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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