Camp Sky and More!

I spent the last two weeks in the most beautiful part of Malawi, the original capitol city, Zomba. I went as a volunteer teacher to teach hand sewing at camp sky. Camp Sky is put together by the education sector of the Peace Corps. Two students (a male and female) are chosen from every secondary (high) school that has a Peace Corps volunteer at it. We find a place, this year Zomba Catholic boys school where we move in for two weeks.



The camp is 7 periods of 50 min classes for a total of 8 days. Core classes such as Mathmatics, Biology, English, and others. There is also business, health and hands on like pottery and hand sewing. I assisted in other classes like Health and Wellness, Performing Arts and Accounting and taught my one class of sewing. I had 22 students 8 male the rest female. I had only planned one project after all hand sewing takes time, but the students finnished the second class! So I ran to town and came up with a second project which they finnished the next class, so for the last class we talked about how and where they can get resources for sewing in their village and how they can make money from hand sewing. One of the things we did was a goat disecting session with the whole camp. We had two goats a male and a female that were disected, the kids enjoyed seeing and naming the different parts. We ended that day by not being wastfull and eating the goats for dinner.



Saturday halfway through the camp we rented three busses and drove out to Liwonde National Park where we met Peace Corps Enviornment Volunteer Julia. We went on a game drive through the park… until we got a bus stuck in the mud... after pushing it out we had to turn back but not before seeing lots of animals! We saw impala, bush bucks, water bucks, kudu, wart hogs, elephants (big and small), baboons, vervet monkeys… The day was cool and cloudyish so we were able to see many animals.



The last day of camp we had a disco party which is the Malawian way of saying a dance. For the dance I and several others collected loads of flowers to decorate and then when we had way too many I decided to make several lei. We made 13 of them with real plumeria flowers, it was fun and smelled so good... they didn't last very long though.




Now onto more exciting news…
When we returned home after Thanksgiving and Bryans knee surgery we found 6 boxes awaiting us at our home!!!!!! It was like Christmas morning. We got so excited so we decided that we should start a Care Package Update section of this blog, so if you look on the left you will find the color coated list. This will be where we list every package we recive here on out. We will list who sent it, the date we received it and our favorite item in the box… this is hard however because we are two different people and well sometimes we like different things and sometimes it is all so good we can never really agree.

We also want to thank the people who sent us the wonderful care packages! It is always so very awesome to receive something from home! Here is a picture of our neighbor kids playing with the game Trouble that Petra and Tiara sent, the children love it!



If you want to send something and just don’t know what to send you can check out our list of Things We Can Never Have Too Much Of (formerlly known as Wish List). The cool thing about this list is that they are all links to websites where you can purchase or just look at what we are talking about… even the teas!

We do not have any set plans for Christmas yet... but I will tell you it is so odd to be singing Christmas Carols and sweating so much because it is over 90 F! What we do will depend on if the rains start where we want to go. So far the rains have not come to our area but have in Machinji and Blantyre... lots of flooding. I do miss the cold weather... and ice even. We wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Happy Thanksgiving to All

We spent Thanksgiving day at the Ambassadors home swimming, playing football and eating pig! The day before we went to staff members houses to cook the sweets and savory foods, we baked cookies (chocolate and hazelnut). The cookies went fast, of course it doesn’t help that we ate them as they came out of the oven! Below is the picture of one of the two pigs being chopped in order to be served. All that remained at the end of the day where the heads...


We had a new addition to our family farm for a week and a half... a baby vervet monkey! Two men brought him to us at our home in the village trying to sell him to us. Of course we said no we can not buy a monkey but we did get out the camera and played with it for a little over an hour... finally our neighbor helped us talk the two men into leaving him with us, after all what were they going to do with it. After they left we asked our neighbor if he thought we might be able to find its mother in the bush, he said no, these monkeys are rare to see in our area and they are one of the only wild animals left so they are hunted and eaten. So the mother may not even be alive.




The monkey is an infant and over the time we had him his teeth started to come in. We found the only baby bottle in our area, and fed him milk and mangos... he really loves fruit, but had a hard time eating it because he had no teeth at first. He also had terrible hand eye coordination, but makes sense as he is an infant. We called him Ugeni which means thing or um in Chichewa. I also called him monkey britches. Our cat took a liking to him and would nap with him for hours and even bath him.


