It’s coming toward the end of a seemingly endless break from school. I took some time and went up to Ruarwe in the north and visited Bonnie at Usisya for her village farewell. On the way we only almost died a couple of times so all in all it was a good trip.

We started from my house up to Nkhata Bay last Friday. From there we caught an ambulance ride for the 4+ hour dirt road down the side of a mountain. It had been raining. The road was wet, and slippery and muddy. The ambulance driver deserves some sort of medal of honor award for his driving skills because without him I don’t know. We only had to get out of the car once and we were only completely sideways twice. It was a unique ride. I had been on the road about a month ago with my visiting friends and everything was peachy. No rain equals easy ride. Rain equals don’t do that. It will be the last time I travel that way again.

However, once we arrived it was wonderful. We got to have lunch and then swimming time and then a community soccer match. It was basically the white people (azungu) verses the malawians. So we played for a while, had a half time break with some skits and dancing and then entered into the second half. The second half was infinitely longer than the first and i have a sneaking suspicion as to why. We were winning! When they finally blew the whistle the score was 2-1 azungu. On top of that I scored one of the goals! That’s right, living in Africa has made me a world class soccer player. I’m sure they had their absolute best players on the field and the goalie definitely didn’t fumble the ball when I scored.

We ended up spending the rest of the evening at a beautiful spot on the beach and next day caught the boat up to Ruarwe. Spent the afternoon up there, tried not to spent too much money and caught the boat south on Monday to Nkhata Bay. That pretty much rounded out the traveling vacation for me. I spent the rest at home getting free lunches and dinners at lodges near my house. Yea, that last sentence was real. It wasn’t a bad break but I think it’s about time to have something to do during the day, like teach little kids. So I’m back tomorrow and we have about 5-6 weeks until national exams begin and my job here is complete. Kelly will be coming back out in June and I think we’ll take some time to travel before our departure. It’s looking like July 15th-ish I should be stateside. So get yourself ready for that. Or if you have no idea who I am then be warned that these blog postings will cease in July. Thanks for reading.

Oh and as for pictures….I was real smart like and changed out my card when it filled up, right? Well, I then proceeded to take the new card and camera into town to load my pictures. Funny thing, all of the pictures that I wanted to load weren’t on the new card! Who knew? Next time, I guess.

It’s 2011 and i haven’t even checked to see if you’re ok.  come to think of it, YOU haven’t checked to see if I’M ok.  so i guess we’re even.

well, I am in fact, okay.  Things are coming along nicely as my service here in Malawi is coming to a close.  Now, some of you might be thinking, ‘hey russ, i thought you weren’t coming home until december.’  Well you are very much wrong my friends, very much indeed. I have opened a new chapter of my life with the likes of the most beautiful, wonderful woman you may or may not already know.  So after I’ve finished with my second school year of teaching I will be packing my bags and heading for the good ol’ U S of A. The plan of my return is currently a mess of many ideas, plans and speculations.   As the schedules stands here in Malawi, the school year is to end July 8th, and with the beginning of exams a few weeks prior it will make for a very short last term and perhaps an even sooner close of school (we shall see).  I will try and keep you all as informed as possible as the ideas and speculations turn themselves into plans and plane tickets.

What I can tell you about my remaining time here in Malawi is that I will indeed be keeping myself busy. I still have some plans with the women’s bag sewing group (Luso La Manja), one of which involves me transporting some bags to America with the intention of selling and hopefully sustaining a longer term American market for said group.  The other plan is to start and finish a tree nursery of approx. 100-200 trees to be delivered to my village and mostly to the children’s center down the street from my house where a wonderful Australian woman is working with feeding centers and HIV/AIDS prevention and adult education and the like.  She’s doing great things down there so I thought I’d try and help out some.  Lastly of course ill be finishing up the school year with my kids, whom I’m currently teaching form 3 and 4 mathematics only.  I’m glad that I’ve taken my subject load down to these two classes cuz it’s allowed me to actually teach these kids and try fun projects and things that I didn’t have time for last term.  We have two new teachers now so we’re up to 7, including myself.  So whether I’m replaced as a volunteer or not I think ill be okay with leaving my school in the capable hands of the teachers who will remain.  I’m happy with the time that I’ve spent here in Chifira and I don’t have any regrets.  Given the chance I might have done a few things differently but that’s life so when you look back at what you’ve done try and remember the good and leave behind the bad because tomorrow’s a new day and I sure as hell hoped you learned something from yesterday.

