Elections, Goats, and Chickens

Sorry I’ve been away for so long. I’ve been really busy since my last real post, but today I am making a point of giving ya’ll an update on my life because I do feel that it is important and worthwhile for you to hear what is going on over here in Malawi.

Let me start by talking about the elections. You may or may not have heard that we had our national elections two Tuesdays ago. I haven’t blogged at all about this for the sake of preventing you guys from worrying about me. If you are moderately aware of the world news, you probably heard about the violent elections Kenya had last year and similar problems in Madagascar this year. With these nearby warnings and a variety of other reasons, I was a little worried about things going into election week (I should also tell you that Peace Corps was also keeping a close eye on things during this time, and they have done an decent job keeping us safe-as far as I have been able to tell). There was certainly some tension during this time. This is a new democracy (less than two decades ago this country was run by a “president for life”), and it certainly shows. I observed men sitting on the side of the road yelling at a woman walking by and calling her a prostitute because she was wearing a tee-shirt of the opposition party. The teachers at my school would have daily arguments about the strengths and weaknesses of the various presidential candidates. The political rallies that I observed from a distance appeared more like high school pep rallies (now that I think of it, all this isn’t that much different than the States). Rather than voting for a candidate, I was told that many people will simply vote for a party’s symbol throughout their lives. The children all knew the favored party’s chants and slogans very well, and they would keep yelling them long into the night. The neighbor’s four-year old boy, Crispin, is still yelling “DPP yoyheaaa!!” on a daily basis.

In spite of all this, I must say that the elections did go smoothly. We have reelected Bingu Mutharika by a wide margin (things could have been a lot more heated if the results were closer). Bingu seems to be doing a decent job with the plethora of problems that this country provides him with, and hopefully he will keep that up in his second term. The main opposition candidate did accuse Bingu of cheating after the votes were tallied, but apparently he does this after every election so his complaints weren’t taken seriously.

Unfortunately for my students, a few of the teachers at my school also decided that Tuesday’s elections were a good excuse to take the ENTIRE week off as a vacation. Election Day was a scheduled national holiday so there was no school, but we were supposed to have school the rest of the week. What actually happened was a different story. I ended up teaching all of the students that showed up on Monday and Wednesday by myself, and on Thursday and Friday only about half of the students and teachers came to school. Well, as my friend Mr. Chembe likes to say, “Such is life.”

A couple of weeks ago we had a problem in the garden. Now that the dry season has started, the local goats are no longer tied up to trees. Instead, they are allowed to run around free all day so that they can scavenge for food. Since I was a child and we had a goat named Ice Cream, I was never a big fan of the goat species. Well, I can say that now I absolutely hate these creatures. The free-range goats of Chadabwa managed to find a weak spot in my garden fence while I was at school one day. The boys and I were just about to harvest a big bean crop, but the goats gobbled those up quickly. They also found the banana tree, papaya tree, Chinese cabbage, and mustard leaves particularly appetizing. For some reason, they didn’t eat the peas. Thankfully, some guys from the village helped us repair the fence with some sturdy elephant grass. We haven’t had any goats since, and we quickly replanted so that now the garden looks even better than it did before those damn goats got in.

Another thing that I am really excited about right now is our new chicken. I had been asking around for a while about a smaller hen that is just starting to lay eggs that we would be able to raise at our house. After a couple of weeks of asking various people I finally found what I was looking for. We have had her for about two weeks now, and she should start laying eggs anytime. The idea is that she will have a good time with the neighbor’s rooster, lay about eight eggs, and in about ten months we will have eight full-grown chickens to eat. They are easy as pie to take care of. We just had to keep her tied up in the back yard for a couple of days to teach her where her new home is. Now, she sleeps in the storage room (I want to build a coup soon because the house will start to smell a little funky if we let her and all of the babies sleep in there). We let her out in the morning to find food (and the rooster), and she comes back on her own every night looking for a place to sleep. One of my buddies is telling me that I now need to start raising pigs as well, but I think I’ll just stick with chickens.

Sorry I don’t have many good pics to put up today. If you haven’t done so already, make sure that you check out the link on the left column to all of my pictures. Also, I will try to start taking some more around where I live so that you guys can get a better idea of what that looks like. Finally, don’t forget to donate money to CampSky at friendsofmalawi.org Tell your friends!!

“Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.”
George Carlin