Back to Lilongwe after relaxing at the beach

May 28, 2008

I’m sitting on the konde of our room at the Livingstonia Beach Hotel where our friends Justin and Esther Funsani arrived yesterday to be our guests for 2 days.  We were afraid Esther would not be able to join us as she has been having problems with her health for the past 6 months or more – very high blood pressure.  She is old enough to retire from her job as Chief of Police at Chileka (near the international airport in Blantyre, the largest city in Malawi), but Justin says she is a workaholic and doesn’t know how to stop.  He retired from his job as librarian at the American Embassy several years ago, and they have been building a home in Mulanje, one of the most beautiful parts of Malawi where Esther is from and where her extended family still lives. 

She has been wanting us to come to Blantyre again to see thrm, but I was reluctant to put that kind of strain on her, as she fusses to make things fancy when we are there, and in addition, it is about a 10- 12 hour trip by bus to get there.  So John and I decided that perhaps if we met at Livingstonia Beach, which is near Justin’s home village, it would be a treat for them that they would never spend the money on, and would be about 5 – 6 hours journey for both of us, so a place kind of halfway in-between that would put less strain on them.

When they arrived yesterday, Esther called me by the Chichewa name for Sister, and Justin took us aside to tell us how grateful they both were for what we were doing.  John has spoken privately with Justin when he last came about providing them with money to make up the difference between Esther’s salary and her pension, in hopes that it will encourage her to retire, as we are concerned that the job is not helping her health. We plan to repeat that offer with Esther present in hopes that they will accept.  Justin and Esther support a lot of family members, and we want to position our gift of monthly support as just another family member helping out, since they consider us to be family and in this tribal culture the extended family helps each other out monetarily and in other ways as well. 

May 29, 2008

Back in Lilongwe at our new favorite hotel the Kiboko Town Hotel.  Both this hotel and the Livingstonia Beach have wireless internet and I’m feeling really spoiled by that – and we were pleasantly surprised at how fast the connection was at Livingstonia Beach considering we were kind of in the boonies.  I think it is because we share the connection with so many more people here in Lilongwe but I’m not sure I’ll have enough speed to put more than one photo on today’s blog, so I’m sending along the photo of Esther and I with the chitenje she gave me.  These sarong type skirts are the traditional garb for women here, and although it isn’t the one in the photo, she bought enough fabric to make 2 chitenje, one for her and one for me, her sister.

May 30, 2008

I fell asleep not long after I finished typing yesterday and I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.  We were both feeling pretty lazy after we arrived yesterday, and when I think about the events of the past few weeks, and the next few weeks, I guess it should come as no surprise that we’d be exhausted.  It was nice to have a down day yesterday and again today, and then Jeff will come tomorrow morning, along with Nelson Nkhoma, the University of Livingstonia graduate John has been helping with an application to graduate school at the U of M – and small world that it is, David Chapman from the U of M will be here in Lilongwe tomorrow as well on a ASAID project, and he would be the head of the graduate program Nelson has applied for.  That’s why we told Nelson we would pay for his lodging if he could make the 6-hour trip down to meet David.  Confirming the small world, Jeff was at a dinner party at a friend’s house in Minneapolis about a month ago, and David was a guest at the same dinner.  Sometimes these coincidences are beyond understanding.

I’ve spent the morning looking at job sites and actually applied for one job online.  It seems very weird to think about as I sit here listening to the sounds of Africa, people, music, cars, and Chichewa being spoken, but our thoughts are turning increasingly to home, and the resumption of our lives there in a few weeks.