Hitch to Lilongwe

4th of July celebration is underway this Saturday at the U.S. Ambassador's house in the capital this weekend and most everyone who's a volunteer is staying at the transit house these next few days. It's packed but I got a tent set up in the yard as many others have also done to avoid having to hunt for a spare mattress. While I'm in town I'm doing some errands for the Livingstonia Beekeeping Enterprise, the coorperative that I'm working with at my sight. We're looking for marketing assistance so I took a minibus to City Center, where all the embassies and NGOs are based and walked into the OVOP office and made a good pitch to them to give some resources to the Enterprise. They think that they can help the LBE find markets in Malawi, and possibly sell the honey in Japan too. Being a Peace Corps volunteer often means acting as a link between your community and other orgs that already operate in Malawi, facilitating communication and doing the legwork that is often not possible for the average villager. I'm really happy with the Beekeeping Enterprise that Peace Corps set me up to work with. The coordinator, my primary counterpart in Livingstonia, is named Hudson Chisambo and he's one of the most hard working, motivated people I've met here. If he had had the opportunity to finish highschool and go to university, he would have been a member of parliment by now. I eat at his house almost everyday and his wife NyaKapira even heats my bafa water for me since my house is not finished and wont be for another two weeks or so. Speaking of my house, I'm moving into a proper house on the Livingstonia platue that was built in 1948. It's got three big rooms, two storage rooms, bathroom with a bathtub and toilet, kitchen sink, fireplace, and I'm getting electricity installed. My neighbor on one side is the professor at the technical college, and his family is awesome and they love feeding me. My other neighbor is the literature professor at Livingstonia Teacher Training College, and his wife loves to cook for me too! Since I moved to Livingstonia in april I've cooked for myysef a total of three (3) times. Yeah. So basically, Peace Corps is ending up to be nothing like what I was expecting! Go figure. I'm the only environment volunteer in my group that has electricity in their house, since everyone is placed in really remote villages. But what's good for me is good for my friends of course, so I'll expect to host a lot of volunteers when they take vacation time or do site visits. Scott and Matteo and I are already planning to do a beekeeping workshop in the Enterprise as soon as I get my house together. Work is going very well. I've given Hudson my couperpart the title of Jedi Master Beekeeper. The guys at the honey Enterprise are very active and we just started a new beekeeping club last week, and trained about 10 women and eight men in hive construction and hanging. It felt great to hammer some hives together, and teach women how to saw and use woodworking tools! All the mothers brought their kids along and the kids were shocked to see their mothers welding hammers and plains and saws. So I kept saying to them, "Bwanakhazi wanga khoma--bwanamule pera yayi!" "Women can do caprentry--not just men!" I've been happy overall, and more importantly I've been flossing everyday. More blog posts to come!