It was so much fun to have a monkey around but he was so much responsibility so we call our APCD who told us to bring him into Lilongwe and we could find him a new home at the nature sanctuary. They take in abandoned or injured animals and nurse them back to health then if they can be released back into the wild they are. So Wednesday morning we met a man who worked with the nature sanctuary who took the babe. It was sad to see him go, we had grown to love the little guy, but it was also a relief to have him taken in by someone who will take very good care of him.



The mango season is upon us! It is literally raining mangos every time the wind blows! We have been collecting giving and eating... well until just last week when we realized I am very allergic to mangos. Bryan cut up a bowl worth of them and he ate half then I ate half and then my face swelled up... fat lips swollen eyes and random spots all over that look like poison ivy. Actually mango sap has similar characteristics to poison ivy! So no more mangos for me... which is very sad seeing as it is literally raining mangos!

Bryan is back!

Bryan is back in Malawi! I was so glad to have him home! The doctors here said he had to stay in town till Tuesday (Monday is a holiday so the office is closed). He is taking it easy.

Remember I said I would post pictures of Lilongwe well here they are:

These are photos from the Lilongwe market. The Malawian venders stack the veggies and will sell you a stack for 40 kwatcha or in the case of most fruits they sell per fruit.

fish... also in stacks and smell horrendous and the flys love them. They are caught in the lake, sun dried, transported to the villages then sold. I don't like to eat the foods that stare back at me.

This is a view from one side of the market and river to the other. People have built their own bridges and charge 5 kwatcha to cross their bridge, so there are about 10 bridges that even Indiana Jones would probablly worry about while crossing. The greatest part is if you just walked a little further down you could cross the river on the road, for free!

This shows you an Azungu (People who are not Malawian or rich) trap. There are random holes or gutters all over the cities here with no warnings or covers. The one above opens into a cavern about 10 feet deep with standing water at the bottom. The hole is large enough for a person who is not paying any attention to where they are walking to fall into...

This is a chippies stand. Precut potatoes are fried then sold to you in a small plastic bag. They are a good snack but sometimes they are kindof soggy.

This is the curio market in Lilongwe, well actually just a few stands in the market to give you an idea of what types of things they sell. Wood carvings, paintings, jewlry, and even things made of stone.

Until next time! Cheers!

Bryan is doing alright

Bryan’s surgery went well, he is now recovering. He will be in South Africa through November 7 which is his last visit with the surgeon. Most likely they will send him back to Malawi the following day. He and I both are ready for him to be back. I feel like I am not upholding to my marriage vow… you know the part where you say “through sickness and in health” but I guess when saying the vow one does not say the fine print, “If the government separates you while in sickness it is ok to be apart” especially because we really want to be together in our village but it is sort of impossible to have knee surgery in the village… not to mention unsafe and far from sanitary. With Bryan in South Africa he can recover in a nice hotel room with good food (that I don’t have to cook) and in a non demanding atmosphere unlike our village.

It is very strange for me to be alone in Malawi. Most don’t think about this, especially other volunteer here because most volunteers come by themselves and live and work by themselves. Bryan and I however are not the same, we at one time in our lives wanted to join Peace Corps on our own but when we got hitched we did not even mention our desires to join until a year later when we found we both had the same desire. But it had changed from “I” want to join Peace Corps to “We” want to join Peace Corps. So we applied, joined, left the U.S., arrived in Malawi, went through training, and even got placed in a village… all together. Because of this and other reasons it is very hard for me to go back to our village without Bryan.

Lucky for me the office here needs my help. Our receptionist who previously did the newsletter has taken another job and so the newsletter has fallen to those who have never done one before so I have offered to help and they are glad so at least I have work to do here. Keeping busy is how I best handle being here by myself.

I have some cool pictures of random Lilongwe, Malawi. Hopefully I will be able to post some of those pictures soon. I think you will enjoy them.

Our new Gal

Here is our new girl Mwamboli (Mwam-bow-ly). She is such a sweet heart. You can see when we first got her how skinny she was. You could see her ribs even through all her fur. She is 9 – 11 months old and weighs 30 pounds. We do not have any papers on her or anything so when we visited the vet she just got updated on all her shots.



