Blog Backlog

9-29-09

And movie nights continue………

Indiana Jones a smash hit, we watched it last week and by ‘it’ I mean a three evening power marathon of all three movies from the Indiana Jones Saga. There was some deep and profound sadness when the Indie trilogy came to a close. It’s been a week since Indie and people are still talking about it.

Where do you go from Doctor Jones? I chose to move onto the Sound of Music, which was to my great surprise and delight an instant success and is perhaps Dwambazi’s new favorite movie. I wasn’t sure if we were ready for musicals but oh we were. I am pretty sure that Ama Chipalasa laughed until she cried tears of joy, her laughter was such that at moments I feared she might wet her pants. My fear may have had more to do with my own hang ups about continence rather than actual risk but the point is there was some powerful laughter.

I scored big with Indiana Jones but I do believe that The Sound of Music or as its been dubbed here “Maria” took it to the next level. In fact I believe we will have an encore viewing of Maria tomorrow night.

10-11-09

And now we have watched the Sound of Music at least 3 times. The love Dwambazi has for Maria has only grown and if I have done nothing else in my time here I have shared one of the greatest films of all time with the good people of Malawi. Children as young as 18 months have been heard saying “Maria” and that brings me joy.

Perhaps some of you noted that I haven’t been myself of recently. There have been some touch and go moments these past couple of months and I decided something had to give. So I stopped taking mephaquin, the evil malaria prophylaxis that’s side effects include depression, irritability and or rage, disturbing dreams, diarrhea….I could go on but I think that should give you an idea of the joys of mephaquin and my mental state. I had no idea my masochism ran so deep that I would continue on with the meph for 16 long months. In all fairness I don’t think it was the mephaquin alone that was giving me such a hard time. I think that I’ve been in a tough spot for awhile and the mephaquin was just exacerbating my already precarious state of being.

As the mephaquin is fading fast from my system I’m feeling oh so much better. Sorry for all of you who had to deal with some angsty letters and emails, you’re good people to stick with my through such unpleasant times. Now that I have my mind back I’m just trying to get back into a routine of being a semi productive Peace Corps volunteer, we’ll see how it goes.

10-14-10

Busy busy beaver here in Dwambazi . Lots of outreaches, chatting, time at the hospital, project planning, thus today I am taking a personal day. I do my best productivity in short spurts. I thought I’d take this opportunity to update you all to some of the more noteworthy events that have happened in the past month or so.

1) The Water Bearer-Water was out for awhile and my garden was in a very fragile state so water hauling a necessity. In one day I carried 7 or 8, twenty liter buckets of water on my head from the borehole to my house (about a 1/16 of a mile). I can’t impress upon you what a feat of strength and tenacity that was. So impressive that a month later I am still talking about it. But seriously I carried somewhere around 150 L of water on my head in one day. I have no qualms putting that on my list of major life accomplishments.

2) The Voice of an Angel-After thinking I should do it but never working up the courage I finally just did it. I burst into song at an under five clinic. Everyone was clapping their hands waiting for someone to start singing so I just jumped on in. There was some stunned silence quickly followed by joy and the realization on my part that my quiet singing to myself around the house sounds very different than my public singing.

3) Hot Hot Heat-It’s that time of the year again. Having rode out one hot season I find I am prepared for the fiery inferno that has descended and I have developed news ways of experiencing the feeling of having set myself on fire. For example I now stretch my arms up towards my roof throughout the day to measure the level of heat radiating off the tin (this experiment may have begun one quiet day while I was doing some yoga to pass the time). At high noon you can feel it pulsating in waves of fiery goodness and it only builds as the day goes on. I have also taken to touching the walls to see how long the bricks will retain heat, they really are quite excellent at holding in heat, nine at night and they’re still very warm to the touch. If only my own personal bread oven of a house actually manifested something delicious like fresh bread or pizza

4) The Second Goal-My Tonga language skills surprise me sometimes, other times they leave me at very inopportune moments but in this case they were with me. Yes Ama Chimbuto that wonderful crazy women who brought such joyous words as bumbu (vagina) into my life raised the bar to new heights when she announced the other day with no provocation that I had a large and powerful vagina. That would be bumbu lakulu ndi lathanzi. The laughter and crassness that ensued was really a beautiful cross cultural exchange. Such that as my friend Mel put it, my vagina is so powerful that it is fulfilling the second goal of Peace Corps.


