Blogs from Southern, Malawi, Africa - page 12

Hello all! I hope things are good in the states? Here time is moving, but probably not the same speed as it is back home. We swore in and became official Peace Corps Volunteers Wednesday, July 23rd. The next day nearly my entire group departed Lilongwe for their respective sites. I, unfortunately, had an interview with a representative of the Board of Nursing and Midwifery Counsel or whatever they call it here… I was very nervous, but I think it went okay. She did, however, assign me to a 4 week orientation in Blantyre, but the other nurses have similar orientations as well. Those who remained left the next day. I left with the 2 other nurses Friday the 25th for Blantyre, and because of our locations it took us an additional travel day to get ... read more

Tragic to only write two entries while in the beautiful country of Malawi. After 40 days here, it is finally time to move on. What a time it has showed us, however. The people are as welcoming as you can be, the scenery as beautiful and untouched as it gets, and the culture makes you forget you're in one of the poorest countries in the world. I don't have time to expand more on my time here, but hopefully I will at some point later. Last I left you I was in Lilongwe after our time on the lake. Since then we came to Blantyre, the big bustling city, met up with a principal from New Zealand, and took off to the Zomba Plateau. We spent 6 days there, relaxing, reading, cooking, biking, hiking, and Will ... read more

Lots has happened in the past week. I have had good times (that have been extremely good) and bad times (that have been extremely bad). I first had my birthday. My 29th in Malawi. I had a wonderful day. It started with a soda on the Chancy Maples floating bar, watching baboons that were fighting on the rocks. I had a great Malawian lunch at a local pub next to the hospital, I swam and snorkeled in the lake & I even had homemade chocolate birthday cake. On Friday afternoon we went to an MTO attackers football game. They lost 5-3 (which was debated as much as usual) but we had a great time anyway. We taught the local kids how to do the Mexican wave. Saturday we headed to Cape Maclear with 5 new volunteers, ... read more

WOW!! This place is just as I imagined and more...as I'm writing this I know I cant do it justice. The drive from the airport through the villages, the orange muddy tracks, fields of crops, men sitting by the side of the road talking, women with babies glued to their backs...then arriving at the orphanage today..all those smiling faces and waving hands, I apologise in advance - it sounds sooo cheesy, but my heart melted and the tears nearly started the first time one of the children wanted me to pick them up today just minutes after I arrived, they love playing ball games, being hugged and just being around us. As expected, facilities are minimal...I mean, I'm happy to 'rough' it and go to the loo hovering over a hole in the ground in a ... read more

The Inconvenient Centipede On the way home from Mangochi (email town) last week, we suddenly heard our driver, Watipa, utter ‘sh*t’, before not-very-slowly pulling our Toyota minibus to a stop. There was a centipede (of the poisonous variety) on the dashboard. The word ‘centipede’ does not do this thing justice. It had 100 legs but they were by no means close together, causing the thing to be pretty large (a foot or so long). Our coordinator Francis managed to get it out of the vehicle but all the commotion caused an unsuspecting cyclist to fall off his bike, dropping his load of tomatoes at the same time. Three cars then joined forces to try to run over the insect so that one of the many people who walk barefoot along the roads in the pitch black ... read more