Date: Sun, 1 Oct 2000

From: Abigail Jeanne Stamm

Subject: I'm off to Malawi!

Hello all,

This is my last mass e-mail before I leave on Thursday for Malawi. Please tell me ASAP if you want me to change your e-mail address or delete you altogether. After Wednesday night, for the next two years or so, contact my dad at stamm@oswego.edu about e-mail info. If I can, I will send a mass e-mail from a netcafe every few months. If not, I will ask dad to send occasional updates. Do not e-mail me in Malawi. I won't respond, if I get the message at all.

First, a bit of trivia. I found a website that claims Malawi means "bright haze", in kiswahili. The name comes from the haze off Lake Malawi. There are two major climates: hot and humid along the lake and colder in the mountains.

I will be living in a village outside Lilongwe, the capital, with a homestay family for about the first three months. I will learn language, customs, food, and technical training there. I think I will get HIV/AIDS prevention education training and the language I am most likely to learn is chichewa, a bantu language related to kiswahili.

After the first three months, I will move to my site. I will live in some sort of housing provided by the school where I teach. I don't know if I will have electricity or access to a phone or how easy my access to water will be. I don't know what I will be teaching either: some say biology and others say physical science. maybe both, with a bit of math and English.

in Lilongwe, my address will be:

Abigail Stamm

Peace Corps

PO box 208

Lilongwe, Malawi

Africa

Please send letters via air mail (faster and more reliable than by land/sea). send photos too; I'm told Malawians love pictures of life in the states. I will receive mail at this address as long as I am in Peace Corps Malawi, whenever I travel to the capital. When I find out my site address, I will forward it to you. I do not know any phone numbers yet.

I don't have many of your snail mail addresses, so I can't write to you until you write to me. that's it for now. I'm watching the Olympics closing ceremony. I was excited to see the flags for Malawi and Kenya. Write back if you have any questions.

Keep in touch!

Abby Stamm