of poor people. Famalies who have almost nothing to give are ussually the most eager to share what they do have. My Christmas in Mwazisi is proof of that. For Christmas I was given a massive bag of Mangoes, a bundle of bananas, copious amounts of honey from two different beekeepers, a Guinea Fowl, and enough rich food and meat to put my stomach in a rough state on through New Years.

Sharing food is a very important part of Malawian culture, so all of the people who had me over to eat and chat on Christmas really made my holiday. These last few months I have felt like I've been running around like a mad man trying to keep the EPA project on track while always dealing with the chaos of keeping up with farming in the rains. So it was nice just relaxing and hanging out with friends for a few days.

I went to Davey Nysulu's place in the afternoon on Christmas Eve to see his daughter who I named this time last year Patti Mtende Nysulu. They insisted on giving her an American name so I named her after my Mom and gave her a Timbuka middle name which means Peace. I brought over a bag of porridge flour for Patti and a couple children's books sent by my aunt Kathy for the rest of the children. Davey played some Christmas music for me while his wife served me tea, and rice with honey on it, along with chidongwa, a locally made sweet beer made from millet and maize flour.

That night I had dinner with Nya Nfuni and her son Kazito. Nya Nfuni is my neighbor who cooks for me. Usually I buy her food and she just cooks extra of whatever she makes for her family, she brings my food over to my house because she's married and it's not really proper for me to eat over there all the time. Nya Nfuni is by far one of the people I love most in Mwazisi, so I was really happy to spend christmas eve with her and Kazito. We had a good meal of Nsima with eggs cooked in tomatoes and onions as well as my favorite village green, pumpkin leaves cooked in peanut flour. After dinner i pulled kazito on my knee and read t'was the night before Christmas. He enjoyed the pictures but asI tried to translate, i also had to explain why it wasn't scary that this strange man would sneak into your house while you were sleeping. Then i played some Colorado Christmas music my Mom sent from KBCO while we made a stocking for Kazito with a blue sock and decorations and glue that Corie sent to make Christmas crafts. To comfort Kazito I hung the stocking in the kitchen outside so Santa didn't have to come into the house. The next morning Kazito came screeching over, "Santa apokala chawananga!" Santa filled his sock with sweets, biscuits, bananas, and Colorado playing cards...Fancy that!

I went over to Benidicto Gondwe's house for Christmas morning breakfast with his present on my head, a top bar bee hive I made for him. After having tea with his wife's prize Chigondamoyo (a sweet corn bread with sunflower seeds and honey mixed in.... so damn good!) Benidicto gave me a Christmas box with a jar of honey and about 2 KGs of goats meat.

I went for church services at the Catholic Church where Devin a volunteer in Kapenda (within biking distance) found me. I invited him to come down and watch the big football tournament called the Christmas Bonanza. But most of the teams hadn't come yet so they didn't start until the day after Christmas. It was a fun three day tournament that people came from all around to watch. The pitch was packed with folks who carried their lunches and hung out all day watching 6 games a day. Mwazisi's Gam United made it all the way to finals and lost to the town stars in rainy muddy mess that ended in penalty kicks.

Devin and I had our Christmas dinner with the EPA project's chairman Cuthbert Kachali and which turned out to be another stuffing meal. Cuthbert slaughtered a sheep, and his wife Queen must have spent the whole morning cooking, because there was about 6 different pastries and African cakes she baked dutch oven style. After the first few courses I was uncomfortably full, but Queen force fed me untill I think she must have gotten full from watching me eat. The Kachalis live a bit far from me so I stayed the night there after also making stockings with his kids. This time Santa brought balloons, more sweets and Colorado Key chains...Whoda thunk it!

The next morning Cuthbert's son Geoffory, Devin, Cuthbert and I took a hike to check some of his hives. The mountains behind his home were beautiful, and the forest's back there still look pretty virgin, it was a great way to hike off some of the overeating of the past few days. Cuthbert sent me back with an entire sheep's leg which Devin and I butchered and smoked over a fire while we gazed up at one of the best starry night skies I have seen in several months. I couldn't help thinking of how lucky I am to be here.

Ramblings: A Sunrise to Remember

2008-11-12T10:47:00.000+03:00

Tuesday November 4th 2008, was a night to remember for all Americans, it marked a decisive change in our countries history, the night we elected an African American to be our President. If I were in America that night I'm sure I would have been in a bar with friends or fellow campaign volunteers eating pizza and drinking beer while we watched the Electoral College maps turn blue state by state on the major news networks. Being here in Malawi my Obama election experience was a little different than that, but I'd say certainly was no less memorable.

Wiz who was my roommate at the wildlife camp set his alarm for 2:00 am which was when we figured the election results from the East coast would start rolling in. We didn't want to disturb the students so we went around quietly waking up the other Peace Corps volunteers and took a wireless radio down to the football pitch where we could comfortably react to whatever results we were going to hear. Instead of beer and Pizza I carried a couple nalgenes of water and a bunch of bananas. Matt Fornoff was kind enough to share with all of us a bit of beef jerkey he had just gotten in a package, which I savored as the first results rolled in.

Since we didn't have Fox News' or CNN's fancy infografic electoral college map, we made our own on some extra flipchart paper that we colored in with blue and red crayons as the BBC world servieconfirmed which states had been called for either McCain or Obama. Between the results we layed on the pitch staring up a beautiful starry night sky. We used my star map to identify constellations and chart our way to different nebulae and star clusters. There must have been a meteor shower that night because we must have seen around 20 shooting stars.

Around the time the first glimmerings of the sunrise began to emerge Pennsylvania, was called for Obama, and I started to feel assured that it was going to go our way. With the roosters first crow, Virginia and Ohio also went for Obama, and we knew we had it. After some very heartfelt cheers and hugs, I settled back into my sleeping bag to watch a beautiful African sunrise over the Vipyha Mountains. I was overcome by a warm feeling of comfort and satisfaction, a new sensation that my country is moving in the right direction, and everything is going to be alright. I felt like I was seeing the entire world around me in a whole new way. My whole body was tingling and I felt like my skin was breathing the cool morning air, as I watched the soft vanilla clouds float over head. For the first time since I started traveling outside of America I felt a pure and absolute pride in my country, which warmed my heart and plastered a contented smile on my face.

We listened to John McCains concession speech as we showered up to get ready for the day. We were having tea and buns as we prepared to load up on the Matola for our field trip, when we heard that Obama came out of his house for the first time to address a massive Chicago audience for the first time as President elect. I called over the students, and explained that this was going to be talked about in their children's history books. We listened to his speech in silence. I don't remember which words exactly brought tears to my eyes, bought as I looked up at my friends who were also teary eyed I realized that we were all feeling the same overwhelming sense of pride, and we acknowledged that mutual feeling as we went around giving each other quiet celebratory hugs.

After the speech my brother called and described the surreal scene. I could hear the car horns honking and people cheering in the streets. My brother said "I've never seen anything like this, it's 2 in the morning and everybody is still partying like we won the superbowl." But the same party was happening in every major city across America. My Dad said it best, "If there is a democratic man who doesn't get laid tonight, he just ain't trying." I think one image that my brother described will always stick with me. He lives on 15th street which points straight to the Washington monument, and he was sitting on his front porch talking to me as he watched an African American man walk right down the middle of the street through traffic with an American flag draped over his shoulders. With the monument in his background, he had his arms raised up as he yelled out "We did it! We did it! That image broght the Huhes poem I wrote about in a previous blog back into my mind; his prayer for America:

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

This is one very big step, now that we have the right leader it's time to really get to work and start making real change. We are facing some daunting challenges: a decimated economy, global warming and a depleted national environment, not to mention two wars and a myriad of forighn policy challenges thanks to Mr. Bushes destructive legacyWe still have a hell of a long way to go as a country, but for the first time in my life I feel like were heading in the right direction, and I know that we are all going to work together to solve these problems and make America into the dream that will be!

I couldn't contain my excitement and so as we careened through the villages that line the Phoka valley. I stood at the front of the truckbed with the other boys that like having the wind in their face. And started chanting OH-BA-MA....OH-BA-MA. When the boys figured out what I was saying they smiled and joined in, and soon the whole Matola was in on it, and I was hanging on for dear life with one hand, while I pumped my other fist into the air yelling at the top of my lungs OH-BA-MA!!! OH-BA-MA!!! OH-BA-MA!!!

Project: Nyika Chronicles vol III: Wildlife Camp success

2008-11-11T17:11:00.001+03:00

Well, last week we held the first ever Nyika Wildlife and Environment Extravaganza! Actually it wasn't quite as impressive as the title makes it sound, but I'd say for the 32 young people who attended, it was an amazing success, especially when you consider that the total cost of the week boils down to less then $45 per student. For many of them it was the farthest they had ever been away from their home village, also for most of them it was there first time to see Livingstonia or the Nyika Plateau, and everybody learned something new that they knew nothing about previously. We definitely got our moneys worth!

I started planning this camp last year with Pace Phillips a Peace Corps teacher who is best described as a high tech red neck from North Carolina, and a fellow environment volunteer Matt Fornoff, a farm boy from Illinois. We saw it as a way to encourage a greater appreciation of Nyika national park for the young people living around the park, and also to provide them with some of the skills needed to earn money while preserving their local environment. All three of us have been busy with other projects in our own villages, so we did all the planning, budgeting, and logistical organizing in bits and pieces individually, or together on the rare occasion when our schedules meshed and we could meet in town. We employed the help of our Peace Corps friends to teach the various Income Generating Activities (IGA's), and kept the whole thing as bare bones as possible. So I must say I was pretty impressed with how well the whole thing went off.

The students arrived Monday afternoon to be greeted by our nominated ambassador of "happy fun time" Matt Wiznewski (for those of you who know Wiz, you know that this is all too fitting role for him) who is also an environment volunteer from San Fransisco. He was pretty incredible the entire week, always keeping the kids entertained during down time between sessions. He split them up into three teams and had them each come up with a team name, moto, and draw a poster. So we ended up with the Elephants, Terrible Tigers, and Team Nyika.

After Dinner we took all of the students out on the football pitch for night sky observing, which the kids were found interesting, but I definitely failed to convey the huge distances between stars, and the vastness of the universe the way Carl Sagan did....."billions and billions!

Day 1 was jam packed with IGAs; first Jim Kasper a volunteer from Ohio explained the basics for mushroom growing, and then gave them the chance to get practical experience in inoculating the growing bags with mushroom spores. Jim did a great job of explaining all of the necessary steps but still kept it reasonably simple enough that everybody could understand. The students were really impressed with Jim's ability to explain such a technical subject in Chitumbuka. The rest of the morning was facilitated by a local woman named Mrs. Zgambo who taught the students how to make soap from palm oil. The students were amazed how easy the process was and because Mrs. Zgambo was teaching the students saw that it was something they could definitely feasibly do in their own village.

After lunch it was all beekeeping. Elihu Isele a volunteer from Missouri who is working with a small beekeeping company in Nkahata Bay gave them a talk explaining the benefits of Beekeeping. Then I demonstrated a cheap method of making standard top bar beehives using bamboo tied and tacked to a hive frame, then we filled any holes paper-mache piñata style using soaked waste paper with cassava flour as glue. Each group got to make their own hives, which went back with some of the students to be hung by their schools wildlife club. After that the students got some real hands on experience as they put on bee-suits and opened up a bee hive with Elihu and saw for themselves the different stages of comb development, how the bees behave, and more importantly how they should behave around the bees. Some of the students looked pretty petrified, but Elihu was great about talking them through the whole process, and they were all smiles as we tasted some of the honey we harvested.

It was a good thing that day 2 was a field trip and none of the volunteers had to teach, because we were all zombies because we were up all night listening to the election. We were still in a state of euphoria from the reality that Barack Obama is going to be our next President (all of which is the subject of my next blog.) We loaded all the students up in the back of a two ton truck and took them to the Historical Mission of Livingstonia that sits halfway up the escartment and overlooks the whole Northern lakeshore. We only spent about an hour at the mission because the real purpose of the field trip was to visit Leeza Dupree's Permaculture farm that sits just beneath Livingstonia.

Leeza moved to Malawi 11 years ago and when the chief gave her the land it was an over worked cassava field that was washing away because it is on such a steep slope. She started reviving the garden by planting lots of trees to anchor the soil, and brouht up the water table by digging swales and catchment ponds, now a decade later her farm is a veritable garden of eden. Leeza had to be away teaching about Permaculture but her husband Auck, and her two Malawian assistants were there to show us around. The students learned about plants and crops that improve soil fertility, act as pesticides, and bring up the water table. Some of the things Leeza and Auck are doing were a bit beyond most of the students comprehension; like keeping a compost toilet or zoning the garden into different plant guilds. But the garden really speaks for itself, and it definately planted the permaculture seed in all of students brains.

From Leeza's farm we walked up to the overlook over Manchewe Falls, to eat our packed lunch. Watching a 900 foot waterfall cascade through cliffs and dense rainforest is a good way to enjoy rice and beans.

On our way back we visited another impressive farm, this one was owned by a Malawian women named Nya Bwendi. Her farm was great for the students to see because she does a lot of the same things Leeza does like intercropping trees, fish ponds, mulching and composting on a massive scale, but it somehow seems more accessable to them when they see a Malawian doing it. Nya Bwendi is a wonderful women, a true example of Malawians inherent kindness and generosity. She happily walked us through her whole 70 acre plus plot of land, gladly letting the students climb the trees in her orchards to taste its peaches, citrus, and apples, she also let them take loads of pineapple puffs so they could start growing pineapples at home As it started to get dark she refused to let us leave before sitting down to eat the fruits of her labor. Serving a full meal to 33 students and 10 Peace Corps volunteers goes beyond generous.

Day 3 was "farm day," a good follow up to our field trip. In the morning the Nchena Nchena agriculture extension worker Mr. Milongo taught the students how to make contour lines in their garden to stop erosion, and how to make different types of compost. I tied Mr. Milongo's talk together with Agroforestry and how to make a three year crop plan. I especially talked about intercropping trees like Tephrosia Vogelli, and Gliricidia Sepium to increase crop yields, then I took the students outside to show them the basics of starting a tree nursery, and gave them each tubes and seeds so they could start their own nurseries at home.

We also talked about fruit drying, which we demonstrated throughout the week with our makeshift solar dryers made out of a shoe box and a winnowing basket, which we used in drying bananas, pineapples and peaches. Rob Norris an environment volunteer from Maryland taught the students how to make fruit jam, and they made big batches of both mango and peach jam which made for a great addition to our porridge the next morning. He also added a useful business element to his session, where he had the students do a input/profit margin and figure out what price they would need to sell the jam to make a significant profit.

The last session of the day was fish farming which was led by Bernard Chizute, the head of the Rumphi department of fisheries. We took the students down to the department of agriculture's fish ponds where Mr. Chizute netted some fish so he could teach us about identifying different species and sexing. We also learned about digging and shaping a pond, and making the inlet and outlet. Afterwards we watched a series of videos in Chichewa about different people's success with fish farming in the central and southern region.

After dinner "happy fun time consisted of a talent show that was a mix between a Malawian Idol contest, and stupid human tricks. The talents included rapping, break dancing, church songs, card tricks, flipping their eye lids up and finally Rob blowing spit bubbles.

The last official day of the camp was the hike up to Nyika Plateau. It was about a 6 hour hike on a beautiful day to see the Nchena Nchena falls. The hike was led by Dan Zgambo a Wildlife extension worker for Nyika who talked to the students about stewardship of the land throughout the day. Once on top of the Plateau he pointed out the various water drainages, and explained to them the importance of Nyika as all of their home villages water source. We also had a good conversation during one rest stop about the difference in the number of animals in the park from just 10 years ago due to poaching. The only animals we saw were a few common Duiker which is a small type of antelope, but most of the students were happy just to see Nyika. They were looking through my binoculars the whole day, and took turns helping me carry the pack with everybody's lunches. It turned into an all American day since we carried peanut-butter and mango jam sandwiches for lunch and made a camp fire after we got back to practice another great American tradition, making smores. We capped off happy-fun time with a plastic sack piñata, which once broken open turned into a pretty hilarious dash and mosh pit for sweeties.

Before the students left they gave Pace, Matt, and myself cards thanking us for organizing the camp. Most of the students said that this camp was their first opportunity to do anything like this which I see as a huge success in and of itself. So finally I would like to Thank my Brother Mike and his wife Meta, who generously donated the money needed for this camp. Your donation made for an experience these kids won't soon forget.

Ramblings: Let America Be America

2008-10-24T17:30:00.003+03:00

O, let America be America again-
The land that never has been yet-
And yet must be- the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine- the poor man's, Indian's Negro's, ME-
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose-
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those that live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath-
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain-
All, all the stretch of these great green states-
And make America again!

This is just an extract from a poem written by Langston Hughes called "Let America be America Again." I encourage everybody to find the whole poem and read it for yourself. Every time I read it aloud to somebody I get chills down my spine and tears in my eyes, because it so perfectly captures the great opportunity that we have sitting in front of us right now. The opportunity to shift away from the misguided path our country is heading down, and to make a massive step on the road to living up to the common dream of America. The dream we all are so used to identifying with; as Hughes puts it a country where "opportunity is real and life is free, equality is in the air we breath." We all identify with this superior image of our country, but we have never lived up to it. And sadly in the past eight years we have gotten farther away from that dream than any other time in our history.

The past century has seen America fluctuate back and forth occasionally advancing towards and then diverging away from the dream that Hughes describes. When Hughes wrote this poem during the Great Depression America was at its lowest...broken down, disillusioned, and divided, but then came a leader in FDR who had the power to inspire Americans to not only pull themselves out of their economic despair, but to make sacrifice in their own lives to come together to fight and win a war to ensure freedom for people all around the world. But we certainly hadn't reached the dream yet with internment of our own Japanese American citizens, the continuance of a terribly flawed and demeaning policy for the first Americans with the Indian Reorganization Act, and still so incredibly far away from equality for women and Black Americans. In the 1960's America reacted to another low point in our history as racism in America began to boil over. We were led towards the dream of truly free and equal America again with a new generation of great leaders, like Martin Luther King, and the Kennedys. We made giant steps forward in terms of gender and racial equality, and it was a time where the people of the working class had more power and influence than any other time in our history. Then by the end of 1968 the dream had faded as our inspiring leaders were killed off, and we became embroiled in the Vietnam War.

