Our Latest Wager

My family laughs at us because John and I are always competing on everything from Sudoku to knowing the title and artist of songs on the radio. So every year we join millions of others in "March Madness" and fill out our brackets and make a wager. This year the loser has to watch the kids for an hour on 5 different days so the winner can go to the gym! I have not been to the gym since Karis was born so I am pretty psyched that I have a pretty strong lead at the moment!! Of course, it is only luck. I pretty much make my picks based on the rankings (listed on the sheet) and the fact that I like the sound of Gonzaga, Xavier and Villanova and they are always in the tournament so they must be pretty good and I just happen to be partial to UNC and Kansas. Those two seem to always make it into my final four!! This year I have UNC picked as the winner - apparently President Obama does as well and he is quite the basketball person so maybe I am on the right track:)

he does exist!

Despite almost having given up altogether I have decided to give blogging one last try! A couple of people commented they were still waiting to hear if the baby had been born...! So here is a picture of Karis and "baby brother" also known as Stephen! He has been a super easy baby and such a blessing. And Karis really loves him!

Dancing Queen

Actually, I should title this, "Mama Ia" as Karis is pretty obsessed with ABBA and most specificaly Mama Mia. It all started because my sister and I took her with us to see the movie in August. Ever since she has been requesting, "Mama Ia" so she can "dance". In hopes to save us from too many hours of ABBA we enrolled her in a pre-ballet class! It is just 30 minutes, 1 day a week and she loves it. And although I initially thought I was wasting money with the ballet outfit that she will outgrow in just a few months she wears it so much around the house that I think we have gotten our money out of it!

No baby yet...

So my official due date was October 14. It is now October 20 and still no baby.... aghh!! On the one hand I am not particularly keen on inducing and definitely don't want a c-section but I was really, really hoping for the little guy to make an appearance on his own but so far he has not cooperated! We do have an induction set for Thursday night unlsess something happens in the interim! We would appreciate your prayers.

Hyena Sighting!

Clearly this is out of chronological order! A hyena sighting in Temple, Texas would be really exciting! However, I was reminded of the hyena last night driving on a road in Temple where we used to see coyotes. So just a few nights before we left Malawi we were driving home from Bible Study about 10 at night and did see a hyena!! It was a pretty big one and right on the side of the road. This is not totally unusual as people do see them every once and a while and John had seen one once before but it was still pretty cool! As with everywhere the city is getting built up so the areas of "wild" are getting less and less - not sure if that means more hyenas will be seen as they have less natural habitat to stay in or what. Anyway, it was pretty interesting and I must admit I had never been so thankful for the 6 foot walls around our compound! I realize hyenas are like most wild animlas - they would just assume leave you alone but I read a short story about a rabid hyena and that was enough to make me paranoid! John, of course, (and rightly) thinks I am silly for this paranoia!!

Sewing project!

I know, I know! I have not updated our blog in months! So instead of trying to get "caught up" as planned I am just going to start back with a random post. I am almost done with what I hope and think is a successful sewing project! I decided the baby's crib needed a bed skirt and although I found really cute curtains and a bumper from Ikea they do not make the bed skirt or diaper stacker so I had the bright idea that I could make it myself! It has taken a phone call to both my sister and my mom and actually reading the sewing machine manual to figure out how to "gather" but I now have 3 of the 4 ruffled sides sewed on and so far so good!!

Sewing actually makes me appreciate people when they say they can't cook. In general I tend to feel like there is nothing to cooking - you just read the recipe and do what it says! But that is because I cook enough to understand the instructions! Quite often when I read pattern instructions I understand the words but still have no idea what they mean!!!

and despite the success of the bed skirt I am leaning toward skipping the diaper stacker all together or buying one... or talking my mom into making one when she is here for Christmas... that might be the best idea yet:)

Our Grocery Store Burned!

