Homestay

The end of Ngulule was uneventful...being team leader, I was a little tired of the smell of nsima from serving it and of trying to keep the little kids occupied. The word for “go away” in Chichewa is “chakani,” and to keep the little ones away from the classrooms Gina and I would constantly say “chakani chakani” or “numba,” “home,” and they’d mimic exactly what we said. I didn’t think I’d be annoyed by the little kids here but when there are a lot of them constantly watching your every move, it is very tiring. I helped introduce the groups for the presentations and everyone ran after the cars when we left.

By the time we got back it was time to pack for homestay the next day. Instead of three days of teaching, we’d be condensing it into two. Mkanda was a lot like the other schools we’d been to, except there were even more animals. Lots of chickens, goats, cows, and pigs. At one point two chickens walked into my class. My teaching partner was Korey, and we taught standard 6. Teaching younger kids is a lot more challenging. They don’t know as much as the older kids and are much shyer. It’s helpful when the kids participate, at least it alerts us that they’re learning something. Since it’s not healthy to eat in the village, we all had pasta salad for dinner in a classroom. All the little kids stood outside the windows and yelled the few words they knew in English, like “give me.” There was really no escaping the persistence of these rugrats the entire time we were in the village. At about 5:00 we were ready to meet our families.

Ronald and Kondwa Mtora hosted Korey, Tara, and me. We met Ronald first. He was only 22 and married with two kids. He spoke fairly good English (although it helped for me to annunciate every word when talking to him) and had attended business college where he met Kondwa, who was 23. He walked us around the village before we got to his house to meet some people. Keep in mind that we were followed by a trail of children the whole time, quite excited to see azungus. People were very friendly and introduced themselves right away. Some only spoke Chichewa, others could greet in English. The village had a dirt path with houses on either side. When we got near the house the sun was setting, so we decided to climb a small mountain up ahead. It was an easy climb even in a constricting long skirt, and it was well worth it. I got some incredible pictures of the sunset, the type of sunset where the sun just sinks into the ground. It made the whole experience of living in this village very surreal.

We went back down to the house. It is surrounded by a gate on all sides made out of straw. Inside there was an open space where the house was and a small bath area in the corner. We would be sleeping in a room, basically, separate from the house but with a low door and concrete floor. The roof had some kind of covering to keep rain out, but then was covered with more straw. Later we met Kondwa, who was very very beautiful, and their 5-month old son Bryan. Simply adorable. They don’t have diapers here, so they just use little nappies which don’t really provide any protection if you’re holding a baby. Luckily I didn’t get peed on, but some other volunteers did. Another interesting thing about babies – there is no discretion when it comes to nursing. All of the mothers with young babies, of which there seemed to be a lot, just pop it out.

Since it got dark very quickly, around 6:30, we lit some candles inside the house. It had 3 rooms. Two were bedrooms and the biggest was a sitting room, which basically had a straw mat on the floor. Ronald and Kondwa also live with Kondwa’s younger sister Maria, who is 14 and in secondary school. They had an older daughter who was 3 but she was staying with grandparents in another village. We sat on the floor and learned more about the family. Neither of them are native to the village we were in, but they run a small market where they bring in things from the city. I suppose that is where their business knowledge kicks in. They said they are happy with two kids and didn’t want any more. They also had no animals. We walked around the village some more and a lot of people were singing and dancing for the other volunteers. In the house some friends came over and we played cards. The deck they had was old and not even complete. I think after dark there is really nothing to do there besides sing and dance or listen to the radio or get drunk. And a lot of people do that every night.

We taught them how to play go fish and I think they really liked it. Then they brought out this plastic bag full of photos and showed us pictures of them and their family. I got the impression that this couple had seen lots of Malawi, including the city. I found it interesting that they chose to live in this village with no running water, no electricity, no furniture, etc. even when they seemed rather well-to-do. However there is an extremely strong sense of community that emphasizes family and friends. People are interacting all the time. They walk around really dirty and barefoot, with used clothes with lots of tears, and very few amenities compared to what we have at home. People live a very simple lifestyle in the village but they seem to be very happy.

One of the pictures Kondwa showed us was from when she was suspended from school. We asked her why and she said it was because one of her teachers proposed and she refused. This is one of the things we try to teach the younger girls at school…I think I will use her story as an example from now on.