Oh, and a side note.  My garden failed.  I got two fruits from all that labor and it was a mini tomato (only 1) and a mini cantaloupe.  Much respect for Malawian farmers, or maybe i was just too lazy to keep my garden in good shape.  Whatever the case I still buy my food and I have no problem with that.

Parmesan Cheese (it’s cheese, and it stays well)

Coffee (the good stuff, not the instant stuff, the french press is a magical device)

Mac ‘n Cheese (again, it’s cheeeeese)

Cholula hot sauce

skittles / reeses’ pieces

cake/brownie mix (there are ovens in town and cake is delicous, ie. red velvet, fun fetti)

taco bell sauce (makes everything taste better)

lucilles BBQ sauce (now i know im getting specific here but come on, it’s the best sauce in the world)

instant oatmeal (for that quick on the go breakfast)

magazines and the like…

that’s about all I can think of for now but if anything else crops up in the ol’ brain piece ill let you know.  Love you all.

Russ

I woke up to a herd of cattle out back, that’s not normal.

my desk.

my garden.

Here we are, it’s mid-november and it’s hotter than any place I’ve ever been. I came back from America trip and was blasted in the face by heat. It’s only starting to let up some which I believe is due to the coming of rains. That will be a treat. Until you read my next blog that rants and raves over how much the rain is awful. The weather here just can’t seem to please me. Could have something to do with the fact that I spent my last 5 years in sunny mild-weathered long beach. Enough about the weather, no body wants to read a whole paragraph about the weather, moving on.

I started a garden in my backyard. That was a good little project. However with the heat (sorry, last time i promise) digging up my entire backyard was a task to say the least. But it’s done and I planted the following, peas, beans, squash, bell peppers, tomatoes, onions, carrots, watermelon and cantaloupe. The squash and beans shot up real quick like and so did the melons. The rest is taking its sweet time but they’re there, slowly but surely. Hopefully by the time I receive my February visitors we’ll have something to eat cuz I think I’m out of money again (and by think, of course, I mean know).

Thanksgiving is coming up and it looks like it will be the last one I don’t spend with the family eating turkey and a million other things so that’s good news. This year will be similar to last years adventures of a pig roast at our boss’ house with cold drinks and cheeeeeeeese.

This new school year is coming along alright. We’ve got ourselves a whoping 3 teachers (including me). Do you remember high school? How nuts would that been if there were only three staff total (teachers, admin, principal, etc). Granted we have significantly fewer students, it’s still not quite enough even by Malawian standards. We are promised a Head Teacher who should be coming soon and perhaps one other teacher. Of course, in December we will be getting our two college student teachers so we should be in full swing for second term. Also weird to think that after this Ill only have 2 terms of teaching left. Then I was thinking about going back to this America place that I’ve heard so much about.

I think that’s all I’ve got for now.

Food.  That’s the biggest difference between America and Malawi.  Oh there’s the whole electricity thing and running water, and reliable transport (like driving in a car) and having all your friends in the same city (ish).  But I always come back to the food.  It’s just so good here.  I ate 5 meals the other day.  Four of them were at restaurants.  Who does that?  I gained 10 pounds in 3 days.  That’s nuts.

Education is screwed no matter where you live.  It’s just, different.  In Malawi we have overpopulated schools, under qualified teachers and practically no resources.  In America it’s still overpopulated and underfunded.  The only major difference is our resources.  If American students were as motivated as Malawians they wouldn’t need a million teachers and a bunch of fancy buildings.

I walked to the store today.  Walked.  It took me less time than it does to get to my local market.  Let’s compare.

Local Market – Tomatoes, Onions, Beans, Rice, Soy meat, Greens, Bananas, Bread.

