John's computer

While in the States in October we bought a new computer and were given a wireless router so for about 2 weeks we were in technology heaven - we each had a computer with Internet access (and it was even running a bit faster) and Karis had her DVD player to watch her "moosh" We loved it but had a bad feeling it was "too good to be true..." Sure enough, "John's" computer decided to die. However, he was able to get on the Dell chat line and they decided it was the motherboard and he needed to send in his computer for repair... He was able to convince them to just mail him the motherboard Hurdle #1) we had to give a shipping address on the spot so gave my grandparent's. Someone needed to sign for the package and they are retired and usually home and very dependable... EXCEPT, unbeknownst to us they were on vacation. Thankfully, a neighbor must have signed for it. Hurdle #2) getting it here - one of John's colleagues made an unexpected trip to the US and was able to bring it back. These SHOULD have been the hurdles. However, who knew that there were 20 different screws to get the thing apart and that several of them would be virtually impossible to get out. Thankfully, the IT person, Thomas, at his work was able to help. He was so excited the first night to get it done and then had to give up on the screws. Next day he took it to work, Thomas got the screws out and John sat down the next night to fix the whole thing, got down another level and found anothr screw that would not come out so had to take it back to work again! Finally, the third night he was able to actually get everything apart and install the new motherboard and it wouldn't work!! So he took it back to Thomas for him to check it out and was rather dejected. Today Thomas had time to look at it and said, "John, it looks like you did a great job and everything is installed correctly you just forgot to put the processor back in!" The feeling of foolishness is far surpassed by the joy that the computer might actually work again! Thomas was supposed to be installing the processor tonight so keep your fingers crossed!

Someone Important Must Live on Our Road

1/12 We have decided that someone important must have moved onto our road somewhere because what was already a rather nice tarred, 2 lane road well able to handle the flow of traffic has been transformed into the nicest dirt road I have ever seen!! First, huge piles of dirt appeard every 20 feet or so and then they have spent over a week spreading and packing this dirt (and apparently pulling up the tar underneath) I suspect they will start tarring anyday which could get rather interesting since we only have one way off our compound and it is straight onto this road! We could not have left if we wanted to on Saturday afternoon and I suspect it will be unpassable again at some point in the near future. When we arrived a year and a half ago it was totally "bush" across the street with no development but in that time a school and several houses have been built and we can tell it is going to be developed more and more so it is reasonable to work on the road. THen this morning a friend said she heard this road was being widened to make it sort of a bypass around Lilongwe!! Aghh! since this would ahve a huge impact on the traffic I can only hope it is a false rumor... and praise the Lord we only rent this house and will be long gone before they actually finish such a bypass! (this road deadends about 2-3 miles from our house. to actually connect it as a bypass to the cities in the south they will have to build several miles of totally new road)
12/17 -I didn't post this the other day because I wanted to load a picture and the internet was too slow. Today I am getting an odd error message so I will just post minus the picture. The development on the road in the past week? Well, they spent 4 days grading and packign and smoothing till it was the best dirt road I have ever seen and then they dug it all up and started over because there was "a failure" somewhere. I think that means they made a mistake. One of Thomas's responsibilities for the week is to keep an eye on the progress and to let me know before they start tarring in front of our house so I can get the car off the compound instead of getting totally blocked on!

Snake Encounter!

Yesterday karis and i went swimming at our friends Beth and Jeremy's house. Beth is currently in the UK and Jeremy was at work but their two lovely daughters Claire (8) and Brianna (7) were home as well as a friend who is staying with the family, Kate. So we had a nice swim and then Karis and I went to the bathroom to change. I walked in, put Karis down, dropped my bag and closed the door all sort in one movement and then looked up to see a large green snake in the shower about 6-8 feet in front of us! It was a littler surreal, I grabbed Karis but she of course was already walking away from me - toward the snake (though I don't think she really saw it but was just stepping away after I put her down) so I had to grab for her twice then had to turn my back to open the door which of course stuck the first time!! Thankfully, the snake was more occupied with getting out of the shower by attempting to climb up the wall that I don't think it hardly saw us.
I get out of the bathroom, slam the door and yell for the girls to call the gardener! Thankfully, all people and all 4 dogs were in the kitchen area and out of the way. So Brianna runs to do that and Claire, who is fearless, is crouching by the door to see if she can see it (I wouldn't let her open it) The gardener dutifully comes in with a stick and a machete. We show him the bathroom door and then close the hall door and stand and wait! We closed the hall door so that if the snake got out of the bathroom it didn't come straight into the room with the kids and the dogs but I still felt a little guilty and I stood in safety and sent him off to kill the snake! We waited about 2 minutes while we hear whacking from the bathroom and then he comes out pushing a still writhing snake along the floor, leaving blood spots. ughh.


