Disclaimer: The views of this blog are solely my own and do not represent the Peace Corps or the United States Government.

Just to clarify, I write all of these on my phone as they happen but have to wait until I have better service to post them, and I can’t edit them so sorry for what I’m sure are numerous typos and mistakes, but also keep in mind that I may discuss the past as if it were the present.

Today is 5 July. I left home one month ago. Since I’ve been here nearly a month and have gotten used to life, I can give you a day in my life during PST. This will change in September when I go to site, but for now this is what I do each day or most days.

I live with a host family. Most days I wake up around 5am or 5:30 (it’s 5:30am right now) and text for about half an hour (it’s when I have the best signal–aside from 2 or 3am when I wake up and pee in the green plastic pee bucket in my room, the chamber pot of the future). I wake up, go out to the chim (shirt for chimbudzi, which is a pit latrine outside, no toilet, just a hole in the ground you squat over), and then I help my amayi (host mother) sweep the yard which is made of dirt. We sweep to get all the leaves and paper and stuff away that has collected over the day with brooms made from sticks tied together. The reasons for this are partially because Malawians find it appearances important (despite literally everywhere being dusty, somehow Malawian men always have spit-shined shoes), but also to keep unwanted creatures like snakes out of the yard since they can hide in the grass. After this I go draw water either from the borehole or the well in our front yard, light a fire (a skill I can do but sometimes still need help with), heat the water up over the fire, dump it in a basin, and mix some cool water with it and give myself a bucket bath in a small mud building outside with stones on the floor for drainage. My amayi cooks while I’m in the bath using the fire we started. I get out and get dressed and come into the house where we eat sitting on a bamboo mat, with daylight coming inside. We do not have running water or electricity. The sun rises and sets at 5am and 6pm, respectively and so do we (I usually sleep at 8 or 9pm. At night if we eat later we use my solar light). I eat breakfast and since I don’t like tea, I usually eat some form of phala (porridge), usually rice porridge which I mix peanut butter with (Peace Corps provides us with a jar per week during training). We talk for a while and I practice my Chichewa.

At 7:20 I walk to my language teacher’s house. I live on the edge of the village so it’s about a 10 minute walk to the main building we meet at, but it’s a 5 minute walk to my language teacher’s. Language lasts about 2 hours and our language classes are very small so we get lots of personal one on one interactions (mine has 3 people, including me). At 9:30, we have a small tea break and we walk to the main meeting hall, a large church that we have been allowed to use. I set my solar panel outside to charge my phone along with plenty of others where a local Malawian man watches and protects them. At 10am we have a session that varies depending on the day. We have 4 sessions each day, including language. Each one except language are an hour and a half (they sometimes go over). I’m education which is the largest sector so all my sessions are at this church. If we have combined sessions they’re here, but if they’re sector-specific, health and environment people meet at 2 other small churches elsewhere in the village.

Sessions can be about almost anything. They’re typically related to sector-specific things like (for me, anyway), lesson planning, classroom management, literacy teaching techniques, etc. But often these sessions can be about safety and security or peace corps themes broadly. We have sessions on development itself and sessions just about life in general as a PCV (Peace Corps Volunteer) in Malawi. Thus far, I have sat through 1 and a half hour sessions on safety and security, malaria (several of those actually), HIV/AIDS, nutrition, relationships, sex, diarrhea, water sanitation, gender equitable practices, permagardening, Malawian history, cooking demonstrations, and plenty of sessions with acronym titles that only make sense in the bizarre acronym-riddled world of peace corps (Today a session leader said “Before I go I have an acronym to share with you” and the whole room groaned in unison).

At 11:30 I walk home and watch/help my amayi cook lunch. Malawians cook over an open fire inside a small building which lends itself to a whole lot of coughing. I help my amayi cook nsima, the main dish of Malawi that’s eaten with almost every meal. Nsima is just corn flour and water, mixed to be solid. It tastes sort of like grits (but less buttery), but has the consistency of really thick mashed potatoes. Malawians use it like a spoon to grab all their other food. They always have a ndiwo (relish), which is whatever you’re supposed to eat the nsima with (this can be meat, beans, eggs, soy, etc and there is usually also masamba (steamed vegetables). There’s a word in Chichewa–kusinkha–that refers to the act of eating just the ndiwo when you miscalculated and ate too much of the nsima before the ndiwo ran out. I find this hilarious. We wash each other’s hands in a basin with a pitcher every meal and we pray. My family is Catholic and so I know this phrase very well now: “Dzina la Tate, ndi la mwana, ndi la mzimu woyera” (In the name of the father, and the son, and the Holy Spirit). After eating we wash our hands again to get the nsima remains off of them.

At 1pm, I go back to the church for afternoon sessions. At 2:30pm we have afternoon tea and at 3pm we have our final session, which is supposed to end at 4:30 but often goes over. Some people hang out outside the church to study Chichewa, others go straight home, others work out. We have to be home by 5:30, which is when it starts to get dark, and often our host parents get worried if we’re taking a while. I’ve been exercising with people lately but I’m so out of shape and running on the dirt road with all the dust isn’t the best breathing environment. Also we have to be careful to watch out for traffic because it will not move for us and there’s not enough space to move on the road to the side. Yesterday someone almost got hit by a motorcycle because it was coming from behind but a donkey cart pulling a load of corn flour bags was coming towards us and there wasn’t enough space for any one of us to move over. If you’ve ever found yourself between a donkey cart and a motorcycle taxi, welcome to Malawi. I like working out with people because it’s a good group experience and way to get to know people, even if I am out of shape.

I get home at 5 or 5:30, then I try to help/watch my amayi cook again. We usually have rice for dinner plus whatever ndiwo and vegetable is left over from lunch. We eat at around 6:45 or 7 and talk a while. I go to my room a little before 8 and read or text until I’m sleepy and then fall asleep (or write a blog, sometimes).

My weekend schedule is a little different. Throughout the week there is water at the school but on weekends I don’t go there so I boil water from the borehole, put it in a filter, and add water guard to it (basically mild chlorine) so that it’s safe to drink. I usually wash my clothes by hand during this time, which takes a really long time for me, and I’m not sure if I’m actually doing a good job because everyone in my family has shown me a different way to do it. I also will wash dishes on the weekend and I sweep my room. I sleep on a mattress on a bamboo mat on the floor in a small one-room building outside and because of the dust all kinds of stuff gets in and under the mat. I remove my mattress and the mat and everything else and sweep all the dust and everything out. At the beginning of last week I discovered a termite mound under my mat, so my amayi mixed some poison with mud and re-mudded my floor (it hasn’t been a problem since). My house is a mud house with a thatch roof and plastic underneath the thatch. If you accidentally spill water on my floor it very nearly destroys the floor. After I do my chores we go to church, usually about 2 and a half hours after it was supposed to start (everyone else does this too–the concept of time is very different here). At church there’s a lot of kneeling on concrete floors off and on and there’s no Eucharist which is strange for a Catholic Church but I figure it’s probably because the stuff is too difficult to buy and priests are hard to come by. The choir sings nicely but the pastor always scolds someone about something and last week it was that the choir hadn’t practiced enough. There are two offerings and you have to go forward and people will notice if you didn’t. After church often there’s a soccer game at the field so I’ll go hang out with my Peace Corps friends there.

That’s my life for the moment. Site announcements are coming Saturday morning, and next week I go on a site visit for a week! I’m wondering where I will be…