I’m not sure how I feel about this blog anymore. Most days I have so many thoughts swirling around in my head and I tell myself that I need to update the blog and yet I cannot force myself to sit down and do it. I suppose I should since it helps to get out all of the emotions and yet I still delay. I guess in principle though it’s still a good thing since I end up pondering things in a more meaningful way as I try to sort out the conflicting emotions and implications of some of the things I plan to write about. Anyways, apologies.

My birthday was at the beginning of July. Am now 24. I feel old. I thought I wouldn’t feel any different after 22, but I must say, 24 does feel older. Don’t know why. Maybe it’s also that I’m 2 years out of college… truly an adult, dare I say?! Anyways, my birthday was a crazy day. So typically Malawian. We had our weekly shopping in town like always. But Ms. Kim was with us and she is not a patient lady so it was hurried and irritable. Bah. Picked up some nsima and beef to bring home for lunch. Turned out to be a great decision because the power was out all day. So Banda and I just laid around all morning, with him asking me about a hundred questions to get me to reflect on my 23 years of living. It was really nice. Although clearly I need to have a better memory as I couldn’t think of many answers. Side note – my memory is beyond awful. I can’t remember hardly anything from my childhood and have some worrisome gaps in recent history too… makes me kind of nervous for my future actually. Anyways, that was probably the best part of my day.

After a while Brother Innocent called and asked if we wanted to go to Dickson’s wedding. I was glad because I’d been bugging him about it all morning since I wasn’t willing to pay for a taxi and thus wasn’t going to go if the brothers didn’t. So we got a ride with them. I really didn’t want to spend my birthday at a wedding in a sweltering building where no one’s speaking English but I knew it was important that I go given all of the hoopla about the chitenje and me being ignored and such. I’m glad we ended up going! Banda did a great job translating and explaining so I wasn’t too confused. Wedding receptions here are very different. There’s no food. No cake. No speeches. No real dancing. Anyone who wants to shows up. Basically the whole point of it is that people throw money at the bride and groom. It’s their starting-out pot. Most couples make enough to pay for the wedding and then some. So it was a little strange at first but I actually ended up having a great time dancing around the groom with my fellow MIRACLE teachers and students, throwing money at his head.

Banda and I were both ready to call it a day before the brothers were. So we got a taxi. Oi. The car broke down 3 times on the way home. I was itching mad because the guy had already pissed me off in the depot, trying to charge us triple on account of my skin color. Some days it gets to me more than others. But he was the only car there. Oh and the 2nd time it broke, he muttered “This is causing me a lot of trouble here.” Oh bite me buddy. Your car is a piece of crap and we’re not complaining at all and will still end up paying you. If your car isn’t up to par, then don’t try to use it. Causing you trouble, my foot. But I held it in because poor Banda doesn’t like it when I yell at people :) and I was trying to stay all zen. But that basically collapsed on the 3rd breakdown as he started dumping buckets of water into the car engine. Even I know enough to know that that’s not gonna work buddy. And then the car started smoking. And I decided it was time for us to get out. The guy just sheepishly took the money. And we walked away. Thoroughly enjoyed the walk home! It was nice to just be the two of us which is always good for my mood. Chattered away and got some cherry plum. Made tuna salad for dinner since the power was still gone. The following Sunday ended up being more like my birthday. Lazed about all day. Still no power. But eventually the water came back (it’d been out for a good 4 days) so I finally got to shower! Oh how my standards of luxury and peace have changed :)

We’re working on getting home. Well really we’re in a stage of waiting. Banda had to get a passport first. Which of course is more complicated here. Can’t just go down to your local post office. Here you have to travel. He left for Mzuzu early one morning, which is 4 hours away on a bus. Spent the day running around getting pictures taken, having officials sign that he is who he says he is (he doesn’t have a birth certificate – the norm here), and then waiting for hours at the immigration office. Then 4 hours back on the bus. His phone died on the way home so I spent a solid 2 hours thinking that his mini bus has crashed and that he was either stranded or injured or worse on the side of the road. Again, a common occurrence here. Which got me to realizing that I don’t even know what to do in such a situation. Who do you call? There’s no police station phone number. No hospital number. Ai ai ai. Not such a comforting notion. Anyways, he finally got home at 2 am! He got to Karonga at midnight but there were no taxis. Scratch that. There were taxis. But none of them had fuel because of the fuel crisis in this country. So he had to walk for 2 hours to get home. Hired a couple of bike taxi guys to walk with him. I don’t think I’ve ever been so relieved to see the kid. And I’m sure my puffy, sob-streaked face was all he wanted to see too :) Anyways, all the paperwork is done and now we’re just waiting the 20 processing days – which WOW is today! Has it been that long since I’ve posted? Anyways, he’s calling while I’m at work to see if it’s ready. Hopefully they’ll give out that info on the phone… gonna be irritated if he has to travel 8 hours only to find out that it’s not even ready. I’m crossing my fingers that it actually is done on time since I’m itching to get things going. But I’m telling myself not to get impatient. This is Malawi, after all.

