Magical Malawi

I celebrated my first Christmas in my entire life without my family this year, even when I studied abroad in India I was fortunate enough to finish in time to spend the holidays with my family in Thailand. This year I was still with family though, my Peace Corps Family. The amazing part about Peace Corps Zambia (as I cannot speak for Peace Corps in other countries) is that you really do feel that the other PCV's here are your family. I started the holiday season off a bit nervous, as a simple mosquito bite turned into a very bad case of cellulitus on my left ankle, causing me to not only be able to walk, but also causing a fever and making my medical team quite nervous. I went to the hospital in Mkushi again, in which I am becoming a familiar face, much to my own disappointment, and was given IV antibiotics along with a 5 day course of oral antibiotics. The hospital that I am sent to in Mkushi is amazing though. It is a private clinic where I have so far received an abdominal ultrasound, (to check on my liver post malaria because it had swelled and was painful) bloodwork, antibiotics twice, IV antibiotics and had two appointments with Zambia physicians trained in the UK. They have taken extraordinary care of me and it has been the fastest medical care I have ever received. After reassuring my medical team that I was not going to need to be admitted to the hospital it was off to Serenje for about a week to recover. The thing about the village is that infections, especially when they are in your feet/ankles or hands are very hard to keep clean and also have difficulty healing. By Christmas eve however I was well, and me and some friends spent Christmas eve hitchhiking from Serenje to Lusaka for a few days. Christmas dinner was spent with a large group of volunteers, mostly from my intake but also from other intakes. It is also great to meet other volunteers from other provinces and intakes. They reassure you that everything you feel is normal, and are usually great resources to talk to about everything from village projects to travel plans. So far there has been no one in Peace Corps that I have met that I haven't liked, Zambia must just attract an amazing group of people. While I wasn't able to spend Christmas driving around looking at lights and opening presents under the tree with my family, it was still an amazing, and very unique, time.

The next day it was time for vacation to start. 13 of us from my intake hitchhiked and bussed our way up to Nkhata Bay in Malawi (which took 2 days from Lusaka, we stopped over in Chipata in Eastern Province for the night), for a well deserved vacation. When we first arrived we had grand plans, including hikes, walks, runs, exploration of the area, lots of reading, and eating just peanut butter and bread. These plans were quickly abandoned and we indulged in luxuries we haven't known for a while. What might these luxuries have been? We were able to wear bathing suits all day, our thighs actually saw sunlight (in Zambia it is very risqué to show one's thighs, subsequently, even with sunscreen we all sustained sunburns to our thighs). We were able to sleep in, we didn't have to sweep, cook, ward off rodents, or carry water. We ate meals that we didn't have to cook over braziers that were simple delicious and just relaxed and caught up on the past three months. Many of us hadn't seen each other since we swore in September 24th and it was wonderful to catch up with people. We spent our days in the sun, swimming in the lake, lounging. The lake was beautiful, the water was blue and crystal clear, almost Caribbean. We stayed at a guest house called Mayoka Village, and we very rarely left. We met other PCV's that work in Malawi, along with other travelers mostly from South Africa. It is also interesting to meet travelers from other places and discuss how life is similar and how life is different in our home countries. It was truly the perfect vacation. On the last night three of us cooked dinner for the guests and managed to pull it off. Malawi time is very similar to Zamtime, life just moves at a slower pace. However, at 6 o'clock we began cooking, and on the menu was chili, roasted vegetable salad, and cornbread. We had about 2 hours to prepare the entire meal from scratch and we were a bit nervous it was going to be a complete disaster. However, the owners Kathryn and Gary along with the kitchen staff pitched in and after two hours of feverish vegetable cutting, bread making, cooking, stirring, and literally sweating we pulled off a fantastic meal which is now going to be added to the Mayoka menu as Peace Corps Zambia Chili. So we even got to leave our mark there.

Vacation has now come to an end, and tomorrow I will be headed to Lusaka. On Monday we will start a two week training called IST (In Service Training) and it will mark the official end of our community entry. Everyone from our intake will be there and we will be learning things like perma-gardening, bee keeping, and also have sessions specific to our program. This is the first time that our entire intake will be together following swear in and it will be fantastic, and bizarre, to see everyone again. It's a bit strange, you spend two months with a group of people, see them every day for the entire day, become very close and then your separated for three months only to be thrown back together three months later. No one has E.T.'d so far so everyone will be there, and it will be so interesting to hear how everyone's experience is going!

Right after we finish IST, the new intake is flying in! I will have also been in country for 6 months. Suddenly, we aren't the new kids anymore! It really does blow your mind, some days feel so long, but then you realize that you've been here for 6 months, and then you think back to everything you were feeling right before flying in, when you arrived, when you were posted. How scared, overwhelmed, and excited you felt and the immense amount of anticipation you feel. And then suddenly, you've been here 6 months and while the experience is nothing like you expected it to be, you really feel this is my life, it doesn't feel uncomfortable or unnatural anymore, but rather feel natural. And then when you are sitting on Lake Malawi, looking out across the lake with someone that 7 months ago you never knew even existed and now you couldn't imagine your life without them, or your in the village out in the fields helping to cultivate a field with your best friend who is a villager in Zambia, or your listening to a conversation in Bemba and you actually understand what is going on, and suddenly you have this overwhelming feeling of awe, amazement, and happiness. I really have been given an incredible opportunity, not only to try and make the world a better place, which is a much harder job than I ever could have imagined, but also to get to know yourself, and who you are without anyone else to create your identity for you. Many people do not get this opportunity and I am eternally grateful for it.

I will hopefully be getting some pictures up in the next few weeks, so keep an eye out on facebook! Also again, as always, feel free to send me letters, postcards, notes, articles, pictures, anything to my address:

Natalie Neft, PCV
Peace Corps
P.O. Box 840038
Mkushi, Zambia

you can also always send me an email natalieneft@gmail.com however, my internet access is very very limited and it will take longer for me to email you back than it will for a letter to reach you.

Cheers to a wonderful 2011