March 10th

Blog #1 Malawi

Since our arrival on the tarmac in Malawi, pulling up to see a group of Peace Corps Volunteers waving a flag saying “Welcome to Malawi,” everything has seemed like a dream. Something that I have not been able to fully process. We spent the last week at MIM (Malawi Institute for Management) which was its own little campus. Each of us were given our own rooms, complete with a bed, mosquito net, bathroom (with toilet!) and a shower. After months of preparing myself to go without these things, I was almost disappointed. We attended several training sessions mostly about safety policies, medical safety and cross-cultural courses where they taught us about the dos and don’ts here in Malawi. We were spoiled with great food like chicken, goat and beef always served with rice. Every day we had two tea breaks where we got samosas and cakes. At night, of course, we helped ourselves to the bar where Carlsberg and Specials (Malawi’s two main beers) were consumed along with one really expensive Malawi gin and tonic, which I have to say beats Tanqueray any day.

The weather here is fantastic, 60s at night and 70-80 during the day. Some nights you can look out over the valley and see these huge cumulonimbus clouds lighting up in the sky like contained fireworks, its really beautiful to watch, especially at dusk. The flowers are everywhere, everything is green and lush. The staff at MIM were so nice, always wanting to help us learn more Chichewa and laughing politely when we slaughtered a word or two. We were able to squeeze in a couple language sessions before heading to our homestay village. Basically I can now ask how you are, I am fine, thank you see you later in Chichewa! If I need, I can adjust that on the time of day- morning or afternoon. Needless to say I was a little nervous on the bus to the village with such limited skills.

While loading up the bus, we were all told what language we would be learning during pre-service training. Malawi has something like 13 different languages spoken in country. Most of Malawi speaks and understands Chichewa, but as you enter the more remote areas (i.e. what almost every PCV does), they stick to the language of their village. My name was the first read from the whole group. I will be learning Chilambya, a language spoken only in the northern regions. We had a brief interview with the Peace Corps environmental coordinators a couple days earlier where they asked us specific questions about our past experience and what, specifically we are interested to do with our time here. They also asked if we had a preference on where we would like to end up. Most of us were surprised by this questions since throughout the whole process we had been told to “Serve where PC asks you to”. To have a choice- well, we didn’t know what to do! Since I was the last interview, I did have some time to think about it. I requested to be in the mountains since it’s so much cooler than the lake which I have heard can get miserably hot in January. While I am excited to be given the northern region of Malawi, I am nervous about a lot of things as well. There are only three of us learning this language, we could be placed in a very remote area, far from other volunteers. Also, I will be living in a house with a family who only speaks Chichewa for 9 weeks, so I will be learning two languages at the same time. While I am very nervous about all of these things, I keep reminding myself to take a deep breath and remember how I got here. The years of dreaming of living in a different country, of immersing myself in a new culture completely foreign to all that I know and am comfortable with. This is what I want, what I’ve worked for. I can’t believe I am here!!!