Metric vs. Imperial

Well it is now Wednesday.  The trip for Kalembe was set for Monday but got moved to Tuesday.

Monday we had some different tasks to settle in Kasungu.  It was Big E and I who did this.  It was not a very eventful day.  Although while driving to Kasungu there was a extremely wasted dude walking in the middle of the highway.  Luckily Big E being a priest avoided hitting him but he told me that drunks stumble down the highway and night and most of them are hit and killed.

So in Kasungu we traveled around doing different tasks.  I remember going to the bank though as quite memorable.  It was 2:45 and the bank closed at 3 and Big E did not want to wait.  So he, in his calm assertive manner, walked in front of everyone and told the bank teller what he needed.  I in the meantime, stood chuckling behind him.

The next morning we woke up early to head to Kalembe.  There were 2 tasks to accomplish there:

1.  Install locks on doors on the new rectory for Father Joe.  I believe 14 doors in total.  We want the rectory finished very soon so the Fathers (Joe and Levinus) can stay out there.

2.  Survey the adjacent site.  This is where guest housing will go, which also happens to be my first building.


So we left at half seven and it took a total of 1:41:52 to get to Kelimbe.  When we arrived we got right to work.  Timeyo and I worked on installing the door locks:

This is Timeyo working on one of the locks.

After this we had lunch and then took a site visit.  For lunch we had nsima (pronounced See-ma).  Which is powdered maize and water (I believe that is correct), chicken and greens.  It was good and we had some laughs.

Big E on the left and Father Joe

Father Joe and I and the Agrupa of Kalembe

Agrupa is the man in charge of religious affairs.  i am still not completely clear on what agrupa means but he organizes and runs a lot of stuff.

So after lunch we went and did a quick site analysis for the new guest house.  

This is a collage of the site.  There is a 1:6 slope on the site which will make it interesting.  The building which you see in the background is the rectory which is almost finished.  They were installing some of the final flashing on the roof while we were leaving.

It is now Wednesday night and the power has just come back on, hopefully long enough for me to finish writing this entry.

Tomorrow we head to Lilongwe to take care of some business and work out details for my visa.

As of this moment I have a 30 day visa but am going to apply for a 1 year visa.

The Bishop of Mzuzu is coming to stay with us in 2 weeks so he can perform some Baptisms and Confirmations and so we are preparing for that.  And by we I mean the priests, I am just sitting around sketching buildings and stuff.

Next week school starts again here which will be good because I can join in on some football matches.  Also this weekend the Premiere League starts (Saturday) and each priest and half-priest (which they have labeled me) have their favorite clubs, which are all different of course.  So it will be quite passionate and eventful once those matches start.

And I almost forgot about the whole title of this entry.  When I was trained at school everything we did was in the Imperial system, and I am quite used to estimating dimensions in feet and inches.  But lo and behold they use Metric here.  So it was quite a difficult day when I was drawing up floor plans and did it all in feet and realized I needed to convert to meters.  

So meters won this round.