Sept 25, 2010 (Sat) – 11:48am (GMT +2)

Last Wednesday the guys from Loma Linda got here rather later than they were planing due to the fact that they missed their flight in Johannesburg and ended up taking another flight up to Lilongwe and then back down to Blantyre. There luggage was supposed to come in yesterday and Jere went with Elisa to pick it up but I haven't heard yet whether that was successful. They were also going to be picking up some more switches and Ethernet cable for the network we are working on setting up for the Hospital. While they were gone yesterday the other two guys and I ran cables to the cashier's desk as well as a cable to the general ward and one to pediatrics. The distance of some of the other wards and especially the Annex is going to make running a single Ethernet cable impossible due to signal degradation. For some of the closer ones we are going to just put up switches to act as signal amplifiers but for the Annex we would like to do fibre optic but the cost may be prohibitive. (Side note: The Annex is what we call the private in-patient area where, if you have the money, you can get a private room and catered meals and the like. Whereas in the general area a family member has to stay with the patient at all times and provide things like meals.) We are going to have to figure out how to get power to the switches we want to hang in the hallway to extend cable range. There is a power conduit running the length of the hall that is for lighting but we traced it out and one switch controls several hundred meters with dozens of lights so we decided that would not be a reliable source of power.

On Tuesday Dr. Fam moved in with Anthony and I and will be staying here for awhile before he heads to Nigeria. This next week a new family is coming who will be using the house he vacated. He brought with him enough food to feed a small country so we should be good on that front for awhile, my only concern is that it will go bad before we can get through it. One item he brought was a bunch of mangoes so I have been learning how to cut up and eat a mango. They are not one of the easier fruits when it comes to separating the edible from the inedible but once accomplished fresh mango makes for a very enjoyable breakfast.

September 18, 2010 (Sat) – 1:42pm (GMT +2)

In a few minutes we are going to start eating haystacks which I'm quite looking forward to. This morning Anthony and I went for a walk down my the dam and took pictures so when we got back we were quite hot and hungry. Once we got back to the house we made up shredded lettuce and guacamole to take to potluck.

Our worker talked to Anthony a couple days ago to see if we had some more work he could do so yesterday we had him do a thorough cleaning of the kitchen. He worked for about three hours and we paid him 120 Kwatcha (170 Kwatcha to the dollar). I kept having to remind myself that that is a perfectly good wage for here and that I wasn't a terrible person for paying him about 25 cents an hour.
2:37
Ahh... That's better, except I hear there is dessert and I definitely did not leave room for it, lol. I imagine I'll have to stuff myself a bit more. There are several more people here than there has been for the last few weeks. Alex got here Thursday night, Wes had picked him up in Lilongwe and took him along up to Mwami just across the border into Zambia. Kelvin and his family got back from a summer of traveling last week so they are here and they have a little 4 year old girl who, once they got over their initial shyness, Andrew and Keiza have been having fun playing with, sometimes to the detriment of our being able to hear ourselves think. Elisa just got back a few minutes ago with Christi who flew into Blantyre today.

September 15, 2010 (Wed) – 7:30am (GMT +2)

Wes left yesterday for Mwami so I couldn't ride with him into Blantyre to work at BAH. So I am currently squished like a sardine into the Limbe clinic vehicle along with 10 other people in a truck that is clearly not designed for this. I am rather exhausted as I was up till nearly 1:30am last night trying to finish some backups off of one of the hospital computers. I had it booted into Ubuntu and for some reason it kept crashing when I would try to rename this one file. Finally I got the backups finished now I just need to reinstall XP and lock the computer down to try and keep out viruses. Even though the computer had anti-virus software installed it wasn't doing much good since every time it would pop up with a warning they would just click ignore. The workers desperately need some computer training, however I can't help but wonder how much of it would actually stick.

Yesterday I finally got around to putting up the new mosquito net I had bought a week and a half ago. I had our yard worker cut 4 lengths of bamboo that I used to construct a frame to keep the top of the mosquito net spread out. I was quite pleased with the result. Apparently Dr. Fam is going to be moving in with Anthony and I for awhile at least, I think he is going to be going to a hospital in another country soon.

September 10, 2010 (Fri) – 7:32pm (GMT +2)

Well I've been here for over two weeks now and I'm getting used to people driving on the wrong (left) side of the road. Yesterday I spent over 8 hours troubleshooting and getting viruses off of computers, by the time I went home I was feeling rather drained. I decided I felt like reading and took a look at the books that were in the house and found that there was a copy of The Da Vinci Code which I had been wanting to read. I started it at around 9 o'clock in the evening, fell asleep around 1am then finished it during this morning and early afternoon. The ending was a bit different than the movie and it a lot of interesting details that the movie had left out. I would be curious to see a detailed analysis of the book that sourced all the various “facts” put forth by the author.

