Pictures

I can't think of anything interesting to write about, but I do have some halfway interesting pictures to share. Check 'em out

This is what it looked like behind our house at the beginning of January. As you can see, we planted maize (that's "corn" to us Americans-in case you didn't know), beans, pumpkins, and sunflowers. With the plentiful rains that we are having this time of year, these crops are growing fast. This is what it looked like by mid-February.

But this little garden is tiny compared to the half acre field that we have.

Here you can see most of the soy beans and groundnuts (peanuts) that we planted together. To the left, you can see the side of the section with maize and beans planted together. Ya'll know that I don't like to brag, but there is much more to it than you can see. I couldn't fit all of our crops into one pic, as there are a few ridges of sweet potatoes off to the right. We've already started harvesting some of the beans. We should start harvesting the groundnuts, sweet potatoes, and soybeans next month, but the maize will have to wait until April. It was a lot of work to do all of this, although I had a lot of help from the boys that live with me (the one that isn't going to school right now did at least 50% of the work). However, it looks like all of our work will be worthwhile as we should have a good harvest. We will have more than the three of us can eat by ourselves so we will be giving lot's of gifts to our friends (the most common type of gift to receive in the village is fresh produce since that's all most people have to offer). I contemplated selling some of the perishable stuff, especially the sweet potatoes, which should fill an entire oxcart, but we'll be better off just trading/sharing it with everyone else. Plus, as a PCV, I not really allowed to sell stuff.

The took the new pic at the top of this web page from the top of a little mountain that is about 3km to the south of my house. Nowadays, in the second half of the rainy season, things are very green and beautiful. This little mountain provides a nice view of things, and I'm pretty sure that I can see all the way into Mozambique. The mountains in the backgroud are in Malawi, off to the southeast.

This is Crispin. Crispin is the son of the deputy headmaster (aka assistant principle) at my school. They live next door, and Crispin comes over to my house daily to discuss deep issues such as the meaning of life, strategies for development in Malawi, and the future of the United States as the global leader. His favorite question is "Ichi ndi chiyani?" ("What is this?"), and I respond for the fifth time, "Ndakuwuzani khale, icho ndi ndowa" ("I already told you, it's a bucket"). In this way he is no different than any other todler, asking lot's of questions. Last year he had a habit of throwing a big hissy fit in his house next door at around 8 when I would be trying to go to bed. Thankfully, he has mellowed out a bit this year, and he is turning into a fine young man (it must be the influence of the big white man next door).

That's all I got for today. A two week term break has just started, and tomorrow I'm headed up north to some seedy resthouse where a buddy of mine is having a birthday party-it should be interesting.

The Second Time Around

In the same way that an adult perceives the world differently than a child, I now perceive Malawi as a completely different place compared to a year ago. In general, things haven’t really changed since last January. We have gone through a full cycle of seasons, the same problems of hunger; poverty; and disease are still obvious (will they always be?); and most people still appear fairly content with the way things are. Although this place hasn’t changed much, I certainly have.

A year ago I was ignorant, concerned, and overwhelmed. Now I am aware, jaded, and bored. I have a better understanding of how things work (or fail to work) here, but this hasn’t helped me to fix any of the problems that I set out to fix in the beginning. Or maybe this has helped me tackle these problems more skillfully, but from the start, the problems were insurmountable. I shouldn’t be completely negative; there have been small successes. It is these small steps forward that I need to learn to appreciate-the big steps forward don’t seem to come around too often.

One thing I am slightly ashamed of is my lack of enthusiasm these days. I recall writing on this blog last year that I was waking up excited for the beginning of each day-for a chance to make some kind of a difference. I can’t say that I wake up with this excitement any longer. Lately, I seem to be simply going through the motions. This isn’t such a bad thing-going through the motions of life-lots of decent people float through their entire lives in this manner. But I can’t ignore the daily hollowness that I feel. I don’t think this is a result of the circumstances that I am living under. Rather, I think it is a personal issue that needs to be fixed by me personally. I’m not exactly sure how I’m going to change all this, but I’ll think of something. I always have in the past.