Now she is much happier and in only one week we have noticed a difference in her weight. We took here back to the village with us when we went back for Bryan to pack and I was surprised how the children loved her. Normally larger dogs scare Malawians, it was good to see they get along well.



Bryan is headed for South Africa for Medical purposes… He is having his knee checked out further with possible operation or something. Sorry I do not have a large medical vocabulary. Please keep him and myself (as I stay here) in your prayers.

Greatest Day Ever!

My birthday was better than could have ever been imagined! We met a fellow volunteer in Salima (Tim) and we hung out awhile then went to one of his favorite shops where he knows the owner and he gets him special request products like olives… When he found out it was my birthday he suggested we go to the lake, Sanga Bay. Before we could argue he said he knew a guy who manages a lodge on the lake and he had the phone in hand calling him. So it happened that this guy was on his way to Salima! So he took us back with him and we ate the amazing food at the restraint and then they surprised me with a cake his wife made! And if all that’s not enough they gave me a puppy! That was the best day ever!

So here are some pictures of the puppy and our cat. They are about the same age and get along great! The dogs name is Mphatso (M-pot-so) meaning in Chichewa Gift. Her father looked like Benji and her mother was what I would call the most adorable village dog in the world but Bryan says she is some sort of English Breed, so who knows.

Sharpvale has become very very hot… Of 100 F during the days and not much lower at night. We had to swich bedrooms because the sun set on the side of the house we where sleeping on. We work early mornings 5 to 11 then rest read or hang out in the shade until 3 to 5 when we can work again. Our mango trees are getting riper… still not ready to be eaten but we are daily given one from other trees in our area.

Our gardens are mostly complete as far as the double digging and we even planted out our strawberries in a round raised garden. Our neighbors gardens are doing great! Better than ours even, he has squash, yard long bean, pumpkin, mustard, spinage, cabbage and more!

Bryan and Mr. Liwonde invented a new addition or remodeling to our chim. We no longer have to squat over a hole, now we can sit… I did not take a picture of the finished project but here is what it sort of looks like.
Also as promised here is a picture of our three sheep and our chickens… only now we only have one remaining… we will try again this November.

Thank you for all the birthday wishes! I think they came true...

Keah's Big Day!

Well, It’s Monday, October 01, 2007! Keah’s ¼ of a century old today! We’re in Salima to do a little re-supply and hope to get on a bus back today, but if we miss a bus we’ll stay here and go back tomorrow... which is what I’d like to do anyway... it’s nice to be back at site, but it’s been hard to do anything special for Keah at site... We didn’t do anything special for our 2 year anniversary and then we didn’t have anything planned for her birthday...

I hope to take her to Liwonde National Park soon to visit another PCV and also to kinda do a little celebration for the two we’ve missed... Liwonde is supposed to be on par with any of the really amazing game reserves in other countries but just not very well known... on an international scale at least... that seems to be how it is here... This place is like a lost paradise that no one seems to know about and I think that’s part of the beauty of Malawi... It’s not overrun by tourists... Well, maybe at the Lake but that’s it.

This place has amazing climbing all over the whole country and it’s very unknown... I’m riding down the road going through Dedza district and my mouth is watering seeing all the granite rock... my mouth is watering and me with no ropes! It is a very, very sad situation, let me tell you! I’d love to put together some climbing trips throughout Malawi! Another amazing situation is the face of Malawi’s largest mountain is the largest rock face in all of Africa!

Check out Mount Mulanje! It is an amazing place! As soon as my knee gets worked out I hope Keah and I will go do a little hiking there! They have Cabins at hikeable intervals all the way up the mountain and around the top of the mountain. Some PCVs go up the mountain for a week or two and hike the whole time...

Life in Malawi

So we are in Blantyre... have been now for a week. We arrived last Monday so Bryan could meet an orthopedic surgeon. He prescribed physical therapy for a week, then after 4 weeks of exercising at home go back and reevaluate. This is not a bad deal but we had decided to actually pack very light for a short trip into the city, and well now we where running out of clothes... so I left Wednesday afternoon for home to talk to the neighbors and pack some more clothes. It was a short trip, I left the next morning to come back.