The grocery store just down the street from us burned last week! I have no idea what happened (though it was very likely some sort of electrical issue) but the whole things burned – all that is left is a shell of the building! This shop was pretty new when we moved here and pretty basic but over the 2 years it has expanded and had quite a good selection of things for good prices – including the best garlic in town and my favorite peanut butter!! Not to mention that it was 5 minutes away by car! Now our closest store is double that distance! However, the good news is that the rumor is that he is going to reopen within a couple of weeks at at least some level. I guess there is some other empty space in the shopping center so they are going to open up there while they rebuild their shop!! Thank goodness! Now I just hope garlic and peanut butter are included in the limited stock!! Of course these are very trivial matters but the selection really does vary between stores – and you can’t assume any particular item is every going to be in stock – really anywhere! Keeps shopping challenging. On a sad note, we are really seeing food prices increase and increase here. It is an annoyance for us but I am really beginning to be concerned for the average Malawian. A liter of oil has gone up 200 kwacha (approx 1 qut. And about $1.5) in the past 4-5 months and just this weekend the price of fuel increased by 25%, up to about $7 a gallon! As everywhere this will have a huge trickle down effect. And as elsewhere salaries are not increasing at the same rate as food and other costs anyway!! And rumor (there are lots of those floating around) is that fuel is going to go up again soon!

Change of Plans

As I read over my last post(and several fun comments - thanks!)I was struck by how much has changed in our life since I wrote just a few weeks ago. At that point we planned to stay in Malawi through July of 2009 with 2-3 month break to come to the States to have the baby. We were happy with the decision and all the logisitcs were coming together to have the baby etc. And then John got a call from the Infectious Disease Department at Scott and White that they were looking for another physcian starting as soon as possible. The sad part is that the available job was due to one of his mentors becoming seriously ill, the good part was that it ended up being a really good opportunity... So after prayer and discussion we are moving back to Temple!! Not at all the timing we anticipated but we are very excited. We are currently waiting to hear back from the travel agent but the plan is that we will all leave Malawi together on August 2nd. karis and i will go to Dallas and John will go on the International AIDS Conference in Mexico City. After that he will attend a wedding in Missouri and then head back to Malawi until Aug 22nd. He then plans to start work at Scott and White on Sept 2! He has things to finish up in malawi till the end fo Aug but has to start work in time for the insurance to kick in for the baby the middle of October so no holidays for him!!
In the meantime, i will try to be more diligent in updates our last few weeks in Malawi as I feel like the only reason my posts might be remotely interesting is because of where we live... whether or not the stores in Temple are stocking sour cream is hardly worth mentioning:) And speaking of Malawi... the water board was going around on a loudspeaker earlier this evening announcing that people needed to pay their bills or they were going to disconnect us tomorrow! I guess that means I should go to the water board and attempt to decipher my bill and see who owes who...rest assured there will be more to this story!
And currently, vehicles with loud sirens have passed our house 3 times in the last 5 minutes. Interesting since in my 2 years here I have never seen a siren like this!! I am sure the guards will give us an update tomorrow! (i could go out for the scoop now but the door is already locked)

Oops!

I forgot i had added a post that I was going to the States - considering that, I should have also commented when I got home! I had a great trip and returned home on May 26. Karis and John had a great time together while I was gone although Karis was sick the first several days. She had actually been sick before I left and I thought she was improving. However, the day I left she seemed to feel bad again and had horrible diarrhea for another few days! This made things a bit more challenging for John! Unfortunately she also shared her germs with me and I got sick when i got to the U.S. - but thankfully not while I was en route!!

Several quick (and random) updates!

• Karis continues to make us laugh and terrify us at the same time. She now likes to change her DVDs by herself despite knowing she is not allowed! The scary part is that she does it successfully. Yesterday we went for a walk and saw chickens and heard a rooster. She asked what the sound was and I said it was a chicken. Her response was something along the lines of, "chickens say cluck, cluck". So i then had to clarify the voices of hens vs. roosters! She also likes to pick her own outfits and changes clothes about 50 times a day! In general, we are okay with this but at times it can take forever to choose an outfit to get out the door and that is maddening!!
• Our gas tank is on E and there was no fuel in town today! The current rumor is that prices are about to go up again - so either the stations are hording their fuel till the new price takes effect or they really don't have any. There are a few other rumors/theories but they imply a longer shortage so I am trying to ignore them!
• In other shopping news: we now have a semi-regular supply of sour cream at one of our stores!! I cannot describe the amount of excitement and joy this created amongst shoppers when it first appeared!! The strange thing is that sour cream was certainly not on my usual shopping list in the States. Why it is so exciting here I am not sure!
• I only have one more day of 7th grade science. It has been a great experience but I am glad it is almost over!
• This is our winter and it has been rather chilly in the evenings and mornings! I definitely appreciate a duvet and don't envy those of you in Texas this time of year!
• I had an ultrasound while in the U.S. and the baby is a boy!

