It does not rain every day or even for the whole day when it does, mostly it pours for half an hour then its done. We are not growing the local staple maize, but we are growing soya, rice (we purchased a plot in Zomba) and sweet corn. So not many people here have ever tasted sweet corn and we grew it. Imagine non hybrid sweet corn from Oklahoma that was planted out in a field 5 kilometers away on a hillside with no ridging, fertilizer or weed pulling... and it produced the best corn I have ever eaten! It took two months unlike the three months the local maize takes so it did not cross pollinate. We only harvested 4 cobs to eat, the rest we are letting dry out to replant! Our neighbors could not believe the amazing taste and fast growing season. They want to plant it everywhere!
Our gardens around our house have Chinese cabbage, leaf lettuce, sunflower, tomatoes, beans and more to come. We are hopping to plant sweet corn next to the house so we can eat our own fresh corn. Malawians always let their corn dry out, not much is eaten fresh. This picture is Mr. Liwonde among the sweet corn, notice how short it is compared to the maize in the back ground.
Home update
The rains have encouraged us to make gutters on our house for water catchment. Bryan put them on and then it didn’t rain for 2 weeks... but finally it did and when it did it filled the large drum in 15 minutes! I ran out in the down pour to scoop water into other buckets!
The comfort in our home has increased a whole lot. We got a new mattress on our bed... nothing fancy, in fact it is just 6 inch covered foam. We also got seat cushions. We bought 4 foam squares and material to have them covered in the village. It cost 25 kwatcha per cover... not even a whole dollar together!
The termites, rains and children had taken such a toll on our back gate that it fell apart so Bryan and Mr. Liwonde made a new different kind. Crazy to think what Mr. Liwonde is using to cut the grasses... look carefully...
Yup Mom that’s the durable guaranteed T.V. kitchen knife you sent with us!
The animal side of our farm has again increased, we are trying out the chickens again. We went to a place called Mkalongwe Farms and purchased 50 hybrid egg laying chicks all 6 – 12 weeks old. They are older then the first 13 we had. We also purchased some anti stress medicine [as if putting 50 chick in a box on my head to walk across town then in the bottom of a (Malawian version) red carpet bus then walking with them on my head another 3 kilometers to our house in the dark were stress] and we also wanted a general antibiotic only the one we were recommended to turned out to not be general. We just wanted to protect the little guys from the strange village diseases. Instead we overdosed them on some medicine that they didn’t need. Their eyes started swelling and closing and two of the smaller ones went blind in both and therefore died. We talked to the local animal advisor and to a friend and now they are getting better! The eyes are going back to normal! I think we are down 4 or 5, but there are still plenty more!
Mavuto has found himself a wife and she had three black kittens... but they are not ours, they belong to the Nkook family, thank God!
We have three rabbits, a male and 2 females, they are young so no babes yet. We are down to 5 Doves (aka pigeons) and the Goat and Sheep are fine.
Mwomboli is looking so very good! See for yourself, here is a picture of her when we first got her and now.
Mphatso has joined mwomboli in the fenced in pen for the days and out at nights, only she is never just free... she just likes to bark... must have terrier in her...
Last June when I went back to the U.S.A. I got material to give to the women of the families around us... I never posted pictures, well here they are. The two women together are sisters Mrs. Liwonde, and Loveness. Left of Mrs. Liwonde is one of her three daughters Mary. The baby is the youngest of Loveness’s two children Caroline. The older women is the Agogo Akazi which literally translated is respected elder wife. She is a grandmother to Mrs. Liwonde and Loveness. The other two are also granddaughters, only younger, Ida and Genus. They are the Nkook daughters that live in the first house. This house is full of trouble... the father is a drunk the two sons lie and steal (a lot more lately), and Genus just had a baby at the age of 14... we are pretty sure she took pills or something to abort the baby only she was 7 months along so she now has a pre mature baby who is so very tiny. None of the 4 go to school, they decide themselves if they want to go or not and now that Genus is married she is not allowed and the others just don’t go. We have been encouraging them all to go and we are so happy that Ida is actually trying to go.
We are doing alright, especially now. You see we had been pretty down and well sometimes depressed because our assignment just doesn’t match with our skills and knowledge. We would have really liked to be next to or in a park/reserve to work with the management and use our degrees... but we have decided we have been sent to the Sharpvale area for a reason and we will do whatever we can for the people here while we are here till April 2009. We will extend a third year and pretty much get to choose where we want to go... so we can work with a park/reserve for the final year. This is better anyway because we do not want to run the park we just want to better the place and then let them do their thing!
We did our first visit to other Peace Corps Volunteers village and homes. Thursday we visited Susan in Nkhota khota. She is an Environment volunteer who came into Malawi with us. Here are some pics of her home and such.
Susan has been working with her local primary school(grade school) on getting more than their one school block. She also has set up pen pal writing with some of the students and here she is presenting the head master with some writing supplies.
Bryan taught the children how to play the card game 21! They love it!
Had to include this photo taken at our home of the kids playing with the huge playing cards sent from Mamma Payne that the kids absolutly love!