We are enjoying the electricity (which goes off every evening) and the running water (which is only on from 3 to 5 am but luckily we have a tank to store up water). Showers have not exactly been anything close to warm, but at least I do not have to pour it over my head cup by cup.
We had a list of things to look for while we are here. One thing was plants, seedlings of: strawberries, mulberries, mint, peach, and we found some grape vine! We also picked up some seeds, marigolds (to keep the bugs out of our veggies) and a packet of mixed eatable flowers. We found some very good nurseries, even a local nursery market with very good prices. Getting our little plant collection back to site will be interesting... We also where looking for a cat, because we have mice in our house which being in the house automatically promotes a mouse to rat status according to villagers. They say the only way to get rid of them is a cat. So day number 3 in the city we found a man with a box of kittens, and so we now have a kitten. It was so very small when we got it, one month. We have started calling him mavuto meaning troubles. We are still looking for a dog. We do not really want a village dog, but maybe somewhat of a pure breed. There are a lot of german shepherds here, they are good to train so maybe we will find a pup somewhere.

Pictures, here they are… lets start with the extension of the yard. While I was in America Bryan had our fence extended so we will have room to garden. In the first picture Bryan is standing at the back of our fence and in the second the picture is taken from where Bryan was standing of me.

So we have more room, now we are filling it. We start by building a summer hut and then a chicken collar with fenced in yard. We even got hybrid egg laying chicks, 17 of them… but they came sick with Newcastle disease and so now we only have 8 left.

Here are some pics of what we have been doing or seeing lately. Top left we went to a village to see the mushroom farming the women are successfully doing. Top Center; women cooking the largest pot of nsima I’ve ever seen and scooping it out with a bowl into a basket! Top Right; is me learning to cook nsima on a much smaller scale… not I cook it every day. Bottom Left is our neighbors cooking tobwa a home made beer that they drink before it becomes alcoholic (within the first 5 days). Look how much they made! It was for a becoming of age ceremony for the neighbor girl. Finally the last image is Bryan and I at a wedding party being the money changers and counters. At Malawian wedding parties you have to pay to dance.

Finally we have the creatures around us… A large chameleon we keep finding around our yard, Bryan holding the dead black mamba and its head on the end of the panga knife… he killed it, one of three within a week. The kitten is our new baby, and lots of trouble… the dog is a fellow Peace Corps volunteers, she is a very big dog, a ridgeback. The center photo is our dove collar and some of the doves. We have 2 breeding pairs and 2 very young chicks.

We are back in a City

Hey there all our faithful readers. We are back in Lilongwe, we just completed our IST, In Service Training. We have been in Country for 6 months today! That is hard to believe! We have 20 more months to go. So back to IST. We have been living in Dedza for two weeks where it is so very cold and trying not to pass around the colds to the 20 volunteers or the 17 Malawian counterparts. A lot of us got sick, just because of the extreme temperature differences from our home sites.

We are staying in Lilongwe till Tuesday so Bryan can meet the doctor for his knee, please keep him in your prayers. I will try to post pictures in the next day or two. It is so good to get messages from you all!

The Two of Us Back Together Again!

Hello Family!

Keah and I just came to Salima to do a little resupply and go to the bank, but guess what happen... We forgot our bank card... the whole reason for coming all the way to Salima is it is the only place near us where we can get money. Opps!

Well, we met a friend here and he loaned us some money so we could do anything we need to do for the next few weeks! Thank God for friends! We are in the process of buying some hybrid chickens, about 9 hens and one rooster, and some rabbits... we already acquired some doves and a dove collar..

We have a terrible protein deficiency in the village, which I think is leading to us being sick quit often. When our body is lacking the protein it needs to stay healthy, what do you expect...

But we are very, very happy to be back together! We really missed each other and being together helps when trying to recover from kusegula memba (diarrhea... yucky!)...

What else is going on? Not a lot... well... Ok... we are doing sooooo much on our house to make it our home! We are building demba (gardens) left and right! We’ll get some updated pictures next time we have a good connection!

We are really loving living in the village. We would not have come to Salima if we didn’t need to go to the bank... and then the bank didn’t work out... but zimatchatika (things happen!)