I now think of myself less as a Peace Corps Volunteer and more as just a regular dude living in a foreign country. A year ago, I was very aware of my duties as a PCV and the advice I had been given to fulfill these duties. At the time, this mindset was essential to “getting my feet wet” here in Malawi and allowing me to be where I am at now without any major hiccups. I have found that now, especially when I’m at home in Chadabwa, I can go full days without even thinking about the Peace Corps and other things related to it. I’m now able to think about things from an independent view, and for better or for worse, this has given me a better understanding of the way this world turns (although I still feel that this understanding has only scratched the surface of things). Certainly, I have grown up quickly here. This is something that I haven’t really thought about until recently. I have never had so much freedom and responsibility (or maybe it is instead a complete lack of responsibility because there are no consequences to failure when I am in a setting where failure is commonplace) in my entire life. This has forced me to define myself as an adult and set standards that I will want to live up to for the rest of my life.

When I get together with the friends that I came here with back in September ’08, a common topic of conversation is “Which of us has changed the most? How have we changed?” I have felt, and been made aware of by others, my own personal change, but what amazes me is how my perception of the world is completely different. I look out the window and notice finer points that I hadn’t been aware of before. I hear things that I couldn’t understand or weren’t as meaningful before. I now know things which have removed the glare of life’s silver lining (There’s a handicap woman in the village across the street. She often gets raped in the fields nearby her home. She has multiple children with unknown fathers. As you can imagine, it is difficult for her to feed and clothe them.).

Do not let all this whining and moaning let you down. Bryan is doing just fine. I think that 2010 will be just as good as 2009, if not better. Although I don’t think I will go through as much “personal growth” this year, I’m sure that I will have an entirely new perception of things a year from now. I am still seeing and doing a lot of interesting things. Here I have met many fascinating people that I will never forget.

"'Always in life an idea starts small, it is only a sapling idea, but the vines will come and they will try to choke your idea so it cannot grow and it will die and you will never know you had a big idea, an idea so big it could have grown thirty meters through the dark canopy of leaves and touched the face of the sky.[]The vines are people who are afraid of originality, of new thinking. Most people you encounter will be vines; when you are a young plant they are very dangerous.[] Always listen to yourself…” Bryce Courtenay

A Day in the Life of Bryan

So my life has settled into a bit of a routine, not anything I want to hold on to (I mean the routine, not my life), and I thought that it may, or may not, be interesting for you to hear about this.

These days I wake at about 4:30. Although during the winter months (May-August) it's usually past five, I awake when it is light enough to see the road so that I can go for a run. My runs aren't as intense, varied, or long as they used to be; I run between 35-45 minutes, and there are exactly four different paths that I have been using. Back home, I didn't run first thing in the morning very often, but here it makes a lot of sense for a variety of reasons: it gets hot in the middle of the day this close to the equator, I have plenty of other things to do the rest of the day, and most importantly-there are less hecklers and gawkers early in the morning (although this doesn't hold true these days when everyone is in the fields taking advantage of the breif rainy season). I found that this is an excellent way to start my day, and I always feel slugish for the rest of the day if I can't summon the inspiration to get out the door and run at the crack of dawn.

Here in the village we don't have any fancy technology to provide running and hot water. Instead, we take cold bucket baths. By now, I am used to this, but during the cold season, especially July and August, this was a fridged esperience. I always took advantage of my elevated body temperature after running by quickly jumping into the bafa (room where bucket bathing takes place). Then, I scurry back into the house and quickly throw on my school clothes-scuffed Timberland boots, khaki pants, and a short sleeve plaid shirt (typical)- to quell the shivering. In the meantime, one of the boys is cooking breakfast. I study Chichewa, correct homework, or just listen to the radio while I wait for the food. The three of us then eat a simple breakfast-usually maize flour porrige (phala). I make the short walk to school by 7, in plenty of time for the first period at 7:30.

I will be honest. School has become a bit monotonous as of late. However, the monotony really only gets to me on days when I'm not teaching very much, just sitting in the office planning lessons with heavy eyelids. So I try to spend a lot of time in the classroom when there are free periods available. This way the day goes by faster and I'm doing what I'm here to do-teach. I certainly don't dislike my day job (although I don't see myself making a career of teaching in high schools); I'm proud of what I am doing here, and there are plenty of moments that make it all worth while.