The girls and the gardener said it was a Green Mamba (very poisonous and aggressive) but I think that is a pretty standard answer for all green snakes so I am not sure. However, we couldn't find the snake book so we put it in a bucket and put it up high where the dogs couldn't reach it to await Jeremy's assessment.

Oh, I just got a text from him and he said it was 100% a green mamba and that it was about 1.5 meters.(this is why little girls have fathers - there was no way I was going to measure the thing and Claire was the one who put it in the bucket!)

On the one hand I making this a pretty dramatic story but on the other hand, this situation had potential to be really dangerous - My theory is that the snake got in throught the open bathroom window above the shower and it just wanted back out when it couldn't get back up the wall there is no telling where it would have gone! Claire and Brianna of course run all over their house and karis tends to run around too and any one of them could have encountered it and had it even been curled up in the shower versus trying to get out then someone could have stepped on it. Had one us gotten bitten it would have been a really, really big deal so I just praise God that it worked out the way it did! AND that the gardener was there! Kate and I discussed that had he not been there we really would have had to have been responsible adults and killed it ourselves!! And had that happend we would have done fine BUT praise God for the gardener!

Lilongwe Used Clothes Market

The used clothes business is quite the happening affair in Lilongwe. Clothes that originated from Goodwill, charities etc etc in the U.S. and Europe arrive in bales that are about 5ft by 5 ft and are bought by individuals. They then take it to their stall (a covered space with plastic on the floor) in the market and open up the bales. The shopper then sorts through the piles until they make a find. Other clothes are also washed, ironed and hung up for better presentation. There does seem to be some sort of method to the madness on how the bales are put together. IE some will be all men's shirts or kids clothes or whatever. Just like consignment shopping in the States you never know what you are going to get: some stuff is junk and other times you will find a name brand with the tag still on it! The whole city from expats to villagers shop here and the prices range from about 100 kwacha for a simple kids shirt to several hundred for a jacket. Sometimes it is depressing to look at an item that has a garage sale tag for 75cents and you are paying $2 for it. However, clearly most items are worth more than they are sold for at garage sales.
We have been shopping here the last 2 years for Christmas gifts for our staff and their families. This year they have a total of 12 kids so we needed quite a lot and it was hot! So hot that while I usually really enjoy these sorts of things i was desperate to leave before we were halfway through our list! We finally gave up before we got everything so I will have to make one more trip - on a cooler day! Once we got everything home and washed it all looks quite nice except for one pair of pants that is too worn in the knees. What actually prompted me to write about this is that last night as I was hanging up a very cute dress that is about 2 sizes too big for Karis I realized that it is in perfect condition AND reversible. Very cool. So I think we will be keeping that one for her and I will buy another one to give as a gift...
The downside to all of this is that apparently this type of thing has actually been really detrimental to the local textile industries in several African countries. Local textiles just cannot produce clothes as cheap as these can be sold... Yet another thing that seems like really good thing initially but once you learn more about the economics not so helpful after all...

Frustrations!!!

I was going to write an separate post for each of these topics but they all fit under the same category (Malawi) anyway and this is more than adequate whining!

1) I just spent an hour trying to figure out the stupid water bill!! Granted, it should not have taken me that long but in the end, I have deduced that they have made a 8500 kwacha ($60)mistake! It took so long to figure it out because the bills are very confusing and if I do not have it all laid out very clearly I will never be able to explain it when I go into the office! The huge complicating factor is that they send out overlapping bills! What I mean is: I receive a bill that is due on say, September 31 so I go in and pay it on Sept 25 but by then the bill that is due on Oct 31 has already been sent out and includes the September balance!! (I tend to pay bills fairly close to the due date and never remember having this issue in the States but maybe it is because the bills were so much easier to read and the odds of the company making a mistake so much lower). So the only way to actually have your bills and your receipts match up is to pay the bill pretty much as soon as you get it - that's reasonable!! EXCEPT - the bills are not actually sent on a specific, consistent day of the month so you don't know when to expect them AND they go to John's office... the only thing I can say about the girl responsible for sorting the mail is, "bless her heart"... In short, actually receiving the bill in a timely manner is difficult. However, I do feel a small sense of accomplishment at figuring it out and tomorrow morning will traipse down to the main water board office to (attempt) to remedy the situation



2) Compound staff - I will attempt to keep this short as to go into too many details would be excruciatingly painful. We and especially John have spent literally HOURS in the last week trying to get everyone to get along. It seems that while we were in the US in October some sort of conflict arose between the guards and the gardener. However, no one told us this, we have just gradually been discovering it. It all started because we left cell phone minutes for them to use to call one of our friends if there were problems while we were gone. They only called her once yet all 5 cards of units were gone... An issue since they knew those units were for a specific purpose. When we addressed the one guard and one gardener who have phones all the issues began to leak out. Then to compound the whole thing we also had a misunderstanding over some ufa (flour) and we have been inundated with requests for money that has left us a little short when dealing with all these guys. Add to that language barriers and a VERY indirect culture where backbiting and gossip seems to be fairly common yet no one will actually rat out the other person. I could go on forever on with the he said, she said but... In the meantime, the gardener seems to have recovered from his week of pouting and we will have a compound meeting tomorrow to discuss the issues with everyone at once!