I (Keah) am back in Malawi! I made it safely, thank you for all the prayers and thoughts... they were what got me here. I was so happy to see Bryan I cried! I know I am silly, but very happy silly person!

We are headed back to the village now so it will be awhile before we are at a computer again. We are so happy we have transportation!!!! Yippeee

Thankyou all again and tilll next time... tionna (see you later)

Keah is on her way back to Malawi. She left Oklahoma City Thursday morning. She arrived in South Africa Friday afternoon. She has a layover there and will fly on to Malawi on Sunday. Thank you all for you prayres. She has recovered and is doing great. She is medically released to do whatever she feels able to do.

Both Keah and Bryan were ready to be together again!

if you have not seen the pictures Keah put on the sight while she was home, be sure to scroll to the bottom of the page and see them!

Posted by suzet(Keah's mom)

clearing some unintended confusion

I guess it is time for an update from one of us…

I (Keah) am back in the U.S.A. I returned for a short vacation for a family wedding… My family pulled together enough money for me to return, but sadly not enough for both. So I arrived Wednesday June 13. I was very busy with bridal showers, parties, digging around in our (once believed to be organized) packing to find things to take back with me, visiting family all over the state, and the wedding itself and the day before I was to fly out (six days later) my mom had scheduled me an appointment with my gynecologist upon my request.

The doctors found a 7.5 cm ovarian cyst, so the endless phone calls began, trying to reach Peace Corps Office of Medical Services (OMS), my in Country Doctor to find out what we should do. The next morning OMS told me I was to be put on medical hold, stay here and have the surgery done as soon as possible. So I called Bryan who was still in our village to tell him I could not come back yet. The outpatient surgery was last Thursday, June 21. I have since been recovering and taking it easy.

Yesterday we talked with OMS again and they told us they want me to have a two week recovery here so… I will be here till around July 5.

Let me show and tell you a little about our home in Malawi Africa. Our house is a simple 2 bedroom a storage room and a living/dinning room. The walls are brick with a tile roof held up by blue gum tree poles (termite infested ones). Every room has one window (except the living/dinning room which has two). All the windows have bars on them. The doors all have locks and they each have a different key. The keys look so cool the are the large skeleton keys! They are not fun to carry around though… We have three small brick and grass thatched buildings behind our house. One is the kitchen where we cook over a three stone fire, a bafa or bathing room where obviously we bath (but with a basin and cup) and a chimbuzi a.k.a. toilet a.k.a. hole in the ground. Here are some pictures to help you see…



These first two pictures show the back of and behind our house. You can see the original path of bricks to our bafa (the small building we bath in). The poles in the ground are the beginning structure of the gazebo Bryan built with the help of Mr. Liwonde. Below you can see what the area looked like when I left two weeks ago. The gazebo complete only missing all the plants to vine up it. The single brick path now fills under the gazebo. There is also a drying rack for dishes in front of our kitchen. Behind the gazebo you might be able to see a short fence without a door on it, this is our kitchen garden. The tree you can see is a mature masow (I have no idea how to spell it right and I do not know the English name for it) tree. It is producing its small tart fruits that taste like crab apples only smaller.



These next two pictures show you the before and after of behind our bafa where the bathing water drains out to. Originally it was just a small pit. Bryan made the pit much larger and made a horse shoe shaped mound of dirt around it on which he planted banana and papaya trees. The pit in the middle we also put the leaves we sweep from the yard so it is our compost pile.



The next two images are of the North West corner of the yard. A smaller sweeter type of mango tree now holds our laundry line. Bryan also built an herb garden in the shape of a spiral for easy watering and care. We had extra papaya trees and so we planted them along the fence.



These photos show our current food storage on our small table and chairs. We have ants very badly and so we have to keep everything that we want to eat off the floor. We got a matt to set on the floor and eat on, but we are both tired of sitting on the floor all the time and look forward to when we can use our chairs to sit on!



We are having a food cabinet built so once we get it we will move all the food into it and we will use our table and chairs. We also had a book shelf made for all our books and papers. It was the first piece of furniture we got for our home, next the food cupboard, then something for our clothing, a couch or cushioned chair, and a bed…



Feel free to leave comments or questions, I will try to respond or even post more picture in the next few days.