For the first half of last school year, classes ended at 3:30. In the middle of these never-ending school days was a 90-minute lunch break. 90 minutes was necessary for preparing, cooking, and eating lunch. The problem was that most people didn't eat lunch either because they lived too far away or they didn't have any food to cook. Also, many students did go home for lunch, and they just wouldn't return for afternoon classes. In the middle of the year, I started a campaign to do away with this lunch break altogether because it mostly entailed about 25% of the people actually eating lunch while the other 75% just waited around the school or wandered home. It was easy to convince the staff for us to make the change. Most of them already felt this way, and none of the other schools in the area have a true lunch break. I brought it up during one of the staff meetings, we quickly changed the timetable, and nowadays (thank God) the last period ends at 2:15. At this time, I tie up any loose ends at the office-manning the library, answering students questions, doing any urgent lesson planning or homework correcting, or supervising any estracirricular activities. I’m usually out the door well before 3.

As most of you know, I like to eat. I’m usually starving by the time I get home, but it doesn’t make much sense for us to have a big lunch this late in the day since, in this culture, a big dinner is mandatory. So we just whip together something quick-roasted maize or peanuts-and then get on with the rest of the afternoon.

On weekdays, the late afternoon is easily my favorite time of day because I get to do whatever the heck I want. These past two months, I have been going to the field a lot, taking care of the crops with the boys. Other typical afternoon activities include: reading (for fun), grading homework, lesson planning, chopping firewood, napping, drinking homemade wine and chatting with locals, or washing clothes.

The range in sunset times is much less dramatic than it is in Minnesota since we are so close to the equator. In the winter months, it gets dark a little before six, and these days it’s about 6:30. Since I was a little kid I always have enjoyed staying up late. But here, in the village without any electricity, my body shuts down pretty fast. As with breakfast, we usually eat together around the table. Dinner usually consists of a big carbohydrate dish and something else on the side. About 80% of the time the carb is nsima (the staple of most East African diets which is make from maize flour, tastes very simple and bland, and looks similar to mashed potatoes (but certainly doesn’t taste like them)). The other 20% of the time the main dish is either rice or spaghetti (the latter is the boys’ new favorite food, which they had never eaten before I entered their lives). Our common side dishes, from most common on down, are as follows: some type of boiled greens, beans, soupy fish, soupy meat, and a popular dish make from processed soya that is supposed to (and kind of does) taste like meat. This food certainly isn’t as good and varied as the stuff in the States, but I have grown to like it. We like to listen to the radio while eating dinner in order to catch the evening news. We chat for a little while afterwards, and I read a few pages of whatever book I am reading at the time. I’m in bed pretty fast, usually between 8 and 9. It’s nice to have a natural rythym of going to sleep and waking with the sun. However, I couldn’t sleep like this in America-with all the electricity around.

Well, I’m not sure if that was worth your time to read or not, but that’s my life in Peace Corps. It will be intense to come back to the rat-race we call America about a year from now. Tomorrow, I’m headed to the lake to relax with some friends over Christmas. Happy Holidays everyone. Be safe-Don’t do anything that I wouldn’t do (that should give you plenty of leeway).

"If America taught me anything, it's that quitting is right up there with pissing in the Girl Scouts' lemonade jar." Khaled Hosseini

CampSky Reflections

(If you don't understand what I mean by "CampSky," please refer back to previous entries.)

All in all, I felt the camp was a huge success. It was one of the more meaningful things I have done in my life, and there were multiple times where the whole scene gave me goose bumps. One of the boys that lives with me was there, and every time one of his friends asks him how the camp was, he starts giggling for about five seconds before he can compose himself enough to explain how much he enjoyed it.

In years past, the camp was about two weeks long. However, this year-due to school calendar changes and other BS that we had to deal with- we were forced to shorten it to six days. When starting to plan for the camp, we expected to have 12 days to work with. Later on, the number of days was cut in half, and instead of also cutting the activities in half, we just crammed them into those six days. This meant that we were constantly busy running around doing different things from 5:30am to 10pm every day. At first the students grumbled about the fast pace, but then they agreed with me when I told them that we have to take advantage of the fact that we have electricity at the camp. I told them we can sleep when we return home to the village, with total darkness at night.


