Ongoing water board saga

Well, the latest on the water board! We did not receive a bill from December until the end of march, when we received the bill from december. a bill, incidently, we had paid on January 11. Now the interesting part and the part that is actually making me crazy at the moment is that on jan 11 I paid MK5775 which was the amount for the December usage, in February we paid MK 8000 (both of those payments were paid minus any form of bill but based on what the cashier said) and then last week (against my better judgement) I paid another MK13000. Now the cashier told me my usage for Feb had been about MK 1200 and then i got a bill for March and it was MK 1090 so how is it possible that I have paid MK21000 for about MK 2500 of usage?!!!

I am not sure what happened but the water board has clearly had some huge issue with their computer system they are having a hard time recovering from. When I was in the office last week attempting to figure the whole thing out there were several very angry people in line around me with similar issues. Unfortunately I had to leave before I even got to the counter but that was probably just as well considering the guys working were so frazzled it probably wasn't worth it.
last week i was trying to solve the problem. This week I have decided to ignore it! When I have energy and feel inspired I will attempt again! In the meantime, I ahve certainly more than paid my bill so my water should not get disconnected!

7th grade science

As I am procrastinating I decided the work I am avoiding is a good topic to cover in a post. I am teaching 7th grade science for the last 11 weeks (3rd term) of the school year at the Christian, American system school here in Lilongwe. I have 17 very well behaved kids in my class and thus far it has been quite fun. Fortuitously the previous teacher had skipped the chapter on the human body so we have been covering that for the last few weeks (they have an exam next week that I should be writing at this moment!) and now we are going to move on to some general health topics. This is where it may get interesting as the health curriculum that comes with their textbook is really scary so I am making up my own curriculum from now to the end of the semester... This is actually a great little job. They only have class M-W for about an hour each time. Monday and Weds class is from 8:20 to 9:10 and tuesday it is from 11:50 - 1:10.

Karis' trip to Maasailand

As you can see, Karis had a great time in the Maasia village (in Tanzania)! It was a neat day for all of us. We left about 6am and with multiples stops reached the village around 10-11. We had the kids wash their hands and then gave them each 2 pieces of bread and a banana and then held a medical clinic.

Yummy Snacks!
Singing songs and playing games.

Elusive Kilimanjaro!

This past weekend we went on a very quick trip to Tanzania. We stayed in the village of Machame, at the base of Kilimanjaro, and met up with a mission trip from Temple Bible Church. It was a great weekend were we got to see old friends and see the work being done at the hosptial in Machame! The country was beautiful as well. The surprising thing was how difficult it is to see Kilimanjaro! Most of the time it is covered in clouds. We saw it for a total of 10 minutes the 3 days we were there and apparently that is actually pretty good! However, we did get a nice view at sunrise when we took off on Monday morning and an even better view from the plane between Nairobi and Lilongwe.

Elusive Kilimanjaro!

This past weekend we went on a very quick trip to Tanzania. We stayed in the village of Machame, at the base of Kilimanjaro, and met up with a mission trip from Temple Bible Church. It was a great weekend were we got to see old friends and see the work being done at the hosptial in Machame! The country was beautiful as well. The surprising thing was how difficult it is to see Kilimanjaro! Most of the time it is covered in clouds. We saw it for a total of 10 minutes the 3 days we were there and apparently that is actually pretty good! However, we did get a nice view at sunrise when we took off on Monday morning and an even better view from the plane between Nairobi and Lilongwe.