Today we remain in one of those dark periods, caught up in two more wars and a foreign policy that has made us resented around the world. At home we've entered a modern gilded age, where the rich and powerful toss around the fates of the rest of country without a second thought. The people who suffer from this careless leadership and corporate greed are by and large the hard working people trying to carve out a piece of the American dream for their own families. But now in Barack Obama I think we have the kind of once in a generation leader that has the ability to pilot our country toward that dream again, and take us closer than ever before.

Obama embodies the very essence of the "American Dream," with an immigrant father who came to America as a student full of hope, and raised by a mother and grandparents from a Kansas farming family that did everything they could to make sure that he had the opportunity to become the man he is today. Obama has showed his ability to inspire Americans right from the beginning when he first emerged onto the political scene with his famous "Audacity of Hope" speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. I have seen for myself here in Africa the effect his election would have on America's reputation around the world. I could see it in the gleam in my friend Mepese Gondwe's eye after we finished listening to Obama's speech on BBC at this years Democratic Convention, as Mepese exclaimed, "It will change the world, if he gets elected!" More than anything I think great leaders can be judged on what they bring out of other people. I know that Barack Obama is going to bring out the very best in America, and can only imagine what effect it will have on the development of all of human civilization. What a spectacular opportunity to change the course of history!

I've actively participated in campaigns in every election since I turned 18. I love the excitement and enthusiasm that comes out during election season. I love the debate that occurs as we all start to talk about how we want our country to be, and how we can get there, and who can lead us there. This debate that occurs every couple years is such an important part of a healthy democracy (although we have a lot to learn about debating the issues instead of just devolving into an exchange of personal attacks and negativity) but the open discussion and picking apart of different ideas is what drives the evolution of our government and the world as a whole. And so now we've come to this, the most important election of my life, with the most inspiring candidate I've ever seen, and I'm off in the African bush. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't trade what I'm doing here for anything in the world, but I feel a bit guilty knowing that America is on the brink of an ideological revolution and I'm not there to have a hand in it. I have already cast my votes for Obama, and Mark Udall in the Senate by mail in ballot, and I guess this blog is my last desperate attempt to do a bit of campaigning through the magic of the internet.

It's great to hear how my family is there throwing everything they have into this campaign. My Mom is the ward captain for the Broomfield county democrats and spent most of her free time these last few months going door to door, and making phone calls for Obama. My father is the stalwart debater. You'd be hard pressed to find a more well-informed person as he reads the New York Times cover to cover each day, and has mastered the art of Tivo so he can compare the three major news networks stories with the PBS, Democracy Now, and Daily show's take on each days news. He's a man never to back down from a false fact regurgitated by one of his coworkers from Fox News, or an ill-informed argument made by an acquaintance on the golf course. If he thinks your wrong, he won't shy away from telling you about it, and he has the information to back it up. Even my Aunt Kathy doesn't let an advanced case of Multiple Sclerosis slow her down. She could be found every day of the Democratic National Convention rolling around the streets of Denver in her wheelchair volunteering. Then there is my brother one of the heroes of the good fight. He wrote the Energy Bill for the Senate that many people say was the best in years, worked tirelessly on the economic stimulus bill that we all heard so much about, and still doesn't put himself above going door to door, and making phone calls to get people out to vote.

I'm very proud of the roles my family finds for themselves to do their part in actively participating in our democracy. And this blog is my way to try to take part in the process myself; to encourage anybody who is still undecided about this election to help us take advantage of this great opportunity and vote for Barack Obama. Those people who are already planning on voting for Obama, PLEASE make sure you get to the polls and vote, you imagine explaining to your children that you missed out on the biggest vote in American history because you were just too busy on election day. I encourage everybody in these last few days to actively engage in the debate, talk politics damn it, that's democracy in action. I'm not talking about being nasty or spiteful, I just ask you to mull over for yourself whether or not you agree that Hughes' words still ring true today, that America hasn't achieved it's dream yet. Then ask yourself who you think is the President who can lead America to be America.

Nyika Chronicles vol II: A Push Bike Adventure

2008-09-24T16:58:00.002+03:00

My friends Elihu, Wiz, Pace and Laura and I had been planning on riding bikes to Nyika National Park, but I wasn’t sure when everybody else was planning to go, and since I don’t have phone service anywhere near my house I was even more out of the loop. Then one day while I was teaching children came running to the school to inform me “Walendo afika,” “The visitors are here.” So I hurried back threw my stuff together and we set off that same afternoon. That day we rode 30 km from my house to Thazima gate through backwoods villages and over some exhausting hills. We took a short cut where most tourists never pass, so most of the people we passed were shocked to see all the azungus on shiny bikes in their village, and even more shocked when we greeted them in Chitumbuka. Pace put it best, “We were azungus on parade.” We got to the gate just after dark, and talked the night watchman into letting us set up our tents just inside the gate, which was a bit bizarre since we were right next to a small trading center, with a small bar and everything, so we had carlsburg around the fire our first night camping.

The next day was a full day of cycling up long rocky roads as we climbed up the escarpment. My absurd concept of distance and time became a running joke throughout the trip, while looking at a map I was sure we could make it to the juniper forest by branching from the main road, have enough time to ride to the Juniper forest, which is more than 70km from the gate and have enough time to start heading North to Chilinda camp. In reality the side road was over several hills and valleys and most of it was so densely vegetated that we had to get off and push our bikes much of the way. But I was still glad we split from the main road though, because the downhills were a blast and we dropped off into some really beautiful and dense Acacia filled valleys that were brimming with life. We called that road elephant road because of all the droppings, knocked over trees, and massive patches of flattened grass where the elephants had been bedding down. We didn’t even come close to reaching the Juniper forest, but found a pretty spectacular camping spot next to the Runyina river where we all had night mares of getting trampled by elephants in our sleep.

The next morning we pushed up the escarpment, and found ourselves on the rolling grass covered hills of the plateau. This is the iconic picture of Nyika, the green open hills that remind me of the highlands of Scotland. The sad part is that in the past these hills were covered with wildlife, it was like something out of animal planet, with all sorts of animals grazing on this massive natural pastur, but in the past 15-20 years the people who were removed from the park in the 60’s and 70’s are returning as poachers, and have wiped out the herds. Now its sad scatterings of zebra, bushbuck, and roan antelope, that pale in comparison to descriptions of Nyika’s past.

The reduced numbers didn’t take away from the thrill of seeing the animals when we did come across them. We first came across a small pack of zebra grazing near the road. The patterns on their faces almost look artificial, because they are so symmetrical and distinct almost like they are painted on. Aside from the stripes, the zebras seemed identical to the wild horses I’ve seen in the Bighorn Mountains, all power and muscle, with an air of freedom and wildness that is lost in the domestic horse. They watched us tensely ready to scatter. When ever we advanced to close, they took off running, until they felt safe, where they stopped to watch us again. One of the coolest monments of the trip came when they allowed Elihu and Pace close enough that when they started running again it almost looked like they were riding along-side the zebras in a pack.

The other major animal we saw that day were Roan Antelope. They seemed like a cross between cattle and a moose. They lumber around and graze with the same kind of ambivalence to the people watching them as what I’ve always seen as a Moose’s stupidity, or brute confidence, as if to say “Yeah I know your there, but if you mess with me, I’m gonna charge the hell out of you.”

That day we rode all the way to Chilinda camp which is where most of the park staff lives. I have gotten to know the director of the anti-poaching program for Nyika and Vwaza who stays at Chilinda. He’s a really generous South African guy who was nice enough to have me in his home to spend Christmas with his family this past year. He put us up for the night and hosted us graciously feeding us his good vodka that fueled a very philosophical conversation about everything from the psychology and sociology of Malawians to global politics and the elections in America.

The next morning Mike took us on an incredible drive to see his favorite part of the park; Domwe peak which overlooks the whole northern part of the park. The views from there were spectacular even though it was a bit hazy that day. The peak is surrounded on three sides by over 500 foot sheer drop-off cliffs, with patches of granite rock outcroppings and rigid mountains off in the distance that reminded me a bit of Glacier National Park. It was the first time since I came to Malawi that I’ve seen such a huge piece of landscape unaffected by human habitation.

As soon as we got back we grabbed some biscuits and set off for the long ride home. We were lucky coming across a truck driving down from Chitipa. The driver agreed to give us a ride saving us about six hours of riding. We threw our bikes in the back and got a ride all the way to within five km of my village. Ending one of the best adventures I’ve had since coming to Malawi.

Project: Wildlife Camp, Nyika Chronicles vol I

2008-09-24T16:56:00.001+03:00

I was first introduced to Nyika national Park by a retired lawyer turned Peace Corps volunteer named Greg Dorr about a month into my Peace Corps service. Since then I have had many chances to continue exploring its Brachystegia covered lower slopes, towering escarpment, ancient forests and vast plateau. There’s plenty of room to explore this park, Nyika is Malawi’s biggest national Park stretching across 1210 square miles. Despite being Malawi’s oldest designated national park few people visit Nyika compared to other parks like Liwonde or Majete. I see it as sort of a forgotten park neglected by the government which leaves it open to poaching and destruction from the people living around the plateau stripping its escarpment for firewood. Nyika is a very important ecological niche to the whole Northern region, it is the primary watershed for both Rumphi and Karonga. Aside from being a very important place nyika. Aside from being very important it is also a spectacularly beautiful place, but few people living around it realize it, because they have seen so little of it. For this reason Me and two other volunteers living near Nyika Pace Phillips and Matt Fornoff have organized a wildlife and environment mini-camp for young people living in Rumphi and Karonga.

The camp is called "The Rumphi and Karonga Wildlife and Environment Extravaganza" (I came up with that catchy title all by myself!), and it is intended to provide students with a broader understanding of the value of Nyika, and skills to benefit from Nyika's resources without destroying them.be five days long at the Nchena chena research station which lies at the base of the escarpment. We are inviting student leaders from secondary school wildlife clubs from all around Nyika. We will be teaching sessions on bee-keeping (how to build and manage a hive), soap making, mushroom growing, Jam making, fish farming and plenty of other useful skills, but the highlight of the camp will be a hike up onto Nyika Plateau to see Nchena chena falls and the Juniper forest.

This camp is being completely funded by the Peace Corps Partners Program, which means anybody can donate to it, which is why I am looking back through my journal entries from all of my adventures in Nyika, and typing up blogs for every trip I have taken to Nyika. I'm calling these next few blogs The Nyika Chronicles, I hope these adventures in Nyika might give you all a better idea of what a special place Nyika is, and if any of you want to donate to our camp you can find it on the Peace Corps website www.peacecorps.gov.

Thanks,
Dan

Garden Sanctuary

2008-09-24T16:52:00.004+03:00

I think one of the biggest legacies that will come from my service in Mwazisi is the little seed packets that my family and friends send in their letters and packages. Having new and different vegetables available in Mwazisi will have a significant effect on the overall nutrition of the people living in Mwazisi. Being organic seeds they also provide the gardeners of Mwazisi with a reliable reproducing seed base as opposed to the hybrid seeds that are spread all across Africa, by seed corporations like Monsanto. Most of all having these seeds has given me the opportunity to demonstrate simple sustainable gardening techniques like mulching and composting which, slowly by slowly, seem to be utilized by an increasing number of my fellow gardeners in the dambo (river valley). The world is headed into a global food crisis, but it will be particularly hard hitting in Malawi where an erratic rainy season last year devastated the south and central regions harvest and a focus on tobacco farming in the north. So I'd say one of the best things I can do for people in Mwazisi is hand them a pack of seeds.

I have already seen the diversification of Mwazisi's diet improve tremendously in the past year. When I first arrived the only vegetables growing in anybodies garden were rape, mustard greens, cabbage, tomatoes and onions. Not only does it seem they just plant these few vegetables, but these are also the only vegetables aside from wild amaranth and pumpkin greens that people know how to prepare. But since I started giving out different seeds I see scatterings of carrots, spinach, and romaine lettuce mixed into the gardens, and I'd like to imagine that's getting eaten.

At first most of the people that I gave seeds to weren't planting them. I think people asked for the seeds simply for the novelty of taking something new and different from the azungu. Maybe they were intimidated to actually plant them feeling like they wouldn't know what to do with the strange plants if they actually germinated. So I stopped just handing them out and started using them in demonstration gardens at both the secondary and primary schools. These gardens had a whole slew of problems, From the bore-hole drying up to goats breaking through our weak fence , and going to town on anything green, to the students just plain forgetting to water the garden for a week or more while I was away at trainings or trips to Lilongwe. But these first gardens were useful because they were the villages first introduction to the strange new vegetables. The students got to see them raised from seed to harvest, and they saw little things like a pepper plant is grown the same way you grow a tomato plant, or that you don't transplant carrots.

The students also were the first to taste the vegetables as well. As the carrots started to pop up I pulled and skinned them there and gave everybody a taste of raw carrots. They must have thought I was trying to kill them, as they slowly chewed the strange food with nervous smiles on their face looking to their friends for reassurance, only to have their friends watching them intently to see if at any moment they keel over and die. After getting their nod of approval I pulled up enough carrots for everybody and told them to slice up the carrots and mix them with any greens that they might be cooking. Soon students were coming up to me asking for carrot seed instead of the usual tomato and onion request. The vegetable sampling had a domino effect, as students carried home bundles of swiss chard, beet greens, and spinach, I had more and more people coming up to me to ask about what they had tasted and how they could get some more.

Another benefit of those first gardens was that it was a great opportunity for seed multiplication. I was amazed that despite the common complaint about the high price of seeds nobody seemed to be collecting their seeds after the vegetables were finished. So when our garden started to shoot flowers, we let them all go to seed, and I used it as an opportunity to teach my wildlife club about seed saving, as a result we collected a fair amount of spinach, and arugula seed, and bags of romaine lettuce seed. The students were excited to see how much seed could be collected from just a few plants, and I hope that they will continue saving their seeds so that the packets I hand out during my service will be supplying the gardens of Mwazisi for years to come.

This year I've done all of my gardening down in the dambo instead of dealing with the goats and lack of water in the village. It's a short walk from my house, and being a bit outside of village has made it into my quiet sanctuary at the end of the day. The brush surrounding the river is always alive with the sounds of birds and crickets as the sun begins to slide behind the mountains in Vwaza, and the nights first stars begin to appear overhead. These last few months things have become more hectic for me; I feel like I'm running back and forth between teaching, my tree nurseries, and the EPA project. So I think the couple of hours of quiet work in the garden every afternoon have maintained my sanity.

Another benefit of keeping the garden in the dambo is that my plot is together with the most serious gardeners in Mwazisi, so we are always learning from each other, and I know that any seeds I share with them will be put to good use. For example Mr. Mkandawire is a man in his sixties who keeps about a quarter of an acre next to my plot where he spends over three hours a day moving from plant to plant with two broken watering cans. He greets me with a warm smile every afternoon and we always share what we harvest that day. I also shared a lot of seeds with him early on, so now mixed in with his many cabbage and tomato plants, there is a whole section of butter crunch lettuce beds, the occasional bush bean plant, and even a few broccoli flowers. He showed me how to dig out a well when the water level of the river dropped, and I showed him that beet roots and cabbages make great companion plants. I was especially happy when I saw him mimicking the heavy mulching I put on my beds, the day after I explained that I do that so that I don't have to water my garden so often. I have introduced him to many vegetables that he has never tasted before, as I always send him home with instructions of how his wife should prepare the veggie of the day. He comes back with plans for next year to grow whatever vegetable I give him, and judging from what I've seen him do in his garden so far, I would never doubt that he could live up to his most ambitious plans.

Ramblings: A Ginger, peanuts, soil blocks, and a crazed elephant

2008-08-04T12:28:00.001+03:00

I’m sorry if I’ve fallen out of touch with everybody the last couple months, but it has been the busiest I’ve been since coming to Mwazisi, and I also had Corie (see the Ginger Blog) staying with me for the past month. She was an incredible springboard for all of my projects, and thanks to her help I don’t feel like everything is about to fall apart, which is usually the case. But of course much of my attention was spoken for while she was here, so I’m sorry if I’ve slipped out of touch.

The Agriculture EPA office project is in full swing now, even though the money hasn’t come in just yet, at least I know that it has been approved and is going to get funded. So in the mean time while we wait for the funding all four committees have started doing what they can. The building committee has started meeting in the mornings and digging soil for stabilized soil blocks, with the help of the Gam United football club (see Meathead football player blog) which I have been bribing with 36 pairs of football boots that were generously donated by my wonderful friend Catherine Yirisari who used to work for the US Men’s Soccer team. The guys are so excited for the boots, since most of them usually play bare foot, and their enthusiasm has carried the work much faster than I thought. We have already dug over 1000 wheel barrows of soil from a termite hill near the site of the office. The machine for pressing the blocks, is actually still in Mzuzu, Where I’m working with an extraordinary Malawian engineer named Louis Chinula who is modifying the top and bottom plates in the machine so that the blocks will be interlocking and won’t need cement for mortor.

The tree nurseries committee is led by three strong tree nurseries in Chitanga where they built fences, shades, air pruning benches. We filled hundreds of tubes at each nursery, so we already started sowing fruit seeds like orange, papaya, and Masow, as well as good agro forestry trees like Faidabiera Albedia, and Sienna Spectabilus. I have also been working with a bigger tree nursery in Kwasamesenga that has a lot more people technically working on the project, but I think because of the number of people working on the nursery nobody is really stepping up to invest themselves in the nursery the way the leaders in Chitanga have. In Kwasamesenga lots of people show up chat a bunch and start complaining that it’s tea time as soon as we start working, but we have also managed to get a big jump on the work there, and its going to be a big tree nursery, close to 10,000 trees.

