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.