3) Karis's bed - Karis has learned to climb out of a crib so was ready for a "big girl bed". We anticipated this and brought a bed rail back from the States with us. So we asked Baylor if we could have one of the single beds that are in storage. They said no problem but would have to find mattresses (a little odd that there were no mattresses since they had them before but...) and arrange transport. No problem. Other component to the story is that we actually had a single bed when we first arrived and had to take the head board off of it to move it into our guestroom. Since we were just using it as a daybed we left the headboard off of it. Later it was borrowed by another doctor and then eventually went back to storage as we didn't need it. But we still have the headboard... I think we attempted to tell the office to bring us the bed without the headboard...
So, about 2 weeks after the request we have a bed delivered. It had a headboard so was a different bed but that was fine. However, we soon realized we could not get this down the hall with the headboard and the headboard was designed differently and won't come off!! So the next day I see the driver and ask him to please bring us the bed with the missing headboard. he said okay and seemed to know exactly what i was talking about. That same day John went into the shed to look and there was no bed without a headboard or any other single beds for that matter! So that night we spent an hour taking the doors off 2 different doors to get the bed into her room. Not a huge deal and it worked out fine. THEN the next day John was doing something totally unrelated (looking for a screwdriver for his computer) and went into a different shed and found multiple single beds, including the one without the headboard! This is particularly frustrating because the office has inventoried things on multiple occasions yet never seem to know where anything is!

However, we do enjoy living here! But we are seriously considering moving into a flat next year for a variety of reasons, eliminating our need for guards and a gardener not the least of which!!

Butternut and Mangoes

For this 24 hour period my favorite food is Butternut squash!! I love the stuff. I used it in place of sweet potatoes in my thanksgiving sweet potato casserole yesterday and I must say it turned out great and then someone else brought cubed, roasted butternut and someone else mashed it! I do specify it is a short lived love affair because i don't always enjoy it quite this much. (Yesterday, when I was boiling it prior to mashing I had some extra and just ate it plain with pepper!) but it is definitely a food we have "discovered" since moving to Malawi. I used to buy them in the States but then wouldn't end up using them. I started getting them here for Karis and then starting finding recipes for them and other people started talking about it. One of the restaurants has an amazing feta and butternut pizza and I now make a feta and butternut quiche! Now, don't assume this is actually an indigenous food to Malawi. As far as I can see, it certainly isn't. If fact they are usually on the expensive side - although not this week so who knows! The funny thing about trying to recreate American Thanksgiving in the southern hemisphere is that it is summer so fall/winter crops like pumpkin are no where to be found and it really isn't sweet potato season (hence the butternut casserole in the first place!)

Another funny food comment: mangoes! It mango season and we love it but John and I definitely have different taste in mangoes! He went to Salima, the home of Malawi's best mangoes, for work on Monday and brought us back a bag. Mathilda cut them up for us and they are great just a bit on the ripe side for me. Then last night someone brought a bowl full of mango that are much more on the green side! I love them and John said he didn't even try them because he could tell they weren't ripe enough!

Wildlife and other happenings

Clearly frequent updates is something I need to keep working on!
Yesterday was an interesting animal day for us! I was sitting at the desk sort of absent mindedly staring out the window when i noticed an animal that looked like squirrel but then it hit me that we very rarely see squirrels here and this is actually something different - maybe like a mongoose or an African squirrel or who knows! I grabbed the camera to take a picture but of course it had disappeared before I got outside but when i was looking around for it I heard a rustling pretty close to my feet and looked over at a huge lizard! I have pictures but they are still on the camera so will have to be sent later.

Meanwhile at work John had a patient bring him two live pigeons as an appreciation gift! Although he did really appreciate the gracious gesture it was still a little odd to handle 2 birds in his exam room! I guess they set them on the exam table first but they pooped everywhere and fell off!So Then they put them in a bag. John said this man's immune system is in pretty bad shape and he definately did not need to be handling birds!!! Thankfully, John was also able to pass them on to another family who needed food later in the day!
In other events: Karis's nightime routine has improved remarkably now that we have been home a few weeks. As she can climb out of any crib she is sleeping on a mattress on the floor till we get her a bed (should come tomorrow) and is also learning more words daily and increasing her song repertoire. She now sings the first few lines of Twinkle, twinkle little star, the ABCs and the eieio of Old Macdonald.
We have also discovered Instant Messenger on Yahoo. This has both increased our ability to communicate and sucked away hours of our life (and well worth it)

