Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Sugar Cane!


     This morning I woke up at 4 but I didn’t know what time it was so I got ready and decided to figure out what time it was because I wasn’t seeing anybody else. When I found out it was four I obviously decided to go back to sleep. While I was sleeping I had a dream that I didn’t wake up until noon and nobody told me and I missed out on half the day. When I woke up I was a little grumpy but I hadn’t missed anything.
After breakfast we went with Chimango to see the village because everybody has only been hanging out in pretty much the same three buildings since we got here. The kids came with us and we all got some good pictures of SAFI and the kids. After that Emily talked about some of the things we were possibly going to do while we are here including some research for Dr. Steele with the solar dryer and helping the sociology majors with their research. We are also helping Ester with her nutrition classes; we are introducing and teaching a little lesson tomorrow about food safety. Ester is pregnant so she will actually be leaving very soon and will be gone for three months and Betha is going to take over for her while she is gone.

     A funny thing about the nutrition classes that that Dr. Johnston made us a little binder with lessons and survey forms for us to use for the class. They are a simplified version of what we learned in International Nutrition. The funny part is that as Whitney and I were reading them, some of the sentences weren’t complete which made us laugh because Dr. Johnston had lots of typos and mistakes on our handouts for class. Another funny thing was that Whitney was looking at a picture of a boiled egg which had instructions on how to boil and egg for the students. She said that she had never had a boiled egg and wanted to try one. I gave her a look like she was crazy because we had boiled eggs for breakfast. The picture she was looking at was an egg cut in half. For some reason she thought the white of the egg was a plate and the yoke was the boiled egg which looked a little like a soufflé. She blames it on jet lag.

     We also visited Ernest today who is an intern working with the fish ponds here. They are set up in a pretty cool way. They have a house for the ducks on the pond so their droppings go into the pond and made it better for the fish and they also use water from the pond to water the crops because it has lots of nutrients in it. Right now the lakes are kind of low because there isn’t as much rain anymore but they have a pump so they can pump water from a well into the ponds. He knows a lot about fish, I was very impressed. He just graduated from University of Malawi which is also called Bunda College. Nichole is one of the Sociology majors that is here with us and wanted some sugar cane so Ernest got all of us a stick. I got a stick the size of a walking cane so I’ll be working on that for a while. He showed how to peel it and eat it with our teeth so we all hacked away at it while he showed us Ester’s garden. Sugar cane is pretty much a soft sweet wood so lots of the fibers get stuck in your teeth and it can be a little bothersome but it was fun to watch everybody try to eat their canes.

     We were all hoping to see Dr. Steele tomorrow because his flight was coming in today but he didn’t make it and there isn't a flight tomorrow so we are going to have a wait a few more days before we get to see him. I also found out when I was downloading my pictures that I brought the wrong memory card with me. I have my old micro card with the adapter instead of my nice new one that will let me take lots of pictures and nice videos. It’s not the worst thing I could forget I guess I’ll just have to rough itJ.

     
This is us on our 14 hour flight from JFK to South Africa

In front of Out of Africa in South Africa

I have a stamp on my passport!

Some of the kids we ran into on our walk

Our hostel we're staying in

My room. I have no furniture besides my bed

My sugar cane walking stick. It'll take me all summer to go through it

Things are going well here. I still don’t think that it has quite sunk in that I’m actually in Africa for three months yet. I’ve been taking baby steps to get used the idea that I’m not going to have all the luxuries I’m used to this summer and that I’m going to miss out on all the exiting things that are happening this summer. I’m sure once I’ve been through a week or two I will be much more comfortable and used the smell.

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