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 | June 18, 2009
There was an article recently about the high cost of poverty in the US. While I thought the author for that article could have come up with better examples, it was interesting and reframed some random thoughts I’ve been having about Malawi. It’s really expensive to have anything here. For one thing, Malawi (the [...]
Sika | May 6, 2009
Madonna’s in the news again. I’m a little leery posting about this, because jeez peez, Madonna is already what 90% of everyone outside of Africa knows about Malawi, but I will boldly venture forth anyway.
If you were privy to my friends’ updates in facebook, you would know that many of them were extremely happy [...]
Sika | March 16, 2009
It’s so clear down here. I can see every dip and indentation of the lake bottom, looking like a buried civilization is waiting to be uncovered—miniature cliffs and canyons, the bed as if an inverted topography: the opposite world pushing through and leaving its mark. Bottom of an eggcrate lakebed, 50 feet down but still [...]
Sika | March 11, 2009
In Franschhoek we stayed at the Franschhoek Group Accomodation. We were a bit nervous when we got there because the place looks like an institution. As in, the type of place to which one can be involuntarily committed. But the rooms are sweet and neat, with duvets and comfortable twin beds. The couple running the [...]
Sika | February 20, 2009
Our first full day in SAfrica*, I woke on Malawi time (read: way too early). I was very excited because I knew we were going to see Johnny Clegg that afternoon. Gareth had told us about the summer concerts at Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens, and that we had to make sure to go to one. I [...]
Sika | January 19, 2009
Moses was meant to help me with my garden the other day. He came a couple of hours after I was expecting him and told me that he and his daughter, Dinah, had a meeting with Derek in the morning. Dinah was one of the students Derek is supporting, but she’s never done very well. [...]
Sika | October 7, 2008
I was talking to my friend Thandi in Lilongwe whilst (hee) I was stuck there for a training. She told me about her job working for a religious NGO that works to make guardians for orphans more independent, with IGAs (Income Generating Activities) and the like.
Some Americans who work with her organization are coming to [...]
Sika | July 23, 2008
First off, it’s not pronounced TAN-za-nee-a. Or Tan-ZANE-ee-a. It is pronounced Tan-ZAHN-ee-a. This means, that in an effort to appear to be culturally sensitive I sometimes say one, sometimes say the other, sometimes say a weird amalgam of all three, and sometimes make noises I didn’t even know were humanly possible, although they certainly aren’t [...]
Sika | June 13, 2008
I am at Mid Service Training right now. (Do you know what this means? I’ve been in Malawi for a whole year. Can you believe it? I mean, I know every second of the last year has just dragged by for y’all, what with me not being around and all, but for me it has [...]
Sika | May 20, 2008
I was reading this book called The Shackled Continent* by Somebody-or-other Whosits-whatsis. In it, he mentions how older male students who are never kicked out of high school prey on younger girls, after which they get pregnant and have to drop out of school. Mr. Whosits-whatsis’ solution is to kick older students out. And I [...]
Sika | May 16, 2008
It’s been a while. It’s not that I have nothing to say, it’s just that whenever I have something to say, well, basically I can’t be fussed (the Scots have been contaminating my language) to actually write any of it down. Well, and also some of it is inappropriate for day shift. And then I [...]
Sika | March 28, 2008
In the process of attempting to look for funding for a friend for a VCT (Voluntary testing and counseling) and Teen Centre in Mzuzu, I found this report. I highly recommend anyone coming here read it as it is all about sex here in Malawi. One of the interesting things to me is that most [...]