Getting in the Groove

Today we taught our food safety lesson. We pretty much just talked about how to keep food safe. The sociology majors Nichole and Camille came to watch us. It was interesting teaching a class. I have never done that before. I also have never been translated before so it was definitely a new experience trying to plan a lesson that would be interesting and informative while leaving plenty of time for questions and translation. Our lesson was basically the “Fight Bac” campaign and was pretty simple but it still took an hour to get through it. Ester translated for us and it was cool to watch her because I know she wasn’t translating us word for word but just delivering the same idea to the students. She is a very good teacher and the students responded well to her. She teaches the parents here. Since this is a school for families, they have the spouses sit together. I thought it was a little strange that they didn’t sit together when they came to class but they all showed up at different times and after introductions they moved to sit next to each other.

After that we worked on the nutrition packets that we made in International Nutrition. We are going to give them to the families before they leave SAFI but they have to be translated first. The problem with that is that each packed has a description of what each nutrient does for the body and since there are 28 families that each have a packet, that means a lot of translation for that part even though the descriptions are short. To help Ester, we went through all the packets and found duplicating packets and decided on one packet’s nutrient section for Ester to translate and we can put that page in all the packets. Some of the packets are hard to read so we are going to fix that too.

After that we had lunch and some free time. I took a shower which felt great except I wore my flip flops today because my feet stank so bad from my Keens so my feet are dirty again but they don’t stink like they did. I don’t think I’m going to ever win this battle. The showers are also really cold and we run out of water a lot. When we take showers only one person can take on at a time, and you need to get yourself wet, turn off the water while you lather up and then turn it back on to rinse. It’s a little bit of a process but the cold water and standing in the stall all wet is good motivation to take a fast shower.

After my shower, Dr. Steele showed up which was great. He’s is really fun even though he mostly just watches us. It’s fun to have a different perspective in our dinner conversations. While Dr. Steele was moving into his room and settling in, we played with the kids and taught them some songs and games. Their favorite game was Duck, Duck, Goose. At first they would just say Duck and you knew you were it when they said it in a higher pitch which was funny. They would also cheat and sit in any open place in the circle. It was also funny when they started conspiring against us and people in the circle would start picking who would be picked. It was fun. Lots of people were watching and laughing. There was a group of boys that looked like they were about 11 who watched but wouldn’t play. I thought that was funny because they were acting like 11-year-olds in the US. They got pretty good really fast. I was definitely wearing the wrong shoes but it was still fun. I don’t think I’ve ever played Duck, Duck, Goose with an audience, especially one that would cheer a little like it was a sporting event.

When we finally finished playing, we went back to our rooms to get some more down time. Whitney braided my hair for me. She was really nervous but did a pretty good job the second time. She’ll probably post those pictures on her blog. We chatted for a while because that’s what we do. When we were bored again, I broke my sugar cane in half so we could take it over to John since he missed that little excursion. Now I have the shorted stick! Whitney and I were saying that there is no way we are going to go through our sticks and that they were more likely to go home as souvenirs but we didn’t know if customs would let us do that. When we went over the boys dorms we found Dr. Steele and we talked to him for a while. He talked about the big spiders and how the power goes out and how things have changed since he was here last year. A few minutes after he told us about how the power goes out but they have a generator but can’t always get it working right away, the power went out! We decided to go outside and just hang out until something happened. Everybody else was in the conference room. The internet must have been working before the power went out but it wasn’t working a good chunk of the day. When they showed up Dr. Steele was playing with his stargazing app. We found Ursa Minor with it which was cool I guess but Emily and I went back to the girl’s dorm to get more flashlights and on the way back we saw Orion. It was really close to the horizon and it was huge. They night sky is pretty different here. I didn’t know I would be able to tell the different between the sky here and back home but it does make sense that they are so different. I mean home is in the north west quadrant and I’m in the south east one.

The power went back on while Emily and I got our flashlights so we hung out in the dining room and just waited for dinner. The power went out a couple more times while we waited and were talking but we were prepared this time with flashlights.

At dinner yesterday, Nichole was talking about how she loved watching Twilight because it was so bad; she specifically talked about the last movie. She convinced us all to watch it if she downloaded it sot that was her quest today. We assumed that she didn’t get it downloaded because the internet was not at its best today but somehow it did. We are going to watch it in a few minutes.

Tomorrow we are going to the farmer training, in Kasungu then on Friday we are going to Lilongwe for the weekend where we can stock up on some things we need and get our cell phones. Next week we are going on a Safari so guess who is super excited! Moses was telling us about a park where we can see the five major African animals, he mentioned zebras specifically. Emily could tell I was really excited. I told her that I really like zebras. When I had my zebra flashlight at dinner she said she believed me like she didn’t before. I have tons of zebra stuff, apparently she just hasn’t noticed before.

Things are going well. I’m still not quite over my jet lag but it’s getting a little better I think. I still keep waking up about two hours early and then I have a hard time going back to sleep. I guess as long as I’m not tired I’m ok.