The income generating activities committee is getting started with a groundnut (peanut) sheller that I made at Mid-service training in Dedza. The executive committee chairman Cuthbert Kachali built a strong stand for the machine so that it can be easily used by everybody. As I put all of my weight on the stand to test out its strength he stood over me with a proud smile on his face and simply said “joinery” as an explanation for the good work that he had done. Two weeks ago we set up the concrete machine in a small room next to Nya Bota’s grocery. It’s a simple concrete machine with a rotor that hangs between the rough cement walls of the machine and leaves a small space where the groundnuts fall and get crushed as someone turns the machine. We have only started using the machine, testing it with the groundnuts that I was given by my neighbors. Once we get the process down with very little breakage of the nuts we are planning to start charging the farmers 100 Malawian Kwatcha (less than 1 dollar) to shell a 100 kg bag of nuts. Everybody in my area grows groundnuts, so this could be a good business for the project to generate money for future ventures like an oil press or a juicer. The idea behind this income generation committee is to add value to crops that are already commonly grown in the area by using simple and fast processors. The groundnut sheller is a great example; an unshelled groundnut is essentially worthless, while shelled nuts can be sold for over 100 kwatcha per kg. But shelling groundnuts is a long and cumbersome job, a 100 kg bag would take a family of five a few days of cracking. But with the machine two people can do a 100 kg bag in less than 1 hour.

The fourth committee is the fishponds committee which has only started clearing the area where we are planning to make community fishponds, and now we are stuck waiting for the Rumphi director of fishponds to come and approve of the area, which may never happen.

The rest of my time is occupied at the secondary school getting the Form 2 students ready for this falls Junior Certificate Exams. Actually, these last few months the secondary school wildlife club has been the biggest cause of my headaches, since my fellow patron teacher keeps making unrealistic promises of trips to the students without first organizing transport or any of the necessary details, so I end up running around begging greedy drivers for a decent price and riding my bike to cell phone network to organize.

So finally last week my headaches paid off and the entire club went to Vwaza Game Reserve for an adventurous day trip that included lots of elephants, hippos, baboons, warthogs, impala, and one crocodile. The highlight of the day came when a massive bull elephant charged the truck we were all riding in and the driver had to floor it to escape from the elephant clearing all 40 students out of the truck with his massive tusks. That could have been something great to explain on my Peace Corps description of service.

So that’s what I’ve been up to the last couple months, there’s about a million little adventures, struggles, triumphs , and defeats mixed in there, that I don’t have time to explain in better detail, and I’m sure you all don’t have time to read, but just know that everyday is a rollercoaster ride, with all sorts of huge ups and downs. Every now and then I encounter something that completely throws me through a loop, but by the end of the day when I’m writing in my journal by a candle, no matter how many things went wrong or how many different people I felt like strangling, I’m still glad that I got on the ride to begin with, it’s always worth it.

Mike and Duch's Chitipa adventure

2008-08-02T03:40:00.003+03:00

Here's a story I stole from my buddy Mike Hardesty a Finished Peace Corps volunteer who is still in Malawi working on the Clinton Hunter project. I thought it was a classic Peace Corps story, and deserved a bit of public access. Believe it or not this came from Mike's Description of Service Report. I'm planing on heading to Chitipa to see if I can find the fabeled Ronoldi.

This year, I, alone with Duch Routt, were able to successfully deliver and out-plant roughly 1,300 bananas in the month of December around the 22nd. It however did not happen without incident. As part of the original budget for the Banana Orchard Establishment Project, the Chitipa ADD had agreed to provide transport for the banana seedlings which were raised in local nurseries around the district. One month before the tentatively scheduled out-planting date, it was discovered that the ADD was not going to be able to keep their word. Duch and I were forced to negotiate a privately hired vehicle that would be supervised by ourselves. Logistically the task was very challenging. Only having enough money for a one day hire, Duch and I were forced to be innovative in how to pick up 6 improved banana varieties totaling 1,300 bananas from 3 separate nurseries and redistribute them proportionally over 6 orchard sites in a vehicle that could only hold around 750 seedlings at one time. After a morning of collecting and delivering with many temporary drop points in between, we headed for our third, and arguably are most difficult, orchard to access in the hills of Misuku Traditional Authority. At about three quarters of our way in to the hills we had an accident because the driver failed to shift properly on a steep incline and lost control of the vehicle. The driver responded quickly, and before we could gain enough speed to go completely out of control, he cut the wheel at the right angle so as not to flip, but so that we would slam into the side of the hill and stop ourselves about 20 ft after we started drifting backwards. Fortunately no one was hurt, although we were all shookin’ up and some of us were weeping, namely Duch. The vehicle on the other hand, was completely jacked up on the hill and was not able to move, in part because the wheels were off the ground, but mostly because the batteries for the vehicle were dead and the 7 toner could only be started by pushing. This last discovery was deflating to say the least, and frustrating for others (Duch) who claimed to despise the consistent deception that prohibits effective development in the area. “Why would we ever hire a vehicle with dead batteries?” he said with a sigh to no one, kicking a stone in the dirt.

Our initial idea was to phone the boma and get the brother of the driver—and the one we had hired the vehicle from—to come on his motor bike with two new batteries so that we could simply start the motor and drive away. Due to reasons that we still don’t completely understand, the promises of new batteries “imminently” coming were never fulfilled that day and we stayed that night in the bush. For about 4 hours leading up to darkness we dug around the vehicle, which was all rock of course, and entertained other ideas of escape. Then the rains came with the wrath of the almighty and we were forced to retire for the evening. Duch and I stayed with the orchard manager to whom we were delivering bananas, Mr Chilali, and enjoyed a relaxing evening nibbling on dried fish around the warmth of campfire recounting the day’s trying events.

In the morning we rose early to the inviting smell of boiling maize flower. After dining and, with full bellies, we went back to the site of the accident to wake the driver and his lackey so that we could begin again waiting for the batteries not to arrive. To this day, and regardless of what you might think after what I tell you next, I do not claim to be a soothsayer. But sitting their in Bukanaga Village contemplating my contempt for incompetence, I confessed to Duch my sneaking suspicion that the batteries just might not come. And they never did.

In the wake of this epiphany and Duch’s uncontrollable sobbing, came a miracle. A miracle by the name of Ronoladi. A true Mundali tribesman of the Misuku hills, Ronaldi heard of our troubles and came—probably from far away--to help purely out of the kindness of his heart (or because he heard we were white men and wanted money). Regardless, he arrived in good time and in good humor with a radiant smile that rivaled daffodils in its ability to warm the heart. Standing at 3-4 ft taller than everyone else, Ronoldi was a behemoth of a man. With only his bare hands and a small, well-used hoe, he immediately set about liberating our vehicle from the granite teeth which had captured it the night before. Watching Ronoldi, our world slowed in to a humbling awe. It was an awe that one might only experience witnessing a miracle or watching ice skating. And as he worked in seemingly effortless motions, the earth moved. Other locals, inspired by Ronoldi’s seemingly unceasing power and jubilance, attempted to keep pace with the Mammoth from Misuku, but soon collapsed in failure and lay exhausted at his feet, only offering moans of encouragement mixed with that of fear
for the unknown.

Hours passed like minutes and Ronaldi continued to work. Clouds drifted over head and Ronaldi continued to work. Small insect-like creatures danced around my bosom and Ronoldi continued to work. By mid day, a new light of possibility shown down upon our cloudy hearts. Then Duch, removing the crusted residual mucus from around his nose and mouth--a pathetic result from hours of weeping--looked at me and said, “We might just make it out this thing yet.”

And indeed we did. A full 24 hrs after the accident, Ronaldi had broken enough stone, displaced enough matter, and shifted enough soil so that we--but mostly Ronaldi--could lift the 7 toner inch by inch away from the hill so that it could drift freely backwards—with the breaks this time—and be push-started on a flat surface some 200 yards down the hill.

By 6 o’clock that night we had finished to deliver the bananas to the third orchard man, Mr. Chilali of Misuku and were quickly on our way to the remaining beneficiaries. By 7 o’clock the full moon had shown its cratered, albeit predictable, face. And as we sat there and marveled at its luminescence, we also sat there and wondered why the driver had not turned on the lights to the vehicle. The simple, and potentially devastating answer, “The headlights don’t work. We will have to stop for the night,” deterred me not. “Did Ronaldi ‘stop for the night?’ I replied. (Duch had started weeping again). “Did Ronaldi waver in the face of impossibilities?’ We’ve got the light of the moon my reluctant friend. Fear not, and let us push forward. Those families will have their seedlings before Christmas, this I swear!”

The driver yawned, but did not stop. He did not stop after the 4th orchard drop off. “Better late then never we yelled with Christmas cheer to the white smiles as we departed.” And he did not stop after the 5th orchard drop off. He did not stop the rest of the journey, until the drive shaft to the 7 ton piece of sh*t fell to the ground traveling at 30 km/hr somewhere in Northern Chitipa around mid-night.

So there we were, tired, smelly, exhausted and stinky. But we had no choice. We had no choice but to fix this rotten, over used 7 toner from hell, because we had only 100 bananas left to deliver to the final beneficiary. With Duch demoralized and weeping himself to sleep in the front of the cab, I, along with the driver and his lackey tied the drive shaft back to the vehicle with bark from local trees and some small pieces of nylon rope. It was temporary; I can’t dispute you on that. It could have failed; I am not hiding that. It was desperate; I know desperation. But we finished our delivery, without incident, without tribulation, and puttered back into town at 2:00 Christmas Eve morning, the drive shaft hanging by a thread.

That night in Chitipa Boma, lying next to Duch in a single room in a run down guest house with unwashed sheets from yester year, I realized we had accomplished something. We had succeeded. Despite all odds and Duch’s incessant weeping, we had rallied and triumphed. I realized that in a mean world where incompetent men wield undeserved power……..

And then a deep darkness washed over me and I drifted into an undisturbed slumber, remembering only Ronaldi’s unrelenting smile…..and Duch, with snot all over his face.

Ramblings: Homage to My Greatest Coach

2008-06-09T00:02:00.001+03:00

In January I started teaching again with the beginning of a new Malawian school year. A year into teaching I am much more comfortable in my role as a teacher, and see it as the greatest impact I am making in Mwazisi. Teaching provides a connection to the younger members of the community, and is a great opportunity to begin encouraging environmental stewardship for the future leaders. A lot of my students are orphans, so in addition to encouraging environmental values I also try to serve as a role model to encourage some of the qualities I think are valuable in a person like honesty, respect, and focused effort. In pushing these traits I realize that I am echoing the words I used to hear from my Dad growing up, and modeling my teaching style and classroom management in Mwazisi after so many years of observing my Dad coaching basketball.

When I arrived in Mwazisi last year I offered to help out at the secondary school during my spare time. The headmaster took that to mean I would be a full time teacher, and told me that I’d be taking over the Form one physical science class the following week. I began teaching by taking over for a class halfway through the school year in a subject that I haven’t even thought about since I was 16 years old. The additional combination of a language barrier with my Form ones, and the hormonal insanity of any 13 to 15 year old, made my first couple weeks of teaching feel like the third circle of hell.

I decided to stick with it when I realized what an incredible need for teachers there was at Mwazisi Community Day Secondary School (CDSS). Most of the other teachers only show up to teach about half of the time, and when they do show up they just sit under a mango tree while the class prefect copies the notes straight out of the teachers edition onto the crumbling chalkboard. A few of the teachers put a legitimate effort into their teaching, but most of them are burnt out and uninspired. I can’t say that I really blame them; teaching in Malawi is a daunting job, with over-crowded classes (58 students in my Form one class), and a complete lack of resources (my class doesn’t even have desks or chairs, but instead sit on planks and scrap wood from the half finished school block next door).

Over the remainder of the school year the students got more used to my teaching and my American English. As I saw that they understood the concepts I was teaching faster I was able to pick up the pace of my teaching and cover more material. They began to participate more and I became more creative in my teaching, improvising class experiments and demonstrations with whatever materials I could scrap together. In one instance I used the students themselves to represent atoms in different states of matter. One third of them acted as solid matter, squeezed together, just shifting their weight back and forth to represent the vibration of the molecules. Another third of the class represented liquids, and moved freely around the room weaving around the solids and passing each other. The last third were the gases, running from one side of the class to the other, colliding (while laughing) into anything in their way including each other. I’m sure the rest of the school was wondering what the crazy Azungu was up to in his class, but the students clearly enjoyed my break from conventional teaching and showed better and better efforts as the year went on. I was extremely proud to see the tremendous improvements the class as a whole showed on my final exam, and was really touched when I heard that at the end of the year the class had gone to the headmaster and asked if I could also teach their Form two Physical Science class.

While I looked forward to teaching my original class, I was not looking forward to starting from scratch with a whole new class of Form one students. I knew that the first few months would be a struggle so I decided to set the tone for the year early on, laying out my expectations for the class at the beginning hoping to start off on the right foot. I thought back to the teachers who had most impressed me and how they controlled our classes, while also inspiring us to give our best effort. But the more I thought about my past experiences, the more I realized that the best example I could imitate didn’t come from my classroom teachers. I realized that my greatest example for teaching is my Father as a basketball coach.

I recently received an article that my Mom had clipped out of our hometown paper The Broomfield Enterprise about my Dad. He received well deserved recognition during halftime of the Broomfield boys basketball game for his efforts in coaching boys basketball at the Broomfield Recreation Center for the past 25 years. My Dad began coaching with my older brother’s first team, coached me through the program, and has kept on all the way up to the present. It was fitting for him to receive the award at a high school game since he has helped to provide so many fundamentally sound, dives for the ball kind of players for the program. Although I had already realized my Dad’s teaching gift, I was incredibly happy and very proud to see that so many other people recognize his efforts as a coach as well. When I started back to teaching this year I really wanted to try and emulate the characteristics that I think make him such a great coach; the way he includes each and every one of his players, not just the star athletes, truly making them feel like they are as much an important part of the team, and drawing out the best efforts and positive attitudes.

Every year at the beginning of the first practice he sits the whole team down at center court and lays out the three rules he expects everyone to follow when they play on his team. After years of hearing the speech as one of his players, as well helping at his practices when I was available in high school and college, I can recite his speech pretty much word for word.

Rule # 1 Do what’s right.

At eleven to fourteen years old his boys are at an age where using good judgment becomes a crucial life skill. He explains to his players that somebody getting into trouble all of the time can’t be a useful part of the team, so making sound decisions on and off the court is an important part of playing basketball.

Rule # 2 Do your best.

He always promises his players that he will never get angry with any of them as long as they give their best effort. A promise he always lives up to, favoring whoever gives his best effort, and not necessarily the best athletes on his team or the players with the most experience.

Rule # 3 Treat everybody how you want to be treated

He demands that his players apply this rule to everybody they encounter including their teammates, coaches, the referees, and their opponents. Respect is very important to my father, and he leads by example, always showing respect to his players, encouraging them to reciprocate his example and carry it into every interaction.

In addition to his three core rules my Dad always asks that the players remember to have fun. His emphasis on enjoying the game is something I have always found refreshing coming back to his practices, particularly after experience as a college athlete. In all my years around athletics I have encountered too many coaches and players who take themselves way too seriously and tend to think of the game as some sort of glorified battle, when in reality its still just a game, and games are meant to be fun.

My Dad reinforces his rules throughout the year in every practice and game. If someone is loafing up and down the floor he yells, “come on you’re not doing your best,” or when he sees someone teasing one of their teammates then he asks, “is that how you want to be treated?” My Dad is always quick to remind his players that they should apply these rules to all aspects of their life; school, family, friends, or just every day life. As he says, “if you strive to practice these rules each and every day than you are bound to be a much happier person.”

I have always believed that my Dad is a natural teacher, and am happy he gets to fulfill this calling by coaching. He motivates and encourages each and every one of his players to achieve, always ready on the sidelines with a smile and a high-five. As I teach my classes here in Africa I like to think that by following my Father’s example and emphasizing the same values he taught on the Basketball court I might have the same kind of long lasting effect in Mwazisi that he has made in Broomfield.

So when I walked into class last January and faced a new class of 60 form one students for the first time, I drew on the experience and wisdom of my Dad, and recited his three rules speech almost word for word. I figure that even if my students never understand more than half of what I teach in class, at least they will still remember my father’s moral code, via his three rules. I know this because these are the classroom rules I write on the board at the beginning of each week, and. When I see a boy looking at his neighbor’s workbook while writing a quiz, I ask him to recite the first rule, and tell me if he is doing what is right. When I see a girl nodding off while I’m lecturing in physical science, I question her about doing her best. Or when I hear a group of students laughing at a classmate’s English mistake I ask, “is that how you want to be treated when you make a mistake?”

I think I was extremely lucky to have such an influential teacher, not to mention to have that teacher as a Father. Happy Father’s Day Dad, thanks for everything.

Prouder Than Ever To Represent America

2008-06-05T01:19:00.005+03:00

It's fitting that I'm in Lilongwe right now to go to the American ambassador's Independence day celebration (he has it a month early because he'll be in America for the real day),it just so happens that tonight we have an even better reason to celebrate our home country...The Nomination of Barack Obama to be the democratic candidate for president. I have never seen a political candidate in my lifetime with as much potential to change the world, and I'm so happy to see that so many people in America see the same thing in Mr. Obama. I have also never seen a candidate that has such an effect on the American public, it seems like he has mobilized and energized my generation in a way that I would have thought was imposable three years ago. He's bringing out people that never even thought about voting, and making passionate believers of them.

The only thing that might be comparable to the excitement in America is the excitement here in Africa! To give you an example the other day I rode my bicycle from my site to Mzuzu to do some repairs. While I was riding through Ekwendeni about 80 kms away from my village,(where nobody knows me or that I'm an American) a women raised her fist and said in slow Malawian broken English, "OH-BAA-MA." You can only imagine the size of the smile that grew across my face as she hid her embarrassed laugh in her her friends chitenge.

Six months ago everybody around my village just laughed at me when I held up my copy of "Dreams From My Father" to show them the picture of the man who I think will be my next president. Everybody, except for Vincent Mpese Gondwe a retired Member of Parliment that lives in Bolero who has become a very close friend of mine. This incredible man has seen the darkest days of Malawian politics, which he still bears in the form of scars on his head from when an attempt was made on his life for making a bold vote in Parliament. He also saw the darkest days in American politics as a student at Harvard in the early 1960's.

When Obama first won the primary in Iowa I rode my bike to Vincent's house to share the good news. He had already heard on BBC and was working on framing a picture of Mr. Obama that he had cut out of a Newsweek magazine, with his added caption "A Symbol of Change." Mr. Gondwe was chuckling as he said, "Daniel I tell you, if that man is sworn in as the American president then all of Africa will change the way it looks at your country."