American Store – Everything.

On the way home from the store I stopped by a place that allowed me to tell them what I wanted to eat and they gave it to me for a small fee in about 2 minutes.  Did I mention that I could order meat and cheese and cold or hot drinks.  Yes.  It’s fast food.

The most hilarious thing about coming home is realizing all the things that I find interesting or crazy convenient are just normal everyday things to my friends so I don’t really have anybody to get excited with about fast food or wireless internet or working electricity or a flash light that doubles as a candle (i know, right!).  I guess ill have to just wait until I get back to Malawi to brag about the fact that I just spent the whole day cooking breakfast, baking brownies, drinking good coffee, watching normal TV and all the while being on the internet (ok, mostly facebook).  See, not interesting or exciting to you (unless you is someone living in malawi).  Well, for now I’m off, ill probably be back when I’m back at my home (considering the only house I have right now is in Malawi, I mean home in Malawi).

So I got the meet the big man in charge, the head cheese, the top dog, the president of Malawi.  It was good.  We ate like kings (relatively speaking, of course) and we danced the night away (until 4pm when they kicked us out).  We were also on Malawi TV which made us all famous to the people who watch TV.  It’s funny when some random person will recognize you from TV, and we didn’t even get paid like those real famous people do.  Other than that it was fairly uneventful, I felt mostly like I was at a president’s ambassadors event with a bunch of food and important people.  (Props to Rachel for teaching me how to use each of the 4 forks, 3 spoons, 2 knives, 2 wine glasses and 2 plates we were each given).  It wasn’t easy but I think I got it all right.  I think Bingu might have spent more money on that one lunch then he has on his education system in the last four years, what can you do it was delicious.

After Bingu’s I went home to finish up my first year of teaching at school.  It was pretty mellow because exams were going to start in a couple days so I was basically just opening up the library and sort of acting as a tutor for any questions they had.  It worked out well and I got to rest up because I knew I’d be headed back to Lilongwe and then to Dedza to help the new group with their training.  This much traveling can make a kid crazy.  However, Dedza and training was a blast and the new kids are great.  We didn’t have a whole lot of curriculum with them, mostly odds and ends stuff like killing chickens and how to ride a bike.  We found out where they are all going and there will be two new additions to the Tonga speaking Nkhata Bay group.  They’re great kids as well as the rest of the northern crew.  I say this because we spend a lot of time together, us northerners, so it’s nice to have good people close by.

After Dedza I end up in Lilongwe.  I wanted to leave Lilongwe today.  Im still in Lilongwe.  It (Lilongwe) contains some similar properties to that of a black hole.  That is if you live on the lakeshore and try to leave past 9am you will not be able to do so.  I was a little bummed out about this.  Mostly because I had walked a half an hour with my backpack, other bag, charcoal stove and large heavy bag filled with miscellaneous items on my head to the bus depot…and then back to the peace corps office.  I was tired, sweaty, stinky and a little bummed.  However, my good friend Elizabeth was going to stay at a friends house in Lilongwe while she was away and offered for me to come along.  So we took a bus, walked down the street and entered into the future.  It is like I’m at a friends house back home.  There’s carpet, electricity, a stove, a fridge, wireless internet, incredibly nice showers.  I’m currently in a state of shock but slowly recovering.  Tomorrow I will try my luck again with going home, this time probably closer to 530 am.  Gotta love the Malawian bus system.

Once I’m at site I will have a few days to pull myself together, tie up some loose ends and get ready for Camp SKY.  Ill be teaching some math classes and having some paper engineering competitions (ie.  bridge/tower building, paper airplane, etc)  Then ill head back to site for a model school that we’re putting on for the two Tonga trainees at my site-mate melissa’s school.  After that ill be heading back down to Lilongwe to get on a plane to a magical place where the water runs and ice cream is real.

See you all in a couple of weeks.  Well maybe not all of you, just the people i know, unless of course we meet on the sidewalk, or at a restaurant (were I will be spending most of my time).  Mbwenu, tisaniyanenge uneneska.