Day TEN - Mulanje Mountain

Day TEN– June 26, 2010
Today was sooo tiring I am ready for bed! The day started off with a long drive to Blantyre which is where Mulanje Mountain is. On the way there I tried to go to sleep since it was so early but I did see a few things. I saw this huge truck of stuff on the road that had fallen on its side; I was glad nobody was hurt but it looked crazy. Then I saw Malawian military men marching in the fields doing training. That was pretty cool and I wish I could take a picture, but it’s against the law to take pictures of government people, police, military men etc. These are women washing clothes in the river.

Finally we did reach Mulanje Mountain. Honestly, I was not excited for this hike. I am not a mountain climber at all and I wasn’t too wild about doing it in old Jordans because boots would have had more grip for the rocks and stuff. Well anyways we started the walk and we had two guides with us.
The whole thing was pretty much up a very steep hill so my legs were getting a work out. I kind of sucked it up and started walking with the fast group up in front. I was amazed with Dr. Kelly because she is like 72 trooping up this mountain with us. I did feel bad for Patty because she uses walking sticks since she has a bad hip so she struggled with it and eventually had to go back to the van where Dr. Barber and her husband stayed.







I was excited to see these pretty big monkeys run by. One of them kind of stared us down from a far distance. One of our guides told us that there’s this big race that men do which is running up and down the whole mountain. He said he had done it last year and came about 50th place out of 250 runners. The first place winner had a time of about 2 hours and 40 minutes so you can tell it was long. A problem we got into while hiking was that this man with sticks on his head and barefooted came down the trail we were walking and one of the students took a picture of him. He got so upset and asked for money for his photo being taken without permission so the girl had to tell him that she deleted the picture. After he left, our guide told us that the man never cares about pictures, but he was mad because she had a picture of him getting sticks some where he had no permission to be so now it all made sense. During our hike we saw a long line of little girls who looked younger than ten struggling with a whole bundle of sticks on their heads climbing up rocks and sticks barefooted. I just felt so bad that they had to work on a Saturday, had no shoes, and work so hard; after seeing that I couldn’t complain about anything.








After a long, long hike up many steep hills, rocks, and tall grass we finally reached the waterfall. It was very hard getting across some of the rocks but it was pretty cool to get to the middle of the river to see the waterfall. Some of us even sat on this large rock in the middle and ate lunch.

The trail we took down hill allowed us to see many people on the mountain. They were nice and said hello to us, but one group of older ladies kept pointing at me and said sister which was kind of odd; Danielle wasn’t near me so she probably got the same reaction since we look different from the rest of the group.


I was so glad for the hike to be over and I was more excited to see what the wood carvers had at their stands. This time our group had a plan to make sure we got good prices for things. We looked around for 15 minutes and tried to bargain good prices. One or two people brought something and the rest of us kept bargaining. Then we all walked away to the van. When the van’s engine started up all the people kept running to our windows offering way better prices. It was kind of funny but I was glad it worked.

The next place we were headed to was to see the new Annie’s Lodge in Blantyre. When we got there her daughter Catherine greeted us and invited us in for tea. I was the happiest person ever because I saw that they had Nesquick strawberry milk. Now I didn’t have milk so I put it in the hot water they gave me. Then I tried to add cream and sugar, but it wasn’t quite the same. Then finally I got offered some milk. With a little more cream it did start to taste decent so I was very happy. They also gave each table a whole plate of different cakes to try; the chocolate one was the best of course! Annie came along with her boyfriend Limbani who is apparently some big famous musician in Malawi so that was pretty cool. She gave us a tour of the lodge in progress. It was nice, but I think the one we are living in will always be the best one. I also found out that Annie owns one of the clubs we passed.

We got back really late but it was a pretty good dinner because my table had some great conversation about some random topics; it was one of those stories you had to be there for.

All in all today was good.

Day NINE - Mwanje Primary School

Day NINE – June 25, 2010 Wow!! I think today was the greatest day so far!!

