TJ, he gone
by Dom at 11:44 am on August 11th, 2008
So TJ came. We had a good time. Though it started out a bit hectic. See he had decided he wanted to do something famous while he was here and after talking him out of climbing Kilimanjaro he decided he wanted to do Victoria Falls so he bought his tickets to fly out of Lusaka, Zambia instead of Malawi. So that made a lot of plans a bit awkward. I had wanted to do the lakeshore hike and maybe camp in Liwonde national park and hike Mulanje but there would be no time to get to Lusaka after all that. Once he got here he thought he wanted to go really far north but then there wouldn’t have been time for Victoria falls, we would have just had a few extra days in limbo killing time. Not the best way to vacation.
So what happened was after he flew in we stayed in Lilongwe a night and then went up to my house for a night and tried to strategize. We woke up deciding to skip Malawi and go straight to Zambia so we would have time to do both Victoria falls and South Luangwa national park. See one of our hitches just came from the park and claimed it was like being in the middle of National Geographic. So that sold TJ. We walked out to hitch around 9, a lazy morning, and then decided, yet again, that we would let fate decide. I stood on the northbound side of the road to flag at the traffic towards the lake and he stood on the southbound side to flag at traffic that would take us to Zambia. I got a ride and off to Nkhata Bay we went.
We stayed there a couple days, got a discount on a chalet because of booking confusion, sweet! Swam a lot, ate a lot, walked a lot. It was cool. We then left early to try to get to Zambia in a day. We made it. We got a hitch down the scenic lakeshore road with a South African. He had something to do with the Uranium mine in the north. He was difficult to understand. He got there in enough time to hitch out to the border and on to Chipata though, so that was cool. Chipata was cool, like a big Mzuzu, except I broke my sunglasses Jenn had brought me pretty much the instant I got there. I did find some pretty sweet replacements though as you’ll see when I can post some photos.
Anyway hung there for a night, met some people, drank some beer, the usual. In the morning we hitched out to South Luangwa. Got a truckbed ride down a 100k dirt road for a couple hours. It’s pretty hot there too for it being winter and all. This is where we encountered the only problem of the trip. The place we got dropped was booked, it being busy season and all. So we had them call around and find us someplace else, and then because there were like elephants and hippos blocking the path to the bar and everwhere else, they had to drive us to this other place the booked for us. It was called croc valley or croc farm or something. There weren’t many crocs where ever it was. We stayed there one full day, did two drives and saw pretty much everything but cheetahs and rhino. We saw elephants, hippos, crocs, buffalo, giraffe, lion, leopard, hyenas, etc. Pretty sweet. The hyena laugh still haunts my dreams, it was pretty creepy. It worked out because TJ had decided he needed to stay until we saw some lions and we saw some the second ride. Convenient when trying to get to Vic Falls. So we made some friends and got a ride back to Chipata in the back with luggage. We got there it was no hassle which was nice.
Again, stayed there a night, met some people, drank some beer, the usual. Then we hitched to Lusaka. Got a free ride with some nice locals and found the suggested hostel with open beds. Stayed there one night and decided to take a bus to Livingstone, the Zambia border town closest to the falls. It wasn’t the best choice. The 8hr bus ride was not very pleasant on the rough roads. So much so that when we left we reverted to our hitch hiking ways. But we got there and again found the suggested hostel with available beds. It was a pretty cool place. Colorful, informative, except there was a lady there that was quite rude. I heard rumors that she didn’t like the busy season. She more seemed to not like her life, but that’s just what I saw. We never spoke about it though. That place had an interesting policy of not keeping your bed unless you had paid for it; which made for some worrisome days when we forgot to pay. Fearing we would return with our stuff in the office and some random traveler in our bed. It never happened though.
The first day we missed the free transport down to the falls from the hostel and so we walked and hitched and eventually got a taxi. We had a great time. We did the normal thing walking around the park taking picturing and getting wet in the spray. Then we hiked down this path to the run-off, the first rapid, called the boiling pot. It was rocky and wet and cool. Climbed around a bit, found a little somewhat calm pool if you will and took a swim. The water was pretty cold and every now and then a big rush would flood the thing and make me fear I was being washed out to swim the rapids. Which really did look like fun, especially after hiking around under that hot Zambian sun all day. After that we decided to try to figure out how to get on the other side of the falls. We had seen, before going, there was a pool at the brink of the falls that you could swim in. While we were taking pictures we saw some people over there so we wanted to check it out ourselves. We found a rasta guide to show us the way. He took us to some nice spots for photos and then showed us the pool. It was pretty crazy. Our guide showed us some points we could jump in. And we did. They were about five or ten meters up. A good jump. We waived to the tourists on the normal side and dove in, well feet first, clenching our butt so as not to be cleansed. Again the water was cold, but invigorating, especially being so close to the falls. I’ll definitely try to post some photos when I get a chance. The only downfall to that trip was that I lost my knife. A real bummer but I figure theres no better place to lose a knife than one of the seven natural wonders of the world. Once the swimming was done, I walked over to the Zimbabwean border and got ripped off for a ten million dollar note. I think I paid the equivalent of about twenty two cents. Oh well, it’s a nice souvenir I’m told. It has an expiration date on it. A smart idea, if a bit funny I thought.
