Work Time!

On Sunday we met Win Duersch. He is a very talented man. He works at NuSkin and created the Vitameal mixes that so many children benefit from. Win told us that they provide Vitameal for a school in Romania and that often girls would have to stay home from school. In order to get them to go to school, they decided that only the children who went to school could have Vitameal. This made it so that many more girls attended school and could not only benefit nutritionally, but educationally. We were able to go to church with Win. Church was wonderful as always and Nicolle and Emily both gave talks. They both did a wonderful job!

Win Duersch met with us today at SAFI and asked us a few questions about our research. He wasn't intimidating, just expected a lot from us. Win told us how we are truly affecting so many lives. Even if we teach someone a little about nutrition, a little about farming, a little bit can go a long way and inspire someone, just the way that Napoleon Dzombe became inspired. Napoleon lived in a village not far from SAFI and was just a regular young villager. Then he learned and grew and taught others his knowledge. He built the dam here that we have near SAFI so that there is water to benefit from. He even had the road made bigger and more accessible to the main road. That's a lot of manual labor from these villagers, but they did it and now vehicles can come through. Napoleon started Blessings Hospital. He has affected so many lives!

This week we are working on solar drying two runs of sweet potatoes so that we can have more water activity data points in order to have a more extensive graph. So we are taking water activity readings more often and are drying out the sweet potatoes even more this time. Today was a good start! Everything ran smoothly and now we are in the afternoon and just working on water activity readings for each sample. We have not been able to do any sensory testing because all of the students here have left already. Win might have thought of a solution for us. He might be able to talk to Napoleon and have us bring our samples to Blessings Hospital and right before the workers eat lunch, we could have them test the samples. Hopefully we would be able to do that. We would have to contact Emily though and we have been trying to call her, but she has not been answering. She is out working on the sociological aspect of her research in order to find out how interested villagers are to a solar dryer and if they would use it at all. If they would use it, she is trying to find out if they would want a community one, or just would rather have their own. Hopefully her surveying is going well! We'll have to see what happens with the sensory testing though. It would be nice if it could work out because then we will have results of what Malawians think about the different tastes of the sweet potatoes rather than what Americans think about them. If we don't do testing in Malawi, it will be tested in the United States, and since it is for the people in Malawi, it isn't as helpful if we test it on Americans. We'll see what happens though!

There are definitely not as many people here at SAFI or little kids to hold my hand this week! In fact, I haven't seen any little kids today, and that's not just because I've been working a lot today. I've walked back and forth a bit, and the usual children aren't there. I sure miss them!