Last Post From Malawi

So the two years are finished.  If I still had any concept of time, I could say something like "Wow, it's really flown by!" or "It's been the longest two years of my life!".  Thanks to my two years in Africa, my time meter is shot and it honestly feels like both of those at the same time.  There are a lot of things that I am glad to be doing for the last time, at least for a while (beans, rice, and cabbage), but there are also a lot of people that I would rather not say goodbye to forvever.  Posting to a blog while here was sort of an afterthought (not even mine actually), but it was a good one because it became and opportunity for me to sit and think about something good, or at least funny, that happened in the week.  Since that's the way I looked at it, a lot of not so nice things were left out.  I'm not against talking about the not nice things, but they just weren't the kind of things I enjoyed typing.  Tomorrow, we head to Rome to meet the incoming volunteers.  Then we are going to Poland to visit Gabi before she heads out to mission again in Bolivia.  From Poland, we will visit Natasha in Slovenia who is about as Africa crazy as a person can be.  After which, we will visit Fr. Antonio in Italy for a retreat.  I haven't mentioned Fr. Antonio, which is an unforgiveable oversight.  He is a Comboni Father who was here in Malawi for our first year and was a big help to all of us.  I have a few more things that I wanted to post, but who knows how it will go.  I'm pretty tired.  I think I'll go home now.

Excellent Adventures

During our training in Rome, the volunteers we were replacing spent a few days with us.  They talked about tips on life in Malawi, the people they knew, and the places they had been.  Then we came to Malawi and went through a lot of the same adjustments, met the same people, and visited many of the same places.  Now we are heading to Rome for the same meeting we had two years ago with the roles reversed.  The first time, when I was looking at the returning volunteers and realized that is how I would look in two years, it reminded my of the scene at the beginning (and the end) of Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventures.  For those who are unfamiliar, it is about a two high school students that travel through time to pass their history final, thus ensuring a peace loving, enlightened future inspired by their rock band the Wyld Stallions.  Anywho, after they meet their time traveling guide Rufus, their future selves show up through a misunderstanding in the use of their time traveling telephone booth (what a great movie).  The Future Bill and Ted tell the present Bill and Ted everything they will do, but it doesn't make any sense because the present Bill and Ted don't understand what is going on yet.  Then Future Ted tells Present Ted not to forget to wind his watch which he inevitably does and has to remind himself when Present Bill and Ted go through the whole adventure and become the Future Bill and Ted in the very same meeting at the end of the movie.  This might seem like a long a pointless tangent to the original idea of meeting our past selves going to the mission for the first time, but it is a really good movie and if I could fully explain the parallels in a coherent way you would agree that it is most excellent.

The First Wealthy Malawian

On a particular trip to the market, that I was going on in order to buy various parts for the various things I try to put together for demonstrations or repairs, I got a lift from Eva and Sr. Salo who were going to the House at Bakhita Primary in town.  They dropped me off and I walked from shop to shop trying to explain what I needed.  Despite all of my discription attempts and hand waving the best I got were confused looks and referals to other shops.  I finally found a few things that weren't exactly what I needed but just might work.  It's been awhile and there were other part hunts since then, but it's safe to say that they didn't.  Anyways, I stopped in at the Seven Star Superette for a cold drink while waiting for Eva to return and was sitting in in front of the store when a ragged Malwian with a backpack decided that he just might be able to convince me to give him money for bus fare to the next town.  His reason was that a dog had bit him a long time ago and now he has pains up the entire side of his body.  The next town, Ntcheu, was the only place to get the medicine he needed.  He showed me his leg, and while it wasn't exactly pretty, I couldn't make out any sign of a dog bite.  While I am not opposed to assisting people in serious need, I also don't make a habit of handing out money to every Malawian who asks for it.  I told him I wasn't going to give him the money.  Seeing that I wasn't trying to get away from him he sat next to me for a conversation which was fine since I was just waiting for my ride.  Talking with locals in the market can be interesting but it's often difficult to get past the fact that I am not giving them money, buy what they are selling, or going to be pen pals.  This man fortunately got past the money situation and talked about how he was the first wealthy man in Malawi.  He said that he had even traveled to Mozambique (Next door not that impressive), Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), and South Africa upon which he produced a small bag of coins from the various countries.  He then mentioned that he was a political prisoner during the time of Kamuzu Banda.  I wasn't too interested until he rummaged through his pack and pulled out his letter of release that looked as official as anything looks in Malawi.  We talked a little while longer until he offered to sell some of his coins (back to the money situation).  With such a good story and the offer of coins from countries that don't even exist anymore, I was pretty much sold.  While looking through the coins again, the man very abruptly chased away a group of kids looking to get in on the action by yelling and swinging his pack around at them.  That kind of soured me on the deal and I might have been convince otherwise, but just then Eva pulled up and I took that as my exit from the uncomfortableness.

