Udibili?

On Saturday afternoon, we were off to Lilongwe. The sociology students ran some errands while the rest of us headed to the market! I think I have been there twice now, and it is one of my favorite places to go! Talking with the different people there and hearing them bartering is just so fun to me. Dr. Elliot was checking up on us that Saturday and wanted to get some souvenirs for family, so he came with us to the market. It's not one of John's favorite places at all, and Dr. Elliot seemed tired of it as well after a little while, so once they got what they came for, they wanted to leave. Emily, Renee and I were still having some fun and they wanted to get some purses made of the colorful fabric, so we kept looking around. Dr. Elliot seemed concerned for us. I told him not to worry and that we would stay together. We know how it works in the market now and it wasn't crowded because they were about to close. He seemed satisfied with that so they went back to the car to wait. I kept looking a little bit and then I met a man named Captain Jack Sparrow and another named Chichewa. They were interesting characters. I think they just think of names like that so that you will remember them better and buy from them and be able to find them within the market. I asked them to clarify the rules of Bau (also known as ntchewa). It is similar to Mancala, but more complicated. They were so nice and we started a little game. It was nice to really get the rules cemented in my brain so that I can teach everyone when I get back.

Last night, Renee showed me some of her bug bites. They were sort of big, and there was one that looked like a spider bite on the back of her upper leg. Hmmm...Doctor Whitney suggested that she not itch them and apply Afterbite and then see what it looked like in the morning. The next morning, Renee showed Emily and I her 'bug bites'. They had grown over nite! Not outwardly, but across her skin. An allergic reaction? What in the world? I looked up different things online and the only thing that sort of matched was bed bugs. I was not completely satisfied though because bed bugs will bite you at night where you are most exposed. Renee's 'bites' are mostly on her stomach, and hips. It just didn't match up completely. Emily and I checked Renee's bed for any signs of bed bugs, but no such luck. The next plan of action: ask Betha or any other english speaking native. They have knowledge and experience here that we don't. When we found Betha, she was with three other women that don't really speak english, but right when Renee lifted her shirt some to show them, they all responded immediately and came closer to look. They knew what it was. No one knew the word for it in english, but they said that it was 'udibili'. I had a lot of questions I wanted to ask them about this 'udibili'...how do you get it? what is it from? a plant? a bug? what happens if it goes untreated? Betha only had so many answers. She said that it just happens sometimes and that it just spreads. That's all I know and I guess all she knows or all the information she gave me from my questions. She said it could cover your entire body. That sounds rough to me especially with how itchy Renee felt.
It was all very interesting, and kind of scary. But don't worry, Renee went to the hospital, which is about a five minute drive if that and she got Calimime gel to put all over herself to fix it. She is already feeling better and not itching anymore. The hospital had her go to the front of the line too. Crazy stuff, right? All those other people in line, that just seems so unfair!
I'm glad she is okay and that there is a remedy!

Here are pictures from the No Bake Cookie Cake for Camille on her Birthday!

Sugar and Butter

Add milk...good thing we had just gone to the store in Lilongwe because there's no access to milk here at SAFI

Here comes the cocoa powder!

After keeping most of the ingredients at a rolling boil, we added hazelnut spread because Emily doesn't eat peanut butter and then we added the oatmeal.

The creation for Camille! We just had to let it sit! (Refrigeration is not an option.)

'Hug'

Yesterday:

Renee and I were walking to our hostel when a bunch of boys came over yelling 'azungu!' at us as always. I said hi and gave them high fives and then continued walking. Renee got held up and then tried to continue on with them holding her hands. They started asking her for her shoes, but she said, "No, my shoes." They thought that she meant that her name was 'Myshoes'. It was pretty hilarious.

We were both going back to hand wash our clothes. I stayed back at the hostel a little bit longer and then as I was walking back to check on everyone and the sweet potatoes, I ran into some of the little nursery kids. They are my favorite. Their big eyes gazing up at me with big smiles on their faces just melt my heart! They always kindly reach for a high five and then look at your hand after you touch theirs as if you rubbed off some magic on them. They are so sweet. Then they tenderly reach to hold your hand. This time, as I walked by they shouted 'azungu!' like always so that their friends knew too, and then as I came closer and said hi to them, one of the little boys said, "Hug" with his arms wide open. I was so surprised! I asked him 'hug?' to confirm and he did it again! I leaned over and gave him a hug. Then some of the other little kids asked for hugs too, so I happily obliged them all. It was such a happy moment for me and I hope I will be able to give out more hugs in the future!

