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!