Date: Sun, 16 Dec 2001

From: Abigail Stamm

Subject: Summer School in Chipoka

Summer School 2001, Chipoka Secondary School

15 December 2001

Most PCV's, myself included, arrived in Chipoka on 24 November, the day before the students came. A skeleton crew of about a dozen PCV's had arrived the day before. Saturday morning, about 20 PCV's piled into the overloaded and topheavy PC minibus and an extra landrover. I chose the back of the landrover early on. My bag was piled with almost everyone else's on top of the minibus. Every free centimetre was taken up by school supplies and food for 150 people for two weeks. Finally, we started out, the landrover following the minibus in case anything fell off. Somehow, the vehicles got separated around Salima Turnoff just north of Lilongwe (Area 25 for those of you who know Malawi). We moved quickly at first.

The roads to Salima are well paved, which is not surprising since Salima is a major town and in Central Region. We had not reached Nkhotakota turnoff though before we were stopped by trucks blocking the road for no evident reason and had to detour. Detours in Malawi are an adventure. Since alternate roads take you hundreds of kilometres out of the way where they exist at all, all detours require leaving the road. In some cases, like the road to Ntaja that is now under construction, oxcart paths will be widened and sometimes smoothed for cars. On the Lilongwe-Salima road (the M5?), there were no nearby oxcart paths. Instead, we got rerouted through a plantation of some kind and hit a dead end where the path paralleled the road, but was separated from it by a five-foot vertical drop into a ditch. We turned around and eventually found another exit to the plantation. It was on these winding paths that we briefly caught sight of the minibus far ahead. It saw us, but did not wait for us. Beggar children took advantage of the detour, waiting at crossroads to beg drivers for money. We gave none.

Back on the tarmac, we traveled quickly the rest of the way to Balaka Turnoff, about 3 km west of Salima. There, the minibus waited for us. Several people got out to stretch or buy food from the roadside vendors: mandazis (doughnuts), chipis (french fries), and fruits. Jenn McAvoy and I went to a nearby resthouse in search of a chimbudzi (toilet). We found one and persuaded the owner to let us use it. It was like any other nondescipt chim, but for those of you who have never seen one, it was a small concrete box with a hole in the ground. It smelled like urine and there were a few flies, though not as many as I have seen other places. While we were at the resthouse, Jenn noticed a tree with what looked to me like a cross between a fruit and a berry. She became very excited because the only place she had seen such a tree before was in the Phillippines, her family's home country. The resthouse owner knew nothing about it except that it had been there for as long as he could remember. All the way back to the landrover, we speculated on what winding trade route had brought that tree to Malawi.

Roughly forty minutes later, we pulled into the 1 km-long dirt road that led to Chipoka Secondary School. I was glad to be in the landrover. December is the hottest month in Malawi and even now, the cooling rains have not come in many areas. I had walked that road before, back in April when I had visited Bryn in Chipoka. It winds its way to the top of a hill. The only trees that provide any shade are the ones just off the Tarmac, where people wait for minibuses to Salima. At the top of the hill, large brick semi-walls support a massive iron gate that I never saw locked. Just inside the gate, where the terrain is flat, the road is paved again until it reaches the other side of the secondary school's property. The first buildings are the teachers' houses. Next is the walled-in compound of the girls' hostels, then the offices, storerooms, and library with the classroom blocks behind them, then the boys' hostels, also walled in. Behind everything were the cafeteria, kitchens, and football field. All of the buildings were on the south side of the road.

The vehicles pulled up to one of the classrooms. One of the few with a door that was complete and locked, it became our staff room and storage area for two weeks. We took some time to settle in. Everything except food went into the staff room to be sorted out later. Later turned out to be after a lunch of mangoes and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. The peanut butter was from one of the many rural women's group businesses that the Peace Corps supports. The vehicles went to the kitchens next, to deposit the food under the guidance of Karen and Pat. Both were in Katsekaminga with me during training and both now live in Tumbukaland (Northern Region).

After lunch, we collected our mattresses and headed to the hostels. The girls' hostel where the female teachers stayed was comparatively clean. Each room was large enough for two bunk beds with footlockers that did not lock and tended to be cockroach infested. They had a window and built-in desk between the bunk beds. On this, I and my two roommates, Jenn and Jen Kennedy, kept our mosquito coils, candles, and bug repellant. Everything else we stored on the fourth bunk, on the footlockers, or in the locking locker in the hall. Unfortuntely, we learned quickly that it was possible to pick the locks easily with a pocket knife or mosquito coil holder. The hostels did not lock. The doors did not even latch shut, so we often heard the wind swinging them open at night. The two night watchmen provided little comfort, especially when one was found sleeping the night after one of the students' hostels was broken into.

