Hey all!
I'm not sure who even checks this thing any more since I haven't found the time, energy, and ability to upload a blog entry in a few months. Finding all three at the same time often proves as elusive as Sasquatch, which, being a Washingtonian, I am well acquainted with. So sorry for the long delay. In order to show you how truly sorry I am, here is a brand new blog post from me to you. Enjoy!
Looking over my last blog post, it seems I have a TON of catching up to do. So I'll cover some of the day-to-day things that my life dances around, as well as the few outings I make into the more pell-mell world of cities, trainings, parties, and modernity.
A few months ago I had a two week training in Lilongwe, which was the first time our cohort had been together since we were sworn in as PCVs back in May. There are now 34 of us remaining in Malawi, having lost three PCVs in the intervening months (you guys will be missed!). It was great to see everybody and share our experiences, advice, and laugh at all our silly shenanigans we've gotten into since moving to site. There were countless conversations concerning the most embarrassing thing that has happened to us in village, as well as numerous stories involving chims (outhouses), goats, iwes (literally "you," but the term we use to refer to kids), food, and transport. Some of the more unfortunate stories included at least two of the above topics. The more unfortunate the story, the more excited we were to share it with one another and the more laughter and tears it unleashed. Because the majority of these stories are either not exactly in keeping with what I'd like my blog to represent, I won't repeat them here. But suffice it to say that we all have had our fair share of babies urinating on us or our luggage during transport, animals in the house (goats, monkeys, rats, etc.), or unfortunate chim accidents (see my previous blog entry for one such example). And then there was the infamous story of a scorpion in someone's underwear. Most definitely one of those stories that is ONLY funny in retrospect.
But back to the training. We learned a lot about conservation agriculture, permaculture, and intercropping. All three topics are interrelated, but given to the tendency for villages to be slow to embrace new techniques/ideas, we tackle these three subjects as independent projects. Ideally, by the time we COS (finish service) these projects will have merged, but we've got to start small while thinking big. One of the most beneficial sessions we had was with an American couple who have been working in Malawi since they finished their stint as PCVs here 17 years ago. They promote permaculture and food security/diversity which is a HUGE challenge in an agricultural climate centered around maize. Many of the traditional crops such as sorghum, millet, and local fruits and vegetables have become stigmatized in the past century. Sorghum and millet, once the main crops cultivated in Malawi, are now thought of as a poor man's food even though they require much fewer artificial inputs and are more drought resistant. I am working with my counterpart, a wonderful woman named Tuse, on starting a demonstration garden near my village which we'll use in permaculture trainings. In a nutshell, permaculture is a method of farming/gardening which requires no artificial inputs, little weeding, minimum tilling, crop rotation, and planting complementary crops together. I'll keep you posted on our progress. We are currently awaiting the rainy season which should start in a few weeks.
I'm slowly getting a few other programs started, though most of these are still in the organizing stage of development. Women in my village and the surrounding area are interested in starting a bakery group and there are at least a few folks in my trading center interested in starting a mushroom IGA (Income Generating Activity) so they can sell mushrooms when they are out of season. Mango season is also starting to take off and with the sheer number of mango trees we have, there is no way they will all get eaten. Which means there is a huge potential for food preservation trainings to teach Malawians how to sun dry mangoes as well as other fruits such as bananas, oranges, and tomatoes to name a few. I'm excited to see where these projects go!
I would bet that you're wondering what it is I've been doing these past eight months if I'm still talking about projects that I'm hoping to get off the ground. I have struggled with this myself the past few months. The first four months at site (from May until the training in September) was designated as time to get to know our communities, surroundings, making personal connections, and integrating. I held a few meetings during these months and attended a few others, but I mainly spend my time forming connections and relationships with the people in my village and catchment area.
Though not often, I have certainly found myself wondering why the heck I'm here and what impact I could possibly have in helping develop a country such as Malawi. Opening this mental can of worms used to send me into a bit of an existential crisis as I would wrestle with the very realistic fears that any programs I got started (such as a bakery or mushroom IGA) will likely collapse as soon as I COS in 2016. Any trainings or meetings I hold usually start in a thick fog of folks asking for money, supplies, or, at the very least, some sodas and snacks. There's not much more demoralizing than trying to work with people when their only motivation for showing up in the first place was to get some money or food. But if there is one think you learn in Peace Corps, it's how to take this huge challenge and work with it, shaping your desires to it and shaping it to your desires. There is a beauty in this that cannot be described, like the beauty in a poem or a painting or the turning of a phrase. Finding this beauty is what makes continuing service worthwhile. Otherwise the days become tedious with the daily chores of sweeping, drawing water, chasing goats out of the garden, and starting fires.
I struggle with the desire to start huge, sweeping programs that will benefit the whole communities and the knowledge that the most successful programs will be the ones for which I am sought out in my community. Unless the people I'm working with are motivated and ready to
implement these ideas into their daily lives and farming techniques, my projects will have an extremely limited impact. So I wait, searching for the few individuals in my catchment that are ready and willing to take the leap. The day I came to terms with this, the day I scaled my ambitions to my environment, was the day I knew without a doubt that I could finish my service as a PCV and be content in what I had accomplished. There is a reason PC is still promoting the same projects and interventions that we were 50 years ago. Change is slow. It happens one person at a time, and we tend to lose sight of that in America where change can happen in one breaking news story, one discovery, one idea. If I leave Malawi having impacted just one person, I will be extremely happy. Make an impact on just one person, and when others in the community are ready, they will have the knowledge at hand.
I'm sorry for the rambling, scatter-brained couple of paragraphs. I'm still struggling with how to put these thoughts and feelings into words that translate beyond the PCV community. There are knowing looks, black-humor jokes, and frustrations which encompass these struggles, but it hard to put these in a blog post.
I'm gonna sign off for now, but I'll hopefully get another post uploaded soon. I'm going to try a new strategy where I write the posts offline, and then upload them later. We'll see how that goes.
In the mean time, happy Thanksgiving! I'll be sending you all warm thoughts on T-day from Dedza, just south of Lilongwe where I'll be living it up in a hostel and, wait for it, using charcoal! A huge improvement from smokey 3-stone fire. There is also some ancient rock art in the area, so I'll be on the hunt for that.
Miss you all.
D.
