I Hope You're Sitting Down

I've got a big announcement for all of you!

I have decided to stay in Malawi a little longer than previously planned. And by a little longer I mean an entire year longer. Khwawa will be my home until August of 2014.

The Malawian secondary school curriculum is set into two halves, each half taking two years. By staying another year, I'm able to take my Form 1 class through their Junior Certificate Exam (JCE). The JCE is the pass/fail exam all students take at the end of their second year. If passed, students move on, if not passed, students either stop going to school or return and redo form 2 at an open or night school. I will also be able to take my Form 3 class through to their Malawi School Certificate Exam (MSCE). The MSCE is scored like golf, the lower the score the better you did on the exam. This score stays with a person their entire career and determines if they can be considered for university for a certificate or degree program. It also determines what kind of job they can get. I'm really excited about this opportunity and I'm interested to be able to see the passing rates of the math section over the next year and a half.

It wasn't easy to make this decision and I went back and forth several times. I miss my family every single day and I'm anxious to be doing the things my peers are doing, like getting big person jobs and starting their careers. It's important that I stay focused on what I'm doing and how this experience is improving my chance at greater things in the future. With that being said, I obviously don't hate it here. I love being in Malawi. It's not all sunshine and rainbows but the good outweighs the bad and that's all I really want. I love walking back from the form 1 classroom and being able to see the lake and Chitimba Point in the background of the school. I hate riding on minibuses but the view is always amazing. I have met a lot of really great people here, Malawians and expats alike, who make it a lot easier to be so far from home.  Life is good.

I'm also incredibly thankful to also be announcing that I will be coming home for a visit at the end of the summer. I will be in America for about a month from July 27th to August 29th. I'm hoping to hit the ground running to be able to see everyone at home and hopefully even a trip to Kent.

Can't wait to see you all! Keep coming back for more updates. I have a few posts in the works and I hope to have those up soon!.

In which I have a freak out about Grad School.

I'm a planner. I have been and always will be.

I came to Malawi with a definite plan for my future but the longer I'm here the more it's changing and it's been driving me nuts! My plan for life after Malawi was simple and involved getting a teaching position when I returned....and that's about it. Come back to America. Teach math. Be happy. Sounds good, right? I think so too. 

But now that I'm here my eyes are starting to open to a few different paths. Every time I'm able to have internet and electricity for a long amount of time I end up researching different grad programs at outrageously fancy schools to which I'm sure I'll never be accepted. I even think I might have to take the GRE! Boo! I lay awake at night thinking about where I want to live, where I want to go to school, and what I want to study. Of course the things at the top of my list to study are Math Education and possibly Curriculum and Leadership  but I'm also looking at a few programs designed for International Education Development. There are a few grad students coming to my area of Malawi this summer to do some work from Teacher's College at Columbia and I'm very excited to pick their brains about their program and life at TC. Do I really see myself living in Manhattan? Or maybe DC while attending American University? I just don't know! 

And maybe instead of grad school applying for the Math for America fellows program? 

So many options. So many questions. Too much to think about!

Oh well, at least I live in the most beautiful place on the planet. I can hear the waves from the lake at night as I'm going to sleep. I work with great people. Life is good.

PS: If anyone has GRE prep material, can you send it this way?

6 Month Update

Friday will mark my 6 month Malawi-versary!

I honestly can't believe I've been here for 6 months. It's been an incredible journey and I can't wait to see how the rest of my time here plays out. Currently I'm in the 4th week of our second term. I'm teaching 3 math classes and starting to get Girl's Club up and running full-time. I've been very happy with my classes this term; it's nice to not have so many things to which I have to adjust. I was able to start off knowing what to expect.

At the beginning of January I said goodbye to Sami as she headed back to Ohio to look for a big girl job! The day before Sami left, we welcomed Carly to Malawi as she began her 1 year adventure of being a teacher at Khwawa with me. She's my new roommate and fellow teacher and I'm very excited to have her here! I met Carly in 2006 at the SW Ohio HOBY seminar, where she was my group leader. HOBY is also where I first met Matt in 2008. I guess you could say that Hugh O'Brien played a big part in getting me to Malawi!

I want to give a big shout-out to all of those people who have sent me care packages! They have kept me going more than you think! The letters, candy, movies, pictures, and battery-operated lights/fans make my world go round. I have appreciated them all and it's a highlight of my week if I get a text message from my post-master letting me know I have a package! A lot of people have asked me for ideas of things to add to packages so I made a new tab at the top of the page titled "wish list."

ALSO: Determined to Develop and Maji Zuwa are still looking for people to help sponsor some of our kids. Your sponsorship would cover school fees, medical care, food, clothing, and transport. Let me know if you are interested and we can get you matched with a student! It's a low monthly payment that can be automatically drawn from your bank account. All of the money donated is given directly to the NGO, no fees for processing! I know and see almost all of these kids on a weekly basis. I see first-hand how your donation is being used, some of the kids are even my students!

Term 1 is in the books!

