Zambezi Swimming Team!

I thought I wasn’t going to be able to have internet, but turns out, it’s free here at Korea Garden. Renee has been kind enough to let me use her computer and such. Well, a lot has happened in a little over a week. Last weekend we spent the day in Lilongwe. At the market, I had met Lifford there and had gotten some paintings from him. He ended up getting Renee’s and my number and we were just thinking it would be for if he got paintings he thought we would like or something like that. Whelp, turns out he was inviting me to his house. Hmmm…nope, definitely not, gonna have to say no to that. He kept calling and texting though! Yikes! In one day, he called 32 times. It was pretty rough. We had to put the phone on silent in order to get through the day. The thing is that I had already told him that I would not be able to see his house and that I had work so I would not be able to. I guess he still wasn’t satisfied with that answer after he thought about it. It was starting to get pretty weird though, so none of that’s going to happen obviously.

Then we went to get onto the bus early in the morning. We had to be at the bus station at 5:30am! We were going to get up super early to walk there, but we were told that one of the streets we would have to walk on was known as ‘Devil’s Street’. Yup, that definitely changed our minds on the walking bit. Kevin, the BFI driver, was so kind and woke up early to take us to the bus station. Turns out John wasn’t feeling well and decided it wouldn’t be wise for him to take the long bus ride with few breaks, so Kevin came back and ended up taking John back to SAFI to get better. Our first bus ride was from Lilongwe to Lusaka. So we had to cross the Malawi-Zambian border. It was pretty exciting. It went by pretty fast too. There were a bunch of men waiting on the other side after we got our passports stamped to exchange money for us from the Malawian kwacha to the Zambian kwacha. It was pretty funny. Almost all of them would end up asking each of us to exchange, but I didn’t need to. After that we got back on the bus and then finished up the bus ride, which I believe was a total of 14 hours. It was long for sure! Looking back, I don’t know how I occupied my time. I know I was in and out of sleep sometimes, and when I was awake, I would just think, or snack on some food we brought. My iPod was out of battery life, so I was without that. It sort of surprised me that I did so well without it. I’m glad though! When the bus pulled in, we heard a bunch of people yelling, ‘Malawi! Malawi!’ It was really funny! It made me feel special, but I think they were partially ready to exchange money with us.  When we got to Lusaka, I was so amazed! They had a couple of billboards that are probably bigger than any other ones that I think I have ever seen! There weren’t any super tall buildings, but everything was so much nicer than even Lilongwe. We checked in to a hostel and met a guy from Germany. He was nice and talked about some infestation experiences he has had in Africa. I’m glad I didn’t have any problems like his! We woke up early to catch our bus to Livingstone, but ended up getting one a little later so we had time to look around the bus station area. There were many vendors, and taxis, and money exchangers about. We headed out on our bus ride and it ended up being about 8 hours. So much sitting! We checked in to a hostel, got a bite to eat, showered, and went to bed.

Our first full day in Livingstone was much more fun than a long bus ride! For the first part of the day, we went to see Adam bungee jump and do the jump swing too off of the bridge that gets you from Zambia to Zimbabwe. We didn’t have to get our passports stamped or anything because we were considered as ‘guests’. But, I was still able to walk over to Zimbabwe partway! Wahoo! We got to watch lots of people bungee jump and swing. It was really exciting! I met a British lady who told me that her son is doing both for his 18th birthday and that when she was younger, her husband and she were in New Zealand at Skipper Island and bungee jumped and then got dropped into the water instead of being pulled back up, and then they got to white water raft down the river. How cool is that!? I want to do that so badly! I really wanted to bungee jump too, but it was so expensive. One day though! It was fun to watch everyone jump though! Some people would get so nervous that it made me nervous! 

