Brokenness

*From mid-December to mid-January my folks visited. Upon their return home, each is writing a post (or more?!) about some part of the experience. Here is my Pop.

 I am using this collection of letters as a noun.  I am not sure that it is actually a word.  Perhaps Zach can ask his Brit friends.  They may know something about the language.  To lend a bit of legitimacy to my comments, I (his father) and Carol (his wonderful mother ) spent a month in Malawi during December and January.  We visited Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe with Zachary and Serena. I even sneaked into another central African republic but I am not revealing the name because it might bring about an international uproar.

Brokenness can be defined as seemingly constant, and certainly irritating, phenomena of everything in the society in some degree of disrepair.  Nothing is spared.  Bathrooms, automobiles, houses, roads, the electricity, etc.  You name it.  Because so many things are manufactured in Western countries it is often difficult, if not impossible, to fix them.  Zachary's car is a good example.  It seems to suffer from constant irritating problems.  There are funny noises here and there and idiosyncratic behaviors such as unplanned horn blowing!  It is a Honda so it ought to be well-made - but the irregularities continue.  Of course this may be due to the fact that it is Zach's car.  Ask him about the car he had in college. 

Although these kind of problems seem ubiquitous there is actually a hopeful side to the issue.  It is that there is an ingenious cadre of "fixers" who have sprung up the deal with the problems.  As we were blissfully motoring across Zambia a suspicious noise showed up in the front, right wheel of the car.  Of course we were in the middle of nowhere.  We debated whether to continue on in hopes of finding some kind of help or turning around and retracing our path.  Of course nobody likes the latter alternative.  Serena then suggested that we should continue on because if the town ahead is big enough to appear on the map it will have somebody who works on noises like ours.  So we continued on. When we arrived at the town we went to the only gas station and explained our situation.  They directed us across the street to a dirt lot filled with automobiles in various conditions and several fellows milling around among the derelict cars.  So that is where we went.  To shorten the story, the fellow took the wheel off, identified the problem, and fixed it!  Additionally, the cost was very modest and we were able to meet and interact with the local automobile mechanic and his friends, including the local teacher.

I suspect that the phenomena I have described is one residual effect of colonialism.  If there had been no colonial influence it is likely that the trappings of western society would only now be emerging in much of Africa.  But modernity has a constant presence.  The problem is that when the colonial powers left Africa there was a sudden and severe lack of expertise.   Hopefully that is being reversed.  In the meantime, if you visit Africa be prepared for the first contraption you encounter to be in some state of disrepair.  Don't let that stop you, however.  There is so much that is interesting and beautiful to justify the trip.

Dog Blogging: The Joy of Water Bottles

 I know we've mentioned a few times that Bay loves to chew on things. He has chewed more than one of my under things, as well as some socks and shoes. We give him bones and chew toys to entertain him but recently he discovered something he likes even more than those: water bottles. We try to minimize the use of disposable water bottles but we still end up with hundreds in the house. Bay has begun hoarding them in his bed, chewing loudly on them and chasing them around the room when he accidentally shoots them out from between his jaws. It's ridiculously loud and we've had to take them away more than once when he decided to enjoy them at 5am. Still, we're trying to let him have this small pleasure.

What Did You Do This Weekend?

Weekends here are fabulous. I love turning off the alarm on my phone and not having to leave Zach alone with annoying little Bay all day. The weather is constantly pleasant and the sheets my big sister mailed me are oh-so-soft and perfect for sleeping in on a Saturday morning.

On Friday night we ate delicious home-made Chinese food with a friend who is a VSO volunteer who Zach plays soccer with. (Zach is finally back to playing soccer after 3 months on the mend after that unfortunate ankle sprain.) On Saturday Zach played soccer while I had a leisurely lunch with some coworkers and friends at one of the nicer restaurants in town. My lamb burger was great - but it cost US$10. Eish. Then I got a manicure (Also $10) and went to the market to buy cloth to have a dress made. Zach and I spent last night and this morning working on his resume and thinking about the next steps after we finish in Malawi in July. Tonight we're headed to the birthday party of another friend, the only pediatric cardiologist in the country, at a nice Italian restaurant. Sprinkled throughout the weekend are the sounds of Zach laughing out loud. Very loud. He's reading 'Spud' but some South African Afrikaans writer and appears to be loving it.