Now everybody in my village is believing in the possibility of a black man leading America, and changing the world. When they walk into my house and see his picture hanging on my wall under a huge American flag I inherited from another volunteer, they say his name with the same delibrit hopefullness in their voice that that woman had the other day....OH-BA-MA. I'm proud to be a representative of America, and am all too happy to sit down with anybody who will listen and start ranting about this man who I believe has the life-experience to understand the world in a way no previous American president has, and the eloquence to relate that understanding to all American public as a whole, and the integrity to use all that influence to help us find a better way in the world.

I'm so proud to see the excitment of a growing movement in America. A mass awakening from the past eight years of our appathetic slumber, and a new demand for change. I'm also proud to see that his nomination was ensured with the final few delegates from my adoptive state of Montana, and will be confirmed with his official nomination in my home state of Colorado. But I would be most proud to say that I served as a Peace Corps volunteer under President Barack Obama's administration. Let's make that happen now!

Ramblings: A Bad Morning Turned into a Beautiful Day

2008-03-27T00:10:00.000+03:00

I was put in a bad mood first thing this morning when I walked out of my house and found that my biggest and healthiest Chamwamba tree was destroyed by one of the kids who live next door. Since I started out planting trees around my house when the rains started I’ve lost count of how many trees the kids have destroyed. “What’s the point” I muttered to myself as I tried to splint the broken trunk, “She’ll just destroy it again in a week.”

As I walked over to talk to her parents I was told that Nya Nfuni (the women who cooks for me when I teach at the secondary school, and one of my closest friends in the village) was sick and went to the clinic in the middle of the night. I went straight to the clinic from there, and found her looking weak and scared, quite a contrast from the bright eyed super women that I call my Malawian Mama. She explained matimba chimbira yichoko, yichoko (My heart is running slow.)

The frightened look on her face really had me worried, and was heavy on my mind as I walked to Mr. Semi the Agriculture extension worker’s house to fulfill our agreement to plant some of his Vetiver grass around our newly dug future fishpond to try and prevent soil erosion and silting. When I got there he complained that it was too late to start work, “the sun’s too high to go to the field now.” His lame excuss to put off the job really annoyed me because it wasn’t even 7:30 am yet and still nice and cool out, but since I asked him to show me the best way to plant vetiver and it was going to come from his garden I was at his mercy.

I was really annoyed as I walked back home because my whole morning was planned around my agreement to meet Mr. Semi. It was then that I noticed a women that I recognized but didn’t really know looking at me and laughing. When I asked her what she was laughing at she said “Mukunyamula Jembe”- “You’re carrying a hoe.” My mood went from bad to furious… The common Malawian belief that all Americans and Europeans are completely incapable of doing any manual labor absolutely infuriates me. I gave a sarcastic response that I’m sure she didn’t understand but could read the meaning behind my tone. I decided I better get out of Mwazisi before I snap on somebody.

I decided to take a bike ride, I had a good excuse to escape since I was already planning to go to Berludgi where I had heard about a man who had extra pvc pipes sitting around that I was interested in using for a rainwater harvesting tank. So I decided to take the long bike ride and visit some friends along the way mostly just to get out of Mwazisi for a day and have a little adventure.

I was already feeling better as I rode out of town; I just needed the excitement of a change of scene to change my mood. I stopped to talk to a man carrying a baby in a bundle on his back the way women do. I told him I’d never seen a man carrying his children, and that it was good to see a man taking care of the children for a change. He laughed and turned around to show off the smiling bundle on his back. I made a quick stop to remind the women from our beekeeping group about an upcoming meeting. I turned off the main road to go over the pass that leads to Pangara; a small village between Mankhali Hill and the mountains on the border of Vwaza Game Reserve. At the foot of the pass you go through a set of boulders that people call the elephants feet, they seem like a gate to the more untouched wilderness behind the mountains where the effect of people living on the land hasn’t taken it’s destructive toll yet. I love going down this road because I always feel like I’m really heading into the bush. There are much more trees on the surrounding mountains and I always seem to have the rocky neglected road to myself, so all I can hear is the breeze in the trees, and the array of Malawian bird songs.

My friend Bwana Nfuni is one of the reasons that Pangara’s surrounding wilderness is better preserved. He is my favorite village headman, because while many of the other village headman are drunks and over inflated egomaniacs, he is a true naturalist. His house is surrounded by trees of all sorts; fruit, palm, and nitrogen rich deciduous trees to improve the soil. Not only does he plant a lot of trees at his home, and chase people from cutting trees on the hills, but his more than thirty bee-hives hanging from the branches of trees is an assured protection of the trees it hangs between. He’s the best bee-keeper anywhere near Mwazisi and has been an indispensable asset for our beekeeping group sharing his knowledge of honey and wax production, and offering advice on how to go about harvesting the hives. I’m really glad to have a village headman like him so close to Mwazisi, he is the rare positive social deviant needed to set an example for everybody else to follow.

I stopped by his house for a visit but found that he was away teaching at the Primary school which he continues to do despite long having been retired. So I headed on to my destination of Beraludgi, and found my man with the PVC pipes. His name was Mr. Boti, and I found him sitting under a shade weaving a basket. He turned out to be about the handiest person I have encountered in Malawi. Aside from being a basketweaver, he is also a carpenter, metalworker, and welder. The man actually converted old bike parts into a grinder, and welding equipment. I was amazed to say the least, and I was equally impressed by his modesty. As I Marveled at his makeshift workshop he just smiled and remained under his shade continuing his work, never saying more than a couple words.

When I asked about the pipes he sent his sons behind the house and they emerged with three 20 centimeters in diameter pipes, which was exactly what I was looking for. He offered them to me free of charge when I know the same pipes would sell for more than 500 kwatcha a piece in Mzuzu. I insisted on paying him a little for them, and also promised to come back sometime with a whole bunch of Vegetable seeds. A promise he seemed to appreciate.

As I left his place my fortune turned from good to downright miraculous, way out there in the bush where Mr. Boti lives I saw a truck I recognized passing on the narrow path. I waved it down and was happy to see that it turned out to be one of my neighbors brother who is running for MP in 2009 who is driving out to every back road outpost trying to garner up early support for his campaign. He recognized me from his brother’s swearing in as a chief, and agreed to carry the pipes back to my house on his way back to Mwazisi. When I left this morning I didn’t even know if I would find any pipes. Not only did I find exactly what I was looking for but got them for next to nothing and got free transport from way out in Berludgi. The gods must have decided to make up for my crap morning.

From Berludgi Mr. Boti pointed me in the direction of a back road to Kapenda, where the nearest Peace Corps volunteer to me is placed. So I decided to drop in and visit him. Unfortunately when I got there I found that he was away as well in Mzuzu, but it was a sunny day and worth the ride just to see another road. When I got to Kapenda a Thunderhead rolled in, the sun was blocked out and the downpour started. I took shelter and chatted with some entertaining guys drunk on homemade wine from tea leaves. They enjoyed helping me to improve my Chitumbuka, and we shared a lot of laughs. The cloudburst ended as suddenly as it had blown in. I took advantage of the clearing, and started heading for home.

I made one more stop at an ant-hill where I was told I could get a bit of cell-phone network. From there I sent my Mom a birthday greeting via text message, and got her to call me back so we could talk longer. When I heard her groggy voice I remembered that it was 5: 00am in Colorado. I sang happy birthday, which brought a sleepy laugh. We had a long and good conversation. I’m always happy to be transported back to Colorado by my mother’s voice every now and then.

I got back to Mwazisi just after dark and went straight to the hospital to see Nya Nfuni. She still looked weak, but was clearly much better. I sat with her and chatted for a while, and told her in terrible Chitumbuka that “I was worried about my Malawian mother all day.” The smile that spread on her face warmed my heart, and made me feel like I am exactly where I’m supposed to be right now, a huge change from this morning when I was feeling so out of place.

As I walked back to my house I heard drums starting up in the trading center. I went to see what was going on and found the village women starting a dance circle. Across the road, I could see some drunken men half dancing, half stumbling in the candlelight in BBC’s bar, which seemed very cave like and sad compared to the beauty of the deliberate and fluid movements of the women under a clear beaming African starry night. I sat on the front steps of Chipesa’s shop with my neighbor’s children and watched the women’s hips gyrate and smiles glow in the dim lantern light. I’ve said it many times before and I’ll say it again, “African women sure are beautiful!”

Kuzizima article: A Great Example

2008-01-15T19:01:00.000+03:00

This is an article I wrote for the Kuzizima magazine last month (a newsletter distributed to all of the Peace Corps volunteers in Malawi). Most of you probably didn’t know that I have experienced a bit of Peace Corps romance since I’ve been here. I quickly hit it off with a second year Environmental volunteer named Corie, but unfortunately last month she was medically separated due to a rare illness that is effecting her pituitary gland and has caused her to develop diabetes isopodous. We were really just getting to know each other but I really gained a lot from our relationship, and that’s what this article is all about; the lessons that other Peace Corps volunteers and myself can draw from Corie. Enjoy!

As most of you know by now Corie Eastridge from the second year environment group was medically separated last month after being diagnosed with lymphocytic hypophysitis a rare disease caused by an autoimmune disease and has been sent back home to Chicago. I know I was not the only person in Malawi to fall for this extraordinary red head, her charm and ever-positive attitude made her one of the most mutually loved people in Peace Corps Malawi. So the news of her sudden departure created an emotional typhoon for all who know her. It’s hard to imagine a Peace Corps gathering in Lilongwe without Corie’s wild dance moves, twisted sense of humor, and constant giggles unbashfully bubbling up in any situation no matter how inappropriate. I had precious little time to get to know Corie, but in that short time I was fortunate to learn a lot from her attitude, her approach to Peace Corps, as well as the circumstances that led to her premature end of service.

In regards to what I learned from her circumstances it has given me a renewed appreciation for my own service. Her experience has taught me that being here is an opportunity not to be taken for granted; it can be over in a flash as she was sent home without having the chance to go back to her village and pack or say goodbye. Corie’s experience encourages me to view everyday here as a gift. Sometimes volunteers start to look at their service in Malawi as an endurance contest, which is no way to stay happy, and in my opinion is counterproductive to Peace Corps goal of providing Malawians with a positive image of Americans through its volunteers. Seeing our service as a gift reminds us that this is a chance to experience a world that, at least in my case, I never could have imagined a year ago. It’s also the opportunity to at least try to make a small difference in one of the worlds most under-developed countries. There is also the opportunity everyday to have a positive impact on some individual’s life, which can be something as small and simple as a smile and kind words to the shy unconfident woman you might pass on the street, or something as significant as helping your neighbor start the small business that changes his or her whole life.

Corie’s attitude while working here in Malawi is one of the lessons that I could most benefit from striving to imitate. Being able to put your frustrations aside and always remain positive the way Corie has done can make any volunteers service more effective. The positive influence Corie had on the people of Maliera was inspiring. When I first visited her site I saw that she approached every interaction with a smile on her face, and always left the other person infected with a smile on their face too. I was amazed at how well integrated she was at her site, and the way people in Maliera truly loved her, clearly a product of her cheery attitude and good-nature towards everybody in the village. She is the definitive example of a Peace Corps volunteers’ role as a diplomat for the American people. Ten years from now when the children of Maliera have grown up, when they think about America they will associate it with the smiling ginger from Chicago they loved as a child. That’s an everlasting impact that can’t be expressed on any description of service.

Corie wasn’t just here as a diplomat though, she also took her approach to being a capacity builder very serious which we can also draw lessons from. She worked with the community to start a peanut butter making project, which is not only an income generator, but also provides a source of much needed protein and fats locally for the areas many malnourished children. She pressed on with this project despite many stumbling blocks, one of which I was there to witness. The group she was working with had become frustrated with making stabilized soil blocks (SSBs) and were ready to abandon the method all together and cut down trees to burn bricks, a method they were much more familiar with. I probably would have gotten frustrated with them being so quick to abandon SSBs. She had worked hard on writing a funding proposal, budgeting, and working out all of the tedious details. Corie did not get angry though. She calmly explained the benefits of doing SSBs and left the decision up to them, and ultimately they were willing to give the soil blocks another try. As their experience with the machine grew, they quickly got a system down, and by the next time I visited her again the building was finished and the group was looking to extend the project to a youth community center. This was the first major project they had ever done as a group, and her patience and persistence helped them see what they were capable of doing together. The new enthusiasm of the group shows that this project is sure to continue and grow even though she has left. The lesson that I think we as Peace Corps volunteers can draw from this is to strike the balance of remaining persistent and confident in our ideas without ever being forceful or patronizing.

People in Corie’s village won’t be remembering her simply because of the projects she did, but mostly they will remember how she was smiling and laughing all along the way; this is the most important lesson that I see in Corie’s example. Even though her service ended early and unexpectedly, she can feel comforted that she made the most of her experience every day that she was here, just simply by being so happy. While she was in Malawi she fostered nothing but positive relationships with people who certainly won’t be forgetting her anytime soon. . Corie came to visit my village for just two very short visits, but people still ask me about her all the time, they say, “Oh Corie, that one is sooo cheerful.” This is probably the most important lesson I have learned form Corie, the importance of just having fun and enjoying each day as it comes to you. Just because somebody works hard and takes their assignment seriously, doesn’t mean that they have to take themselves seriously; at least Corie illustrated this with every giggle, at regular rate of about five per minute.

That propensity to always be laughing was the most important thing I learned from Corie, and also happens to be the first thing that drew me to her. At my groups swearing in one of the Malawian speakers from the department of forestry said “We understand that Lady Bill Clinton may be the next President of America.” Every American present at least shared a quiet chuckle with the person next to them, but one giant laugh carried over the whispers without reservation, and I turned around to see Corie’s ear to ear grin. I knew then that she was somebody who knew how to enjoy life, but as I spent more time with her I became more and more impressed with her ability to laugh and appreciate the world around her regardless of the circumstances. These last few months she has really demonstrated this ability. Even when she was in tears telling me about her frustrations with not being allowed to go and say goodbye to anybody in her village she joked about her sickness as a punishment for all the evil jokes she has told over the years. Her ability to laugh and remain positive despite having her entire world turned upside down by this very serious illness is nothing short of remarkable.

I really have no frame of reference to understand what she is going through as she deals with this rare illness that will affect her for the rest of her life. I can only hope that I would have half the strength and dignity that she has demonstrated so far. Corie said it best the last time I spoke to her about how little the doctors knew about what is happening to her, “Eh, We’ll see what happens….everything always works out.” That sort of optimism and ability to see the futility in worrying about what is to come in ones life is something rare and beautiful, and I am ever-thankful to Corie for providing such a spectacular example to try to live up to.

The Ladies Take a Field Trip

2007-11-28T11:23:00.000+03:00

As I mentioned in my last blog, the call of adventure beckoned my friends to leave Mwazisi earlier than they had planned. They decided they wanted to do something nice for the community before leaving, which developed into the idea of renting a Matola and taking the women of Mwazisi to Vwaza Game Reserve to do a game drive, and have a day outside the village to be free of the monotony of their usual daily activities. We just invited women because we knew they were much less likely to have an opportunity like this, and we also knew that the dynamic would change if men also came along, the women wouldn’t feel so free and open to enjoy themselves.

We left late and our number of women was reduced because of a funeral at a near by village. But I was happy that the journey carried on anyways, and the 23 women who did come were abuzz with excitement as the truck pulled out of Mwazisi. All of the ladies were dressed in their best dresses, kept beaming smiles, and sang songs the entire way. One often repeated verse was “Tizamuwona zovu lero” (“We will see elephants today”). My name was also featured occasionally in the songs, which I always acknowledged with a grateful smile. We stopped in Kapenda to pick up Willard Nshanti, the Parks and Wildlife official I asked to escort us. He came out of his house wearing his parks uniform, a bright red sash across his body, and had an M16 rifle. He also came out with a huge grin on his face that gave the scene an element of comedy. I caught Leslie’s eyes and could see that she found it every bit as funny as I did.

We powered through the sandy patches in the road where Matolas tend to get stuck and reached the park close to 9:00 am. Unlike the last time I biked to Vwaza there were no elephants sitting at the gate waiting to greet us, but plenty of baboons instead. Before we started the game drive the park director addressed all of the ladies outside his office. He talked about the problems caused by people coming into the park to collect firewood, and the importance of starting our own tree nurseries, and planting trees near people’s homes to ensure that firewood is available inside the village, and people don’t need to be so dependent on the surrounding forests’ resources. I was happy to hear him say “Chonde mukupanda blue gum na milina chara” (“Please don’t plant eucalyptus and milina trees”). These are two very invasive trees that do more harm than good for the soil, but are the most common trees planted by Malawians because of how fast-growing they are.

After the talk we loaded back up on the Matola to go to Kazuni Lake, where animals can usually be seen at the water hole. Within just a few minutes of driving the women in the front of the Matola started calling out “Wona nkhumba,” pointing at two warthogs running through the woods, frantically being chased by three small piglets.

The next animal we saw was my favorite; a massive sabel. I was immediately reminded of my friend Tony’s animated description of what a sabel looks like, in the way that only Tony can describe something… He jumps from his chair to give himself room for the depiction. “Man you’ve never heard of a sable? It’s the most bad-ass animal in Malawi bro. It’s built like a freaking elk, man, but has a hump on its back like a bull-moose,” as he tucked his shoulders back and curled his neck to replicate the stout muscular neck of the beast. “And it’s big man, real big,” which he indicated by waving his hand high above his head. “And it has two long spiraling antlers” as he outlined the antlers over his head with his index fingers. “Most bad-ass animal in Malawi bro… So when one of the women pointed at one gracefully gliding through the woods I couldn’t help but smile, Tony’s description was dead-on, it was the most bad-ass animal I’ve seen in Malawi. We watched as it glided around each tree and over high shrubs with the fluidity of water running around stones in a streambed, despite having the muscle mass of a bull elk.

We saw scattered herds of bush-buck that could of just as easily have been white-tales grazing through fields of clover somewhere in eastern Wyoming. Then we pulled over by Kazuni Lake to get out and take a closer look at a herd of hippos under the supervision of Mr. Mshanti and his M16. He kept encouraging us to get closer and closer, which surprised me because I’ve always heard that hippos are the most dangerous animals in Africa. We were made bold by the guns under the park official’s arm, and inched within 30 feet of the huge and dangerous animals.