Later in the day, Renee and I had put our clothes on the line outside and were watching a movie in her room on her computer. Suddenly the cleaning lady comes into Renee's room. She doesn't speak any English, but somehow I have been able to understand what she means, and she doesn't even give me any hand motions. I think there are only so many things that I do during the day that she sees that she would talk to me about, so I narrow them down to one thing and probably just get lucky and guess. That's my only possible explanation, but it's pretty cool! One time she was telling me that I should scrub my clothes while I wash them as I was washing them. And I had told her that I had already done that, and she nodded yes and said okay. Anyway, back to Renee's room. So she came into the room and started speaking in Chichewa. Renee and I were pretty lost and thought that she just wanted to visit us, but she started speaking to us some more. All of the sudden it was like I knew what she was saying, it just sort of popped into my brain, so I asked with hand motions, "Did our clothes fall off the clothes line?" She gave me an, mhmmm and sort of laughed with it. Yup, I was right. I told her 'zikomo' (thank you) and hurried outside to find the clothes line had broken and my clothes were lying in the dirt. Aw man! It's okay though. She sort of started laughing and then helped us fix the line so that our clothes could still hang to dry. It was pretty exciting.

Also, on Tuesday, which was Camille's Birthday, we wanted to make her a special treat. She has been craving no bake cookies, so that was the plan! We gathered the ingredients before we left Lilongwe and then made the no bake cookies in the kitchen at SAFI. The women had to unlock the door to let us in to make them. Then they just started watching us. It was pretty funny. Renee and I just estimated our measurements and it turned out great! Sara, Betha, Joyce, Ayda, and Bernadet were just watching us make it. Then we let them have the other ingredients because we wouldn't be using them for anything anymore and they enthusiastically accepted! They even wanted to keep the recipe and they hadn't even tried them yet! It was great, we made sure there was some left for them after we Camille had some for her happy day! Apparently they liked it. I wonder if it was too sugary for them because candy here is not as sugary as the candy in America. Who knows!

An Adventure Indeed

This weekend has been quite the adventure!

Let's go day by day. It will be much easier that way.

Thursday:

We finished up our run of solar drying. Yay!! That means for the first week we get to go to the local market day! It's always on Thursdays and I had not been able to go until this week. I was pretty excited to see what it was like and how it compared to the market in Lilongwe. It was much more calm, even though since we are white, many of the vendors called out 'Madam' to us to try and get us to go over to their pile of clothes to look through. Bernadet, Aida, and Sarah were with us and they wanted some clothes as well as wanted to help us through the market so that we could understand what was going on since many of the vendors don't speak english.
The skirt fabric vendors were the ones that we kept going to because a lot of the girls wanted to get their friends some as souvenirs. We went to one area, but the price was too high compared to what they had gotten before. We were looking around at the different patterns and one of the men working the area was trying to get my attention. Bernadet said that he was saying that he wanted to be my friend. 'Huh, that's odd', was kind of my thinking since he singled me out amongst the other white girls. Then Bernadet said that he likes me. At that point I was thinking, 'Yup, no. Definitely not going to happen.' We started to move on since the price was too high anyway. He was trying to motion for me to sit down with him, but I said, 'No thank you. Sorry. Bye.' He seemed kind of bummed out. But he got over it pretty fast, so that was a relief.
As we were looking around, a crowd of children were following us and watching us look at clothes and skirt fabric. It was really cute. They would look where we looked and look at what we were pointing at. I wonder if it is going to feel weird for me not to be stared at when I get back to America because I am constantly watched here. At first it bothered me, of course, but now, not so much.

Friday:

We left in the morning to go to Kasungu. After a long drive down an incredibly bumpy dirt road, we made it safely! The Lifupa Lodge owner/manager is a woman that is against poaching. They actually have two French men volunteering to catch the poachers. The money that they make from the lodge goes towards paying the employees that aren't volunteers, upkeep, and then the rest goes towards anti-poacing. How cool is that!?

