Weekly Update

The past week has been fairly calm. There was another nutrition training planning meetiing last Friday where we made some more definite plans. We decided to postpone the training until the end of January since two of the trainers will be taking leave in December and the beginning of January. Also World AIDS Day and Christmas would make it difficult to plan a training in December. We've also created a detailed budget and come up with a venue. So, things are slowly falling into place.

The first World AIDS Day planning meeting will be held this Thursday. I asked the DAC who was supposed to organize the meetings and he said our office. He seemed surprised that I would even ask. I guess I'm just confused as to what he really does and what the office is supposed to do. Hopefully I'll figure it out before I leave.

I went to a traditional dancing event this past Sunday. To be honest, I really just went to see my friend Immaculate who was down from college in Mzuzu. I haven't seen her since the end of September when she left for the new trimester. Unfortunately I wasn't able to run into her since there were so many people there and there was not cell phone reception. But, the Lomwe tribe, of which the current president is a member, created a group last year to preserve their cultural heritage. I was told that the Lomwe people are from the south but with the creation of the tea estates a lot of people from the northern part of the country moved south to work. Many people spoke Chichewa and eventually the Lomwe language started to die out. Now only grandparents speak the language. So, the cultural preservation group decided to start a school where they would teach the Lomwe language and customs. The event on Sunday was a celebration of the anniversary of the formation of the group.

I now have a Chichewa language teacher. I asked my friend Blessings who used to be a teacher at Thyolo Secondary School to recommend a Chichewa teacher for me (they teach Chichewa and English in the schools here). It was a very quick turnaround since I only asked him yesterday and the teacher stopped by my office today. Hopefully we can start lessons this week. I tried just learning by talking to people but that's not the way that I learn. Also my new teacher was thrilled to learn that I was a Peace Corps Volunteer because he has already worked with three other volunteers in the past.

Lucy and Lake of Stars

Lucy had a big scare this past weekend. I left her in by bathroom and asked my landlord to check on her and feed her. Saturday night she fell in the toilet and she wasn't pulled out until Sunday morning when my landlord went to feed her. Poor kitten! She spent the night in the cold water trying to escape but was too tiny to leave. My landlord put her in the sun to help her warm up and tried to get her to eat but she wasn't interested. She's a lot better now and is eating and drinking a little. Hopefully she's too afraid of the toilet and water to jump in it any more.

In happier news, Lake of Stars was amazing. Lots of fantastic music and fun dancing. The Black Missionaries were just great: such an energetic show. There was an artist from the UK named Sway who was pretty good, but he talked too much and mostly it was about himself. Then there were just a bunch of DJs. It was fun dancing music but I liked the live music better. The beach was great, very relaxing.

Update

The nutrition training preparation is going well. Four of the nurses from both the hospital and MSF came for a planning meeting on Friday. We decided on tentative dates for the training (the 1st and 3rd weeks of December - which could be a problem because of World AIDS Day). Two of the nurses are also certified trainers of nutrition education so that means that we already have trainers as well as a curriculum. Preparing the budget has been a little difficult since in theory the community should contribute to at least 10% of the total cost, but this isn't necessary. So I'm sure we can work around it. We also have a venue (a Catholic church with a reception hall) and there are about 24 nurses who will be trained in all. I've been working on the application form and trying to get some statistics from both the hospital and MSF. So many people have left this week though, which makes me glad that we were able to have the meeting last week.

In other news, at least in Europe and Africa Mother's Day will be this Thursday. So that will be a holiday from work. I'll be visiting my friend Lisa in Ntcheu and then we'll be going to a music festival in Mangochi. It's called Lake of Stars (because it's always on Lake Malawi and there are famous (?) musicians). I'm really excited to go and listen to some great music. There will be at least one group from Malawi (Black Missionaries), hopefully more.

I've named my cat Lucy after "I Love Lucy". She is hilarious, just like the actress and plus I love the name. She's still crazy - sometimes she just runs laps around the house for no reason. She's getting fatter though, which is good because she was really small when I got her 2 weeks ago.

There was a District AIDS Coordination Committee (DACC) metting yesterday with the main objective of planning World AIDS Day. We decided to create a planning committee and wanted to only have 10 people. But then some people decided that representatives from departments like police and monitoring and evaluation should be included. Oddly, no one mentioned the District AIDS Coordinator's office. Maybe I there's something I don't understand (i.e. the office might not be good at planning or securing funding ) but I thought that would be the first department named. So I did and I think I'm the representative. I'm actually really glad to be on the committee because one of the tasks is securing funding. So maybe we can research grants or use some of the ones that Peace Corps can provide. In any case, the DACC decided to stop sitting around waiting for funding from the National AIDS Commission because it usually doesn't come on time if at all.

It rained for the first time last week. It was really nice to smell the wet dirt here in Africa again. I don't know what it is, but there's a certain post-rain smell here that I've never experienced anywhere else. I guess the rainy season might have started, or it might have just been a freak storm.

Oh, I attended an interesting meeting on climate change last week. For at least half of the meeting we debated whether or not there was climate change. Then someone said that if we agreed that climate change did not exist then there was no point to having the meeting and we should just leave. Finally, people agreed that there was, indeed, climate change and that someone should make some laws about it. Then the meeting ended. I asked the meeting facilitator afterwards what he would do with the notes from the meeting. He said that he would send them to the national environmental office (or something like that) and that they would compile them and maybe make some decisions or laws.

Projects

The internet has been out at the District Assembly for the past two weeks, so that's the reason for the delay in the posting. I'm in Lilongwe now trying to get some work done. One of the things I'm trying to do is get some funding for the nutrition education training project I mentioned in my last post. My boss at Peace Corps was really receptive and seemed to think it'd be fairly simple to receive funding for the project. He's really ambitious and thinks we could have everything ready to do the training by mid-November. I'm thinking it probably won't happen until December or January. But it will happen and that's all that matters.
I have a cat now, I got her last weekend. She's a bit small, maybe too small but she'll survive. She's 5-6 weeks old and I was really worried the first night because she refused to eat and she just kept crying. Finally after force-feeding her (sorry Amy) every few hours she finally started to eat and now won't stop. She's ridiculous: she doesn't know what shadows are and tries to attack them, she falls over sometimes for no reason and she climbs up my legs if I'm wearing pants and then cries when she gets stuck halfway. Silly cat.
I've made some more friends at the Assembly since my friend Immaculate went north to Mzuzu for college. They're mostly guys (in fact, I think they all are), but that's not very surprising since most of the people who work at the Assembly are men. We talk about life and make jokes (sarcasm, unfortunately is not as appreciated here as it is in the U.S.).
It's getting a little warmer in Thyolo but not as warm as it is here in Lilongwe or even Blantyre. The people who live in Thyolo say that it is usually pretty cool, even during the hot season. Well, at least compared to the rest of the country. So, I am relieved because the place where I lived in Togo got very, very, very hot. Sometimes it was hard to fall asleep at night.
I took some pictures and had every intention of putting them up on my blog since I have a fast internet connection here in the captial, but I forgot the gadget (don't know what it's called) for downloading them onto the computer. But I promise that I will put them up soon.