Second Year of School

My second year of school is underway. Although I missed the first few weeks while at home in America, the school year started off well and now that I am back my classes are in full swing.

This year my class load has changed a bit. I am currently teaching all four Forms of Physical Science, Biology for Forms 1 and 3, and Life Skills for Form 4. We are in dire need of another physical science teacher but are making do as best we can.

Enrollment at my school is even greater than it was last year. Our Form One class has just over 100 students, Form Two having 128, Form Three about 70, and Form Four 59. Having this many students is definitely a challenge with only eight teachers, but I am looking forward to working with all of them throughout the year. It’s funny how you adapt and become used to things, a year and a half ago I would have thought it impossible to teach a physical science lab to 128 students at once, and though it sure is difficult, it can be done!

I should also mention that we have received the results from the national Junior Certificate Examinations for our school. We had an amazing 70% pass rate, which may be part of the reason for our increase in enrollment. We’re still awaiting the results from the senior level and hopefully they will be just as good.
Gwangwa Girl's Club Football Match! The best part about this was that the boys even helped coach the girls!

Camp Sky Success Story

I am happy to report that Camp Sky 2009 was an absolute success!! I know it occurred nearly two months ago and apologize for not having written a blog entry to fill you in.

We had nearly one hundred students, including junior counselors (those who participated last year) and this year’s campers. The students had a fabulous time. We had to shorten the length of the camp a bit which meant that we volunteers had to fit as much into as little time as possible. I think we did a great job, our cooperation and often sleepless nights really paid off in the end for our students.

The camp was held at Lilongwe Girls Academy, a government school in the capital city. The location was great and the facilities were amazing. I served as the Dorm Amayi (Dorm Mother) for the girls hostel and had a great time singing songs with the girls, making sure they were ready for classes and activities, instructing them on the use of indoor plumbing and wishing them goodnight when it was time for lights out.

Upon arrival, each student was placed into a group based upon their career interest: Environment, Health, Public Service or Business. Their core and extra-curricular classes were focused on these areas. For example, I taught Physical Science for the business track and in doing so talked about the use and manufacturing of organic compounds and the chemistry behind soap-making, which I demonstrated in class as a potential IGA (income generating activity).

Other activities included astronomy class, a disco (dance), sports, field trips to the airport and Mawian National Monuments, Tae Kwon Do, Salsa Dancing, and an awesome interactive performance with a Malawian Drumming Group.

All in all the camp was educational and a ton of fun! Unfortunately I don’t have any pictures to share yet but I plan on getting them in about two weeks time and will definitely post them then!

Thank you again to my friends, family and the Northern Illinois Poker Tournament who donated to the Camp Sky fund on the Friends of Malawi website. Your contribution really made a difference in the lives of our students!

Home for the Holidays

It was absolutely wonderful to be home in America last month. I was able to see many friends and family members. I spent Christmas, New Year’s and all of the days before and between with people I love and for that I am very grateful.

I’m also grateful for the fact that I did not have to travel alone as one of my fellow volunteers, Alyssa, was traveling to Chicago (en route to Michigan) as well. We took three separate flights to arrive at our final destination and an additional three to come back to Malawi. On the way there we changed flights in Addis Ababa (Ehtiopia) and Frankfurt (Germany), each having very short layovers. In total we were in the air for just over 21 hours, but of course it was made longer by changing flights.

On our way back to Malawi, instead of flying through Frankfurt, we had a nine hour layover in London. Having such a long amount of time, we were able to leave the airport and explore the city. Carry-on luggage in hand, we saw many of the sites, took a few pictures, stopped for fish and chips, and decided we’d have to come back eventually for a longer visit. Below are a few pictures of our time in London; there are additional ones at the My Pictures link.

After London we had another stop in Ethiopia and finally arrived back home to Malawi, an exhausting amount of hours later. It feels nice to finally be home, back at Gwangwa after my travels.

Back to business, time to start my second year of teaching…

Kitchen Project

Our building committee has been meeting fairly regularly to secure the community contributions needed to build our school kitchen. Yesterday, I spent all day moving and counting bricks as we transported them to the school from a nearby village where they were made. We’re using between 25 and 30 thousand bricks, so as you can imagine it was quite a long day! We’ll continue tomorrow and after that it will be time to find the sand and quarry needed for construction.

Of course, we are still waiting on funding for the rest of the project. The other funds will pay for labor, cement, nails, tin sheets, and all other building materials. We’re eager to get started and already working hard to get the project going before next school year!

If you’d like more information or to donate to our project, visit the link below!

https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=614-214

Thanks to those who have already donated or who are working on raising funds within their own communities and groups!

This is a picture of our current kitchen. You can see why it's so important that we build a new one!

Game Count

I made my second visit to Liwonde National Park a few weekends ago, but this time I was actually doing work, helping with the annual game count. With the help of volunteers, every year all of the large animals including elephants, sable, impala, wharthogs, kudu, etc. are counted and logged in the records of the park service office.

I was glad to help for the weekend and had a really great time hiking and counting animals with some of my Peace Corps friends and armed park scouts. They were of course armed because some of the animals, elephants especially can be very dangerous if provoked.

I didn’t really see much on the hikes, but definitely enjoyed myself. The most exciting part of the trip was when our scouts spotted what they thought was a poacher in the forest. We snuck up on the supposed poacher, caught him and watched the scouts bring him into custody! We found out the next day that he probably wasn’t a real poacher and was likely released as soon as he was brought in. It was exciting nonetheless!

Gwangwa Girls Club

This will likely turn out to be one of my favorite and most memorable activities at site. After attending a girl’s empowerment camp put on by Peace Corps Volunteers, two of my girls came to me to ask if we could start a girls club at our school. So the GGC has been meeting two or three times a week after school. We sing songs, dance, talk about women’s issues, play netball and football (soccer… this is a big deal for girls to be doing!)

We have three rules:
1. No boys. (Mitsikana Basi)
2. Don’t be shy. (Osachita Manyazi)
3. Be respectful and helpful to all girls at all times.

It’s pretty fabulous. I’ve added some pictures of one of our meetings to the "My Puictures" Link and will soon add more from our upcoming football/netball event next week!

Graduation

The Form Fours celebrated their graduation a few weekends ago. It was a fairly large deal, like any graduation in the states. We had t-shirts made in town, had a giant feast, a disco, and invited lots of guests including the Deputy Minister of Education and the Member of Parliament for our area. My favorite parts of the day were the events that featured students, especially the speech that was given by the Head Girl and the plays put on by the other students to entertain their friends. Unfortunately, I had to miss out on the end of the festivities as I made my way to the airport to welcome the newest class of education volunteers to Malawi. It was pretty neat to be on the other end of this ordeal, seems like not too long ago I was in their shoes.

There are pictures from both graduation and the airport on my picture page!