Rocktober/Nonstop November

(Thanks to Matt for a better name for the 10th month)

Life has been driving me so hard I'm just now catching my breath enough to tell about it. With a batch of certain-to-be-late Xmas cards under my belt, it's high time to update ye olde blog.


(R)October made me a pleasure-seeking gypsy as I followed the party trail to corners wild and remote, wearing strange and mesmerising attire, and November had me pushing to find my own limits, the sight of which had gone unseen since undergraduate days of yore.

The Party Details:
1. Game Count at Liwonde National Park on the Shire
My first brush with (a few of) the big 5, safari style. Each year, the game parks and reserves take a survey of the populations of large mammals for monitoring purposes, and the Ex-patriot community gets to be the ones trapsing around on the lookout for elephants, rhinos, i mpalas, zebras, hippos, ocelots, etc. We had a really great gropu of Peace Corps Vols camping at Mvuu Camp. Before waking up nice and early at 4 to go on our "transverse hikes" on one latitude line across the park, elephants and hyena had come wandering through out campsite (but we were safe - they don't like tent walls that "give"). After setting out, it just got better: we would hike from one end of the park west across to the Shire River one day and th enext day hike along the river, all the while counting and identifying the sexes and family groups of almost anything that moved, plus the relevant GPS coordinates. With a group of 2 or 3 people also went one scout with eagle eyes and one rifle-toting azungu bodyguard. The hikes were pretty intense physically, if mostly because the temperatures climbed so high before 9am. My group of 3 and I saw over 100 animals on each of the 2 days: mostly impala, warthogs, kudu, bushbuck, waterbuck, etcetera. But there was one close call with a bull elephant where our rifle man sent us girls scrambling back into the brush, at a diagonal angle, as he cocked his rifle and prepared to defend. Then later, the boys led us out on a bank uncomfortably close to a hippo "friend" that kept surfacing to check out the scene. In the afternoons, we all relaxed at the park's pool with some beers and debated the merits of spending our entire stipend on the park's amazing buffet. A good time had by all.

2. Training of Fresh Meat in Dedza
I returned to the touristy village by the Peace Corps training college called Mpalale and was spoiled for a week as I acted sage to the new crop of teachers in Malawi. Sure I did some teaching observations and assisted in language classes, but mostly I ate a lot, played bawo, and felt pretty wise and/or helpful. When on the last day we met the other 2 training groups and my colleagues (other PCVs of the week), I paid my dues by giving a rockin TALULAR demonstration: molecular models with movable electrons to show ionic bonding! Then I spent the rest of the time buying my village home fries beer and watching R. Kelly music vids at Ed's newly-improved Bar on the flatscreen (!!!).


3. Chitipa Halloween
You rig up a sexy costume out of bottle top sand string and schlep it up to the most remote corner of Malawi, which might as well be Tanzania because of the weird food & languages, and you kill/skin/roast/then eat two pigs and participate in a 3-day music and tattoo festival. The costume? Rainbow Brite Rated R. The music? Banjo-pluckin boys, British VSO girls playing Radiohead around the fire, drumming on washbuckets. The poison of choice? Pineapple double punch, which is more than twice as good at Powers No1, the usual sachet-packed cane liquor of preference. They both come in ketchup-style squeezie packets. Then an indian style feast. Crazy it was, with 40+ people so far away from civilization, but unlike the other participants, I did manage to avoid getting a tattoo. You can relax now, Dad.


The Work: Camp Sky 2009!
Though for me it took oodles of phone units and damn near all my waking hours and summonable patience, the PCMW Education 2008 group and I pulled it off: A test-prep camp extravaganza for 80 kids, even as it was an awkward time - blasting right through the Thanksgiving holiday. The important part was the kids had such a good experience that a lot of them wrote Thank You notes to the PCVs and will keep telling stories about their experience for years to come. The kids themselves were all fabulous, too - top notch, motivated, smart. In short, they really inspire some hope for the future of this place.

As to my duties, I was happy we pulled off a semi-sane schedule with career sessions and project presentations built in, while bringing in a diverse group of PCVs in other sectors to lead extracurricular activities, from compost to jam to anatomical goat dissection to orienteering to natural medicine to Tae Kwon Do. As to other stuff I was not directly responsible for, I had a blast learning to salsa dance by candlelight, going to the airport and Kamuzu Banda's mausoleum, drumming on a djembe to accompany a drama performance with a dance troupe and hand clappers to boot, and of course - the disco. The fruits of our labor were immense but I doubt if I will ever again work that hard for that long here in Malawi. Thankfully I was not among those who had sleepless nights, but I was good and zombified by the end of camp. I had a little destressification at the Ambassador's Thanksgiving feast/pool party but even there I was working it for Camp Sky (when not chicken fighting in my bikini).
As a reward/remuneration for earnest efforts despite bad timing of having the Tgiving party on a Saturday, the 1st day of Sky classes, we had a 13-person dinner party at Country Director's Vic's house to celebrate. We ate amazing Mac N Cheese, grooved to jazz and Dusty Springfield, and stayed almost until midnight chatting and drinking his scotch and coffee with cookies. No cigars, though. All that was a nice way to open the door to more comfortable interactions w/a guy most of us vols openly disliked to mistrusted due to all the unsavory changes that seem to be piling on top of each other since Vic came to Malawi.

Last but not least: Thank you so much for those of you who contributed to make Camp Sky a success. We couldn't have done it without you, and wouldn't want to besides!

So what now? School is back in session so all I'm hoping for is a nice quiet Christmas on the beach at Natalie's site in Ngala. For New Year's who knows? Nkhata Bay?