Next stop, Victoria Falls. This place is breathtaking! It’s the biggest waterfall I have ever seen! I feel so lucky that I have been able to see it with my own eyes! We got to take a bunch of pictures. Adam came up with the idea that we could have a competition of seeing who could come up with the best picture (not including the classic touristy pictures…something unique and different…a different viewpoint). Challenge accepted. We had a lot of fun trying to capture the beauty of the area in different ways and angles. We have yet to determine the winner. We went to an area right where the water fall actually falls and we were sitting right before the actual waterfall. It was incredible to be that close to such a huge cliff. Don’t worry, we weren’t super close or anything, but it just seemed so crazy that danger was so nearby! Something so beautiful and expansive, but so dangerous at the same time! Emily, Renee, and I were sitting and enjoying the scenery when a bunch of school children surrounded us! We decided to leave them to let them enjoy their time near the water, but one of the teachers asked to have a picture of us with the children. Then they said, ’Come on kids, get around the tourists.’ Then the kids said, ‘Your tourists.’ To which I replied, ‘Yeah, what are you?’ They didn’t know how to respond to that, so they didn’t and they just smiled. After the picture they were sort of touching our hair and saying, ‘Pretty.’ It was pretty funny. Apparently in the area that we were in of the park, there are a lot of baboons, but we didn’t see a single one! That’s probably a good thing though, because a man from South Africa that we met in our hostel said that they can lift up a stump and could beat a grown man in a fight easily. I’m glad we didn’t have to mess with any of those guys. After Victoria Falls, we ate Italian! Yum! We even got some gelato. It was so nice and cold on my throat. We got back to the hostel and I braided Renee’s hair. It’s the best I’ve ever done!

Emily woke up early to make sure that we would have spots to all go white water rafting down the Zambezi River. A man from Ireland who is now recently living in Germany and his girlfriend that we made friends with and another girl from America that we met came too so we all decided to get in a raft together. We had our security briefing which was pretty great. There is a rope that goes around the raft that they refer to as the ‘oh sh*# line’. Basically, you need to get down and grab that line when they say so because something big and bad is coming up. Our river raft guide was Malvin. He’s a funny, cool guy. We went through some paddling before getting out on the rapids. Now, I’ve gone down the Ocoee River a couple of times and have white water rafted once in Virginia I think is the other one, but the Zambezi River, it’s somthin’ else! The water from Victoria Falls makes up the river, since it is still high water here, we had to start at rapid 7 because the others are too dangerous before it. Rapid 7 was easy enough, a good start. Then off to Rapid 8, known as ‘The Midnight Diner’. I definitely did some dining and dashing on that one. Let’s go through it. So basically, if you go through the right, it’s a class one rapid. We said no to that one. Then if you go through the middle, it’s a class three rapid. Meh, maybe. Then Malvin told us that if we go on the left, through the Midnight Diner, then it’s a class five with a bunch of class four rapids following it. Yes. Our raft decided to be brave and go for it. This is what happened: Malvin is yelling for us to paddle forward. We are all digging in and paddling hard. This wave is huge and we are going for it. Malvin might have told us to grab the line and get down, but I sure didn’t hear him. We are almost completely vertical with the raft and then we start falling over to my side of the raft and I see people coming over and onto me. I was right behind the front person and on the right side. Down into the water I go. I have no idea which way is up and I feel the current sweeping me away. I’m under water for a while, long enough for Malvin to climb back onto the flipped raft. Emily, Sarah, Renee and Hannah are all hanging on to the raft and get back on while Me, Neil, and Adam are going through class four roller coaster rapids with just our bodies. I was the farthest down the rapids and had gotten through about three or four of them with just my life jacket to keep me going and I had swallowed so much water. I looked back and saw the raft so far away! Neil was close to me and I felt a tugging on a strap of my life jacket pulling me down some into the water. It was him. He was in survival mode and grabbing whatever he could to help him stay up. I yanked the strap away. Crash, another rapid pulling me down! Then I get up and see a kayaker coming to my rescue! He tells me to stay calm as I kung fu grip the handle at the front of the kayak. It was Baby Face, Malvin’s cousin there to save me and to keep me from drowning. He kept telling me to stay calm. I probably looked terrified! I was still just trying to breath at that point I think. We kayaked through the rest of the class four rapids and I finally got back onto the raft. It sure was terrifying! The next rapid was a class six or seven, so everyone skipped it completely. There was another rapid that we fell on in the very beginning too. It was still pretty scary, but I was getting used to it maybe or something…I don’t know. So we got flipped off and I got swept away again after being stuck under the raft for a while and then all of the sudden the raft was coming up behind me and I got stuck under it again and had to push myself out from under it and then grab onto the rope so that we could flip it and I could get back on to safety. It got flipped over on me so I again had to get myself out from under it amidst the rapids we were going through and then I was pulled back in. I looked around to grab anyone else to pull in, but it was just Adam, Sarah, Neil and I. Emily had to go down with a kayaker down three more rapids! Renee was with a kayaker for a bit and then got thrown onto another raft. Hannah was also with another raft. Everyone was okay, but it was so weird to not know where they were at the time. I missed my team! There was another time where two of our teammates almost fell out at a rapid, but Emily and I were able to help pull them back in. It was an exciting day for sure! We even saw a crocodile and two baby crocs on rocks along the river. So turns out there was a whole other element of danger that I hadn’t even thought about! After that, all the other guides and the kayakers named us the Zambezi swimming team because we always had to swim through the rapids. It was pretty funny. We ate lunch and watched the video with all of the teams. Ours was definitely the most exciting because we actually fell. They even played ours again in slow motion. There were pictures too! It was really great, we enjoyed it a lot.

