Village-based training: Getting my feet dirty

Note: I'm just now posting a backlog of writing about what I've been up to in PC training. As of Dec 8th, I'm one day away from swearing in as a real life volunteer, so this is some old-ish information (but still good!)

Peace Corps trains new volunteers in two distinct modes: village-based clusters and centralized training in a larger group. After arriving in Lilongwe and moving up to Dedza College of Forestry, our training home base, I spent 6 weeks with one third of my training class peers living in a Malawian village learning all the important survival secrets and social morés via the first mode. It was a lot like study abroad; I lived with a host family and only did a few things every day besides immerse myself in learning local culture through the local language, Chichewa. What an intense experience! I remember being escorted on a dusty dirt path between mud huts with roofs of long, dry grass to arrive at my own little mud house within a fenced in family compound.

My new mother was there to greet me and over the course of the next two hours I was visited and greeted by many new women neighbors. I had no idea what to do with myself at first; what would other Malawians have been doing at that hour? I also mistook the first man I met who spoke English for my father; he introduced himself as Bambo Ampokosa so I thought he was calling himself 'Dad'; turns out that's just how they respect people around the village. Though that particular neighbor became a good friend and was effectively one of my fathers/mentors; he was fond of giving out advice but our relationship became more mutual through English practice for him and the constant barrage of new Chichewa words for me.

While very overwhelming at times, just being in the village and participating in everyday activities while employing my nascent vocabulary was an awesome way to learn. Once I was up to a functioning level of proficiency, I really enjoyed family time; my amayi let me follow her into her gnome-sized kitchen and waste matches lighting a cooking fire with wood cut down from trees nearby; she watched as I tired myself out pumping water at the borehole and relieved me of my bucket when I was spilling it all over myself -- hey, carrying 20L H2O on your head in flip flops is hard! I enjoyed doing dishes in two buckets outside the house to pay back my amayi for a good hot lunch (my favorites were the days when we had rice, greens,and beans, though chicken was tasty too), and I always swept and tidied my own space. Washing clothes by hand in buckets was one of the more time and energy-consuming tasks; doing it in the river eliminates the step of fetching water but it's really hard when you're in a restrictive full-length skirt and showing skin is a no-no. I was always thankful when amayi would take the larger, dirtier items while I was scrubbing panties and tank tops.

I took 3 meals a day with the family (and received snacks to take with me - no lack of food in Malawi!) and my favorite time would be sitting around afterwards just hanging with them, giving my ears a workout and playing with the 3-year old daughter. Zakina was a little firecracker, moody as hell but unabashed in welcoming me though I was strange to most adults even after becoming a common sight on the local paths. Her favorite thing was to dance - even during dinner, and we would have to clap and sing to provide music for her! - and she would often go from giggling to screaming to falling asleep all in one meal. She treated me least like a guest, occasionally peering into my house through my window or opening the door to check on me when other family members would stand outside and call 'Odi?' until I figured out they meant me.

My days were very full with classes for language (in addition to constant practice), technical sessions and student teaching to make me into more of a real Malawian teacher, visits to important community members like the chief or Amfumu (who later took a few of us on a fruitless search for crocodiles!), the local tea shop proprietor, Amayi Mussa, and all the excitement of dealing with free-range animals and gastro-intestinal maladies. One of the most loved Chiutsa village cluster conversation topics was and is still poop: whose squirts out half-formed, whose was refusing to show itself, and everything in between. Dealing with the locales was also a huge part of my day: everywhere you walk or show your face in Malawi, at all times, people greet you and everyone else individually, even if you're in deep conversation, if you're eating (then the eating person will probably offer to share food), if you're playing bawo (the adult version of mancala, very popular here), anything really. At first it seems like a drag - it takes forever to get anywhere! But after a while it's a nice way to get into a conversation with anyone and everyone. However, some of the little kids of the village (we call them iwes and they call us azungus), especially those living near the trade center who tended to roam free of supervision, were obnoxious and relentless; they even came to the trainers' village house and disturbed our language lessons by standing right outside the (grass) fence. They were certainly the worst with unwanted attention,shouting "Azungu!" over and over just on sight of a white person. When I was in a new place and unsure of my surroundings, that kind of attention was especially uncomfortable to me, but they have definitely given me a thicker skin just by my adjusting to their shenannigans.

Teaching at the community day secondary school was an interesting experience in itself; things are pretty adlib here, though teachers must never admit they don't know an answer or fact. Case in point: my teaching practice was all of 2 weeks, at the end of the semester right before summer break, when kids were especially restless. I got some experience invigilating (the british word for administering a test) after that, but do I feel like a real teacher yet? Not really.
One interesting surprise about being here in Africa at this juncture in American life was how popular Obama is here - and how much people know about American politics, just through listening to BBC and Malawian Broadcasting Company (MBC). I got a lot of handshakes and grins when I spoke of supporting him to Malawians. What a cool feeling - pride in something my country is doing was a completely unexpected happenning for me here, though not unwelcome!