Visitors and Vacation

3/22/08

I didn’t take time in the last post to tell a great story about what it takes to get things done over here.  The visitors visa you get when you arrive here is stamped into your passport and is good for 30 days only – John looked at our passports and discovered it as I had thought it was good for 60 days.  So the last time we were in Mzuzu, we went to the immigration office as we understood that we needed to apply for a temporary residency permit to extend our visas for the 6 months we will be here.

Since we don’t get to Mzuzu very often, we were already about 2 weeks past our “legal” date when we went, and we were chastised by the immigration officer for being here illegally.  He said, “do you know that this is against the law?  What would you think if I came and did this in the US?”  We were appropriately contrite, and apologetic and he extended our visa for 3 weeks to give us time to complete the paperwork needed and to get another passport sized photo for John, who’s photos we took for this purpose were in the still missing luggage.

So before we left Mzuzu on Tuesday, we went back with all our paperwork in order for a “quick stop to take care of this on the way out of town.”  So we go back to the same place and are told we need to “go to room 2”  except that none of the rooms have any numbers on them and we walk down a long hall and finally find 2 rooms that are numbered room 1 and room 2 – the only numbered rooms on the floor. 

We wait for the chief immigration officer, and present our paperwork, which he checks and confirms is all in order except that we need 2 copies of each of the 2 forms, and their copy machine is broken.  So off we go to try to find somewhere that has a copier, in the rain, and when I walk down to the place a ½ block or so away where I saw a sign, I can’t find a shop where the sign points.  We go to find our driver to see if he can help and drive off only to see the place about ¾ of a block away with the sign blown over.  Get our copies, go back. 

The chief immigration officer is busy so we wait again, give him our copies and he starts to collate them, and his stapler is broken.  Fortunately he is able to fix it, and declares everything in order so we should go back down the hall to pay our 5000 kwacha (about $35) each.  No computerized system here so the clerk has to complete the receipt with carbon copies by hand, one receipt for each of us, then the forms have to be stamped, each copy (including the carbon copies) with the official stamp, whacking the ink pad and the copies a total of about 10 times. 

Total elapsed time, 1½ hours, for what should have been a 15 minute deal max. 

 3/25/08

Our friends who will be staying with us, doing some volunteer work for 2 weeks and looking at the possibility of coming back next year for 9 months or so, arrived without a hitch 3 nights ago.  We were a little jealous of the fact that all their luggage arrived, and were also grateful for it, since Mary Ellen has 6 some stethoscopes to give as gifts at the Nursing College for the graduates, and it would have been horrible to lose them. 

I’m going to go back later and talk a little more about our time in Lilongwe before they arrived as we had a chance to meet with John’s friend from the Peace Corps, and he took us to meet a wonderful man, but there isn’t going to be time to do that before we have to leave internet territory I don’t think.  Instead I’m going to talk about our day yesterday at the Nkhotakota National Park.

We decided to rent a car again and drive our friends back up north via Nkotakota, since that is somewhere we almost went to when we came back in September.  It is a very large, completely undeveloped park and wildlife area, where there are no roads, so all safaris are walking safaris with a guide and a rifle escort from the park service.  We are staying at the Nkhotakota Safari Lodge, which is a short walk from the Pottery Lodge, a slightly more upscale accommodation we are told, and where you can also learn to make pottery by the local craftspeople. 

I am sitting on the porch of our room about 30 feet from Lake Malawi watching the sun come up and listening to the breaking waves roll in.  The rooms are large and comfortable and charmingly furnished, so I’m not sure how the lodge could have been any nicer, but I’m sure it is.

Yesterday we went on a full day walking safari which I thought was going to be “tailored” for the mzungu level of fitness and energy,  Wrong – and while we were all about half dead by the time we finished, it was that very satisfied kind of half dead you get after accomplishing something you know is a real feat.  We were eagerly anticipating seeing some exciting wildlife, as last week, they saw a lion take down an antelope and were close enough to hear the lion’s heavy breathing as it ran by.  They also so Water Buffalo and Elephant, but game viewing is very difficult now during the rainy season because of the dense growth and ready availability of water. 