My first term as a teacher in Malawi ended a few weeks ago. It blows my mind sometimes when I think about how fast time is moving. One year ago I had never taught more than a weeks worth of one single class and now I have four courses under my control. Isn't it incredible how one year can change your life? 

The term started kind of rough. It took me a while to get my footing but once I got my balance I could feel improvement with each passing week. I had been taught to be a teacher in the 21st century. Yet I found myself in a dirt floor classroom with open air windows and the occasional chicken pecking at the ground. I had learned to be a teacher in a place where SmartBoards hang on walls and sets of calculators sit on shelves. The adjustment hasn't been easy, and is no way near complete, but I'm starting to feel like I'm getting the hang of it. 

There are days here where I've felt like I've lived in Malawi my whole life. I don't embarrass myself greeting anyone in Tumbuka and my lessons go as planned. These are usually the days when I can catch a minibus to the market within 5 minutes without being crammed into the person next to me or a student offers to fill our water buckets at the bore hole. I would say the best example of a day like this was when I taught my first lesson under a mango tree. My form 2 class struggled with behavior at the beginning of the term. They are a tough bunch but after a few weeks it had improved. To reward them I decided to have a little fun (and by fun, I mean 'math teacher fun') and hold class outside. It was a beautiful day and I could tell the kids were getting a little stir crazy. I gathered them all under the mango tree and we did this lesson. It was a hit! Everyone loved it and I could tell they had improved their skills of reducing fractions and adding positive and negative numbers. Who wouldn't have fun when solving tangled ropes with math? It felt completely natural to be teaching outside, using only a chalk-board and rope as my materials. It was a day in Khwawa that I will not soon forget.

Conversely, I also have days where I wonder what I'm doing here. These are the days when I'm over charged for tomatoes at the market or the minibus fare from my village because I'm a mzungu (white person) or the days when I find children in my garbage pit combing through rotten food and empty boxes in their bare feet. I have days where I walk into class and after 20 minutes of struggle I realize students aren't paying attention to constructing a parallelogram because only 4 out of 50 of the kids have a straight edge, compass, or protractor. 

But what is life without the bad days to make you truly appreciate all the happy times? Overall, my first term at Khwawa was pretty amazing. I am incredibly thankful for the opportunities I've had so far and I'm looking forward to the next two terms!

Tough Decisions

This post is long over due. I want to tell you all about the school where I am teaching and living.

I have been teaching at Khwawa CDSS since the beginning of September. This week will mark the 9th week of classes for the 14 week term (2 of which are for exams at the end).

There are three types of government secondary schools in Malawi. To be selected to such a school, students take an exam in Standard 8 (8th grade). Only the top third of students are selected to secondary schools. Of that top 33%, the students are sent to either a National Boarding School, a District Boarding School, and a Community Day Secondary School. Most students are enrolled in a CDSS and it is the cheapest option for students.

Once students are in secondary school, there are two big exams that they have to take. The first is called the JCE (Junior Certificate Exam) and is administered at the end form 2 (the second year). This exam is to see how the students are progressing. The exam is pass/fail and it must be passed to continue in school. The second exam is the MSCE (Malawi Senior Certificate Exam) and is taken at the end of form 4 (4th year). This is the exam that will determine if students can attend university, a trade school, or even get a job.

At our CDSS I am teaching 4 different courses with 23 periods a week. I teach mathematics for form 1, 2, and 3 and Physical Science for form 1. Form 1 and 2 have about 50 students each and form 3 has about 25.   There are nine periods throughout the day starting at 7 am and ending at 1:20 pm. The students stay in their classrooms divided by form and the teachers rotate through the classes.

I'm also the Form Mistress for form 1...which means I'm basically the class teacher. I take their attendance each day and monitor behavior. I'm also in charge of registering each student, knowing their information, and assisting with bursary support if they receive it.

A few weeks into the semester, our headmaster, Mr. Kamwambi came to our staff meeting with information about a new government bursary (scholarships) that is being piloted for form 1 students. As the head teacher I was asked to assist the bursary committee with interviewing the students. About 20 students were noted as being the neediest of their peers and it was my job, along with one of the Malawian teachers, to help them fill out the application. The application was three pages long and full of questions to help the government gauge the neediness of the student. Here are a few of the questions:

• Does your family own any cows? goats? pigs? chickens?
• What is the roof of your house made of? (thatch, metal, tiles)
• What are the outer walls of your house made of? (burnt bricks, unburnt bricks, mud and sticks)
• Is your mother living?
• Is your father living?
• Who takes care of you?
• Does your household own a bicycle? radio? cell phone?
• How many children in your household are attending primary school? secondary school?

After listening to the heart-breaking answers of my students, many of whom I learned are orphans, it was then my job to rank each students by their level of neediness. How was I supposed to do that? How was I supposed to rank my students based on their neediness when ALL of them, including those who weren't interviewed, should be ranked number 1. How could I choose? 

Thankfully, Sami was there to help me. Ranking my students based on their applications was probably one of the hardest things I've had to do this term. It just didn't seem fair to me that I had to rank a person lower because maybe only one of their parents is dead, compared to two; or maybe they have burnt brick walls, where one of their peers is living with walls made of mud and sticks.

