Hello! It’s Natasha again! Second time traveler and project lead. Today, I’ll be talking about our second day in Zomba, meeting up with The University of Minnesota’s EWB chapter (UMN), and starting camping!!
I was able to turn on my phone today!! It was very exciting to wake up and find it charged. It however still has terrible service so my messages aren’t really working 😊.
I woke up late to Adda making a delicious breakfast of eggs and cereal. And then went to go take a quick shower and somehow tracked water all over the bathroom floor. It was really nice though, and I felt really clean.
Then we rushed to pack our car since we were supposed to meet with the community at 9 AM in Naisi. Of course, we were running on Malawi time so arrived 20-30 minutes late. Costa came along for the car ride as well as Roland, the Intern at FPI.
We had talked the night before and decided that we didn’t want to spend too much time in the community, as we didn’t want to raise their hopes too much since we were still planning on assessing Makwerlani later in the week. With our teams of two, we split up and finally got to see the homes of several villagers that lived near the Naisi primary school.
Sophie and I talked to a pair of sisters who were self-made businesswomen and also just really smart, caring people. The younger sister was a single mom of five where she took in many of her relatives or neighbors’ children after they were orphaned. The older sister had a really cool improved cookstove that used less firewood, where she had talked to someone who taught her how to make the stove as well as explain how it is better for the environment. The two both knew how to cook buffalo peas, which were made of pigeon peas, vegetables that would be poisonous before cooking. However, they came up with ways to make it for their customers to enjoy.
We also got to know our translator a bit better on the walk back from the village as he talked about how students were learning to take care of themselves and farm to bring resources to their home villages. He also was very curious about Singapore and how it grew from being a small country with few resources as he hoped that Malawi could do the same. He also wondered how Black people were treated in America and the upcoming US election. He was worried about the political stability of the US.
We then decided to regroup and chat among the many members of the community and thank them for welcoming us. They were all very involved citizens who were very proactive in making the village and school the best they could with the resources they had. They were also really good teachers who cared a ton about their students and advocated very well for them.
We quickly ran and took some soil samples as well as water samples so that in the future, we could potentially build chimbutzi blocks for the girls and boys at the school.
Leaving Naisi, we headed over to Zomba city where we stopped by the main hospital where there was a composting bin for guardians of people who were in the hospital. It was really cool to see this new technology be implemented in a community and have so much community buying that people using the kitchen really felt like it was their own. We bought some sweet potatoes as I remembered that our cultural mentor Naomi bought them in last year’s trip (so they’re safe!) and headed over to the UMN’s St. Pias school and project.
They are building Ventilated Improved Pit (VIP) latrines for the school, and it was really cool to see their process and how complex their project was. They traveled with two mentors involved and helped them create a structure for their club that encouraged them to work with FPI in a very hands-on way. It was also really cool to be able to be among students in Malawi who felt very comfortable with outsiders and came to hold my hand, play games and even compliment my hair. We had to rush because Costa told us that it would be easiest to set up tents before sundown. However, we did accidentally lie about being at St. Pias for only 15 minutes. We were there for over 40.
Rushing over to Trout Farm, we split up and went to cook the food that we bought the day before over a traditional cook stove that we had actually seen in assessment that day. It was obvious that the way the stove used a lot of firewood and created a lot of smoke that it would be pretty harmful indoors.
After gathering and sitting around the campsite light the team and Costa ate our delicious meal of pasta with beans and tomato sauce and a little bit of veggies. After dinner, we did a bit of stargazing and chatted about who seems like an oldest or middle or youngest child. Then, right before I wrote this email, I realized I probably lost my phone so this message was sent on Sophie’s phone (thank you Sophie!!). I called my mom real quick and it seems like my location is on trout Farm so will look for it in the morning.
Signing off, and with much love from Malawi,
Natasha