On Wednesday I tried making lentils that we had a bag of but it turns out that trying to cook a bag of mixed lentils and rice to the correct degree is rather difficult. By the time everything was no longer crunchy there was a nice thick layer of burnt on the bottom of the pan. I tried to save it by putting in lots of spices but eventually I just gave up and threw out the whole thing. Today I made stew and put experimented with putting eggplant in which turned out to be a good deal more successful and quite good. Tuesday I went into town to do some visa stuff and work at BAH and got a fan which has been nice. The white noise has helped drown out all the loud people walking by my house at all hours of the night. But it doesn't do much to drown out the things that crash onto the tin roof of our house. I think there must be a tree that hangs over the house and drops things onto the roof, but I swear it only does it in the middle of the night.

August 31, 2010 (Tue) – 11:55pm (GMT +2)

This morning Chrislyn called to see if I wanted to come over and learn how to make bread. Wes came by the house shortly thereafter and I went with him down to the hospital. We hooked up a printer to the airport router and his Mac worked with it just fine but we couldn't get any other computer to work with it. I started learning about IP/TCP headers and things in preparation for setting up firewall and QoS stuff. For dinner I made spaghetti sauce which came out quite well. After dinner I went back down to the hospital to catch up on internet things. The guard was asleep in a chair when I went through the gate. From what I hear, that is not uncommon for guards around here.

August 30, 2010 (Mon) – 10:31pm (GMT +2)

Saturday Elisa, Eldi, Cheri (sp?), Deborah and I went to a game park about two hours from the hospital. We saw Zebras, Giraffes, Nyala (these striped deer looking things), Wildebeests, a Warthog, monkeys, birds and a huge ant trail. It was a long day and by the time we got back to the hospital we were all rather drained.

Yesterday Wes and I spent some time at the hospital taking a look at various networking things as well as updating a computer that we will be using as the IT laptop. We also walked around campus and to see where would be the best places for routers and things to make wireless available to as many people as possible. In the evening I started cleaning things out of the fridge and trying to get the kitchen a bit more organized and ended up spending about two and a half hours cleaning. It does look a bit better now but the whole kitchen needs a good deep cleaning. By the time I got to bed it was almost midnight.

Today we filled the Land Cruiser with people and headed into Blantyre at 7:30 in the morning. Wes, Chrislyn and the kids, Elisa, Eldi, Deborah and I managed to fill every seat it had to offer. There were a seeming endless supply of errands that needed to be run around town including, much to my joy, picking up my luggage at the airport. When I had called they said only one bag was in but as luck would have it both bags were in fact waiting there. Now that I've been living off of my carry-on for the last 5 days it feels like I suddenly have an absolutely gratuitous amount of stuff. Having more clothes is a definite plus, especially since this morning I spent a good 40 minutes ironing my cloths to finish drying them. I bought several items while in Blantyre such as a glass bowl to use in the microwave, a knife set, a high/low voltage protector, laundry detergent, wax paper, ketchup, steel wool, some spices and a few other things. On the way back to Malamulo we stopped in what is apparently the best market for fresh produce and I bought a bunch of tomatoes for making salsa with this week. I ate supper with the Lutzes then went back to my house where I ended up helping Anthony with his computer for over an hour until we finally gave up for the night.

Aug 27, 2010 (Fri) – 2:45pm (GMT +2)

This morning I got up at 8 o'clock and Anthony showed me the Wheat Bix he uses for cereal. It wasn't bad with sliced bananas and jam mixed in. Once we had finished eating (while listening to NPR and discussing various things from New Orleans' flooding problem to people beating their kids) we joined Chrislyn, Wes and the kids to go to the market in Makwasa. It being a Friday, everyone had come to town to buy and/or sell various goods off all descriptions. I bought a cold drink which was fruity with a touch of coconut and got a few hundred units for my phone. Afterwords I walked through the market and bought tomatoes, potatoes, onions and eggs from various venders. They have a thing where after you decide how much of something you want they will throw in an extra for free. For example I bought two piles of potatoes and they added another part of a pile for a bonus. On the walk back Anthony and I joined a crowd of people gathered around a witch doctor who was “making money” by chewing on a piece of paper then making a 50 Kwatcha bill appear, it wasn't bad slight of hand but that's all. Once we got back to our house I decided to try my hand at a stew and made a quite passable meal. I was going to put some TVP in it but then I realized it is all in Johannesburg with the rest of my luggage but we did have some “soy pieces” which are similar so I put those in. Once I was done I made myself a bowl and went over to the Lutz's house.
8:00pm
The kids were going down for a nap and after eating I laid on the couch to type but shortly followed suit and slept for about 2 hours. After I woke up I called Anthony and met him down at the hospital to get on the internet. I finally had time to upload some pictures and I got Skype installed on my netbook which took 5 tries to download but it finally worked and I was able to talk to people at home.