Bugs everywhere and of every description except pretty, unless you're Jenn, who likes entomology. Mosqitoes were a constant problem, especially at night, as were flies when we tried to eat outside the cafeteria. The grounds of the entire school stank of urine. The sun beat down on us relentlessly. The buildings all have corrugated iron roofs and serve nicely as ovens, even with every window open. There is very little other shade anywhere on campus except a few scattered trees with sparse leaves. Scott and Jason Price took to hiding in the library in front of the only fan to escape the heat. Both have sites in the mountains of Northern Region, where it is much cooler, so they were not nearly as acclimated as the rest of us. At the beginning, water was a huge problem. Karen could not boil and filter it fast enough to keep 30-something volunteers sufficiently hydrated to prevent becoming sick. Then Bryn learned that the water in the taps is chlorinated and therefore safe to drink. I still did not trust it, so I drank filtered water when I could and tap water only when the filtered water was not available. It tasted disgusting either way. We took cold showers. There was no hot running water, but it did not matter. Since we all sweated 24-7, we preferred cold showers anyway. Electricity was another problem. It existed and usually worked, but most of the outlets were nothing more than loose wires. The lights could not be turned on with a simple wall switch except in the library. All of the others required a special starter to turn on each light individually. That was Evan's job as Logistics Man. He would climb up onto a window and balance percariously, his arm around a rafter, while he tried to turn the starter in the socket that he could barely reach. I did not envy him that job. As a result of the effort to turn on the lights, we rarely if ever turned them off and if there was a blackout, we usually left off all except the staff room and bathroom lights.

Dinner my first night was Malawian food, rice and beans if memory serves me correctly. As we ate, the local teachers' children came to beg for food. We ignored them or told them to get lost. The teachers may not make a fortune, but they are paid enough that their children should not starve. We toyed with the idea of providing food to help the starving children of villagers (not teachers) in the area, but rejected it as impossible to implement. Malawi has not reached a state of famine, but the rural areas are rapidly running out of food and the rains are late in coming. Late rains means a late harvest and more time without food. No one has considered what to do if the rains fail. We just hope that they won't. After a meeting to prepare for the students' arrival the next day, we finally went to bed, or tried. A half hour to an hour later, I returned to the staff room where Pierce, our aheadi (summer school headmaster) was still working. He gave me a moquito net, one of the only eight the Peace Corps agreed to lend to us. At least I would not get bitten, but the net did not hold out the sound, nor did it do much against the ants that patrolled my bed 24 hours a day.

Next morning, we were all up early for a breakfast of phala (rice porridge) and eggs. Then we spent the entire day preparing. For much of the morning, I ran errands for the registration table or helped Jerome label and distribute locks and keys to the students as they arrived. It was boring work, but allowed me to remain stationary in the shade. At first, only two to four students arrived at a time. There was a mad rush in early afternoon with us scrabbling to record the students' personal information, distribute things the students needed, and escort them to the appropriate hostels. My students arrived during that time. Some larger groups of students managed to persuade the minibus drivers to take them all the way to the school driveway. One group got a ride in a really nice private car for the same fare as a minibus.

Around lunchtime, one of the girls from Pat's school west of Rumphi arrived. She was alone because the group had not received enough money to travel together from Lilongwe. Pierce gave her money for all four of them. She left her katundu (luggage) with us, then left again for Lilongwe. Later in the afternoon, her friends came without her. They had found money on their own. Meanwhile, we learned later, she had returned to the bus depot and looked for them. Not seeing them, she sat down to wait and ended up staying the night at a resthouse near the bus depot. She came the next morning. We had been very worried and were glad to see her.