Home Safely

Well, we are safely back home in Malawi and getting back into the swing of things! We thoroughly enjoyed our time in the States and had a great time with family and friends but are also glad to be back! Our trip back was pretty much uneventful and smooth. We had much better service on the flight and had an extra seat so Karis had some space to sit! We were also very pleased to discover that Delta had just changed their planes and we had individual t.v. screens!! Huge blessing! Of course, karis was not interested in any of the shows so wore out the battery on my laptop and her portable DVD player but that is what we brought it for! John and I watched several hours of tv each and it was great! Johannesburg airort is notorious for things being stolen out of your luggage and unfortunately we were victims this time! Our five bags that were in the baggage compartment all night were fine but when we checked in for our flight in the morning they made us check John's carry on that had all the electronics in it (specifically so they would not be accessible to anyone as that is the type of thing that is usually stolen). We anticipated this happening but thought they would take it at the gate but instead they took it at check in! In retrospect we should have rearranged things at that point but we just didn't think through it all as it was happening! We are thankful because it could have been much worse and of all the electronics in that bag it was the one we use the least but it is still maddening!! We also knew we were back in Malawi when we arrived with no one to pick us up! Our friend, Beth, had planned to do it but had something come up so made arrangments with John's office to send a driver but somehow it didn't happen! It was minor as we called and they sent someone immediately but was still a good reminder that things don't function on the same schedule here!
On the plus side, there were no problems on the compound while we were gone and the rains have started early so things are already green! We really are glad to be back!

Karis's First week In the U.S.

Karis has thoroughly enjoyed her first week back in the States and it has included a lot of "firsts":

• Her first chance to play with cousins (well, at least since she was 2.5 months old). She got to spend the week with Diya (10) and Devan (3). Diya was wonderful with both younger kids and a great help while the younger two liked each other - most of the time! They were so cute together
• Her "first" haircut - consistent with Telegu culture her maternal uncle took the first three snips. I think technically this should have been my brother, Beau, but since Chintan is married to Mercy he is considered a maternal uncle so he performed the task! Then we took her to a salon and had a complete trim. She sat perfectly still in my lap the whole time! If we had known she would cooperate John could have done the whole thing himself
  
• Her first trip to the zoo. She loved feeding the baby goats but the playground was definately her favorite!
• Her first shopping trips! She slept through the mall excursion but enjoyed her playtime at Old Navy and Target... and the shoes and clothes her aunt bought her! We bought her some shoes to grow into but she keeps pulling them out of the boxes and putting them on.

Safe trip

After much fear and trepidation, our trip to the States went really well! Unfortunately, the customer service on our 18 hour Delta flight was virtually nonexistant but every other aspect of the trip went really well and Karis did great! She was not fussy at all and slept quite a lot on the long flight. Although it was a really, really long flight it actually did not seem as long as it could have and I (Sara) was less tired than usual upon arrival. Karis took a nap Friday afternoon in the airport in Lilongwe, slept in about 2 long stretches on the flight and then took a nap as we were landing in Atlanta about 7am U.S. time. Other than that she only slept for about 10 minutes in the car on the way home from the airport but was able to stay awak and pretty happy until 6:45 when she went to bed and then slept through the night as usual so she adjusted well! Our bags did not arrive in Atlanta with us but did arrive with all contents accounted for on Sunday so we were relieved! (one never knows what is going to happen to your belongings when they are "lost" in Johannesburg!!!) We will wait till after our return trip to pass final judgment on Delta and one long flight versus a layover in Europe!

We leave on Friday!

We are busily getting ready for our trip to the U.S. on Friday and can't wait! In the meantime we are rushing around trying to get everything taken care of for Sunday school (or relief teacher seems to be AWOL) the compound (complicated by almost losing our housekeeper this week and a potential conflict between the "day staff" and night guards) John's work and packing.
My general sense of panic at the thought of our 18 hour, 50 minute flight from Johannesburg to Atlanta with a stop in Dakar, Senegal and without an assigned seat for Karis has slightly abated. This is the result of wonderful prayer from our Cell group and my Bible study as well as dvds she really enjoys (loaned from a friend) and a few new toys I have been holding back!! (also from friends! Thanks!) The nice thing about having one long flight is that it does make for the quickest trip possible. We leave Lilongwe at 1:30pm on Friday and arrive in Little Rock at about noon on Saturday. with short connections from Lilongwe to Jo'burg and Atlanta to LR. We are very, very excited about our trip and can't wait to see friends and family! All prayers for smooth travel are appreciated!

Karis and her friends

We go to play group most Wednesday mornings and Karis is interacting more and more with the other kids. Here she is with her friend,Joe. Her more constant companion is her Eeyore.

John got it for her in South Africa and especially in the last few weeks she has gotten quite attached to him. She even asks for him by name and says "Eeyore" very clearly! She thought he needed a bath on Saturday (which he actually does) so took him swimming in the water fountain while we were fixing breakfast!

Meanwhile on Safari...