Instead of going straight to our schools this morning we went to Mwanje Primary School to award the students in standard 7 with new book bags for moving forward to standard 8 and we are giving the 11 standard 8 students new book bags too for getting chosen for secondary school. When we gave the standard 7 class theirs we were in their classroom and they started singing for us while we passed them out; a lot of them seemed so happy and I was just so glad to be there. One boy in particular that I really wanted to meet was this boy named Gift; he was the most enthusiastic he would not stop dancing, I just loved him! He was real nice too when I spoke to him later. The real ceremony was outside for the 11 students. We each got to give a book bag to one of the students; I chose to give my book bag to one of the girls because out of the 11 students only 2 were girls so I was honored to give it to her. I didn’t get a chance to speak to her but I wish her a lot of luck in her studies and hopefully she will make it to the university. The dancing and singing done in our honor was great! I felt real important sitting in those chairs in front of the school. One thing that was real cool after all the speeches was that they gave us a gift which was a map of Malawi made in tiny, tiny beads glued to a frame which was all hand done by one of the teachers. After signing the visitors’ book and meeting some of the teachers all the kids in the courtyard just started this cool beat with a drum and singing and dancing. I saw people from our group in the crowd dancing with them so I went out there too. These three little girls from standard 7 came up to me and they were just too nice. They were trying to teach me the words of the song that basically kept repeating; I had it for a moment, but I don’t remember the words now. Then the oldest one was teaching me the foot movement they were doing it was so much fun I just loved the whole thing. Those three were my friends I just had to hug them goodbye; they were so nice. This is the teacher who made the beaded art work. I wasn’t ready to head back to school after that, I was still pumped up from all the excitement.

When I did get back to the school I went straight to work with Dr. Barber in getting the classroom ready for the teacher’s Literacy in Mother Tongue class. Today Alinane and I finished translating his book. So then I helped him use highlighter tape to highlight vocabulary words he would want to use. Then I went to talk to a bunch of different teachers and they got to ask me a bunch of questions like comparing schools in the United States and Malawi; it was really nice. The rest of our group also came over to see how our project was doing and some of them even chose to help some teachers with their books. For dinner tonight we went to this restaurant called Tasty Bites. I had these really good things called samosas, but the rest of my meal wasn’t that great. I did get some really good chocolate cake though and the frosting was so different but much better from anything I tasted. I also learned that Tasty Bites was the place where our professors created the logo for our study abroad program which is kind of cool.

Day EIGHT - Feeling Better

Day EIGHT – June 24, 2010
Today was great! :) After all that medicine I took the past two days I finally feel soooo much better! I mean my stomach felt just a little funny and I just had a mild back ache but other than that I felt good. I also got a full night’s sleep thanks to this medicine Carly gave me and I could finally eat. I had a nice breakfast because I finally figured out what I did like and what I didn’t like which helped a lot after trying everything these past few days. I also got to try this pinkish fruit juice whish was so good.

As always when I got to school it was tea time, but today it was better because they had these little coconut cookies that were way better than the tough bread rolls they always have.
Today was also my big day to teach a lesson. I started off teaching about the 7 continents and then on to the oceans. There was only one student who is from Zimbabwe who already knew most of the material; he is constantly showing me how much ahead of the rest of the class he is and how good his English is as well. Well, anyways, I continued to talk about some of the countries found in the continents and then I explained the journey that my group has traveled to reach Zomba. I also went further to explain to them that people from America are all not white. So I explained how America is mixed with many, many cultures and how we ended up being called the things we are called like Hispanic, African American, Native American, etc. At this point they were very interested. I also showed them where my family was from which Puerto Rico. Gift, the teacher I’m working with, encouraged me to keep talking so I went further to talk about the differences in their culture, the culture in the United States, and some of the things I knew about Puerto Rico. What I learned was that in Malawi the staple food there is maize which they make into nsima (this is a white food that tastes like mashed up rice that is stuck together), monkeys are the equivalent to our squirrels, special birthday celebrations are from the ages 12- 18, and common careers for females to look forward to are nursing, teaching, secretary work or managing companies. I also got the teacher Gift to participate by teaching him and the class basic Spanish. So he and I did a short basic conversation in Spanish, but I had to keep telling him what to say and how to say it which the kids loved because they kept laughing at how he kept messing up. It was a really good class period. I enjoyed the whole thing and I found out some of the students never even heard of Spanish before so I was glad to expose them to something new.

The second half of my school day was spent with Dr. Barber and the Literacy in Mother Tongue project. I did finish helping the blind teacher translate his book. I also got to Chipo find supplies for the book she was making. Gift ended up finding me again and he gave me a whole lesson on Chichewa. He used the book he translated from English to Chichewa for his students on me except he did it backwards so I was asked to read the book in Chichewa and then he went back and quizzed me on what words in Chichewa were the English words so it was sort of like matching. I had a lot of fun doing that and I could tell that he is going to do great teaching children English using these books.

