The End of Boreholes

Well I apologize for waiting so long to write a blog post.  There has been a lot of planning over the past week.

Well a lot of that and some relaxing also.

So after last Monday I spent the following Tuesday in my room.  It was not so much by choice but rather that Monday had put me in a kind of "brain-dead" mode.  The shaking of the vehicle had gotten to me.

There was a lot of wedding items I had to take care of last week which took a while.  I am not sure if I said this before...but I am only getting married once (that is a joke).  I have to say though that planning a wedding is more than I thought it would be but everything is wrapping up nicely, and, as I have learned from many trials and tribulations, broken appointments, failed plans and disappointments here in Africa that in the end, the wedding will be great regardless of any bumps in the road.

I have learned last week that my visa is going to expire before I leave the country which, as the immigration officer told me, "they will be angry at the airport when you try to leave."  So I am applying for certain resident permits here but in the end I have switched my flight to come home sooner than my original departure date.

This put things into perspective as when I return to the US it will be one month exactly until I get married....wow.

Well we are preparing for the visitors to come in this weekend....well let me rephrase.  I am preparing for Araceli to come this weekend.  I do not think that you can read into my excitement with this blog post but none-the-less I am giddy.

Timeyo and I have identified a village which I want to do some research at, which happens to be on the way to the airport.  So we will head out early early in the morning and spend time at the village and then head to town.

Here is us taking a lunch break after bore hoes

Today, as my post says, was the last day of bore holes.  We have reached and surveyed all of the bore holes we can get access to.  There is still around 30 left but the roads are so horrible that it would take days to reach them.

So I am happy for that and so are my joints.

When we pulled in today I made a comment to the guys that I would like a beer right now, but I realized there was no beer at the house so I had to do with water.  Although I am sipping on a cup of coffee right now I figure I would treat myself to a cigar after I finish writing this post.  That is of course until the bats come out and start attacking me, then I will head back inside.

The fields of tobacco.  These have already been mostly picked.

Hopefully in a few weeks here I can include a post about my pipe development.  I have, as a hobby, been developing pipes for smoking tobacco.  It has been quite an interesting journey as I learned quite a bit after the first 4 I made.  But it is something to do to pass the time after you have finished doing everything else to pass the time.

Timeyo improvising for a hat

Being an introvert as a child I found it easy to slip into solitude.  Then during college that completely flipped 180 degrees and here comes the extrovert.  But I find myself here into a kind of 'forced solitude'.  I cannot have long drawn out conversations with people here and I spend a lot of time alone.  That is not a bad thing but I am definitely looking forward to the guys coming this weekend so we can chat.

Preparation

It is Wednesday and I am sitting here, it is about 8:20 in the morning and I am sipping on a cup of coffee.

This is a structure made which tobacco is hung from to sun dry.

Amidst  all of the work and being busy I have decided to take it easy today.  Monday we spent going out and surveying bore holes.  I think for about 10 hours and when I came back from that I was exhausted beyond belief.  I know this for sure because I had a quite vivid dream which only happens when I am super tired.

But I did enjoy it none-the-less.  One thing I enjoy doing is when we go out is to play with the children.  While the Agrua is talking with the people there I run around with the kids or play a few games with them.  I think that if I only focused on the bore holes I would feel incomplete and it makes me happy to put smiles on the kids faces.

So I found a french press yesterday in the storage cupboard and I tried it out this morning and it works fine.  There are no coffee grinds in my coffee.

This was on the side of the road where the rains had eroded away the ground.  If you look closely you can see shoe and feet marks as people have been using this as a water source

The first group is coming here in a week and a half and among them is my fiance, Araceli.  We decided it would be a good idea for her to come check out Malawi before she moves here so she has an experience and perspective of the place.

Although to say that 10 days can give you a full perspective of Africa is a lie.  It has taken me much longer, up till about last week.  And even then I am learning new things.  The novelty of the place, culture and people has worn off.  It is like what happens after you listen to your favorite song 1,000 times.