You would not believe the difference between being a Peace Corps Volunteer and living in the capital city with your boyfriend, your dog, and your car. Life is bougie.

Dog Blogging: All Curled Up

Must be more comfortable than it looks.

Serena and Chimango Are Not Impressed

 Here's me, listening to one of the Health Surveillance Assistants tell me why they have only sent in 15% of their expected number of DNA PCR tests in 2012. And below is my co-mentor, Chimango, listening to why that team will never be able to reach their target. We are not impressed.

To be honest, I don't think we spent most of our time in the field last week making these faces but when I scrolled through the pictures from the week I noticed we definitely spent too much time making them.

Usually the people we met in the health facilities were eager to improve and quick learners. They discussed amongst themselves strategies for improving the number of tests they collect and the number of HIV exposed infants identified. Often Chimango and I felt sort of unnecessary. But, as you can see, sometimes we were a little skeptical.

At any rate, I'm back in the office tomorrow to assess whether mentoring went smoothly. In a few months we'll see whether it had the intended effect on the early infant diagnoses of HIV exposed children in Malawi.

Dogblogging: Action Shots

 Our dog has an incredible amount of energy. He gets regular walks from Zachary but he still gets so worked up that we've had to come up with ways to help him get some of that energy out. Otherwise he jumps, runs in circles around the living room, bounds over the couches, knocks things off tables with his tail and does one particularly amazing move in which he jumps sideways onto the wall and kicks himself off of it.

So we've come up with something not terribly clever that does the trick none the less. We stand out in front of the house and take turns calling his name, resulting in him running between us as fast as he possibly can until he's fit once more to be inside of the house. Look at his grace and form. And also, note that we are sunbathing in the 75 degree weather in February because even though I've already mentioned that, it's worth repeating. Come visit and we'll go lay on the lake shore and drink iced tea!

Awesome Plants: Part 4 (?)

Guys. Look at this amazing plant that I saw while hiking a few weeks ago. It's camouflaged!

Also this yellow flower and this orange flower were bright spots in a field of green. I know I've said it many times but the flowers here and unbelievable - hundred of shapes and colors everywhere. Also that beautiful honeysuckle/jasmine smell is back in backyard and once again floats in through our windows at night. It's amazing! I am not looking forward to the return of the dry season and the death of many of the tall green plants that have sprung up everywhere (though it will be nice to have dry clothes again).

Work. (!)

Most of you know that I never talk about work on the blog. First, work is depressing. There are a hundred things every day that make me shake my head, cry, think about buying a ticket out of here. Zach becomes irate at many of the stories he hears from my colleagues (not super helpful but at least he's in solidarity). Second, putting stories about people at work on the internet is SKETCHY. That crap gets you fired!

But how much can I write about flowers and dogs? Well surprisingly a lot. But today I'm going to write about work! Sort of.

I work with an incredibly dedicated group of people. Both in the Malawi government and at CHAI, I am impressed by the extra hours put into work and the thought that goes into efficiency and effectiveness. I focus on early infant diagnosis of HIV (what is that? Maybe the topic of another blog post). This week I've been out in the field with some of those incredibly dedicated people, visiting health facilities that have a high volume of patients but a low volume of submitted EID tests. We go there to have a conversation and find out how we can make things easier for that facility and urge them to improve. Usually it comes down to some inspiring speeches and, when that fails, some veiled threats about accountability and the Ministry's computer that is omniscient and "knows when you guys are failing!" And a promise of some Fanta next time we come if they've improved never hurts.

