Friday (the 13th) back in Blantyre

To my surprise, the workshop closed a day early. It seems that the national campaigning is underway, so a candidate up for re-election called a meeting for "all civil servants." Anyway, since teachers are civil servants, they had to leave to go to the meeting. As we were leaving, Cosmas, the project coordinator who is a very fine young man, started playing soccer (they call it "football" here) with some of the older students after school. Cosmas was a very good player, an "elite" player as we would say, but he sustained an injury and had to drop out. Because of his experience in playing soccer all over, he would see soccer friends in Zomba on the street and greet them. By the way, the World Cup for soccer will be played in South Africa in 2010. (LJ & SK--Can you find South Africa on the map/globe?)

My two colleagues, Moses and Cosmas, and I worked on creating the standards for the schools late last night. I hate to say this, but if I hadn't come to assist, Moses would have shown up in Ottowa, Canada, in June with two sentences on a piece of paper. I'm tiring these guys out!

Since the CODE (Canadian organization I'm representing)van was in two accidents and is in the shop, we have been using Moses's car. It is very funny how many times the battery has had to be jumped. We had to drive from gas station to station to look for air to pump in the tires. The roads are full of holes and rocks, so it's rough on the tires. Moses's wife, Joyce is now buying a new battery for the car, and I think she might consider buying new tires! On the way back to Blantyre, we stopped a Moses' rented house. It's a small house with two bedrooms. Although Moses purchased land a long time ago to build a house, he hasn't started. He says that building materials cost a lot, so he is waiting to get more money. Meanwhile, he will be moving to another rented house, because he has three children--a 7 y/o,11 y/o, and 15 y/o. They have bunk beds and have to sleep in one room together.

As we were waiting for him in the car, Moses's neighbor came over to tell him that the motor and battery had been stolen from her car. There aren't garages or any place to put cars, so someone came during the night and robbed the car of essential parts.

The Canadian journalist is going to send me the article she is writing about the project. It will be published in the Malawi paper and probably a Canadian paper as well. As I said, she is traveling the world writing about development projects in economically developing countries. This is her second month of an eight month tour.

I hope LJ and SK are able to share some of the information with their friends and classmates. I hope everyone reading this is getting something more personal than watching a travelogue about Malawi!

By the way, since I left earlier than I planned, I wasn't able to get Master's contact information and qualifications to take with me to Kenya. Perhaps he'll find another way to get a job outside of Malawi.

I do appreciate your comments. Let me know if you have any specific questions, and I'll try to research the answer!