Sara's trip to the U.S.

I will be heading to the U.S. solo on Friday. I have a meeting for the American Overseas Dietetic Association in Chicago May 22-24 but decided to go a bit early and take a side trip to Texas so I will be gone a total of 10 days. I am very excited to see family and friends and not have a small child on 30 hours of travel but also a little apprehensive to leave karis and John for that long! They will have a great time together, i am sure!! However, we would appreciate your prayers as John will have to balance work and full time parenting and we have a new nanny/housekeeper who will be home with karis in the afternoons. (she goes to nursery school in the mornings).

Cleaning out the Car

The other day I decided to clean out the car. Here were the contents:

• water wings
• 6 pairs of Karis's shoes -no 2 year old should even have 6 pairs!
• 11 water bottles
• 2 Bibles
• 3 books
• 4 pens
• Alcohol gel
• 2 egg cartons
• 2 diapers
• Karis's sunglasses

Out of control!! I am happy to report this is the most cluttered it has been but we clearly need to work on taking in junk on a daily basis!

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.

Karis is going to be a big sister!

Yep! Number 2 is on the way! I am "due" October 14. So far I feel fine as long as I eat often enough which is certainly doable. We are excited and there's not really much else to report about it so we'll leave it at that!

England!

We spent a fantastic 5 days in England over Easter! We planned the trip to visit our friends, Stephen and Julia Cheung, but it also worked out that my sister was also there at the same time so we got to see her and her husband as well! It really was a wonderful trip starting with our flight on Virgin Atlantic! We enjoy flying new airlines and had heard good things about them and were not disappointed! Stephen and Julia then picked us up and we stayed with them in Reading. It was rather cold the whole time we were there - 30s-40's most days but we bundled up and were quite comfortable! As the purpose of our visit was to see friends we did not hit all the sites but we did visit some gardens, drank coffee at Starbucks across from Windsor Castle (we decided that was adequate as going inside would have cost $30 a person) ate at Wagamamma's twice and did some window shopping! We had planned to take karis to the zoo but the day we were in London it was REALLY cold and rainy off and on so we decided to go to the museum of natural history instead. Just one small problem: the place was absalutely packed! Easter is a big holiday in England with everyone off school and work and everyone had the same thought process as us - the museums are inside and free!

Things are really expensive in England. Most things "cost" the same amount (or more) in pounds as they would in dollars the only problem is that the exchange rate is $2 to 1 pound! So an 8.99 menu item is really $17! Needless to say, we did not do a lot of shopping and there was a conspicuous lack of tourists from the U.S.!

The Soap Opera Ends!

