Life is good

The opinions expressed in the blog are solely mine and not representational of the Peace Corps or the United States Government

Hello all,
I hope all is well with everyone in the states. Life here in Malawi is quite fine. I have just finished up our IST training. As I have mentioned before the first 3 months is all about community integration but now post training is when they want us to start working on project in our village and surrounding areas. The IST training was 2 weeks but we learned a lot of great things and our counterparts also come for five days. Some of the things I learned was how to make peanut oil, peanut butter, making soap, we built a mushroom and were taught how to grow mushrooms, jam making, HIV training, safe water training, and how to graft different species of trees to reduce the time fruit trees take to bud. We also went to one of the few museums the country has which was amazing. It was all about the cultures of the different tribes in Malawi. Everyone is excited and ready to go back and see what we can do to help our community members.

Also I am extremely happy that after going 2 months without a place to go the bathroom due to my previous hole in the ground collapsing I have a new chim as we call it. It was interesting going 2 months with no chim and using friends and some other interesting means when nature called. My neighbor and I upgraded to a cement floor which is nice but the actual structure is made from mud bricks and we used mud to secure the bricks in place. Right now it has no roof we are still working on that but it is the dry season and I enjoy the free feeling of having no roof and staring up into the sky while I do my business. Our summer is coming soon and October is the hottest time of year but supposedly I will start to feel the effects of living in the hottest are of Malawi any day now. I am preparing a place outside to sleep for the next 3 to 4 months and trying to figure out how to hang a mosquito net using whatever means possible. I have officially lost 10 pounds already. I have an active life, low fat diet, and do not par take in my normal joy of drinking fine beers so I am feeling very healthy for the most part. I think soon after I get back to site I am going to get a few baby hens and raise them and enjoy their eggs when they get to that point. Also now that my fence is built I have been working on beds where I will be planting vegetables once the rains come. I have been working hard on nursing my soil back to health by setting up compost piles all around my yard.

Other than that I am just enjoying day to day life. When I leave my village for training and other reasons it is to the point now where I miss my village and I get excited to go back. My house and village are really starting to feel like home which is a nice thing by all means. So I put just a few cultural notes down below and as I lean more I will keep updating everyone. Take care all good times to you all

PS-I have changed my e-mail address and I now can be reached at patrickseanphillips@gmail.com I still will check my old one at times but please try and use this when contacting me in the future

Cultural notes
· Nose picking is completely accepted here and public. Many times I will be talking to people and they just start digging away. It is hilarious but I respect their openness about it
· Men and women do not show any signs of public affection at all but women and men who are friends hold hands often. It is a sign of friendship and a few people who I have gotten to be good friends with will take my hand at times when we are walking together. It is just the culture of Malawi and was no big deal for me but it is very different.
· Once a women has a child her breast are considered public. Women are always dressed from the top up here but they breast feed anywhere at any time. I will be in the middle of conversation with a woman, buying vegetables, or anything and they just expose their breast and go for it. They often forget to put said breast away when done. I am also impressed at how they can do it while multi tasking. I have seen them riding bikes while doing it, carrying a 15 pound bail of water on their head, picking vegetables, or just about anything.
· Dress wise men almost always wear collared shirts even when they do manual labor like farming. Women always wear a skirt like thing called a chitenje which they tie around their waste. It was illegal for women to wear pants in Malawi until the law was changed in 1994 but you rarely see women wear pants only in large cities.
· Also everyone here thinks grass is dirty so they sweep their front yards everyday so it results in compact dirt yards with no vegetation. It is terrible for soil erosion and makes things dusty.
· Monogamy seems to be a foreign concept in the country for the most parts. Going along with that polygamy is legal and there are a decent percentage of men with multiple wives
· Homosexuality is illegal


Pictures
The first one is me making peanut butter
The second one is my buddy John in the process of making soap
A carving I saw one day roaming around
My neighbor Haswell working on our chim

The opinions expressed in the blog are solely mine and not representational of the Peace Corps or the United States Government