Speak like a Malawian

                Today we got all of our sweet potatoes dried which means we can all go to Kasungu this weekend to see the animals! We were worried yesterday because it was cloudy with a slight chance of meatballs so not a whole lot of drying went on. We are starting to get really good at getting good information but we still run into problems, there are just fewer problems with each run. One of the problems we had was the dogs pulled on the mosquito net we had over the air dried potatoes to keep them from getting blown off the table and that moved the bricks that were holding down the mosquito net and that messed up the entire order of the sweet potatoes so we didn’t know which slice was where and we could figure out how much water each individual slice lost. We’ll just have to use averages. We also lost some slices randomly. It didn’t help that we had tons of slices.

                We also got to go to the market today. It was really exciting! We went with Ida, Sarah, Bernadette and some other ladies that work at SAFI. They were great and helped us find some good stuff and made sure we didn’t get the white people prices. Mostly there was clothes which I don’t really need and you had to hunt through them and I wasn’t feeling so hot because it was really hot and I was  having a tired day. They were really cheap though if you found something you liked and was your size so that’s not too bad. There were also lots of chichenges so I got three because they were also pretty cheap, like a couple bucks. I’ve been on the lookout for a cute purse. I saw some like the one I want at the market in Lilongwe but we were told it’s cheaper to buy the fabric and have somebody else make it for you. I asked Sarah where she got hers and she said Lilongwe and that I could give a tailor a chichenge to make it out of so I’ll probably buy another chichenge for that.

                On the way to and from the market it was a bit of a walk but not that bad so the locals from SAFI taught us lots of Chichewa. I was trying to keep up but they were going so fast and I don’t remember anything they taught us. We need to just have it written down so we can go over it and practice but we still have some time. The locals really like it when we speak Chichewa.

                It felt so good to just lie down and drink one of my water bottles from my growing collection after we came back. Usually we get water bottles at meals and I drink half of it and then it sits in my room because I don’t drink the rest of the day so I have a pile of opened, half empty water bottles in my room. I made a goal today to starting drinking more so it didn’t look like I was trying to open a bowling alley in my room. The market was really hot so I actually wanted to drink a lot of water when we came back. After I rested a little it was time for dinner and Whitney told me a story that I need to put up here but I forgot what it was so I’ll have to do it another time but no worries because I have another one.

                So Moi lives with her mom in the hostel with us and she hangs out with us a lot. When she peaks in on us working we put her to work and when we’re not working, we play with her. Yesterday I was bored but there wasn’t enough time to watch a movie so I decided I would watch Brian Regan. I asked everybody else if they were bored enough to watch but only Nicolle was so we were buds. On her way in Moi decided she wanted to hang out with Nicolle because she loves Nicolle, everybody does so Moi came in to watch with us. She saw the bag of candy that Dr. Steele left for us that we’ve been rationing at dinner and wanted some. We told her no but I pulled out my Swedish fish and let her have one, then we started the show. Moi, like all children, had a hard time sitting still, especially since she didn’t get what this weird movie was about. At one point I got up to plug in my computer and she saw the bag of fish on the bed and started sneaking them! I also got out my after-bite because I had some bites that were driving me nuts and she wanted part of that action too. My favorite part was when Brian Regan was talking about Dora the Explorer and the map song. When he started singing it, Moi jumped right in and then started singing all the other Dora songs. It was a like shocking and unexpected. As it turns out, she loves Dora. It was cute.