Thoughts become reality

After worrying, planning, and thinking about what I am getting myself into, the time has finally come for me to get started. My flight leaves tomorrow morning. Here is what my luggage ended up looking like:


In addition to one carry on item (the black duffle bag), we are allowed to have two checked bags (the blue and brown bags) that are supposed to be under 80 pounds total. I was a little worried about this until I finally put everything on the scale and it was well under the limit at around 50 pounds. This may not seem like very much luggage for a 27 month trip, but I can buy a lot of stuff over there as well. It's not like I'm going to the moon. People have been living in Malawi for thousand of years, and I'm sure that I'll be able to get another t-shirt if the two that I am bringing get too many holes in them. But perhaps I shouldn't be so sure of things until I actually get there and check it out for myself.

I found some interesting info at lonelyplanet.com recently. On the South Africa page there is a travel warning: "Criminal gangs are known to operate at airports, bus stations and other transport hubs in South Africa, particularly at Johannesburg International Airport. Muggings and carjackings are regularly reported in Johannesburg's city centre." Yeah, I'll be passing through there in a couple of days; good thing I bought that money belt.

It looks like the internet cafes are outrageously expensive (I think I remember someone saying 8$/hour, which is about a days "allowance") so I don't know how often I'll be able to post or how long the posts will be. One thing I do know is that it is very unlikely that I will have any internet access at all during training. With this, don't be surprised (or worried) if I don't get on here again until December. When it concerns the third world, no news is good news. If you want to get in touch with me your best bet is to ditch the keyboard and write me a letter. Wish me luck, and start making those travel plans to Malawi now- I would be glad to take a few days off to be a tour guide.

The Five W's

To start things off, here are the five W’s of this adventure of mine
Who?
My name is Bryan. For more a little more detail, see the text on the left.
What?
First I have to go through ten weeks of technical, cross-cultural, health and safety, language, and development training. Technical training covers the ins and outs of being a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV), and for me this will include a teaching internship. More than likely I will be learning Chichewa, which is spoken mostly in rural areas (while English is spoken mostly in schools and the cities). Also, I will be living with a host family during this time in a village similar to where I will work and live during service.
After completing training and showing some level of competency, I will be officially Sworn-in as a PCV and allowed to begin my work. My primary job will be Secondary (high school) Education. I will mostly be teaching science, but I may be needed in other areas as well. I also plan on doing some projects outside of the classroom. This could include promoting HIV/AIDS awareness, environmental activities, tutoring students, and organizing community groups or athletic teams.
Where?
I will be training and working somewhere in Malawi, but at this point I don’t know the specific location. Most likely, I will be working in a small, rural village. Hopefully it will be at a higher elevation, where it tends to be cooler. It’s also interesting to note that I probably will not have running water and electricity.
Malawi is known as the “Warm heart of Africa” due to the friendliness of Malawians. As you can see on the map to the left, it is a land-locked country about the size of Indiana. It is characterized by beautiful landscapes with mountains and the large Lake Malawi along the eastern boarder. Unfortunately, this country and its people also face many problems, which is the main reason I am going there in the first place. These interconnected problems include (but are certainly not limited to): high population density, an HIV/AIDS epidemic, drought, environmental degradation, and a general poor standard of living. With regards to my specific service area, education, common problems are an insufficient number of teachers (leading to class sizes of 50-100 students (yes, I am a bit intimidated by those numbers)), a lack of resources (desks, books, even floors and roofs), and few students passing the national exams.
Why?
That’s a question that I still don’t have a concrete answer for, but I’ll take a stab at it anyways. I have always been discouraged by, and perhaps even ashamed of, the issues faced by a majority of humanity while my own life (as a white, American male) is relatively easy. I feel like I have some skills and knowledge that will be useful to these people to improve there own lives. This should also be a good experience for personal growth and all that good stuff. Volunteers that have been doing the same things that I will be doing often say that they learn more from the people they are working with than those people learn from them. Furthermore, at this point, I don’t have a good idea of what direction I want to take with my life, and this will give me a few years to get things figured out while doing something productive in the meantime. Also, I’m looking forward to doing some traveling around this area of the world and experiencing this new culture. I won’t have any better time in my life to do something like this, and although I’m not so disillusioned to think that I will enjoy every minute of every day, I hope that in the end this will be an overall positive experience for me and everyone I work with (Peace Corps slogan: “The toughest job you will ever love.”).
When?
To get things rolling, there will be an orientation in Philly for a couple of days starting September 26. Then we will fly across the pond to Lilongwe, Malawi (the capital) via New York and Johannesburg, South Africa (18 hours between these two). Training in Malawi goes from about September 30 to December 9, and my service will end about December 9, 2010.

At this point, a lot of this information is speculative, based on stuff that I have read and rumors that I have heard. However, I’m pretty sure the first “W” is accurate. Anyways, I will try to update this regularly, but this may be difficult as Internet access (not to mention electricity) will probably be hard to come by. For the same reason, I encourage everyone to contact me through the mail (see info on left) rather than email. Surprisingly, there is a good chance I will have a functional cell phone over there, but more on this later. I hope this was (and will continue to be) at least mildly interesting.