Week One in Malawi

Almost halfway through the semester

Greetings from Malawi!

It’s been a whirlwind transition to a new culture, country, and continent. Our 3 days of international travel on 3 continents included lots of waiting in line - for security and customs, to board the plane, and yes even to buy a Chick-Fil-A sandwich.

We left our hotel at 3am (Ecuador time) on Tuesday, March 12. By 6am we were boarding our flight to Miami. In Miami, it took a long time to pass through the various stages of U.S. customs. But thankfully our layover was quite long and I still had time to find the Chick-Fil-A in a different terminal:) Next, we had our flight to Atlanta, where we spent the night in a hotel. We didn’t get to our ATL hotel until nearly 8pm - fitting 19 people and all their luggage into a hotel shuttle is not an easy task. After such a long day of travel, my twin made the one hour drive to give me a hug and drop off some snacks for the next leg of my journey

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Our flight to Africa left the morning of Wednesday, March 13 - not as early as the one before but still had to leave the hotel by 6:30am (Eastern) because traveling in such a large group requires a lot of extra buffer time in case anything goes wrong. It also wasn’t lost on me that four years ago (March 13, 2020) was my final day of in-person school before COVID shifted my life. I’m grateful for the opportunity to be traveling the world four years later, after two highly anticipated international trips were cancelled for me in 2020.

The flight from Atlanta, Georgia to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia was 14 hours long - by far the longest flight I’ve ever taken. I joke that this was the point at which I lost track of the days for many obvious reasons. Suddenly, we were six hours ahead of Eastern time and we (very briefly) tried to sleep on the plane. We also ate lunch first, then they served us breakfast, and finally we had dinner. The order of meals did not help our confused bodies at all. Technically, we boarded our final flight the morning of Thursday, March 14 and three and a half hours later our tired, jet lagged group of 19 arrived to Malawi! Thankfully, all 19 of our bags safely arrived with us and we were warmly welcomed by our Malawi country coordinator.

Our home base is a community center called Kusewera, which is outside of Lilongwe (the capital city). Kusewera has dorm-style guest housing where we are staying, in addition to some Canadian students who are spending an entire semester in Malawi. Kusewera has a preschool and kindergarten for local kids and also hosts an after-school program during the week for older kids

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The adjustment has been a challenge at times. Culture shock part 2 is not at all easier than the first time. I had built a routine in Ecuador and become familiar with parts of the local culture. So there are parts of life in Ecuador I am missing, like my own room at my homestay and daily walks to take the metro. But I’m hopeful that eventually I will find my routine here in Malawi. It’s only been one week here so I’ve got three more weeks.

Another highlight of our time here was our two day visit to Permaculture Paradise Institute in Mchinji. I was not familiar with Permaculture at all but I learned so much about this amazing system of agriculture and enjoyed eating so many fresh passion fruit off the trees! We stayed in solar powered little huts and there were lots of ants (and spiders) so it was quite an experience. We also ate lots of delicious food at their restaurant, including Nsima which is a traditional Malawian corn dish.

We also spent a day at Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources, meeting with two different professors and learning about Agricultural Extension in Malawi and Challenges to Agriculture in Malawi. That day we also visited a nearby “model village” which is a community that stands out as an example for successful agricultural practices. We were warmly welcomed by the chief of the village and he took us on a tour of the various projects in their community - from gardens to pigs to goats to bunnies to beehives to corn fields we saw so much! The village we toured was a matrilineal one so the women hold the power to make decisions of who is chief and they are the owners of the land, not the men. The women were also with us the whole time during the tour, singing, dancing, and smiling with so much joy. At first we felt weird entering this unfamiliar space and disrupting the locals normal lives but they showed us so much hospitality and said how having visitors makes them so happy because they have worked so hard to become a model village and love being able to share their community structure with outsiders.

Wifi is not ever available to us and service is super inconsistent, which has been an adjustment but it’s been nice to be a little disconnected and I have enjoyed readings lots of books. Here, it’s a much slower pace of life. We have our daily schedule but usually things are running behind or people show up late to meet us or the bus isn’t ready for us or we just have extra time most days. Our days still include so much but there’s lots of moments to rest and reflect, which I’ve appreciated.

Currently, we are wrapping up our two days in Salima, the town on Lake Malawi. We’re staying at a lodge right on the lake with a pool because sadly it’s not safe to swim in the lake due to parasites. We met with the Department of Fisheres and also the Rice Research Station in Salima. Today, we head to Gowa for the first week of our rural homestays so I’ll be away from my phone even more for the next little bit.

Overall, here are some happy surprises I’ve experienced so far in Malawi

• The two cats at our lodge in Salima

• How welcoming and joyful the women in the Model village were to greet us and share their community with us

• The delicious fresh passion fruit

• Cold showers

• The bug net princess canopy

• Volleyball peppering at Kusewera

• My new loop earplugs

• My chitenje (traditional skirt always worn by women in Malawi)

  

  

  That’s all for now!

  -Anna