That night, we had the short but necessary opening ceremony, mostly to introduce teachers and rules. The students were divided into four teams, identified by letter and colour. A was blue, B pink, C yellow, and D green. Within 24 hours, the Potterites among us had introduced a House Cup, but surprisingly, none of the groups were nicknamed after any of the Hogwarts Houses. Later, the teams named themselves as follows: A was Blue Waves, B was Eyes of Good Hope, C was Yellow Stars, and D was Team Ambitious. The primary monitors of the House Cup were Lisa, female leader of the Pink Team, and Dave Buie, male leader of the Blue Team. Dave's name was rapidly changed by the students from Mr. Buie to Mr. Blue. Each team had a male and female leader from the PCV staff. The only other people of import that I have not introduced thus far are Kit, the deputy head, Debbie, the nurse, Angie Jeffers and Jason Price, the Discipline Committee, and Nate Samras, the counterpart liason. The rest of us taught and helped with kitchen or hostel duty as needed.

After the ceremony, I finally met with Jason Price to sort out our lesson plans. We would be team teaching for English class. Each team had their own class. We would teach writing in each class every other day, alternating with Dave, Scott, and Jeanne, who were teaching grammar. Since I had not taught English since Los Angeles, Jason had to teach me everything before I could teach it. Usually, he did not care, and I learned quickly. I think the logic for who taught what in summer school followed the logic for Peace Corps in general. If you can do it, you can teach it. He led the first class so I could watch. I led the second and third. He led the fourth. We tended to prefer the classes with our own students. We both had students in the last class, Team Blue. I have typed the lesson plans that describe the lessons themselves for anyone interested. Dad, I will try to e-mail it as an attachment to a short message, since it is in Word format, but it is pretty big. In general, the classes went well, but we discovered many problems to remedy for next year. DANIDA, the Danish Government's funding program, would only sponsor summer school if we took both top students and mediocre students. We planned for two of each from each school, but when we assigned the students to teams, we were completely arbitrary. We all wished they would have been placed by ability instead.

I also helped Nate Stewart teach the Kiswahili elective class. He learned Kiswahili while doing the SIT program in Tanzania. Teaching Kiswahili was hard, since we had zero resources and my memory was poor, but we only taught the first week and had fun. Some students said the lessons were too hard though. Again, there is room for improvement. We always ended with a song, which the students enjoyed. We had two classes, one with five students and one with eight students, which allowed for some one-on-one work. Each class had three lessons. Other electives included dance, French, phys ed, physical science, journalism, art, and chess. The journalism class wrote and prepared a Summer School newsletter. One of my students, Rajab Kwenyengwe, wrote an article for it. For those who read my letter about Lunzu, Benard is his younger brother.

The first few days were uneventful. Everyone was still settling in, students were testing teachers, and teachers were sending students to wash dishes for everything from forgetting to wear nametags to outright disrespect. In the kitchen, Karen and Pat were trying to find the happy median between too much food and not enough. Rice for each lunch. Nsima (Ugali) for each dinner. Breakfast usually included eggs and alternated between bread and rice phala. Most lunches and dinners included beans and greens, but occasionally we got fish, goat, or chicken instead. Nearly every meal included a banana or mango. The last night, staff got macaroni and cheese, which verges on being a delicacy in this country. Occasionally the kitchen staff also sprurged on about 150 sodas for everyone. Once Pat opened a staff meeting by offering us a special Chipoka delicacy, curried rabbit bits. Biology class had just done rabbit dissections and some meat from the rabbits had been salvaged and given to Bryn's worker, who was helping out as needed and washing PCVs' clothes for MK5 per item. After his speech, Pat opened the box and produced chocolate bars, which caused mass chaos until everyone had gotten some chocolate. Pierce did not even try to regain control until that point.

Life skills was always fun. I only sat in on one class, but helped prepare materials a few times. The Life Skills teachers varied a lot, but the core group was Debbie, Owen, Jason Welle, and Lisa. They used Chishango boxes to make "Funsani/Fumbani" (question) boxes for the students to ask health and sex related questions anonymously. Some of the questions were very intelligent and others the kind of curious questions that are taboo to ask in the villages.

Wednesday night, the students were divided by gender into different classes. I sat in on the girls' class. They learned about the female reproductive system first. Most had no idea what the function of the clitoris was, but they called it kanyemba, or "little bean". They did not know that females are supposed to enjoy sex. We did laugh though when the discussion turned to masturbation and one girl shouted, "finger fuck!" Everyone started laughing. Birth control was another big topic. The students were given condom demonstrations and Debbie had borrowed a variety of birth control paraphenalia from the local health centre. Some students thought the five-year patch was too long to wait to have children; others thought it was the perfect amount of time. The patch is very popular according to the Kalembo dispensary (Ulongwe clinic) because it allows a woman to practice birth control without her husband knowing. Too bad it does not prevent STD's. Toward the end, one girl asked if the PCVs at summer school were married. Lisa was almost honest, saying that most there were unmarried. (Some PCVs have told their sites that they have spouses to cut down on sexual harrassment.) The students had trouble believing that. They could not believe that most are 20-something and single either or that a PCV can date someone, if not a Malawian, without ever having sex. Here, dating is primarily sex.

