Bola Masiku Ano

So it looks like my last few posts have been pretty negative. This is because my attitude towards things was fairly negative at the time, reflecting the reality that I was dealing with. Thankfully, things have gotten better, especially since that last post. Here are a few highlights from the last few weeks.

IMHO, this is the best time of year in Malawi (I wish I had some nice pics to insert here, but lucid writing will have to do the trick instead). The rains are starting to let up. Everything is lush and green. Glutony is rampant as malnourished villagers find that the pumpkins, potatoes, maize, and peanuts are starting to mature in their fields. With more food in everyone's stomachs, people are generally happier and there is less of a tendency to steal from each other and more of a tendency to share. All of these things are very good, and they greatly outweigh the negative aspects of this time of year, which include abundant mosquitoes and highly energetic children (they didn't heckle me as much in December when their stomachs were empty and they didn't have enough steam to yell at the white guy).

In spite of many delays and minor problems, most of the projects that I have been working on are solidifying and appear to be at least somewhat successful. The girl's hostel is mostly finished except for the painting. They're now building the kitchen and bafas (place to bathe), and we won't actually be able to let people start living in the hostel until these facilities are completed within the next few months. Even though we have many debts to pay off for this project and I have no idea where that money will come from, it looks like this is going to work out after we have spent almost two and a half years farting around.

With the food security project, I've discovered that it's imperative to find good people to work with. This project is assisting five different groups, and each of the five groups is having their own unique problems and successes. I told each of these groups from the beginning back in October that I would use this project to measure their respective competencies. I tried to make it clear to them that I would try to continue working with the good groups and abandon those that didn't seem to have their heads screwed on straight. I tried to take a passive role with this project in order to see which groups are mostly looking to rip off some donor money (unfortunately this happens to be most of the community organizations within Malawi, dare I say the entire developing world) and which groups are actually trying to fulfill their objective of assisting people living with HIV. As I expected, multiple groups have proven to be misguided and looking for an easy kwacha (buck). However, a few have stood out as honest and functional. Not surprisingly, the groups that I haven't had any problems with all have strong female leadership.

Once we harvest everything and wrap up this food security thing, I look forward to starting another project with the groups that aren't trying to pull my chain. We have a few ideas in the pipeline including mushroom farming, winter farming, and home based care training (this is basically giving these local people the skills and supplies to treat their neighbors for simple medical problems so that they don't have to worry so much about walking multiple hours to the nearest health center). I'm most interested with the idea of home based care, but I have to look into it more to see if it is something that we can actually implement before I leave 9 months from now.

You may recall that two of my students were living with me at my old site in Chadabwa. When I came to Mitundu last September I decided that it would be best to live on my own, with the benefits of more privacy and less mouths to feed (amongst other things). For security reasons, a handful of people suggested that I hire a guard or at least have someone to stay in the house while I was away. I consider this, but a guard was going to be expensive (plus there were men living in this house before me by themselves without a guard and they didn't have any problems) and it was difficult for me to find someone reliable and trustworthy to hold down the fort while I was gone, especially on short notice. Well, you could say that I was asking for trouble. I was warned, and I sort of ignored the warnings. Since I started living here in Mitundu, I've been worried about security, and perhaps I was getting lax with making sure to lock everything up tight and always be on my guard. I can also say that I expected a problem to eventually occur. Stories were prevalent of different people getting robbed all the time in Mitundu, and I had little reason to believe they were going to skip my house. I wasn't surprised when it actually happened (see the last post if you don't know what I'm talking about). However, I've learned my lesson the hard way and made a few changes that should prevent any more of my stuff from being stolen.

I invited the two boys that were living with me in Chadabwa to join me in Mitundu. Moses started living with me a few weeks ago, and Fred should come in the next few weeks once he gets done harvesting and selling his potatoes. This arrangement will work out well for all three of us. I'll have extra hands around for chores and people with weapons (we have an ax, hoe, panga knife, and a cleaver. People have been recommending that I buy a gun, but as a Peace Corps Volunteer, I'm not really supposed to have one.) in the house while I'm away to dissuade any crooks from coming in and picking through my stuff. Moses will take his university entrance exam next month (which requires a fair amount of preparation, more so than the ACT/SAT we take in the States), and in my house with electricity he'll be in a much better environment to study. Fred should be able to find more things to keep him busy (I'm thinking this will mostly be work and soccer) here compared to his home village where he is mostly loafing around these days with nothing constructive to do.

So I have roommates again. There are pros and cons to this, but it is the best way for me to keep things safe. It's become clear that the police aren't much help here; they're too busy getting wasted at the bottle store and blackmailing prostitutes (but that's a topic that I won't go into right now since it doesn't really belong on this positive post).