We were able to learn a lot about poaching and how they go about catching the poachers. It was very interesting. One of the things we did after we got settled into the Lodge was to go on a safari walk. Dangerous you say? Normally, no, but in our case...it got to be slightly more dangerous than most. Don't get too worried, we are all still in one piece. Let's just go through all that we saw!

A bunch of ants getting food with the soldier ants making the walls to protect the gathering of food.

Here is a picture much closer of the soldier ants making the barrier.

Some beautiful scenery!

Leopard tracks!

Hippo tracks!

The sun is slowly going down.

Some of the beautiful purple amidst the gold.

Warthog skeleton.

The sun is going down now!

The sunset is over and we are still on our safari walk...

Okay, so this is where it started getting dangerous...after finding many cool pictures to take, we realized that it was getting dark. Dr. Johnston was with us and so we relayed the message to him that we should pick up the pace. It didn't help that we were sort of scared because before we left on the safari walk, the lady said that deep in the bush, a leopard might be watching, but if we stayed together it wouldn't bother us. Hmmm...hopefully it wasn't too keen on hunting us at night. So we hurried along in the dark. It was pitch black with little moonlight. Too bad we didn't bring any flashlights...that would have been useful...or scarier in case we actually saw a predator. Oh well, we made it safely, but we were a bit worried the whole time, even with a man with a gun.

Here is our awesome guide...don't worry, he has a gun to protect us!

Saturday:

We went to see some cave paintings and hike up Black Rock to have some lunch.

Emily and Renee waiting for our guides in the sun.

Emily and I riding in the back of the Land Rover!

The cave is in the upper right hand corner of the rock.

Some of the cave paintings we saw!

On top of Black Rock! So beautiful!

Renee, Kevin, Me, Emily, and Matt. These two men were our guides and catch poachers! They were the French men that we met. Kevin didn't speak much english, but Matt did quite well! It was a blast!

On our Land Rover ride back to Lifupa Lodge, we were getting attacked by biting flies in the moving car! There were so many that got in! I despise flies to begin with and used to have major issues with them, but this trip has helped me a lot. These flies though, we didn't like them one bit! They were sort of harder to kill too, if you hit it against the car window, it wouldn't smash, you only would have stunned it. You had to hit pretty hard to get these guys. So there were probably about seven that ended up in the Land Rover, maybe more and we were trying to get them like crazy! At one point John karate chopped one for me pretty hard, so hard that I thought the blood on his hand was from his own body, but it was just the fly. It was really funny though because at one point, they seemed sort of concentrated at me so I was making noises and trying to get away. Matt and Kevin were laughing at me for sure and probably at all of us in how we were responding to the biting flies. It was pretty fun though, despite the fact that the flies bite.

That afternoon we headed back to SAFI to pick up Nicolle and Camille because they weren't able to come to Kasungu with us. As we were waiting, we were taking pictures of the kids with us. After a while of taking a picture and showing it to them, they started pushing each other around a little bit. It was all in good fun until one kid got smashed a bit on the ground. He started crying. Even though he couldn't understand what I was saying, I tried to comfort him and then once he looked at me I motioned for a picture of him. He really liked that idea because he started posing like Jackie Chan (Jackie Shan as they would say). It was great! It really made him happy again. Then, the boys started pushing again and this time, a cute little girl was victim to the falling. She started crying and I felt so bad for her! So I rubbed her arm and said it was okay and then she held my hand and looked at me and so I motioned for a picture for her and this is what I got:

She is so adorable! It cheered her up too! After all that though, I didn't want any other kids to get hurt, so I stopped taking pictures.

Sunday:

Sunday was lovely. Talks were about charity in Sacrament meeting. Then we went to the YSA aged Sunday school and it was really interesting to hear what they had to say. We talked about keeping the commandments and how we can help others around us to do so. Obviously it is a personal choice, but we can still be influences for good for others by how we live our lives. It was a great lesson!

