07 July 2010

7 July 2010

Im back.  A couple of things have happened so I’ll fill you in.  1) June happened.  It basically came and went, not a whole lot happened.  We started our last term of the year and it’s gonna be a short one (9 weeks instead of the usual 13).  On top of that the second year students start their national exams on, well, today.  So that means that three of our teachers have been assigned to other school for proctoring.  That leaves us with three teachers to teach the other three classes that remain.  That’s not enough.  One of the teachers retired in June so we’re a little short staffed.  You might be asking, “well aren’t they going to replace that teacher with a new one?” …that would be ideal, but no. they will not.  2)  America’s Birthday happened.  It was a blast, we got an invite to the Ambassadors house for a little American style BBQ.  So I ate burgers and hot dogs and chips and beer and it was glorious.  I spent most of my time there selling bags for the women’s group (Luso la Manja) that I’ve been helping another volunteer with.  That’s been a lot of fun because the women are amazing and easy to work with.  I’ve been trying to get them some advertising materials, ie flier and what not.  I finally got something together so hopefully it will help with there non-peace corps clients, which are few, relatively speaking.

There was a volunteer at my site before I showed up.  She left about a year before I arrived and now she is back doing some graduate school work around the village.  Last week her bag was stolen out of my neighbors house when she was coming back from some research near the lake.  It has made me a lot more cautious about locking up my house and keeping my valuables as safe as possible.  It was a real bummer for her because she lost all of her video data and her phone.  We tried the witch doctor, of course, and that was an interesting experience.  He’s a lot younger than I thought but he does a good job of scaring the crap out of villagers.  Only a couple of her things showed up the next day which everyone attributed to visiting the witch doctor, but since then nothing.

Im very excited about our summer camp (Camp Sky) thats coming up at the end of the term mid august.  I’ve selected two students from my form two class.  They just started writing their exams with the rest of the second years and every time I meet with them about the camp I get more excited about them going.  I’m going the be the chaperone for the northern students that are coming, and on the 17th we travel to Kasungu teachers college were the camp will be for 10 days.  We will do core subject teaching in the mornings and the afternoons will be more fun classes like, solar engineering, creative writing, interview skills, leadership and so on.  After the camp I’m going to be coming home for about three weeks to visit some peeps and the fam and of course go to Kern.

Speaking of being a chaperone.  I was a chaperone for my kids soccer team with another teacher about a month ago.  We spent the weekend away at a primary school were the tournament took place.  That was fun.  It was nice to see some of my students outside of class and I think I got some street cred for sleeping and eating with them.  Im pretty sure I surprised a lot of them, I mean the place wasn’t all that luxurious.  It was a primary school block with concrete floors.  But don’t worry, we found the room with the metal tables and slept on those.  Plus we got to buy meat for one of the meals, I think the other schools were jealous.  There were 6 schools for soccer and 6 for netball.  Netball is primarily a girls game played sort of like a combo of basketball and ultimate frisbee.  We started on saturday with two games each in groups of 3 teams.  The top two teams of each group would move on to the next day of play.  Our first game did not go well, we lost 3-0.  No need to worry, all we needed was to win the second game and we would qualify.  Second game started well, we were up 2-0 buy the first half.  I think they got a little too comfortable and let an early goal slip in the first half.  No worries, but by the end of the second half it was getting dark and the kids were having trouble seeing the ball, the ref was about to call the game and they punched in another goal.  2-2.  The decision came down to goals allowed and because of our 3-0 loss we didn’t make the cut.  The kids were torn up but we hung out that night and left in the afternoon on sunday.

This update is getting long.  I hope you’re still reading.  I got a solar backpack from another volunteer and now I have unlimited phone, ipod and speaker usage.  I am very happy about that situation let me tell you.  I also just bought a blanket in my trading center which is another treat because it’s finally just cold enough to warrant the use of a light blanket.  I love cold weather.  Probably only because it’s about a million degrees the rest of the year.  What else.  I got a sports coat in Lilongwe at the open market because we are going to be having a ‘meet the president’ function in a couple weeks.  That’s right, the president of Malawi Mr. Dr. Prof. Bingu wa Muntharika.  Last thing ill say.  I got to meet the new education group that came in late on saturday night.  I had breakfast with them (compliments of peace corps) on sunday and take them to the peace corps office to meet the rest of the volunteers and have a quick tour of the facilities.  It was nice to see so many fresh optimistic faces in one place (there are 38 of them I believe).  I will be helping them out with training the first week of august just like the second year group did for us.  That will be nice because I’m going with good people and the training staff is great and the college food is in surplus.

The next few months are going to busy.  I love being busy.  Ill see you all in september.