safari +...

update for the week:

01/18-21

so this past week, we traveled to zambia to go on a three day break at Wildlife Camp. we saw lots of animals, enjoyed some time by the pool, and went on a night safari drive and a morning safari drive.

on our way there, we encountered some problems with the dirt road. there was a long stretch of dirt road that made it pretty much impossible to travel via car. plus it since its the rainy season, there were many puddles. we passed by a village and was stuck there for quite some time because there was a huge puddle, or should i say, lake, in the middle of the road.

i learned that the villagers actually dig up the hole in the road to make travelers pay them for "fixing" the road or their car if it breaks. since its the rainy season, all these holes were filled up with water so it became even harder to traverse. long story short, our bus's radiator broke as it was crossing through an extremely bumpy side path which was an alternative to crossing the red sea. we tried to pay the villagers to drive through their village cause there was a path available but they said no. then they asked us for money to help fix the bus and all of us got pretty annoyed. but we got there by making shuttling with our landrover which can pretty much haul through any kind of road.

the break was great. after 2 weeks of hard work, it felt well earned. safari was amazing. we saw a lot of things that people would have to go on like 4 safaris to finally be able to catch. some examples: lion pride, lion pride eating dead giraffe killed on previous day, tons of elephants, elephant young, elephants fighting, giraffes, baboons, impalas, warthogs, tons of hippos, hippos being fat, hippos being lazy, hippos yawning, wild dogs, hyenas...etc. it was great. what made it even better was that this wasnt like a zoo where these animals are behind bars. theyre just chillin out in the open, and we just drive right up next to them. they think that the safari vehicle is a large animal that doesnt threaten them so as long as we stay in the vehicle we are fine. if our internet here wasn't so slow, i would post up pictures.

on our way back, we hired two more landrovers and got back (its a 7hr drive from lilongwe malawi to zambia).

amazing.


1/22/09

today we returned to work and we started our fourth camp at school whose name i dont know. this time it is my partner and my turn to work with the teachers of the school instead of the students. we have a discussion with them about teaching methods, curriculum, situations they are faced with, etc.

we had a very interactive group of teachers and they were very responsive so i am grateful. i think that as we do this, we teach them our teaching methods and curriculum, and at the same time, we are learning a lot about them and the culture that surrounds us currently.

today i've learned that HIV/AIDS education in malawi is difficult because not only is it taboo to speak of such things, but names of genital parts are considered highly offensive. i think this is really weird because these grown adults find it difficult to say medical terms such as penis or vagina, and so i wonder how could they be effectively be teaching to these students about sex education?

i find this hard to understand because the HIV/AIDS epidemic is so preventable and so stoppable. and if these teachers, or even the malawians find it hard to overcome this one wordy problem, i wonder if there will ever be hope for malawi's children.