Wednesday to Friday, the Biology class held dissections. They had to scramble to get about 20 rabbits to dissect. Tuesday night, several volunteers were thoroughly traumatised when they tried to slaughter the rabbits. They had gotten tranquilizers, which did not work properly. Wednesday, the students skinned the rabbits and cut off the meat. I joined them for part of Group D's lesson. Rajab's group had skinned their rabbit the best. Most groups skinned all except the head. They skinned the head too and it looked perfect. Their rabbit became the class example when the students were asked to look at muscles in the face. One girl in the same group became very sick though. She could not handle the sight of blood, so she left early. The next day, they looked at the internal organs. Keeping the rabbits from going bad was a challenge with such high heat and no way to preserve them. Friday, they reviewed everything they had seen.

Sometime between Wednesday night and Thursday morning, someone broke into one of the girls' hostels and stole several pairs of shoes, including Sarah's pata-patas (flip flops). Sarah taught French. One girl had all of her things stolen, so the other girls loaned or gave her some of their extra clothes and other possessions. Pierce went to the police in Chipoka, then he and Evan headed to the market. Thursday is market day in Chipoka. They did not find any of the stolen things. That afternoon, the police officer finally came to interview Sarah and the girls. He chose the Kiswahili classroom, so Nate and I held class ouside under a Jacarinda tree. The police had a suspect, a former student from Chipoka Secondary School who had stolen from other students before, but nothing was recovered. The guards had seen nothing. The following Wednesday, a dress and two more shirts were stolen from the same hostel. We searched the girls' hostel for the clothes, but turned up nothing. Again, the police also found nothing. The next day, the samosa woman, daughter of the Chipoka Secondary School Home Economics teacher, was wearing a dress from the first theft. She said she had bought it in the market, which is probably true. If she had stolen it, she would have waited until summer school was over to wear it. At the end, the teachers pitched in MK 50-100 to buy new pata-patas for the girls who had none and some things for the girl who had lost everything.

Saturday, Jason informed me at breakfast that he could not teach English class. He said he had to go to Lilongwe because one of Jon's students had a swollen jaw and horrible toothache. Jon wanted to bring the student to Lilongwe Central Hospital to have his tooth pulled. For some reason, Jon could not go alone, probably because he and Jason are inseparable. I needed a second person to assist me for English class and the new education trainees had arrived the day before, so I asked Abby to help me. (She will be going to Ntaja to be Jonathan's sitemate. I visited them during her site visit and will definitely return sometime. Now that the Liwonde-Ntaja road is paved, I can go during the rainy season.) Bishop, the PC education technical trainer, observed the lesson. At the end, he told me I was too harsh. Jason is very harsh and I had assumed he had just rubbed off on me, but Bishop said I had been too harsh during my training too. Otherwise, the lesson went well except for one boy, Gift, who tried to pick a fight with me after class. He had never done that before and I assume he tried then because Jason was not there. He had been disrespectful to several other teachers too, so he was sent home early the next week. For the second class, I found another trainee to help out. That afternoon, the Lilongwe group returned. The boy turned out to be fine and Jason was impressed that the dentist gave him anesthetic before pulling his tooth, presumably because he had been escorted by a couple azungus.

Sunday, the students participated in a scavanger hunt consisting of a series of puzzles to get them thinking. When I was not helping prepare for the counterparts to arrive that afternoon, I was Object #0, the Bonus, for the Blue Team's puzzle, purely because I was wearing my blue dress and Dave wanted to tease me about it. The rest of the time, I made posters and nametags and hauled desks for Nate Samras. After lunch, the students went to the lake with most of the PCVs. One student from Bryn's school next door went to visit a relative instead, so he was sent home.