This process forced me to really open my eyes to the poverty my students live in every day of their lives. It forced me to understand the lives my students have outside my classroom and the reality they face when they leave the school grounds. Where do they get food? How far do they walk for water? Who is taking care of them?

Nyika and Vwaza

This past weekend Sami and I were invited, along with our neighbor Aaron, to go on a safari with a few other volunteers in the area. How could we pass that up??

There are four Aussie volunteers north of us at two different schools. In addition, there is also a Canadian volunteer here with Determined to Develop for a few months. Two of the Australians have a student whose father works for the National Park Service in Malawi. He offered to take them on a trip for free for up to ten people. All they had to do was split the cost of the gas for the hired car he would get us. As far as the food, all we had to do was bring the supplies and the staff would cook it for us. Score!!

On Friday afternoon, Aaron, Sami, and I packed our bags and set off for the stage at Khwawa. The stage is the bus stop just down the hill from our houses. It's where we pick up public transport or sometimes Matt will pick us up on his way to Maji Zuwa. We were picked up in a safari truck by the 4 Aussies, a Canadian, our guide (who was in posession of a rather large gun), and our driver. It was a 6 hour drive to Nyika National Park and most of it was on bumpy dirt roads. Nyika is the largest park in Malawi and it was also the first. The locals call is the Scotland of Malawi because of the rolling hills and frigid temperatures at night. We arrived late Friday night and stayed in the camping hostel that the park operates.

Saturday morning was safari time! We ate a quick breakfast of instant milk with corn flakes, and bread and peanut butter and headed out in the truck. We trekked through the park for hours and saw tons of wildlife. We saw antelope, zebras, warthogs, giant things with horns that looked like giant deer, and some awesome looking birds. Not only does Nyika have beautiful wildlife, but the scenery is gorgeous as well. In the park is the second largest peak in Malawi and a few protected Juniper Forests. Apparently Tolkien traveled through the area and based some of the settings in the Lord of the Rings books after the landscape of this park and the Zomba Plateau in southern Malawi. Our guide also showed us the fancy cabins and lodges in the parks that I'm sure a lot of international tourists stay in...not a volunteer's budget!

The next morning, Sunday, we packed up our hostel and headed out of Nyika in search of more traditional animals that you think of finding in Africa. Our guide was nice enough to get us into Vwaza Wildlife Reserve and inside the park we also picked up another guide and a random Peace Corps Volunteer who happened to be there that day as well. His name was Stony and he is stationed at the Reserve as part of his service. Inside Vwaza is a giant watering hole, reminiscent of The Lion King scene when Pumba recalls his traumatic experiences there. In fact, we talked a lot about the Lion King on our trip. How could you go on a safari and not sing every song? Anyway, back to Vwaza. Our first animal we met was a herd of elephants. They were heading back from the watering hole and we caught them just in time. The mother of the herd got a little territorial so we had to drive away, luckily enough we ran into a few more herds along the way. Once we finally got to the watering hole, there were TONS of hippos. Get it? Tons? Anyway, they were awesome. It was kind of surreal to see the elephants and hippos. They are such massive creatures and something you only see in movies or on TV. Also at the lake were some impalas and Kudu.

We had an awesome safari and I can't wait to hopefully do it again soon. Sami and I plan to travel to southern Malawi after our term ends in early December. We're hoping to hit up the Zomba Plateau and Liwonde National Park.

I'm headed to Livingstonia this weekend. Sami and I are hiking with a guide starting at our house in Khwawa. It should be about a five hour hike. On Sunday I will be attempting to skype with my church in Farmersville for World Communion Day. Hopefully I will be able write a few more posts on Saturday.

Life at Khwawa

I've lived at my house at Khwawa for a few weeks now and so far so good.

It's a small house with four rooms, an outdoor kitchen, shower, and latrine and we just recently got a fence around our yard. Woo!!

Luckily enough, our neighbor is a Peace Corps Volunteer from Texas who is starting his second year teaching at the school. He has been a huge help to us as we've gotten started. Seriously, I think I would be starving without him.

For water, we walk about 20 yds to the water pump. We have buckets that we fill up every so often and we even were able to buy a bucket with a nozzle. The nozzle is useful for washing our hands and for filling cups and pans.

A typical meal for us includes cooking on our mbaola (charcoal stove) or over an open fire. We eat a lot of rice, beans, and tomatoes! Sometimes we spring for a soda at the shop by the road and I'm very thankful for the Kool-Ade I brought from home! (hint hint ;)

Sorry the posts have been few and far between! I will try to post at least once every weekend. It's my plan to spend the weekends at Maji Zuwa or traveling around Malawi. This weekend I'm in Mzuzu with Sami and our PCV neighbor, Aaron.In Mzuzu we found pizza....and ICE CREAM!!! oooooh yeeeaaahhh. Also, we met two Ohians! One from the columbus area and one from Akron. What a small world!