The day after our return from Nkhata Bay, we didn’t go to work but instead spent the day in town, going to meetings for the library project, renewing visas, going to the clinic, and buying groceries since our house was empty post-trip. Was relaxing at home after running around all day, when suddenly I heard a knock on the door. Dragged myself up grumbling (unplanned visitors here 95% of the time are only asking for something, not just being pleasant). Open the door. And who is there?! VITU! With his older brother. Apparently he had been crying for us all day so his family finally got fed up and just brought him to us. So his brother left him with us and went off to watch a football game. Oh Malawi and your different ways of parenting. Laura was on the phone with her parents so I was left on my own for a while. Now I love children. But Vitu is stubbornly difficult. Always seems to be bored or unhappy no matter what you do. So I gave him a tootsie roll which he shoved whole into his mouth lol. Decided to take him on a walk because nothing in our house is kid-friendly. Meandered over to the summer hut in search of someone who could interpret so we didn’t have to sit in silence. As usual though he pretty much refused to speak despite the teachers’ attempts. Mlotha made me feel better though by telling me that as long as I kept giving him hugs and smiling at him, he was very happy. After a good while, it was finally time for Banda to be out of classes and since he’s the only one who can ever get Vitu to talk, we went in search of him. Swung Vitu up on my shoulders and thoroughly enjoyed him choking me/messing up my hair while we walked along. He even asked me later in the visit to carry him like that again. I was so shocked to hear his little voice! Found Banda and went back to the house where we continued to bribe Vitu with American food. Beef jerky, Cheeze-its, and Raisinets lol. He loved all of it of course. Banda’s face was priceless as he tasted the beef jerky and immediately passed it along to Vitu, who spent the rest of the visit doublefisting about 4 servings of beef jerky. That kid was content. Eventually we had to go though since we had plans for the evening, so we put Vitu on the back of Banda’s bike and bike-taxied him home. And this is where things turned not so pleasant. He immediately started throwing a fit, screaming hysterically for a good 30 minutes, writhing on the ground in agony. Oh my lord it was awful. And it happened again when we saw him a few days later. So I’m pretty sure that if he keeps that up, we won’t be visiting anymore. At least I won’t. It’s just not fair to his parents to leave them with a screaming child who refuses to listen or eat.

Laura and I tried again to go to the airport for drinks with Banda and Raymond, but alas again it was closed. Terrible luck with that. We even went early but to no avail. We did have a fun walk though and have come to realize that Raymond understands everything we say. This is not necessarily a good thing lol. Usually if there is something scandalous we want to say, Laura and I will just say it really fast so that it is lost to any snoopy ears. But not with Raymond… his giggle lets us know every time he has caught something scandalous! Fortunately, we’ve also come to realize that we feel free around Raymond and Banda in a way that we don’t usually around other Malawians. For all of the great friendships I’ve made here with teachers and workers and Brothers, they’re the only two where I don’t feel the need to censor or make sure I’m being proper. So that’s lovely. I’ll be sad when Raymond’s student teaching is up at the end of March – hopefully he’ll be posted in Karonga! Dare to dream lol.

Unfortunately I did spend most of last week very sick. As in – not going to work because I feel like I’m going to throw up every moment of the day – kind of sick. Definitely the most sick I’ve ever been here – or at least the longest and most consistent throughout the day. Being sick in Malawi is pretty awful, especially when the power goes out leaving you with no fan and a heat-box of a house. Spent a lot of time laying on the concrete floor, trying to get comfortable. Adorable moment as Banda brought over an Orange Fanta “for the patient.” My need for productivity did win out though since we were having dinner guests the first night, so I spent my sick day alternating between laying down with bouts of nausea and making banana bread, chocolate chip cookies, cheeseburgers, French fries (from scratch – unpeeled potatoes), pickles, and beans. Side note: So proud of myself for figuring out how to make banana bread! It tastes wonderful, even Banda likes it, and it’s going to make Laura and me very fat over the coming months because we snack on it every time we walk into the room!

Like I said, we were having dinner guests – Banda, Kalua, and the 3 student teachers - so I ended up making dinner for 7 despite my feeling crappy. I’ve never cooked alone for that many people before so it was bit daunting. Also, I’ve never made hamburgers before. They turned out pretty rare, close to raw for poor Raymond I think. But the boys powered through, eating all of their burgers despite the bad cooking and that they just think our food is so bizarre. It was pretty adorable watching them try to assemble their burgers though, keeping in mind that they had never even heard of hamburgers before. Had a fun time telling them how to layer and watching them squirt ketchup all over the place. Props to Raymond for creativity – he put the fries onto the burger itself. And to Kalua for cuteness – after hearing that putting cheese on the burger made it a cheeseburger, he wanted to know if putting cucumbers on it made it a “cucumberger.” They also must have thought dessert was strange because I made cookies but they were the soft kind, my preference, but here all cookies are hard. But despite the strange foods they seemed to have a fun time and my heart just about overflowed with happiness as I stood there and watched them laughing and eating on the couch. Love them.

