Snacks

Eating has been tough here. This is what they consider a snack. This is a stick of birds?!!? that they take off the heads, roast and eat. Feet, neck, intestines and all. Really?? This is getting a bit too much for me. The funny thing is, these guys were "above" eating the mice on a stick. I can safely say I am so confused as to what is ok to eat here and what they say they would never eat. To me, it seems like it is a crooked line.

Babies reaction from a village

Coming Home!!!!

I am coming home!!!! I will be back in the US on July 22nd. This is the kind of reception that I have gotten used to, and this is what I expect when I get home. I am looking forward to seeing my family and friends and eating 78,683,682 pieces of a NY pizza.

This was a video I took this week when visiting one of the Orphan Care Centers.

World Cup!

Due to some unforeseen circumstances, I ended up in South Africa and found my way to a World Cup game. Here is some footage of the Australia/Serbia game I went to on Wednesday night. What I found most interesting is that I truly believe some people at this game were more interested in playing their vuvuzela than watching the game. I do not even think some of them knew a game was going on....they just came to play their vuvuzela. I probably would have been right there with them if this had not been my first WC game.

A Chieftress

Just me and the chiefs at a village meeting in the third picture. I am loving this front row treatment and expect the same treatment when I return home.

A few "where's waldo" for you.

Always a nice warm welcome

Again, this is something that never gets old. Anytime we go into a village, there are a group of kids who end up chasing the car and following me all around. No matter how tired or exhausted I am, this is something that always brings a smile to my face and happiness to my heart. This is always how I get welcomed and sent off. So cool.

Check out the baby's face in the front. This is classic and always is the expression from any baby. I have this sick sense of humor where I get the biggest kick out of it and it makes me laugh so hard when the kid starting crying. Whenever I see this expression, I zero in on the kid until he starts freaking out. Again, this is something that does not get old. Kinda like a bonus to the whole experience.

My work here

This week, I went to one of the villages to interview one of the orphans living there. This is how things work here. After sitting down to talk to the girl, a bunch of kids just came and sat around us listening quietly. It was hard not to get distracted by them - they are so cute. The only challenge is once I smile at one, I have to make sure I look at and smile at each one as I do not want any of them to feel left out. It is hard work here. :-) I love these moments. Interviewing kids about their life has been a very eye-opening, emotionally challenging and rewarding experience. I feel so lucky to have this opportunity.

The Good Life

One of my favorite things about Malawi is that there is always someone to tend to your needs. If you have a job in Malawi, you have to have a "house boy/girl" to do all of your chores. The cooking, the cleaning, the laundry. It has been such a nice luxury for me. I just hand over my clothes to the house boy and they come back clean and pressed. I just tell him what I want for dinner, he sets the table, serves me and then I just get up when done and he cleans the dishes. It is awesome! I have really been enjoying this. When watching TV, I just ask for tea and a scone and bam! look what I get. I could really get used to this. The reasons things are like this is two-fold. First of all, labor is cheap. From what I understand, these guys make about $35/month. But more interestingly, it is because everything is so labor intensive; you cannot have a job and accomplish these things. Laundry has to be hand-washed and pressed. They have a certain bug that can lay eggs in your wet clothes so they HAVE to be pressed to kill the eggs. As for preparing meals - forget about it. It can take forever as everything is made from scratch. Not to mention the time spent walking to the market to purchase these things. Cleaning - forget a dishwasher.

Being a house wife has a whole new meaning here. I could handle it in the US, but here, no way. It is way too much work. I cannot even take care of myself here.

Breaking Rocks

I have written before about people breaking rocks as a job. Well, here it is. All day, everyday. Can you imagine? They take them from big boulders and break them down to a powder to use as cement. In this picture they are breaking down the rocks to make a cement covering for a hole in the ground to go to the bathroom in. This is one thing I will not miss when I go home. Not for one second.