Then we combined with the adult men and women and the teacher went over how to give tithing with the tithing slips and for fast offerings. It was very interesting to see how someone could get confused if they had never filled out one of the forms before. It made sense though why they were confused. I might have made the same mistake if I had never filled one out before or seen someone else fill it out, so it was so good to see that they were being taught. They were saying that the branch started three years ago, and it is exciting to see how far they have come!

Also, I got to head back to Madisi with Akim to meet Dhuka! Akim and I were able to talk a lot on the drive and I learned a lot from him. It was really cool! With some confusion, we found Dhuka! It was so great to meet him! He is a wonderful man and I was so impressed by him and his mannerisms and just this aura he gave off. He truly is happy and it was great to see someone like that! A lot of people in Malawi are happy, but Dhuka seemed to be different still. I enjoyed the short amount of time that I was able to meet him for. Hopefully I will see him again. He might be coming in the area next month, so we will see!

Dhuka and I!

Tonight as I was writing this blog post, one of those bugs that I was talking about snuck into the conference room! But I got it! Those dive bomber bugs! I asked Akim if he knew the name of them, but even he couldn't remember. We haven't seen very many, so I wonder if they are sort of like cicadas in that way. Well, if anyone can figure out what the name of this bee bug is, aka: dive bomber, please let me know! I'm so curious and I haven't been able to figure it out even still!

What is your name!?!

Attack of the Dive Bombers!

We have had multiple run ins with the dive bomber bugs here in Malawi.
It all started the night we were taking water activity when Renee screamed out of fear when it landed on her and I used a spoon as a baseball bat.
Then, there was the swarm that I had to run past to use my computer one Sunday night so that I could get internet. They just swarm by those lights for the pathway. It was the most I have ever seen in one area!
Next was on Monday night. Camille and I were going about the Jillian Michael's workout DVD. We didn't have to get past any dive bombers to workout that night, so we thought that it was just some crazy night for nature. Emily was working out with us, but then was not feeling well, so she left early. It was just Camille and I. Suddenly, a dive bomber bug got into the classroom. It came at me and so I flung my arm out to hit it, but then missed and threw my full water bottle at the flying bug. My water bottle had water flowing out of it like a dam had just broken open! I hurried to get it out of the room and had to dodge dive bombers outside by the lights as I did so. They were gathering outside. These dive bombers just really like the light. Camille and I finished our workout successfully. Since our water bottles double as weights I was down a weight for the end of the workout. We ventured outside and found many dive bomber bugs buzzing around the light diving down periodically because that's just what they do! Camille and I squatted very low to avoid their dive bombs. I accidentally dropped my other water bottle to later discover that the plastic on that one cracked too! I lost two water bottles to these bugs! As Camille was down low she had the yoga DVD in her mouth while she took a video of the bugs. One flew into her hair and she was shaking her head making a slight screaming noise trying to get it out. It was so funny! Then we left and were in the clear and both laughed together about it. Somehow there is always something that causes a bonding moment for Camille and I especially when it is just us doing the workouts together.
The next encounter was last night. We were getting the brine set and ready to go for our pretreatments late at night after dinner. We wanted to make sure we were more organized for this morning so we could crank it all out. We were cruising along that night. Soon, we noticed some dive bomber bugs hitting the windows. Then one by one, the dive bomber bugs would creep in. I was designated to terminate the bugs because Renee is the brine master and is pretty scared of them, and Emily helped a lot with the brines and helped here and there with getting the dive bombers with me. We had to get so many! They just kept coming in and disturbing our work! And we did not want them to land in our pretreatments, so we had to terminate all of the ones that came in. We ended up with a rather large pile of dead dive bomber bugs in the room by the end of the night. I didn't have my camera with me to get a picture of it, but Renee got a picture and will probably put it on her blog when she has time to update it. We ended up developing a really good method of killing the bugs though. Since they love the light so much, we would turn off the light, and they would fly around for a little bit more and eventually would rest on the ground. You can hear them flying, so once we couldn't hear it anymore, we turned on the light and looked around for them crawling on the ground and hurried to get them. It was pretty great teamwork. When Emily and Renee had to mix the brines, I was the only exterminator on the job. Sometimes two bugs would get in at the same time too! I would turn off the light and once I turned them on, all three of us would start looking. Emily and Renee would yell, 'Look over there over there!' I had no idea where they were looking so I would yell back, 'Where, be specific!' because I couldn't find it still. They were really good at seeing them and eventually started pointing or yelling that it was under the table. I think we have mastered it pretty well so we will be prepared for any other late work nights.
I've been trying to research what these bugs are called, but I have not found anything yet.
I will let you guys know once I figure it out!

