My New Home

I'm all settled into my site now. I came into "town" (Lilongwe) today to meet up with some friends. We're all headed over to the lake for the first time tomorrow for a nice little XMAS vacation on the beach. Maybe I'll put up some pics of our adventure later on.

Anyways, I really like my site. Although it's relatively close to the capital, it's a very rural location. The closest source of electricity is 6k away (at another PCVs house, she was lucky enough to get a solar panel). The closest trading center, Mitundu, is a 15k bike ride away. This is where I will probably have to buy the majority of my food, and it is also where I can either catch a minibus or hitch a ride in town. As for the area around my site, it's pretty flat with lot's of farmland (at least during this time of year, while we have plenty of rain and the land is green, it sort of reminds me of Iowa).

The two big crops in this area are tobacco and maize (the people in my area were very disappointed to hear that I don't plan to plant either of these in my garden). I live near a smaller trading center which basically consists of a pair of very small general stores and a pair of tea rooms. The people in this area live in small villages, consisting of about 5-15 families (~6-13 people per family). Each little village is made up of extended family. The way this works (to the best of my knowledge) is that when a marriage occurs, the husband will move into a new home in the village of the wife.

My language is improving rapidly. As I said earlier, I’m in a very rural area. This means that very few people speak more English than “Hello!” or “Give me my money.” (no kidding, this is how they say it-it’s hard for me to take a beggar seriously when they use this gramatically poor phrase). Therefore, I’ve been speaking lot’s of Chichewa and making a fool of myself. Everytime I leave my house, I feel like the freak show at the circus, but I’m getting used to the confused stares and the “Azungu, Azungu!” (which roughly translates as rich, white, European) chants by the children. I have convinced these lille rascals to call me by my actual name.


My house is brand new. It certainly wasn't constructed with extraordinary craftsmenship, but it's better than anything I would have expected three months ago. The roof leaks when the wind is out of either the north or the west, but we plan to get this fixed...sometime. This is my backyard, with the chim (aka toliet) on the right and the entrance to the bafa on the left:

This is my kitchen/sitting room:

and my bedroom:


Some of you (Josh) may be looking for cheap ways to call me. The cheapest thing that I know of is a website called skype.com. I think it's like 13cents/min, although you have to make the call through the computer rather than an actually phone. It must be fairly simple to figure out because even my mom and brother were able to get it going;-}.

I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season. I’m starting to miss home, but I am truly enjoying my time here. Each day provides some interesting moments.

I’ll leave you with a pic of the most interesting critter I’ve seen thus far. I also have some pretty big spiders in my house.