A Quick Thank you!

I just want to take a second to thank everyone who has sent me a care package in the past couple of weeks! I don’t think you truly understand what it means to a volunteer to receive a care package filled with comforts from home! I have not only been able to eat things that I miss like skittles, Oreo’s, beef jerky and dried fruit, but I have been able to share some of these things with the villagers! Today, I used some of the dried fruit you sent to make granola. I don’t really know if the Malawians I shared it with liked it, but I am happy! I also brought out bubbles for the first time… the intention was to cheer up my 2 year old neighbor girl since she was crying (she’s always crying), and all of a sudden there were 20 kids in front of my house. I spent an hour blowing bubbles for them as they ran around trying to pop them. I’ll post pictures as soon as I have good enough internet!

I knew I had great friends and family before moving here, but you guys continue to exceed any and all expectations of support during my time in the Peace Corps. I feel so incredibly lucky, THANK YOU, Ndagha!!!!

An Addicts Recipe

My name is Britney, and I have an addiction to peanut butter. Admitting it is the first step right?? Peanut butter has always been an issue for me. Back in high school I was interviewed by the local newspaper and one of the questions they asked me was “what is one thing you can’t go a day without?” I panicked and said brushing my hair or something else equally lame. When I got home and talked to my mom about it, she immediately said “you should have said peanut butter! You eat it by the spoonful!” In hindsight, it would have been the perfect answer. 

Worried about not having access to peanut butter when moving to Africa, I had it as the number one thing on my list of things to pack. Of course, being me, it was the one thing I forgot and I had to make my dad stop at the gas station by the airport at 4am before boarding my plane so I could have my last jar (or so I thought). Malawi has actually made it worse…during pre-service training we were provided a small jar of peanut butter every single week! The first week I brought it home with a proud grin on my face to my host family only to watch in horror as the jar was shared with every single member of the family and their friends. It was gone in a day… As a Peace Corps Volunteer, I wanted to come here and help those in need and learn to be selfless and all that, but apparently I’m just not that good of a person. That jar was the only one my family saw. I kept the weekly jars stashed in my bag or room throughout the rest of training. No, I’m not proud of it, but do you see the impact addictions can have on a person’s life!?

Since moving to site things have gotten a little better. I stress ‘little.’ Every time I am in the Chitipa Boma I say I’m not going to buy another jar, that I need a detox, but somehow that magic jar of happiness ends up in my bag again. I have decided to try to follow my site mate’s lead and limit the amount that I BUY. Instead I have been making it from scratch. The logic is that if I work for it, I deserve it (right?!). You can decide, here is the process of making peanut butter in my village:

1. Bike 35km to Chitipa Boma. It’s sandy, windy and usually hot (pity might work, right?)
2. Visit the local market to buy about a half pound of ground nuts (costs about 200 Kwacha, 50 cents)
3. After checking the mail, enjoying beers on the airstrip (closest thing to a park), eating some chips mayai and stopping by the bank, head back to Kameme. Don’t forget its 35km back too!!
4. Start a fire in my baula
5. Roast the peanuts until they start to pop
6. Toss them in the mortar and lightly pound them until they are broken up
7. Throw the nuts into the sefa (sifter) and toss them around a bit to get the skins off and out of the mix
8. Put them back in the mortar and pound until your hands are shaking and blistered, and your arms are numb
9. Hopefully this is the same amount of time it takes for the peanuts to have turned into ooey gooey goodness.
10. Add salt, or if you want to get crazy- experiment with adding cinnamon, sugar, vanilla, chili powder, honey, cocoa, Cajun seasoning, or anything you can find in your kitchen.
11. Enjoy and hope it will last until tomorrow…

An Ode to the Bucket

Every single day here in my small village, I find myself depending on buckets for just about everything. Here are a variety of ways buckets have become a vital part of my Peace Corps Life:

-My sink: I have one bucket that has a faucet on it that drains into another bucket located in my kitchen. I use this to wash my hands, my vegetables, and to rinse my dishes.