This was the library Dr. Barber starded in this school.

Later on I had a very good dinner. I order the four season’s pizza and I must say it was delicious. I can tell you right now it is not like American pizza, but it was good judging from where we were. Don’t get me wrong I still reminisce about the last American meal I had which was a BK Double Stackerfrom Burger King, but today that pizza did its job. It was so big I had to save half of it for tomorrow so I’m excited for that.

This was in our room before we went to sleep.


Some chips I brought which had some weird flavors.


And these are all the bottle caps I have been collecting for the kid's abacuses that they make.

Day SEVEN - School Day

Day SEVEN – June 23, 2010
Still with a lot of back and stomach pain I was able to make it to school today. It sure wasn’t easy but I made it through and I’m glad I did. I decided to work this teacher named Gift and his class. What I didn’t realize was that this class has two teachers Gift and Chipo and Chipo is the teacher Danielle was working with so we both ended up in that class.

The first part of my day was spent sitting in on Chipo’s English reading comprehension lesson. This class was standard 7 so they all had a good amount of knowledge on the English language. Some things I noticed in the class was that children’s names range from very cultural Malawi names to common American names like John, Sophie, Oscar and Renaldo. One little boy also had the unusual name Funny. Students also had to get down on their knees to ask for permission for something or to go somewhere. I also noticed that they had extremely old books that were basically falling apart and they had to share it with 1-3 other students. I really wished there was some way to get this school and schools like it all over the world the funds for materials because it’s extremely sad. I was happy to see that a lot of the students had very neat and pretty hand writing some were even better than mines. During break time I noticed that some students who didn’t go outside with everybody else stood inside and kept working on class work. I asked Gift why they didn’t leave and he said that they stay inside and keep working because they don’t have food to eat like everybody else; which was really sad.

The next part of my day was working with Dr. Barber and her Literacy in Mother Tongue project with the teachers after school ended. This project was basically an after school class for teachers from all 3 primary schools. It wasn’t required so these teachers had to show up on their own free will. We did tell them that we could not pay them but that we did offer school supplies through the activities. Basically this class taught teachers new methods of teaching for students who spoke a different language other than Chichewa. This was important because when you first start school class is taught in Chichewa and as you move up standards you are taught English so when you enter secondary school the whole thing is only taught in English. So students who speak Yao or a different language never understand from day one because they don’t understand Chichewa so they will never be able to understand English.

The first task and homework assignment Dr. Barber gave teachers the first day was to pick out a very extra large big book that told little kid stories and to translate it from English to Chichewa using a color marker. And today’s task was to add a third language in another color marker that is common in their school.

She also taught other activities and strategies they could use in class like matching and making connections or using vocabulary quilts and so on. Today we had more teachers than the first day which was exciting because we now had a full house. We eventually ran out of supplies for each teacher so later in the day Dr. Barber went out and bought some more. She gave them their very own book bag full of supplies like color markers, tape or glue, and scissors. She also gave them color paints with brushes to each standard to share which I think they appreciated a lot.

One teacher that I got to know well was Alinane. He was the only blind teacher in the room. I felt bad for him because I heard the first day he just sat there because no one bothered to help him translate his book since everyone got caught up in their own work. So today I sat down with him and read his book to him and he translated and spelt each word in Chichewa so I could write it out for him. We both learned a lot from this. He learned words he never heard of like “meadow” and I learned some Chichewa and how to spell some of it. We still haven’t finished the book so I’m sure we will get right to work tomorrow. I also plan to sit in one of his classes because I’m very curious on how he teaches.

At the end of the day Gift surprised me by informing me that he wants me to teach a lesson tomorrow on anything. I plan to teach world geography so we’ll see how that goes.

Today was pretty good minus me not feeling good at all and my suitcase still not arriving after a whole week.

I must say that so far this trip has made me so grateful for the things we do have in America like drinking water, shoes, heated homes, and many, many other things. And I miss American food so much and my momma’s cooking especially her Spanish rice. But whenever I start to miss home listening to my iPod seems to help so I recommend to anybody leaving the country to always bring some music!