I especially enjoyed watching the women who I have only ever known in the context of Mwazisi. It was awesome being able to watch them having so much fun, and losing themselves in their wonder and amazement when one of the hippos opened its huge jaws to let out a yawn revealing its massive teeth for tearing and grinding the flesh of its unlucky prey. After the hippo closed its mouth and dipped under water to swim away the silence was broken by the women looking at each other still with wide excited eyes, chattering and laughing high on the adrenaline of the moment. As we walked over to a good place to take some group pictures, I continued to watch the women who were really feeling free and having a ball, carrying balls of dried elephant dung on their heads, and laughing the whole time. We spent a long time next to the lake just taking picture after picture, more of the ladies than of the hippos. I’m glad we caught all of those smiles when they were at their most magnificent.

The rest of the trip was botched up by Mshanti bringing us on a wild-goose chase that led us down a long bumpy road to the other side of the park to try and see a new animal sanctuary that it turned out we couldn’t even get clearance to enter. But it didn’t really matter the whole trip was worth the first couple hours of smiles.
We stopped off at a local market on the way back to hide from an oncoming storm, and eat lunch. The frustration of our misguided adventure to the sanctuary fell away as we shared fried corn on the cob, and bananas we bought from the market, and rice and eggs the women carried. As we sat in a storefront and talked about the days events those smiles came back. A mini-van full of teachers returning from a nearby school passed through the same village on its way back to Rumphi, which was our final destination after the field trip. The women told us we should take advantage of the free ride, and they would head back to Mwazisi after the rain had passed. So I loaded our bags while the ladies said their final goodbyes to Leslie, Annie, and Sarah knowing that they would most likely never see them again. My American friends insisted on hugs which surprised the ladies, who awkwardly embraced their new found friends. I could see they were sad to say goodbye to these foreigners who flashed into their lives and brought them to see a place just down the road from them but they had never had the chance to enjoy. They giggled as they gave into the hugs and I was happy to see the smiles flash again as we hopped in the van.

First Visitors

2007-11-28T11:16:00.000+03:00

It never fails…when you’re late, everything goes wrong. I spent most of my morning looking for a lost ATM card so I could withdraw enough money to get to Koronga to meet my friends who had flown in to Dar Es Salaam and taken the train through Tanzania to the Northern border of Malawi. When I finally got on the mini-bus I sat for an hour and a half while the conductor waited for more passengers to board. Despite my persistent pleading, “Tiene, tiene chonde nachedwa” (Let’s go, Please I’m Late) he refused to start the journey until the bus was full to capacity. We finally started pulling out of Mzuzu when the side door suddenly fell off the overfilled minibus. All I could do was laugh as I looked at my watch to see that it was a half an hour until the time I agreed to meet my friends at the Chitimba roadblock, which was still one and a half hours drive away. While the driver and conductor put their Malawian ingenuity together to reattach the door I had visions of my friend’s good will towards me fading as they sat in the hot African sun on the side of the road surrounded by Malawian children with outstretched hands repeating the primary English phrase they learn from their friends in areas where tourists pass; “Azungu, give me my money”…A heck of a way to spend their first day in Malawi. I felt I was already failing as a host in Malawi.

The ride from Mzuzu to Chitimba is beautiful; it skates around the southeast corner of Nyika Park and affords spectacular views of dense green forests, with baboons wandering out to gawk at the cars as they wiz by. Then as you make your way down the escarpment Lake Malawi suddenly appears before you. Being the third biggest lake in Africa, its sheer enormity always gives a thrill when it comes into view. It was my first time taking this road but I couldn’t enjoy it fully with my waiting friends weighing heavy on my mind. Two and a half hours past the time I said I’d be there the driver told me we were approaching the Chitimba roadblock. I climbed out of the hot, packed minibus with my apologies all planned out, and found my friends sitting under a palm tree with smiles on their faces as they enjoyed a fruit picnic and chatted with one of the English speaking roadblock officers. They all greeted me with big hugs and warm salutations. Not a complaint was uttered and when I brought up my late arrival, they just shrugged their shoulders, and said “Eh we figured you would be here a little late so we only got here a half hour ago. We’re on African time now, just glad to be here.” I was relieved and excited; right away I knew this was the way things were going to go for the next month. There was no need for me to ever worry about having to entertain anybody, the ladies were always game to go with the flow and enjoy any experience that came their way. They were open to anything and everything and were never phased by the common frustrations that seem to come with life in Malawi.

Sarah, Leslie, and Annie had been on rugby tour with the Missoula Maggots for a few months, and were tired and ready to spend some time in my village. Mary’s only destination was Africa, but she was also content with spending time in Mwazisi where she could do what she loves and does best…teach. The plan was for them to stay with me for a month while they helped the form four students (high school seniors) prepare for their MSCE exams, the most important test most Malawians will ever take. A students entire scholastic carrier boils down to whether or not they do well on this month long series of exams. Unfortunately, by the time my friends arrived, the time for teaching and studying was pretty much over, but we were able to put together a few mass cramming sessions, that turned out to be very helpful, according to all the students who came. An opportunity to practice in the eleventh hour would make a difference. The secondary school teachers view the second half of the third term as the beginning of their vacation, so some of the teachers leave to go to Mzuzu or Zomba to work on advanced certificates while others spend the remainder of the school days sitting under a mango tree, and leave the form fours to study on their own. Form one and threes spend their time idling in teacherless school blocks.

From talking to a few Peace Corps Education volunteers I gathered that the essay portion of the exams was the most difficult section for most students. So in the weeks before my friends arrival I took over some of the other teacher’s open slots with the form fours and gave them the best tutorial I could come up with on essay writing. The day before I left to go to Chitimba I had the form fours write an essay that I took from an old test paper. When the ladies got to the village we looked them over to see what common mistakes we could shore up at the last minute.

The essays showed that we had a lot to teach in only a few days. Most of the students, even after my previous crash course, had no concept of how to structure an essay. They wrote in bullet points and rarely made a complete sentence. The best way for us to help was to set up a workshop, where we reviewed the structure of a good essay: thesis, support, support, support, and a conclusion, with an emphasis on the importance of answering the who, what, when, where, and why in any question. We then gave them three practice questions to choose from and allowed them 50 minutes to write the exam, to simulate the actual tests, which have a strict time limit. After they finished we went over some basic vocabulary and grammar in small groups. Mary was swarmed by students looking for help in math, which she handled with the grace and professionalism that inspired the phrase that the rest of us probably repeated a thousand times over the next month, “Mary’s so fricken amazing!”

We spent the rest of the afternoon marking papers, and giving extra help to students with more in depth questions. My friends fully embraced the task; I was amazed at the thoughtful detail with which they marked the papers, and the encouraging comments they gave. Especially Leslie who works with the Boys and Girls Club of Denver, I was impressed to see how quickly connected with my students, and how comfortable they became with her.

One example that sticks out came near the end of their visit, Leslie came to work on English with the form three class to organize a pen pals exchange with the students she works with in Denver. It was the first time she had met the form threes and I didn’t have time to help in that class because I had two periods of physical science to teach with the form one class next door. I brought Leslie into the class for a quick introduction, and explanation about what she would have them do, then I hurried over to my class and taught for the next 2 hours straight (cramming in as much review as possible to try to get them ready for final exams the following week.) When I left my class I found that she was still teaching…well, sort of. When I walked in all of the students were gathered around Leslie looking at her camera, roaring with laughter. Apparently she just recorded some of them doing their best Malipenga dance, and they were watching the replay. After she helped all of them write their letters, she just hung out with the students and chatted for a long time. The whole house had a glow when I peeked in; the students all had grins from ear to ear. They were obviously not used to a teacher staying after a lesson for casual conversation, and certainly not for singing and dancing. When I entered the classroom Leslie was finalizing plans for the whole group to reconvene at one of the girl’s house for a dance party. I asked “hey why haven’t I ever been invited to a dance party.” I have to say I was a bit jealous.

In addition to teaching, the ladies also had a chance to be students. They came with me to my regular Chitumbuka lessons with Nya Bowe (Mrs. Kayera). She was ecstatic to have a full class, and not just working one on one with me. I could tell she spent some time organizing a lesson plan and presented the lessons from my Peace Corps language manual as well as any of my Peace Corps trainers. Sarah was the most serious about learning Chitumbuka, and was Nya Bowe’s star student. She took detailed notes in class, and spent any down time studying through her little notebook, or bouncing her pronunciation off me to make sure it was correct. When she greeted people out on the street they stopped surprised and said “Ehh, Wamanyeko.” Everybody was very impressed and appreciative that Sarah was putting forth so much effort to learn a language she wouldn’t be able to use anywhere outside of the Northern region of Malawi. The older people around the village would say, “That Sarah, she works very hard, and is so cheerful. The others, Ahh Watondeka.” Which means failing, but really they were probably doing much better than I did in my first couple weeks, but paled in comparison to Sarah.

All of my friends immediately fell in love with Nya Bowey, with her infectious smile, and outgoing nature that is so uncommon among Malawian women around foreigners. They decided that we needed to have Nya Bowey bring her whole family over to my house so we could cook dinner for them. The girls were excited to cook ever since they discovered my friend Mr. Mwasa’s garden where he has been growing a variety of vegetables from the seeds my friends and family have been sending from back in the states. They were like kids in a candy store running around the plot picking fresh basil, green onions, romaine lettuce, beet greens, Swiss chard and bush beans. “Why didn’t you show us this earlier,” they asked me bitterly, “we should have been eating this the whole time.”

After there first experience with cooking in the village over a three stone fire my friends quickly understood why I pay my neighbor Nya Funi to cook a little extra of what ever she is making for her own family. Between carrying water from the borehole, improvising utensils, and suffocating in a smoky kitchen, cooking in the village becomes quite an undertaking. We also cooked a big meal for Nya Funi’s family on a different night, which we started preparing around 11:00 am by making corn tortillas from scratch, then made a roasted corn salsa, a pot of beans that took half the day itself to cook on the fire, and a vegetable fry-up that gave my Malawian friends an opportunity to sample foods that they had never seen before.

It was a time consuming undertaking, but we had a blast seeing what we could put together in a group effort. We all worked well together, once we found our rhythm, with Leslie and Annie generally the brains behind the operation, and the rest of us carrying out their orders. Annie really held the whole thing together with her level head and her ability to make the most out of everything that was available to us. We joked that it was practice for our future self-sustaining community back in Colorado or Montana, when we get tired of our wandering ways and finally set roots. The idea of communal living back in America was a common topic of discussion throughout the girls visit, it seemed to start out as a joke, but lead to more serious discussions about the ideal place, and whether it was possible to be self-sufficient in a big city like Denver, and by the time Sarah was leaving we had some of my Peace Corps friends getting into the idea and asking if we had started thinking about a year when it could start coming together.

Both meals were a big success. Many of my other friends ended up dropping by and tasting our creation. It was certainly like nothing they had ever tasted before. Some of it was a little to alien for the Malawian tongue, which is used to only the blandest of foods. But sometimes as soon as Nya Funi put the spoon to her mouth, her eyes would show that she was experiencing an epiphany of flavor. She looked almost shocked as she pointed her spoon at the bowl of vegetables declaring “kunowa chomene” (very delicious). When the Kayira family came over we lingered behind my house under the stars long after our bellies were full to capacity, chatting and laughing. With encouragement Sarah broke out the guitar and we started singing American folk and country songs, to repay all the singing and dancing Nya Bowe’s daughters had done for us. Leslie encouraged me to get up and dance, so that we could lure out some big laughs from the Malawians, so she could sneak a picture or two. The resulting snaps will surely transport anyone of us who were present back to that night of contented companionship.

There are too many great cultural exchanges to relate from the girls visit without writing a book. Even though they didn’t stay in my village as long as we originally planned, their impact on the community far exceeded my expectations, and will certainly have a lasting effect. One day they came with me to Football training. I think its fairly safe to assume this was the first time anybody in Mwazisi had ever seen a women in shorts let alone playing football. When the ladies first showed up ready to play, the guys roared with laughter and bounced around slapping high fives with excitement, probably mostly from seeing my friends in shorts. But when we started playing pass and defend their jaws dropped as Annie, who played soccer at the University of Montana ran circles around some of the best players. Apparently word of the ladies training with the team spread through the village, because before I knew it a crowd had assembled around the pitch, as big as the crowd for most games. What made me most happy was seeing all of the young girls who were also watching as the village heroes of Gan United running their absolute hardest and calling out a women’s name to pass them the ball, and then joking around with them the same way they would with any other teammate during a lull in the action. This is very significant in a village where men and women seem to live in separate worlds, in most cases barely speaking to each other beyond the expected formal greetings (although there are certainly exceptions.)

Eventually the itch to strap on a backpack and continue the adventure of exploring the world became too strong for my friends to keep wading around in the calm pool of village life in Mwazisi. An itch I can relate to, and I’m glad they acted on it because it brought them to one of the great wonders of Africa, and rafting on the big waters of the Zambezi river; separate adventures that you will all have to get from them if you ever get the chance to buy one of them a beer. I just count my blessings for having the friends that I have. Not many people would be willing to embark on a trip like theirs and experience life in Africa the way they did. They are four remarkable women and I’m glad we had the opportunity to share the experiences that we did, and now when I write to them about Mwazisi, they can put it into context in a way that nobody else can, that is until you come to Malawi and see the Mwazisi valley for yourselves.

A Couple Friends Looking For Help With Fees

2007-10-13T10:23:00.000+03:00

In my last blog I mentioned two teachers looking for assistance in furthering their education, this blog is to provide more information about them. But first I would like to reiterate my concerns with this situation. I agreed to help these two teachers look for financial assistance after their persistent inquiries, but I don’t want this to open the flood gates inviting everybody with the inclination to come to me asking for sponsors. In Malawi just like in America if somebody shows their academic prowess there is tremendous opportunity to receive government assistance or private sponsored scholarships. Though neither of these two men were strong enough in school to earn scholarships they are both already teachers, and it is my hope that by helping them to advance their education than it will raise the level of education in Mwazisi’s struggleing school. One of my primary fears is that once they achieve their desired degrees they will move on to a more prestigious school, and the brain drain in Mwazisi just continues. All I can do is just keep on encouraging people to take ownership of their home village and invest themselves into its sustained development.

Again I don’t want people to see me (their azungu) as a mere source of money. I know there will be more significant and far-reaching things for my friends back home to put their money towards as my projects develop, and the Peace Corps has organized better and tax deductible avenues for friends and family to provide project assistance. So please don’t anybody feel inclined to cover my friends entire tuition. I am encouraging them to continue seeking alternative means to fund their own schooling, because as I said before I think people take their education far more serious when they are financially invested in it. In both cases my friend’s tuition is over 150,000 Malawian Kwatcha, which is over $1,000. This is why I’m reaching out to a larger audience, asking people to chip in bit by bit, instead of asking just a few friends to pay it all in one lump some. Neither of these men will be starting school until next year at the earliest. So if people are interested than they can help by raising a little money here and there at their local church groups, or rotary clubs. Then when the time rolls around to pay tuition if a lot of people chip in just a little bit it should add up to take a big chunk out of the tuition they have to pay. As with many things I’m doing I don’t know if this is the best way to go about this, but I have found that is generally best to just dive in head first, themn shore up the problems as they pop up. Why not go out on a limb? Isn’t that where all the fruit is? That being said, here are my friends.

Mike Kayera
The first of my friends who is looking for help with paying his school fees is the Head Master at Mwazisi Community Day Secondary School, which is the school I am currently teaching at. His name is Mike Aaron Kayira and despite being the head teacher at our school, he only has a teaching certificate with no advanced education. To improve his teaching abilities Mr. Kayira is hoping to continue his education and obtain a diploma in Theology through the Theological Education by Extension in Malawi (TEEM) program. Bible Knowledge is a required course in Malawian schools and is the subject Mr. Kayira primarily teaches. I think most of you know that I am a strong believer in America’s division between church and state, but I think some of my more religious family members might find this compelling.

All secondary students have to take the Malawi School Certificate of Education Exam (MSCE) in order to get their secondary school certificate. At least a score of fifty is required to pass (the lower the score the better, making an eight an exemplary score). Mr. Kayira scored a thirty-five on his exam which is average, and is barely high enough to sit for the Malawi University Entrance exams, and is certainly not high enough to receive any sort of scholarships. Though his MSCE scores are mediocre he passed the Entrance exams and has been accepted into the TEEM program.

When I asked Mr. Kayira what his future plans were for after achieving a higher degree he replied “It is my great desire to eventually be a lecturer at one of the universities in Malawi. I also want to do pastoral work in Malawi to address perennial problems such as HIV/AIDS and counseling for victim’s families.”

Next I asked him how will the continuation of your personal education benefit the local community and Malawi as a whole? Mr. Kayira replied, “It will enable counseling and guiding on Biblical issues to help families through the problems they encounter in everyday life, and preach the gospel of salvation. The impact for the nation will be to impart knowledge to students, and to promote theological studies.”

I know Mr. Kayira very well, his wife is my Chitumbuka teacher and I consider his entire family to be my friends. While teaching in Mwazisi he and Mrs. Kayira are supporting a very large family with four girls and two boys. The oldest girl graduated from Pwezi Girls Secondary School (one of the top private schools in the country) while his two boys are both currently going to very good private schools, and his standard 6 daughter, Mauka just tested at the top of her class and will most likely be going to a top notch secondary school. I can say that Mr. Kayera is ambitious almost to a fault, and will certainly focus his full efforts on achieving his desired degree.

P.F. Nyasulu
The second of my friends asking for help in finding funding for school is Mr. Penjani Fredrick Nyasulu and he is also a teacher at the CDSS. He would like to pursue a degree in Food and Nutrition at the University of Malawi in Zomba Chancellor College. When I asked him about his future plans, he said he planned to continue teaching at the secondary level and hopes to inform students more on how they can address perennial problems such as poverty, malnutrition, food and taboos.

When I asked him what the benefit of his degree to the local community and Malawi as a whole would be, he replied as a qualified teacher of food and nutrition I can provide students with the knowledge to establish nutritional related services in the rural areas to save the nutritionally handicapped people. I will be able to equip them with the knowledge of appropriate technology for preparing and processing food for supporting a more healthy lifestyle. With greater knowledge of food and nutrition I can inform the People of Mwazisi about which locally found foods are most nutritious and need to be supplemented into the daily meals regularly to prevent diseases of malnutrition.

