Sika | June 25, 2010
And, that’s it for Peace Corps. I’m still going to be writing at this address, but when I get back from Costa Rica, I’m going to archive all my Peace Corps related stuff at a different address, redesign and re-title my blog, and start new(ish). Someone once told me it annoyed her when RPCVs kept [...]
Sika | June 25, 2010
Malawi has made me . . .. indecisive. I mean, I had occasional (frequent) problems making a decision before, but in Malawi you can make as many decisions as you want, and they rarely have any effect on the end outcome. Which is not to say there’s no point to making decisions; but, if you’re [...]
Sika | June 9, 2010
It was Sunday and Eid, and so the streets of Addis were thrumming with people who didn’t have to be at work. Semien hotel, where we were staying, was just off the piazza (ah, Italian attempts at colonization) and we needed to head from there further into town to find one of the few ATMs [...]
Sika | September 7, 2009
If I said there aren’t some things I’ll be happy to leave, I’d be lying. Mostly things like stone babies and the way many men feel they own my body because I’m a woman, and being called azungu azungu all the time, and feeling like I live in a fishbowl—the only way to escape it [...]
Sika | September 3, 2009
I haven´t written about my last weeks in Malawi partly because I still don´t have pics uploaded for some posts I´ve already written, but mostly because I´ve been in a serious state of denial: refusing to say good-bye to people I know I won´t see again; planning multiple trips back to Zomba so I can´t [...]
Sika | September 2, 2009
I think one of the problems some people have when returning from Peace Corps is a response to the loss of what Peace Corps means for one’s identity. For one thing, Peace Corps goes to great lengths to enculturate us–my mom even asked me, when we were kept incommunicado with the outside world during training, [...]
Sika | June 18, 2009
There was an article recently about the high cost of poverty in the US. While I thought the author for that article could have come up with better examples, it was interesting and reframed some random thoughts I’ve been having about Malawi. It’s really expensive to have anything here. For one thing, Malawi (the country [...]
Sika | May 6, 2009
Madonna’s in the news again. I’m a little leery posting about this, because jeez peez, Madonna is already what 90% of everyone outside of Africa knows about Malawi, but I will boldly venture forth anyway. If you were privy to my friends’ updates in facebook, you would know that many of them were extremely happy [...]
Sika | March 16, 2009
It’s so clear down here. I can see every dip and indentation of the lake bottom, looking like a buried civilization is waiting to be uncovered—miniature cliffs and canyons, the bed as if an inverted topography: the opposite world pushing through and leaving its mark. Bottom of an eggcrate lakebed, 50 feet down but still [...]
Sika | March 11, 2009
In Franschhoek we stayed at the Franschhoek Group Accomodation. We were a bit nervous when we got there because the place looks like an institution. As in, the type of place to which one can be involuntarily committed. But the rooms are sweet and neat, with duvets and comfortable twin beds. The couple running the [...]
Sika | February 20, 2009
When I think of writing now, my thoughts seem so negative. As much as Derek may rejoice in me becoming a jaded old PCV, I am not happy with the way all the negativity makes me and Malawi sound. So, I think I’m going to do what I did for my students after their practical [...]
Sika | February 20, 2009
Our first full day in SAfrica*, I woke on Malawi time (read: way too early). I was very excited because I knew we were going to see Johnny Clegg that afternoon. Gareth had told us about the summer concerts at Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens, and that we had to make sure to go to one. I [...]
Sika | January 22, 2009
One of my friends at work is a scandalous divorcee. She contracted HIV from a job before this one, her husband was negative*, and so he decided that she had been sleeping around with the doctors and left her and their kids and picked up some pretty young thing. This was four years ago, and [...]
Sika | January 19, 2009
Moses was meant to help me with my garden the other day. He came a couple of hours after I was expecting him and told me that he and his daughter, Dinah, had a meeting with Derek in the morning. Dinah was one of the students Derek is supporting, but she’s never done very well. [...]
Sika | October 7, 2008
I was talking to my friend Thandi in Lilongwe whilst (hee) I was stuck there for a training. She told me about her job working for a religious NGO that works to make guardians for orphans more independent, with IGAs (Income Generating Activities) and the like. Some Americans who work with her organization are coming [...]