The Weekend

This weekend I was able to sit back and relax a bit, mostly on Saturday. Sunday was kind of full of eating after 12:00pm that is. Not gluttonously eating, trust me. I'll get there. Sorry about that.
Let's just start at the end of last week.
On Thursday and Friday we were working hard on the solar dryer as I posted before. We got our readings on Friday. Finally on Friday the internet was working again so I found out that Dhuka, my friend's friend was going to come this weekend! Yes! I have been wanting to meet him so badly! So I told our group that I was not going to go on our Saturday day trip to Salema to see the sights because I wanted to be around in case Dhuka came then. I wasn't sure when he would be coming. I found out today that he had some trouble getting out of Mozambique and that he is still planning on coming. So that's good. I hope he is safe!
So, on Saturday whilst I stayed at SAFI, I decided to read outside. It sounded so delightful to just sit in the sun and read for a while, so I executed this plan. Once I sat out, some of the little kids noticed me and wandered their way over to see what I was doing. I was suddenly crowded by about eight curious children. There wasn't going to be much reading going on. I did notice an older boy that was understanding some of the words I said. I showed him some of the chapter headings to see if he could read them. He did really well and read every heading I showed him. It was impressive. After a while I decided to read inside.
Then I got a nice nap in because reading always makes me fall asleep. But, I missed lunch. That's okay though because I have some granola bars, so I just ate one to tie me over until dinner.
I did not have much to do, so I decided to check my email after doing a workout. Then I realized I could work on downloading the movie that I got on iTunes. Here the internet takes a while, so downloading takes a very long time. It goes a lot faster on Saturdays though! That was pretty exciting.
Then, dinner time!
Adam stayed back from the day trip too to work on his research proposal, and Camille stayed back too, but she's been sick and was not feeling up for dinner. So...it was just Adam and I for dinner. I was kind of wondering how much talking there would be going on at dinner because Adam doesn't seem to talk a whole lot, and I can only ask so many questions because I don't just like talking and taking over or else it's so one sided. Turns out, he felt like talking so that was really nice! AND, we even got a Cadbury chocolate bar to share for dessert! We never get those! It was so exciting!
Then it was a pretty calm night.
Sunday:
We went to the Chichewa speaking Presbyterian service. That was pretty interesting. There was a lot of exciting music for sure! We were hoping that we would be able to just slip in the back and stay there on the concrete rows...no such luck! We got moved to the front to the front of the concrete rows...and then they decided to move us to the very front just behind the speakers where the minister and others sit in the plastic chairs. This Sunday, they were working on their fund for their new church building. We donated money at the beginning of the bowl coming around. Then they were kind of pointing at parts of the congregation after the bowl had gone around to come up and donate. We were all immediately worried that they would call us up...and they did. Oh boy...so we explained to one of the men with us that we just gave it all in the bowl that they pass around, we didn't know that it kept going. They understood, so that was good...phew. We came to learn that it is a sign of joy for them to go up there and dance and give the money. We even found out that you can get your 1000 kwacha and kind of trade it in for 20s and then throw those so it looks like you have a big wad, but you don't really have as much as it seems and then you can stay up there longer to dance and throw money.
At one point when the choir was singing songs, the preacher told us that they wanted to see how we dance and everyone stood up to dance to the song, so we participated as well. It was pretty funny! This is definitely helping me to get out of my box amongst strangers.
After all of this, some of us were getting headaches (me included) from the loud music especially since we were right by the speakers. We were then invited to the ministers house. He provided us lunch! We were so grateful!
When we got back to SAFI, we had been gone for 7 hours!! Whoa. It was about 3:00 and Sarah, Betha, Aida, and Joyce had made us lunch. So in order to not offend them, we ate that too. Then we had dinner at 6:00! Oh boy! That's what I mean by Sunday being a lot of food for the second part of the day. AND, I actually forgot to take my malaria medicine after dinner...so I ended up swallowing it with another granola bar because if you don't take it with food, then you will feel sick.
Last night after dinner, I wanted to go see if I could download my movie some more while I checked my email and such. When I turned to see the door to our 'lab', which was the classroom I planned on going to, I saw the dive bomber bugs! Not just a few though...there were TONS!!! They were swarming around all of the lights hanging from the ceiling outside. It was crazy! I saw Emily in the room I was headed for. She obviously made it alive. Hopefully she did not have any injuries. I had to prep myself and hold my laptop firmly. Once Renee saw the bugs she goes "Aw, seriously!? That totally ruined my day!" She was planning on joining the computer party, but she has a history with the dive bomber bug (full story in a previous post). It is known as the only bug I have ever seen that can make Renee scream. I guess that sums up her desire to avoid them completely.
Anyway, so I prepared myself and sprinted for the door avoiding any dive bombs from the bugs. I swiftly opened the creaking wooden door and hear Emily say, "Hurry! Go go go!" I quickly closed the door and breathed easily. I didn't let any in! Phew! BUT, the windows don't close all the way...so one would get in here and there, and so Emily and I would have our weapons nearby and ready to swing!