As we were listening to the news on the radio in Chichewa, Bush came on. We asked about him and everyone had heard of him. We asked about the current president of Malawi and whether or not people liked Banda, apparently they did. However, they did not know about the war in Iraq or even Darfur. We were lucky that this family spoke English so that we could ask them about Malawi and other things. They asked us a lot of questions too, like what houses and food were like in America, and whether or not we had granaries. We just kind of said everything was similar instead of going into detail or risking offending them.

Even though it was early, the fact that we were in near dark made us tired quickly. We ended up going to bed around 9 even though the family said they stayed up until 11. It was hard to sleep through the night. The floor was extremely hard even with a sleeping mat, and it was chilly out. The toilet (not to be confused with bathroom) was located right outside of the fence. It was not as bad as I thought it would be. When we went outside, the stars were the most breathtaking I have ever seen and may ever see in my life. It was like you could see the entire Milky Way. I’m not sure if what we saw was exclusive to Africa or was because it was very dark in the village, but we all took a moment to just stare up.

In the morning we were woken up at 5:30 to help with chores, which basically included pumping water. This was a lot of fun though. The pump was not that difficult to use but my arms started burning after I’d been doing it for a few minutes. The well is a very social place, women just stand around chatting while others are pumping. You can probably imagine how strong these women are. Tara attempted to carry a bucket of water on her head but almost fell over and spilled the whole thing. Most of the women carry one bucket on their head and one by the arm. I think they are truly stronger than the men here.

Since they run their own business, the Mtoras have a flexible schedule. They walked us back to the school, about a 5 minute walk, where on the way we were greeted by even more villagers. At the school we got to compare stories from other volunteer’s homestays. I think the worst I heard is one volunteer not sleeping a wink because there were mice running everywhere and dropping from the ceiling. On the other hand, some volunteers stayed in a house with leather couches. It seemed like the language abilities of the hosts varied too.

Day 2 of school went fine. For the presentations, I think the entire village showed up. We had a humongous turnout, including some of the parents of my students who were exciting to meet. Ronald and Kondwa came too. My class did a song about solar energy. Just to note: one of the little boys in my class was a spitting image of Webster. When the performances were over I tried to take pictures, which turned out to be a disaster because all the little kids squish to be in them and then want to see what the pictures look like after every one that is taken. Then some old ladies came over and started pulling on my hair, which really freaked me out. There were just so many people around that some other volunteers and I needed our space and wanted a break, it was crazy there. Since we were staying in the village the volunteers played a soccer game against some of the students. Of course they whooped us, even though we have a few college soccer players. For dinner we ate a variety of canned food that we “cooked” in our solar ovens.

On the way back to the house, we were all worn out and said we would try to go to bed at 7. But when we got there, 20 people seemed to squeeze inside the sitting room, I’m guessing to see us, but they just kind of sat there. Then they went outside to sing and dance. Finally we were beckoned to come outside. There was a drummer and girls were dancing around him in a circle. They danced for literally 2 hours. It was interesting at first, but just got repetitive. They kept asking us to dance over and over. We finally did once, but then all they did was laugh at us. Probably because we didn’t stick our booties out enough or something…that’s basically what their dancing is. There were a lot of drunk people out there too. We didn’t want to be rude but finally just said we were going to bed.

That night it was very very windy…we thought all the straw on the ceiling would blow off. We woke up at 5:30 again to pack up everything and say goodbye. Kondwa prepared a bath for all of us in the little bathroom corner of the house, which was basically a basin of warm water. It was very refreshing though, I ended up washing my face and my arms. WC decided the day before that we were going to hike an even bigger mountain at 6:15, so we did. Again, very challenging in a skirt, but we did it! It was an amazing view.

Everyone was relieved to be going home though. It was a mad rush to the showers before the warm water ran out. I’m not sure if I’ve ever been dirtier before, I was dripping brown water. It is really nice to be back to the house though with lots of food and electricity.

One thing we did differently at this school was administer a 10 question quiz before and after our lesson to assess student and teacher progress. Korey and I got most improved. The average before teaching in our class was a 61 (the lowest of all classes because they were young); after we taught it was a 91.

Now that we’re back everyone is just relaxing. We are going to take a trip to the fabric market this afternoon and do some last minute grocery shopping before…safari!! I am so excited for safari, not only to experience it but also to have a break from teaching. We are leaving early tomorrow morning…my next entry should include lots of fun pictures.