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.