Team Spirit

Well another great week here in Malawi.

We are making a lot of progress and it is great to see everyone work together.  One of the great joys I have had while working here at Child Legacy is learning a lot from other people.

There is a multitude of such vast disciplines in close proximity to each other that is is almost by osmosis that you pick up knowledge.

There are two guys I work with here.  One is a plumber and one is an electrician.  We spend quite a bit of time strategizing about all the work that needs to be done.  For instance, last week we had to install a septic tank for a new building we are constructing.  It gave me to the chance to learn from the people here with the experience of these things the best way we can build a septic tank.

So kind of a minor thing....a septic tank.  But the collaboration which happened during this process and teamwork from different disciplines to make this one septic tank be built was almost a flawless process.  Probably the only flaw was when I came in to help because my lack of experience.  But it was great learning how to build a septic tank.



building  the septic tank


Now not every week is as exciting as this previous one (I joke though cause most are) but I truly enjoy watching as the people I work with, come together to find solutions to every situation out here.

Everything else has been going well out here.  All of last week was rain.  Rain, rain, rain.  But I can't complain.  The rain cools down the temperature just enough to give me an excuse to build a fire.  It is quite enjoyable in the quite of the night out here to sit by the fire, light up a cigar and drink some scotch and just relax.  The next best thing would be to have a steady supply or ribeye here to complement the other three.

The rest of the week has gone by great though.  I have had some more time to put my carpentry skills to the test (which are a little rusty).

Araceli is still working on grad school, although she is finishing up soon.

I took an hour break from writing this and have come back and it looks at though the storm is about to start (we have not had rain in 2 days so it will be nice to have it tonight).  The lightning has started which is a good sign.

Well everything else out here is going just fine.  We were able to make it into the city last weekend and we ended up spending the afternoon there which was nice.  We met up with one of our friends and had a nice long brunch with him.

I had to wrangle a goat today that escape from its pen.  It got into our garden and was eating our vegetables.  Turns out that I wish I had a lasso here.  Would make work a lot easier.

Well I hope all is going well back home.  I will have to remember for the next blog entry to put more photos of Araceli and I.

Araceli trying out a new staircase she designed (its not finished yet...)

Since Being Back

I returned to Malawi slightly after the beginning of January.  Araceli stayed behind for school (she ended up coming over a week later).  The thought of putting up a blog post has been in the back of my mind even before I got here.

So….what took so long?  I guess I cannot come up with a good answer.  I can only explain what has been happening over the past month which has led to this delay.

The rains are coming down here.  This year they have been sporadic.  Sometimes a few days at a time and others you will go a week without seeing any water.

It just so happened the day I touched down in Malawi there was a rather large rain hitting the roads.  This left me unable to go out to the project as the roads were impassable.  So my first night back in Malawi I stayed in the city.

I headed out the next day and once I arrived and put my luggage into my room I started walking.  And once I started I do not feel like I stopped until last week.

The guys working on finishing the roof

The amount of construction and events happening were more than I expected.  It took a little bit of time to adjust.  When I did, I was so consumed (in a very very good way) by the construction we were doing.

The ward we are working on has now had its roof completely finished and we are working on finishing the inside now.  We are still building more houses and buildings.  We finished building 2 greenhouses.

Everything was going well…..then the rains came again.  You can test the quality of your design based on a few different items.  One of these is nature.  And we received the right kind of rainstorm to test our design.

One of our bridges....it is underneath the water

It stood up well to it.  There were things which we had to tweak but everything worked out well

Not only the aesthetic difference of Malawi but also the feeling of Malawi from when we left last year to now has changed.  The rains have been coming and everything here is green.  There is a different attitude held by everyone here than 5 months ago.

One of the greenhouses

For a majority agrarian economy, most of life is dependent on the weather.  Malawi has not gone through an industrial revolution so their work hours are mostly governed by the sun (this is not 100% for everyone in the country, but close)

I have most likely written about this before but I am intrigued by the difference of lifestyles of Malawi vs. Western countries.