So what did the students do at the camp? Every morning was spent in the classroom until lunch time. The topics learned about were similar to what they learn about at their respective schools, but here they had access to better resources and teachers that actually knew what they were talking about. The afternoons consisted of a wide range of activities ranging from Peace Corpish skills training (jam, peanut butter, and soap making; composting; planting tree nurseries, etc.) to Karate to elective classes on unfamiliar topics such as human rights, budgeting, and natural medicines. One afternoon we also went to two places near Lilongwe city. First, we went to the Lilongwe International Airport. Of coarse, the two (no typo) flights that were coming in that afternoon were late, but it was well worth the 90 minute wait to see the amazement on the students faces when the hundred ton hunk of metal gracefully fell from the sky. Immediately after the plane landed, we spotted another flying in, getting ready to land. At an airport that only has about five international flights coming or going on any given day, we were lucky enough to see two land at about the same time. Soon after the second plane landed, we had to rush off to our next destination. When we first arrived at the airport I started a rumor that we were going to America. The students were a bit let down when they realized this was a lie. Our next destination was the Hastings Kamuzu Banda mausoleum. For those of you who aren't Malawian history buffs, Banda was the first president (dictator) of Malawi. He is a national hero to most Malawians that I know, and the students were very interested to look at the monument. We didn't spend a lot of time there, but it was a decent evening activity before dinner.

The only regret I have is that I wasn't able to teach at all. I was always busy taking care of logistical issues such as food, security, and transportation. All this was good experience for me since I had never been in this kind of leadership role before. Still, if I'm a part of the camp next year, I will just be a teacher. Someone else can be the bad guy-yelling at everyone and taking responsibility for all the problems.

Lastly, I certainly shouldn't forget to thank all of you that donated money to make this camp possible. One thing that I have learned over this past year is that lots of donor money is wasted/mishandled in developing countries. However, I can confidently say that your money was well spent-empowering the future leaders of Malawi.

"It is when we try to grapple with another man's intimate need that we perceive how incomprehensible, wavering, and misty are the beings that share with us the sight of the stars and the warmth of the sun." Joseph Conrad

Nsanje

I have been wanting to write about this for a while, and now I have collected my thoughts and found time to write something coherent about this cultural blemish.

A few months ago I visited a village called Nyamazani, and I was amazed by what I saw. This village is strikingly different compared to most of the other rural settlements in this area. Most of the houses have roofs made of iron sheets, it appeared that almost every family has their own oxcart, there are a variety of fruit trees throughout the area, and the place is crowded with goats; pigs; and cattle. On the other hand, in my village (as with most of the villages in this area) most of the houses have roofs thatched with grass, the entire village shares two oxcarts, we enjoy cutting down trees before they can reach ten feet, and only one family is raising cattle; two are raising pigs; and a handful keep goats. Clearly the standard of living is mush higher in Nyamazani, and I wanted to figure out why.

To begin with, there are tribal differences. The largest tribe in Malawi, concentrated in the central and southern regions, is the Chewa. In my area, most of the people belong to this tribe, we speak this language (Chichewa), and the leadership-village headmen/women, chiefs, and members of parliament-belong to the Chewa tribe. However, the village of Nyamazani is a small pocket of a different tribe of people, the Ngoni. The Ngoni are descendents of the great Zulu tribe in the area of what is now the Republic of South Africa. The tree pillars of Ngoni culture, as any Ngoni is happy to tell you, are meat; women; and beer. In spite of this, they do seem to have their act together, especially when compared to the impoverished Chewa.

There is a controlled experiment set up here. We have an independent variable-the Ngoni tribe in Nyamazani and the Chewa tribe in the rest of the area. We have a dependent variable-the Ngoni village has much greater material wealth than the surrounding Chewa villages. All the other variables are more or less constant/equal-these people have farmland of the same fertility, they deal with the same weather patterns, they have the exact same government leadership, etc. What is left is the fun part-to interpret the data. (Please excuse me for turning this into a science experiment-I am a nerd, and I just finished teaching the Scientific Method to my students.)