So how many other crazy activities can Alyson do while feeling ridiculously sick? How to top a 7 person dinner party? Well, how about spending 2 hours sweeping water out of a house? That’ll work. While waiting for my Communications class on Thursday morning, Laura suddenly realized that she had left a tap open in the bathroom. So she ran home while I anxiously awaited the news. It turns out that there was about 2 inches of water flooded in her bedroom as well as the bathroom! So I ran home to help and had to search Chaminade’s campus for brooms since we had nothing with which to move the water. Thank goodness for Kalua who ended up missing his class in order to help me find them! And his reaction when he saw the great flood of 2011? “Oh that is just too much!” Because, you know, 1 inch would have been a pleasure :) So Laura and I spent a couple of hours sweeping water out of her room, through the living room, and out the back door. We called it “Lake Azungu” – “White People’s Lake.” Luckily nothing was ruined – only soaked – and our floors are now clean! Even at the time it was funny lol but now I can barely type for giggling.

Other than all of those exciting moments, Laura and I have also had some really nice moments of just sitting at home, having long chats about different things in life. Really nice. And she’s started getting into the swing of African cooking more, so that’s also been great to have someone to share in the meal prep tasks… it’s always more enjoyable when there are 2 sets of hands! Also rekindled my love for “Mama Mia” as we had a great night watching and singing along to that!

Signed my first contract at MIRACLE – exciting moment! Got my first paycheck – not so exciting lol. $130 a month, baby. Oh student loans, pay yourself back.

Took Raymond on his first trip to the lake with us and Banda. I think he had a fun time lol. Great excitement was had as a singing group was recording a music video while we were there. Pretty funny to watch them dance in the waves all serious-like. Also, scandalous moment as there was a Malawian couple who first was making out in the water and then moved inland to literally lay on top of each other on the beach with the waves lapping up on them. It was like a movie lol. And so distracting we couldn’t help but watch. Have never seen a Malawian couple give each other a peck kiss in public or even hug, much less have a full out make-out session. Poor Raymond was curled up in the fetal position he was so uncomfortable about it! Raced bike taxis home – Banda won, the skinny brat, even while balancing a tray of 30 eggs. My guy put up a brave fight, surging out in front for the early lead, but he didn’t quite understand the concept of “slow and steady wins the race.” Passed a truck that was stuck on the walk home and was suddenly deluged by people yelling “Madame!” and launching themselves on me for hugs. Remember that it was pitch dark at this point so I had no idea who people were lol. Only Cobby, who we could tell by his loudness and cologne. Fun to see him randomly since it had been over a week since our last meeting and I was missing the kid.

Went with Clifford to see some land that I might buy. As mentioned before, I’m going to build a house here in Karonga. It’s very difficult to find anything for rent that has electricity and water that isn’t more than I make in a month. And you can build a small house for about $2,500. Huge chunk out of my summer work savings, but it’ll pay itself back in 2-3 years. And if I have to move at some point I can always rent it to people. So it’s a good investment. By “small” I mean 23 feet by 20 feet for the whole house, so that will be 2 bedrooms plus a large sitting room that can eventually be sectioned off into a 3rd bedroom for the 10 children I’m planning to have :) Just kidding, take a breath people. But I digress. It’s tiny by American standards, but for me it’s just right. One of the bedrooms will be a make-shift kitchen and then if I do have kids one day, I will build another room outside to house the kitchen. There’s not going to be a toilet inside because that is too expensive. Instead I’ll have a pit latrine, but I’ll do it up nice – going to build a seat for it so that it’s comfortable. Also the shower will be detached outside. I’m excited! Once we get the land, it should go fairly quickly – maybe a month to build everything, although waiting for the electrical hookup sounds like it might take much longer.

Anyways, back to the land. I want to buy from a friend so that hopefully they will give me a fair price. So we went with Clifford whose father has a huge plot that he’s willing to sell part of. Walked for only 15 minutes which is great that it’s so close to campus. And I was also pretty charmed by the beauty of the area. I could definitely see myself living there. The plot itself is not as beautiful as the rest, but when you’re surrounded on all 4 sides by it, I think that’s enough. There are hills behind, a rice field in front and huge hundred-year-old trees on the neighboring plots. It’s like a little oasis in the generally unattractiveness that is Karonga bohme (town). So we’ll see what the price is – hopefully it’s right. He’s also taking me to see another piece of land that belongs to Chief Mwanganda, so I’m excited for that as well as to see the Chief again, who we knew before and who has to approve my land purchase :)

Lazy Sundays – my favorite day of the week here in Malawi. Even beats Beach Saturdays! Lazed about in bed until 2 pm and then spent the afternoon being enjoyably productive. Also got to talk to Mum for the first time in a long time and had a nice chat with Sara, even though we failed at Skype and had to move to Facebook Chat. I have also begun again in earnest teaching myself Chitumbuka because Dorcas told me I was going to be a terrible mother who cannot even understand my own children. Now I don’t believe her snarkiness for a second, but it did make me want to work harder at teaching myself. So I’m going through the Peace Corps grammar book that we have, slowly working my way through the lessons and trying to memorize vocabulary. Banda’s started helping too, talking to me in vernacular as much as possible. He’s good about it – he speaks slowly, doesn’t laugh, and is willing to repeat until I get it. None of which happens with the other teachers or students. So there’s a lot of “what?”s going on, but some of it is sticking and at the very least, I’m getting over my shyness of using the language. Because before even if I thought I knew how to respond in vernacular, I was too embarrassed about stuttering my way through or mispronouncing something, so I wouldn’t even try. But now it’s getting easier rolling off the tongue.