After that we hitched back. The next day we did a rafting trip. It was probably the highlight of the whole trip. It wasn’t actually rafting, it was riverboarding, you just had to go with the rafters. I had never heard of this or seen it anywhere, but what it is is they give you short fins, a boogie board, a helmet and lifejacket and you basically swim the rapids. It really made regular rafting seem like a cakewalk. The water was cold and as anyone that’s been diving with me knows, I get cold easily, I was shaking the whole time. It was awesome though, just awesome! They would pick us up and raft us over the calm sections and drop us back in right before a rapid. We’d strategize a bit with out guide and then swim as hard as we could accordingly, which was normally against the very strong current. By the end of the trip my feet just flapped behind my legs my ankles were so beat. The next day my thumbs were sore from my deathgrip the deathgrip I had on my board the whole time. I only thought I was going to die about four times too, it was great. Saw some crocodiles, unfortunately they only stayed on the shore in the sun. I thought it would be pretty funny to see one of those things flopping it’s way down those crazy rapids beside me. That river was really deep and it was crazy to feel the currents underneath. They’d pull your legs all over the place. The whole thing was just intense. Afterwards they gave us beers and lunch which went well with the breakfast they provided before the trip. We watched the video they made and got ripped off buying the photos they took. I’ll post some of those when I can too. That was pretty much day two.
Day three, there, we just walked around and hung out and recovered. Nothing too special. Went shopping in the curios, watched the new texas chainsaw massacre, and animal planet while eating lunch, weird. Then we hitched back to Lusaka the next day and TJ flew out and I hitched again, back to Chipata. In all my wisdom I left my credit cards in TJ’s bag too, so I hope they enjoy their trip to Europe.
Overall it was a great time. Back in Lilongwe now sorting out my bank stuff and preparing for COS conference. Hazah! (oh yeah, my pink eye is better.)
Business in Lilongwe.
by Dom at 4:14 pm on July 22nd, 2008
So now it’s Lilongwe. I got a sweet hitch down…not. After sitting on the side of the road for two and a half hours I decided I’d take the first thing I got. It was a car that went about 3km and turned left and drove another hour and a half out into the bush to drop some relative off. So while I got to the road around 8:30 or 9 I didn’t actually get past Jenda (usually about 20min away) until 1. Then he was doing like 140Km/hr (~85mph) the whole way. Think of doing that on Skinner Mill Rd. or Monroe Ave. maybe. I feigned asleep a lot so I wouldn’t have to see what he was doing. I still had to listen to him complain about Malawian drivers since he was from Zambia and feel to car sway and roll through the turns. Anyway, I’m here now.
The responses I’m getting from the schools seem a bit demoralizing. That being said I’m still applying, just with less hope. Most seem rather unsympathetic to my situation. I guess I expected it, I just hoped otherwise. This week I plan on trying to figure out how to get on georgia’s university system website so I can get transcripts sent. That’s my goal.
Dora’s not here though and her absence annoys me. I could have easily found out she wasn’t going to be here, I just didn’t. Now I can’t ask her about things I hoped I could and time goes by.
TJ comes in soon and who knows what we’ll do. He wants to see Victoria falls. So I guess we’ll do that. Otherwise, it all seems up in the air.
A bit stressed
by Dom at 4:04 pm on July 22nd, 2008
Term three was over days ago now. I’ve come to Mzuzu to do some work. See Jenn left and I started thinking, I’ll see her soon, I don’t have much time left here. Only then I took it to the next level and started worrying about grad schools and moving out and TJ coming and my peace corps paperwork. I think I worried so much it caused my face to break out in hives. I think. It might not be hives. It might not be stress related. Could be an allergic reaction, though I didn’t think I was allergic to anything. Plan on seeing the doctors next week before I pick up TJ. We’ll see what they say. It’s starting to go away.
Another teacher was transfered from my school. I’m not sure if I’ve posted this already. It was the only woman we had. She was pretty awesome. Real nice, laughed at everything. So now we’re down to four plus me. I went to the division education manager with a letter from my headmaster to request more teachers. that was only a day or two ago though so no action has been taken. Atleast none that I know of. I hope I get replaced. They need it.
