I am headed to the Southeast African country of Malawi for twenty-seven months to be a Community Forestry Extension Agent with the Peace Corps.
I am headed to the Southeast African country of Malawi for twenty-seven months to be a Community Forestry Extension Agent with the Peace Corps.
LOTS OF PEACE CORPS INFO!
Map of Africa Map of Malawi
Greetings from the Land Where Footprints Have Toes - Malawi, the warm heart of Africa. I am serving a twenty-seven month term as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the southern-central reigon of the country, living in a rural village at the edge of a National Forest Reserve. I'm a Community Forestry Extension Worker, which means I spend my days talking to people about natural resource management and teaching them ways to make best use of the resources they have left. In actuality, effectiveness as an extension worker depends on one's integration into the community, so I spend a lot of time working on learning Chichewa and Chiyao, the two languages spoken in my area, and just hanging out with my neighbors. Not a bad life, I'd say.
More Information:
Peace Corps Lonely Planet: Destination Malawi Alex Sievers Photography - Malawi Friends of Malawi Guide to Malawi - lots of great info and pictures!
Questions and Answers
Where is Laina? Malawi, Africa.
Where's that? In SE Africa, bordering Mozambique, Zambia, and Tanzania. Malawi is a long, skinny country, spanning the 9th to 19th parallels. Her site is in Mangochi District, at the western edge of Phirilongwe Forest Reserve.
What's it like there? Quite beautiful, as her site is bordering Phirilongwe forest, which is brachystagial woodland, or open, high-canopy forest with rivers and underbrush except for in the dry season when the grass is all burned by the forest fires. The villages are poor and largely illiterate, as a rule, with few people who speak English with any proficiency. Almost everyone is a subsistance farmer, though some grow cotton or tobbacco for cash crops. There is an equal mix of Muslims (Yao tribe) and Christians (Ngoni, Lomwe, and Chewa tribes) who all get along well (no jihad, here!) She lives next door to her main counterpart, who is a wonderful support and is like a brother to her.
Will she have email? No, with infrequent exceptions. Communications are difficult at best, with the nearest working telephone 65km away and mail delivery once a week barring depressingly frequent bicycle problems on the part of the mail carriers.
So what is she doing there? She rides her bike here and there between villages, meeting with groups of villagers selected by their communities to participate in the creation of sustainable natural resource management practices. She teaches things like how to make mud stoves, solar fruit dryers, compost piles, how to practice permaculture and agroforestry techniques. She also helps educate people about HIV and AIDS (which is decimating Malawi) and tries to get the kids to consistently attend school.
Will there be other PC Volunteers with her? No. In fact, she is currently the most isolated Peace Corps Volunteer in Malawi, living 50km from the nearest American.
What are the living conditions like? In government housing, which consists of a mud-brick hut with a tin roof. No electricity, plumbing, or heat, cooking on a mud stove that she built herself, bathing outdoors by means of a plastic cup and basin, cultivating the land behind her house to grow maize, the staple food of Malawi, and growing vegetables within the goat-proof confines of her fenced back yard...
What's her address? Laina Poon Peace Corps Volunteer P.O. Box 32 Phirilongwe, Balaka MALAWI
LETTERS WELCOME! They'll take a minimum of three weeks to arrive, and of course another three weeks for her response to reach you. Write par avion or air mail on the envelope.
When will she be back? Her service will be completed sometime in April of 2003, after which she will do some travelling around Africa. She'll likely be home by the end of summer, 2003.
