Malawi at last and with a phone at that

peace corpsMalawi Blog


Ladies and Gentlemen Boys and Girls: Welcome to the first installment of Spencer’s Blog in Malawi. I just wanted to update everyone a little bit, tell you some news and funny stories. So, fasten ur seatbelt, its going to be a bumpy road. Ok, maybe it won’t be that exciting, but I hope that u will enjoy it. By the way, I really want to express how much fun I am having, but how much I miss everyone. There happens to be one beautiful girl named Sarah that I happen to miss more than everyone else!
Well first off, I am writing this on my laptop at the Malawi College of Forestry in Dedza, Malawi. MACOFO is situated in the beautiful Dedza District in Central Malawi. We have a great small mountain behind the college that most of us have climbed at least once and some as many as ten. I just finished a very important period of the Peace Corps experience called Village Home Stay. I lived in a large (compared to the other villages that PCT’s stayed at) village called Kanyama for 6 weeks getting adjusted to the culture and language while at the same time getting involved in practice teaching at Makota Community Day Secondary School (C.D.S.S). It was a lot of fun and although I am glad to be getting closer to my own site, I will miss my family that I stayed with. They we a lot of fun and we always had people stopping by because the Amayi and Abambo (mother and father) Binga have 9 kids that all live close. For the first week I met another member of my family at least once a day.
I will write more about VHS later, but I also wanted to tell about my future site. I will be living in the Central Region in the Kasungu District. I cannot tell any more details than that because of Peace Corps Safety Guidelines, but you can learn all about the district online if you want ;) I will be teaching Physical Science and whatever else. Physical Science here in Malawi is a eclectic mix of Chemistry and Physics that the students are tested on in the 2nd and 4th form (Sophmore and Senior year). I am also really excited to start a garden at my house if I will be able to do that while leaving plenty of time for Bao and Draft which are the local board games.
Here are a few of the cultural observations about Malawi (aka things that I think are funny, different, or neat): Malawians are big on formalities in the sense of introductions. There are understood scripts when greeting people in this country. They are not, however, big on the formality of being on time. This I feel will probably be the most frustrating aspect for me. I have heard that you can schedule a meeting and receive acknowledgment for one time and Malawians can easily come 2-5 hours late. Apparently, if you are not the last person to arrive, you are not late!
On the whole they are friendly, patient, and all around nice people. I really felt very welcomed to the village and the country. Every time I arrive someplace new it seems I am welcomed with song and dance.
The language that I am learning, Chichewa, is a Bantu language and is a very simple language in the sense of it having a lot of consistency. It is very difficult in the sense of it having almost no similarities with English, pronunciation, and the fact that you can have one-word sentences that are close to 30 letters long. A short and easy example is Ndidzakulemberani – which means I will write a letter to you. I am really excited to get better at Chichewa and eventually to become fluent.
Ok, before I finish this blog, I want to tell a funny story about the language experience. Malawians are very shy about bodily functions and parts as well as sex. If you mention certain awkward anatomy in public than people will think there is something wrong with you. So, with that background, let me tell you a brief story. I was walking to one of my brother’s houses to take a picture of his family. Vitaliano and I were walking in the road and I looked up at a beautiful cloud formation and said “Ndimakonda Mitumbo!” he quickly corrected me and said “Ayi, Ndimakonda Mitambo” (no I like clouds/sky). I didn’t think too much about it until later that night when I realized that Mitumbo means anuses. So if u didn't catch that, I told my Malawian brother that I like anuses instead of the sky. Oops!!! Anyway, I thought I would share that with you. I will be getting a cell phone pretty soon and would LOVE to receive phone calls from everyone. Also, please continue to send letters and packages. I cannot tell you how happy it makes me to receive things from the states! Much love, and I hope to hear from many of you soon.

p.s. i have a phone which u can call or text. it is not too expensive using an internet program like JaJa (sp?) if u do please remember the time difference: here it is 0112659118490. I hope to talk to u soon!