Okay...here are some random pictures...

Crazy flavored crackers! Even in Malawi!

I want to make this board by myself out of wood and everything and then I can teach everyone how to play! Woot!

Productive

Yesterday was an especially busy day!

After breakfast in the morning, we hurried and started peeling sweet potatoes ('batata' in Chichewa). While Emily and I were using the extremely nice peelers that one of our professors, Dr. Johnston, was able to bring with him for us (among many other things for our research), Renee finished up making the brines, and John started to use the mandoline so that we could have consistently thick slices.
We allowed the slices to soak in the brine when we were all done with slicing and weighing.

Next stop, fixing the solar dryer.
Unfortunately, the solar dryer was in poor condition when we arrived. The corners needed caulking within the solar dryer so that heat wouldn't escape as fast. Also, the door to place the racks of samples would not close completely allowing heat to escape as well. Not only that, but the chimney directing the heat to escape broke off.
The mission: Fix it all before the sweet potatoes were done soaking. Meaning 2 hours time.
We began. Emily and I were the main caulkers, we had to use our fingers. Supplies are low generally speaking.

Emily: Is Akim eating raw cassava right now? I don't think he should be  eating raw cassava...
Me: Whoa, whoa, Akim. I don't want any of that raw cassava.

Then, we were to fix the door. Luckily we had a lot of help from Akim, and one of his friends in placing rubber from a bike tire to help close the gaps from the almost closed solar dryer door. Then we used string to wrap around the solar dryer and hooks to tie it on to then have the door more securely closed. It all sounded great to us, but it was hard to explain to Akim and his friend. At that point we could only have so many people explaining a concept to carry out, and only so many bodies can gather around the solar dryer and still be useful and not crowd the area, so I came up with a game of miniature croquet whilst we waited.

Tape formed into balls to play croquet with!

It was really fun actually! Well, maybe I was the only one who thought so...oh well!
Then we thought about making miniature pool, but that was not as successful unfortunately.

The repairs on the solar dryer took longer than we anticipated, so the soak was definitely longer than two hours. Right after the repairs were complete, Emily, Renee, and I hopped to it and worked on getting the slices onto the air drying mat after weight them, as well as into the solar dryer after weighing them. Not even half way through the pretreatments, the scale we were using broke. We thought it was just the batteries, so we grabbed three more double A batteries quickly and replaced them. Still nothing. Maybe it was the rusty looking spring that connected to one of the batteries. We didn't know. Either way, it wasn't working and we didn't have a replacement scale. I had to bring the bad news to our research leader, Emily, who took it with great stride. Looks like we had to finish up without weighing the samples and that was that. So we continued working without getting lunch because time is our enemy once the soak is done. It's best to have everything drying at the same time. Everything runs much more smoothly when we get that done. Poor Renee has been sick and she suffered through it with Emily and I. Yes! We finally got it done! Off to our cold lunch.
Camille and Nicolle were so nice and while we were working had asked if they could watch over the solar dryer and the pretreatments so that we could eat lunch, but again, time was our enemy. But it was so nice of them!
Then, later that night after dinner, Emily volunteered to take the water activity of each pretreatment in both solar dryer and air dryer. Renee and I decided to do it with her, because the water activity meter takes a while to read, and it can get pretty boring. Also, it's easier with another set of hands to open and close the solar dryer and hold a flashlight, and another person for more company. At this point we all were thinking that we would be a true team. Plus, it's just nice to gather the data with some company.
Emily, Renee, and I felt pretty united together after all of that.

