Sika | September 9, 2009
We weren’t there for Health ‘08’s site announcements. Health ’06 did a great event for ours, but due to scheduling problems we didn’t get to stay in Dedza long enough for the ’08 site announcements. This year, site announcement was at All-Health, like it was for us, and so we could all be a part [...]
Sika | September 8, 2009
Edith asked me to come to PST (pre-service training) for the newbies. I was excited because I was pretty sure Zomba was getting Marla, and I thought it would be nice to get to know her a bit better. Also, I hadn’t had/taken the chance to spend more than a few hours with the Health [...]
Sika | September 7, 2009
If I said there aren’t some things I’ll be happy to leave, I’d be lying. Mostly things like stone babies and the way many men feel they own my body because I’m a woman, and being called azungu azungu all the time, and feeling like I live in a fishbowl—the only way to escape it [...]
Sika | September 3, 2009
I haven´t written about my last weeks in Malawi partly because I still don´t have pics uploaded for some posts I´ve already written, but mostly because I´ve been in a serious state of denial: refusing to say good-bye to people I know I won´t see again; planning multiple trips back to Zomba so I can´t [...]
Sika | September 2, 2009
I think one of the problems some people have when returning from Peace Corps is a response to the loss of what Peace Corps means for one’s identity. For one thing, Peace Corps goes to great lengths to enculturate us–my mom even asked me, when we were kept incommunicado with the outside world during training, [...]
Sika | May 21, 2009
At our COS conference, there was a Yao dancer with his locally-available-resources-band. Since it was too dark for movies, I took pictures and recorded some sound files instead. I’m not sure this post is going to work the way I want it to, so if it doesn’t, I’m sorry.
Yao Dance
Yao Dance2
Yao Dance3
ETA: I couldn’t embed [...]
Sika | May 5, 2009
Last week I had my COS (Close of Service) Conference, We went to Nkhotakota Pottery on Monday and came back to Lilongwe on Friday. The Close of Service conference is about learning what paperwork we have to do, and how to exit our communities gracefully. After all, it’s tough to adjust to a place [...]
Sika | March 25, 2009
All y’all health 2009 people are probably getting a bit anxious at this point. Relax.
One of the best posts I’ve seen about what to bring is here. I disagree with some of it, but we all disagree about what is necessary and what isn’t. Everything depends on what support you’ve got back home and where [...]
Sika | March 25, 2009
I just ate a yummy white guava that I bought at the market when I went in on the 10 o’clock (read: 10:40. Ish.) bus. In one of my last couple of bites, I saw a brown area, which upon closer examination, was inhabited by a worm.
The worm had an interesting reddish-brown head, which contrasted [...]
Sika | March 18, 2009
Lectures start up next week again. I’ve got 4 topics, but I did 2 of them last year and one of the other 2 is related to one that I did last year. For the second years, I have two topics coming up, but I’ve done both of them before, so it shouldn’t be too [...]
Sika | February 20, 2009
My birthday party was awesome. David made a nutella birthday cake for me, I made Tracy’s carrot cake for Thoko’s birthday, and Adrienne blessed me with her first ever baking attempt: a delicious although somewhat disconcerting red velvet cake. Wanangwa brought a Ngoni delicacy—a hog’s head, and parts of it actually tasted good*.
We had music [...]
Sika | November 10, 2008
I went back to NOC a while ago to do a vertical garden training with the guardians and the home health volunteers.
While I was there, we reviewed weighing and charting and I took the pictures I didn’t get before because of the failure to bring my camera. So this post will be mostly pictures to [...]
Sika | October 7, 2008
I got there late because my tires needed pumping. I knew I had loaned my pumps to Sarah and David, respectively; I knew I had to get to NOC last Wednesday; I knew I always need to inflate the tires a bit when I haven’t ridden my bike in a while. I still forgot to [...]
Sika | September 24, 2008
The weekend before last, Cory arranged a football and netball tournament and HIV/AIDS thingamajig. A few health volunteers deigned to show up* even though Cor is a lowly education volunteer. It was interesting, although most of the educational bits came in Chichewa and so we spent a great deal of time trying to figure out [...]