While John was having the week he described below I was "suffering" on safari. South Luangwa is a great game park only about 4-5 hours away in Zambia. Our friend, Donna, was visiting from Temple and part of her whirlwird tour was to go on safari. We had a great time and had some definate game viewling highlights: 2 lionesses with cubs, a leopard with cubs and a recent kill right at the side of the road, and elephants coming right up to our dining room! We also saw lots of zebra, elephants, hippo and giraffe. We closed the experience with seeing 2 lionesses hunting!! Unfortunately they started chasing a cape buffalo and ended with him chasing them! Our guide said, "they have failed". This experience was made slightly more exciting by the fact that our vehicle was not running well and the guide could not turn it off! The vehicle ran well the first day but the first night it was having battery issues and we actually had to be pushed at one point (they use these spotlights to veiw animals at night and it was draining the battery)! All well and good when there is nothing around but not something you can repeat when you are 20 feet from hungry lions (literally!) I was having visions of a) lions jumping into the back of our open vehicle or b) the engine dying and us having to sit there for hours before it was safe to get out and push!
So those were the game viewing highlights. Mind you, we spent about 16 hours over 2 days in a land cruiser to see all that! Great, but Donna and I were in agreement that one day would have been adequate for us! Thankfully we were sitting on the back row of the truck so when everyone else was still enthralled with the birds and crocodiles we just talked!
This was the first time I had left Karis for more than a day so I was concerned about her and the death of Loveness was a huge unexpected stressor but I had no qualms in John's (and Mathilda's) abilities to take care of her so I just prayed for them and enjoyed the hours of uniterrupted sleep and naps at every possible opportunity! It was great!

Difficult Week

Written Sept 10

This past week was a challenge in many ways. It was the first time I was left in charge of Karis for over 1 day. Sara and Donna (a good friend from Texas) went on safari to South Luangwa, Zambia for 4 days leaving me and Mathilda entertaining Karis.

Day 1: The first day was business as usual, because Karis is used to being left a home during the day. I went to work and came back home to find Karis fed, bathed and ready to play. I really was a little disappointed that I was not doing those things, because I could handle taking care of my own child (but in some ways I was so thankful that Mathilda took care of the major things). Karis usually goes to sleep between 6:30 to 7:30 but I let her play and kept her entertained by watching her 1 set of DVDs. She finally went to sleep at 8:30 and that set the tone for the rest of the nights (sleeping between 8:30 to 9:00). Her sleep pattern was shot the first night! What could I have done, she knew her mother was missing and she needed the DVDs to settle her prior to going to sleep. Sara also had worked at getting her to sleep in her own crib and that also was shot. I needed to keep her close so I could wake up if she woke up in the middle of the night and so from the first night on, she wouldn’t even take day naps in her crib the whole time. We had to place her on our bed in order to get her to take a nap.

The first day was not the worst as the week progressed. Day 2: Tuesday started as a nice day. I took Karis into work for 30 minutes to get some paper work done to admit our guard’s wife, Loveness, to the hospital and returned home to spend time with Karis. I thought that the next day after Sara was gone would be the most difficult for Karis and so decided to stay home from work the majority of the day. One of my friends, Lisa, came over to lend me some additional children’s DVDs and we spent time talking while Karis played with her son Lenny. Lisa and Lenny left and things were going well until I got a call from the pastor taking Loveness to the hospital for admission as I had instructed him to do. He also told me that she was bleeding from a place on her leg, (this was not surprising as that was the reason for the admission) and that they were going to the emergency department first. I agreed with the logic and told him to keep me informed. I got a call 40 minutes later to be told that she had passed away. This on the other hand was a huge shock and surprise! This changed the whole next few days. I left Karis at home with Matilda at that point and left to go assist our guard. I came home tired and emotionally exhausted and let Karis dictate the events of the evening before retiring for the night. She wanted to watch the new DVDs and these new DVDs were a relief from the ones that we have been watching for over 5 months now.

Day 3 without Sara. This day began early with having to go to work for a portion of the day and the funeral the rest of the day. The details of this tragic story will be another blog. Poor Mathilda was left taking care of Karis for the majority of the day and I only relieved her around 6:30 in the evening. Again, because Mahtilda must think that men are not supposed to do child rearing activities, Karis was fed, bathed and dressed for bed by the time I got home. The moment Karis would see me, she was ready to play. We stayed up another night playing and watching the new DVDs that are from Australia. The videos are “Play School” and consist of nursery rhymes in an Aussie accent. I think Karis is going to end up with an Aussie accent after watching these videos!

Day 4: Sara is coming home! I was able to spend some time at home with Karis. I put up a swing in the front yard and entertained her by pushing her in the swing. She enjoyed the swing and wanted to spend most of the time there. I also took her on errands around town like to the National Health Science Research Council to submit a research proposal. People here love seeing children and don’t object to having a child being brought. Finally, I went to work with Sara on the way home from her Safari and to resume mommy duties. Sara was missed during this time, but Karis and I did bond though our delinquent behaviors…eating whatever she wanted, sleeping whenever and where-ever she wanted and doing whatever she wanted. I think the only saving grace was that she still spent more time at home with Mathilda than me and that probably kept Karis semi-civilized.