Other than that, we worked some more on the nutrition packets, and taught another nutrition class this morning and gave out the packets that we made in our international nutrition class to the families. They liked to look at the picture of their family on the front. Dr. Johnston explained a lot about the packets for the families and how it would help them. It was really fun as always!

The past two days the internet has not been working, and a lot of us have been needing to check emails from professors or get pictures sent from email printed off for the families. It's amazing how useful the internet is!

Joyce and I! She is always so happy! She is so wonderful!

Solar Drying/Air Drying Week and Beach Weekend

This past week has been full of solar drying and air drying sweet potatoes. We've been taking water activity laboriously in the morning, the early afternoon, and in the dark of the night so that we could have an idea as to how long it takes to dry them in a solar dryer compared to air drying them. Also, we can then see which pretreatments were best and which cause too much discoloration as well as take longer to dry.

Air drying mat with different pretreatments of sweet potatoes. The net is to keep bugs out and animals from eating them as much as possible.

Recording the readings that I tell them from the water activity meter. We make work look fun!

One of our meals! We usually get either rice, noodles, or potatoes with chicken, eggs, or beef, and peas, green beans, cabbage, or salad. Some things we are less likely to get than others. One of our favorites is cabbage! It is so delicious, and it is even delicious served hot!

Usually we get chicken, but one day we got nyambo (beans) for lunch! Yum!

I've been trying to capture my favorite part of the sun rising and setting each day, but it is actually quite difficult. The sun shines through the gold and pink/purple plants in the ground and it is just so beautiful. The eyes just see things so much differently than a camera. This is my latest attempt at capturing such beauty. The sun is just so bright that my camera reacts to that light and shadows everything else even though it is as bright as can be too! Down below the sun shining in between two of the rays of light, there is a little bit of the purple/pink that I was talking about. You can get a glimpse of it at least. Just imagine that all over the ground.

This is SAFI. Under the overhang describes the purpose of SAFI. I will get a picture of it so that you can read it. It was too dark at that point in the day when I was taking pictures.

 We went to the beach in Salema on Saturday during the day. Here is our view. There was an island out further at Lake Malawi. We took a boat to the island with a guide named McPherson. We went snorkeling and saw beautiful vibrant blue fish and other fish as well. Then I realized that they might not clean their scuba gear like certain guides in America. I didn't feel the need to keep my gear on after that, but I did keep the goggles on so I could still see the fish. Then McPherson took us on a hike to the highest rock on the island! It wasn't too far or too high, but it was still a really nice view! We got to see part of Mozambique way off in the distance. They mountains or hills were barely visible. And then McPherson showed us the section that was still Malawi. It was really neat. Sometimes it's hard to believe where I am!

This beach is cleaned everyday. The rest of Malawi has a lot of trash flying around. There are no trash cans to throw things away near the sidewalk and so people usually just drop trash on the ground or in ditches. Sometimes people come around and pick up trash wearing certain clothes, but I do not know how this is determined. It was nice to experience such a clean beach. It was pretty deserted too. 

I did get a nice burn. Renee got a really bad burn though. She is already getting blisters. Ouch! Mine isn't that bad, but I'm making sure to put Aloe Vera lotion on it. I usually don't burn too badly, but I think since I'm wearing the same short sleeved type shirts and capris that when I wear my swimsuit my poor back and shoulders haven't seen the sun for a good while compared to my forearms. It's okay though, I'm sure it will wear off soon.