Then we got snacks for the early morning bus ride the next day and just had some dinner at the hostel. We left early in the morning for our shorter bus ride of the two to Lusaka from Livingstone. Then we stayed the night in the same hostel as before on our way to Livingstone. We saw that there was a movie theater nearby and decided to check it out! We ate some pizza, and then watched the new Wolverine movie in 3D (I’m telling you, Lusaka is really nice!) and then ate chicken burgers and fries.  We had to wake up even earlier for our bus ride on Sunday. It left at five, so we had to load up at 4:30 so we ended up leaving at around 4:15. What an early morning! 

With the bus ride today, the bus was playing a lot of gospel music along with the music videos. It wasn’t my favorite, mostly because it was so incredibly loud at first. Then they ended up turning it down, and I was actually able to sleep or think and what not. I was able to meet a couple from Israel and a couple from the Netherlands. It’s fun to meet different people on the bus along with the hostels too. We sure have travelled a lot though. I just hope I don’t have permanent cankles, haha! 

It was interesting that when I am in Malawi and introduce myself to the people here, they do not make any connections with my name, but while we were in Zambia, when I would say my name to the taxi drivers and what-not, their reactions would range from, ‘Oh, that’s a good name.’ to ‘Oh, that’s my auntie.’ to ‘Ah, yes, Houston.’ It was really funny.

So now, we have a day to chill out in Lilongwe on Monday, and then Tuesday morning we leave to pick John up at SAFI and then we are off to Nkhota Bay for a fun kayaking journey along with meeting some of Kevin’s (our BFI driver) family and friends. He is such a cool guy! He’s helped us out a lot, so we try to treat him with food when we can. We’ll give him some apples when we go to get our own snacks and such. He truly is just so great and kind. He wants to do his best for us. We love him so much!

After the long bus rides that I have been through, I’m pretty sure the long flight from Johannesburg to New York is going to be easy as can be compared to a cramped bus ride where I can’t stand up and walk around or go to the bathroom whenever I want or get fed complimentary meals during the trip, etc. I never really appreciated those aspects of flights as much until this bus travelling experience.

I took a bunch of pictures, but I have not been able to load them onto my computer yet since I didn't want to risk bringing it with me this past week. Don't worry though, pictures will be coming soon!

And We're Off!

We finished our last run of sweet potatoes! Yay! It's been crazy with this last run because we check the water activity reading every two hours, so it usually gives us an hour break in between each reading since the readings take so long. Haha, the electricity and water wasn't working at all yesterday, so that was pretty exciting. We've been finishing up strong here with our week and are happy to have finished strong. Cleaning up has been pretty easy. We cleaned off all of the tables and Renee did some major sweeping throughout the whole room since we just usually sweep the major areas after each day. It was really nice to have such a clean room. I sure like it clean. The next day though, it had gotten pretty dusty already. The dust just finds its way everywhere!
In a little less than an hour we're going to be off to Lilongwe where we will then head to Zambia and then back to Lilongwe for a couple of days and then off to Nkhota Bay! We will be in Zambia and Nkhota Bay each for a week. After that, we will be back in Lilongwe and then on our flight back to America! It's crazy! I probably won't be able to have internet until I'm back in America, but I'll be sure to remember all of the exciting things we did and post pictures on here too. I have a feeling I'm going to get some good ones.
Well, have a great couple weeks!

