Tatsegula nyumba ya asungwana!

Life moves on in Malawi. This time of year, people are harvesting their crops, reaping the benefits of the work they have done in the past year. As with the past few years, tobacco prices have been very low, and I wonder why people aren't catching on to this (I often ask people: "Every year you work your ass off, spend lot's of money on inputs, and end up with nothing after selling your tobacco harvest. Will you cultivate a different cash crop this year?" The common answer: "No sir, we always depend on tobacco."). At least half of the economy in Malawi is tobacco-based, and these low prices (not to mention a lack of innovation) will have negative long and short-term effects on this already deeply impoverished country. But the soya bean farmers are doing well. The prices of this easy to cultivate, legumous, soil-enriching crop are through the roof, and I can only hope that more people will grow this food-crop in the future instead of the low-grade, (child) labor-intensive, environment destroying, unprofitable crop we call fodya (tobacco). However, I have come to realize that it takes a long, long time for people to change their ways so I don't see any real changes coming any time soon. I guess it's most effective when we learn the hard way.

The girl's hostel is finally being used. It isn't really finished, but we decided that it's close enough to start having residents. About half of the rooms don't have windows (apparently we ordered 40 instead of the 60 that we needed, oops!), the kitchens aren't roofed yet, and the contractor and his workers haven't been paid in a while. These first two problems aren't really a big deal (from a rural African village perspective) since we don't expect to see much rain until December. In spite of these deficiencies, 16 girls started living in the building last week. I live a safe enough distance (15 kilometers) away so that I don't have to hear everything about the hostel, but it sounds like things are going well. The girls haven't started killing each other yet, and they even did some much needed landscaping last weekend. We decided that since the school year is almost over, only the Form 4 (equivalent to 12th grade) girls will live in the hostel for the rest of this school year. In this manner, starting with fewer boarders will hopefully allow us to iron out some of the wrinkles before we fill it to full capacity at the beginning of next school year in September. This is all good news. I certainly have some concerns about how this hostel thing is going to progress, but I won't go into all that right now. Here are a few pictures of the almost finished but still being used building:

I mentioned in my last post that I was eagerly awaiting my MCAT results. Perhaps my delay in writing about these results is an indication that they ended up sub-par, but that is not the case at all. Avoiding the urge to brag (J), I will just say that my MCAT results will not hinder my chances at getting into most schools. These results ended up being almost exactly what I expected, and I am satisfied with them. It's the rest of the medical school application that I have to worry about now. I'm still working on getting together and polishing up my personal statement, letters of recommendation, transcripts, and other odds and ends so I can send out my primary applications in the next few months (if any of you would like to edit my personal statement please let me know because I need all the help I can get). My tentative list of schools that I will send primary applications to includes: University of Minnesota-Twin Cities and Duluth, University of Saint Louis, Creighton, Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, Rush, Rosalind Franklin, and Loyola (the last three are all in Chicago). Anyone!, Everyone!, please send me an email (bjvonasek@gmail.com) if you have any advice about what schools I should apply to or what schools I should add to this list. I certainly don't have the best idea of how to go about doing this, but my general strategy is to not waste my time applying to out of state public schools. I'm targeting public schools specifically in Minnesota and private schools in the upper mid-west. Because applying to medical schools is expensive and I have the budget of a Peace Corps Volunteer, I'm trying to limit the number of schools that I apply to while at the same time not hurting my chances of matriculating next August (I absolutely don't want to do all this application crap over again next year!).

Right now my first choices are UM-TC and Duluth (if I decide that I really want to work in an underserved rural area I think UMD will be my top pick (because they are one of the best in this area), but I haven't decided that yet). If I get accepted to either of those schools, then that is where I will end up going. All of the other schools are just back up plans. Perhaps I am misguided? I don't know. Let me know what you think (via email, I haven't heard from a lot of you in a while, and it's nice to get an email from someone other than Amazon.com or Wells Fargo from time to time).

Once the schools receive the primary applications they send out secondary applications to almost everyone that has adequately completed the primary application. The secondary applications include a handful of essay questions and other odds and ends, and this is also where the schools start profiting from the application fees. Ideally, these secondary applications are submitted late summer/early fall, and if you make the cut, you are invited for an interview. Interview season tends to last from September to March (it varies a lot depending on the school). Unfortunately, I may be at a slight disadvantage with the interviews because I probably won't be back to the States until around the Holidays, but I'm hoping that I'll land a few interviews and have a chance to get in somewhere by convincing some school that this brute from Africa might make a decent doctor someday. We'll see what happens.

I never thought that I would say this, but life is becoming somehow ordinary here. I believe how you wake up in the morning is a good indicator of how things are going. If you wake up without gumption and apathetic, not looking forward to the next 16 or so waking hours, then you probably need to make a few changes in your life and take things in a different direction. If you wake up eager to tackle the day (or even better if you can't sleep because you're so excited for the next day), then things are going well and you're on the right track. I think most of us wake up somewhere in the middle of this spectrum, not really excited by nor discouraged by the ordinary day ahead. This is where I'm at right now. I'm not saying that I'm having a hard time here but that the novelty of Malawi has worn off and there's not as much excitement as there used to be. Maybe I need a vacation or something.

"Whatever is subject to origination is all subject to cessation." Gautama Buddha