2006.07.12: July 12, 2006: Headlines: COS - Malawi: Courier-Gazette: Greg Dorr and his wife, Susan, are serving in the Peace Corps in the central African country of Malawi
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2006.07.12: July 12, 2006: Headlines: COS - Malawi: Courier-Gazette: Greg Dorr and his wife, Susan, are serving in the Peace Corps in the central African country of Malawi
Greg Dorr and his wife, Susan, are serving in the Peace Corps in the central African country of Malawi
After our three month settling-in period, I’ll be working full time with the Parks and Wildlife Department, ostensibly to protect endangered wildlife in the Nyika National Park. As a practical matter, I’ll likely be trying to protect natural habitat from deforestation by encouraging the planting of trees, creating nurseries, distributing seeds, educating on importance and techniques.
Greg Dorr and his wife, Susan, are serving in the Peace Corps in the central African country of Malawi
From city hall to African village
by Greg Dorr
Note: Greg Dorr, former Rockland city attorney, and his wife, Susan, are serving in the Peace Corps in the central African country of Malawi. This is his most recent letter home.
MKUPA, Malawi — It’s just before 5 a.m. and, as in most rural areas, the cocks are crowing. And there are a lot of them. In Malawi 87 percent of the population is engaged in agriculture and I bet 100 percent of them have a few chickens. With chickens come roosters, whose crowing is harmonious compared to the sounds made by the two guinea fowl who roost the night in the top of the mango tree, just outside our bedroom window. Whenever I hear them, which seems nearly constantly, I struggle to articulate the sound they make. It’s most like a strange piece of broken machinery. Of course, it’s the sound Frank McCourt references in “Angela’s Ashes” of the “bockety perambulator” being pushed down an Irish cobblestone street. You’d have to make up a word, like “bockety” to capture the sound. It’s still dark out (this close to the equator we get 12 hours of daylight and darkness unchanging year round — seems strange) and won’t be full light till 6:30. I’m writing by two quaint single-wick open-flame kerosene lamps, made from old tin cans and light bulbs, with shoe laces for wicks. Electricity is about three miles away in Bolero, which also has a post office so we use it for our address.
Garden
The Paramont Chief of the Timbuka people lives in Bolero so it is a village with some prestige, including an open market where we can choose from the same three or four fresh vegetables (greens), bananas, sweet potatoes, beans, rice, salt, soap, etc. Really all we need; however, diversity is sorely lacking. Susan is daily challenged to discover some new ingredient or invent a new combination of the standard in her mission to create culinary delights. She’s pulled off any number of miracles. To that end we are busily creating and planting our kitchen garden. The soil is predominantly a red clay reminiscent of the Carolinas. Needs a lot of organic matter and some sand. We’ve got our compost heap going and hope to have chard and beet greens in a month’s time. The dry season is nearly upon us but we are most fortunate to have a water tap in our backyard so we can water our garden and remain productive. We’re also busy settling in to our house. It’s constructed of mud brick with a corrugated tin roof. The interior walls have been cemented but the dull gray of the Portland cement is not the color scheme Susan had in mind, so we’re whitewashing with lime the inside and adding a little color for accents around the windows and doors. Seems home maintenance and improvement is unending and unavoidable. Might as well enjoy it then. At least we’re not under any pressure to keep up with the Joneses.
Location
You can locate Bolero on Google Earth. North of Mzuzu and west of Rumphi. I’m in a small village (Mkupa, a section of Kawaza) at the base of the southern escarpment of the Nyika Plateau. Nkonjera Mountain, which reaches a height of 7,500 feet, looms 4,500 feet above us. At night the Big Dipper is upside down over its long impressive ridge. The North Star is below the horizon, a reminder of just how far we are away from home. The escarpment is very much like the view on the New York Thruway heading to Albany and looking west to the Catskills. I suspect the similarity is due to the fact that the Catskills were once a plateau and the mountains were carved out by erosion and not made by the collision of tectonic plates.
Work
After our three month settling-in period, I’ll be working full time with the Parks and Wildlife Department, ostensibly to protect endangered wildlife in the Nyika National Park. As a practical matter, I’ll likely be trying to protect natural habitat from deforestation by encouraging the planting of trees, creating nurseries, distributing seeds, educating on importance and techniques. Deforestation is a serious issue in Malawi where firewood is the predominant fuel source for cooking and the population has increased from one million 50 years ago to over 12 million today in a country with a land mass about the size of Maine. The geography books and travel guides say Malawi is the size of Pennsylvania, but I think that also includes the lake which accounts for almost one-third of its area. I’m inspired by the importance of the work, having just read Jared Diamond’s latest book “Collapse,” a scholarly and well written piece that equals “Guns, Germs and Steel.” Both “must reads.”
When this story was posted in August 2006, this was on the front page of PCOL:
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Story Source: Courier-Gazette
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