Difficult weekLessons: As a dad you just try to survive these trials by getting rid of all rules that you thought were easy to enforce. Stay at home moms and dads are truly super-hero’s. The energy, the creativeness, the discipline that is required 24 hours a day to keep these little ones going is exhausting. I am so thankful for Mathilda.

*Pictures taken previously but this is basically what happened (watch DVDs and eat whatever you want- chocolate cake, etc)

Village Ladies Conference

Last Friday I had the pleasure of attending a church ladies conference with my friends Lorrie and Heather. Lorrie is a missionary and this was a group she works with and Heather and I tagged along. Heather is a physican and gave a brief talk on HIV and I talked a little about nutrition. It was a great, great experience! Two things probably affected me the most 1) I could not believe I had been in Malawi without attending a village church until now. It was so fun and so similar to what I grew up doing. In Lilongwe there are so many expats and so many international organizations and diplomatic missions that there is also a bit of a bad attitude - almost as though the average Malawian has been told they are poor too many times and so now they totally believe it in their spirits. In the villages, however, you get a pure, simple joy. People are very, very poor and need help but they don't necessarily think they are poor - a key difference! Of course, the best part of the village is the food and I was not disappointed. It was the best Malawian food I have had since arriving - complete with "local" chicken, not "hybrid" as our interpreters told us. To us this equivacates to very little meat on the bones and quite tough - to them it makes it a delicacy! I was quite happy to eat the soup and leave the chicken for our interpreters and whoever else came behind us. Rest assured it was not thrown away
2) I had a very brief glimpse of the affect of HIV on this community and the choices faced by women. It was heartbreaking. Heather gave a brief introduction to the disease and encourged people to get tested. These are some of the questions/comments she got in response"

• "If my husband is positive and I am not and he refuses to wear a condom, what should I do?" (in this culture, refusing sex is really not an option)
• If I get tested and am positive and tell my husband, he will leave me.
• The Bible says it is wrong to use a condom.

Heather handled it beautifully but it was heartbreaking because there just aren't any answers for some of these issues (from a secular standpoint, that is. Thankfully this was a church group so she could address prayer more specifically).

Lorrie speaking to the ladies. I have no idea what some of them went to to get there. It took us an hour in a landcruiser. Most of them likely took public transport (seriously loaded mini vans) that dropped them off kilometers from the church and then either took a bicycle taxi or walked (many with a bag on their head and a baby on their back)
the top picture is the cooking fire and the ladies lined up for lunch! When the stray dogs are that thin you know not a lot of food is thrown out!

Dzalanyama Forest Reserve

Buying Sugar cane on the side of the road! Everyone in the car with the exception of myself (but not karis) thoroughy enjoyed it and said it was particularly sweet!This weekend we went on a trip with our friends Phil and Cynthia and Beth and Jeremy Barr and their 2 charming daughters, Claire and Brianna, to a place called Dzalanyama Forest reserve. Our sedan would have struggled to make the trip so we loaded into the land cruiser with the Barrs. There is actually supposed to be some good hiking and bird watching in the area but we occupied our time by attempting to dam the stream by the lodge (cabin). All three girls (not sure how much Karis helped but she loved playing in the water) and their daddies spent hours on this activity. One of the safari companies runs a little cabin that we stayed in. It was basic but very nice. The nicest part being that it actually comes with staff! We brought our own food but there were a couple of gentleman who actually did the cooking (ie. Beth gave them the eggs, sausage and bread and they scrambled, fried and toasted) and cleaning! It was great! This is apparently common here but the first time I had experienced it and I am definitely a fan.


Claire and Brianna gamely
sat in the way back for the 1.5 hour drive over the dirt roads!


Karis made friends with the local village kids while the dam was constructed!

Does Anyone Supervise This Child?

As you can see Karis is not one of those children who hates to get dirty!

We went shopping this morning and a friend/shop owner gave Karis a packet of chocolate covered "biscuits" (cookies) which she of course had to eat immediately hence the picture in the car seat.

Thank goodness for washable markers!!

Insect Repellent

When you think of moving to Africa 2 things you automatically want to have enough of are insect repellent and sunblock. At least that was what I thought and clearly everyone else does too! This picture shows all the repellent that we brought and that we have accumulated in the past year! Lilongwe is a very transiet community and we have been the last stop for several friends on their way out of the country. And I must say that we have benefitted greatly from the odds and ends they have left behind but I also have to laugh when I realize how much insect repellent we now have. Anyone planning to visit: no need to bring it! We have repellent with no DEET, 100% DEET, controlled release, family, organic, we have travel wipes, pump spray, aersol spray! One wonders if we were all obsessive about buying in the first place or just really negligent at actually using the stuff when we arrived and I think the answer is both!

