COS trippn' 3rd stop: Swakopmund, Namibia - Township Tour

After sand boarding we went on a "Cultural and Township Tour". We didn't quite know what we were signing up for.

The Township is the area just a ten minute drive outside of Swakopmund, where most of the black Namibians live.

This was from a preschool we stopped at. Spongebob is beloved on multiple continents.

The town is full of makeshift shacks, but the street signs & curbs at the street signs sure are nice...?

This little shop was really similar to the barbershops in the villages of Malawi. Only in Malawi you don't see many dreadlocks.

The last stop was to the home of a local in the township for some traditional foods and singing. We started off drinking homemade ginger beer (non alcoholic). It was great! This is the rest of the tour group we were with.

A local choir sang a few different songs in a beautiful harmony. One was from the Lion King.

They also prepared some traditional foods for us to try. There was a maize dish that tasted very similar to nsima, Malawi's staple food. You rolled it into a ball to eat with the side dish, just like in Malawi.

The side dish shown just under the maize dish was tripe. I didn't know it was intestines till after I ate it. It was pretty good. A little chewy. The green one was spinach.

Mmmm, bugs

I'm in the last seven months of my service now, and I still have a few things on my PC Malawi bucket list to do. One of them was to try nsima made from cassava flour instead of the usual maize flour. Another was to try the flying ants that people eat here. I got to do both last week.

Good old nsima. It was served with a tomato and egg relish as well as cooked cassava leaves. A classic Northern Malawian meal, and pretty tasty.

Afterwards the owner of the restaurant showed is where they were drying the flying ants in the sun.

Here is a closer look. They are about an inch long and have about two inch wings.

Just remove the wings and eat. Here is me about to eat one.

And here is me after. Really, it didn't taste bad. Kinda flaky, crunchy and salty. But the legs got stuck in my teeth and that freaked me out a little bit.

I'm glad I tried them, and I would eat them again. Especially if they were prepared in some dish. Maybe a flying ant burger?

Back in PST Again

I’m so excited to welcome the new Peace Corps Trainees for the Education Sector! They arrived last month and started their Pre-Service Training (PST) here in Malawi. Here is a photo of them that was taken at the airport when they first arrived:

Some of the currently serving PCVs in my group were invited help facilitate the training for the new arrivals, including me! So a couple weeks ago I headed up to the Kasungu District in the Central Region and found myself back in PST again.

The house I stayed at in the training village had three rooms, with a mud floor, an outdoor kitchen and chim, and an outdoor straw bathing area. No electricity here, so I had to heat my bath water and cook over a charcoal mbaula. Which I learned how to do that week, with the help of my fellow PCV Tally, who was also facilitating sessions with me. She is a mbaula expert, and makes excellent peanut butter cookies over her fire. I plan on trying that back at my site soon. Here is a photo of my morning pot of water for coffee and hard-boiled eggs.

The Chichewa group near the house I was staying in let me sit in on their language classes a few days during the week when I didn’t have to facilitate technical sessions. It was nice to get a refresher, and I was able to pay more attention to the whys of the grammar rules instead of just the whats since I know more now. They were learning about how to answer basic questions about themselves like where they are from and where they live. That will be really useful for them because I get asked those things in Chichewa all the time. I can say, “Ndimachokera ku America mu mzinda wa California” (I am from America, from the state of California) in my sleep.

The week I was there was heavy on technical sessions, so Tally and I had a lot of work to do, along with the PC Technical Trainers Denis and Geoff. We worked with the trainees on Malawian curriculum and syllabi, lesson planning, teaching in classrooms with limited resources and student-centered learning. We also did a session on teaching English as a second language. Both Tally and I are science teachers at our sites, but really all PCVs are English teachers because we teach our classes in English. We provided tips on delivering content in a way that ESL speakers can understand, like making sure to speak slowly and clearly, writing things down and defining new words. As someone learning a new language myself, I know how important those concepts are. I often wish people here would use some of those methods with me.