There's a million steps in this mentoring process and for me, most of them began two weeks ago. It's a short time to deal with the logistics for visiting 52 health facilities but we just have one more day to go and then I'll declare success! Up there is my fabulous group of mentors who we sent out across the country last Sunday. Send us your good juju from America cause we're trying to save babies here and we can use all the good juju we can get.

Dogblogging: Ashamed to be Bathing

Bay hates his weekly massage with warm water and soft shampoo. Not sure why, but the shame and dread is palpable every time he's subjected to it.

British People.

One thing about living abroad is that you end up getting to know a lot about other cultures. Duh. But not just the culture you live in - you also end up hanging out with expats from other Western countries who have really odd hobbies and pastimes. We spend a fair amount of time with our British and Irish friends and last weekend they invited us to have Pims and play croquet. Pims is, apparently, a type of posh alcohol that is mixed with lemonade and drank by rich people. To me it just tasted like alcohol.

That's Zach's homemade quiche in the foreground, by the way. Anyway, after we drank some liquor out of wine glasses we played croquet. It turns out there's a lot more to it than meets the eye, though I think I'll stick to miniature golf in the future. At any rate, Zach and I were honored to be the only American attendees and enjoyed an afternoon of trying out our fake British accents and being the butt of jokes about gun ownership and mass shootings (which is pretty typical when hanging out with Brits).

So classy right now

Small Emergencies

I mentioned in a past blog that Bay jumped through a window. In fact, he did it again a few days later when chasing a moth. Luckily the only damage done was to his paw (and to the window, of course). Why would he jump through a window? He was alone and getting worked up and he probably didn't even realize it was there. Lame. It ended up being relatively easy to fix the window but we were worried that the cut would require stitches. Of course, Bay wouldn't stay still long enough to assess it. We rushed home from a bar after receiving a panicked call from our roommate to find this:

Ewwww. He had spread blood throughout the kitchen and was still bouncing around like he hadn't just risked his life to get into the living room. The only way to keep him still was to continuously feed him peanut butter while tightly tying his bandage. Here's how he looked subdued:

He didn't end up needing any stitches, thank goodness.

Dogblogging: Lovely in Yellow

The handkerchief makes him appear more obedient and tame, don't you think?

Keeping Busy

Hello, hello! I apologize for the silence on the blog for the past few weeks. I've been extraordinarily busy at work and Zach seems to have lost his inspiration. Hopefully it comes back soon. In the meantime I'll update you all on the mundane happenings of life in Malawi.

Two weeks ago we went hiking at Nkhoma mountain, which is a large rock mass about 45 minutes south of Lilongwe in a cute little town with an old mission. We went with our friend David, a pediatrician with Baylor, and Amanda, who works in public health for a nonprofit related to Baylor. Most of you saw the pictures on my or Zach's facebook page so I won't put up many. We had a lovely day though we ended up heading straight up a mountain without a trail to help us (I think we got lost). On the way back to town we also walked by some fishermen and their packs of dogs, who didn't take very kindly to Bay. We made it out alive though and after a coke at the local market (where we also purchased a very special gift for Eric Griffith) we headed back to Lilongwe. That was 2 weeks ago, which means you still have some more mundane weekend updated headed your way.

Dogblogging: Gardening

Now that Bay doesn't run away from the garden he spends a lot of time sitting around watching us plant things. I think he thinks its super boring and is missing the days of hunting for bones in the neighbors' yards.

Small Hiccups

Last week we had 4 small hiccups in our lives. Well, 5, if you count the time I smacked into the curb and busted a hole in our muffler but Zach already told you about that and got it fixed. In chronological order:

1. It started raining inside our house. We woke up on a Monday morning to a flooded room due to a burst pipe in our ceiling. Here's Zach cleaning up the damage. Happy ending: a plumber came to fix the pipe the same day.

2. Bay caught a chicken and mauled it. We had to pay 500 kwacha to the man who owned the chicken, though the chicken didn't actually die. I suppose Bay just enjoys the chase but I find this to be disturbing and gross and awful. He is far from the first dog to chase a chicken and be unlucky enough to catch it but still, ew.

