April 30th

April 30^th

In about a week I will be standing at the United States ambassador’s house swearing in as an official Peace Corps Volunteer. It is crazy to think that Pre-service training has gone by so incredibly fast. There were several days where I thought our classes would never end, nights when I could not fathom how I would survive 9 weeks living in a house hold of strangers, and what seemed like hours of staring contests with my abombo once we ran out of English and Chichewa words that we could understand. Yet somehow, I’ve made it through, somehow I come home from classes and joke around with my sisters, make dinner with my host mother, and talk politics with my host father. After 8 weeks, I am experiencing similar feelings as I did before boarding the plane in Cedar Rapids. I am comfortable here, I know the routine, I know what is expected of me, how can I leave all this for an unknown future in a place I hardly know anything about with people I don’t know?? I’ve realized this is what life is. Taking these small and sometimes big leaps into the unknown. You don’t know what you will learn, how you will grow and what impact these small leaps will have on your life. I have made several big unknown leaps since graduating college. They have led me to some amazing people who I hope to have in my life for a long time from all across the country. I miss my Washington and Tennessee families like crazy and know that if I had not taken those leaps to go outside my comfort zone to work at those crazy jobs I found online I would not have that. I’m feeling pretty nostalgic today. This is actually the first blog entry I have typed on my computer. All previous blogs were handwritten and typed at a later date. I have not used my tablet since leaving the hotel in Philadelphia. Since this is the first time on the computer, this is the first time I have had access to a lot of my music and photos… Thank you again to my amazing friends who took the time to help me download music. It is amazing how much music can be used as therapy, I’ve missed it dearly.

Like I said, this is our last week here in Kasungu. The group dynamic has changed a little bit since coming back from our site visits. Its suddenly real that we are all moving away from the safety of Chicombwe and Dombolara. We are not going to see each other every single day, and we are starting to realize we are going to be doing this as individuals, not as a group of 37. I am going to miss several people in the group who are moving to the southern tip of Malawi- opposite of me up in the North. Hell, I’m going to miss seeing those who are only living 40k away from me. Travel in Malawi is so difficult. While this country is only the size of Indianana (or so I’ve been told), it could take days for me to reach friends living in the south. Roads here are tricky, if they are paved the usually have huge pot holes and heavy traffic (foot, bike and vehical). Your mode of transportation is usually sketchy at best. Even when I dished out money to take the “nice bus” from my site back to Kasungu, the bus ended up breaking down and we had to hitch part of the way back. However I would take the risk of taking the nicer buses rather than being packed into a minibus where there are only 18 seats and sometimes upwards of 25 people (and sometimes chickens) trying to fit in there. Travel is an adventure… that’s all I can really say. I am looking forward to sharing stories with you all when I do decide to venture away from my post!