Aug, 26 2010 (Thu) – 10:40pm (GMT +2)

Last night I slept for about 12 hours and got up shortly after 11 in the morning after which I felt a good deal better. I got ready for the day and was just going out the inner door when Chrislyn knocked on the outer door to say that it was time for lunch (she had invited me over the night before) so I went and ate with them. Their kids, Keiza and Andrew, were as hyper as ever and Chrislyn has started referring to me as “Uncle Chris” when she talks to them. After lunch Wes and I went down to the hospital and started catching me up on all the various projects that need worked on. It is going to take awhile to get completely up to speed. We spent a few hours thus occupied and then proceeded on a short tour of the campus on the way to drop some item off at someone's house. From there we went to take a look at the various aspects of the water system. The water tank was a bit low so we drove a mile over extremely bad roads – thank goodness we were in a land cruiser – to where there are 4 wells by a reservoir which supply the hospital with water. He showed me the generator/control room which is inside a solid concrete shed due to security concerns. He tries to keep as few of the pumps running as possible to reduce the energy cost so there were only three of the four running. The smallest one was shut off in favor of the second smallest one which had been turned off, so the added capacity should refill the storage tank. By this time the sun was getting low and we headed back to the house where I stayed and talked and played with the kids for most of the evening, partway through we had a snack of macadamia nuts and apples. Wes told me that I could probably sell my computers and iTouch when I leave for quite a bit of money, a lot more then I would be able to get for them in the States so I may just do that, it would probably give me enough money to buy all new better equipment when I return.

Eventually Anthony came over and stayed for a little while before going out to return a water bottle to one of the doctors who had forgotten it somewhere. Shortly thereafter - once I had played a game of Uno with the kids – I returned to my house, had some toast for a snack and explored the house a bit more. Tomorrow Elisa is supposed to be returning from her meetings in Blantyre and I will probably be going into town to buy some things at the market.

Here

Well I made it to Malawi yesterday after almost 40 hours of traveling. My luggage was not quite so lucky. I think it got left in Johannesburg due to the extremely short connection time. I had to sprint to make the plane and if they had left on time I wouldn't have made it. The next SAA flight into Blantyre is on Saturday so hopefully I will be getting my luggage then. I'm very glad I packed a change of clothes in my carry-on. The weather is quite nice here at the moment but soon it will be getting much much warmer.

After getting out of customs I met up with people from the hospital and we spent a few hours running errands around town before heading to Malamulo. While Anthony and I were waiting in the van for the other two, security guards cleared the street and a few minutes later the president came by in a big cavalcade. I can't say I was expecting to see the president of the country within two hours of getting there so that was interesting. I wish I had had the foresight to have my camera ready.

On the way to Malawi I had an almost 9 hour layover in the Frankfurt airport so I put my bags in storage and took the train to explore Mainz, at least that was the plan. I accidentally got off the train too early and after wondering the streets for a few minutes and not finding any of the street names from my google maps print out of Mainz I realized I was in fact in Ruesselheim. I decided that the first order of business before I even thought about getting back on the train was to find myself a nice doener kebab, that amazing morsel of food to which my thoughts have so often strayed over the last 3 years. I almost got away without using any English but I forgot the German word for “onion” so ended up saying “kein..... er.. onions.” Getting money changed into euros was a quite unexpectedly difficult task. When I was at Bogenhofen I could just go to any bank and change money but for some reason almost no one would change money in Ruesselheim but finally at the Deutsche Bank, after trying 4 or 5 other banks, I was able to get the euros I needed. By that time I decided that I would just explore Russelheim and save Mainz for my layover in April. Shortly after getting money changed I wandered into a fair that was going on in the streets and had rides set up in a park by the river. It looked like the fair that just happened in Berrien but with more German. After wandering through the fair I took a walk by the river and then went back into town. Earlier I had seen a museum marked on a map so I went to take a look. It turned out that it was a historic park with walking paths that went by old towers and ruins now surrounded by nice gardens. I was temped to climb up into one of the towers since the door at the bottom was locked but I decided against it much to my sense of fun's dismay. By this time it was getting to the hour when I needed to head back to the airport. I laid down on the grass for a little while to rest then made my way to the train station. I got back through customs and security with about 2 hours to spare. When I went to sit down I discovered much to my delight that there was a power plug right beside my chair, an occurrence rather unheard of in European airports. Fortunately I had packed a plug adapter in my carry-on just in case lady luck decided to smile upon me in just such a fashion. I spent the remaining time until boarding watching The Da Vinci Code, an interesting movie based quite a lot on myth and legend. It reminded me very much of National Treasure.

Once we got to the house where I'm staying we put my bags inside then went down to the hospital with Anthony, Chrislyn and her two children (a 2 year old boy and a 3 year old girl). On the walk there we saw a very distinct double rainbow. At the hospital I got on her laptop for a few minutes to check email and Facebook after which Anthony and I played with the kids – who seemed to have limitless energy –while Chrislyn did a few things online. By the time we started to head back to the houses the sun had set. Chrislyn had invited us over to dinner which we thankfully partook in while waiting for Wes to return from a 3 week stay in Zambia. After he got back and introductions were made we stayed and talked for a few minutes then Anthony and I headed back to our house to hit the sack. I unpacked the very limited amount of items in my carry-on, spread the mosquito netting and went to sleep.

Heading out

All my life stored in four bags. Off to Africa.