Finally! The soap opera of our compound seems to have come to an end with a positive conclusion from our standpoint - all three guards and the housekeeper are gone!!! I am not sure how I have said about all this so I will give a brief recap! The issues started about 6 weeks ago with the housekeeper accusing the guards of stealing food from her. They most likely did but of course vehemently denied it. Unfortunately, in the process of investigating the issue we discovered that she had been talking really badly about us herself. We looked to her as a leader for the compound and this is clearly not the sort of leader we needed. This was also the final of several issues relating to housing and transport etc and so we decided to let her go. (but it was a drawn out and difficult process). Meanwhile the issue of the food was never really resolved but that ceased to matter because
a week later MK 15,000 (approx $100) was stolen out of our car!! We have never left money in the car like that before and also always lock the car but came home from a trip and in the process of unloading etc etc just forgot to lock it. Two guards and the gardner had access to the money!! And of course, they all denied it! Thomas, the gardner, was very contrite and very upset. He is smart enough to know that the standard procedure in this case is that 1)they all get fired and/or 2) the police get called in which case everyone gets roughed up a bit till the truth comes out... The guards (Samson and Lloyd) on the other hand were rather obnoxious with their denials and kept saying, "you should have locked the car"... Because we are too soft and because we really did not think Thomas did it and we couldn't fire the guards and not him, we decided to deduct the money from all their salaries. Again, Thomas handles it well knowing this is the best case scenario and the guards whine and complain. A few days later, our third guard, Immanuel, comes forward with some information that indicates Lloyd was the one who took the money. Since we wanted to give it time to learn if Samson had also been in on it and because we did not want to fire people and then leave immediately we did not do anything prior to leaving for London. The day we returned was payday and we were going to address it then. Well, we come home to discover there has been an "emergency"! Immanuel had called our friends on Monday saying they had to come and take our car because Samson and Lloyd were going to steal it that night! Thankfully, the malawain administrator from Baylor came, heard the whole story and fired Samson and Lloyd on the spot. So we came home the next day to just Immanuel who then said that he was being threatend by the other two and just couldn't continue to work here - unfortunately not surprising for how things work here. So we paid him his salary and some severance and sent him on his way. The next day the other 2 show up to plead their case! They of course say that they know nothing about stealing the car, they don't even know how to drive, that Immanuel had actually been in trouble before for stealing a car and that he was the one who hatched the whole plan and when they wouldnt go along with it he used his cell phone to get them in trouble! (they don't have phones) To be honest, their story could be true... But I don't care!!!! I am just so happy that all three are gone. All three had bad attitudes and had been fairly difficult for a while - not the sort of clear cut issues you can fire over but just attitudes and there was too much smoke surrounding all of them! The sad thing is that jobs are hard to come by and they are all three living at a very, very basic level and have families to provide for. The other thing that disturbs me slightly is that Samson and Lloyd still say they did not take the money and Immanuel was not here to have been able to do it... so are Samson and Lloyd lie to the death or did Thomas, the only one I (think) trust and is still working, take it???

Karis

I really will make a concerted effort to be a better blogger! Just putting "Karis" as a title makes me realize how far behind I am her antics!

The two most recent developments are that she was pretty sick last week and she has started "school". Whether school contributed to the illness is up for discussion but we don't really think so! Basically she is going to nursery school a couple of days a week and really seems to enjoy it. I had been contemplating sending her a little anyway just for the chance to play with other kids and then I got a temporary teaching job and fired our housekeeper/nanny in the same week so that expedited the need to have a place to send her a few hours here and there! I do have a few concerns about the school but to be honest, I have concerns with all the schools here. Safety standards just are not what they are in the U.S. but there is a good ratio of adults to kids and they are all well supervised everytime I am there. She will definitely go at least three days a week for the next "term" which is April thu June because those will be days that I am teaching but I am not sure after that. The advantage of this school was that they were allowing us to pay by the day so it was pretty cost effective to just send her one or 2 days a week. Now we have to pay for full time. It is worth it while I am teaching but I am not sure after that. Also I have not replaced Mathilda in the house so I am not paying that salary. If we end up replacing her I can't afford or justify employing someone full time and send Karis to "School". However, the next few months are sorted out so I will worry about that later!

Meanwhile, karis was sick all last week with high fevers off and on, no appetite and diarrhea. Of course, if your intake for a solid week consisted of milk and avocado the latter can hardly be unexpected! We took her for a malaria smear on Weds after she actually had chills on tuesday night but it was negative. Still, the fevers continued so on Thursday we took her in for labwork and antibiotics. John of course had not been verbalizing much but had been ruling out various diagnoses all week. By Thursday he had narrowed it down to salmonella or typhoid (and I think those 2 are actually related to one another or even similar) She certainly had the symptoms for typhoid he read out of the medical book and we know she ate muffin batter with raw eggs and went swimming in lake malawi so certainly could have been exposed to goodness knows what! Unfortunately, they had a really hard time finding a vein in her chubby little arms and hands so even after 3 sticks did not get enough blood to really diagnose the problem but an injection of a broad spectrum antibiotic worked a miracle and she seemed to recover almost immediately! (did the sickness run its course or the antibiotic just work... who really knows!) We are just really thankful she is better!