A Chicken Business

So, this guy has 19 other friends in the back. After meeting one of the kids we have in our program, I wanted to see if there was someway in which to help his family. He lost both his parents in one week last year and is now living with his grandmother. Most days, they struggle to get something to eat, let alone have any of their basic needs met. After meeting and working with the family for over 2 months on this, we have finally have started a chicken business. We purchased 20 chickens that will lay eggs for the family to sell. I can seriously say that I have learned so much about chickens, how to raise them, and how to run this business that I could start this up myself. It has been an exciting learning process and I am looking forward to having this on my resume.

It was a trip picking the chickens up - they just hand them to you one at a time. Soooooo hilarious. And then they just hung out in the back of the truck. A few were adventurous like this guy; although I did not really like this, I did respect his adventursome spirit. But, I totally freaked out when he was gutsy enough to find his way to the front of the truck between me and Mike. I had to laugh at myself after the fact as you would have thought there was a rabid dog next to me the way I was yelling at Mike to stop the car. I am not the best with animals, and I am ok with that. Keep them in the trunk for all I care.

Game Time!

A little game here......I am posting this video and will tell the story in a few days. I want you to watch it and guess what is happening.

A. This is dinner.

B. This guy has 19 other friends in the back ready to make us some money.

C. This guy won me $50 in a chicken fight.

D. This is Mikes pet chicken hanging out with us for the day.

This video just makes me giggle watching it. I cannot get enough of it.

Irrigation pump

We visited one of the villages where we are supporting their winter harvest. They use an irrigation system because we are now in the dry season. Pictured is the irrigation pump. The crazy thing is, at home, I paid $150 a month to do this in a gym. Who would have ever thought that I could be losing weight AND productive at the same time. Now if I could only work making money into this, I would really be onto something here.

On a side note, I looked up from the planting to see these two guys on the irrigation pump pictured above. It is almost comical how anti-gay they are (sometimes I feel like I stepped back into 1952), but then they pull stuff like this. I have seen more straight men holding hands here than I have seen in the Castro or Chelsea. They think it is odd for a girl and a guy who are dating to hold hands. Go figure.

Waging War

Now I am a big believer in the old saying, "don't let the truth get in the way of a good story", but folks, I ain't lying here. I went to buy my friend a birthday card, an/;d for every birthday card, there were 100 "with deepest sympathies". Now as I have said before, I am a self-proclaimed birthday grinch, but I just did not feel the "with deepest sympathies" was totally appropriate, even though that is exactly how I feel with each uptick of that damn number.

I cannot even begin to tell you how much time Malawians spend going to funerals, visiting someone in the hospital or visiting someone suffering from malaria. It is pretty shocking. I have not gone through one week without hearing about a funeral or someone I know down with malaria.

I spend at least one day a week taking one of our kids to the clinic to get tested for malaria (we are at 100% at this point) or visiting someone suffering from malaria. I have been here long enough to see some kids on their second bout of it since I arrived. I mistaking started to think of it as if it were something like the flu as everyone I know has had it since I have been here. I had a huge reality check when we visited one of our boys in the thick of it. It was awful! I was convinced he was dying and of course mike was saying he's "just ok". I was wondering if we were looking at the same thing. He could barely breath or recognize who I was. To add to the disturbing scene, there was no adult there to take care of him in this small, dark and dusty room without any ventilation. I left very concerned, disturbed and more religious about taking my malaria prophylaxsis. I am now deathly scared of malaria, and I would say rightfully so. You should see how neurotic I have gotten when I see a mosquito. All I see is death flying around and I cannot relax until I get him first.

Pictured is how you need to sleep if you want to stay alive. If only I had video of me waking up at 3am with one in my net. It gets crazy. I would definitely again, be an Americans Funniest Videos winner no doubt.

A Shout Out!!

I just wanted to take this chance to thank everyone who has sent me a message on my blog or personally sent me an email about my blog. Your words have meant more to me than you could ever know. Thanks for all the love, support, and kind words. I am trying to pay it forward.