Mr. Nyasulu is 35 years old and is the father of four children. Aside from being a teacher, he also keeps a grocery in the local trading center. He has been very friendly to me since my arrival, and invites me to have a Fanta with him nearly every time I walk past his store. He is a strong teacher and I think he would make the most out of furthering his education

Project: Making Connections

2007-09-25T15:26:00.000+03:00

Since the beginning of my service in Malawi one of the main questions my friends and family from home have been asking is what things do you need, or what can we send? Lots of people even ask me if they can send money… Never thought that would be something I’d be uncomfortable with. I really appreciate the generosity and eagerness to help in what I’m doing, but I have come to strongly agree with the Peace Corps policy of keeping the volunteer living standards on par with the village they are working for. In my experience it is because of this policy that Peace Corps volunteers establish much closer relationships with the villagers than the typical aid or development worker. If people in Mwazisi saw me receiving frequent packages, and living with all sorts of fancy gadgets, and luxuries, it would set me even further apart from the rest of the village, and make me even more alien than I already am. Really I don’t need anything for myself. But letters, pictures, interesting articles and the occasional chocolate bar from home are always welcome and appreciated. And of course we could always use vegetable, herb, and spice seeds (at the moment we could use carrots, rosemary, sage, cilantro, oregano, chamomile, mint, thyme, lavender, parsley, or cinnamon for a volunteer herb garden.

Another thing that people can do if they are interested is make connections here with people in my village. One of the main questions I get around the village is “can you help me to have a pen friend in America.” At first I was very cautious to set up pen pals because I was worried that people were looking at it more as an opportunity to ask people in America for money, which is a very unsustainable way for well intentioned Americans to try to help people here, and in my opinion it does more harm than good. People here in Malawi have gotten very used to receiving money from Northerners (mostly Americans, Europeans, and Japanese) without any expectations on how that money should be used. I have seen this cause some Malawians to become dependent and even expectant on this type of money, disabling their own initiative. That being said I have also seen that most people are genuinely interested in learning about America, and having a friend on the other side of the world. So now when people ask me, I am very candid with them and explain that I will organize a pen friend only on the condition that they do not ask for money and that if they do ask, my friends in America will stop writing them and will tell me about it.

So if anybody is interested in having pen pals let me know and I will also start posting names and addresses of people who are asking me for pen pals (unfortunately I left my address book at my house so I can’t post any names this trip, but will very soon). I will continually update this blog with the names and addresses of people and groups looking for Pen Pals. Also, I am still looking for pen pals for my classes at the Primary and Secondary schools. I teach Form 1 Physical Science (equivalent of freshman year), and standard 6 agriculture (equivalent of sixth grade). I am also leading a wildlife club with the entire secondary school. If anybody thinks they have a good link for these groups or would like to pen off a letter relevant to any of these subjects feel free to address it to me at:

Dan Carr PCV
Mwazisi Post Office
Mwazisi, Rumphi District
Malawi, Central Africa

Or you can write the school directly at:

Mwazisi CDSS
Private Bag 1
Mwazisi, Rumphi District
Malawi, Central Africa

These are just the classes that I am teaching but I can make connections with people from every subject going from kindergarten to form 4 (Senior year), or I also can help connect people to appropriate church groups if that is what they are looking for.

Another thing that people have approached me about is helping them find sponsors to finish there education. I am very leery about this because it is asking for money directly (even if the continuation of education is a very worthwhile cause) and it would put me in charge of the money exchange and ensuring that it goes to the right place). So far I have only been asked by two people, both of whom are teachers, who want to get a higher degree in subjects that they already teach. To ensure that only serious students are asking, and to give the potential sponsors a better idea of who exactly they would be helping out, I have asked anybody who is looking for school sponsors to write a short introduction explaining; who they are, the degree they are pursuing, the tuition needed (which I will verify with the University), their personal goals and plans for the future, and an explanation of the benefit for Mwazisi, and Malawi in general if they continue their personal education.

I will type up these introductions, and post them on this blog as well. I would encourage people to keep their contributions small, as I am also encouraging the students to continue seeking other sources of funding for their own education. People always take their own education more serious if they have a personal financial stake in it. If people do want to start sponsoring specific students than they should inform me first via email, then they can get the money to my Mom in Colorado, where she will deposit it into my account in America, where it will remain until it is time to pay that persons tuition. I will withdraw all of the money meant for that person at once, and pay the tuition myself instead of handing them cash, which is unaccountable. Again I am very uneasy with this scenario, but at the same time I don’t want to ignore people at both ends who are asking for legitimate help here, and people with the means in America who are asking what they can do.

I feel much more comfortable with the pen pals scenario. When you look at the mission statement of Peace Corps you see that two thirds of our mission here is giving people around the world a better understanding of Americans, and giving Americans a better understanding of people from all around the world, so I think setting up pen pals is a great way to approach that mission. So I will try to get names and addresses posted very soon.

Ramblings: Still A Meat-Head Football Player

2007-09-09T14:47:00.000+03:00

In a previous blog I mentioned my connection to Gallinanda United the local football club, now I want to talk about how playing football(soccer to us Americans, and bola to Northern Malawians, but I’ll stick to football since I already used it in the title) is actually very important to my peace corps service. It sounds ridiculous, I know, playing football as an important aspect of development in a community where the problems range from food insecurity to the effects of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, but hear me out. Being a part of Gallinanda United has helped my community integration enormously. With Gan United I have found a strong sense of belonging, and thus a sense of confidence in the community, making me far more effective in everything I do. Gan United is idolized in this small African village, which can be useful in making a positive impact in all aspects of life in Mwazisi. By encouraging the players to take being a role model serious, there is a tremendous opportunity to steer Mwazisi’s youth in a positive direction. I am a firm believer in the power of sports, and its ability to bring a community together. So for me Gan United is not only an opportunity to have another group of close friends to run and compete with, but it’s an opportunity to influence and work with a group of young men that are icons for a whole village’s youth.

I first encountered Gan United while I was on my site visit during training. I crossed through their practice field on my way to meet my new landlord. I chatted with some of the guys about football, explaining that I had never actually played back in the states. It’s shocking to a Malawian, that a boy could have a childhood without bola. I joked that it would be their duty when I returned to teach me how to play. I was surprised when after only a week of living in the village they started coming up to me asking why I hadn’t been coming to soccer training. “I don’t want to get in the way” I would reply, “I really don’t know how to play bola.” But they were persistent, “No no, your physique shows that you will be a striker. We’ll teach you.” But, when I first did show up to practice I lived up to my promise; whiffing completely on many balls, and when I did connect, the ball never went in the planned direction. It was a very humbling experience to say the least, with roars of laughter coming from the ewes on the sideline every time I tried to make a play on the ball. But the guys from the team kept encouraging me, always smiling with me, and saying “Ah, you see? You’re coming up now.” I wasn’t coming up anywhere, but at least I was sharing laughs with the villagers for the first time.

I immediately saw how important the football team is to the village. Long before I could understand much of any Chitumbuka, I would recognize the names of the star players mixed into the excited conversations of young ewes, “Shanti na Gifti this and that” or “Monday na Junior something-or-other.” The first home game I saw really brought the communities support for Gan United to light for me. The rest of the village must have been empty, because practically everybody I know was at the pitch and fully engaged in the match. The team even has its own football hooligans who come dressed in flamboyant scarves and hats to march around the pitch belting out cheers and songs at the top of their lungs all the while doing some serious booty dancing. When Gan scored their first goal I was surprised to see that it wasn’t just the players running around hugging each other, but it was like the whole crowd lost their minds. Everybody charged the field, over two hundred hands must have touched the goal scorer’s back before he reached mid field, old men could be seen high stepping across the field with canes raised in the air, I saw ewes doing something between Kung Fu and break dancing, and this was just about five minutes into the game. After seeing all of this I knew this was something I wanted to be a part of, despite being probably the worst bola player in Malawi.

Ironically, the morning of my first road trip with the team turned out to be the same day one of my best friends and high school football teammate’s was getting married back in Colorado. So I woke up well before dawn to climb the mountain where I get cell phone network, so that I could talk to my old football teammates before I went on a road trip with my new football teammates (Sunday morning here is Saturday night there, so I caught them in the middle of the reception). It was surreal sitting on a mountaintop in the Malawian bush talking to my buddies who were busy celebrating the first marriage of the bunch. I must say it was tough knowing that I was missing it, but they made me feel better by picking up right where we left off, giving me my usual fair share of abuse, telling me that they had already shared some of my stupider stories. But they all also made sure to let me know that I was missed at the wedding. I pictured them all with drinks in their hands around my Mom’s cell phone, beating on each other and laughing the way we always have. I definitely had a smile on my face as I rushed down the mountain to catch the team’s transport to Laveli for Gan United’s match against the heavily funded and well-equipped Eva Demaya Squad.

It turned out to be a great trip. The B team won their match 2-1 and the A team managed to pull out a tie 2-2, despite at least half our guys playing barefoot. This is a big feat because the Eva Demaya squad is sponsored by a Dutch health center in the area, so they have brand new boots and top-notch equipment, which draws in ringers from all the surrounding villages. Tying a team with so many advantages is worthy of celebration so the matola ride back was the best part of the trip. The team was dancing and singing pilled in the back of the big truck not having an inch to spare with all of the traveling supporters. Everybody was huddled together drunk on the excitement from the game, and maybe the packets of sugar cane alcohol some of the guys stashed in their boot bags. Guys were falling all over each other as we flew over bumps, but everybody was singing at the top of their lungs and laughing the whole way. At one point I heard my name mentioned in one of the songs, but didn’t catch the context since the Chitumbuka was drowned out by the whirling wind as we flew down a hill, but I could tell it was good from the whistles, smiles, and thumbs up I got from everybody around me.

We got back late, but I couldn’t sleep. I found myself thinking of all the different teams I have been a part of over the years, and the good friends made along the way. A month before I came here to Malawi I was dancing and singing at the Boulder Rugby Season end formal. I arrived to this fine gathering wearing a 70’s tux and my date fellow former rugger Leslie Pickard sported a lion costume. The whole thing culminated in the entire team doing the can-can to Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York” with our pants around our ankles. Before that I was stomping around the world with the Montana Jesters rugby club. I was lucky enough to play with this rare breed of gentlemen everywhere from Scotland to Humboldt California. My time with them was short, but the memories are abundant, and the Jesters will always have a big place in my heart wherever they all happen to be scattered around the world.

Before taking up rugby I was a Montana Grizzly, where I saw how sports can bring a community together in a very special way. One of my most memorable experiences in sports was our National Championship run my senior year. The buzz and excitement around Missoula was infectious, as we advanced through the playoffs to the championship. I will never forget the parade through Missoula as we were bussed to the airport to depart for the Championship game in Chattanooga Tennessee. The streets were lined with people waving anything silver and maroon they could get their hands on. Lawyers hanging out the windows of office buildings had signs saying “We Believe!” The local transients were in the street pumping their fist at the bus as they demanded “Go get ’em Griz.” I remember Fathers with their sons on their shoulders squinting through the tinted windows of our bus trying to catch a glimpse of Craig Ochs or Johnny Verona. As we passed the lumber yards and rail depot on East Broadway you could see the hope for victory on the faces of our most devoted fans, the common working men and women of Missoula. Some of the workers even ran a train engine alongside our bus as they danced on its platforms to our fight song which was blaring over speakers attached to the sides of the train. I felt so proud to be a part of what all these people were coming together to support, and I will never forget that feeling.

But before Montana, I was playing with the same guys giving me hell on the phone earlier that same morning before I went with Gan United to the Eva Demaya match. The guys I used to play football with in my hometown Broomfield Colorado. We used to dance and sing cheesy songs on our way back from winning a cross-town game against Brighton or Skyview. The same way Gan United was singing old Timbuka songs on the way back from Eva Demaya. It’s funny that I’m halfway around the world in the heart of Africa, where sometimes I feel like I have been born into a completely different reality, but I still find moments that mirror so closely my other life back in America. I may be a bleeding heart liberal volunteering in one of the world’s poorest countries, but it seems no matter where in the world I go, I fall in with the same kind of meat-head jock crowd I always have.

Aside from finding a good group of friends, I see Gan United as an opportunity to make my impact in Mwazisi more effective. As I said before, I am a strong believer in the power of sports to mobilize a community, I would love to see the same type of excitement I saw in Montana about the Griz develop here in Mwazisi about Gan United. Mwazisi already idolizes this team, but by helping Gan United keep improving we can give Mwazisi something to really get excited about, and encourage a sense of community pride. Most people in Mwazisi talk about someday leaving it to live somewhere like Blantyre or Mzuzu. If people don’t see themselves or their children living in Mwazisi ten years from now then they can’t be serious about doing any work to improve the area’s future. People need to have pride in their home village, if they are going to think about its future and development. Football is just another way to encourage the people of Mwazisi to come together and have that sort of pride in their homeland, which would encourage them to look after all aspects of its future.

Given my bola aptitude playing and coaching won’t be my role of strengthening the team (although I do play on the B-squad every now and again, mostly for everybody else’s entertainment, and I had my Mom send a copy of “A Complete Idiot’s Guide to Playing Soccer,” so I’m still not counting myself out of coaching) but the team has adopted me as an unofficial manager. Managing Gan United is an opportunity to help them start income generating activities, like a team vegetable garden or tree nursery to raise money for equipment or transport to matches. I can also make efforts to help them find connections with teams in the U.K. or America able to donate old boots or uniforms. I can help them to organize more matches and find tournaments, the more games they play, the more opportunity there is for the buzz I’m looking for to develop.

I also have my selfish reasons for managing Gan United. It is very useful to have the village idols at your disposal and I plan to use them to encourage fundamental changes in the communities mind set. For example tree planting is a very big part of what I’m trying to do in Mwazisi as an environmental extension volunteer. I already have tree nurseries established, and spend a great deal of my breath preaching the value of planting good agro-forestry trees to develop soil fertility, prevent soil erosion, and bring up the water table. Most of my efforts are answered with encouraging words from most everybody in the community; they assure me that they understand the importance of planting trees. But this seems to be all lip service, because as trees are cut down by literally everybody for firewood, building, or farming, I have only seen a hand full of individuals who are making substantial efforts to replace them.

Around Gan United’s pitch there are few trees, disappearing vegetation, and signs of erosion. This is also a central and high traffic location in the community where everybody could see the benefits of planting the right trees. My Mom (being the saint that she is) has already sent two beautiful brand new balls for the team, which were badly needed since the old one was patched, tattered and certainly on its last leg. But instead of just passing the balls to the team, I promised to pass them only in exchange for the teams help in planting agro forestry trees around the border of the field. If the work the team does ends up improving the land around the field then it can serve as a great example, that lends merit to my preaching. Even more importantly if a young boy sees his hero football player planting and taking care of trees, then he is far more likely to do the same in the future.

Another idea has to do with volunteer AIDS testing in Mwazisi. As I am sure many of you know AIDS is a problem of epidemic proportions here in Malawi. Out of a population of about 12.3 million about one million people are currently living with HIV or AIDS. This number is growing all the time because most of the people who live with AIDS don’t realize that they have it. For that reason free volunteer testing and counseling clinics are set up all over the country. One such clinic exists in Mwazisi, but after meeting with the nurses that run the center I realized how seldom it actually gets used; this is due to the cultural taboos attached to sex and AIDS in Malawi. Nobody goes for volunteer testing because it is equated to admitting to taking part in risky behavior, which might mean pre-marital sex, sleeping with prostitutes, or being unfaithful to one’s partner, any of which would obviously bring disgrace to a villager. This all applies to my connection with Gan United because the team is constantly telling me how badly they are in need of new jerseys. If I am able to find a new set of Jerseys for the team, or help them to raise the money they need to buy their own, I would do it only on the condition that we organize a day when we all go publicly for volunteer testing while wearing the team’s new jerseys. It’s something small, but at least it’s chipping away a bit at the social stigma.

My association with Gan United can be useful for countless reasons. It helps me to become integrated with the community and feel more comfortable in the work I do here. This team could also be something the whole community can rally around, and working with them gives me access to individuals who are much more influential in the village than I could ever be. Most of all, it’s just nice to be a part of a team, and have the same type of friendships here with my teammates that I have had at every other stage of my life in every other place that I have lived.

Project: Jatropha Curcas and Locally Made Bio-Diesel

2007-09-09T00:06:00.000+03:00

Jatropha Curcus may well be the miracle tree that Mwazisi’s farmers need to reverse the decades of environmental degredation largely caused by tobacco farming. Jatropha will diversify Mwazisi’s tobacco dominated farming, prevent the massive soil erosion caused by deforestation and unsustainable agriculture, and best of all be a tremendous income generator. Jatropha (Kamsatsi in Chichewa, and Physic Nut in English) grows in the poorest soil, and the driest climates. It is resistant to pests, and its leaves are poisonous so farm animals won’t eat it. The tree takes only eighteen months to seed and grows for fifty years. Seeds can be pressed into a clean burning bio-fuel. A local buyer is already in Malawi; Bio-Energy Resources Limited (BERL). They will buy the seeds from the farmers now at a good price to encourage the trees expansion countrywide, so the first step for us in Mwazisi is to grow the trees. It’s never a bad thing to plant more trees, so we may as well start planting and see where this tree can take Mwazisi.

Jatropha could be an alternative cash crop for Mwazisi’s tobacco farmers, so it is useful to start off with some background information about tobacco farming issues pertaining to cash crop farming. Most local farmers wouldn’t say there’s a problem, in fact there’s a gleam in their eye as they tell you how many bails they hope to sell next year. The local forestry extension worker and he will tell you it’s an environmental nightmare, yet he still plants most of his fields with tobacco. Ask him why, he responds, “What other options do I have?” For the past 25 years Tobacco has been the only cash crop grown in Mwazisi. During the Kamuzu Banda Era tobacco was licensed to a limited few plantations, but then the World Bank stepped in and demanded a free market where all farmers were permitted to grow tobacco. Small-holder farms rushed to convert their fields from maize to the more profitable tobacco, and have married themselves to this very destructive crop over a short period of time. Now that tobacco has become Mwazisi’s only cash crop, it is difficult to tell a local farmer to stop making money for his family in the name of preserving the environment. But, in Jatropha there is a viable alternative; one that can improve the health of the local environment by regenerating forest cover and top-soil.

