Hello from Malawi!

~Moni~!

It's been a weeks since I left Colorado and I've been outside of Lilongwe since Tuesday.  We've been staying at the Malawian Institute of Management which has been more like a summer camp than being in what I imagined Malawi to be.  First impressions off the plane- the topography was eerily similar to the desert between Bakersfield and Taft.  Although I was jet lagged from the 15 hour flight from NYC to Johannesburg and the 2 hour flight from Johannesburg to Lilongwe, those first few glimpses of the topography and the mob of people waiting outside the airport totally overwhelmed me.  It took a few days to really even feel like the whole situation was real!

The area surrounding the Malawi Institute of Management

I’ve been learning some basics about what to expect these next couple of years and have really been happy to meet everyone.  Today I found out that I’m going to be learning Chichewa, a language that is spoken throughout central and southern Malawi.  It doesn’t give me anything specific about where my permanent site will be, but I’ll be finding that out on July 11th.

Tomorrow we’re moving to Kasungu and meeting the host families we’ll be staying with over the next few months.  We’re also going to be going to a market in Lilongwe to get some supplies.  Most important on my list: a pee bucket for nighttime, toilet paper :) , and a few chitenje (cloth wrapped around for a casual skirt).  As of tomorrow, I won’t have any electricity, running water, and minuscule to no access to internet, so I will talk to everyone in ten weeks with lots of pictures and amusing anecdotes, I suspect!  I miss and love everyone back home!  Talk to you soon and ~tiwonana~!