The observatory

The above description does not do it justice at all though.

We are spending our Sunday now just cleaning and working away.  Yesterday was Valentines day and I had brought back a real nice bottle of red wine  All I remember was that it was from the Russian River Valley (California).  It was quite tasty and probably one of the better wines which I have tasted.

The wine selection we get here is not that unique.  You get the opportunity though to repeatedly try the same brand to the point where you could describe each ingredient to the letter.

As of now we still have quite a few mosquitos over here, we have plenty of bug spray though so they stay away.

The day is winding down here, if it cools off enough we can have a fire, this seems doubtful though.  I think we will have to wait another couple months.

Manpower

I was thinking of the name of this blog as I was sitting on the tractor the other day and it seemed like the best answer I could come up with.

In a few of my posts I have written about how Araceli has been designing a two story Office/Observatory and the different parts of construction it has  been in.

Well on Friday it was a big day because we poured the second story slab.

I think I could write a book about everything we had to go through to get this thing done.  It was quite surprising to me all which needed to be coordinated to do a slab.

As we got closer and closer to Friday we (Araceli, the Supervisors and I) went over and over the process and steps it would take to do this.

Why I am stressing the planning part of this I think can be put into better perspective on comparison with the States.

A distant shot of the progress going on

In the States, not everywhere, but on the jobs I have worked on (schools, facilities etc) when they pour the concrete slabs they truck in very large trucks (the ones with a big rotating drum on the back) and then crane a pipe in and pump the concrete through the pipe into the area and spray all the concrete in.  

A fast process.

Unfortunately here we do not have a crane, pump, large truck (with the big rotating drum) or a pipe.

Vibrating the concrete into the steel formwork

So we had to resort to other methods.

We had a concrete mixer on the ground and had to find out a way to transport about 12 cubic meters of concrete up about 6 meters.

So the solution we came up with was to employ our tractor and fill the dumper with concrete and then hoist it up and have guys shovel out the concrete from the dumper and into the formwork......

 Lifting the concrete up to the second story

I have to say that I have never sat on a tractor that long.

We started at 8:30 in the morning and did not stop until 7 pm.  We had no choice.  It was one of those things that once you started you had to see it all the way through.

Araceli up top documenting the process

What I was impressed with was the ability for our workers to continue for all of these hours doing this hard labor.

The "concrete gang" the guys mixing the concrete, main responsibility is to hoist cement, stone and sand into the mixer.  Now each bag of cement is 50 kg.  And the ratio we are using is 1 cement to 2 sand to 3 stone.  There was a total of 65 bags of cement used so you can start imagining the amount of lifting these guys had to do.

Pouring the concrete into the dumper of the tractor

But as they progressed through the day they rotated each position so they would not tire out.

Eventually we finished pouring everything at 7.  Unfortunately for some it was not over.

There were about 5 guys who had to stay around till just before midnight screeding the slab.  In the process of just being poured the water makes its way to the surface.  To maintain a smooth surface the builders had to run a metal float over the concrete surface and smooth it out.

Screeding the slab.  You can see the parts where the water is coming up on the slab

Any experts out there do not get on to me if I missed something or called something the wrong name.

I was impressed with all of these guys for their hard work and endurance to get the job done.  Although they did get a hefty overtime for doing this.

The final product

Happy Thanksgiving

Well the time it has taken me to write a new blog post does not live up to the comparison of "snails pace".  It has been much slower than that.

What has happened over the past 2 months is has been a transition into a much larger role and responsibility than what we had before.  Since the time of the last post we have almost finished erecting a 10,000 square foot women's ward.

Putting up a steel beam, preparing to pour second story.  Unfortunately no crane was around

A main focus here at Child Legacy is to build a hospital in a rural area to provide healthcare to the people in that area.  Looking further into that focus women and children's health is a main focus.  So the women's ward which we are building right now will have the ability to house 50 beds for women.