So why is Tobacco so bad? In the Mwazisi Valley it is the biggest contributor to deforestation. Anybody who has lived in Mwazisi for more than ten years will tell you the local landscape has dramatically changed; forestland has turned to tobacco fields, and the old fields have now turned to dust. All land is considered public here, so if a farmer wants to grow more tobacco he receives permission from the village headmen and opens a new field in the bush, chopping down any trees in the way then burning off the remaining vegetation, to prepare to plant in the upcoming rainy season. He is then able to grow tobacco for the next three to five years, which eats up all the nutrients in the growing season then allows the topsoil to wash away in the rainy season with no trees to prevent erosion. More trees are cut down to build “gafas”, the long sheds used to hang and dry the tobacco leaves before grading. This whole process has been a disaster for the regions topsoil, according to a 1992 World Bank Study loss of topsoil in Malawi averaged over 20 tons per hectare per annum, with rates over 50 tons in areas with heavy tobacco production.

All of this deforestation and erosion has caused a severe water availability problem as well. The Mwazisi River was once a perennial river providing irrigation of maize fields in the dambo (the wetland area surrounding the river) throughout the dry season, now the Mwazisi rips and roars through the valley in the rainy season washing away everything including bridges and surrounding roads. With no trees or vegetation to hold up the water table in the dry season the river dries up, the ground turns rock hard, and the Garden of Eden turns into a brown wasteland until the rains come again in November. After the tobacco and topsoil erosion has depleted the soil it’s time to just move deeper into the bush and clear a new plot, and the deforestation continues. In Malawi it’s the rapid expansion of tobacco farming, coupled with firewood collection, and man made bushfires that have destroyed the forestland and local environment. But this type of desertification is found all over Sub-Saharan Africa culminating in a 21rst century African dust bowl.

Not only is tobacco causing deforestation, topsoil erosion, and water scarcity, it is also an economically unsustainable crop for the hard working farmers that have become dependent on it as their only cash crop. According to a 2003 FAO study report entitled Issues in the Global Tobacco Economy, Tobacco generated about K 12 billion of export revenue in 1999 and accounted for more than one third of total revenue from agriculture and about 15 percent of GDP in the same year. The health risks associated with smoking tobacco have led to global efforts to reduce smoking. Rising cigarette taxes, education, anti-smoking ad-campaigns, and smoking restrictions, will only continue to kill this already dying market. The massive Jump in tobacco production in Malawi over the past decade has quickly outpaced the declining market causing a sharp drop in prices and thus a drop in the farmer’s income. The price has also declined as inexperienced and unequipped farmers have started taking up tobacco farming, decreasing the overall quality of tobacco produced in Malawi. According to the same report, “the total output of burley tobacco in 2000 was 20 percent higher than in 1996, but the total revenue was 24 percent lower than in 1996.” More farmers are cutting down tress to open new fields, but every year getting paid less and less.

Three exporting companies now control 90 percent of total tobacco exports coming out of Malawi, so the small number of buyers paired with Malawian farmer’s desperate need for money has given the buyers control over the market. These companies make maximum profits, and the farmers get a mere fraction. The prices saw a small spike this year due to the emergence of a new Chinese market, which will encourage the Mwazisi farmers to up their production even more for next year. What they don’t realize is that it is still a dying market, and when it finally dries up they will be left empty-handed and see that their once fertile soil has washed away to a desert wasteland.

But for now every April the tobacco farmers race to bale their harvested tobacco and get it to the auction floors in Mzuzu and Lilongwe. Auction season is a party. After selling their bales many of the farmers stay in the bomas where they celebrate away their new found money on drinking binges and shopping sprees. When the money runs out and the family suffers through the hunger of another dry season they resolve to plant even more tobacco before the next rains, hoping to earn enough at the following years auction to better provide for the family. This obsession with tobacco is especially strong in Rumphi district (the district Mwazisi is in) one of the areas that tobacco grows best.

Many people in Malawi recognize the need for crop diversification. In Chitipa and Mzuzu, coffee has presented an alternative, although slow to produce profit since the initial growing period is about seven years. This is irrelevant in Mwazisi though, where the villagers tell me the climate is not right for coffee growing, although I’m not convinced and would like to experiment with that possibility. A former tobacco plantation owner in Bolero is also trying, with moderate success, to give farmers in Rumphi district the alternative of growing Paprika. Along with other herbs and spices Paprika may provide another option for diversification, but they also have their drawbacks. Paprika is in the same family as tobacco, and planting it in fields that were once tobacco can easily spread disease. Paprika is also prone to pests and needs lots of attention and pesticides. Jatropha on the other hand is virtually pest resistant, and being a tree needs little care once it is established, just let it grow, and harvest the seeds, a major change from Tobacco which needs a tremendous amount of time and labor.

I’m by no means the first person to see the potential of Jatropha for Malawi. In fact there’s already an existing market for Jatropha started and run completely in Malawi. A group of interested individuals from a variety of backgrounds have formed an organization called BERL (Bio Energy Resources Limited). BERL is encouraging farmers all over Malawi to grow Jatropha and hopes to soon start pressing the seeds and processing bio-fuel. Already BERL will buy the seeds produced by farmers at 15 Malawian Kwatcha per KG, about the equivalent of maize. At present BERL buys the seeds for the purpose of redistributing them to farmers, and increasing the amount of Jatropha grown nationwide. Currently a farm family’s cash income averages $290 per annum. Growing a hectare of Jatropha could add another $200 to this. Once Jatropha has been established on a wide-scale then they will start setting up permanent collection points and processing plants with the hope of eventually having two processing plants (twenty four in total) for every suitable district in Malawi, allowing mass production with minimal transport. BERL is very concerned with not only giving Malawian farmers a fair price but also with producing quality jobs in the production process. They are also very focused on environmental sustainability. After pressing they will compost the nitrogen and phosphorus rich seed cake to produce a natural fertilizer.

BERL has all of the makings of a company that can boost for Malawi’s farmers, economically and ecologically. BERL can provide a sustainable alternative for the tobacco farmers in Mwazisi. I look forward to seeing BERL develop into a tremendous opportunity for Malawian farmers. Anybody interested in supporting the development of Bio-fuels world-wide, or sustainable economic development in one of the world’s least developed countries has a chance to help both of these causes by supporting the development of this up and coming company. I want to see BERL develop from the start as a business that Maximizes Malawi’s natural capital, meaning it generates the maximum profit from Malawi’s natural resources for its farmers without damaging the local environment that provides those resources. In fact Jatropha trees would help to regenerate that local environment.

My role in all of this is to get the farmers in Mwazisi to start planting, and we already have a head start. During swearing-in I bought 5,000 polyethylene tubes for the purpose of starting a reforestation tree nursery with the local Natural Resource Committee. We are planting a variety of trees that have various practical, medicinal, and agricultural uses. When I read an article in Newsweek about Jatropha’s high potential for making bio-diesel, and recalled it as a tree that we learned about during training to be very useful for soap and candle making, I decided to go to the Land Resource Center in Lilongwe and buy 1 kg of seeds to include in our nursery. So we already have a good stock of Jatropha seeds to plant at the beginning of the rainy season. Living fences are a great way to grow Jatropha because it grows thick, is pest and animal resistant, and residue that falls from its branches helps soil fertility. The biggest advantage of encouraging farmers to plant Jatropha as a fence is that we are not asking anybody to replace food crops that are grown in the field, or their beloved tobacco for that matter, Alleviating any worries people have of taking a risk on a new and unknown tree.

One thing that I have learned from BERL is that direct sowing of Jatropha seeds at the beginning of the rainy season (November/December) is more effective and clearly cheaper and less labor intensive then planting the seeds in Poly tubes. So we will save the seeds I bought and plant different trees in the nursery and direct-sow in October. We have started digging the holes for planting and filling them up with compost so that we can easily just start sowing the seeds when the rains come. Two of BERL’s founders Timothy Mahoney and Laurie Webb have even offered to come to Mwazisi with more seeds so we can have a local training session on direct-sowing and care for the trees.

The final phase that I would like to be involved in before leaving Mwazisi would be to actually make bio-fuel in Mwazisi for use in the local maize mills, and if refined well enough the Matola (local transport). Actually pressing and making bio-diesel in Mwazisi is obviously useful for the community as a source of cheap, self-made fuel. It is even more useful for demonstrating to the local farmers that this fuel will run in a diesel engine, and therefore give them an idea of Jatropha’s future value and encourage them to plant more. In order to do this we would need to either build a local press or else raise money to buy a more advanced one. The process of producing the oil is very simple, it’s just a matter of mixing the oil with a catalyst and letting the reaction take place. The preferred catalyst is potassium hydroxide but calcium hydroxide will work and is a locally available constituent of fertilizer. Etnahol also produced in Malawi can be used as the alcohol. The only equipment needed is a press (can be made locally), a water heater (maybe a solar water heater), and two tanks one of which needs to have a drain on its bottom.

Another exciting use is illumination. Jatropha oil burns smokeless, and so is ideal for Paraffin lanterns. Malawians already know Jatropha’s power as an illuminant, I have been told that its seeds were traditionally shelled and put on the end of a stick to act as a candle Paraffin is extremely hard to find in Mwazisi, and is far to expensive for most villagers. With a large stock of Jatropha we could press a portion of the seeds to be put directly into the lamps. What an exciting prospect, to be able to say that we brought light to Mwazisi with this simple tree.

It is uses like this that will encourage the farmers to plant more Jatropha, and eventually provide the seed base that BERL needs to start real significant production. Who knows where it could go from there? A huge growing market for Bio-Fuels is developing world-wide. Maybe someday Malawi will be the Saudi Arabia of Bio-Fuels. At the very least it’s something to spark hope and interest in Malawi’s farmers. Jatropha has really taken over my thoughts lately, and I’m sure my friends are tired of hearing about it. When I travel with the local soccer team on the weekends I encourage people I’m chatting with to plant it. When I’m in Lilongwe or Mzuzu lots of my time is dominated by looking for and processing information about Jatropha, and bio-diesel. I can’t wait to see where this thing goes, and how BERL develops. If any of you have suggestions, criticisms, or ideas make a comment or e-mail me at umdcarr@msn.com. I want to try to make this as effective, environmentally sustainable, and profitable as possible, so I’m looking for help.

How I'm Passing Time In Malawi

2007-07-28T14:36:00.000+03:00

Go in search of your people.
Love them;
Learn from them;
Begin with what they have:
Build on what they know.

But of the best leaders
When their task is accomplished,
Their work is done,
The people all remark:
“We have done it ourselves.”
(Old Chinese verse)

I realized after my last post that my blogs make Peace Corps service seem more like a travel adventure than actual work. So I decided it would be good to post a blog describing the work that I have been doing in Mwazisi up until now now, and also the ideas I have for the future. I also want to make this into an opportunity for me to share my ideas with all of you, so that you can critique, give suggest new ideas, or for you to just flat out tell me “Dan, that’s stupid don’t do it.” The advantage of wondering around the world these last few years is that my experiences have brought me in contact with a wide variety of people, all of whose brains I can pick through the wonderful world of the internet. Now I can say I have friends who are experts in soil science, ecobuilding, international law, energy production, permaculture, water management, education, literature, music, art, business, food aid, and on and on. This can be an invaluable resource for Mwazisi that I would like to start tapping with this blog.

My idea with this blog is to gather ideas, critiques, and knowledge from all of you masters of your own fields out there. I can then take your input and find the best ways to facilitate it into tangible projects in Mwazisi. Each of you have the unique experience and expertise that can work miracles here in Mwazisi, it’s just a matter of finding how that knowledge might be able to address a need in Africa. This can only be accomplished through the continuous exchange of information. From my Uncle Pat Conway, the ultimate handy man, to Father Hogan Missoula’s beloved Peace Maker, I would like to hear what you all would do if you were in my position. How would you approach the problems that the villagers identify for themselves and what different things would you try to do in two years here.

I really appreciated all of the feedback and comments I received from people after my first blog entry. It was awesome to see that people were really interested in the things I am seeing here in Malawi. Some of your comments and emails were really beautiful and encouraging (Leslie…Wow! You never cease to amaze me.) But I would also appreciate criticism; especially as I start describing the different projects we are hoping to do. Feel free to rip my ideas to shreds and tell me what you think we should be doing. I will start with this blog by telling you about what I have been doing in these first few months; how I have been integrating with the community, my initial projects, and generally how I’ve been spending my time so far.

I also want to explain the local environmental problems identified by the villagers, which I will do in a later blog. For this purpose I’m in the process of organizing community-based surveys of problems and needs in the Mwazisi valley. There will be three different local groups that I will conduct the surveys with; the natural resource committee, a women’s group, and the wildlife club that I teach at the secondary school. I hope to compile the information from the three different surveys, and summarize them in a blog that I will try to post the next time I’m in Lilongwe (the end of August). I believe it’s useful for me to post how the people of Mwazisi describe their problems and needs, allowing all of you to also think about solutions for Mwazisi.

Following Einstein’s dictum that problems can’t be solved within the mind-set that created them, I think it is advantageous to present these problems to a large group of outside observers (namely, you), and ask what your take on it is. As I become more and more imbedded here in Mwazisi, I am taking on the same perspective as the people living in Mwazisi, which is a tremendous advantage in the work I’m trying to do. I think the Peace Corps approach of becoming a part of the community in order to assess problems and then build capacity for sustainable solutions is the best possible method of development. I don’t think a person or aid agency can fully help a community of people unless they really know how the people of that community live, and really that can only be done by becoming a part of the community oneself. But it is also useful to have fresh ideas coming in from the outside to help present alternative options.

I will continue to post blogs that describe challenges we identify as we encounter them, and I will always indicate them in the title with the header “Challenge.” I also want to present the projects that we are doing in Mwazisi or hope to do. It’s good to keep you all updated on the things we are working on around Mwazisi, because when it does apply to your area of expertise then it is an opportunity for anybody and everybody to chime in with advice. So those project blogs will be titled “Project”…. complicated system hugh? I know I missed my calling as a library cataloguer. So there are really only two other types of blogs that I write. One being the stories I tell of my experiences in Malawi with witty anecdotes, and overly elaborate observations. While the other consists of my esoteric ramblings that seem to come out when I’m thinking a lot about any one particular thing that tickles my pensive bone. So I guess I can also start labeling those blogs “Stories” and “Ramblings” respectively, which would give people the opportunity to skip over any category of blog they might find particularly painful.

So what am I actually doing in Malawi? Well as environmental volunteers our job is defined as community based natural resource management… which is kind of vague. I see our role as raising awareness about the effects that environmental degradation will have, and then build capacity to address local problems in an environmentally sustainable way. The community environmental assessment is a key element to raising awareness, because the villagers know better than anybody else what environmental problems they face, but just like us in America they don’t often think about these problems or how they will be affected by them in the future. For example they all would say that deforestation is a problem, but they don’t worry about it enough to change their wood consumption habits. The same way all Americans realize that carbon dioxide emissions are causing global warming but we don’t think about it enough to change our driving habits. The assessment gets everybody talking and thinking about these issues. I think my role is largely just getting people thinking about these issues. I can also point out the affects that are less foreseeable, again with the example of deforestation I can chime in; “By clearing this forest, you are also ruining your farmland by causing erosion and washing away all of your arable topsoil, so in a sense you’re starving future generations.”

I’m also careful when I say we build capacity to address local problems instead of just local environmental problems, because I think it’s impossible to be taken seriously in the village unless I’m also working to address the problems associated with poverty. This is why most of my “environmental” projects consist of income generating activities. The capacity building aspect of our job is showing the villagers how they can make money in harmony with there local environment instead of by simply exploiting its resources. Examples of income generating activities that I have already started working on with various villagers are the construction of top-bar hives for bee keeping and the sale of honey, and tree nurseries to sell a variety of useful agroforestry trees to local farmers. These are both great potential moneymakers but they both encourage the preservation of the environment as well.

As I’ve said before the focus of my first two months has been community integration and trying like hell to master Chitumbuka. One thing that I consider community integration is teaching Physical Science at the secondary school. I only agreed to start teaching because when I first arrived to Mwazisi nearly everybody in the village asked me if I would be teaching, and told me how badly the school needed help, but it has turned out to be one of my most fulfilling roles in the community, and I know the community appreciates it. Now most people identify me as “Mr. Galimoto” (Mr. Car), or “sambizi” (teacher). I also started a wildlife club with the secondary school, so I can pass on my environmental training and knowledge to the young people who most need to hear it. This gives me an opportunity to teach them to make tree nurseries, energy saving mud-stoves, fire-briquettes from peanut shells and cassava waste, and other resource saving tidbits.

I also started teaching Agriculture at the Primary school, which makes use of my environmental background as well. As a bonus teaching standard 6 students has really helped my Chitumbuka, since the students don’t really speak enough English to understand me yet. I teach that class for two hours one day a week, so I develop my lesson plan two days ahead of time and take it to my Chitumbuka tutor Mrs. Kayera… aka my Malawian mother. Mrs. Kayera helps me translate the lesson plan, and practice the more important phrases, so when I go to class I can teach in mostly Chitumbuka, with only minimal help from their regular teacher. We do one hour of theory in the classroom, before I take them outside for a chance to get practical experience in the demonstration garden we have started together. The students enjoy the time outside, and it gives me a chance to teach organic gardening and how to make compost, which the villagers currently don’t use. I’m encouraging all of the students to replicate what they learn in class at home with their parents. This could really do a lot of good for nutrition in the village, because at present time the only vegetables found locally are rape, pumpkin leaves, mustard, and tomatoes. These are all nutritious, but not having any variety must be causing them to be deficient in certain vitamins. Not to mention all of the greens are covered with white spots because they apply the same heavy fertilizers they get from government subsidies for tobacco to their vegetables.