Smarts.

After Renee and I were working on water activity at 12:00 during the day through lunch. So we were able to go get lunch right after John finished so that we could do a little swap and he could work on the water activity while we ate. The water bottle that I ended up with was dented at the bottom on one of the parts where it contacts the surface it stands on. It couldn't stand up at all! So my first solution was to get a knife and fill in the lack of contact it had with the table. That still didn't work and it wasn't balanced enough. I added in the handle for a fork too so that it might fill it in better. It was still a little shaky and then I finally realized the best solution!
I took the fork and placed the water bottle where it was uneven on the bottom onto the fork part where the food goes. The handle of the fork raised up as the other end lowered down. It was the perfect leverage and balance and the water bottle didn't tilt or get off-balanced. Yes! Solution made! I felt pretty happy about it...and smart too. If only I would have thought of it first. But sometimes, you have to try different methods out before you realize the best solution. And sometimes, those errors help to spur the thought of one of the best solutions. That's how it was with me! "Hey wait a minute, I have this fork, why don't I just use this?!"
This applies to so many things!
"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."
“Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”
“If we all did the things we are capable of, we would astound ourselves.”
“The three great essentials to achieve anything worthwhile are, first, hard work; second, stick-to-itiveness; third, common sense.” 
“When you have exhausted all possibilities, remember this - you haven't.”
“Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is to try just one more time.” 
“Vision without execution is hallucination.”
“Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's useless.”
All quotes by Thomas Edison. They are all so good, and there are so many more good ones too!!

Top of the Morning!

Sunday night we set up the brines and woke up early Monday morning to start peeling and slicing the sweet potatoes! We got everything set up and figured out so that we could get all of the water activity testing we would need to have more data points in our graph. Our plan is to take water activity readings every three hours for this run so we can see how dry the sweet potatoes are able to get for a longer period of drying.

Water activity readings for five different treatments of sweet potatoes takes us about an hour to do. During the two hour break in between, I was able to do my much needed laundry. I did a lot too, so my hands were getting a little raw from wringing out the water. As we have been cutting into the samples, they are extremely hard! I almost got a blister on my hand from cutting the sweet potatoes up. I'm going to have to change how I cut the sweet potatoes once in a while so a blister doesn't form. My hands are probably a lot stronger than they were before!

After talking with Emily yesterday morning, the plan was to go about as if we were to carry out the sensory testing. A lot of planning and methods go into it, so we wanted to make sure that if we were to be able to do it this week, that it would be a success. It added quite a bit of stress to our day, but it was a good experience. That evening, we got another call from Emily about the sensory testing and it turns out that it will be a no-go because we will need her help in coming to Blessings Hospital, which is incredibly hard to arrange for her because of her sociology testing this week. We don't really have the manpower for it. Also, it is comforting to know that the main use of these dried potatoes will be in soup form, so the flavors that the sweet potatoes have from the pretreatments will not have a huge effect. We also worked on rehydrating the sweet potatoes and on the salt pretreatments, Renee didn't think they tasted salty.

With our water activity readings, we will be waking up at around 5:30am to make sure that we can get the readings taken starting at 6:00am. I haven't woken up that early in a long time! We'll be doing that the rest of the week for sure! We do our last set of water activity readings at 6:00pm. On Thursday and Friday with our last run of sweet potatoes, we are going to take readings every two hours to get more data points along the beginning curve of dehydration.

That's the update so far!

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!

Tick Troubles and Bottle Caps

When we were staying at Korea Garden Lodge this weekend, two surprising things occurred.

