Transatlantic Pen Pals

Did you ever have a pen pal? I had a couple growing up, and I really enjoyed it. So when I found out about the Worldwise Schoolprogram during my Peace Corps application process, I was really excited to participate. The program matches PCVs with a teacher in America, and their students can exchange letters. This lines up perfectly with Goals 2 and 3 of Peace Corps, the sharing of American culture with our host country, and vice versa. Unfortunately, Worldwise Schools had some technical difficulties the last couple years, and the three attempts I made at signing up came to naught. Colii also tried to sign up a couple times, and never heard back from them. (Side note - they have restructured the program and made improvements, so hopefully it will work much better for PCVs and American teachers in the future. It's such a cool idea.)

Luckily, Colii and I are PCVs, so we are practiced at having to be creative and resourceful to get things done. We decided to have the students in my Library Club exchange letters with the students in her Health Club. We had all the kids write letters, and then we matched them up together.

The Moldovan Pen Pals

               

The Malawian Pen Pals

I even gave my students a little one-page info sheet on Moldova, with a map and a photocopy of a postcard I got in Soroca when I visited there. Colii passed on some Romanian phrases to me, and I included those on the sheet as well. The Romanian phrases have really caught on, and now I regularly hear “Buna dimineata” and “pa pa” at school from my Malawian students! Even from kids that were not even involved in the pen pal program.

Letter writing was a great way for the students to practice their English and writing skills. It also taught them about another country. Sharing the culture of your host country with the people of your PCV friend’s host country isn’t one of the three PC goals, but it sure was a lot of fun!

Kukolope ndi Ana

(Chichewa translation: Mopping with the kids)

Yesterday afternoon the kids came over to hang out. We practiced our English colors (Petro knew "khaki"!), the words for feelings (they love acting out "scared" and they get wild when we practice "happy") and ate mangos and these small black fruits with pits that they called "nanyole". Then I brought out a game of Snakes & Ladders that I found at Shoprite in Blantyre. They got bored with it pretty quickly and we moved on to looking at books.

Then they started telling me to mop my porch because it was dirty. I said I didn't want to, and that it didn't bother me. They kept insisting it needed to be mopped, so that it could be "kuwala" (to shine).

The kids are not OCD-- it's just that a clean home is very important in the culture here. And with the cooking and washing and the chim being outdoors, that means the yard is also considered the home as well. Which is why sweeping the yard and keeping the grass short is so important to people here. The women sweep and mop their homes everyday. At school the kids sweep and mop everyday too, even in Primary School. Which means the kids are well-versed in basic cleaning skills.

So when they told me to mop, and I said I didn't want to, they begged me to let them do it. Well, what could I do? I gave them a mop and a bucket and they set about mopping my porch.

Gender equality-- boys can mop too! Petro started the mopping.

They shared the work, I mean fun. Here is Fanny taking a turn:

They were really proud of their work. I thanked them in English and Chichewa, then I brought out a little oatmeal for them as a thank-you. They loved it!