Chifundo

I have to admit that I didn't notice Chifundo much the first term this year in Math class.  She was very quiet and didn't draw much attention to herself.  By the time, I had I didn't have much hope for her to pass.  She is from the village, her English was very poor and even simple concepts were a problem.  She did, however, make an effort and seemed, at least, to care which is more than I can say for some of the students.  Sometime during the second term, it became very clear that she made the decision that she was going to pass despite how difficult she thought the subject or how strange the accent of her teacher.  She came to Girlie and Eva on Saturdays for help with her English.  She began asking questions, offering answers and forcing the same teacher to repeat that which he said to fast in that same strange accent.  The improvement in her grades did not come right away.  The material in the second term was more difficult and she was still catching up.  She was one of the few students that received an extra comment for exceptional effort on the report card and the only one of those that still did not pass.  In the third term, she continued.  She was still very shy and did not attract unnecessary attention, but I could tell she was improving.  When I wrote the term exam, which constitutes 80% of the final score, I made it fair but certainly not easy, meaning many students that did not care and did not try would more than likely fail and have to repeat Form 1.  Math is now required to advance, but then again 40% is a passing grade.  I went on a marathon of grading papers so I could return them before the students left the next day, and I left the country the next month.  Some students that should have passed didn't and some that probably didn't deserve to pass managed to get lucky.  Many complained that it was too hard or too long.  Walking back to the house after distritbuting the exams, I passed Chifundo and knowing her score asked her what she thought of the exam.  She just smiled as big as she does (quite big) and said in a very satisified way "I passed!"...very easily I might add.

Citric Shortage

Most of the time we just drink water, properly boiled.  Eva drinks coffee and Girlie drinks tea even if the weather is has hot as the drink.  Other things available that we have on occasion are Soft Drinks, Milk, Juice, and drinks of the fermented variety.  Coca-Cola is the dominant provider of soft drinks and they colaborate with the local Southern Bottlers (Sobo) company which provides its own local flavors, Coco-pina and Cherry plum.  Sobo Orange Squash is a non carbonated orange flavored drink that is concentrated so it must be deluted before drinking.  While we usually pour a little bit of sobo a lot of water, Malawians usually pour a little water and a lot of Sobo.  Most soft drinks are purchased in bottles with an additional deposit if you don't bring an empty with you.  Drinks in cans are almost twice as expensive so they are not that common.  Fresh milk is available in small plastic bags, but does not keep well for more than a day.  Powdered milk is...well, powdered milk.  We've done some experimenting and it is actually good with chocolate drink mix after a couple hours in the freezer.  The fruit juice is good, but it is expensive.  It also usually has the second ingredient of milk which is a little strange, but not bad.  As for the fermented variety of drinks, Carlsberg (European Beer) has control of most of that which you would recognized as actually being beer.  Somehow they managed to work out a deal of being the only foreign company allowed to bottle in Malawi or something.  This means in most stores the only brand available is Carlsberg: Green, Brown, Special, Stout, and Kuche Kuche (Carlsbergs local brand).  The fermented beer that you would probably not recognize as beer is the local Chibuku.  It is a fermented drink made from corn flour.  It is very gritty and doesn't taste that great but it is very popular.  They also have a sweet non-alcoholic Tobwa which is similar.  I like Tobwa sometimes, but as far as Chibuku, I am conent just to say that I have tried it.  Last week, as we were trying to prepare for a party before leaving and we were unable to get any Soft drinks because apparently there was a shortage of citric acid and they stopped produciton.  We went from store to store only to find empty shelves.  Fr. Bob said he saw a truck pull into town in the morning so we rushed to see what the situation was and it was a false alarm.  Empty shelves.  We managed to get enough lower quality orange drinks and a few cases of the fermented variety so it worked out.  We cooked a big pots of meat, rice, and cabbage over trenches dug in the back yard and spent the day eating, talking, and playing games.

Technical Difficulties

After more than a month, the Form 4's finally finished their exams this week and the last one was Computers.  As their computer teacher and considering that most of them had never used a computer when they started two years ago, I was a little concerned.  The first day was the theory portion which did not go very well and I was not too happy about.  Questions concerning ways to increase processing speed, procedures for mail merge, and DOS commands seemed somewhat out of place.  The students felt pretty beat up afterwards.  The practical exam held in the college lab the next day was much more in line with what the students were prepared for, but I think a few of them panicked even after I specifically instructed them not to making it more difficult than it should have been.  As their teacher, I wasn't officiallly overseeing the exam, but I was there to assist with any malfunctioning computers.  Just after the test began, I watched a few of them open their heads, take out their brains, and place it on the desk next to the monitor.  Unfortunately, since I could not instruct the students after the test began, I was unable to advise them that this was not an exam in which body weight was important and they would need their brains despite how difficult it would be for them to hold up.  Inevitably some of them forgot what to do with the floppy disks I passed out at the begininng, said very clearly were for saving all of their files, and spent the week running up the exam reviewing how to use.  Others, while trying to remember how to get the disk into the computer, pressed the power button which I specifically pointed to on each computer and warned them to never press under any circumstances.  I watched as one student spent precious time clicking on every button in the window except the one she should have.  Some faced the typical problems that happen while using computers, but as I said before, chose to panic only making the problems worse.  One girl accidently deleted all her data while using Excel.  Instead of staying calm and using the Undo command as I showed them in class, she closed the progam trying to find it back and lost it for good.  She had enough time to start over and still finish, but she cried instead.  The official exam proctor, unexperienced with this reaction, actually asked me to see if I could get it back for her, but it was to late.  Another almost lost it right at the beginning of the exam when she could not get the cursor to do exactly what she wanted.  After I said that I couldn't help her, the tears were on their way and she stood up to leave.  I gently pushed her back down into the chair, told her to calm down and finish.  She did, but I don't know if she fully recovered.  Overall, the execution of the exam went much better than expected.  The power didn't go out once and nothing blew up.  I believe many of the students did much better than they think even though they weren't very happy with the exam or with me for not answering their questions while they were taking it.