We walked about 5 miles through grass that was twice our height part of the time, dense forest, across streams (we all fell trying to step on the slippery fording rocks) ate lunch next a picture postcard waterfall that was probably 500 yards wide (our guide told us that it was maybe a tenth that size in the dry season) which I’m attaching a photo of from where we sat for 15 minutes for a rest stop.  There were not trails where we were, we were simply walking through the forest and grasslands.   I slipped on a large rock that sloped down into the water and had to have our guide help me up as I couldn’t get any purchase with my downslope foot as the rock was slick from the water (just a bit of a bruise on the side of the leg and a little scrape on the knee fortunately since we were a long was from the start of rangers house.

We saw some crocodiles there, and got bitten by some big ants that you had to actually rub or pick off your skin as they got a hold of a piece of skin and couldn’t be simply brushed off.  Later in the walk we smelled an elephant close by, but didn’t see it, saw some fresh zebra and water buffalo tracks, and saw quite a few baboons after lunch – the guide said that baboons are often near animals, but not that we could see yesterday.   Despite the lack of animal sightings, it was a magnificent day in the wild.  Much of the time we weren’t even on any trails, but our guide knew the area well enough we could just tramp through the woods and then find a trail periodically to walk on until we veered into the woods again. 

On the way back we went to see the tree in the village of Nkhotakota that memorializes the place where David Livingstone signed a treaty with the local chief (who at that time was Arab as Nkhotohota was one of the worst terminals in Africa for slave trade, mostly to the east.  John and I knew some of the history from our readings, but Frank our guide added some great detail.  One of the reasons Livingstone is revered in Malawi, even thought he represents the Europeans who went on to colonize them, is that he stopped the despicable slave trade.  

Lilongwe culture shock

3/21/08

It feels so odd to be “back in civilization” again.  We got a lift in the University vehicle from Mzuzu to Lilongwe, the capital city, and arrived around 5pm the day before yesterday.  Lilongwe has about 400,000 people, give or take a couple hundred thousand(Malawi is getting ready to conduct it's first census soon), so it is a big city, although I don’t think there are any buildings with more than about 10 stories and there are probably only a handful of those.   Nevertheless, we were saying yesterday that we feel like a couple of country bumpkins here.

We rented a car from Sputnik again, yup, that’s the name alright.  We’ve used them a couple of times and they deliver the car to you, and will let us drop the car at our hotel in Mzuzu for a $70 drop off charge.  We figured we could use the car in town for our errands and work, then drive up to Nkhotakota with Steve and Mary Ellen, and then continue on to Mzuzu and it would be so much easier than trying to find taxi’s (there are only a few and are all private cars so you have to negotiate for fare as well) or arrange any other kind of transport – getting around is such a challenge, and is so expensive.  Just for gas and oil, it cost us close to $200 to be driven to Lilongwe – the University vehicles are 9 passenger SUV’s so they get bad mileage. 

The traffic seems much worse than it did the last 2 times we drove in Lilongwe, but maybe it is worse because of Easter holidays and tourists, from within and without of Malawi.  I said to John yesterday, "did everyone in Lilongwe get a car since the last time we were here?"  Anyway, we were stunned by the amount of people and the number of beggers that we didn’t see the last time either.  On the main drag, the blind beggers and their escorts stand in the middle of the road and then the escorts walk up and knock on your windows – we do not remember that happening the last time.   But mostly we are stunned by having a TV in our room at the Korea Garden Inn (which is an $80 per night hotel with a swimming pool, and feels very much like a western hotel when we are used to the tiles peeling off and the rats in Mzuzu – although I think the Mimosa Court in Mzuzu is a nicer hotel for $40), and in the restaurant area which has 10 or 15 channels.  2 of the hotels in Mzuzu have TV but only one channel.

