baobab! my new favorite word/tree

so, it seems that i have fallen a bit behind in my correspondence (as was made clear by a few semi-concerned emails from family and friends) and i apologize. (p.s. this one is really long, feel free to break it up into a few separate segments if needed)
life has been so busy! here's why:

1) i finally got my nails dirty (and face, toes, ears, pretty much anywhere dust can go...) helping to implement the roll out of the scheme in mangochi district. now first i must tell you, this was one of the better places to be stationed in malawi: it's right by the lake, the weather is fantastically pleasant, and the fish (called chambo) is pulled directly out of the water and onto your plate. so to the scheme, my job involved assisting in training the community social protection committees and helping them to get started targeting and ranking needy households. it begins with a community meeting of a group of villages, where they learn about the scheme and then elect a committee that will serve to target, list, rank and help implement the payments to the beneficiaries. voting in a rural, illiterate community consists of lining up behind the candidates and then counting how many are in line, pretty efficient and no need for those silly booths with the curtains.next the committee goes through a training for 2 days to learn who to target (ultra-poor and labour constrained), how to interview and fill out the appropriate form, and then list everyone in their village who they think might be eligible. it's amazing how much these communities know about each other and i was really impressed with how quickly this process is. i was able to go to a few of the households to observe the interviews, some of these stories are so tragic, it's hard not to get emotional but all the more reason to work even harder to make the scheme the best it can be.
one story of note is about an old woman, estimated around 74ish who is caring for 4 grandchildren whose mother has already died of, and father is very ill with AIDS. the children were all very dirty and dressed in rags and had the token bloated round bellies (an indication of both worms and malnutrition), they are not in school as they were all there sitting in dirt the giggling at me when we came to visit in the middle of the day. the grandmother was continually coughing and we could barely hear her speak as she had been chronically sick for quite some time...

this household, like most of the qualifying households, is just barely surviving (literally) on less than one meal per day with no way to make money or break out of the cycle of poverty, ah social protection. so, after all the potential households are interviewed, the committee meets again to list all of the households and then rank them in order of neediness (though it's hard to tell who's needier, a 107 grandmother caring for 6 kids or an HIV+ single mother of 5 who can't get to the hospital for her ARVs). this process is very difficult and it took the committee all day to complete it, it's amazing how hard they all worked at it. unfortunately i had to come back to lilongwe before the 2nd community meeting and approval process but i hope to return after the scheme is in place and see how the beneficiaries are doing.

2) our hotel, located right by the lake, meant early morning kayak trips and swims and endless searching for hippo tracks. sadly no hippos (though i would probably have actually preferred NOT to see one) but the hotel did have other wildlife! when i arrived my room had an entire tribe of ants residing in the bathroom in addition to a roach that lived behind the closet, a few geckos and whatever that squeaking thing was in the ceiling (later figured out it was a family of bats indicated by the guano plops left outside my door each morning). i also was able to watch these funny little rabbit/guinea pig creatures crawl all over the cliffs and hear the monkeys running on the roof of the restaurant during breakfast. speaking of monkeys...

my final day in the field i was running to the restaurant to grab a bite before we headed out into the village. there was a monkey sitting in a planter outside of the restaurant and i made the mistake of thinking, "awww cute little monkey, let me stare you in the face!" bit of a bad decision on my part, next thing i know that cute little face was baring a mouth of teeny sharp teeth and lunging at me! i can still feel the brush of his tiny little hand/paw swiping the back of my calf. i turn around to see him chasing after me with those little teeth shining and all i was thinking about was how long i would have to wait at the district hospital to get a rabies shot... after the 15 foot chase the monkey gave up and i thought that my shrieking and whooping was kept to myself as i didn't see any visible witnesses of my national-geographic-style when-animals-attack. but then i heard dr. bernd schubert, (the german consultant for the scheme) laughing hysterically and knew that my embarrassing display was indeed public knowledge. needless to say i came out sans any need for additional vaccinations and a real-life lesson on how to challenge a primate without making a sound.

3) as the hotel was 30 minutes outside of mangochi town, and the village was an additional 2.5 hours down a dusty and bumpy road, i spent a good 5 hours in the car each day. ample time to sub-consciously soak in every last word to each song on the music genious that is celine dion (our driver gerald's, favorite cassette tape). i knew i was in trouble when i started humming "my heart will go on" while in the shower, curses to gerald! note: aside from the questionable music choices gerald is a very nice person and an excellent dodger of bikes/people/potholes/goats/whatever else you may find on the road in front of you...

4) baobabs, these monstrous trees that are fantastically ugly and grow for thousands of years, have become my new favorite project for long car rides, try to find the oldest/biggest/gnarliest looking one and then climb it of course!

5) carla (the other unicef intern) and i made a weekend trip up to cape maclear while we were in mangochi. this place was absolutely incredible! we kayaked out to one of the islands and snorkeled around looking at fish in colors you didn't know possible, led a parade of 30-something children making animal noises through the village (they just started following i swear it), ate the best chicken curry ever!, and practiced my bawo (a malawian board game that everyone seems to play) with the security guard at the hotel, i'm getting really good, might start hustling bawo games soon...

6) upon my return to lilongwe i have been non-stop (mayke, my supervisor is leaving for holiday on saturday which means 10-11 hour work days this past week...). but exciting! mayke was super busy on tuesday so she asked me to try my hand at speech writing. sure why not! didn't actually think she was serious, but as it turns out i sat in a conference room last night, listening to my words coming out of the Honourable Minister of Women and Child Development's mouth! incredible! yesterday was Malawi's 1st National Social Protection Awareness Day and involved a morning of testimonials from various beneficiaries of social protection programs (including our social cash transfer scheme!), traditional dances and drumming, getting mobbed by people wanting copies of handouts (they get crazy excited about ANYTHING you may be giving away, even fliers about social cash transfers) and then last night a banquet full of important people, documentary screenings, presentations, and of course, speeches! (i might just drop obama an email, see if he has any need for a new speech writer in his campaign).

7) hours and hours of sex and the city screenings with my friend roger, he has just been introduced to the show and addiction is honestly and truly an understatement! the best part is, roger's a nutritionist at unicef but keeps an incredible variety of candy on his coffee table, so i can keep chipping away at the enamel on my teeth uniterrupted...

and finally, 4th of july just happens to fall on a long weekend in malawi so tomorrow i will be heading back to the lake for a good ol fashioned american bbq (just with norwegians, danes and canadians) camping weekend. happy independence to all of my american comrades and i will attempt to keep up better with my blogging (might make for shorter reading next time too!)

cheers!