The third student to be sent home was Charity, also from Bryn's school. The full moon had just passed and Charity claimed that the full moon made her go crazy. The hostel leader, one of the female PCVs, found her on the floor in her room, curled up in a ball and naked Saturday night. She called for Debbie, who learned that Charity hallucinates and barks at the full moon. Charity would not move from the middle of the floor or get dressed until Debbie told her it was time to go. Then she stood up as if nothing odd had happened and obeyed. Debbie decided the best thing for her to do was to go to her parents to get the medicine that she needed from a certain tree. Because I was relatively free of duties, I was voted to go. We reached her house after about five or ten minutes on a goat path. She found her sister, who explained that the last of the medicine had been given to a neighbor child with the same ailment. They would have to go to the traditional healer for more. He lived about three hours away on foot, so Charity would not return until the afternoon. Chharity did not return and when Bryn went to her house, she learned nothing. Charity came back the next morning. I found out later that the traditional healer lived in Salima and Charity had stayed there overnight before returning.

I was feeling off because of the heat and probably dehydration, so while the students went to the lake, I stayed behind to hide in the shade and help with Counterpart Registration. Scott's counterpart had come that morning, long before anyone else. My counterpart, Mr. Mbewe, was one of the last to arrive. He teaches biology and mathematics at Ulongwe CDSS. He has graduated from the Domasi teachers' college and has the most education of anyone in my school except maybe the headmistress. He was paired with Jerome, I believe, to observe Biology class and lesson plan writing.

In English, Jason, Jeanne, Scott, Dave, and I were paired with seven counterparts. We divided them by their chosen focus, either writing or grammar. The two women wanted to focus on grammar with one of the men. The other four men joined Jason and me. Writing the lesson plans with them was frustrating. Since the unit was sequential and completely foreign to them and they were jumping in in the middle, we had to spell out everything so they would understand. Rather, Jason had to spell it out. I remained silent except when we were actually planning. Once the counterparts caught on, they were upset about having to leave early. They left thursday morning instead of sunday, as originally planned, so they could not see the end of the unit either. I talked with both Jason and Nate at some length about having the counterparts stay for the whole two weeks next time. Logistics and funding are lesser problems. The primary problem is that most PCVs do not have the patience to work with counterparts for two weeks when many of us work so closely with them at site.

Monday was observations for the English counterparts. Jason taught one class and I taught the second. All seven counterparts observed both writing and grammar. After dinner, we finally had a chance to meet and discuss the lessons. Only two counterparts had opbserved mine. The counterparts wanted to try teaching the lessons, so we agreed that the next day, Kit's counterpart, Mr. Kachama, would teach the first lesson and Peirce's counterpart, Mr. Mkweteza, would teach the second lesson. Jason and I would observe. Both taught well as far as I could tell, though they did not understand the material completely and struggled a little on the students' feedback and questions. I think the students enjoyed seeing different teachers for one lesson. After discussing tuesday's lessons, we wrote the plans for wednesday.

The counterparts would leave on thursday, so we agreed that Jason would teach the first class and Lola's counterpart, Mr. Mwafulirwa, would teach my class. (Lola left Malawi in November and is being replaced by Annie, who just swore in on Friday.) Several unforeseen problems arose. First, I had noticed that in past lessons, he had not understood the material. Second, even though we had stressed that the class was immediately after tea, he was not at all prepared. Third, he had not observed me teach the same class on Monday, so he did not know that they were slightly ahead of the other classes. To me, it seemed the lesson was a disaster, but Jason was more optimistic. I tried to remain silent, but had to interrupt three or four times to correct misinformation that he had given.

Friday, Jason left with John to hike Mount Mulanje, leaving me to cover his classes again. I was furious with him, especially since I became sick that morning and he did not care at all. Fortunately, Fraser, our PCMO (doctor), had just happened to stop by to say hello. He assured me that I would be fine in 24 hours. Dave and Scott showed all of the classes "The Diary of Anne Frank." Saturday, I was fine, so I taught three classes. Scott covered the fourth for me.

