Ok more about me in Malawi. After a week at Malawi’s forest college we moved into our home stay villages. “Homestay,” (as they call it in Peace Corps) is designed to immerse us into the culture and language of Malawi and that it did. Getting out of the vehicle was quite the realization, I recall saying out loud, “well it’s on like Donkey-Kong,” this had to be the hardest part of Peace Corps Training. Walking down that dirt trail fallowing my Amayi (mother in chichewa) carrying my huge pack on her head was an eye opener, the whole time I was like, “come on Jacob pull your self together.” She walked me to the small mud hunt where I would spend countless hours in the dark looking over my language books. As the weeks went by I found myself pang’ono pang’ono (little by little) learning and loving more and more about Malawi. By the end of homestay I was ready to move out and make a name for myself at my new site.
Yesterday was swearing in at the Ambassador’s beautiful house, fallowed by a day of non-stop eating of wonderful American food. Our Peace Corps Country Director is amazing and invited us all to his place for dinner, yeah be had BBQ polled pork, even after being in country for only 60 days I can already appreciate good American food, lol. Today most of us headed out to our sites, which was sad to say goodbye, I am going to miss them a lot. As for me I head out to my site tomorrow and most like will not see another Peace Corps volunteer for the next two months. It is strongly suggested that we stay at our sites for the next three months with the exception of 4th of July, which the Ambassador invites all Americans in country.
Well I hope that the information will suffice for now and I’ll try and write again in two months. Sorry but as environment volunteers we are out there, away from electricity and running water, well besides the river, lol. Ok take care and lots of love from Malawi.
p.s. I got and love all the emails you sent to Victor our CD.
SO COOL, Jake. Soak it in! I got chills reading that!
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Having worked in a place as beautiful as the Thuma Forest Reserve must have been a great experience!
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