Culture and Buildings - March

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Immediately following my sister's departure back to the states, I followed my friends to Senga Bay. We stayed at Carolinas - but WARNING: my friends had over $100 stolen out of their bags in the locked hotel room...the owners of the place were out of town, so that might have had something to do with it, but I personally will not go there again. It was a cheaper place for PCVs to stay, but not if someone is going to go rummaging around in my stuff!!! The sneaky thing was that they stole only a little out of each girls wallet's so they didn't realize they were missing money until they did the math later!
My friends and I were not happy, and we didn't ever get the money back.

Following this one night stay, we went to my friend Cathy's site for a minor St. Patty's party. Nothin' big, just a few guliwamkulu dancers showed up in the afternoon and the evening was spent chillin' and catching up. We ate pierogi's, potatoes, flatbread, cake and cucumber salad. Yum. The following morning she even fixed GREEN eggs and cornbeaf-hash.

Jen and I then caught a bus down the M-5 to Blantyre. There we stayed at Doogles (of course - MK1,000 a night for dorm bed) and had a MONSTER BURGER (a nice slab of meat, cheese, a runny egg, and bacon - my entire protein consumption for the month in 1 meal!). She came down because we both wanted to see Avatar in a movie theatre, and we did, and it was awesome. However, when I went to pull out my last MK500 (=$3) I was floored when I found almost a million kwacha in my account. The funding for the People Living with HIV/AIDS resource center construction had come in!

I had worked previously with this group in February with a nutritional/medicinal garden training. They are a highly motivated group of people but I was skeptical about their ability to construct a building in 3 months - and I can't really leave the money with them when I left...When I got back to my site I consulted my counterpart and was adamant that there was plenty of time and they would get the building constructed. I was still skeptical, but she pulled the group together, met with them, hired builders and had the ground cleared within a week. By week two the foundation was being laid and all the bricks and sand was collected. I was blown away.

Meanwhile I was still teaching my first year nursing students. I was leaving to go to Jillian's site for her HIV/AIDS building opening before Easter so I had to make sure all my lessons were taught before I left. I was busy! I traveled up to Lilongwe on Friday while the students were taking their mid-semester exams and made it to Jillian's site on Saturday the 27th. I stayed there through the 29th before I hitched up to Brian's site and met Tenley in Mzuzu on the 30th.

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