The nursery that was

Not much new to say about the nursery. It's still very much burned down. The kids are living in the "guest houses" as I explained before, and I haven't heard of any major problems. Neville, Sibale's friend who runs an orphanage in Blantyre, brought over lots of milk, diapers, and other supplies for the babies.

A few staff members also lost their offices in the fire. (Our village outreach coordinator had her office in the nursery building among others). They are currently working outside; thankfully it rarely rains here when its not the rainy season. Sibale has begun to construct new rooms in the storage garage which is connected to the clinic for new offices.

Education Day

I had the pleasure of attending the annual Education Day ceremony yesterday.  Education Day is nation wide with school meeting at various sites around Malawi (according to their "zone") for speeches, singing, dancing, etc.

The Education Day ceremonies for our zone involved Gracious, three other secondary schools, and a couple of primary schools (not sure how many primary schools, but there were lots of little kids running around).

To quote one of my colleagues, Education Day was "well disorganized."

Not surprisingly, the ceremonies did not commence at 9:00 as scheduled.  By the time all the schools showed up and things got started it was 11:30.  Actually, two of the other secondary schools didn't show up at all; apparently they already went on holiday.  When ceremonies did begin, I was a little disappointed that Education Day wasn't exactly kid focused.  (I should have already known this from the non-kid friendly theme:  "School Management is the Responsibility of all Stake Holders.")  All the adults sat comfortably in the shade, facing the various student groups that performed, while the students stood in the sun, viewing the performances from behind.  Since there was no PA system, and no one made a serious attempt to keep the audience quiet, the only people that could actually hear the performances sat in the first few rows.  I was luckily in the first few rows, but alas, almost everything was in Chichewa.

Despite the disorganization, many of the performances (skits, dances, and songs concerning the theme) were quite good.  The pictures and video show a couple of different primary school groups and one from Gracious.  My favorite part of the performances was the fact that the stage continued to shrink as primary school children crowded closer and closer.  To try and control this, primary school teachers were literally using sticks to beat the children back.  (Don't worry, they weren't really hitting them.)

After all the speeches, songs, etc. (which seemed to go on forever, the kids were bored as well) we ate lunch, and got ready for a pre-planned teachers versus students football game.  For some reason, the game never took place.  I'm still not sure why, and no one else seems to know either.

Perhaps the most amazing thing, is that the headmasters, and various committee members met several times to plan Education Day.  Our headmaster was quite confused as to why nothing went as planned, but I can't say any of us were surprised; it was just another day in Malawi.

Fire

Friday night we had a fire at the nursery. Luckily a night watchman spotted the smoke early, and all the kids and staff got out of the building in time. Unfortunately however the nursery is completely destroyed. Not surprisingly, there is no fire department here in Mangochi; the efforts made to fight the fire with the recources available were not enough.

All day yesterday MCV staff emptied out the two guest houses, to make a new home for the infants. The guest houses were being used as our administration office, and girls dormitory. Both the girls and office staff moved into unused classrooms at the school for the time being.

Two babies are in the hospital for smoke inhalation, but otherwise there was no physical harm to anyone as a result of the fire. We're still not sure what started the fire.

I'll try to give more details later this week.

Ndalama

While it’s obvious that most things are cheaper over here, I thought I’d share some examples of just how different prices are.

mashdabwada (basically little doughnuts) 5 Malawi Kwacha
bunch of bananas for MK20.
plate full of chips (French fries) MK30
minibus to Blantyre MK550
night in a cheap hostel MK300
coke MK40

$1 = MK146 right now so the little doughnuts I buy as snacks cost about 3 cents each.

Many things cost as little as MK5 but the bills go all the way up to MK500, so getting change is always a problem. The fact that the bills only go up to MK500 is also a problem since it means you need to carry gangster rolls of cash if you need a lot of money for something. (Not exactly Zimbabwe, but it’s still a hassle)

What’s terrible is that after you’ve been over here long enough you get used to Malawian prices. I sometimes find myself guffawing at something that’s MK20 and refusing to buy it because it’s too expensive. I’m seriously starting to wonder how I’m going to survive in NYC again if I think 14cents is too expensive for a snack.

More pictures went up again today on my picasa site; I couldn't get them all up yesterday.

more pictures

There are a bunch of new photos on my picasa site, including lots of kids enjoying their Gracious t-shirts. (They're in the same album as before, so go towards the end for the new ones.)
http://picasaweb.google.com/bradyco/MoreMalawiPics

Guides

While my guide on the Zomba plateau was excellent, he reminded me of some not so excellent guides I had on previous trips.

A couple of conversations with our guide on Mulanje:
“What kind of flower is that?”
“That’s a wildflower.”
“Do you know what kind of wildflower?”
“A red wildflower. It’s often confused with the orange wildflower.”

“Wow! What kind of bird is that?!”
“An eagle.”
(already knowing I shouldn’t ask) “What kind of eagle?”
“A flying eagle.”

Our guide at Nyika identified a suspicious number of birds as Ogre Buzzard.
"What’s that?"
"Ogre Buzzard."
(completely different looking bird) "Wow, what kind of bird is that?"
"Ogre Buzzard."
After the 4th one Nick and I stopped asking.

Zomba Plateau

As planned, I spent last weekend in Zomba. I stayed with Michael Hill (he’s the bearded fellow in the last Cape Maclear photo). Michael is one of the original MCV board members, and currently lives in Zomba working as the director of Orphan Support Africa (http://www.orphansupportafrica.org/). He was an excellent host, and I got to enjoy a much needed relaxing weekend. (Working at MCV isn’t always quite as easy as I make it appear on the blog)

Zomba is the old colonial capital of Malawi, and is noticeably wealthier than Mangochi. But don’t worry, it’s still Malawi; the power went out both nights I was there. I went for hikes Friday and Saturday on the Zomba Plateau. The plateau has many peaks with spectacular views. From the southern peaks you can look out over Zomba town with Lake Chilwa and the Mulanje Massif in the background; and from the northern peaks you can see as far as Lake Malombe. (Yes, Malawi has more than one lake; Mangochi is actually between Lake Malombe and Lake Malawi). My guide, Kala, (a local secondary school student) was great. He told me many interesting things about the local flora/fauna and culture, and astonishingly he actually seemed to know what he was talking about. If you read the next entry on guides, you'll understand why I say astonishingly.

While I was away for the weekend, our school had a quiz competition with two other schools. 5 form 1 girls from each school competed in questions on Math, Biology, Physical Science, and Agriculture. Our girls won, and I was proud to hear that it was mainly due to the fact that they dominated the other teams when it came to the math questions. :)

The Azungu Overload continues

Not to much has happened of note at MCV since my last blog, but there have been a lot of azungu running around. Lots of people volunteering here for short stints, 2 weeks - a month. I've spent a more time hanging out at Palm Beach, and last Saturday a bunch of us went to Cape Maclear. 4 of us stayed over night, and had such a good time hanging out on the beach, snorkeling, playing volleyball, etc. that we decided to stay Sunday night as well. (Actually I spent all day Sunday being sick, but am fine now.) We drove to MCV early Monday morning, just in time for me to take morning attendance.

We have this Friday off, for Malawian Independence day, and I'm planning to head over to Zomba to do some hiking.

Happy 4th of July. Hope you all enjoyed the picture of these patriotic looking Americans. (Most of them are American anyways; there's one South African, and one Brit. Can you pick them out?)