One of the times in the city grabbing a pizza

Simultaneously while we are building this we are building a Delivery Suite, High Dependency Unity and a Radiology and Ultrasound building.

Pouring slabs for Women's Ward

Finishing up Trusses for Women's Ward

The women's ward though has been something a bit special because we started here about the same time construction started on it.  Although we did a bit of construction at our previous job, this is on a different level.

The rainy season is about to start here and we are trying to get the roof on the ward before that times comes.  The heat has been increasing everyday which makes it feel as though it is building up for a big rain.....unfortunately the rain has not come.

A building Araceli designed getting ready to pour the second story slab

We had the ability to get out of here last week and get into town for church.  It was our first time to do this.  I guess there is not much order when it comes to parking here and once we left mass the parking lot was extremely chaotic and there was no sense of order.  If anyone has seen Austin Powers then they can relate to our experience trying to get out of the parking lot.

But we did and ended up spending the day going around the city checking out different restaurants and hanging out with one of our two friends here.  I guess that would sound worse if we lived in the States but here I find it harder to get out.

As the week progressed we were getting prepared for Thanksgiving but around Tuesday we realized that Thanksgiving could not happen on Thursday.  Each morning we get up between 5-5:30 and end up working till about 6.  After 6 it does not leave a lot of time to cook a giant feast.

So we pushed Thanksgiving until Saturday.

It was an exciting day as it was only a half day of work.  So once noon rolled around we started preparing everything.  We could not find a turkey so got a chicken instead.  The menu consisted of chicken, mashed potatoes, biscuits, sauteed kolrabi, green beans and onions. For dessert we made cheery cheese cake and cream cheese filled pumpkin roll.

....it was awesome.


Unfortunately due to our diet out here we barely get any sugar at all and after one bit of the cheesecake I could not eat anymore.

But the feast was great.

Araceli and I right before digging into our Thanksgiving meal

Today we have been cleaning and organizing.  We cook a late breakfast and watched a movie and decided to take it easy today.

We have two more weeks here until we fly back to the States for Christmas.  We are planning on spending a few weeks there before flying back to here.

We are looking forward to seeing everybody and spending the time eating hamburgers, steak, milkshakes, buffalo wings, garlic fries, cookies, cakes, chili cheese hot dog, limeade, onion rings and many more...

To the Change

Out of all the times I have apologized on here for being late on a post now is the biggest one.  It has been some serious time since I have posted on here.

There have been two things which have happened since the last post which has consumed all of our time:

1)  We took a trip home for a wedding
2)  We changed jobs

Before leaving Malawi, pegging site for excavation

Earlier this year I was asked to be part of my friends wedding.  It sounded like a great plan.  As time progressed since we got back here in April we did not put much thought into it because we did not think we would be able to make it.

Heading back home for the wedding

When June came around though we found out that we would be able to go back home for the wedding.  This made us get really excited and getting home to see everyone would be great also.

Around this time though there was also the transition which we were making to our new jobs.

Heading back to Malawi, this was while we were in Ethiopia

The trip was to come back in August and we conincided that with the transition to the new job.  The new job though.....was still in Malawi.  We signed on with another organization here called Child Legacy International.

At Child Legacy, we poured the slab during the day but the temperature dropped so we had to stay while it cured.  It happened to be quite a cold night so we rounded up some branches and lit a fire

So the last post was a couple of weeks before we left for the states and everything turned into a whole rush.  We got to see some family when we were back home but not really that much.  It was just a lot of speed and stress and before we knew it....we were gone, flying back to Malawi.

Making our way through the banana orchard

On our way back though we missed our flight in Canada and had to catch a later one and ended up spending a night in Ethiopia.  Which did not turn out to be a bad thing.  The airline put us up at a nice hotel and we ended up hiring a driver and running around Addis Ababa seeing all sorts of things.  We went by and saw our old friend Lucy and also got to go sort through some different trinkets.