Day SIX - Sick Day

Day SIX – June 22, 2010
I didn’t get any sleep the night before since I was sick and threw up. And the morning was just the same. So I stood at the lodge all day and missed the first day to help teach classes. I’m really disappointed I missed the first day, but I was in so much pain. I did appreciate the staff coming to check up on me and bringing me lunch and anything I needed to my room. Today was the day I really wished my phone didn’t cost so much to use because I really missed my mommy.

Day FIVE - Primary Schools

Day FIVE – June 21, 2010
Once again I heard a rooster earlyyyy in the morning.
Today was the day we were traveling to all the schools that we will be working at. The first school was the village primary school called Maliemia that Radford University students will be teaching at.

When we got off the bus all these little kids came running towards us. It was sooo many of them. Of course they did call us “white people” in Chichewa since they believe that everyone in America is white including me and Danielle. And they all went crazy when people took out their cameras. In Malawi, you can never just take one picture of a child; you have to take a picture of all of them. What I did was, I took their pictures and actually let them see their selves on the camera which blew their minds. Eventually, I did put my camera away because I noticed that they started pushing and fighting for pictures and I didn’t like that at all. I did get to meet a little girl whose name was also Michele, but I bet she most likely spells it completely different.
I peeked into some of the classes that were still in session and I was very amazed at how discipline they were even if they did have over a hundred kids in each class sitting on the floor. I also got to speak with some of the teachers and they were very nice and happy to see us.

One thing I noticed between the younger and older kids was that the older kids were very distant and didn’t want to say anything to us. So I decided to go up and start talking to them. Most of them were either in standard 6, 7, 8. One boy decided to ask me a million questions like “Why are you here? Where did you come from? Why this school? What is it like at your home?” I could understand why he was asking so many questions and I was actually glad he did. And I guess I must have done well in answering the questions because after he let go of his hard face he smiled and said “Welcome to Malawi.”

The way school works in Malawi, they have primary school and secondary school. Primary school has standards 1-8. In standard 8 they take an exam and the students who do the best on the exams are accepted into secondary school, but some drop out even if they are accepted because they can’t afford the small fees of secondary school. Secondary is for four years and on the last year you have to take an exam and whoever does best on the exam can go on to the university. So it’s like pyramid style with the amount of students getting smaller as the level of education gets higher.

So the next school we went to was the Government Primary School. This school is where the Virginia Tech students would be teaching. One thing I noticed about this school and the last school was that some students here had uniforms while the students at the last school didn’t. This school also had the child feeding program which is why there were so many little kids, who were too young to start school, hanging around on the yard. Again, classes here were pretty big with over 100 students in each class. But what I did get to see since they put the attendance on the board was that most classes averaged about 30 kids being absent each day. I also got to see the library A&T started at this school; it’s a small locked up room but at least they have one.
The next primary school we visited was the Domasi Demonstration Primary School where Danielle, Dr. Barber and I will be working. This school looked the best out of all of them and every student had a uniform. Dr. Barber was well at home; every teacher knew her there and they were ecstatic to see her. The teachers at this school set up a room of chairs for all of us to sit around and introduce ourselves. This one teacher name Gift was the most outgoing and very friendly so I might work with his class. He showed us around the school and kept teaching us words in Chichewa.
After this school we walked over to secondary school next door. This is the school that the two Virginia Tech PhD students will be teaching at. One thing I found sad about this school was that their library was pretty and had many shelves, but barely any books and the books they did have looked extremely old like they came from the 70’s or 80’s. We didn’t stay too long in this school because the two PhD students had to meet with the head teacher and talk about some things.
When we did finish visiting the schools we headed into town to go visit a fabric store. Apparently there is a seamstress nearby who can make anything you want as long as you buy the fabric. So everybody bought pretty fabric to take to her soon.

After going to the store to pick up some more bottle water we all decided to walk back to the lodge instead of driving so we can know how to get back and forth on our own. This was the part I regretted. That was the longest walk in life and the whole thing was walking up hill. And at one point this man was following us until we went in this store and we got one of the workers to get him to leave us alone. That was kind of scary because he looked crazy. The main thing I did like a lot about our walk was that I did get to see the little monkeys on the trees outside of Annie’s Lodge.

Now here is the part when things started going downhill. My back was hurting a lot from the walk because I already get back pains on the regular so this walk made it worse. And I don’t know if it was something I ate but I got very sick at night. My stomach was killing me and since my luggage wasn’t here yet I didn’t have my medicine so I had to ask Dr. Barber for some. This whole night was just completely painful and I didn’t get any sleep.