Here is a photo of the trainees in the hall during a session. The facilitator is our Associate Peace Corps Director (APCD) for Education, Michael Kumwenda.

This was a really fun week to facilitate PST because besides all the technical sessions, we also had a luncheon. All the host mothers brought in lunches for the trainees to share with everyone, and the trainers prepared dishes to share as well. It was a basically a big potluck. There were so many dishes to try. Tally made chocolate brownies which were delicious. I also had nsima because I don’t get to eat it very often anymore. There were also cooked greens, potatoes, cooked cabbage, rice, beans and lots of other local dishes.

The trainees are a wonderful group. I had so much fun spending time with them, and I am looking forward to working alongside them as fellow PCVs. They find out their sites tomorrow and they will swear-in at the end of August. And the PC wheel keeps on turning...

Scottish Invasion

Yesterday we had some special visitors at my school. A group from our partner school in Scotland spent the day with us.

Scotland and Malawi have a close partnership. There are so many schools and aid organizations from Scotland in Malawi. On my site visit last August I met a Scottish couple in the Boma that was raising funds to build a girls hostile. A couple weeks ago I met three university students from Scotland that were teaching Expressive Arts at the local primary school for six weeks. (Now all their students know the words to that song "And I would walk a thousand miles." A group of kids came up to me and started singing it, and were delighted when I joined in. It was pretty funny.)

Our partner school (which is not affiliated with the PC) is a Catholic high school in Scotland. They provided funds to build a laboratory at my school, provided books and science materials and sent sports equipment like footballs. They also fund a program at my school called Girls Go for Health which provides support for girls to stay in school, including free menstrual pads, tampons and ibuprofen.

We had about 25 visitors from the school, mostly female students. When their bus arrived, it created quite a stir at my school. So many azungus in one place!

First things first-- gotta take snaps. Cameras and photos are universally loved by teenagers, no matter what side of the world they are from.

The visitors observed classes in the morning. In my Form 3 Bio class we were finishing up our unit on Reproduction. The topic was problems of the reproductive system, which include sterility, maternal death and sexually-transmitted infections. Fun topic for a day we are having visitors, right? After my lecture I had the students work in their groups to answer questions about  STIs. The Scottish students assisted them.

After that, classes were suspended for the rest of the day so that everyone could play sports. There was football, netball, races and even volleyball. All equipment was provided by the Scottish partner school.

Below you can see some of the girls playing netball. Netball is like basketball except you don't dribble the ball. Also it is almost exclusively played by females.

In Malawi you always feed your guests, so our visitors were treated to a traditional meal of nsima with ndiwo (side dish). The ndiwo was some kind of local leafy green cooked with tomatoes and onions, maybe rape? I don't eat much nsima now that I cook for myself, so I always enjoy it when I have it. We also had Coca-cola and biscuits (cookies). Yum!

After that it was time for our visitors to be going. It was a really nice day and my students enjoyed spending time with the foreign students.

Fun fact-- did you know that the National Animal of Scotland is the unicorn?

Host Family Reunion

Last week I went to visit my host family from PST in Chinkhombwe Village with a couple of my PCV friends.

It was so great to see my host family again! I took lots of photos. Although we can never get all of us in one photo.  Rodric, my 10-year old host brother is missing from this one. He was tending to the goats.

My host siblings-- Vinny, Pephero and Rodric

I was especially happy to see Pephero. I brought her a lollipop and she loved it!

I also picked up this cap in Lilongwe for my abambo (host father). Here's a little nod to all my family in New York-- Go Yankees!

Amayi (my host mother) made tea and boiled cassava for a snack. She made me put extra sugar in my tea, Malawian-style. The cassava was really good. I might try making that at site.

Of course, no visit to the village is complete without eating nsima. Amayi made nsima with beans as the ndiwo (relish, or side dish). But now that I am no longer eating nsima twice a day everyday, nsima is just fine. I still can't eat a whole nsima patty though, much to my host family's disappointment ; )

It was great to see everyone again, and to get to see the village when it was so green. It was even worth the miserable bike taxi ride we had to take from the Boma to get there, which was muddy and bumpy and made worse by the fact that our drivers (riders?) were racing each other. Shiela, my PCV friend took this photo of me on the bike-taxi.

