Monday, November 29, 2010

Turkey Day & Water Projects Galore!

So HAPPY LATE TURKEY DAY!!!  I hope everyone was ridiculously stuffed with turkey and mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce and apple/pumpkin pie!!!  I was definitely missing everyone in the US the last few days... especially family.  (Love you guys!).  My Thanksgiving here was pretty fabulous... Spent this past Thursday in Blantyre.  VSV in the south had a welcome/orientation for the new education and health volunteers that arrived in July.  Technically they've been stuck at site for the last 3 months and are "officially" able to travel, so it was supposed to be the first time we all got together.  Definitely a fun time... we all stayed at Doogle's, the backpacker's lodge there.  We pretty much just hung out and chatted... and drank... probably a little too much, but that's ok.  And ate really yummy food.  Amy and I also had a good time shopping and hanging out with Mary, a girl from University of South Carolina (I think...) who's doing research for her Ph.D in Mulanje district...

Friday was an exciting travel day.  And by that I mean we got on a bus at 630 am, and didn't move from our seats until 11.  Got some stuff done at the Peace Corps office in Lilongwe... and by that I mean I played with my new computer for about 4 hours!  Its absolutely beautiful!  Its a burgundy & black on the outside and has a pretty largish keyboard for a net book, and has an amazing battery life (very important when you don't have electric... :), and there's a digital camera thing that might mean if I can get a high speed internet connection I can try skype!  Super excited because I've already used it a ton to write these two grants that I will explain soon...

Saturday was the official Peace Corps Thanksgiving dinner!  It was delicious!  The needed a few additional volunteers to help cook, so went to that...  It was insane and awesome!  Feeding 100 people is a ton of work but we all had fun.  Main course was a roast pig (turkey is way too impractical...).  Also had mashed potatoes, mac & cheese, mango pie (almost like apple!), green bean cassarole, salad... you get the idea... yumminess...  And there was lots of dancing!  Vic, our country directer provided music and has a really good collection of random stuff... Afterward... we just all hung out... then went to Chez Ntemba, a night club... I'm constantly amazed at night clubs here... and how much more comfortable I am dancing... Until a dance-off went down, followed by a techno rendition of Jingle Bells that I was just not feeling.  So a bunch of us went home...

So... grants... A village right by me called Namwera is currently having a major water problem.  They have 2 boreholes (think giant hand pump) for getting water, but one has no parts... a problem you can imagine, and the other is in need of replacement parts, so right now its operational, but takes about 2x as long to fill up a bucket as one that's in good condition and the hand pump part sounds like its going to fall apart at any moment.  In addition to this, the "working" one is at the bottom of a hill, while the majority of the village is at the top... And this is a steep hill.  For those of you who know my Dad's house, imagine walking up the hill my driveway is off of (Grapevine Rd), to the top, with a 20L bucket of water on your head.  Not a fun time.  Which means either more work for the women and girls here, or they drink untreated stream water.  So, I'm writing 2 grants.  One is to fix these 2 boreholes, plus one in my village that hasn't been working for awhile... Also, when I went to go talk to the village chief about the boreholes, he asked for help with another project.  There's a pipeline system running from my village... an intake pipe takes water from a nearby stream, treats it with chlorine (when available), and then pipes take the water to parts of my village and a few others south of Maliera... Namwera's Village Development committee managed to raise ~US$200 to get some pipes to extend the system, but were struggling with the rest (~US$500).  So, that's the second grant.  Anyways... keep your fingers crossed that they get approved!  The grants are through a really cool organization called appropriate projects that is all about water projects under US$500.  They fund projects upfront so it gets finished asap, and then they ask people to sponsor the projects and donate the money for it.   So... if anyone is interested in helping out... check out appropriateprojects.com

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

The Stolen Camera Saga...

So... thought I'd take a moment to describe the joys of the legal system here in Malawi.  For those of you who don't know, my camera was stolen from my backpack Oct 31st... I was getting off a bus, realized people could see my camera sticking out of my bag, so closed it.  Started walking away from the bus stop to a different place to board a different minibus, and as usual, was crowded by bus conducters, drunks, and random people who "just want to be friends."  When I boarded the 2nd minibus, realized that my camera was gone, and that one of the people crowding me had probably taken it.  Amy, who was with me at the time, and I went back and started asking people for help, and finally some guy took us to the police station to make a report.  At the time, was seriously unimpressed with the police service, but to my great surprise, got a call the following week that my camera had been found!!  Ecstatic, I went back to Limbe, thinking I'd only be there a few hours, identified my camera (minus 1 memory card and flashdrive and transfer cable thing... plus all pics on the 2nd card were deleted...), and was told I should stick around till the next day... so I did... and the guy who stole my camera plead not guilty (claimed he found it on the street).  So, was then informed I'd have to talk in court the next day. 

After getting prepped on court procedure by Hector, Peace Corps' amazing safety and security officer, who also was super patient in answering my questions and getting the police to speed up the process so I wasn't hanging out in Blantyre/Limbe forever, I met the prosecuter for my case.  At the courtroom, sat on a very uncomfortable bench for a very long time... Malawian court is really interesting.  The defendent doesn't have a lawyer (at least in the cases I saw) and the court doesn't provide one when they can't afford one.  So, the prosecuter asks questions of witnesses they call, and then afterwards the defendant can cross examine.  There's a clerk that interprets English (which most of the proceedings are in) into Chichewa (but not the other way around).  Also, the magistrate (referred to as "your worship") records all the dialouge himself and then asks more questions to clarify.  Was super nervous at first, but then I watched a ton of cases before mine was heard, so had the whole process down. 

Anyways... then had to wait 2 more days to get my camera... went all the way to Limbe (its expensive!) found out that I couldn't take it yet... then arranged through some awesome people who live in Blantyre to get my camera through a friend of theirs and they'd bring it with them the following week to my village.  Worked out pretty well... EXCEPT... the friend had to wait 4-5 hours because she refused to pay a bribe (after I called the prosecuter to ask if the arrangement was ok AND wrote a letter giving her permission) and sometime between the trial and getting it last week, it was dropped... and while it still works, its annoying. 

Either way... I'm incredibly thankful that it was found!  Overall, minus the last bit, the Limbe police were absolutely amazing.  I have a working camera... and that means I can continue to take pictures instead of not being able to at all!  Anyways... more on some projects I have later...

AND HAPPY TURKEY DAY TOMORROW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!