Surprise one:
Adam knocked on our door and showed us a tick that he had on him. He had a rash-like area from where the tick had been feeding I guess. It was pretty strange looking. But there the tick was, still hanging out connected to his skin.
Then he said to me, "I want you to take it out."
What me? Was my thought.
And then he handed me his big pocket knife.
"Uh, okay." Was all I said
I've heard of people burning ticks off, but since we didn't even have a way to heat up his knife to sanitize it and we just used hand sanitizer, I guess this was our only option. He probably knew better than me I guess. He told me to just get below the head, that was the most important part and to not squeeze the tick or else it would let out nastiness from it.
So I just started trying to get it out.
The tick wasn't very far in, so that was helpful, and probably less painful for Adam.
He didn't squirm too much or make any noises to show that he was in pain, so that helped make my job easier. I felt really bad just cutting into him even if it was going to help him out, so I had said sorry because I just felt so bad!
Finally I got it out without him bleeding very much so that was also good.
We looked at the tick and it was still trying to eat at the tiny bit of flesh that his head was connected to.
So gross!
The next day, Adam told us that he realized that he didn't have his vengeance upon the tick and couldn't even remember what he did with it after observing it on his knife. So basically it could have still been in Renee and I's room somewhere. Needless to say, I checked myself for the tick in the shower the next night.
We were clear.

Surprise two:
Renee and I were reading in our room, and then Adam came in to chat with us. It was pretty fun, and then he saw that I was reading The Prisoner of Zenda. He had read that book when he was younger and he really enjoyed it. Then he asked if I would read it out loud so that he could remember some of it. I told him he could just borrow it after me, it wouldn't take me too long to finish, but he was adamant that I read aloud to Renee and him. After I denied many times, I finally gave in. I started and after a while he had me pause so that he could get a coke from his room next door. I was about to continue when he started opening the bottle cap with one of the water bottles. Suddenly the bottle cap popped forcefully into the air, hit the ceiling and then the wall and then hit my hand on the way down and then the ground. It was so sudden and surprising. Luckily the top of the bottle cap hit my hand instead of the sharp parts so it didn't hurt. It was just so crazy! I have never seen that happen before. Maybe it's because we have plastic bottles of soda in the States so that way we can slowly release the pressure that builds up while the cap is still pretty secure on the bottle.
It was pretty funny and surprising and we held our shocked expressions for a while and looked at each other and had a good laugh over it.

Running and Some Chichewa

As I was on a walk with Nicolle and Renee, we ran into some little boys who were up for a walk as well. They started walking with us. I tend to walk fast anyway, so I was getting a little bit ahead of Nicolle and Renee in the group and I had a little group of boys with me. One of the boys looked over to me and made a running motion in place. I said to him "Race? Running?" He said yes. I don't usually shrink from a challenge since I'm so competitive, so with that we were off! I was in my pants and chacos and was running on uneven dirt, so I wasn't going full speed, but I sure was bookin' it! The young boy who has shorter legs than me and is skinnier than me kept up with me really well! I was so surprised! We slowed down and the other little boys were running to catch up and laughing about the race. The boy I raced and I 'high fived' and then I noticed a boy holding a sling shot.
It looked something like this:

They told me it was a catapult and they started giggling after I grabbed a rock and asked to use it. The boy handed it over snickering. I'm guessing they thought I didn't know how to use it. Once I shot it the boys all went, "Ohhh!" It was so funny and they are just so fun! They have so much energy and such a desire to explore. After that, the boy wanted to race again. We were going up a hill this time, but that didn't stop us! He stayed with me really well in the beginning but tapered off a bit. As I stopped at the top of the hill, he was jogging after me and there was a group of women that were at the top of the hill that had seen me running. They were laughing and motioning running to me and speaking in Chichewa. I was nodding my head yes. Women hear don't run, they have a lot to do each day and the women here have such strong arms! It's amazing! Their arms are so toned! What they do each day is hard work enough, there's no need to run. It was pretty fun though. One of the best walks I've been on.

When Akim was driving us back to SAFI, he started teaching me some Chichewa. I'm still not very good at it and don't understand much of anything, but it was really interesting.
He taught me 'nose', which is 'puno'. Also, if you say 'campuno', it means 'little nose'. And if you say 'kancampuno' it means 'one little nose'.
Some of the little boys taught me the word for 'dirt'. It's 'ulime'.

As I walk around SAFI, I don't always hear 'azungu!!' yelled at me anymore. Now I usually hear 'Whinny! Whinny!' It's really funny! They just have a way of saying my name that just makes me smile. And then I say the names of the kids that I know and ask the others what their names are to try and remember them too. It's really fun. We have a good time saying words to each other that the other doesn't understand but repeats anyway.