Saturday night Pierce held a meeting to tie up loose ends. Throughout the meeting, which was held outside, the racecar spiders raced over and under us and nearly up our skirts. The term "racecar spiders" was coined by Joe Lanning, who taught permaculture. It was also called subterfuges or "kwenda pa njinga," which in Chichewa literally means "to go by bicycle." At the end, Angie Jeffers put on a performance. She stood up at the door and put a tall black hat on her head. Nate Samras stood beside her, scroll in hand. Of course, nearly everyone shouted, "It's the Sorting Hat!" We were wrong, we realized, as Nate unrolled the scroll, for which Naomi was the calligrapher, and Angie began to read "The Chipoka Address." It was, obviously, a parody on Abe Linclon's "Gettysburg Address." At the end, Angie officially thanked Kit, Evan, Karen, Pat, Tuong Vi, Jen Kennedy, and "someone else, but neither we, nor anyone else, know his name" for their work. The someone else was our aheadi, Pierce. The joke began the day before, when Pierce was serving the students their food and asked each one, "Do you know my name?" None knew, so for the next 24 hours, Angie would start singing, "Say my name, say my name" every time she saw him.

At the closing ceremony that immediately followed the meeting, each team performed a skit or series of songs, the drama class performed part of Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar," and the dance class performed their dance. I missed the second half of Caesar and the dance because Pierce needed my help elsewhere, but was told that they went well. The students had made masks for Caesar. They had no other costumes. The "readers" sat in a semicircle around the stage facing the audience. The "performers" acted as their lines were read. I know nothing about the dance except that the two girls I sent, Rose Makwinja (neice of fellow teacher Mr. Samu) and Naomi Fungulani, danced very well in it. I believe one was a lead dancer.

After the dance and drama were the team performances. Most of the teams sang songs, but the last team, Group D, performed a skit that impersonated various teachers, including Jason Price, Owen, Nate Stewart, Dave, Lisa, Jerome, and Jen Kennedy. I was apparently not notable enough to be impersonated. That was everyone's favourite performance, especially the PCVs impersonated. At the end, Lisa and Dave announced that the winner of the House Cup was Group A. Dave was thrilled and Lisa was upset. The students each won a pen, pencil, notebook, and Newsweek.

After the performances, everyone filed outside to the football field, where Nori, Evan, and Lisa were setting up the fireworks. We sat the students on the raised ground around the field. We watched the lightning storm coming from the south while we waited. At last, the fireworks started, but the first few were low to the ground and not very interesting. The students preferred the lightning. Then the big ones that launch a dozen feet and bang loudly began. The bangs reverberated off the hall behind us, frightening the students as much as the fireworks themselves. The students had never seen fireworks before. As they continued, the wind picked up and carried a few toward us. The students jumped up in a panic and started moving toward the hall, controlled mostly by Bryn and Owen. One boy cried, "Someone will become sick!" It was a reference to juju, or witchcraft. With no past knowledge of fireworks, the students assumed they were made using juju. When the display was over, Naomi, the primary physical science teacher, explained how fireworks work using Chemistry. She finished with a comment to the effect of, "See! Chemistry really is cool!"

On 9 December 2001, Sunday, after breakfast, we finally started to clean up our disaster of the last two weeks. Some PCVs checked students out while others gathered supplies, returned borrowed materials, and packed our katundu (luggage). Dave was the first PCV to leave with a minibusload of students heading north of Mzuzu. He said later that they sang and impersonated teachers for the whole seven hours, providing wonderful entertainment for him. Other minibuses headed to Lilongwe and Blantyre. All three had come empty from Salima.

After the students were gone, we packed up the two Peace Corps vehicles. One, the landrover, would go straight to Lilongwe. The other, the minibus, would take a detour to Senga Bay, where most of the PCV's planned to party for two days. I had already gone to Senga Bay shortly after my birthday and had not enjoyed it except for the boat ride to and hike around Lizard Island, so I went to Lilongwe. Once the katundu was packed in, there was room for exactly six PCVs and the driver. At the last minute, Scott decided to go to Senga Bay. He would have been PCV #7. Chris and I were wedged in the back with no foot space at all, so we had to curl up completely and could not move for a little while after we reached the transit house. We had to wait until someone opened the door from outside, at which point I nearly fell out, since I had been leaning against the door. Then it was time to unpack and put everything away for next year, should the new Education PCVs choose to continue the program.

<+><+><+><+><+><+><+><+><+><+><+><+><+><+><+><+><+><+>

As always, do not e-mail back. You can write to me at:

PO Box 43, Ulongwe, Balaka, Malawi

or

PO Box 208, Lilongwe, Malawi

Mail was slowed down for a while, especially mail through the Peace Corps office, because of the anthrax scare. No anthrax has been found in Malawi, but the US Embassy and Daily Nation office have both received hoaxes. Now mail seems to be more or less normal again.