To do this, I went straight to the source-the people themselves. I asked a variety of different people from both sides the provocative question, “Why are the Ngoni so much better off?” To this question the typical response was: “Because they have more money.” I had to press further: “Why do they have more money?” To this second question there were two different, but not entirely exclusive, ideas. The first idea was that the Ngoni are simply harder workers than the Chewa. I feel the second idea explains the divide in wealth more deeply: The Chewa people tend to have more jealousy towards one another.

I have observed this jealousy firsthand, and I feel that it is one of the biggest problems this country (or more specifically-the central region of the country) is facing. I have to be aware of this because the people I interact with, or become friends with, are victims of jealousy. For example, I have a good friend who helps me with lots of different things such as maintenance around the house, development projects at the school and in the village, and learning various things about Chewa culture. People see him hanging around with the white man a lot, and perhaps they think I am giving him lots of different things. Therefore, he has felt a huge difference in the way the people in the community treat him. A few months ago, two of his goats were stolen, his old friends no longer talk with him, and he cannot rely upon other people for help as he did in the past. It is to the point where I feel uncomfortable talking to him in public because I know people are watching us with hatred in their eyes. All this is due to jealousy.

A handful of knowledgeable people have told me that this abundance of jealousy leads to laziness, theft, and a fear of spending money if you do have it. The first consequence, laziness, is certainly present here. I’m not sure whether or not laziness is a consequence of jealousy, but it certainly is a problem. I have been told by older people that this is something new. In the past, people were working very hard farming (which is the main source of income here), and then after the harvest in March and April they received the fruits of their labor. Apparently, nowadays things are different. The work ethic has faded away, and people are content with just barely surviving. Perhaps this is due to jealousy. There is no need to work hard and gain wealth if people will just hate you for it.

People also tell me that there is lot’s of theft due to jealousy. Another friend of mine, who typically spends all day-from 5AM to 6PM-in his enormous garden, and has plenty of produce and income to show for his hard work, had ten chickens stolen from him last month. It is not uncommon for well-to-do people in the village to be robbed on a regular basis. When I arrived here last December, I was surprised to see that very few people grow cassava (a crop that grows very will here, requires very few inputs, and gives a good profit) and raise pigs (another good source of income). I asked why, and I was always told that people are afraid to have these things because they are frequently stolen. Obviously, the theft here cannot be entirely contributed to jealousy, but it certainly is a contributing factor.

The last point is most interesting to me: People here are afraid to spend their money, or even to work hard to make money, because they know people will be jealous of them. This is less of a problem for me because, as a white man, I am expected to have lots of money (If only these people knew about the debt I have with my college loans). But for everyone else, you have four options if you do find yourself with a full wallet. One, you can find a new place to live, such as a city where wealth isn’t something that attracts as much attention. Two, you can keep the money without spending it. Three, you can spend the money on silly things or give it all away to your lazy relatives. Four, you can set up an alliance with you friends and family so that anyone that threatens to steal your things or show their jealousy towards you will be punished severely. I suppose there is a fifth option: you can work hard, buy nice things, be a good person, and then in the end feel the effects of everyone’s envy.

For the most part, Chichewa is a simple language to learn. In English, we have many synonyms, while in Chichewa there is the inverse of this-one word that means many different things. However, the English word “jealousy” can be translated into at least three different words in Chichewa: kaduka, nsanje, and njiru. To me, this isolated abundance of synonyms illustrates just how important (or prevalent) the idea of jealousy is in Chewa culture. These people have a hard enough time just to get by on a day-to-day basis. Having to be conscious, or fearful, of success certainly doesn’t help the situation. It doesn’t really encourage development either, which makes my job difficult.

“We’re one, but we’re not the same. We get to carry each other.” U2

(hint)I like to read your comments

I have now become used to things so that my life isn’t as interesting on a day-to-day basis as it used to be. Nevertheless, I’m content with my life now. I have good people around me, and still feel like I am doing something important. However, lately there have been difficulties.

I have had a more difficult time dealing with some people that I encounter daily, especially beggars, punks, and co-workers. I no longer simply ignore the beggars; make jokes with the middle-aged morons; and deal with the lazyness of the other teachers at my school, but I make sneering comments at them and don’t enjoy seeing them most of the time. I must say that this attitude now towards the other teachers has become more civil: I know that all of them are under-qualified for the work that they are doing, and in spite of their lazyness and plethora of other responsibilities (farming, supporting multiple families with their meager income, being poor), they aren’t doing too bad of a job (especially my headmaster-whom I admire a lot for his dedication in the midst of hopelessness).

