One Year In

Well, we are now more that halfway through our Peace Corps service. We have completed one year of teaching, and in a few weeks the new trainees will swear in, officially making us "second year volunteers."
We've had a crazy last term, staying very busy. In August Zeb's parents came to visit over our term break. That was adventurous but still overall fun. To summerize, we had a car accident in Mzuzu (north end of the country) on the day we were supposed to be heading down to Lilongwe (central Malawi) and on to the beach at Cape MacClear and Liwonde Nat.Park (southern Malawi). It was a crazy, stressful, horrible day. But somehow we found someone to fix the car that day (thanks mostly to Alfred, who works as the grounds manager of the PC transit house in Mzuzu and is AWESOME), and by 3AM we left Mzuzu, and by 10AM we'd gotten a different car in Lilongwe and were on our way to the beach. 30 hours after the accident we were sitting on a gorgeous, quiet island beach at the other end of the country. From there everything went smoothly. We went to Liwonde National park and saw elephants, hippos, elands, roan antelope, bushbuck, warthogs, baboons, and other fun animals. (Zeb has pic on his picassa site, find the link at zebandtinainmalawi.blogspot.com).
It was sad to see them go but the week before they came, Shane (my brother) bought his ticket to come in December. So since then we've had his visit to look forward to.
After John and MArie went home we went back home and back to classes again. The weather throughout the "winter" months had been pretty chilly. Lows around 50, highs in 70s. But just after school started up again in September we abruptly moved from cold season onto hot, dry season, and the temperature has been rising ever since. Just before coming to Lilongwe this week our thermometer topped out at something over 130F. (Granted, that is with the thermometer sitting in the sun, but I'm also sitting in the sun washing dishes or doing laundry or walking to a grocery.) We moved our dinner table (which is a desk from school) outside because its cooler than outside, and several of our candles that we eat by have melted inthe sun. Every afternoon we typically nap for a couple hours because thats about all you can do. We've been moving our mattress and mosquito net outside every night and sleeping on our porch under the stars, which has been pretty nice actually.
Then, last weekend, we got up on saturday, dreading doing chores in the heat. By 9 AM the thermometer was over 120. But then, some glorious big dark clouds showed up, moving our direction. (keep in mind that we have only seen rain twice since April, and then only sprinkles. I'd been dreaming of this first rain for months!) By 9:30, the temperature had dropped to 70 and a few minutes later it was pouring. It was fabulous! I stood shivering in the rain until I couldn't take it anymore, then we started a fire and made hot soup for lunch! Since then we have had rain showers almost daily, here in Lilongwe too. So now we are officially in hot, rainy season.

In late September, the new Peace Corps education trainees arrived in Malawi. We greeted them at the airport, and then Zeb spent a couple weeks in Dedza helping with training. A couple weeks after he got back to site, I went down to Dedza for a week to help out as well. The new trainees are a great bunch, and it was fun and a little strange to work with them, when it seems like only a short time ago we were there as trainees. Now we are in Lilongwe on our way down to Dedza again, this time together.
Aside from our trips to Dedza, we've been continuing to teach at site. The form 2's and 4's (sophomores and seniors) took their national exams during the beginning-middle of the term. That was somewhat nice for us but also problematic. When the national exams are given, each school sends two teachers to envigilate (supervise) the exams at another school. Also, several of our teachers were retaking their exams, our headmaster was taking exams for a correspondance diploma, and another teacher was helping to mark the exams. So during test time, we were generally very short on teachers. There were days where there was only Zeb and I runnnig the school, or us and one other teacher. But once the form 4's finished their exams, I was done with half of my classload, since I'm only teaching forms 3 and 4. And add into that the fact that is the equivilant to May of the American school year, so the form 1 and 3's were ready to be done (as were we).
We've also been continuing to look options of building a laboratory at our school. We were asked to help to try and find funding for a laboratory last spring. For the national exams, the biology and physical science tests have two parts-- a theory and a lab test. but without lab equipment, its hard to prepare students for the lab tests ( or even give the lab tests for that matter). And, without a lab building with proper security and storage space, its difficult to buy lab supplies. There are other villages around ours where there have formerly been PC volunteer teachers. A couple got grants to have buildings built, such as libraries or laboratories. I thing that this kind of set up the expectation that when a community gets a PCV, they get something cool and expensive built. Well, as we've been researching grants and building plans and material quotes, we have realized that most of the other PC building projects have been done 5-10 years ago. In that time, the amount of money available from most grants has stayed the same, while the cost of building materials here in Malawi has tripled or even quadrupled. So we've been trynig to determine a feasable way to build some sort of structure that will function as a laboratory. Teh long term plan is, if we can get it built and stocked, for me to work on compiling some sort of general laboratory manual. We are lucky to have a really good Malawian science teacher at our school, so we would then try to organise a lab training workshop for other science teachers in the area, as most have never even used basic lab equipment or chemicals. The idea is that then after we leave, and even if our other science teacher gets transfered to anotherschool (which happens very often here in Malawi, at the whim of the ministry of education), we can keep a pool of trained science teachers in the area, who could hopefully continue the anual trainings. We would also share resources with other schools who don't have labs. But first, we have to build the lab. I'll keep y'all updated as the issue either progresses or utterly fails.
And finally we've been working on preparing for Camp SKY. (okay, I haven't been doing much other than looking forward to it. other wonderful PCVs have been doing the work.) As I think I've mentioned before, it is a summer camp that our training group is putting on, and each volunteer brings his best students for a couple weeks of classes, field trips, and lots of fun stuff. We have also been planning for Shanes visit in December.

We've also had some shake ups in the last few months. In late August we were informed that the Peace Corps transit houses would be closing due to budget issues. So the place where we once could go and bake in a real oven and use flush toilets and take showers and watch DVDs was to be no more. the house in Mzuzu (closest to us) closed in September, and the house in Lilongwe willclose in January. We'll still have access to computers/inernet at the PC office in Lilongwe, but we'll just have to find our own lodging. It is a big adjustment, and a little sad to lose the houses, but overall I think its for the best. I didn't expect to have that luxury when I came here, so we'll do fine without it. I also think it was too easy to spend a little too much time there instead of at site, so Ithink this will help people to better integrate into their villages.
The second big news we recieved only a few weeks ago, when the ministry announced that they are shifting the school year from starting in January to starting in September (lke the US schools). To achieve this, they declared that the new school year this year would start on December 7th, just two weeks after the current term ends. All term breaks have been shortened from three weeks to one, and next "summer vacation" will also likely be only two weeks, so that the following year can start in Sept. So basically the students (and teachers) will have three years without a summer break, or any break of more than 2 weeks at a time. Crazy!
This of course has many frustrating implications. Firstly, camp Sky. We've had to shorten it from two weeks to only one. And, we'll have to go directly from teaching at camp to starting the new termthe following monday. Lots of volunteers had travel plans for Christmas-- we have Shane comingto visit-- which means missing the first week of class. The bigger problem though is that December is planting season. So with most of our students coming from families of sustanance farmers, they'll all be in the fields and not in class anyway. We're still just thinking out all of the implications of this change, but we can't do much other that go with it and make the best of it.

Well, that sums up the last three months of our lives. I hope that everyone is doing well. Feel free to make a post or send an email and let us know what is new with all of you. We're always curious to hear news from our friends and family back home. I hope you all have a great thanksgiving! Eat some turkey and cranberry sauce for me!!