Jenn’s still in thailand. She went to Cambodia, said she loved it but super corrupt. Now I think she’s gone to visit Vietnam. From all her emails it really sounds like the place to be. Like the place to be. I’m a good bit jealous.
Blackle
by Dom at 10:04 am on July 6th, 2008
So there’s this flyer here in the computer lab someone posted describing this site, Blackle.com. Apparently the premise is a Google with a black background instead of white. The idea being that white uses more energy to produce to by changing it to black your saving energy. Hence the “Watt hours saved” counter. I think it’s a great idea. Baby steps.
Grad Schools
by Dom at 10:00 am on July 6th, 2008
So I’ve started doing some research on schools. I’ve narrowed it down to about 8 right now. As it is I would like to apply to them all, but we’ll see what I can afford. I’m a bit scared some are out of my league but I want to go for them anyway; I don’t want to sell myself short. I’m pretty excited. I’m going to email them soon to try to get a few questions answered. I hope to have finished applying by the time I return home but we’ll see how that goes. It’ll be a lot of work and traveling. I think my biggest setback will be my inability to edit my portfolio from here. Such is life though, we’ll see if they let it slide in lieu of my Peace Corps service. Anyway, here are the schools and locations in case your curious. And if you forgot, it’s industrial design that I am interested it.
Rhode Island School of Design - Providence
Art Center College of Design - Pasadena
Cranbrook Academy - Detroit
Pratt Institute - New York City
Carnegie Mellon - Pittsburgh
University of the Arts - Philly
Notre Dame - South Bend
Ohio State - Columbus
Gone
by Dom at 12:46 pm on July 3rd, 2008
Jenn left today. I’m sad. She’s traveling through southeast asia for a bit before heading home.
Jon and Emily
by Dom at 3:49 pm on June 27th, 2008
So Jon and Emily came and went. It was a great time. We spent a few days at my house where they saw me teach and helped me get water. We spent some time in Lilongwe doing fourth of July stuff and we went to the lake for a few days as well. I was impressed with how they handled all the situations. Like they were old pro’s or something. They were so easy it was great. They even cleaned my house and filled up all my water buckets while I was teaching the last day we were there.
It was nice for others to see the kind of things I get to face day in and day out. Like sweet random hitches and food that almost tastes American. We all actually thought it did taste American until Jon corrected us. Out of a room of 10 I think half did a double take when he said nik naks tasted nothing like cheetoh’s. Amusing. I got him hooked on bao. I just hope he finds people to play with besides Emily, cause I know she’ll get tired of it. If he doesn’t I just keep whooping him when I get back, well he did beat me two consecutive times and deemed himself the bao champion and started talking smack to Malawians saying he was the best. I don’t think he ever let them challenge his title though. He also was kind enough to bring a soccer ball for my school which was in desperate need of one. Though now, two weeks later, it’s almost unrecognizable from the bunch. It’s amazing how they treat things.
I think they had a good time. It was stressed by some of my previous engagements but they were good sports about it and seemed to make the best of it all. We made it to the lake and thats all I really wanted to do. Now they’re home safe. Back reliable transportation and food, and traffic jams, mcdonalds and headaches. Although I think traffic fume headaches are worse than sun/boredom ones. I’m extremely glad they came and I think everyone enjoyed meeting friends of mine.
Bike Training
by Dom at 10:03 am on June 1st, 2008
I was approached over a month ago by another volunteer asking if I would lead a training or workshop on bicycle maintenance. He had some questions, thought it would be great if I could get some of the tools from lilongwe to show him how to fix his bike, and maybe invite some others. I said sure no problem, I’d love to, sounds great. So some time goes by and we figure a date, this friday, would be best for us. It was the earliest I wasn’t busy. So this week I’m down in lilongwe for my term break and I’m thinking “Great, I can get the tools myself and bring them up so I know we’ll have them.” My plan then is to leave wednesday for mzuzu so I’ll have thursday to relax, friday for the training and travel again saturday and sunday. Well I decided to take teusday morning off from school research and internet to try to think what I want out of a school. However the transit house manager then approached me to help them maintain bikes because it’s my holiday and I’ve helped before. That wasn’t the plan so I’m not really pleased, but I go. We make a plan on how to handle the returned bikes, which to maintain and keep and which to get rid of. And we begin some maintenance.