I would love to visit my host family again, but hopefully during the dry season.

Tiwonana, banja! 

Chakudya Cha Masana ku Malawi

Here are photos of some of my lunches during homestay.

Nsima and chicken

Nsima and soya pieces (cooked with onions, tomato and oil)

Ngaiwa nsima with beef and cabbage (Yum! Anything ngaiwa is delicious, and cabbage is my favorite vegetable side dish here. This isn't typical, but I enjoyed it so I wanted to share.)

Nsima and cabbage

Dinner is usually the same as lunch. The leftovers from lunch are covered and stored in our house until dinner time, then reheated and served with fresh nsima for dinner.

Other lunches/dinners:

- rice with scrambled eggs

- nsima and beans

- rice with hard-boiled eggs

- nsima with pumpkin leaves

Bread Day

In Malawi PST we love Mondays. Why? Because it is the day PC gives us trainees bread, peanut butter and fruit. It probably doesn't sound too exciting, but when you eat nsima everyday, it is pretty amazing. Bread and peanut butter fills us up when we need a snack or can be a meal when we have been feeling sick and can't eat our regular meals (which has not happened to me in a while, luckily). 

The peanut butter provides a little extra protein in our diets. Peace Corps provides meat to our families three days a week plus eggs and soya pieces, but my family still has some days where we will eat all three meals without any protein. Plus, the protein portions of our meals are very small. So a little protein boost is nice.

The fruit is also especially welcome. Fruit is pretty scarce in the diets of our host families this time of year. They eat small, green oranges that grow on the trees here, which were pretty sour in July, but are finally getting sweeter. Small tangerines just finished ripening last week. (My host brother got stung by a bee while harvesting a bunch of tangerines.) You can find small bananas and apples at the outdoor market in the city, but we do not go there very often. Plus, the apples are from South Africa so they are pretty expensive. Of course, this is the "cold season" in Malawi, so the real fruit is on the way. Papayas, mangoes and pineapple--oh my!

Today we each received two apples with our bread and peanut butter, and they are my favorite fruits right now. So happy bread day to you!

Eating like a PCT

Here is a look at a day's menu from homestay in Malawi and homestay in Moldova.

Malawi

In Malawi, the food is heavily salted and cooked with a lot of oil. Sugar is expensive, so my host family uses it liberally in their tea, but otherwise uses it sparingly. Typically my host family adds salt to their food before  eating as well. Sometimes they add hot sauce too.

Breakfast - plain white rice and tea

Snack - plain white rice

Lunch - nsima (maize flour and water cooked into a thick porridge) with boiled greens and chicken

Snack - bread and peanut butter*

Dinner - nsima (maize flour and water cooked into a thick porridge) with boiled greens and chicken.

The nsima is freshly made each meal, while the ndiwo (side dishes) are usually cooked in the afternoon and the leftovers eaten again at lunch.  There is no electricity and therefore no refrigeration, but the ndiwo are covered and placed in a cool room between meals.

* Peace Corps supplies Malawi PCTs with two loaves of wheat bread and one jar of peanut butter each week. This is to supplement the meals provided to trainees during homestay. They also provide some fruit for us trainees, usually bananas, apples or oranges. PC also provides  our host families with chicken twice a week, beef once a week, eggs, soya pieces, sugar and salt. Otherwise we would probably not have much protein during homestay.

Moldova

Breakfast: eggs cooked in pig fat; placinte (pastry) filled with oily pickled cabbage & cheese; bread

Lunch: pasta w cheese swimming, LITERALLY, in oil; bread

Dinner: salad swimming in oil; soup in chicken(?) broth; fish fried in oil & cornmeal; & of course bread

There's a little cup of salt ALWAYS sitting on the table to dip whatever u want in it (which they do to like everything)