Then when we were in town, we went to a photography place that develops digital film and were able to do our prints in 4 hours – Mzuzu has a few photography places, but none that do digital.  The Shopright grocery store is the biggest culture shock.  It looks kind of like a US grocery store and has everything including jars of spagetti sauce and various kinds of pasta.  And I was beaming for the whole day yesterday because they had packages of spagetti bolognase sauce mix to add to hamburger (or mince as they call it here).  They even had boxes of “Mince Mate” made by Knorr which would be like Hamburger Helper – I passed on that, as we can only get mince in Mzuzu periodically and I'm not that fond of Hamburger Helper anyway.  While the food we get is very good and fresh, I’m getting very tired of the constant menu of stewed chicken or beef with whatever is in season vegetables and rice or potatoes.   It was all quite shocking and we walked up and down the many aisles (the store in Mzuzu only has 3 aisles and is about the size of a 7 eleven or smaller) getting things that we can’t get in Mzuzu.

I’m noticing that I feel more stressed out here too, and said to John on the way back from breakfast this morning – “where are the chickens – I need my chickens!” – and he said he was feeling the same way only missed sitting and watching the clouds in Livingstonia too.

I know I’m also stressed because we need to get about 130,000 of Malawian money from the cash machines to cover our expenses until we get to Mzuzu where there will be a cash machine again, as no one takes credit cards and we will be needing money for gas, hotels, food and safari’s at Nkhotokota over the next few days.  So what if the cash machine is broken or limits withdrawls to 2000 or 8000 which they often do – and the normal limit is 20,000?  John’s friend Justin is coming later today, and it will be wonderful to see him, we are paying for his hotel room too, as he would never stay anywhere this expensive.  Then Steve and Mary Ellen arrive tomorrow, we hope, as they are making a very tight (illegal connection in travel terms meaning less than the recommended time for a connection) to an Air Malawi flight, and we know that Air Malawi is having major problems and is down to one working airplane according to the papers we got in Mzuzu (we can’t get newspapers in Livingstonia either so catch up on the news when we come to town) – so who knows if the luggage will make it even if they do make it.  If they do get delayed, it messes up all the rest of our arrangements since we have our hotel reservations in Nkhotokota and Mzuzu, along with our transportation booked back to Livingstonia and the headmaster inviting students and teachers to meet Steve as soon as we arrive back in Livingstonia.  It sounds silly to worry about all those possible contingencies, and it is, but on the other hand, none of those things was easy to arrange with lack of phones (or spotty operation in some cases) and transport.

So I guess there are reasons to be stressed –  I need my chickens!!

It’ll all workout however it’s going to and we’ll deal with as we need to – we’re getting good at that!  

No picture this time as Lilongwe just isn't that pretty and this internet connection is really slow.

 

Back in Mzuzu again

It’s been a rough week workwise with some controversy over a student’s grade leading to an academic suspension which some of us feel to be unfair and improper (but since we are not a party to these kinds of academic decisions have nothing to say about the matter), add to that the 2^nd work stoppage in a month by the faculty at one of the colleges over a money issue which was handled badly by the administration.  I’ve spent many hours this week working on transcripts for several of last years graduates from the same college who are applying for graduate school and found that the records are in poor shape, which also affects data entry into a computerized data base one of the other volunteers has made.  All in all, a disheartening and discouraging period for us at that particular college at least.

On the other hand, one of the other colleges has invited us to attend and help facilitate their 4 day strategic planning retreat, and also to conduct an assessment of their performance against the last 5 year strategic plan which their board has requested.  Their principal is a dynamic leader who could be successful running an organization in the US or other western nation.  We also checked in on one of the other college principals who asked us to make a promotional video for him some weeks ago.  I shot the raw footage, and John took some still photos.  I’m hoping my computer has the power and storage to edit it, but if not it can be done after we get home and sent back.  He’s also very visionary, and a delight to work with, so we have to remind ourselves again that we can’t fix everything, and we can only do what we can do, and some of the people we work with are a delight.

On a much brighter note, the flower seeds we planted are starting to bloom along with some of the other plants our gardener found and planted for us, and we took a picture of him kneeling and holding one of them.  All the sticks that he put in the ground are full of leaves too – the growth is amazing here with the warmth and rain, and the house looks so nice with the gardens adding color.  