After his passport is done, we can start on the visa process. It’s a good thing I’m a planner because I sent the consulate lady an email a few weeks ago to figure out what’s necessary and I learned that we have to do the initial petition by August 10! Yikes! Not much of a window between the end of July (when his passport’s done) and that date, considering it involves 2days of traveling and their office is only open 2 days a week. After the 10th, they’re changing the procedures and I have to file in the U.S. Which brings up a whole bunch of other questions about if he’s allowed to go to the US too or will he have to follow later or what. Anyways, just seems easier to try to get it in under the wire. That requires an 11 hour bus ride to Lilongwe, one way. Ai ai.

I’ve decided to sell the house as is. It’s not finished yet. Still needs a pit latrine and a septic tank, but we tried to hire someone else and he wanted to charge as much for labor as the whole house cost! HA. So we’ve decided that we’re just not going to find someone who is honest about prices. This guy never even saw me, but he knew that Banda was married to a mzungu and what do ya know, the price magically is 30 times what it should be! That’s right, darlings, not a typo. Not 3 times. 30 times. So I decided that any money I put into finishing it will not be made back on the sale. So I’m cutting my losses and getting rid of it. Hopefully. I don’t really know how to sell a house here. I guess flyers and word of mouth? We’ll see.

I’ve been applying for a bunch of jobs lately. Mom gets worried that I’ll feel discouraged if nothing comes of them, but I don’t mind. I love researching for different postings and then looking up housing and living costs to see if I can make it. Imagining lives in different places. Coming up with different letters and resumes. I don’t know, call me a geek, but I kinda enjoy it. Ask me again in a month if I’m still unemployed, but for now it’s a good way to spend my time.

I’ve been feeling sickly again which is a drag. Had a good couple of months there. But now it’s back daily. Stomach problems. Headaches. And most recently a sore throat which has spread to my ears. And anyone who knows me, knows my ears are the breaking point. Bah. Went to the doctor. He told me to take double my anti-malarial stuff since it’s also used for all kinds of infections. We’ll see. Also, a strange phenomena. The last 4 times I’ve eaten potatoes – fried and boiled – I’ve ended up with terrible stomach pains and etc. I don’t understand why it’s happening. The doctor said it’s the fertilizer that people are using, so Banda’s been great about questioning all of the vendors about where they get their vegetables. Sigh. I really don’t need to lose any food options here. We’re down to nsima, rice, and pasta now. And I eat nsima every day for lunch so really it’s just rice or pasta. Boring.

Banda went on a bit of a cleaning spree one weekend and I always feel guilty just sitting while he’s doing stuff. So I ended up sweeping dirt for the first time. Yes, sweeping dirt. It’s a daily chore here for women, actually twice daily usually. When I wake up in the morning and stumble out to use the chimbuzi (pit latrine), my neighbors are all outside, sweeping away, making different patterns in the dirt. To me though it seems like a waste of time and energy. A belief which was only confirmed as I sweated it out that day and woke up the next day to find the dirt already messed up again by the animal and human foot traffic. But I felt Malawian there for a little while.