10-16-10

I’m headed into Lilongwe on Tuesday to submit a grant that I have been talking about submitting for about a year now, we’ll see how it goes. I also need to wrap up some of the final reporting on GLOW.
I’ve been a bit mum on the subject, given my mephaquin induced state of crisis, it didn’t feel like the best time to try to unpack GLOW but I’m sure you’re all eager for a synopsis as I talked of little else for at least six months.
GLOW was simultaneously everything I hoped it would be and more, it was undoubtedly one of the best things I have done in my time here, it was stressful, it went by so fast it was hard to take it all in. There were moments of disappointment where I felt like I had built GLOW up in my mind into something that it could never be and of course I had moments of feeling like I was in way over my head, that I took on a job that I was in no way qualified for. In the fluctuations between the extremes, there was a lot of running around, laughter, tinges of hysteria, exhaustion, sense of accomplishment, and fun.
And hunger, it was damned impossible to find the time to sit down and eat a meal. Two out of every three meals was “eaten” while in motion. I recall on the last day of the camp serving myself delicious rice and beef and greens and thinking how delightful it looked and smelled, how it appealed to every one of my senses. How I longed to take my sweet sweet time with that rice and beef and savory every delicious moment. I remember taking my seat, adding just a touch of salt, and raising the fork to my watering mouth. I’m not sure if the rice and succulent beef made contact before someone came to call on me for something. Perhaps one bite made it in or maybe it didn’t even get that far but I do remember the feeling of profound loss as I shoveled in as much as I could in 45 seconds and then carried on nobly saving the world.
The girls were amazing. There were a crap ton of them. When looking at everything on paper I don’t think we really thought about what 80 girls were going to be like in the flesh. It’s a lot girls and it presented some interesting logistical situations. There were moments where I think we were all tempted to start banging our heads against the nearest available hard surface. The flip side is that a lot of girls got to have an amazing week. Looking back I may have over scheduled them a bit but there’s so much you want to get into a curriculum that it’s hard to tease out what should stay and what should go and it’s all such valuable info. There was lots of fun time, bonfires, a class on body movement and drama and lots of dance magic
Thanks to our fundraising prowess and to all of you awesome folks who donated we were able to provide the girls with some awesome stuffs. Dictionaries, math kits, folders, tee-shirts and bags.
In prepping for the big hand over to next years group and getting the last of the final reporting done, I’ve been going through all our GLOW pictures and videos. Looking back over everything was actually really nice. Like I said GLOW happened so fast it was hard to make heads or tails of things but taking the time to sit and look over the pictures of a pleasant and healthy reminder that GLOW was incredible and I actually did a pretty decent job.


10-20-10

I’ve arrived in Lilongwe. It’s about 2AM now and for some unknown reason sleep is eluding me. Perhaps this is a sign that this is going to be a most productive few days. I’ve already written several emails today, blog will be posted shortly, and then I can move onto big grant writing. Or I may pass out come 6AM as I have been up all night for no good reason.
The night before I left to come here, we watched the sound of music again and the joy just continues to grow. I love hearing Mrs. Chipalasa narrate what’s happening in the film, it cracks my shit up. Bless you Roger and Hammerstein and you too Julie Andrews.
I miss you all and hope that the last few months of your lives have been relatively angst free and that the summer treated you well.
In the next couple months I’ve got some big decisions to make about when I’m coming home and in what capacity (eg student, roust about, employed person) so there should be some exciting news in the future.