We had to move a very heavy piece of very delicate electronic equipment several times today. I'm constantly amazed at the ingenuity and willingness of the national staff. I recruited several drivers, the mechanic and a couple watchmen to move the AVR. Everyone grabbed a corner, elbowed in and heaved.
It's probably not the best practice, occupational-safety-wise, but everything worked out. I think the law of the land is that the ends justify the means. No harm, no foul.
In a couple of days a member of the team will leave. He was here temporarily to recruit and train someone in a position with the company, but he was a fully-integrated part of our team. So, in honor of his imminent departure, we had a feast.
We went early to the market to buy fish (which is very expensive in this landlocked country, in this district hundreds of miles from the Lake) and grill-able vegetables, then returned home and prepared a huge meal, barbequed Cameroonian style by the doctor.
We had an excellent meal of fish, chicken, corn, plantains, salad and potatoes from a variety of cultures. And it was topped off by a decadent chocolate and pear cake.
Not a bad sendoff.
It's the height of dry season here in Malawi, and that means dust. One thing the district of Chiradzulu is good at is growing bricks, and bricks come from clay-y soil. There's an abundance of trademark African red-dirt, clay-filled soil all around us, and when the dry season comes, that dust turns into haze.
The gorgeous vistas in the early morning are replaced with blank expanses of dust-censored sky.
But the sunsets are spectacular.
Ground was broken, but now all the paperwork is official.
A little bit backwards, but hopefully we'll get there.
We had a meeting with the community counsel at Thumbwe Health Center today in regards to the rehabilitation and extension of the current staff accommodation at the health center. MSF is funding and organizing the building of two kitchen/bathroom facilities to add on to the current staff housing, to better accommodate the medical staff who are assigned to work at the health center.
Today we introduced the contractor to the community and solidified the plans for construction. It will be a major project, and will rely on significant community support. We laid out the areas of the new kitchen blocks, and staked out the area for the pit latrines. Next up, the community will dig the pits and foundations voluntarily under the supervision of our hired contractor. Then the building will begin.
But today was all about getting on the same page, and the council was firmly supportive.
6 weeks later, we'll see what we have.
Malawi time, that is.
We live halfway up Mount Chiradzulu. Every once and a while, we climb the other half to reach the top. Our reason is the age-old old reason of "because it's there," realizing a primal need to stand on top of something.
So up we head up on Sunday in what has turned out to be a monthly pilgrimage to the top of our immediate world.
Today we were weary (no one knew from what) so we set a very slow pace. The trails lacing the mountainside are a combination of wild game trails (from hyenas and antelope, but we haven't seen either) and tracks worn by charcoal merchants and firewood-gatherers. The mountain is a protected park, so both charcoal making and firewood gathering are prohibited. But no one seems to enforce that...
The trails meander across the face of the mountain, sometimes ending at a good-sized tree stump, or getting you to a well-established trail. Every summit attempt is a lesson in track finding, directionality, and patience. None of the trails are hiking trails. There's no such thing as a switchback on Mount Chiradzulu. One section of trail goes straight up a steep slope of loose dirt and fallen leaves for over 100 feet.
We keep trying to find a route to the top with a trail the whole way, and today we were almost successful. We only bushwhacked (literally: we cut a stick and whacked at the bushes) once for about 50 feet when we lost all semblance of a way forward. But most attempts end with us pushing through dense foliage, sometimes with the help of a machete, for long periods of time. While walking straight up the mountain.
We are relieved from the torture of our slog straight into the sky by periodic appearances of the local mated pair of eagles. They nest nearby our house, and hunt on and around the mountain. With such a steep slope, you can be surprised by a pair of eagles soaring up a thermal just 20 feet from your face, as you go from looking down on them to watching them from the normal inferior vantage point in a matter of seconds as they blast by.
The family of eagles was quiet today, but a mated pair of falcons made up for the lack of aquiline display. Malawi is an excellent country for bird watching. At the summit, we heard the two falcons calling to each other and could pick out one of the two perched on a tree just one rocky outcropping over. It was incredible to watch their effortless aerial acrobatics from a front-row seat. Cool.
After a three-hour ascent (mostly on relatively well-established trails!), we hung out on the summit for a bit, watched the avian show, then headed down. We were pretty tired, and not looking forward to the long walk back. But we followed well-established trails and let gravity help us out. Incredibly, 20 minutes later we passed the source and hit the flat track that is the final stretch before home. What? Three hours up and 20 min down? How?
I guess because we ran, slid and jumped down without much pause. The summit isn't that far, just hard to access.
But the whole experience was excellent, and we are zeroing in on the easiest way to the top. By the time we leave, we may be professional-level guides for Mount Chiradzulu.
Maybe I should work on my mapmaking skills. For institutional memory and all...
Today's weekly shopping included a trip to Limbe Market, a first for me.
We bought a huge bag full of various vegetables for the equivalent of five US dollars, but more importantly we wandered around and saw the sights.
Of course we were targeted by every single vendor there as two azungus walking around in a sea of Africans, but we still managed to enjoy ourselves.
Although we may or may not have promised our firstborn children to the sweet potato vendor next week...
I guess we'll see.
Far from another installment in The Matrix, a journey to the source is a stiff walk to a secluded glad where a spring-fed stream tumbles down a cut in the mountain and meets the beginning of the water board's infrastructure.
We headed up there today at lunch to monitor the water level to try to find a solution to our inconsistent supply. We poked and prodded and measured and photographed, but then eventually just sat and enjoyed the area. It's cool in the shade, calm by the flowing stream, and comfortable on a big bolder. Apparently monkeys live in the area, although I don't see any today.
Maybe I'll bring a picnic up here on the weekend.
It is work, after all. Important observation.
The back of the truck parked along the side of the road, fixing the power lines, reads "towards power all day everyday."
It's a lofty goal.
Electricity is actually fairly decent here, but they're repairing the transformers for the next week. It's been nearly 24 hours without city power, and there has been less than 10 hours total in the last 5 days.
But we have generators here. We have a heavy-duty generator at our office on a serious automatic switchover and startup device that generates three phase power and is designed to run 24/7. We have to protect our cold-chained drugs, after all.
At the house, where only comfort and some perishable food is at stake, we have a much more puny generator that has to be (*gasp*) started up manually. This runs the security lighting, the refrigerators, one washing machine and a single socket in the whole house.
(That socket is located in someone's room. We may or may not have plugged the toaster into that socket during an especially ill-timed blackout. The cord may or may not have been too short to set the toaster on anything so we may or may not have stood there with a toaster in our arms for four loads of toast. It's all speculation at this point.)
So we suffer on, with internet and air conditioning at the office, but candlelight and gas cookers at the house.
Not too bad.