3. Bay jumped through our window, shattering the glass and cutting his paw. ! He dripped blood all over the kitchen floor before our roomie cut up a sheet and tied it tightly around his leg. What a total idiot. Another happy ending: we replaced the glass today and Bay seems totally fine, though he keeps breaking the gash open and bleeding on my hands. He's also chewed through two screen in the past three days. He's really on a roll this week.

4. Our dear friend and employee Paul appears to be stealing money. This is a super tricky one since we don't want to fire him without any proof and leave him without a way to support his family. But the truth is that if he IS the one stealing money then he's stolen the equivalent of the rest of his year's salary and he'll be just fine if he gets fired. How this is resolved will depend on Jonathan's advice and wisdom, so stay tuned.

Also this morning our shower broke. I guess that makes 6 hiccups?

A Warm and Sunny February

One thing that is better about Malawi than I ever expected is the weather. December and January in some African countries are oppressive months, marked by 100 degree days. In Swaziland I couldn't be inside of my house between the hours of 9am and 4pm because the low tin roof made me feel like I was being cooked alive. I would lay outside under a large tree, reading and sweating. Even baths couldn't cool me down and even at night it was so warm that you would sweat even when you weren't moving. I spent every night of both years laying directly in front of a fan (ok, there was actually one night in June where I had to sleep in a fleece jacket when it dropped into the 40s).

But January in Malawi is totally different. We had one week of straight rain, which meant that our clothes began smelling mildewy and the wicker furniture in our room gave off an odor redolent of hamster shavings (wet sawdust, you know). That wasn't very pleasant but it was still mild weather and being from Oregon, it didn't seem so terrible. And for the past week we've been in the low 80s, with no humidity and some of the most beautiful clouds you've ever seen. We spent today lounging under the tree in our backyard and playing cards at an outside table at our favorite cafe, dressed in shorts and a t-shirt and enjoying iced tea. The weather couldn't be nicer.

Here's Zach planting the leek seeds sent to us in a package by my lovely friend Margaret. Great pastime for a sunny day!

Good luck to those of you battling the rain and snow in the Northern hemisphere!

Purchasing Produce

*From mid-December to mid-January my folks visited. Upon their return home, each is writing a post (or more?!) about some part of the experience. Here is another from my Mom.

We bought most of our fresh produce from roadside vendors or the open markets.  We bought lots of tomatoes, eggplant, onions and green peppers.  We also got wild mushrooms (they were full of sand), green beans, apples, oranges, green onions, cilantro, zucchini, potatoes, garlic, and leeks. Zachary even splurged and bought asparagus for our homemade Christmas dinner (roast chicken, bread stuffing with sage from La Grande, sweet potato soufflé).

It was common to see a vendor with a small quantity of bananas set up along the street or carrying them in a basket on her head or pushing them in a cart.  Zach’s strategy was to hand them a 100 kwacha bill (about 30 cents) as though we knew what that would buy and just see how many bananas would be handed over—usually about 6!  However, with almost everything else there was a required negotiation about the price. 

Mango barrage!

 It was always easier to get something if there was only one seller but it was amazing how a gang would appear if they detected that a sales might be in the offing. Stopping to buy something could create a mob scene.  Mangoes were ripe and available everywhere when we first arrived.  At one stop about 15 children descended on Dale, all offering large quantities of mangoes, each assuring that his mangoes were the best.  Dale finally made his purchase from one shy little girl.  We never knew if she had to share her money with all those bigger, louder children.     Toward the end of our stay, pineapples became available.  Zachary and I were out in the rain when I decided I would really like pineapple before we left Malawi.  So he asked one of the banana sellers what a pineapple should cost.  She told him 300 kwacha.  He then went to the pineapple vendor who told him 700.  They finally settled on 350 (about a dollar).  It was a very tasty pineapple.