When we got back to Malawi we transitioned to the new site which was about 150 km away.  And since then we have been learning the ropes of the new organization.

Looking at the newly poured slab for staff housing

It is a different world out here.  The president/director is from Texas and he brings the flavor of Texas here.  The entire site is a sustainable development.  There are about 30 buildings out here, a lot of them are healthcare related.  There is a high focus on sustainable development here.

All of the buildings are run off of renewable energy (solar panels and wind turbines).  They have their own wells drilled here and supplies all the water here.  Along with that there is a huge agriculture program which helps feed the people here and 5 fish ponds which are used to breed thousands of fish which are sold to the community.

Along with this though there is quite the responsibility which is put on us.  And ever since we have returned from the States we have been learning the ropes.  I brought along a pedometer with me and without trying I get about 10 - 16 miles in of walking each day.

Araceli next to another building we just finished building the foundation walls for

But we are enjoying it here.  I am enjoying the new job and so is Araceli.  We currently have 9 buildings which we are working on.  Although we will not get all of them built this year we will get all of them up to slab level before the rains come, and then next year will continue building them.

So there has been a change of pace now but we are excited to be part of this new adventure.  We continue to appreciate everyone's support back home.

Clean Water

Since we have been at Kasese there has been quite a story about the water here.

When we first came here the water which was used for the site here was coming from a well which had a high salt content in it.  So it was good water for doing some cleaning and showering.

Other than that we had to cart in our water everyday, clean water that is.

We progressed this way for about 8 months.

A few weeks ago we had a medical mission come in, but it was more than them which came in.  We happened to get an early Christmas here at Kasese.

Before the medical mission came, through the powers to be, we got clean water at Kasese. And to top that we got a new hot water heater also and now we are able to take hot showers.

It has been an awesome few weeks here since that change.

 

Our kitchen, although more cabinets have been installed and it has been cleaned up

 

Without clean water, it is hard to live.

I thought about this last night as I anxiously with some excitement watched the water heater slowly heat up the water to a point of a steaming hot shower.

I do have to say that sometimes it gets boring here so the smallest things get us excited.

 

There are no kilns here so they fire bricks by stacking them and firing wood underneath

 

So with the undertone of clean water we just got finished with a medical clinic last week.  We saw about 300 people while the doctors were here.

 

Replacing one of the floors

 

One of the nice things about having the group here is that we had a cook come in to cook for them......but Araceli and I happened to join in on the meals which lightened the load of work for us to do.

It was a small mission group, only 3 ladies, but it was nice to have them here, to meet new faces and also to talk with them.

We dropped them off last week at the airport and have just been working away here.  We have been developing the site more along with the buildings.

We got about 10 guys out here last week to clear all of the land, which they did a good job of. 

 

The land after it has been cleared

 

Now all of our energy is being put onto the guest house and getting that ready for larger groups to come to Kasese.  This is the guest house which got a large portion of its roof ripped off from a storm and has large water damage inside.

We have almost finished replacing the floor inside with a new one and yesterday we picked up new corrugated roofing sheets to put on the roof.  The carpenters should begin working on that today or tomorrow.

 

Putting up a new ceiling 

Then there is the detail work, which always seems to take the longest but we are working away at getting everything done here.

I have gotten through another book and although it is a bit more graphic and has a bit more language I recommend people to read it also.  It is called The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay.  It is a fun read. 

Other than that things are progressing as normal here.  We get our shipment of paint in this weekend so we are looking forward to painting the entire complex.

Chipaso Secondary School

Well what a time it has been.  Right now we are in the middle of a medical mission trip here and I somehow found time to write a blog post.

Over the past couple weeks, aside from preparing for the mission group to come we have been involved with a Secondary School here. 