My new project

Currently I am working on a proposal to start a HIV+ Teen Group. Meeting with the kids, writing the proposal, researching how to run an effective and productive teen group for positive kids. This has been a very eye-opening and emotionally draining experience to be honest with you. I sat down with 5 kids last week to talk to them about who they are, their lives, when they found out they were positive and what their dreams and aspirations are. One of the kids is a lot tinier than he should be. He is about the size of my 5 year old nephew but twice his age. As he sat in the oversized chair, swinging his legs around as they were not even close to touching the ground, smiling like he just won an award, I found it so hard to ask any question related to him being HIV positive. As I would ask, I would stop myself, look at the translator and say "wait…you are sure he knows he is positive"? I found it very hard to even mention the word HIV. I stumbled around these questions, thinking how "unfair" this all is, wondering how he could even understand what he is up against. One thing I do know is that none of these kids knew anyone else who was positive. That was a killer too. How are these kids going through this without having someone else to relate to or understand what they are going through?

As we were driving home, all I could think of was "there is no way I can leave here anytime soon". How could I leave here after meeting these kids, who now have names and the cutest faces, and realizing how much they need a group like this and how much I would like to be a part of starting it for them.

A Day of Christine

I had a day of Christine the other day. A day of relaxing, a massage, pizza, getting my hair done and an afternoon glass of wine. Oh how I love these days and have not had one in over 3 months. It was great, until I started thinking about the economics of it all.

A massage is shockingly cheap here, whereas books are extremely expensive. For one massage here, I could buy two books. Whereas in NYC, one massage could buy me twelve books. A massage in Manhattan can put ten kids in school for a year. Sometimes I can get so wrapped around these numbers I just want another glass of wine. "Waiter!…"

…..there goes another year of school fees for this kid.

So this is how things work here. Mike translates everything for me. I find it interesting that for every 100 words they say in Chichewa, I hear 25 in English. After a listening to Chichewa for 5 minutes, Mike will look at me and say "they are saying that they are happy you are here". hmmm.....i am pretty sure something else was said there, but oh well. The second picture is probably me doubting he is telling me everything.

Today is Not Common

I am currently reading a book by Jeffery Sachs titled "The End of Poverty". He talks about the need for developed countries to help those countries suffering from extreme poverty. He talks about economic development being a ladder in which these countries suffering from extreme poverty need help getting their foot on the first rung of the ladder, and that the only way they can do this is with the help of developed countries. They cannot do this on their own. The way I envision this is thinking about when I was a kid. When one of my friends wanted to climb a tree, we would give them "ten-fingers" to assist them in their first step to get into the tree. This is the same principle needed by these countries and it is needed at the ground level in these rural villages where the tree is out of reach. The thought is that if we can give them "ten-fingers", they can climb the tree themselves.

I feel so lucky and fortunate to have been able to witness and be a part of this process this week. Pendulum Project and Face to Face AIDS Project just gave a grant to a rural village, Chadika, to start a food security program for 40 people either impacted by HIV/AIDS in some capacity, or families taking care of orphans. They participated in a two day training on what it means to own a successful business. They have each been given a plot of land to grow maize for food as well as to sell some for a profit. I was so proud to witness this. How cool to be part of something that could potentially change the quality of these peoples lives who would otherwise not be able to do this?

As I was leaving, they were singing a song to me. Mike asked if I knew what they were saying. I think he sometimes grossley overestimates my understanding of Chichewa. They were singing that " Today is a special day, Today is a happy day, Today is not common". I could not have said it better myself. I felt the same way.

I have gotten a lot of questions about how long I am going to stay in Malawi. My original plan was to come here for two months, then travel through SE Asia. I have been here three and cannot think about leaving yet. How do you walk away from something where everyday is not common, everyday is a special day and everyday is a happy day?

Here is a picture of the training where they are learning about what a business is.

My new game

Just me playing more of my new game "repeat after me". I do not really see this one getting old, especially when I can get them to say "Christina you are great" over and over again.

A Malawian Car seat

This is how kids travel here. No joke.

One thing I have gotten used to is that whenever I hold a baby, I inevitably end up with pee all over me. The sacrifices I make for a picture. I wonder if politicians would still "hold babies" if I passed them one of these kids with chronically wet pants.