Looking back... my first letter

My village is amazing. It is an 8 km bike ride from a nice little market. and 8 km from a main road, which is 45 minutes on that by hitching, 1 hour by bus to Lilongwe. I have a site mate, a girl in my village. Other than married couples, I am the only person to have someone else in my village. Martha is a health volunteer who has been working to start a youth club soccer team (by youth, she means 18-25 yr old men about. They are great guys, most of whom graduated high school, but as farmers, couldn't go to college or leave their family farms. it's great. martha left for 2 weeks and each day she was gone, they practiced 2 hours each day. The team is doing really well in the area's village league. Now, my job is to expand this to a woman's team. I am also going to work on expanding the program to the high school. If that is successful, we'll begin to work at the primary school. It's great; Martha and I get on so well. I also get on really well with my fellow teachers. The majority of Malawian teachers show up drunk (literally, this happened at all of our practice schools) and none lesson plan. But at my school, Martha has worked with them, and she assures me my first impressions from staff meetings were correct; they work extremely hard and are so friendly and upstanding. Also, my headmaster is super friendly and cool. His wife speaks no English, but we get on great, always joking and chatting. When I stayed with them for a week for my site visit, she had me do all the chores with her... from gathering and cutting wood and building the fire to pounding maize corn in a giant mortar and killing a chicken (BTW, Malawian knives are NOT sharp, so I essentially decapitated a chicken with a blunt strait edge. yuck)... being a Malawian woman is a lot of work.
My school is located on school grounds, its small, with a cement floor and tin roof (v nice :) I hate dirt floors, too much sweeping and maintaining!) It is next door to what used to be a science room, but do to lack of facilities (no beakers or chemicals) they stopped teaching science, and the school's 90 girls all board in the one class room!) There are no desks or text books, not even one for me. Although the library is full of donated books, 4 shelves, each full with 100 plus copies of one book... they are: 1) Train your dog, change your life (a self help book made especially ironic by the fact that Malawians are so poor, they don't keep pets, and most of the students barely speak English), 2) The power: 11 reasons why women gain unhealthy wait, and ways to change them (also ironic, as weight is not an issue in what is the 2nd poorest country in the world..also, feminism is not really a movement here yet, where women can not legally wear pants to school.. nor can i teach in them :( ) 3) A guide for Doctors on changing patient behavior (Malawi doesn't have medical school, like not a single one in the entire country we learned in training... not to mention that these kids are in secondary school. 4) Lonely Planet Adventure guide to hiking India, Pakistan, and the Himalayas (also strange as not a single kid has been farther than 1 hour outside of their village. So, in short, the library is BULL SHIT. Even US text books are silly, since Malawians don't get American English and the curriculum is off... but Malawian text books are super cheap and really good. In the shipping costs alone, companies could just give the money and buy text books... But they need their tax deduction. It is infuriating. I am hoping my family will visit.. i want them to see it. For all its problems, Malawi is stunning. It's tiny but has a million languages (i got lucky, as alot of people speak Chichewa, the national language and what I've been learning, at least to some small extent). it's a really interesting cultural experience. People are obsessed with greetings... if there are 20 people,. you must shake and say how are you to each one... sometimes 10 people will come and go in a line asking you who you are too... I am always tempted on the last person to say, not well, just to see what they will do.
Lilongwe is an odd city. There are huge houses, walled in with 3 gaurds and the tops of the walls covered in wire AND cut glass. The thing is, outside of Malawi, hitch hiking is the safest form of travel. Volunteers here have one of the lowest crime rates against them. Yet in Lilongwe, we aren't even allowed to ride our bikes, as it is not unusual for someone to jump out with a machete and take it. At the same time, it's nice to be staying at the volunteer house with showers. I need to go to session (2 more days of training and then we are DONE), but I wanted to say hi to everyone. I wil get to check the internet again this week I hope, if not, some time in the next month, so a reply would be cool if you all have any questions or anything. Also, feel free to email my mom at dianedeva@aol.com for questions about phone cards (mom, can i get the phoen card info again? All the volunteers want to know it) Thanks alot. KB
ps, I may have forgotton, def did actually, to email some people, so pass it on to anyone you think might like this. AND WRITE ME LETTERS! I LOVE MAIL.