It just so happens that the Headmaster of the School and I share the same philosophy about how a school should run and we tend to get along pretty well.  It also happens to be the school which the girl we sponsor, Linda Phiri, goes to school.

 

Taking a tour of the site.  The bricks which were just fired numbered 80,000

This school is Chipaso Secondary School.  It is located in Kasungu and is adjacent and involved with the Catholic Church.  Also the girls there are boarded which is run by the Carmelite Nuns. 

When I first came to this school two years ago I was impressed with it because of the discipline and thoroughness which they have towards the students and education.

When Araceli and I first brought Linda to go to school there it was a nice chat which we had with the headmaster and his expectations for Linda.

 

Taking a tour of the computer room

 

When she started off she was shy at the school and it was difficult for her to adjust.  We went for a meeting there two weeks ago and found that she is making high grades and has been appointed the prefect for her class.  This was great to see.

I write all of this to lead up to the point of this blog.  And to express the satisfaction I have had with the school in the past.

About 2 months ago Araceli and I met with the headmaster and found that Malawi was implementing new standards for biology and physics in all of the Secondary Schools.  The problem was that the schools did not know how to compensate that request.  There was no buildings, there was no facilities.

So what to do?

This was the question which the headmaster presented us.

From that point on we have been involved with the committee for the school for planning and development and have been working on raising funds to erect a new school building.

We laid out the budget and our eyes widened quickly.  But then we broke it down into smaller.....smaller numbers and decided things could be much easier.

So we worked away asking for money and donations and continuously having meetings until we found that things began to work out.

I spoke with the headmaster last week and found that they had broke ground on the project and were already digging the foundation.  And donations were coming in for the project.

I was exhilarated to hear all of this.

 

Casey on our medical clinic

 

So the project is going on and there will be bumps as usual but it will get done because of the leadership involved.

So the project will continue and the deadline we are looking at is the end of September.

It makes both Araceli and I happy to know that we are helping a good school develop where they educate students who are then capable of competing for careers and making something of themselves.

Wow, that sounded like a commercial.

 

Timeyo and I in the makeshift pharmacy working away

It is now Sunday evening here and we have dubbed today Mexican day and are making fajitas.  Unfortunately we forgot to get the tequila, so no margaritas today.  But I do have to go  now and light up the barbeque.

I got caught up in the part and now it is Monday morning when I am posting this.
 

A Strange Series of Events

The last week here has been an unusual one because of how well events fell into place.

Last week, Araceli and I went and picked up a girl from school who we are sponsoring.  Upon returning to her home her mother was so gracious for what we were doing she gave us a goat.

Wow....cool, a goat.  I was pumped.  I couldn't wait to have a pet goat running around Kasese.

So we made our way back to Kasese and tied up the goat, with a long enough leash to go around grazing and such.

Days passed and the goat continued grazing.  We told people in the compound about how we were going to have a celebration on Friday for our country's independence.  We would have food and drinks and fun.

So everyone was getting ready for that.

On Monday I decided to go with one of the guys we were with here to pick up some river sand to till into our garden.  Along the way he was telling me about someone he knew who had banana trees.  Oh....really? 

 

Unloading the sand and banana trees

 

When we returned from getting the river sand we ended up unloading 4 banana trees.  We had to move fast and plant them in the garden.  It was quite an off-the-cuff situation but I could not find myself passing up some banana trees.

As the days passed we continued to work at Kasese, and as the week was drawing to a close we were becoming excited for the party.

Thursday morning rolled around and I had an idea.  I remember a recipe which my dad sent me a year or so ago called, "Goat in the Ground".  What an idea it would be.  We have a goat....we have ground.....lets put the goat in the ground.

 

Planting the new banana leaves

 

So I was convinced.  We prepared the goat to be put in the ground but there was a problem.  The foil which we were going to use to wrap the goat in was quite expensive so we had to find another solution....but what were we going to do?

As we sat around pondering this in the garden I looked up at my banana trees and it hit me.  I grabbed my friend and we ran back into the bush and pulled out about 25 banana leaves.