My malaria is definitely a memory, and getting more distant by the day. Hopefully I am done with it and John doesn't get it.  Since we are moving towards fall and winter here, temperatures are dropping and the high plateau where we are is even cooler with less mosquitoes.  When the missionaries settled it in the late 1800's there were no Anopheles mosquitoes here, so no malaria, but the mosquitoes have since moved or adapted to the higher elevations, I suppose another affect of global warming - but we still have a lot less of them here year round, so hopefully we are done with malaria for this trip. 

We went to the local primary school this week to meet the headmaster and first grade teacher as our friends from the US will arrive next weekend and we wanted to arrange for him to volunteer there with an eye toward coming back next year during his upcoming sabbatical.  The first grade class looked to have about 100 children it sitting at long tables with benches – squished onto every square inch of sitting space.  Second grade has about 120 on most days so about 20students have to sit on the floor since there isn’t enough bench space.  It’s quite amazing to walk into a classroom like that.  The headmaster told the first grade kids to sit and then had them put their hands “up, down, up, down, up, down” to get them attentive and focused, which worked for a little while.   The second grade, which is taught by our neighbor, sang us a song.  

Those grades are only in school for about 3 hours a day.  I’m assuming a part of the reason for that is that they live so far away and need to walk home in time for lunch since the school cannot feed them.  It also may be partly because of those large class sizes, and the impossibility of keeping their attention any longer than that in the environment.  Anyway, we got there at the time the children were leaving, so they came and surrounded us as we talked to the headmaster in the yard.  He said they were wanting candy since so many mzungu give the kids here candy, but despite the fact that we had no candy, soon there was a sea of little shining faces and outstretched hands to shake hands, say hello and greet the mzungu visitors.  

John said afterwards that is probably as close as we’ll ever get to the experience of a politician working the rope line, or walking into a crowd after a speech.  We must have shaken 50 or more hands each, and in some cases we sought out the shyer kids who you could see wanted to be part of it, but were too shy to come up to us.  We left saying that was the place to come to when we needed a little cheering up.

Here’s another cheer up, sort of a follow up to the “humor issue” about language in one of the last blogs.  John was showing me the handwritten list we received of items for the “Maize Mill Contation”( fairly easy to guess that is Quotation) and asked me to guess about item # 11 on the list – “Hinches, Rocks, Crew”.  I guessed right away that “rocks” must be “locks” cause of the “L” and “R” mix up again, but “hinches” and “crew” had me stumped.  John finally figured it out because of the context as “hinges, locks and glue.”  There were also some “flame timbers” and “flame nails” which we don’t even notice as incorrect anymore.  We wonder if we give them as many laughs as they do us – I’ll bet we do.

 

Last Post Until we get back to Mzuzu

March 8, 2008

Tomorrow we’ll head back to Livingstonia, and it has felt like such a treat to have internet access for all these days.  It has also been a spirit lifter to find such a nice hotel.  I feel like I could do testimonials for the hotels in the US that advertise about how much more work you’ll be able to get done if you stay at their hotel.  I certainly do have more energy staying at this place than I have the others in Mzuzu, and I wouldn’t have believed how much difference the hotel you are staying in could make.  Funny after all those years of travel that I wouldn’t notice, but then most bad hotels I’ve stayed at in the US aren’t that bad – with the possible exception of a Holiday Inn in South Dakota that had water running down the wall, and a Ramada in Newark that really smelled disgusting.   Still a lot better than the one here in Mzuzu that I kept seeing rats in, or that had half the tiles in the shower peeled off and a hundred mosquitos flying around – and me recently with Malaria.

I’m thinking it’s time for a “humor blog”.  We have so much fun here and find so many things to laugh about.  The Malawians have a great sense of humor and love to laugh too.  Because English is a second language for them, there are some sounds that are very difficult for them to make, and it creates some words that give us a real kick.   I hope the Malawian’s find as many things about us that are funny – I’m sure they do.