Living here through the toughest of seasons (I believe) has revealed a lot of facets of the culture.  Both good and bad facets that there are, I am grateful to have experienced these.  Although for the bad ones, when they were happening I was not too grateful then.

I learn that to experience something fully, you must subsume yourself into that.

What I am getting at from all of this is that my perspective from when I came last year to my perspective now has changed quite drastically.

We were walking around and came across these guys preparing tobacco to be smoked.  They let us go inside one of the kilns.  This is a picture on the inside of all the tobacco which is hung and was being smoked.  It was hot in there.

With that being said, I am looking forward to the group coming next week.  Not only because of Araceli but also because my friends are coming.  It will be nice to be able to talk in depth about things.  Something which I am still practicing here with the locals but I can only get so far in a conversation.

We will be doing a medical mission.  I think though that the roads are pretty horrible so I am not sure how many rural trips we will do.  I know we will run the pharmacy here for a few days.  I am anxious to do that because it will be another way in which we can help these people.

Just last week they had at least 5 funerals in one day.  It is not the most pleasant life here at the moment.  I pray for the suffering everyday.

I have received my Malawian drivers license (well temporary) and will pick up my plastic one next week in the city.  This is going to expand my projects a bit and my ability to move, which I am looking forward too.

Fuel is still an interesting situation here.  I will not go into too much of the nefarious business but usually the amount that you pay for, is not what you get.....and that is just the way it is.

But it is down to about 700 MWK per litre which is around $10.34 or something like that per gallon.

While Araceli is here it happens to be her birthday.  But since she reads this blog as well I cannot divulge any of the plans for her birthday.  But it will be a lot of fun.

Here is after Monday's bore holes, we stopped and had some food.  This is Guinea Fowl and Nsima and there was a rock somewhere in there which I bit down on

As it turns out also, my visa expires 4 days before I leave and I cannot renew.  I have to leave the country before those 4 days or become a temporary resident of Malawi.  So I might be coming home sooner than I thought.

For the People

Well the last week and a half has been quite busy.  We have gone out 3 times to record bore holes.  We went out last Monday and Friday and then this Monday also.

I am not sure where I should start with this.  The rains here have done quite a number to the roads and there were some villages which we could not reach.

For the rest that we could reach it was a tumultuous ride.  I do not believe I have ever been shook so much.

The day after each bore hole session my hips have always killed me from all the shaking and bouncing around.  And then on one day I was holding onto the grip in the car above my head to stabilize myself but I ended up hurting something in my shoulder because it was pulling on it so much and for so long.


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With all that being said let me talk about what we have done.

In recording these bore holes we are getting a comprehensive layout of the bore holes which will help with future assessment and drilling of new bore holes.  The way we arrange it is we work with a local who knows the villages well and he contacts the villages and we go see them.

So last Monday we went out and started surveying.  It was a gloomy day and it ended up raining all day.  Which to some extent was nice, but to the rest it was just wet.

Agrupa, Timeyo, Me and Agrupa sitting around taking a break with a drink and bread

Friday we went out again but today it was hot and sunny, so I ended up not using my jacket at all.  But we got a lot done this day and I met a lot of little children who are great.

A few of the bore holes we visited were no longer working or had been vandalized as so the people were using the water from the river for cleaning, drinking and such.

This Monday was the same deal.  We left early and went out to two different sections.  One was called Juni and the other is Nkamwankuku.  Both are West of us.  The roads were pretty bad and our time of surveying bore holes to driving was something like 1:42.

One of the roads eroded away by the rain

But we covered all of the two zones and got all of that finished.  The day after each of the survey's though I find myself attached to my bed most of the day.  For no real reason but my body seems to have developed a magnetism towards it.

But all is well.  After being in the sun on Monday I look like a lobster but I am happy we got that done and are close to having all of the bore holes done so we can move on.

Tomorrow I head to Lilongwe because I need to renew my visa.  I also have to work on getting a drivers licence here.  I have a few pieces of mail to send off and I guess while I am at it, pick up a few things and grab a pizza.