I ended up not writing Thursday because not
a whole lot happened. In the morning, we met with the Mayor of Mzuzu. That was
interesting because of the cultural differences between the ceremonies around
Mayors. The Mayor was referred to as Your Worship, and his right-hand man bowed
to him before sitting down or leaving the room. He also wore a giant gold chain
around his neck. Overall, the whole meeting felt a bit unnecessary, but Paul
was pretty excited about it. After that, we had lunch and wandered off in
groups. My group went to an internet café, where we spent 20 minutes fighting
with really slow internet. We probably should have taken turns: four of us
using it at once made it slower for all of us. It was significantly faster on
the day I checked about med school. So in 20 minutes, all I managed to do was
send an email to a few family and friends. I’m really looking forward to having
more consistent internet access so I can be in contact with people.
After the internet café, we walked back to
our Oasis. It’s closer to town than we thought; it only took about half an hour
to walk from the centre of town home. I’m really getting my bearings now; it
took awhile. The lack of street names is actually not bad since I rarely
utilize street names when navigating; I usually rely on landmarks. When we got
home, I sat on the front lawn with some of the others having an afternoon drink
– I swear, I have drunk more alcohol here in a week than I usually drink in a
month. Eventually, Kelsey, Natalee, and I went for a walk around sunset. That
was really lovely; a lot of people were out, so we interacted with a lot of
locals. Many of them wanted their picture taken. In particular, one man, named
Edias, managed to communicate to us that he wanted a copy of the picture, so
we’re planning to print it out and then show it to people until they direct us
to him. He pointed out his village to us, so we’ll head in that direction. We
also acquired a posse of young boys, who climbed trees and played around for
us, and then followed us almost all the way home. They were really cute.
In the evening, I taught Natalee, Kelsey,
Marlo, and Mary to play Dutch Blitz and we had a lot of fun. The others were
getting drunk outside; I enjoyed having a chill evening with a few of the girls
I feel most comfortable with. I also found a workout buddy! Kelsey and I have
decided to do daily strength training (we have so much downtime here, it’s 100%
feasible), and last night we had a good workout. We have pretty similar fitness
levels, so that’s nice. We also stretched. We joked that we’ll come back with
6-packs and being able to do the splits, to offset our awful farmer’s tans.
Today (Friday) we’re headed out to a
fishing village and then going out to what Paul calls a “disco” tonight. Hopefully
we’re all well-rested enough! We often start getting tired around 8, just from
the sun.
Added later (Saturday, if I’m being 100%
honest):
What a long day! We left for the fishing
village around 9:30 and got back just after 6. Overall, the experience was
slightly disappointing because we spent probably about 7 hours of that time
driving in the bus. The other hour and a half was split into 4 stops, 3 about
half an hour, and one for 10 minutes. The first one we just picked up some
Fanta and Coke (both extremely popular drinks here that are cheaper than
water), and the second we got more Coke and Fanta…but that time we added a
bathroom break. The third stop was finally the fishing village, where we saw
much more fish than I’ve ever seen in my life. Fishermen go and catch these
really tiny fish overnight, and when they’re back in the morning, the fish are
placed on nets to dry out. What’s particularly interesting is that often, the
nets they use are usually bug nets from NGOs that are given to pregnant women
and children to protect them from Malaria. While this is definitely not good,
all I could think about was how innovative it was: see the need, fill the need.
My favourite part of the village was that we acquired a posse of children who
followed us around. We joked to Paul that he’d gained a bunch more students.
On the way back from the village, we
stopped at a beach and spent some time watching monkeys (MONKEYS!!!) and taking
pictures. I got to do some gymnastics on the beach, which was really nice, even
though it made me really sandy.
I taught Marlo the game “zitch dog” from
How I Met Your Mother on the bus. Basically, every time you see a dog, you
point at it and say “zitch dog.” Whoever says it first gets a point. We
expanded it to all animals (FYI: zitch chicken doesn’t exactly roll of the
tongue) and had a great time playing, maybe me more than her since I won quite
handily.
Going to the disco was fun! I was pretty
tired, but I managed to last until we got home around 3. Only 12/18 of us went,
which I think worked out well because 18 is just a really massive group to
coordinate. Luckily, Pat (one of our two guys) came, so he spent a decent
amount of time jumping from one of us to another whenever we were getting
uncomfortable from dancing with someone. Possibly not how he wanted to spend
his night, but I was thankful to have him there and I think many of the other
girls felt the same way. I really enjoyed dancing! There were even a couple
songs I knew. Fun fact: apparently Malawians are obsessed with the song Sorry
by Justin Bieber. They played it at least 3 times. Not surprisingly, having 18
drunk people led to some minor drama, but I think it’ll all be forgotten by
Monday. Thankfully, I wasn’t involved, just a spectator.
-Jen
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