Malawians have a lot of trouble pronouncing “R”, and they use “L” and “R” pretty much interchangeably.  The carpenter we have worked with stopped over one day and had some drawings he’d made for a laundry area at another house and the drawing was labeled “raundry”… the Malawian President’s last name is Mutharica, and when I hear anyone say his name it always sounds like they are saying Mettallica (an old heavy metal band for president?) … walking through town the stores have signs painted on the outside that list of the kind of goods they carry and in the space of a block there was a place that sold “door and window flames”  and another that sold “hair crippers” … the windows have “buggler bars” to prevent theft and they use “burbled wire” for fencing. John’s friend Justin talks about the “bosco’s” that were sent for transportation, avoiding the use of the “L” in bicycles altogether – and making me think about the Bosco chocolate powder I always wanted as a kid.  And you want to be very careful and keep a straight face when you are having a political conversation and they start talking about the about the “elections”(I’ll let you figure out how that gets pronounced) in the US right now.

Lots of people have a speech pattern where they are describing something and then stop for a rhetorical “what?” and then answer that question them selves.  Since they also often also add the vowel “I” to the ends of their words it sometimes becomes “whati” and becomes pretty funny when it is interspersed into the conversation.  “As you work on whati(?), the strategic plan, you will be able to help us whati(?), develop a budget, so we can whati(?), grow.” Is a bad example of what it might sound like.

My favorite one lately was the Principle at the College of Nursing talking about a time when he was supervising a construction project, saw that the brick wall was crooked, talked to the contractor about the quality of the bricks, the amount of sand they were putting in the mortar and the quality of workmanship and said “did you think I was born in the city!?” – so opposite of what you would hear in the US where people worry about being seen as some hick from the country that people can pull something over on.  Here the wisdom is in the country – rather than our pejorative “did you think I just fell off the turnip truck?”

Just to be sure that I don’t make the Malawians sound like objects of ridicule, let me say how incredibly bright so many of the people are that we work with.  The principles of a couple of the colleges that we work with could do well in leadership jobs in any organization I have worked with in the US.  The principle of the College of Nursing is a great example, and John is trying to set up a collaboration with the Dean of the Nursing College at the U of M, and we have  said how much they are going to enjoy working together because they are both such dynamic leaders. 

The College of Nursing is the first college to ask us to attend, and help facilitate a 3 – 4 day strategic planning workshop with their staff and department heads which was quite thrilling for us.  Their strategic plan from 5 years ago was one of the best, and the Principle has gone through that one in detail with us, looking at each part of the plan and saying what their results were against the plan, and what more they are hoping to do.  He really understands the importance of doing a plan, of having his whole staff develop and have ownership of the plan, of implementing the plan and using it as a guide for prioritizing activities and use of scarce resources and of measuring results.

I’ve seen plenty of leaders in the US that were not as good at this as he is, and he has grown the college of nursing from 56 students to 147 (his goal was only 120 students in the last strategic plan), tripling the size in 5 years with a goal to grow to at least 250 in the next 5 years – so still a small institution.  The Nursing shortage in Malawi is so great that Diploma graduates are snapped up so quickly they can barely pack their bags to leave at the end of their time, and in many cases are hired by NGO’s operating in Malawi for starting salaries that are more than double with the Principle(who has a Masters degree) is getting.  A really remarkable guy. 

Time to go again, and I’m going to head off to send this from an actual internet café close to our hotel rather than walking the ¾ mile or so to the Presbyterian Synod offices where they have wireless internet and we can work after hours sitting on the steps outside.  I attached a picture of John doing that on our last trip to town as it was getting dark.  You can picture us when we are emailing or blogging much of the time while we are here.  

The other missing photo

Here's the photo from our konde.  More to come soon.

Latest Update

I'm not sure what happened to yesterday's post, as I thought I had attached a photo of the roof that had blown off the building next door.  I'm going to try again today and since we have a few days of internet access will make this very short today. 