Funerals

Unfortunately, with the arrival of the AIDS epidemic funerals have become a commonplace occurrence in Malawi. In fact, funerals are so common and it is so culturally important for people to attend that they are becoming financial strain on businesses, not to mention families. Businesses now specify how many days you can be off work for funerals, and how much they will pay for them. (as in the U.S. funerals are very expensive and I think usually include taking the body and a truckload of people to the home village which can be hours away) Karis and I attended our first funeral while John was in Romania.This funeral was for Mathilda’s, our housekeeper and good friend, brother. We had met him and John had helped to take care of him so we wanted to go. In the 10 months we have known her Mathilda has had 6 extended family members die. This gentleman’s wife died last year and he left 5 children high school age and younger. Although Mathilda has 3 other living siblings she is the only one able to help with these kids. This is a common occurrence. We know for certain one of these deaths was the result of HIV and suspect at least 2 others were as well. Karis and I only attended the actual funeral service which was not dissimilar to many services in the U.S. with a eulogy, comments from friends and coworkers and sermon followed by going to the graveside for the actual burial and shorter sermon. The difference was that here all the women were in a hut with the deceased wailing and the ceremony took place with all of us sitting outside on the ground. Then we all walked down the dirt road and cornfield to the cemetery. Mathilda's village is only about 15 minutes from our house so transport expenses were minimal but they fed everyone at the funeral and probably a lot of people for several days before and after.

Last week we attended our second funeral. This one was for the sister of a friend in our Bible Study. The lady was already a widow and leaves behind several (i believe, older) children. Apparently there were originally 9 children in the family and with this passing only our friend and one other remain. Once cannot even begin to comprehend the heartache of losing so many family members and the emotional and financial burden it places on those remaining.

Cameroon

We spend Christmas in Cameroon with Sara’s parents and had a great time. As this was our inaugural trans-African flight it was rather educational. We learned that flying anywhere within Africa is both A) very expensive and B) very indirect. Either airline choice we had required an overnight. We chose to fly Ethiopian Airlines whereupon we also learned that one reason people fly Ethiopian is that they are very lax on their luggage restrictions. Therefore, the vast majority of passengers had way more than their allotted hand luggage. Combine this with only moderately helpful flight attendants and you have quite an interesting scene! We left Lilongwe at 1:30pm, flew southwest to Lusaka, Zambia to pick up more passengers, flew northeast to Addis Ababa, arriving about 9pm. It then took at least 2 hours of hassling to actually get our hotel voucher. The next morning we flew west to Doula, Cameroon. From Doula we had a 3 day drive to Garoua where the Davises actually live. Despite insanely bad roads and not feeling particularly well, we did enjoy seeing some of the countryside (though not enough I would choose to do the drive again… ever!) Once there, however, we had a lovely and relaxing visit and Karis got to spend lots of time with her grandparents and we enjoyed being back in West Africa which has a totally different feel than Malawi and Southern Africa.

Addendum: for this trip we could have flown Ethiopian or Kenyan Airways for only about $50 more. After now having flown both we highly recommend paying the little extra for Kenyan!! At the end of the day getting there is goal and they are both adequate but we were much more comfortable on Kenyan... but then again, they have had two crashes in West Africa in the last 7 years so maybe they aren't the best choice for West Africa...

Kenya May 20—27th, 2007

John had a conference in Romania the middle of May and returned through Nairobi, Kenya so Sara and Karis joined him there for a wonderful week of vacation. We have always heard good things about Kenya and must say that from the quality of Kenyan Airways, the graciousness of the people and the amazing safari and coast it more than lived up to our expectations. Some of the highlights:
Due to the large number of Indians in Kenya, masala tea , chapattis and “real’ samosas are a part of the local diet and are readily available. Although there is also a large Indian/Pakistani population in Malawi unfortunately these foods are not common place here. Malawian samosas have cabbage instead of potato—truly an abomination!!
Seeing a cheetah “kill” in Masai Mara
Seeing the Masai decked out in their traditional attire
Karis absalutley loved the ocean. She is normally scared of waves but where we stayed there was a coral reef about one Km out so the waves broke there making the water very calm at the shore!

Our Little Water Baby

Karis loves the water. She had a wonderful time in the ocean and the hotel swimming pool when we went to Mombasa and thoroughly enjoys her baths! She is also still learning about what should and should not go in the water!! The first things she does when she hears water running is to throw all the shampoo, soap, bath toys, and wash clothes in the vicinty of the tub into it! No problems there. On Monday she thought her Lucy the Talking Spider (quite a clever toy, I might add) also needed to go for a swim along with her peanut butter toast. I was able to rescue Lucy before she drowned but despite a brisk dry off and spending the morning on the clothesline she seems to have irreparable damage - she is no longer a talking spider! The toast was beyonod salvage but at least there were not too many crumbs in the bath! Tuesday her coloring paper went for a swim and yesterday while playing outside she decided to stand in a pot of water - leather shoes and sweatpants included! Unfortunately I do not have a picture of it but it was hilarious. The sweatpants are of course none the worse and I have not yet inspected the shoes - they were pretty much at the end of their lifetime anyway! Clearly regular trips to the swimming pool are in order when the hot season arrives.