One big change recently-About a week ago, the Ministry of Education announced that it is completely changing the school calendar for the upcoming school year. This means that our upcoming term break that was supposed to last from mid-November to the beginning of January will instead only be two weeks long. This also means that the big education camp we have been organizing, Camp Sky, will have to be rescheduled because the new school year will now start before the camp was supposed to end on Dec. 11. This also means that my teaching duties here in Malawi will be over in June of next year. This gives me six months to do who-knows-what until my contract with the Peace Corps ends in December 2010. Certainly this change in the school year came as a surprise to all of us, especially since a change as big as this wasn’t disseminated to the public (students, teachers, lower-level government officials) until less than two months before the change will be implemented…but that’s Africa for you. This will be an inconvience for me, but it won’t cause any major problems. Right now, it has added some excitement to my life that had been becoming a bit mundane. This massive shuffling of the school calendar has put lot’s of uncertainty into things here, but it will be interesting to see what will come of all this in the next few months.

It started raining the last two weeks. Not a lot, just some showers that act as a polite warning for the “real” rains that will come about a month from now. The upcoming rainy season will paint the entire country green and things will look much more pleasing compared to the dry desolation I see out my window nowadays. However, the rains will also bring hoards of mosquitoes, muddy and impassable roads, students and teachers coming late to school, soggy firewood, and-it deserves mentioning twice-LOTs of MUD. It’s been nice to not have to deal with these things since March. Of course, the rain is necessary-especially here where its punctuality and quantity (too much or not enough, too early or too late, these variables directly affect our quality of life for the upcoming year) are of great concern to the entire country (continent(world)).

This year, (gladly) I will have to worry about all this as well. The respective families of the two boys that live with me have given us some land to farm during the rainy season. It adds up to about two acres, which doesn’t sound like a lot until you have done all the work (clearing the land, tilling, adding fertilizer, weeding, harvesting) by hand and end each day with blistered hands and a sore back. We have only started with this whole farming thing. We’ve purchased most of the inputs and started clearing away the debris on the field from last year. So far we haven’t done a lot so I can’t say whether or not this whole endeavor will be a good use of my time-but we’ll have to see how things go. Everyone gets excited to see me going to the field with my khasu (hoe) to do work and get my hands dirty, and people have told me that everyone is encouraged to work harder (especially the lazy men that sit around drunk and depressed all day) when they see me working side by side with them. I did feel guilty when I bought the fertilizer. I can just imagine it all washing into the river and killing all the fish, but the maize simple won’t grow without it. As Sprewell said, “I’ve got a family to feed.” Now I do too so I bit the bullet and bought the chemicals. Our plan is to intercrop maize with climbing beans and soybeans with groundnuts while we will plant only sweet potatoes in another field. Hopefully, we won’t run into any major issues, and our storeroom will be full of food in March.

I think all of my writing here shows that I am having some difficulties but lots of good times as well. Lately, the newness of everything has worn off and I am comfortable with the different aspects of my life that may have freaked me out when I started living here. Also, I can now confidently say that I will be ready to leave this place a year from now. I like this place and the people here, but not enough to stay for more than two years. I appreciate change and new experiences. I don’t see myself ever settling into one place for very long.

“A man’s errors are his portals of discovery.” James Joyce

Don't Forget About Camp Sky

(see the May 10 entry if you want more information about this)

In case you forgot, we will be having a large summer camp in December (that may sound odd if live in the northern hemisphere of this planet). We are still looking for funding. Here is how you can help.

It's very simple, you don't even have to get up from your computer:
1) Go to this link: http://www.friendsofmalawi.org/grants/how_to_donate.html
2) Scroll down to "Summer School "Camp Sky" 2009 Project"
3) Click on "Donate"
4) Make a donation

We certainly appreciate any amount that you send to us (a dollar can buy about 5 kgs of maize flour here in Malawi), but large amounts are certianly more useful;-)