We have found a wonderful hotel in Mzuzu, the Mimosa Court, if anyone is coming here and needs a place to stay.  Clean, bright, roomy, nice bathroom and shower - it is really one of the nicest places we have stayed since we got here and is less than $40 per night with a great location for walking to places. 

People have asked about the luggage thing and the claim has been files and is being processed by SA.  They say it takes awhile and when I pressed them for a little more specifics, they said 2 months.  We figure it will be a miracle if it ever shows up or if we ever see any money. 

I'm going to run and see if I can post that photo, and if that one posts will try to post the other one I took from our konde last weekend. 

March in Malawi

March 2, 2001

It’s hard to believe that we left the US 2 months ago yesterday; it has been a packed 2 months!

We hope to go to Mzuzu in 2 days, so I am sitting on our porch, looking out over lake Malawi and over to the mountains on the other side in Tanzania on a beautiful 70 degree or so day.  I can hear the hog grunting in his pen on the farm just to the right of us below the hill.  I can hear their radio playing too, with some happy sounding music, and there is the sound of kids playing in the distance as well, and one of the roosters crowing.  I’ll miss these sounds when we go back.  There has been a steady stream of the neighborhood dogs and chickens through our yard, and lots of people going by on the path, many of them carrying things on their heads.   We leave our doors open for fresh air and light, and yesterday I was working in the sitting room when I looked over at the doorway from the kitchen and saw a dog face turning to look inquisitively at me – “oh no” I said “ you can’t be in here” and as soon as I started to move she left.  We had some chickens wander in one day too, but they barely made in the door when then saw us and turned around.

The seeds we planted when we arrived are a foot or more tall, and some of the flowers have buds on them, so I’m hopeful that we will have flowers soon.  The plants that were cut and stuck into the dirt are all thriving, with some beautiful red leaved plants, geraniums, coleus, vinca, and some type of sedum I think all looking hale and hardy.  The house looks so much “softer” now with the gardens surrounding it.  As I look down the hill I can see the corn/maize is tasseling, the banana trees are heavy with fruit, and the whole valley is gloriously green, with the little angular plots of gardens making a colorful patchwork.  There are lots of colorful butterflies, including one large black one with white spots on it that is very pretty.  Sometimes the butterflies appear to be “dancing” with one another in the breeze.  I’m attaching a picture of exactly what I’m looking at, but you can’t really see the mountains on the other side of the lake very well.

 And the slow pace - delightful!  I was sitting here yesterday morning watching the roosters having an altercation over something, and keeping track of my favorite black and white hen and her 5 chicks that I have been watching since they were little puffballs a few weeks ago and now look like chickens (albeit small versions). The chickens are endlessly amusing and I will miss them very much at home. Makes me want have some at home, but since we live in the city, hardly a practical idea although I know that the laws allow you to do it.  It would take all the fun away to have to pen them up though, since part of the fun here is watching them wandering around doing their thing.  

Speaking of chickens, we ran out of time to buy frozen chicken when we were in Mzuzu last time, so when we got back asked Smelton if chicken was available up here as we had never seen it in the open air market or any of the small shops, and our Norwegian neighbors mentioned that they had sometimes gotten it up here.  He said he would check and came to tell us later that there was a man nearby who would sell us chicken and he was at the door needing payment.  I was busy doing something and John went to talk to the man, came back and got money to pay him – about $4.00 for a whole chicken, so not a bad price for us, but a lot of money for the Malawians who only average about $30 a month in salary.  So John comes back and says, “that is going to be some fresh chicken – he had them with him”.  I was so glad I didn’t go to the door, as I didn’t really want to meet my dinner face to face.  It was fabulous chicken, but when we went to our Norwegian neighbors later and their chickens were out in the yard, with their rooster looking at me, I said “I think Horace (their rooster) is giving me that look because he knows we are responsible for murdering one of his friends from down the hill.”   

We’ve had some periods of dry weather this past week or so, with low humidity and intensely blue skies.  It was a real treat.  It came on the heels of a big storm on Monday night, where the rain was coming down sideways in sheets, and the wind blew hard enough to blow off the roof of the little shack next door.  I have a picture of that too.

