Yesterday morning I was boiling some water to French press some Mzuzu coffee (read: not very good coffee... send coffee) when I heard a knock on my door- it was a student holding a puppy, a puppy for me! I seriously freaked out in the way that Americans freak out when faced with puppies. My voice went all high, and I think I bounced a bit. Malawians don't really get the whole puppies-as-pets thing, so I tried to reign it in, but I was thrilled. I thanked my student, gave her some chocolate, and sent her to school so that I could talk to my dog in peace. BTW, if my students knew that I talked to my dog, they would know that I was crazy, right now they just suspect it.
Basically Hector the puppy is the cutest dog in Malawi, when I first got her she was all skinny, but I've been giving her powdered milk and bread, and she's been getting bigger in that cute puppy way they have where you can tell they've eaten because suddenly they have bellies. I left her at home yesterday when I was teaching, and when I came back to check in on her throughout the day, I noticed that she had claimed my Obama chitenge to sleep on- the image of my yellow dog and a democrat reminded me of my pappa, who always said he was a yellow dog democrat (meaning he didn't care if it was a yellow dog- he'd vote for it if it was a democrat. Those union guys sure did stick to their party)
As you can probably tell, I'm smitten.
The rest of my weekend was really fun, I had a lot of fun at the Mzoozoo, which is a hostel type place where Peace Corps is allowed to camp for free. I got to eat a hamburger and dance to Girl Talk, was I happy? Is the pope creepy?
The trip back from Mzuzu was fine, but I got these really bad blisters that got infected like none other, so I walked with a limp all week. My teachers kept asking 'what's wrong with you', and I had to hold back from saying something snappy like 'my momma didn't love me' (which we all know isn't true- love ya mom). The language barrier thing causes some strange moments, like when my women's group wanted to bake a cake the following day, and kept calling it 'the cake of tomorrow'- I expected the cake to be all space aged, and instead it was just cake.
The women's group is going well, they still want to sew school uniforms, but until we get some money to start with, we can't buy the fabric, which is frustrating. I told them that we would sew some bags next week out of chitenge (which I am donating) and hopefully sell them to get money for the fabric. We're just doing things slowly, but I mean, on the bright side, I have a women's group that keeps growing each week, which is a huge resource- once my group starts planning educational events and women's group meetings, my group will be good to go, its just strange because we have nothing to start with.
The library looks *awesome* (the stars are supposed to make the word look shiny, because that's how the library looks right now). My form 1 students have been using it all week creating posters for presentations that they are giving next week, and they can't keep their hands off the books in there. We don't have a ton of books, but I've tried to display them in a way that would interest the kids, and it seems to be working- I didn't notice how many nice books we had until they started pulling stuff down, and now I'm really excited to work with them, maybe starting book club groups. I loaned a book to one of my best students (shhhh... don't tell the grumpy teacher who is technically the librarian), and he seemed attracted to historical type books, like ones about Rome and stuff- he eventually chose one called 'Heroes and Saints', I hope he likes it. Books about plants, animals, history and historical figures are pretty popular, and the more pictures the better. Also, the English language primers were getting looked at a lot, but to be honest, so were the anatomy books with the pictures of STDs, so, well, you know, kids are kind of the same all over the world, genitals are funny no matter what language you speak I guess.
Also, in case you were wondering, things with Zach are great, I think that I'm probably sending him to the poor house with the amount of money he must be spending in long distance phone calls, but he doesn't complain. I'm the luckiest girl in Peace Corps because that kid sends the best packages.
All in all, things have been going well- I like my house, my puppy, my job and my friends (in and out of Peace Corps). It seems like this Peace Corps thing is going to work out after all (who knew?)
I can't wait until the new group gets here- you guys are going to love it.
4 comments:
Hector sounds wonderful. You'll have to post a picture. What is the name of the book your aunt gave you? I've forgotten already.
Since we want the women to be self-sufficient, is there a way to make a microloan to them at a small rate of interest, to get them started on their projects? Do you know of any microbanks operating in Malawi?
the book was Half the Sky- is is wonderful. As for the microloans, I'm not sure, but I'm going to a conference soon where we'll learn about that stuff, I want the group to be self sufficient too, so that when I leave, they'll still have a good business. I know that there are microloan foundations out there that service women's groups in Malawi, but we aren't registered yet, since we just started.
I like this post. Good to see that things are on the upswing. Glad to see you got a friend that, while he can't understand you, will wag his tail anyway. Are you going to leave your personal collection of books in Malawi when you leave? We miss you a lot (unfortunately, we're not as well funded as Zach.) I can't wait to hear the feedback about microloans.
Love, us.
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