Pesto... almost

Tonight we had pesto for dinner... sort of. Last week one of the stores had bags (at least 2 cups of basil) for MK 75 (54 cents). This was a first and I was quite excited. I also had pine nuts in the freezer from several months ago when I bought a bag for an exorbitant price but you have to buy it when you see it. Now, the missing ingredient of parmesan or anything remotely close... it was just not too be!! There are 3 grocery stores I shop at regularly and then 3-4 more that I go to for random items. There is no such thing as a one stop shop! The same shop with the basil and pine nuts also occasionally carries romano or parmesan cheeses. However, when you see them you must buy it because it will be gone in a day or 2 and there is no telling when the next shipment will arrive!! so, tonight with no virtually no other food choices and basil about to go bad I decided to improvise and use cheddar and a locally produced gouda type cheese! So we dump it all in the blender and... it won't blend!! This blender is a thorn in John's flesh everytime he thinks about it.. We paid about $35 for it and it is totally useless! It has no power to actually blend much of anything!! The one redeeming value was that it came with a grinder attachment that I used to grind coffee. Until the day that the top of the grinder disappeared. We can only deduce that Karis threw it away (a whole other issue. Mathilda has rescued shoes, cups, make up but she may have missed this one!) So now the blender is virtually useless! In the end we had to take out the pesto and chop it in to reasonably small pieces by hand!! Overall consensus: in a pinch you can use cheddar cheese for pesto although it is not ideal. It is all interesting. I never anticipated being able to buy parmesan when we moved here and truly, the availability of items is such a blessing - the lack of consistency, however, is a challenge. I try not to make my life difficult by making foods with a ton of expensive, difficult to find items but you never knwo when soemthing that has been everywhere for months ( sweetend condensed milk) will suddenly disappear!

Okay, i wrote this weeks ago and am just now finishing and posting. Last week Foodworths got a truck from South Africa - it was quite exciting! They had laundry detergent designed for front loader washers, brown sugar and parmesan all at one time! I have stocked up on the first 2 and decided the latter was just flat out too expensive!

Our First Entry

We have finally arrived in the year 2007 and figured out how to set up a blog and use it! After days of not being able to access the account, this is our first attempt to document something of our lives. This blog has been inspired by our friends Jason and Annalee, and Kyle and Amy. They have used our computer to do this "blogging" thing and we have become interested. Sara tried to start this in the Fall (Northern Hemisphere) but not having Internet at home proved to difficult.

We were able to get Internet access at home by going through some struggles.
The process started by purchasing the equipment on E-Bay in the States and having it brought over to Malawi by friends. The set-up cost here in Malawi would have cost us close to $900, thankfully we were able to do it for considerably less! Although the equipment made it here, it was not without difficulty to set up. There was a plug that was missing and an access code for the router that still has not been sent, but none the less, we have Internet at home and we are happy! The funny thing about getting Internet is that the satellite antenna(picture from our house with grain silo-has antenna on top) is visible from our home and we were assured that there would be no problem getting a great signal and great connection.

Three days, three technicians, their boss, and a small dish attached to our outside wall later we have a decent connection. It is better than nothing and again we are ecstatic!

We need to define decent apparently- we are "discussing" the definition. It is not dial up but not high speed Internet!-John. When it is at it's best I do think that our connection is comparable to a reasonable high speed connection in the U.S. However, there are many times when the system slows down (due to the number of users?) the power goes off or other various reasons and it is not nearly as fast... However, John assures me that I have just forgotten the true speed of U.S. Internet - Sara

However, one needs to keep in mind that regardless of how this speed compares to the U.S. thanks to Baylor's contract with the Internet provider this is virtually the fastest Internet available in Malawi and at a reasonable price and we are infinitely grateful.

This whole topic brings to mind an interesting caveat that anytime we use terms such as "good", "reasonable" and "decent" you should immediately add an implied "for Malawi" because everything is relative. A great example of this is last week when we took our friends, Jason and Annalee, to a local restaurant and told them it was "really good" cheesecake. John and I finished our pieces where as they each ate about 3 bites of theirs. Although we do think it is good cheesecake it is not certainly not Cheesecake Factory! This is not to imply that everything is sub par here - it is simply different. So should you read that we have "good" Internet and then come visit us expecting to be able to upload pictures with the same efficiency of high speed in the U.S. you would be disappointed.

So now you can read about these mundane happenings in our lives here in Lilongwe.