 

Wrapping the goat up in banana leaves

 

We marinated the goat and stuffed it full of vegetables.  We then proceeded to wrap it in multiple layers of banana leaves.  The recipe called for cooking the goat for about 12 hours in the ground so I waited until about 9:30 Thursday night to stick it in. 

I lit up the coals and let them burn red hot and then put the goat in and covered it up.

I have to say I did not sleep to well that night as I was worried if the goat was going to work out or not.

So Friday came and we all got to work.  As I was doing things in the compound I always kept my eye on the ground where the goat was, wondering how it was doing.

 

The goat/banana leaves right after being pulled from the fire

Finally 5:00 rolled around and it was time to pull the goat out.  And it was hot.  I picked up the banana leaves and they were smoking.

 

Pulling the goat apart

I ran to the house carrying the parcel in my hands and threw it onto the porch.

When I cut the ropes and pulled the leaves off I found the most tender goat I have seen.

We proceeded to cook the rest of the food and then cut up the goat.

We invited everyone over to Timeyo's house and then just had a good ole celebration.  We cooked some hamburgers and French fries along with the food and most of it got devoured.

As we ended the night I looked back on the previous 2 weeks and was quite happy with how things worked out.

So happy Independence Day to everybody.

 

Enjoying the feast

 

And a quick note, last week Louis Zamperini died.  There is a book out about him called Unbroken.  I would recommend to go pick up a copy and read it.

The Little Things

Ever since Araceli and I were dating we always had a penchant for wine and cheese.  Not sure why but it was always something which we have enjoyed.

It is something we have enjoyed here a few times also, not many though as it is sometimes difficult to get or the price is too high.

 

Mason installing our new wall to separate shower and kitchen

 

 

Since we have gotten back here things have been quite busy.  We have been running around doing things, meeting with people and driving.  Sometimes we find it is easy to get lost in all of this.
We of course have set out some time for ourselves though.

Last week we headed out to a friends compound and stayed there for 2 days.  While there we got to know a lot about their agriculture program and ended up that their specialist there gave us a bunch of different plants to take back to Kasese and plant.

These were mostly drought resistant plants and plants which can do well in clay soil.
Some of them were vetiver, comfrey and aloe vera.  I will get in trouble though because the specialist gave me a bunch more but I forgot their names.

In deciding how to extend our garden we had a wonderful feature which ran through it.  It was a natural sump in the ground where the water from the entire land collected and ran through.  So we decided to use this as a design feature.

We ended up splitting up the vetiver and planting it along this sump.  Vetiver is great for soaking up water and slowing it down and preventing more erosion.  One of the problems we had though was the ground is all clay.  Just solid clay.

 

Our working garden.  The vetiver on the left

 

So there was lots of digging beforehand and removing the clay and then mixing is organic soil along with river sand to get the right drainage (there is still quite a bit of work to do on that though).

We developed the garden and brought in some stones from the mountain to help balance the plants.  We are still working on that though.

Another thing which Araceli and I have been talking about is re-using our greywater.  Now the problem is that a lot of our greywater has a high salt content so we cannot use it at all for agriculture.  Be we re-routed one of the drains from our sink to be specifically for non-salty greywater and diverted it to a horseshoe bed.

We planted some comfrey and miniature bamboo to act as filters before the greywater reaches the horseshoe which we are growing carrots, tomatoes and jalapenos in.  We will see how it works out, but are quite excited about it.

 

Timeyo and I installing the drainage for the greywater system

And although we are not experts in this, and there is a lot of trial and error things still seem to turn out okay.

Yesterday we spent driving around Lilongwe getting quotations for items and buying things for the project here.  As we were finishing up we had to buy some groceries also.  When we were nearing the end of our journey in the grocery store (Chipiku) we came across some wine which was not too expensive.

So we got it.