-My dish collector: This bucket is larger and is stored under my kitchen table. This holds all my dirty dishes until I work up enough motivation to clean them (which is usually once every single dish is dirty enough that I’m grossed out using it again… before you judge, you try fetching your own water and see how often you’ll want to do dishes).

-My Dishwasher: I put water in one bucket with soap and rinse the dishes off in another.

-My Washing Machine: I soak clothes in a bucket with soap for an hour, then wash/rinse them off in a different bucket with clean water.

-My Bath: Who needs running water when you have a bucket and a cup!?

-My Water Collector: I strap the big boy (50 Liters) onto the back of my bike and ride on down to the bore hole to pump my water! He’s all fixed from the fall a couple weeks ago thanks to some handy duct tape! 

-My Fermenter: Oh bucket wine, how delicious and horrible you are all at the same time! Isabel and I have been experimenting with making our own wine by putting water, local fruit and yeast in a bucket and waiting! The last one was delicious but left a mean hangover… 

-My Lizard/Spider/Bug Catcher: Without fail, every time I return home after being gone for more than 2 days I am surprised to find something has crawled in to a bucket and (usually) died… RIP Jim, the lizard King. 

-My Storage: Buckets help keep sneaky things like cockroaches and mice out of my beans and rice.

-My Watering Can: When I go water plants at either Isabel’s house or Lucius’s garden, buckets are the means to keep the plants growing (it hasn’t rained for 3 months).

-Plant Nursery: What do you do when you have a hole in your bucket? Well fill it with dirt dear Liza! This worked fairly well to get some plants going for Isabel’s garden.

-Solar Dryer: Have another broken bucket? Throw a dark chitenge in the bottom, use that extra screen and plastic you have lying around, and create your own little solar dryer for tomatoes, mangos and bananas!

-Compost Toilet: Some volunteers feel bad interrupting the nightly parties that cockroaches, bats, snakes, mice, frogs, scorpions, and spiders like to host in our chimbuzi’s (outhouse). Solution? Keep a bucket in your room for those late night emergencies! Luckily I have an iron bladder and have not had an issue just yet… but doubt I’ll make it through these two years without sacrificing one of my buckets for this purpose, it’s part of life in the Peace Corps after all.

*It seems like I have buckets everywhere in my house according to this post, when in reality I only own 4*

Tattoos

I was walking through my village today just to get out of the house and wandered down to the trading area. As always, when I am out and about the kids yell either “Sarah” or “mzungu” at me (Sarah was a previous volunteer in the village next to mine and automatically every white female that passes through is now named Sarah). The adults call out to me as well always wanting to chat. Today, I stopped and was talking to a man who is a teacher at a secondary school not too far away when a couple of women showed up, grabbed me, and tried cleaning the tattoo off my arm. He tried to translate for me, saying that the women wanted to know if I was born with this mark or if I had just drawn it on with a pen that morning. I tried to explain that no, it is a permanent mark that I chose to get put there. They did not understand why it was not washing off and it took some time before I could have my arm back. I tried my best to explain that in America, tattoos are common and a part of our culture but some things are just too difficult to translate… they walked away very confused.

One time, as Isabel and I were traveling into town in the back of a pick-up, we were talking to the other passengers about the World Cup and game that had happened the night before. An African team had lost against some European team, and one person mentioned it was because the other team used magic. This of course peaked our interest, and so we asked how he knew magic was being used? He said it was evident in all the charms the other team had on their skin. Basically, his thought was the other team had been given the upper hand because of the magical charms (tattoos) so many of the players had. (Side note: during this ride, we also learned about the fire breathing dragons that live in the Misuku Hills and discussed mermaids which most Malawians believe to be real).

Moral of the story is, Malawians don’t understand tattoos. I can only imagine how the thought of paying someone to permanently draw on your skin seems ludicrous and extremely frivolous to someone who struggles to have enough money for food. The cost of only one of my tattoos could have probably provided a family with enough money to by ufa (used to make nsima) for a whole year. Perspective is an interesting thing.