Getting to the end!

I want to use some different font this morning to make me feel a little better. I did not complete what I wanted to last night on the blog because I ended up chatting with Shannon and Stephen on Facebook…I really enjoyed chatting with them both; it made me feel a bit more like home! So I was going to get up and spend the morning this morning working on the blog…I started uploading some videos first on Facebook, it said the video would take an hour to upload, so I decided I would go bathe while that was working. I came back, feeling refreshed and clean and the computer was frozen. So I made my way out of that and now the computer will not connect to the internet at all!!! It is just par for Malawi…nothing is quick, simple or as expected…I am hoping that a little rest and time, the internet will reappear! So I am typing this on my flash drive, so when the time comes, I can copy and paste it into the Blog…there’s more than one way to skin a cat!!
I started writing last night about some random thoughts, so I will continue that. The next note I had jotted down had to do with the education situation here. I went up to the office to meet our contact, Oster, and had to wait for a while. I noticed there were job postings on the boards in the front of the building…a lot of them. A young man came in and was reading them; I asked him if he was looking for a job, and he said he was just reading them. He said he is a teacher at a rural school in Zomba where there are 700 students with 6 qualified teachers. This is not an uncommon occurrence at all; in fact, it is the norm. This is why we started doing what we are doing, to help assist in some way with these conditions. I left the office for a few minutes to go to the post office and while I was on the back,
Oster stopped and picked me up on his motorcycle!! Later in the week we rode all the way out to the school on it…it was fun!


Ok, so some other observations…..music…I am not the music wiz, but I do know oldies! There is a lot of old music that gets played…in the car Mathew and I listened to and old Lionel Richie cd repeatedly…it is still stuck in my head! One day walking into town in Zomba, I passed a store playing the Backstreet Boys…and old one; actually I don’t know if there are any new ones!! One day we were listening to the radio and the announcer was talking about the late 60’s and all the hippies that were around then. It was just funny to hear that reference here; I don’t’ know if they had Malawian hippies?
On the way to the school, there is a section of the road that is paved and it looks like there is ongoing construction on it. On the sides of the roads are piles of rocks…being made into gravel. There were several people on the side using a hammer to smash the large rock into small gravel…by hand in the hot sun, for hours all day. They are not in prison working for penance or anything, and I doubt they get a lot of money at all for that hard work!!
People are very friendly here; sometimes I think they look at me suspiciously and almost….I don’t know the word…but I have found that if I say good morning or smile it usually gets returned. Many times people say hello to me first; walking into town one morning, I think the same morning as the Back Street Boys song, a man on a bicycle was coming around the corner and as he approached and passed me he said, ‘good morning sister, how are you?’ I responded in kind and it just put a smile on my face to be greeted that warmly by a stranger!
When I walk around with Mathew or Leah here in Malawi, we can hardly walk a block without them running into someone they know, and we stop and chat. Well, I felt like a Malawian the other day, twice! I met a man at the motel and we ate breakfast together; he was in Zomba doing some work related to HIV, and I passed him on the street and we greeted each other. It was nice to see someone I recognized on the street! Then another day, I was walking to the College, and ran into Bernard, a friend who we met through other friends of ours from Malawi. We greeted each other and he asked where I was going; I told him and he gave me a ride! It was very nice. That is the other thing; there is very much community and people helping each other here in a way that is different from the U.S. Maybe it is the Northeast; we do have a reputation, apparently, of being cold and unfriendly.

On that similar note; I was at Bernard’s office, he works in an insurance office, and a customer came in complaining about something. I later learned that he was a minibus driver and had gotten a ticket from the police for not having proper insurance coverage and he didn’t have the money to pay the ticket, and was saying it was a mistake by the insurance company. Bernard took him (and I went with them) to talk to the police about the matter. We first stopped at the police ‘department’ or headquarters and they directed us to where the police were, out of the road. The police sit on the road in numbers, several will sit in a particular location and randomly stop cars and check for license and insurance and just generally check on the direction of the vehicle and their purpose for the travel. We pulled off the side of the road at one of these stops and Bernard and the man got out to talk with the police. Bernard is the insurance agent, mind you. Actually he is a regional branch manager, so I think even higher than just an agent! He wanted to clear the matter up and make sure it was not a mistake on his office’s part and was willing to accompany this man to find out the pertinent information. I couldn’t believe the length he went to in order to find out the truth of the matter. In the end, I think the man was found to be in violation and his ticket was not cleared. He was angry when he got back in the car and was saying that the police ‘just take things personally and judge you before they know the facts. They don’t like to admit if they are wrong’. So, we headed back toward the office and to drop the man off at where his vehicle was, and Bernard wanted to show me his house he is building. The man just had to come along with us. I asked him if he would take a picture of us in front of the house, and he did, though he looked upset still about
his insurance situation.

On this trip, I saw two men, different times and places, peeing on the side of the road. They were right out in the open, without a second thought…one of them was an old man and he was right outside Bernard’s house! Not something you see like that in the U.S. People shake their heads about it, but you don’t get arrested for it!
A few more thoughts…I have kept track of my spending and money, and wanted to pass along some information of cost of items…people always ask if things are more or less expensive here, and I guess the best answer is that it depends on what the item is. For example, my hotel room in Zomba was the executive unit, it had 2 twin beds, a bathroom in the room, tile floor, and tv (which didn’t work) and a coffee station. The room was mostly comfortable, it had a great mosquito net with no holes in it, and a ceiling fan, which worked when there was electricity! The room cost me about $19 per night, so that is not bad at all especially considering that was the most expensive!! Oh yeah, and that included breakfast every day; tea, 1 egg, chips (fried potatoes) and bread…not bad!
Gas, on the other hand, is a different story…let me see if I can do the math:
It costs 290 kwacher per liter
There are 3.7 liters in gallon and 180 kwacha per dollar (that is the rate I got)
So…290 x 3.7 = 1073 / 180 = 5.96…if my math is right, that means that gas cost $5.96 per gallon here!!!
So, there is some difference for ya! We cannot complain when we pay, what, $3.70 per gallon? And we have money in the U.S.!!
I paid $4,000 kwacha a day for the car rental = $22 per day, plus 20 kwacha per mile, plus gas. I think it was the gas that killed the whole thing, really! So it was not cheap, but it was better than the minibus!
A coca cola cost about 100 kwacha = about .55.
I have paid 1,800 mk for a pizza, which is about comparable, about $10, it may even cost more here!

So.. that is it for today...I had pictures to accompany this entry, but i am now low on internet minutes...hard to explain. So I will have to bypass that for right now! More tomorrow!