Masamba ndi Zipatso

There is a lot of locally available fresh food in Malawi. You can find tomatoes and onions year-round. I have also seen green peppers, small orange hot peppers, sweet potatoes, Irish potatoes, carrots, beans, peas, okra, cabbage and rape (Brassica napus) at the local village markets. As we are just going into the hot season, I expect to see even more as the year goes on. And those were just the vegetables! For fruits, there are oranges, apples (from South Africa), bananas, papayas, guavas and my favorite-- pineapples! Most of these are seasonal, but I should be able to get bananas year-round.

Check out the spoils of a recent shopping trip:

Oh yeah, and one more fruit-- mangos! Mango season starts around December. I have heard tales of the wondrous, large Malawian mangos, and I am very excited to try them.

There are small mangos here too. A teacher from my school brought me a few green mangos and suggested I try thinly slicing them and eating them with salt. I find the unripe mango to be pleasantly tangy, and I will definitely eat more of these. I did not care for it with the salt though.

(For the record, I did not use all that salt. It just poured out too fast from the giant bag.)

So while I am waiting for mango season, I can munch on a few of these mini-mangos, along with bananas and pineapples. Yum!

Chichewa Lesson

fruits - zipatso

banana - nthochi

pineapple - nanazi

mango - mango

apple - apozi

orange - lalanje

Vegetables - masamba

tomato - matimati

onion - anyezi

cabbage - kabichi

carrot - kaloti

okra - therere

peppers - tsabola

peas - nsawawa

Home Sweet Home

The day after I swore in as a PCV, I said goodbye to my host family and the training village, and headed off to what would be my home for the next two years. So here I am, in the Mulanje District in southeastern Malawi.

I have spent the past few days getting situated. I've unpacked, done a lot of laundry, cooked a little. My first cooked meal was oatmeal with cinnamon and raisins. I used Jungle Oats to make it, which is the brand of oats sold here in Malawi. I've also been drinking a lot of tea. During homestay, I acquired the daily habit of morning tea. My amayi insisted upon it. (Although "tiyi" was a loose term, and could refer to anything from actual tea to coffee to hot water with sugar in it). Here, I am drinking locally available black tea that is grown here in Malawi.

After living with a host family for two months, it is nice to be able to stay in my pajamas a little later, wear trousers around the house, and sing along to music as loud as I care to.

My house is made of mud bricks, with a tin roof and cement floors. Outside, there is a kitchen area and a bathing area, both made of mud bricks. And of course, the outdoor chimbudzi (pit latrine). Best of all, I have a view of the mountains from my front porch. And they are beautiful.

I replaced a volunteer who just completed his service, so the house came already furnished because he left all his stuff for me. (I inherited the bowl in the above photo, as well as the spoon.) So when I walked in the door it already felt like a home. Soon it will feel like my home too.

I thought I would be living alone, but it turns out I have flatmates! Here is one of them now, up near the roof:

I saw three of these lizards yesterday crawling on the wall. I also met another flatmate last night-- a gray, furry little mouse. He was squeaking and doing some kind of scritch-scratching under my bed, but I haven't figured out what he is up to yet.

It's been raining here, which is amazing after the drought back home and then arriving in time for the dry season in Malawi. It is very green here in the Mulanje district, so I am hoping that means we get rain more consistently throughout the year.

I think I am going to enjoy living here for the next two years.

Congrats to the Malawi PCVs

I am officially a Peace Corps Volunteer now! The 19 of us in the Peace Corps Malawi Education group swore in on the 28th of August at a ceremony in the village of Chinkhombwe, Kasungu District.

Here we are, in all of our Malawi finery! Notice the sweet 'staches on some of the guys. It was just for swear-in though.

Wish us luck! Our service to Malawi has officially begun!

**Update**

We made the Malawi news. Check it out:

http://www.nyasatimes.com/2014/08/28/19-us-peace-corps-sworm-in-to-work-in-malawi-schools/

A few corrections - Please note that despite the quote in the article, we actually do have two volunteers posted to the district we trained in, including one from my group. Also, there is a Secondary School nearby the village, which is where we completed our Model School. Finally, if a school would like to have a volunteer placed there in the future, all they need to do is contact Peace  Corps and apply.

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

Chakudya Cha M'mawa ku Malawi

Here are photos of some of my breakfasts from homestay in Malawi:

Ngaiwa (whole-grain maize) porridge mixed with sinjiro (peanut flour) and sugar, tea

Rice, tea

Potatoes

Chigumu, also known as African cake. It is made with maize flour. Amayi usually makes this in the evening and then serves it for breakfast the next morning. Despite it's name, it is less like a cake and more like cornbread. There is very little sugar in it. Sometimes mashed nthochi (banana) is added, which makes the cake a little more sweet and moist.

Chipisi (French fries):

Other typical breakfasts (not pictured):

- roasted peanuts and tea

- white bread and tea

Care Packages

Last week I received two care packages, and it made my day! See how happy I am? That's because getting mail from home is wonderful!

So far I have had three packages mailed to me, and everything has arrived safely. I know Coalee has received several packages sent to her also. We have both received letters too (including from each other). So it seems like the mail systems in both Malawi and Moldova are pretty reliable after all, which is great.

If you want to send us a care package, please do! It is so nice to get something from home when we are so far away. If you need ideas, here are a few suggestions:

Coalee in Moldova

Granola bars (Lara bars & kashi bars)

Markers

Polaroid camera & film

Mini portable speaker for iPhone

An adult wooden rocking chair kit that I can build myself

Sticky tack, to hang pictures on the wall

Stacy in Malawi

Photos of you!

Duct tape, in cool colors/designs

Clif Bars, Lara Bars

Trail mix

Dried fruit

Sugar-free gum

0.7 mm pencil lead

Sticky tack, to hang pictures on the wall

Chocolate that doesn't melt, like plain M&Ms or Nutella or cocoa powder

Anything you feel like sending!

Munabadwa Liti?

In Chichewa, that means "When were you born?" You answer, "Ndinabadwa pa 9 October 1940", for example. (That is the birthday of my favorite Beatle. Guess which one...)

When we learned this in Chichewa class back in June, I went home and asked my amayi (host mother) when everyone's birthdays were. She knew everyone's birthday except my middle brother Roddy. She knew he was born in August, but couldn't remember the day. That might sound strange to an American, but here in the village they do not celebrate birthdays. However, this seemed like a fun opportunity to share a little about my culture, so I made plans to do a little birthday celebration for Roddy.

On August 3rd I asked my abambo when Roddy's birthday was. He told me it was August 4th, the very next day! That meant I had only one day to prepare.

The next day I made Roddy a birthday card and grabbed a few strawberry candies I had brought from America. After dinner I presented him with the card and sang the Happy Birthday song to him. My amayi joined in at the end. Then I gave him the candies.

He gave one of the candies to abambo, one to amayi, and one to his older brother. My amayi split hers up, saving a piece for my little sister who had fallen asleep. A few minutes later a couple neighbor boys came over, and she gave them part of her candy to have as well.

It is amazing how communal this culture is. Sharing is not even a thought. It's almost automatic. Could you imagine sharing a small piece of hard candy with three other people?

After she finished the candy, my amayi mentioned that her birthday was the next day. I knew it wasn't though, as she had told me her actual birthday when I first asked, so I called "bodza" * on her. She laughed, and said sort of apologetically, "I like sweeties." **

*Bodza - translates to "lie", but it has a more playful connotation depending on the tone, so here it is more like "fib" or "I know you are joking"

**Sweeties - sort of a generic term for candy