Tea Fields

Tea fields are everywhere here. Our resident Brit says that it is *almost* as good as British tea (I'm pretty sure this is where they import their tea from). Compared to how all pervasive tea fields are here we only have a few scattered stalks of corn in Michigan. Most of the fields are owned by large plantations, you can tell when the ones that aren't since they don't look as nice.

Oct 17, 2010 (Sun) – 9:48pm (GMT +2) - Moving, New People and ICU

Last Friday Anthony and I moved to the guest house so that Elisa's brother's family can move into the house we were in when they get here this Wednesday. Dr. Fam flew out early this morning for a vacation in Malaysia before going to work in Nigeria. This last week a new girl came who is a physical therapist from Brazil. Now there are four of us living in the guest house, the new girl (Diane – pronounced kind of like “journey”), Anthony, Hannah and I. I made bread by myself for the first time tonight and it looks like it came out well, we'll see how it tastes tomorrow. The squid proxy is up and running as of today so now I get to have lots of people complaining to me about what they can't do on the internet. The next thing I need to work on is configuring squid so that I can route https connections through it. I found a tutorial online that looks promising, I just need to go through it and see if it actually pans out. We were going to watch Moonraker tonight but Hannah got back from the hospital quite late and we all have early mornings tomorrow. Yesterday we walked out to the dam after potluck and I discovered that the water system control building is quite good for climbing on.

Last Wednesday I went into BAH with Wes, Alex and Pelica where we spent a long day working on the new ICU. It turns out that we are going to have to completely redo the wiring since the “electricians” that were hired to do it did a completely crap job. It wasn't even just incompetence, he also stole wire or else it just magically disappeared all on its own. There were several places where 6 or 8 wires would be coming down on both ends like they were supposed to but if you went up into the attic all the wires were attached to a single wire that was run across the length of the attic then attached to more wires to go back down. I'm not sure how they thought they would ever get away with it, it's not like we wouldn't notice when things didn't work.

Oct 4, 2010 (Mon) – 9:26pm (GMT +2)

So I was just out making my self some food (lunch and supper). Just after I got back to the house the power finally came back on. There was a scheduled power outage from about 8 this morning till about 9 this evening (scheduled in that we know power was going to be out today, we however had no idea for how long it would be out). Saturday the power was also out for 3 or 4 hours ending just after midnight, as far as I know that one was unscheduled or at least unannounced. Anyway, a few minutes after the power came back on a bat started flying around the house. I have to say it is a bit unnerving how close it gets without ever actually hitting. I watched it for a few minutes then went and got my video camera and started recording it. At one point it landing on one of the window bars in the sitting room and I started to get closer for a better shot when suddenly a large owl smacked into the window trying to catch the bat. It was just a bit startling. If it hadn't been for the glass that bat would have had its life ended quite abruptly.

Two of the guys from Loma Linda left this morning. Jere is staying for another two weeks to work on setting up some biometric time clocks and start training on the patient finance accounting system. Of course right after they leave (well technically the night before, but after any useful time of them being here) we discover that the squid proxy we have set up to control web access doesn't allow through SSL connections like gmail which is a problem. Wednesday I'll be able to get in touch with them and hopefully they can help me figure out a solution if I haven't by then. (In the interim I've just routed all https traffic around the proxy which is definitely not a long term solution.)

On Friday Elisa, Christy, Alex and I went to Mount Mulanje (the third highest mountain in Africa) and climbed up the the waterfalls. Christy called me a little before 10 am to invite me and the phone ringing woke me up. She only gave me about 10 minutes notice so it was a bit of a scramble. The climb up the the falls took about an hour and by the time we got there we were all very hot and sweaty so jumping into the cold water felt good. After a minute or two the water stopped feeling cold once out bodies went numb. At one point I looked at my hands and they had completely lost all colour. Once we were sufficiently numb we got out and Chrity and Elisa laid on the large rock by the pool while Alex and I climbed up to the head of the waterfall. After awhile Alex went back down and strung up a hammock he had brought with him and I explored a few hundred meters further upstream. We headed back down the mountain around 4:30pm and got down just as the sun was setting.





Saturday we had a welcome potluck for the Haytans. A whole bunch of people came out from Blantyre and some of the peace core people in the area came as well. There was at least 50 people. The variety of food alone, never mind the quantity, was quite overwhelming. It was hard to know where to start and what to leave for seconds, thirds and fourths. I think I gained back all the calories I lost climbing the mounting. It was nice to be able to socialize with more people. After eating a group of us younger people (it feels odd that I can't categorize us as teenagers anymore) went down to the hospital to show around those who hadn't been there before. A little later some of us went out walking again over to the tea field this time. I hadn't been out that direction before so it was new for me as well. I discovered about half way through the walk when I went to take a picture that I had left the memory card on my desk. I'll have to get back out there soon with a fully functioning camera.

As I mentioned earlier the power was off for the whole evening. We had been going to have a movie night but projectors don't work well without power. I ended up teaching everyone (except for Alex who already know and was quite good) how to play Slaps by flashlight. Anthony kept apologizing every time he hit someones hand and I kept trying to convince him that that was unnecessary.

Yesterday and today were pretty much normal work days although yesterday I did spend awhile skyping various people in the evening. The mosquitoes have been getting worse and so has the heat.

Sept 28, 2010 (Tue) – 5:27pm (GMT +2)

So today I ended up spending several hours multitasking between virus scans and looking for resources relating to Arthurian legend then somehow branched into looking up corner desks to use with multiple monitors. There is going to be a whole list of books I want to buy when I get back to the States. Someday when I have my own library (right next to my den) I will have a large section dedicated to works on Arthur, Merlin and the knights of the round table.

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.