Feb 09

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Whew. Not much to say about February. Same old same old. The students have not come back yet, but there is a RUMOR that the students will all be coming back on Monday. We are now 8 weeks behind so there is no way that they can catch up so the calendar will probably be pushed back. That means the new students will probably not arrive until June or so, and all my travel plans are going to have to be shifted.

My colleagues and I have been doing in-service trainings with the nurses, clinical officers and medical assistants on Wednesdays in the hospital. That at least has given us something to do. I have to teach something about Vaccines in April...

Elly and I have been walking Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings at 515am. It is really beautiful now because the rains have made everything nice and green. And it is good because it LOOKS like there is a lot of maize (corn) growing, which is the major staple here in Malawi since it is the key ingredient in nsima. Maybe 'hungry season' wont be so bad this year.

Zuze has not come home yet. I told some kids I would give them MK500 if they found him and brought him back. They keep coming by every few days to tell me they found him but can't catch him, but I am skeptical that they are actually telling me the truth.

Becky came and visited me a few weeks ago. She was studying for the GRE, which she took it on the 21st. I was just going to study a few vocabulary words a few weeks before the exam, but she got me so nervous that I am probably going to start studying soon even though the next exam is in October.

I have been reading a lot. And I have been working on t-shirt designs for GAD (Gender and Development) and GLOW (Girls Leading Our World). And I have been playing a lot of solitaire...

I visited Kelly before Valentines Day. I got a ride to her site with an ambulance going to Blantyre to do interviews of the new nursing students (The application process would wear me out. They have to do a test while at the interview, and then the interviewers ask them all sorts of random questions...I would do so bad). The sad thing is that it looks like we are only going to have 10-15 females, and the rest of the class will be males.

Anyway, I spent about 4 days at Kelly's site. She was sick, so I came to see if she had Malaria or anything. Then we met her chief, and went to the market, but we spent a lot of time just chilling out and watching movies and TV shows (Samantha Who is kinda funny...). We also ate lots of guava. YUM! I came back to my site Valentines day. It was quiet, nice day, but I decided to eat lots of chocolate for the heck of it. Haha.

It is the rainy season. However, in Nsanje we have not had too much rain at our site, but apparently it has been raining A LOT in the mountains of Thyolo. This has managed to wash out a few of our bridges, and has made power a luxury. Every time the power is out, the network (cell phone service) is out. Which is frustrating. Ugh.

I also finally got my packages for Christmas recently too. The post office strike over the holidays has delayed a lot of mail here. Haha. This is expected in Africa.

Kelly came to my site last Friday. We had gotten a demand from the government and CHAM to open the schools on the 1st of March so we had lots of meetings Thursday and Friday about it so I had to let Kelly in my house while I sat in meetings until 5pm. Kelly got to go to Blantyre since I saw her last, so she arrived loaded with meat and cheese. SO WE ATE A LOT. Yum. We got a ride to Blantyre Monday morning, and then traveled up to Lilongwe on Tuesday. We came up to see off another friend of ours, Jeanne, who had to go home yesterday because her mother was admitted to the hospital back home. Now I am the last nurse left in country from our health group! No pressure or anything...

My friends have come into town though, so I am going to hang out with them today. We are going to talk travel plans and site visits for the next few months. It will be good to catch up because I have not seen them since Christmas. Kelly and I are going to make our way back to Blantyre tomorrow morning, and I hope to be back at my site by Monday in case the students actually DO come back!

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