Another method of community integration has been my involvement with the local bola team (soccer to us Americans, football to the rest of the world). I am quite possibly the worst soccer player to ever step onto the pitch but I love the opportunity to get out and run with the guys, and there is definitely no rugby in Mwazisi (sorry Skip). Pachoko pachoko (bit by bit) I’m coming along, I can now kick the ball without having it go in the complete opposite direction then I planned on kicking it. The Bola team in Mwazisi (Gan United… Gan standing for the chiefs name Gallinanda) is a tremendous source of pride for the community, and generally the third most popular topic of conversation behind God and Tobacco. Everybody turns up for the home games, and a large number of supporters pay extra to pack onto the matola and travel with the team for away games. I just practice with the team and occasionally play with the B team, but they have kind of adopted me as the unofficial team manager, which means I help organize matches with other teams around the north, and I’m hoping to organize a few IGAs to help them raise money for boots, jerseys and transportation costs. My association with the team has certainly improved my status with the community even more, and brought me into contact with most of my closest friends in the community. It’s really a special part of my life in Mwazisi and deserves a blog entry of its own, which I’ll get around to one of these days.

I believe the things I do at my house, is another important aspect of my community entry. I try to keep my house as open and inviting as possible. Anytime I am home I keep my front door open, and use a box of crayons to attract the kids to hang out on my front porch and draw on the back of the many handouts I received during training and deemed a waste of paper. I spend lots of my free time doing various home improvement and permaculture projects in my yard. I invite friends to help me with all of these, which attracts lots of observers full of curiosity and questions. I’m currently building a water catchment system with my friend Benidicto Gondwe, and there are always a slew of onlookers hanging out watching us and asking us a million questions about what we’re doing. We’re both more than happy to explain and encourage them to build one of their own. Children are often attracted by my projects, which is great for me because there interest generally turns into a source of free labor. I had curious ewes (kids) help with the construction of a drain from my bafa to my banana and papaya trees, a fence for my garden, and two compost pits.

An example of one such project is when I had my friend Davey Nyasulu help me plaster and white wash the inside of my house to make it brighter and to keep out mosquitoes and other critters. This turned out to be a massive project that lasted almost three weeks, and needed the help of another friend Charles Singini. I learned a lot from working so closely with Davey, who is a far better builder than I am. The best part though was the conversations the three of us had as we worked together. Davey told us all about his passion for music and dream to someday start a local band, while we mixed batch after batch of cement. Charles kept us smiling with his always upbeat attitude, and his ridiculous antics… i.e. making god awful sounds with my harmonica, and numerous attempts to show he could lift as much as me, despite being about half my size. Some of the best conversations took place while we shared lunch. Sometimes we had deep philosophical conversations about religion, god, and human beings place in the world, while other times they entertained themselves by firing off question after question to me about what life is like in America. By the end of it the three of us had learned an incalculable wealth of new information from our three-week exchange, and now Charles and Davey are two of my best friends and certainly will remain so throughout the duration of my time here.

All right, I’ve rambled enough. So now you have a bit of an idea of what I’m doing at site and the things I hope to do in the future. I am looking forward to posting descriptions about our projects, and hearing from all of you. I want to make these projects as effective and sustainable as possible, and your knowledge will be one of my best resources in achieving this.

My Sermon in an African Church

2007-07-09T11:15:00.002+03:00

Last week I was invited to attend a gathering of four African Church congregations in the village of chitongwa. They gather once a month to combine their choirs and to worship together for the weekend. I saw it as a great opportunity to meet more people, practice Chitumbuka, and have more people get to know me and what I'm doing here. I guess its also an opportunity to learn about the stories of the bible and Christianity, but I get plenty of that already here in Malawi. Most Malawians are profoundly religious people, and generally the main topics of conversation are God, Christianity, and the bible. So sometimes it seems like my Peace Corps service has become more of a lesson in theology. So I am learning a lot about Christian philosophy, being the Godless Azungu that I am, but mostly I go to church to listen to the music.
So after a very early morning run, bafa, and breakfast, I set off on the 7km journey through the hills surrounding Mwazisi escorted by NRC chairman Erflone Gondwe who invited me. Along the way we encountered a man clearing a forest near the village. I was becoming very angry as we approached and I watched him hack away at a very large and healthy Musangu Sangu (Winter thorn) tree. This is a terrible tree to destroy, because it is very slow growing, but when it has matured it becomes a wonder tree for the soil. It's deep roots help prevent soil erosion, and its leaves are nitrogen fixing, so when they fall off in the cold season they act as fertilizer for the surrounding soil.
I was shocked and disheartened when we approached the man and found that it was Principal chief Chilengua. This is the same man who posted a a sign outside of his house saying "The destruction of local wildlife in Mwazisi is strictly prohibited by the local traditional authority." I was shocked because I know that he is an educated man who knows the value of Masangu sangu trees. I was disheartened because I also know what a tremendous influence he has over the surrounding villages, and how important his example is.
I didn't try to hide my anger, while Mr. Gondwe greeted him with the typical Timbuka greeting of chiefs, “Tilli Pascono," meaning "We are beneath you," I got straight to the point asking, "Chafukwa Mukotola Makhuni yawisi" - "Why are you taking green trees." I could see that he was embarrassed; his face showed that he felt naked and exposed before me. "Yayi," he explained "Nikukhumba kulima hona kuno" - "I want to grow tobacco here." This bothered me even more, I could understand a bit if he was growing corn, or sweet potatoes... something that adds to the village food stock, but I don't see the justification in one of the wealthiest men in Mwazisi clearing a mountainside to grow Tobacco, purely a cash crop, which he will need to cut more trees down for in order to make a gafa (a temporary shed used for hanging and drying tobacco after harvest.) I remained diplomatic in the encounter, keeping a casual smile throughout my cross-examination, but I conveyed in no uncertain terms that I expected to see him "Namuleni-lenji!” (First thing in the morning) on Monday morning at my tree nursery. Which was when I would be teaching the Natural Resource Committee how to plant tree seeds in Polyethylene tubes. He assured me he would be there... but come Monday was nowhere to be found.
I still had the whole encounter on my mind when we arrived at the church. But my mood was changed by all of the smiling faces that greeted me outside the church. I was later told that I was the first azungu to ever attend services at that specific church. This also explained why some of the very small children started crying and ran away when they saw me. I asked Mr. Gondwe what I did to scare them. He just smiled and said “chakwamba azungu wakusanga” (the first white person they have met.) I don’t like anybody fearing me, but I thought that was pretty damn cool. I felt a bit like an ambassador; their perception of Americans would largely be based on the first impression I left them with.
As a guest they had me sit on the side of the pulpit with the chiefs that had assembled from the different participating villages. I was happy there because it was the best vantage point of the choirs, which is the main reason I even go to church, to listen to the township jive type of harmonizing that all African church choirs seem to do so well.
Three choirs took turns singing between each sermon. The first choir was the women’s guild choir, made up from women ranging in age from 18 to 60 something. When their turn comes they all slowly rise with a dutiful look on their faces, half with babies tied to their backs with chitenjes. They start slow keeping a unified beat by sliding their bare feet across the dirt floor, and making a motion with their hands like they are swinging a jembe (fitting since women pretty much do all the work here anyway). They all have their eyes closed, and the only sound at this point is the woosh….woosh….woosh of their feet. Then they are cued by the choir leader who sings out the first word in each line to be repeated with the power of the rest of the choir’s unified voice. Their songs were slow steady and solemn, but beautiful.
The second choir was made up of just six teenage boys who kept a much more upbeat tone using all sorts of rhythm instruments, and a guitar. Their leader has a great high pitch voice that resembles the voice of the front man for Ladysmith Black Mambanzo, giving the choir the stereotypical African sound that we might expect from African movies.
The third choir was the children’s choir, which was my favorite, not so much for the music but more for the spastic dancing. While the teenagers keep their cool, simply swaying with the rhythm, the children make an aerobic full body activity out of it, swinging their arms with every step and gyrating their hips violently with the beat. The massive smiles on their faces show that the children know something we older ones have lost, how to dance like you don’t have a care in the world.
My Chitumbuka has now improved to the point where I can understand about two thirds of the sermons. I generally get the message, even if many of the words get lost in the speakers fast-talking and my limited vocabulary. There was a whole pack of preachers sitting in the front instead of just one priest presiding over the whole service. One man did wear a priest’s garb, white collar and all, but the church head people did most of the talking. The headmen wore white jackets that look like high school science lab-coats, and the women wore bleach white bonnets and blouses, and a black skirt…very pilgrim looking.
Each sermon was accompanied by a bible passage read by somebody else. The companion would read a verse than the preacher would give their commentary on it. Then the companion would read the next passage, and the preacher would take his or her turn again each time building in both volume and authority. When somebody in the congregation hears something they particularly relate to they cheer by making a sound that I think sounds like a turkey call; a hoot broken up by flipping your tongue against your upper lip. These “turkey calls really add to the dramatic effect of the sermons, and seem to boost the energy of the preacher. By the end of the sermon I may not have understood what they were saying but I’m convinced I better make some major life changes and repent my sinful ways.
Towards the end of the service, the priest acknowledged me as a distinguished guest and asked that I be introduced to the congregation. So Erflone spoke for me at first, giving my name and explaining that I have come from the state of Colorado in the U.S.A. as a Peace Corps worker. Then he introduced all of the church headmen and women as they came up to shake my hand.
Then came my turn to address the congregation. I knew this was coming because I had to do it at all the other congregations. I Usually just limit myself to a few basic sentences in Chitumbuka, explaining how happy I am to be here in Mwazisi, that I will be here for at least two years working as an environmental extension worker, and that I look forward to working with everybody.
But on this occasion I was feeling inspired by my preceding preachers, and still a bit fired up from my encounter with the chief that morning. So I started into one of my blatherings, which any of you who know me well have suffered through many times before. I spoke about one third of it in Chitumbuka, then elaborated my points in English, hoping that the few people who could understand would relay my message, and clarify for the others.
“Ntchito wane, ntchito ya chiuta,” I nervously started, meaning, “My work is the work of God.” I know that’s a hell of bold statement, but relating the environment to God seems to be the best way to convey my message to the community. I explained that;

“God has endowed us with boundless gifts in nature, we have been given all of the beautiful surroundings we enjoy here in Malawi, perennial rivers that provide water into the dry season, and most important the ability to sustain ourselves with fertile soil for farming. But we are destroying these gifts, slashing and burning forest for tobacco farming, over irrigating the Mwazisi river drying it up by August every year, and overusing the soil with bad farming techniques that turn the fertile soil into desert dust.
Jesus Christ taught us that we must love and care for one another, but how can we look after our children (bana bachoko) and also destroy the environment that will sustain their future. By not caring for the environment today we are starving the future."

I doubt if anybody understood fully what I was saying, but the turkey calls were abundant, and the smiles on everybody’s faces showed me that people appreciated what they did understand of my Chitumbuka mixed with chizungu. For me, it just felt good to get that rant off of my chest. Now I just need to refine my language so I can rattle on like that in all the churches. I definitely know a huge sector of American church congregations that could use someone with a keener mind and nimbler tongue to convey the same type of message. Because just like in Malawi, many of the fundamentalist Christians that I know don’t seem to draw the connection between God and the health of the world they believe he provided us with.

First Impressions

2007-05-19T14:10:00.000+03:00

So I’ve been in Malawi now for over two and a half months and this is my first blog entry…so it will be a long one. Turns out that finding time to get on the Internet is even more difficult than I thought, but now that I’m settled into my site and have my bearings a bit I think I can make more regular entries. Despite not typing a blog, I have been writing a ton in my journal, and have plenty of stories and experiences to share. So now whenever I make it to Mzuzu I will try to type up and enter at least one story.
I arrived in Malawi on March 1st 2007 in a whirlwind with 22 other environment volunteers. When we landed there was a handful of volunteers, and staff there to greet us with cheers and waving Malawian flags. We had time for quick introductions, before being rushed to the office for paper work and processing, then we were packed into a bus like sardines to go an hour and a half south to the Dedza College of Forestry and Wildlife, the headquarters for our training over the next two months. That first bus ride in Malawi was surreal. Driving through the crowded streets of Lilongwe, the capital city, it was like we were the circus coming to town. Everybody stopped and stared at us with wide eyes, their faces seemed to say “Whoa look at all those friggin ‘Azungus’(common word for white people all over Africa).” I can’t say that I was entirely comfortable with all of that attention at first, but it’s something you quickly have to get used to as a Peace Corps volunteer. Now when I go to a new area I’m used to everybody staring at me as if I were a three-headed alien.
When we first arrived we were staring at the Malawians just as hard as they were staring at us. In my case, at least, that bus ride was my first glimpse at real third world poverty. I remember dead silence for a long while on the bus as the sites and smells of the Lilongwe marketplace flashed past, then the piles of garbage all over the place, then the masses of people at the river; some bathing, some washing clothes on the rocks and some just drawing water to take home. We were all very quiet most of the way through Lilongwe. When we neared the city limits the silence was finally broken by Bryon, one of my fellow trainees, who said, “Well, welcome to our new home.”
That was when I first realized what a totally different reality we were stepping into. It was a daunting feeling, but at the same time very exciting. We were only infants in Malawi, having no idea what the hell to expect, and at that moment we were in the process of having the whole world, as we knew it thrown up into the air like a deck of cards. Training would be the time to try and put the cards back into order. I was talking about that first day with my friends Elihu and Jake a few weeks ago. Elihu, who was a trainee with me, made a comment I could relate with, “I felt like I was tripping, but hadn’t done any drugs.” Jake who is now nearing the end of his three year service, and has accomplished some major projects replied, “I feel like I’ve been tripping for the past three years.” So I guess the novelty never wears off…I’m looking forward to the journey.
The next two months of training in Dedza were intense. A lot of information was packed into a short period of time. We received crash courses in local plant and tree identification, tree nursery preparation, and out planting, budding and grafting, mud-stove construction, beekeeping, bio-intensive gardening, and perma-culture. About a third of our training was focused on language. Which was where I focused most of my energy and free time. I am now very glad that I did, my community entry has been made so much easier by the little Chitumbuka that I can speak, it sets me apart from any other Azungus the people from my village encounter.
One of the most important aspects of our training was home-stay. This was when we moved in with a Malawian family in a rural village in Dedza near the college. This was an opportunity to really learn how to live in Malawi. Day to day activities are a total different ball game when you’re drawing all of your water from a bore-hole, cooking over a three stone fire, and living without all the basic creature comforts, like a table or chairs. During home-stay, training went from “intense”, to “holy crap what did I get myself into?” Lucky for me I was put in a really great group, my fellow trainees were awesome. We all kept our senses of humor throughout training, and kept the atmosphere light. I was also very lucky to be placed with a family that I bonded well with; the Butowe family. We had a huge language barrier because I’m learning Chitumbuka, and they all speak Chichewa. But you don’t always need words to appreciate one another, and you can easily get by with pantomimes and hand gestures mixed with an encouraging smile. I really hit it off with the Butowes and want to spend an entry devoted to talking about my Malawian family.
After six weeks, home-stay finished with a huge village farewell ceremony/party. It was a very regimented gathering to begin with. Having formal speeches from village headmen, and our officials, including a speech in Chichewa by Jonathon another Trainee. But all of the pomp and circumstance quickly gave way to the dancing. It started with the village women doing traditional dances for us to a chorus of drums from the young boys. Then they started pulling us up to join in the dancing, and I should tell you that African dancing is more like the dancing you see in rap videos than anything else. You have never seen booty shakin’ like this, and it’s done by everybody. Really I didn’t know my hips could twitch like that, I was kind of impressed with myself. So in return we led the whole village in a round of limbo, which was awesome. People were cheering and laughing their heads off. Also I’m not afraid to mention that I turned out to be the star of this portion of the ceremony being by far the tallest person involved paired with my superior limbo abilities. The whole gathering was a blast, but quickly followed by sad goodbyes.
So now home-stay was over, and soon after the big night arrived…Site Announcements! It felt like Christmas, everybody was all giddy and excited. We had a party at the head trainer’s house, and after a couple beers we were all anxious as hell to find out where we were going. The APCD Brian Connors started out by giving descriptions of each site and then lifting pieces of paper on a map to reveal our faces on our new sites. When Brian was describing my site, the first thing he mentioned was the remoteness. He said it was tucked way up in the mountains by the Zambian border between Vwaza Game Reserve and Nyika National Park. But he also mentioned the beauty of the area, a narrow green valley surrounded by the rugged mountains distinctive of the Great Rift Valley. He also mentioned that I would be the first Peace Corps volunteer ever placed in Mwazisi and that the possibilities were endless. The villagers wouldn’t really know what to expect, but there would be potential to start some very exciting things.
The next day I left for my site visit, to see this mysterious place for myself. Which gave me a chance to see how hard transportation is in this small country. The transport from Dedza to Mzuzu took one full day, and then I took a mini bus from Mzuzu to Rumphi, where I caught a Matola.
The Matola itself is worth noting, it’s a big flat bed truck or lory that sits at the end of town waiting to be filled up with passengers and cargo to be dropped at the villages all along the dirt road climbing up into the Lusuntha hills. When it’s absolutely loaded to the brim we start the journey. On this trip I had to sit on the sidewall because I didn’t know any better, and didn’t realize this meant taking my life into my own hands. The sidewall is very loosely attached, and teeters to the point of nearly spilling everybody out when we pull around a corner. Eventually I saw an opportunity to move down to a 5 kg bag of sugar below and jumped on it. This was great because it provided padding for the bigger bumps and dips in the road. For most of the way I had a women with a baby strapped to her back sitting on my feet. The woman smiled at me politely while the baby stared with utter fear, “what is this strange white creature” he must have been thinking. I held a basin for washing and a box on my right knee and some sort of porridge (I hope) was oozing out of it. A tiny old woman practically sat on my left knee, every time we hit a big bump she bounced into my lap, and smiled apologetically, I answered it with a laugh to say “no problem.” Bumps were a big source of entertainment. Every time we hit a big one, everything bounced in a different direction. Women with babies firmly attached to their breast flew up and came crashing down with painful grimace, which turned to a shared smile when they caught each other’s eyes. The men in the back scrambled around grabbing the loose supplies and quickly rescuing it so they could repeat the same dance when the next bump came.
The sun was beaming down on the back of my neck most of the ride. But I was too taken by the surroundings to really care much. Brian was right about the beauty of the place, it is incredible. He was also right about the excitement of the villagers, and the limitless possibilities. In my first few weeks I have stayed very busy teaching at the secondary school, getting to know the community, and starting my first tree nursery project. It's a busy and exciting time, I can see all sorts of oppurtunities to make a positive impact. Now we have two years to see what can be made of those possibilities.

Tiwononenge (see ya)