My work here

This week, I went to one of the villages to interview one of the orphans living there. This is how things work here. After sitting down to talk to the girl, a bunch of kids just came and sat around us listening quietly. It was hard not to get distracted by them - they are so cute. The only challenge is once I smile at one, I have to make sure I look at and smile at each one as I do not want any of them to feel left out. It is hard work here. :-) I love these moments. Interviewing kids about their life has been a very eye-opening, emotionally challenging and rewarding experience. I feel so lucky to have this opportunity.

The Good Life

One of my favorite things about Malawi is that there is always someone to tend to your needs. If you have a job in Malawi, you have to have a "house boy/girl" to do all of your chores. The cooking, the cleaning, the laundry. It has been such a nice luxury for me. I just hand over my clothes to the house boy and they come back clean and pressed. I just tell him what I want for dinner, he sets the table, serves me and then I just get up when done and he cleans the dishes. It is awesome! I have really been enjoying this. When watching TV, I just ask for tea and a scone and bam! look what I get. I could really get used to this. The reasons things are like this is two-fold. First of all, labor is cheap. From what I understand, these guys make about $35/month. But more interestingly, it is because everything is so labor intensive; you cannot have a job and accomplish these things. Laundry has to be hand-washed and pressed. They have a certain bug that can lay eggs in your wet clothes so they HAVE to be pressed to kill the eggs. As for preparing meals - forget about it. It can take forever as everything is made from scratch. Not to mention the time spent walking to the market to purchase these things. Cleaning - forget a dishwasher.

Being a house wife has a whole new meaning here. I could handle it in the US, but here, no way. It is way too much work. I cannot even take care of myself here.

Breaking Rocks

I have written before about people breaking rocks as a job. Well, here it is. All day, everyday. Can you imagine? They take them from big boulders and break them down to a powder to use as cement. In this picture they are breaking down the rocks to make a cement covering for a hole in the ground to go to the bathroom in. This is one thing I will not miss when I go home. Not for one second.

A Chicken Business

So, this guy has 19 other friends in the back. After meeting one of the kids we have in our program, I wanted to see if there was someway in which to help his family. He lost both his parents in one week last year and is now living with his grandmother. Most days, they struggle to get something to eat, let alone have any of their basic needs met. After meeting and working with the family for over 2 months on this, we have finally have started a chicken business. We purchased 20 chickens that will lay eggs for the family to sell. I can seriously say that I have learned so much about chickens, how to raise them, and how to run this business that I could start this up myself. It has been an exciting learning process and I am looking forward to having this on my resume.

It was a trip picking the chickens up - they just hand them to you one at a time. Soooooo hilarious. And then they just hung out in the back of the truck. A few were adventurous like this guy; although I did not really like this, I did respect his adventursome spirit. But, I totally freaked out when he was gutsy enough to find his way to the front of the truck between me and Mike. I had to laugh at myself after the fact as you would have thought there was a rabid dog next to me the way I was yelling at Mike to stop the car. I am not the best with animals, and I am ok with that. Keep them in the trunk for all I care.

Game Time!

A little game here......I am posting this video and will tell the story in a few days. I want you to watch it and guess what is happening.

A. This is dinner.

B. This guy has 19 other friends in the back ready to make us some money.

C. This guy won me $50 in a chicken fight.

D. This is Mikes pet chicken hanging out with us for the day.

This video just makes me giggle watching it. I cannot get enough of it.

Irrigation pump

We visited one of the villages where we are supporting their winter harvest. They use an irrigation system because we are now in the dry season. Pictured is the irrigation pump. The crazy thing is, at home, I paid $150 a month to do this in a gym. Who would have ever thought that I could be losing weight AND productive at the same time. Now if I could only work making money into this, I would really be onto something here.

On a side note, I looked up from the planting to see these two guys on the irrigation pump pictured above. It is almost comical how anti-gay they are (sometimes I feel like I stepped back into 1952), but then they pull stuff like this. I have seen more straight men holding hands here than I have seen in the Castro or Chelsea. They think it is odd for a girl and a guy who are dating to hold hands. Go figure.

Waging War

Now I am a big believer in the old saying, "don't let the truth get in the way of a good story", but folks, I ain't lying here. I went to buy my friend a birthday card, an/;d for every birthday card, there were 100 "with deepest sympathies". Now as I have said before, I am a self-proclaimed birthday grinch, but I just did not feel the "with deepest sympathies" was totally appropriate, even though that is exactly how I feel with each uptick of that damn number.

I cannot even begin to tell you how much time Malawians spend going to funerals, visiting someone in the hospital or visiting someone suffering from malaria. It is pretty shocking. I have not gone through one week without hearing about a funeral or someone I know down with malaria.

I spend at least one day a week taking one of our kids to the clinic to get tested for malaria (we are at 100% at this point) or visiting someone suffering from malaria. I have been here long enough to see some kids on their second bout of it since I arrived. I mistaking started to think of it as if it were something like the flu as everyone I know has had it since I have been here. I had a huge reality check when we visited one of our boys in the thick of it. It was awful! I was convinced he was dying and of course mike was saying he's "just ok". I was wondering if we were looking at the same thing. He could barely breath or recognize who I was. To add to the disturbing scene, there was no adult there to take care of him in this small, dark and dusty room without any ventilation. I left very concerned, disturbed and more religious about taking my malaria prophylaxsis. I am now deathly scared of malaria, and I would say rightfully so. You should see how neurotic I have gotten when I see a mosquito. All I see is death flying around and I cannot relax until I get him first.

Pictured is how you need to sleep if you want to stay alive. If only I had video of me waking up at 3am with one in my net. It gets crazy. I would definitely again, be an Americans Funniest Videos winner no doubt.