May 26th, 2014

May 26^th, 2014

A day in the life of a PCV on site lockdown:

5:10am- Alarm goes off. Lay in bed and listen to things scurry over my tin roof for about 10 minutes. Finally find my lighter and light the candle next to my bed.

5:20am- Head out to the Chimbuzi (bathroom… ok, hole in the ground). Check around for any snakes/bats/huge spiders before entering. While I have yet to see a snake in my Chim, others have come across black mambas, green mambas, and cobras of other varieties…

5:30am- Go on a run with Isabel. Say “Makata” to every single person we see, and get stared at because of our scandalous leggings with shorts on top (fully clothed head to foot, but you can see the outline of our legs…not ok). Oh and we are running, people don’t do that here… crazy Americans.

Side note: I have dabbled with running back in the states. I enjoy the exercise but have never been able to keep it up for an extended period of time. Here it’s a different story. I love the excuse to wake up early to watch the sun rise over the mountains. The feel of morning here is unlike anything I have experienced in the states. I remember running along the river in Tennessee and feeling something similar watching blue herons flying over the misty, rocky river; but here, the sky is a different color every morning, the chickens crow and birds call, the wind sweeps over my small little valley making the palm trees sound like waterfalls. It’s magic.

6:30am- Back to the house. Grab a bucket and head to the borehole (waterhole). Carry 20L of water on my head back to the house. Get laughed at by all the women along the road since I am usually pretty soaked by the time I get home… Often they will try to take the bucket from me, but I have convinced them that I am capable of fetching my own water. They will call their friends over and point at me laughing still. It’s the worst when someone decides that they need to try and have a conversation with me while I am standing there with water on my head. I don’t know how the amayi’s do it. They usually have buckets twice my size and will walk twice the distance. By the time I get back to my house my head is wobbling all over the place because my neck is tired. I can only get better right??

6:45am-Take a “bath.” Basically splash around in a bucket of cold water really fast and hope my neighbors don’t look into the holes in the wall/come into my courtyard (no door and its outside).

7am- Start the fire. Boil some water for coffee, make breakfast. Usually I’ll have eggs or oatmeal depending on what’s around. I can only buy oatmeal in Mzuzu, so it’s pretty precious.

8am- Since I already have coals going, I may make rice, beans, or sweet potatoes for later.

8:30am- Do dishes from the day before. Sweep out my house since the dirt is constantly falling from my walls. Battle some termites who like to eat the dirt and bricks (who knew?) of my house.

9:30am- *** Read/Yoga/Blog/Write letters/Go on a hike/Wander around the village to talk to people.

12ish- Maybe head over to Isabel’s, if she isn’t already at my house. Wander over to the ladies who sit under the trees by her house to buy some tomatoes or avocados. Make more food. Chat.

5ish- Head home since it’s no fun walking through the village in the dark (snakes!).

5:30ish- Visit with a neighbor probably on my way home, or they will stop by my house. I will give a report of what I did that day, mostly in English trying to throw some chilambya, or chinyha words in. They will respond mostly in chinyha throwing some English words in.

6ish- Eat leftovers from lunch/breakfast (who am I kidding, I’ll probably just eat some peanut butter). Light some candles and read more.

8 or 9pm- In bed. Maybe watch a movie if the solar panel was outside during the day.

***This is of course if there are no meetings, or special events going on. If there is a meeting, it would look like this:
9am- Show up to meeting on time, realize we are the only ones there… ask around to make sure we are in the right place

10:30am- The people leading the meeting show up (even though they are the ones who told us 9am). Do greetings, sit around for a bit.

11am- Meeting (maybe) starts. Once the group decides on which language to use (because there are 7 to choose from), they begin. We can loosely follow what they are saying, but mostly we just sit in the corner and try to look attentive.

1pm- The meeting might be finished. What was covered would probably take 20 minutes to cover in the states. But that’s ok, because we are in Malawi… it is what it is. 

Obviously my day to day routine will change once I am no longer on lockdown. For the first three months of being at our site we are told to not start or be involved in any projects. We are to integrate into the community and basically learn how to live on our own in Malawi. In a month, I will start doing community assessments to identify the needs of my community from my community. Once I have a better understanding I will attend an in-service training in Lilongwe at the beginning of September. There we will hopefully learn more skills specific to what our community needs are. After that, I’ll be off and running!