Teaching has started wrapping up. We have a new system here which we are following. Basically it’s the national standards for technical colleges. All it really means is a whole lot more paperwork for me! And I don’t get to cover as many topics because we have to stop and do assessments (tests) for everything. Which I already did on my own, but now they have to be repeated and on and on. Bah. I think it’s actually a disservice to the students. It’s good for the trade classes though because everything has to be learned to perfection or they don’t pass. So the main thing I’ve been dealing with is oodles of paperwork. In my own OCD, list-making manner, I kept IMPECCABLE records. Every single assessment was documented. I kept the overall results list updated. I was on top of my stuff. And then the principal tells me that they’re in the wrong format. Well, Madame, I do believe that is why I gave you exact copies of what I was doing THE FIRST WEEK OF SCHOOL so that we could make sure everything was alright then!! But nope, all I got then was “good work.” Great. She told me this ONE DAY before the external verifier was coming to check all of my work and assess a random sampling of students to assure that everything was done properly. This was the verifier that I told her to schedule for 3 weeks from now when all of the students were done. But nope, the guy up and decided to come the next day without more than 3 working hours of warning. AWESOME. So I worked all day until 9:30 that night, reformatting the 500 assessment records. And then printing them all because the secretary couldn’t be bothered. And then collating them all. And then signing them all. Oh I probably would have exploded at a sweet puppy dog by that point. But I did it all. The next morning Madame looked at the papers and said “This is good work.” All I could do was sigh. On the up side, the students are doing really well. They’ve all been achieving and they are confident – which is reassuring to me as a teacher that they feel adequately prepared. Another beautiful thing was that during graduation, 2 of the graduating students came to me and told me how much they had come to appreciate our Communications classes. That while they were on their attachments (internships), they used the skills we discussed in class. That it made them feel more prepared. And that their supervisors even commented on them! It was like a little lamp shining inside of me that something was finally seeming to have an impact.

Last week there were no classes. Why? Might you ask. A good reason like holiday or exams or natural disaster? Nope. Graduation. Because apparently we need to spend 10 hours (not even exaggerating!) rehearsing a 1 hour English version of mass and days upon days of campus cleaning and brick painting. All because the Bishop was coming to graduation so they felt the need to put on a grand show. Maybe if the students regularly had mass or even had Faith Living classes that aren’t the joke they have become since Molly left… maybe then they wouldn’t need 10 hours of practice and lecturing so that students would be respectful during church services. And days were spent cleaning the grounds, tasks which could have been finished a lot more quickly if the majority of students weren’t so lazy and whiny about working. One whole day was spent with the whole school painting bricks white. That’s right up there with sweeping dirt on that the” things that Alyson just doesn’t understand” list. I got to know a handful of 1st years, though, which was nice as I don’t have much contact with them. There are a couple of good ones in my cleaning group so that was lovely. I was in charge of gifts for the top students in each trade so I spent a lot of time that week creating certificates and wrapping presents. I’m pretty sure that the Bishop – a self-professed education enthusiast – would have just about died had he known that classes were non-existent for a week for his benefit. Campus looked nice for graduation, though, and mass went on well, so it was a success. The Bishop was a hoot – quite the public speaker and very pragmatic about education which could be good for MIRACLE, though bad for its staff as he seemed to be pushing for more qualified instructors. We’ll see. I loved being around the 3rd years again. How I’ve missed Mphatso, Kelvin, Zellipah, Elijah, and Emmanuel. So nice to see them again.

Work has gotten better. There are still many days where I am driven crazy, but overall it’s been much better. I think I finally complained about vernacular speaking one too many times, because now Mbale reminds people every time we have a meeting that they need to speak in English. He’s gotten more than a few dirty looks shot his way, so I’m grateful to him for sticking up for me. Madame Principal has also been great about keeping me more in the loop about things. And Nellie has been lovely as usual. Her, Envie and Paleisha seemed to have noticed that I was getting down in the dumps and have since been awesome about reaching out to me. Love them. While I am still definitely ready to come home, it is nice that the last few months here will be spent enjoyably rather than miserably.

Now that graduation is over, we only have 1 more week of classes. I can’t believe it really. I remember moaning at the beginning of term that it was going to be forever before I get another holiday and now it is upon me! Will probably be spent picking up the books in Blantyre, which STILL have not arrived – the new date was July 23rd but of course that didn’t happen either. They’re now 2.5 months late. Also, we’ll go to Banda’s home village for a few days. That should be both wonderful and terrifying. And maybe even go to Nkhata Bay or to Maji Zuwa. But then again, we’ll also be busy running around for Banda’s visa stuff so we’ll see. Busy holiday probably.