And it just so happens that we found a block of cheddar cheese which was expensive but we did not mind that much.

As we returned that evening which was around 6 we decided to do a variation on the cheese and wine and have grilled cheese and wine for dinner.

It was nice to enjoy amongst all of this that small thing which we always celebrated.

 

Where to Begin?

I was thinking of how to start this story as the webpage was opening (about 5 minutes) and I first I wanted to congratulate my friend Molly for getting married last week.

I seem to always be writing that it has been some time since the last time I wrote, and it truly has this time.

On June 1st was Araceli and my 1 year wedding anniversary.  We were contemplating for weeks what we should do for it.  Should we stay in Malawi?  Should we go out?  Well the quickest answer was to go out of Malawi.  But from Africa there are so many places to travel.

We ended up settling on traveling to Mauritius.  Which is a small island off the East coast of Africa.

 

Araceli and me in Mauritius

 

So we were gone for some time doing that and it was a blast being there.  I could probably write a whole book about our experiences there but there is no need for that here.  I will just leave it that we enjoyed ourselves immensely with the oceans and beaches, seafood and sugarcane.

When we returned to Malawi we had a lot of work set out for us.  We are still repairing the buildings which were damaged here and dealing with the unique aspects of Africa.

About 2 weeks ago we had put in an order for 60,000 bricks from a man who made them in the village.  He had no problem with this.

As our schedule was progressing here and we were running short of materials we went on the day we agreed with the man to buy the bricks and to our surprise...he had sold them all to someone else.


Now for a bit I was upset with the man because he had told us he would sell us the bricks.  After some time though I came to terms with it and I realized that if I was a guy, living in the middle of the bush, sometimes not knowing where I was getting food from and I had the opportunity to sell all of my bricks at once, I would do the same thing.

So I forgave him.

 

Some of the masons re-building the duplex

 

So we had a new objective at this point, FIND BRICKS.

That was the only thing on my mind.  So we spent some time driving around in the bush looking and we found a couple guys who were in the middle of making bricks and we made a deal with them.  One of them for 60,000 bricks and the other for 15,000 bricks.

Unfortunately the bricks made in the bush, or rather in all of Malawi, hold no standard to anything in the world.  I can take one and break it in half with my hands.

 

Making bricks in the village (that is a termite mound behind him where they are getting soil from)

In any case they are not the strongest brick in the world.

We welcomed a mission team last week, they came from Fort Worth, Texas and was headed by my friend and priest Father Flynn.

We were actually in transit and met them at the airport and greeted them, but then yesterday we were able to go out to Kalembe at hang out with them there.

Father Flynn is the one who brought me into Africa and got me started here so it was good to see him and spend time with them.

 

One of the many accidents along the road

 

We also visited another NGO last week, Child Legacy International and spent some nights with them there.  They have a lot of interesting things happening at their compound but one in particular is agriculture.  I spent some time talking with the specialist there and she ended up giving me a bunch of different types of plants for different purposes.  So now I have them sitting outside of the house waiting to plant them...hopefully tonight.

Life has been going as normal though, Araceli has been baking away in the kitchen and I cannot complain.

We have finally found a solution to the dust problem in our house....more cleaning.

It was not the one I was hoping for but it has to be done to keep the dirt and dust out of our house.  We usually sweep every morning and evening and then mop twice a week.  Maybe this is equivalent to cleaning in the US, not sure.

Timeyo and I had an interesting morning today.  We went to fix our generator (with tools borrowed from Child Legacy International which was very nice of them) but we had to makeshift some tools.  After about 1 1/2 hours we finally got the generator fixed.  The only problem was the cord you pull to start the engine had broken so we had to replace it, but in order to do that you have to take then whole blasted thing apart.

Trying to figure out the generator

But 1 1/2 hours later and hands covered in grease, we are finished and have a working generator again.

We are looking forward to next month as a mission team is coming here, it will be nice to have people here but it adds the pressure of getting things done here.