 Our big treat this past week was watching movies on my laptop computer.  Our Norwegian neighbors have a huge collection of DVDs that they watch on their laptops, and since they have been here for over a year already, with 2 more to go they have amassed a bunch of them.  The first night, we made popcorn with real butter that I splurged on at the market in Mzuzu last time, and propped ourselves up in bed with the laptop on a big pillow in between us.  What a treat, although I noticed we were a little speechless after if was over, I suppose because it was the first moving image we had seen in over 2 months. 

 The American Embassy announced that they were sending the movie Amistad to the College to be shown for Martin Luther King day and black history month (which seemed a little weird since we are in Africa).  It was to be quite an event, and the secondary school and college both closed down so people could attend.  I was pretty excited even though it was to be projected on the wall of the auditorium that still has “welcome” written in sticky tape on it.  Unfortunately, the vehicle carrying the movie, and undoubtedly driven by some wimpy city driver, got stuck at bend 20 on the escarpment road.  Bend 20 is the first one coming up the hill, and while there is some mud there, we told our University drivers that they should have hired them to drive up as they always make it somehow.  We said those city drivers probably just looked at that first bend and chickened out on the trying to make it up.  Our drivers got a kick out of it though, and we have been so impressed with their ability to drive and on that crazy road up the escarpment. 

 March 3, 2008

We hope to go to Mzuzu tomorrow or the next day so will be able to post this on the blog soon I think.  Today is a holiday here, and we are enjoying sleeping in since our “staff” (cook and gardener) is off.  It’s great to have an extra day to catch up on emails to be sent when we go to town, and to have leisurely time to write here. 

We are continuing to have nice days, although it has been raining at night, which is good for the crops and our garden.  Temperatures continue to be in the 70’s during the day when the sun is shining, and cooler at night – pretty much ideal weather, although on the rainy days it is quite cool.  I’m hoping this weather pattern will last for awhile although the rainy season doesn’t really end until April, we are told that the rains do come and go some during the season. 

We continue to struggle with “the money thing “ – that being the fact that we have money in the middle of one or the poorest countries in the world, and this past week we were bombarded by requests for money.  For example the “maize mill” project I mentioned in an earlier letter is something we are getting more deeply entrenched in. – it’s what we used to call at work “scope creep”.  We’ve made it very clear (in our minds anyway) that we are going to help them get the money, not give them the money, but it tends to become unclear in their minds.  Yesterday I was meeting with a 4^th year student to coach him on the writing and English in his Senior research paper (a fun thing we both volunteered to do in our spare time), so John was going alone to meet with a man from the Electric company in order to get a quotation to use in our the proposal we said we’d help create for hooking up power for the maize mill.  But when he got to the village, he found that Macdonald had assembled the chiefs and village leadership, along with nearly all 30 of the women from the cooperative.  After the introductions, where Macdonald tried to explain that we were not giving the money, but were helping to prepare the proposal to send to potential donors, the chiefs and women spoke and it was clear that they thought we were giving the money for the mill and it was a done deal.  John tried to clarify in the speech that he was asked to give, but with the language differences, and their expectations we wonder how much of it got through. 

Everything we have been asked for is to do good things that  like the maize mill will help them to be self sufficient, money to stock a store, money to buy an extra cow for the butcher to sell, money for tuition – but we don’t want to become bankers or microloan makers.  It opens the floodgates for the whole community to show up on our doorstep, and since we don’t have money for everyone, how does one fairly draw the line and decide who will get it and who won’t.  What bothers me the most about it though is that it perpetuates the mzungu as the giver of money, the one who has the power, and it continues to create an unequal relationship between the mzungu and the local people.  One thing is for sure, it creates ample opportunities for growth and learning as we try to make our way through what is the right thing, and most caring and helpful thing – and for 2 caretakers who would like to find a way to “fix it all” that is a very important lesson.  It is very difficult to see all this need, and to know what is the right thing to do to help – and it is something I’m sure we will continue to struggle with during our time here.