Thursday, March 31, 2011

POW-WOW!

Wellesley's PCPP grant is up online, it is for an awesome project building a women's center in her village Kawaza. The center will strive for both women's empowerment and protection of the local forests. Anyone that can help, please see the following Peace Corps page and donate. Thanks.

https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=614-227

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Charcoal Drawn Skies

Strange dreams woke me at 4 am this morning. I found myself recovering from another world in the corner bed of Dorm 1. It was still dark out, the streets were quiet and the halls of Mufasas breathed a silent breeze after another late night. A Japanese tourist and Wellesley were snoring lightly. I got up discreetly, grabbing my toothbrush, toothpaste and iPod, trying not to wake anyone else. The hallways were pitch black, faint rays of light filtered from the bathrooms. A large rat scurried from the kitchen cross the hallway into the bathroom, returning to its cardboard shelter in the middle stall. I took my time brushing my teeth and spent over a half hour just standing under the warm waterfall shower. My muscles melted in the hot water, my bones were warming and a sense of morning peace grew over me. Pulling on a shirt and a pair of jeans, I grabbed my bag, plugged my ears to Vampire Weekend and walked into the dawn lit street.

It was chilly outside, the sort of chill that in Malawi translates into a scorching afternoon. A couple of mini-buses drove by on their morning routes, but the streets were empty. There was not a sound otherwise. Not a spray of dust, clouds of exhaust nor aggressive street vendors. You spend so much time looking down in Lilongwe, or in any city for that matter, that you forget all else. This seems translate into all aspects of city life, a stressful faith in the microscopic in front of you, everyone under a lens. Surviving this bustle, battling traffic and life with the same aggression and coming out the other end appearing unscathed is a cause for admiration. In that same sense, time also becomes microscopic and hours become minutes, minutes become seconds. But while the cosmopolitan citizens slumber a recovery from another long night of fulfilling social obligations in pursuit of once innocent dreams, the city breathes. Its roads cool, the trees gently shed a day’s pollution into the winds and the birds reclaim their branches.

Turning the corner, passing under the trees rooted in cement circles, light filtered over the streets. The skies brightened as I made my way up the steps and a formation of birds flying overhead caught my eye. I looked up and was instead caught by a beautiful sunrise. The clouds were drawn on to the grand sky with a colored charcoal, glowing a light gold and some still pink. There was a wide diversity of clouds all drawn with the granular strokes of charcoal on paper with smudges of grays and blues. Signs of an artist’s hand were evident everywhere. The sun was hidden behind a large blue PTC and Standard Bank, but once passed the entire sky opened up. By the time I reached the barren tree in the parking lot of the new mall, the view was mesmerizing. I slowed my pace, a taboo in any city, and let the morning Lilongwe soak into my skin. My general loathing for this city seemed to have temporarily vanished and I felt transported to another time when Lilongwe was a much different place. A time before large shopping centers, before roads, going back, back in time to fields of villages and animals. Forests of trees covered the land and the names of chiefs were reserved for villages and not two-story buildings. A quiet time.

It was such a brief moment, as if in a flash of dawn light everything vanished. A brief, microscopic moment in this city, which could be lifetime anywhere else.

Transient places in a transient place, I leave for Dedza tomorrow. The new group arrived last month and their PST is underway. I am assigned to Week 3 and will be teaching village economics and small-business development to the trainees. I’m looking forward to returning to Dedza and enjoying the comforts of home stay for a week. Having a host family, three square meals a day (and a packed snack for class), hot water baths and the beautiful serenity of a Dedza village. I will return on Thursday for a VAC meeting and hopefully return to the Mwazisi by the end of the month.

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Remixes in the Waz

To begin commemorating the 50th Anniversary of Peace Corps, the U.S. Embassy requested that I put together a video for each month of this year of various volunteers in Malawi. So here is my first of a series of videos produced: Wellesley's Reforestation Remix.

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=195969923761290&oid=160841183603&comments