Right, so this makes me see, yet again, how large this problem repeatedly is. So I go to talk to the GSO, the person in charge of the whole bike program. We discuss the current situation but he’s also curious about my training. I tell him it’s nothing big I just need to borrow some tools. He’s like ok, could you just talk to your APCD(kind of boss) about it. Sure why not. And he asks if I’ll do it again next week when there are a lot more volunteers around in lilongwe. I tell him probably, though I have reservations since Jon will be here. We schedule but I’m still not sure if I’ll keep the appointment or not. We’ll see. I digress. I am then called in by my APCD to the GSO’s office to talk with them. See we emailed the CD to clear the second training and they had questions about the whole affair. So I’m called in and told that they’ve decided to cancel my training in mzuzu…
I sit and think…how to respond.*
So I go on to explain the utility of the training and they understand that. Which was great. We’ve worked out a plan for the future based on this idea; which is a partial answer to the bigger bike problem. Fantastic. However, I’m still going north, and people will probably still be there, so now they’ve just not let me have tools. Which means problems go unfixed until this better solution can be enacted and performed, which in all it’s bureaucratic honestly probably won’t be until long after I’m gone. Unless I decide to care about the office’s problems and push it myself.
See, this is an example of how a seemingly innocuous request can become a huge ordeal and then even get nixed. Truly inspiration is what it is. Just not in a good way. Ah, policy.
*What they fail to see is they are completely irrelevant. They knew nothing about it two hours earlier for a reason. We saw no need to explain it to them. We need nothing from them except tools. So their “veto” is effectively meaningless. But how to put that tactfully was the problem.
Funny Stories
by Dom at 10:01 am on June 1st, 2008
I remembered a funny story, and funny enough at the same time another funny story happened, to a lesser degree at least. First as I walked from a gas station there was a minibus filling up with fuel. It was empty of people but it was shaking. I didn’t know why. As I passed by the rear of the bus I saw the attendant with the nozzle in the bus and two guys beside him standing there heaving the bus back and forth. I didn’t even ask why, it’s almost normal. In a hitch once they used a piece of bamboo to hold open the little door so they could put gas in, I don’t know why. Alright so I can’t remember the story I started the post intending to tell. Sorry. I’ll try to think of some others then for compensation. Tonight was kind of a funny story I guess. I went to dinner with Danni and Ali and they ended up getting hit on. As we were leaving apparently they were talking about Danni so she said hello then they got to chatting. This super drunk British dude was like you look fantastic, staring right at Danni, then realized how awkward a statement he made and tacked on, all of you, you all look really great…I said thanks. I was flattered, haha. How preposterous. The drunk guy was explaining how his son has a phd in mech engineering but got a job as an electrical engineer. He thought that was funny. He bought us a round and had his driver bring us home, so it wasn’t all awkwardness. Though they’re trying to get us to go to Nkhata Bay tomorrow.
I traveled up to Mzuzu today. I got a ride with peace corps. It was nice. We stopped at a PTC grocery store on the way up and I bought some boiled eggs, three, from this kid outside. K30 a piece I gave him a hundred. He tried to tell me he didn’t have change. I was like no son, took his eggs, and made him find me change. That fool thought I didn’t care about K10. That’s a banana in Lilongwe, or a tomato at my site, or like 10 guava, or two small packs of biscuits, etc. Then I got in the care and the staff person I was riding with gave me an egg sandwich.
I was taken in a hitch once to his fiance’s house. Or at least his fiance-to-be’s house. He proposed while we were there and then took her with us. It involved a lot of discussion with the parents outside while we sat inside watching some Easter special mass on TV from Nigeria. That was ridiculous. There were these white people, missionaries maybe, doing interpretive dance with wands and stuff. The mom was the head nurse at the clinic at my old site too. I thought I recognized her. Fortunately the recognition wasn’t reciprocated.
Alright so another funny story, the story I started this post for actually. So I was riding back from Nkhata bay with Jessie in a minibus. We were sitting across from this Malawian with this piece of luggage clutched in his arms. It was this molded foam piece with a zipper and a plastic handle. Fairly standard, except that this man had put a lovely purple plastic padlock on his to keep his zippers together. The kind of lock that’s about the size of your thumb that you might buy at a dollar store and whose key’s you normally lose within 5 minutes. I asked Jessie what she thought about that lock, or more what she thought he thought about that lock. I wasn’t satisfied though so I asked what she thought he’d do if I seized it and acted like I was going to rip it off. She said she didn’t know but wanted me to. I was like yeah right…and then I did. I grabbed hold of it and just shook it with a wild look in my eye. That man was frozen in his place eyes wide, stunned, for a solid second or two before he started to move. Then I released it and laughed. Everyone laughed, Jessie almost died. From laughing. The man said something about a false sense of security or how it was just for looks. I concurred. He was wary the rest of the trip. Needless to say, I was amused.