Up to date news

February 11, 2008

I think I am officially Malaria free and my digestive system finally seems to be functioning properly again.  John did a great job with extended nursing and cooking duty, and I was no company at all for most of the time, so I think he’s as happy to have me back as I am to be back. 

We lost power again for a short time last night, and went for a short walk when the rain let up for a bit at the end of the day.   We saw a lot of dirty tired students lugging their katundu(baggage) along the muddy road, as well as some local villagers lugging katundu for those lucky enough to have money to pay someone.  It turns out that the road was so bad that they had to drop the student off several miles away from the dormitories or get hopelessly stuck.  Students were still being shuttled up at 3 in the morning long past the 7pm welcome dinner that was planned, and many students walked 5 or 6 miles at about 2 in the morning when one of the trucks bringing them could not go any further.  Welcome to the rainy season in Livingstonia.  The only saving grace is that the rainy season is not new to any of these students, nor is hardship or hard work.

February 16, 2008

It is a spectacular day today, low 70’s and sunny all day.  We have had 4 or 5 days of rain free days (a little rain at night), and even the locals love it.  Everyone gets tired of the slippery, muddy roads and footpaths, and those weeks of cloudy days are hard on the sprits too.  I’ve felt better this week, but I tried to go on one of the footpaths down into the valley a few hours ago and my legs got week fairly quickly.   We are supposed to go on another hike with Macdonald tomorrow, but I told John I’m not sure I can make it.  We will hike to his village down the hill (Vungu-Vungu, named after the sound the machine made that was there using their clay to make the bricks for Livingstonia in the late 1800’s), which is probably a mile or two away.  He wants us to meet the widowed women’s farming cooperative that he works with.  They are planting nearly 2000 coffee trees, among other things that are intended to help them make a living and support their families. 

After that we were going to walk to Manchewe Falls, which is a 300 foot falls listed in all the guide books for this area.  I really want to see it, but it will add another 4 miles or so to the walk and will be all up hill on the way back.  I don’t think I have enough strength back after the Malaria yet. 

February 17, 2008

I’m shocked at how tired I am after our walk to Vungu Vungu today (we did not go to Manchewe), but fortunately, John is pretty tired too.  I’m feeling really out of shape, and trying to remind myself that I just got over Malaria a week ago today, so a 3 or 4 mile walk down and then back up a big hill, on slippery, and think heavy muddy stick to your shoes ground (it rained again last night), isn’t bad, for someone who isn’t recovering from Malaria. 

We were the honored guests at their little low thatched roofed, mud floored adobe church – it probably seated 40 people if it was packed to the walls, and maybe had 30 people today. Then we went to Macdonald’s house for lunch.  The house had burned down last year and he was embarrassed that it was a dark, leaky, mud floored, thatched roofed 3 room or so house – I don’t imagine the former house was much better.  He had asked someone to bring some tomatoes and vegetables and found that they hadn’t done so, so we were served rice and a scrambled egg cooked over a wood fire since they have no electricity, which we insisted on sharing with them, as we were sure that the family had only gotten rice, or nsima (the staple polenta-like corn dish I described in an earlier blog. 

Then we went to a meeting of the farming cooperative and heard them talk about their 5 years of working together as widows to grow both food and cash crops, for themselves and to share with others, including some orphans many have taken in.  They are still struggling and making very little money, but have a strategy to build a mill since they are near electrical lines and people have to haul their corn on their heads up the big hill to Livingstonia to have it milled.  Everyone grows their own maize(corn) to dry and have milled into the flour they need to make nsima.  They figure they could make $140 per month per person (there are 30 of them) milling corn for people in their valley – well above the $30 average per capita income currently in Malawi.  We ended up telling them we would loan them our phone to make investigative phone calls, help them put together a proposal for the $10,000 or so they think they need to build the mill, and I will do a “business training” session for them in the next month or so.  I’m also going to try to do some internet research when we go to town on possible places to sent the proposal for money for them  If anyone has any ideas please let me know.  I know there is an internet microloan program, but I can’t remember the name of the organization.  The group already has a treasurer and secretary along with some “management staff” in the cooperative, and I’m not exactly sure what I’ll do for training, but we can talk about the skills they already have and see what it would take to run the business.  I’m going to be designing my new training program “How to run a maize mill.”

It is difficult when there is so much need, but we are trying to do what we can, where we can.  Earlier this week, we had David Mhango over for lunch, as we missed his 28^th birthday party on Sunday due to my Malaria.  He had assembled the entire family and his phone didn’t work so he didn’t get the message that I wasn’t well enough to make it and finally he called wondering where we were as they were al waiting for us.  He came to write his CV and some cover letters which John retyped and “prettied up” for him so he could use them to apply for some volunteer jobs at the school or hospital.  He has not been able to find work and thought this might be an entrée.  We printed the CV and cover letter copies, put them in a nice folder, made a birthday card for him and have him a phone card worth about $4 worth of cell phone time (the largest denomination you can buy here) and he was overcome, saying there were not even words in the bible to tell us how appreciative he was for the gifts.  It takes so little to make such a difference to people – we got a round of applause for offering to use our phone to make some phone calls for the women’s cooperative today – it’ll probably cost us less than 50 cents.