I've been staying busy the last few months studying for the MCAT. Most of you probably know that this is the big exam to get into medical school. I'll go into much more detail about all of this on a future post, but for now suffice it to say that I've started jumping through the hoops that lead to medical school, and I have decided that I want to be a physician. As for this beast called the MCAT, at one time or another, I knew all of the material that it supposedly covers. I'm finding that some of that knowledge is coming back to me quickly while other topics (electromagnetism has always been difficult for me to wrap my head around) are proving to be more elusive and are ending up on flashcards that I flip through whenever I have down time. This is really a thinking exam so memorizing a bunch of equations and constants doesn't help much if you aren't able to actually understand concepts and work your way through convoluted information that is provided on the test to answer the questions. Studying for this hasn't been as easy as it would be back home where I would have easier access to information, high-speed internet, and a testing center, but I'm trying not to feel too sorry for myself. I've been able stock up on prep materials (i.e. books) that are functional in rural Malawi where electricity is unreliable and most people don't have a real good idea of what a computer is. So long as I don't run into any major problems, I'm expecting to do decent enough on this brain-frying test. I'll take it on April 16th in Cape Town, South Africa. I'm really looking forward to this trip. I plan to spend about a week in Cape Town, which is supposed to be one of the most amazing cities in the world, particularly this time of year. I'll take the exam early on, and then I'll have a few days to relax and have fun. I'll let ya'll know how everything works out.

So as you can see, things are better now. Yes, life has its ups and downs, and I think its helpful to try to forget about the downs and remember the ups so that we at least have the illusion that things are good most of the time.

Some food for thought: I have multiple smaller project ideas that only require a little bit of funding (20-100$). I want to know if any of you are interested in helping out with the funding of these projects. If so, please contact me via email (bjvonasek@gmail.com) so that I can give you more information and we can iron out the details.

"The world is my expense,
The cost of my desire,
Jesus blessed me with its future,
And I protect it with fire." Rage Against the Machine

Ndabeledwa

It’s days like this when I really hate living in Malawi (before you continue reading I should make it clear that I have plenty of good days here as well, and hopefully there will be plenty more good days to come-but right now I’m not sure). After spending the night in the city I came home in the mid-morning. While approaching my house, I noticed from about 100ft away that my front door was wide open, and it immediately became clear to me that I’d been robbed. Strangely, my immediate reaction was curiosity (Are those @#$holes still in the house? Did they actually take anything, or did someone just open my front door (yeah right)? Is this really happening?). Then I entered the house, reality struck, and it hurt like hell. The first thing I realized was that they took two mountain bikes, mine and that of a fellow Peace Corps Volunteer whom is currently on vacation and was storing her bike at my house. “OK,” I thought, “Is that all they took?” No, absolutely not. Here’s the list that I’ve been able to compile the last six hours: Shortwave radio, new pair of running shoes that I got while at home during the holidays, Ipod, mattress, blankets, all of my silverware, battery recharger, digital camera, and the two mountain bikes that I have already mentioned. The funny thing is that a bunch of the items, such as the Ipod; battery recharger; and digital camera, will be completely useless to whatever idiot took them because they either forgot to take the charger or they don’t have the appropriate adapters and other junk to make those electronics work.

Another funny thing (I’m trying to look at the bright/funny side of all of this so that I don’t go off the deep end), is that a few days ago I was thinking about how lucky I’ve been that I haven’t had a single security problem in my 2+ years here. I guess I forgot to knock on wood. Many other Peace Corps Volunteers in Malawi have been robbed (actually most of them)-either at home while they are around or away, on the street, or even in the staff room while they are in class teaching. Perhaps I started to feel that this couldn’t happen to me and I became a bit careless, but either way I have received the wake up call.

Going back to the bright side of things, if they try to rob my house again, they won’t find much because they took most of the valuable stuff the first time around. They can go ahead and take my beans, other mattress, charcoal, and stained shirts; that’s about all I got now. The only things that I have left that are still valuable to me are my cell phone and computer, and I usually carry those two things on me so it will have to get ugly if they want that stuff.

The main thing that I’m concerned about right now is that this crap will continue to happen. Based on the experiences of other volunteers, it seems that if your house gets broken into once, it will continue to get broken into. It’s pretty obvious that whoever broke into the house was someone from nearby and they new that I was away last night. From now on, whenever I’m away for even one night, I’ll have to either expect the worst or look for another way to keep things secure. It looks like the best thing to do is have someone stay in the house while I’m gone, but this is a hassle because it requires more planning and it’s hard to find people that you can trust (plus, who’s wants to sleep in a house by themselves when thieves are expected to come?). If this continues to happen (this isn’t the first time, the volunteer that lived in the house before me also had an “incident” less than a year ago), it may be best for me to just get the heck out of hear, but for now I don’t want to think about that option.

Before I continue I should make it clear that all of this just happened so I may be a little emotionally unstable right now. Perhaps some of the stuff will be found and returned to me, and perhaps the people that did this will be caught. However, I doubt any of this will happen. When I filed a report at the police station they didn’t seem all that enthusiastic to help me out: “If we here anything we will let you know, or it you hear any rumors you should let us know.” (How about you getting off your butt and doing an investigation since your title is “Police Investigator.”) I don’t need all that crap anyway. Who needs a bike when you can walk? Who needs an Ipod when you can sing like me? Who needs silverware when you have two hands with all ten fingers? Who needs a digital camera when you have sharp eyes and a brain to remember everything? Unfortunately, without a camera I will be posting a lot less pictures on this blog. Hopefully you will find my writing interesting enough. It should be pretty interesting if exciting stuff like this continues to happen to me…

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Matthew 6:19-21