Strange things

                Friday night there was a dance party. It was really weird. It started as this nice casual kind of thing for Nicolle and Camille for their birthdays. As people were invited, they got really excited and it turned into a huge even that everybody was really excited for. They were expecting food and decorations and all kinds of stuff. Ernest turned himself into the DJ which I thought was weird. There wasn’t a whole lot of dancing at the beginning when I went and it really weirded me out more than anything and I was just too tired to really summon up the confidence and whatnot to deal with a dance party. They are just not my thing. Apparently a while after I left a bunch of drunk farmers showed up and it got pretty crazy but Ernest and his music were not happening.

                Speaking of Ernest, he wanted to be our guide in Salima this weekend so we took him and to be honest, he wasn’t that great. I think he just wanted a free meal out of us or to get away or something. I think he’s trying really hard to impress us but I have no idea why. Anyway, we went to two lodges on Monkey bay right near where we went last week. It was also weird because Whitney stayed at SAFI to try to meet up with a family friend/friend of a friend, Adam stayed to finish his proposal and Camille was sick so she also stayed. We had a nice small group which was definitely strange to us. We also went on a quick boat tour and rode around the island and saw Malawi from the perspective of the lake but we didn’t see any hippos or alligators or anything.

                Today we went to church with Akim again except this time we went to the Chichewa service. It was papal Sunday so there was a lot going on and they were also raising money to finish the new church they are building. It’s weird visiting churches here because you can’t sneak in the back just to observe. You show up and all of a sudden you taken to the front in front of everybody and they introduce you and talk about you to the congregation and since they were fundraising they kept looking at us to give them more money. After the service was when most of the fundraising was. The choir would sing and some guy would point at different sections of the congregation to come up and donate. The problem is that we all donated what we brought when they passes the collection bowl so we didn’t have any more but people expected us to keep putting in bills. As it turns out, people will just take 1000kwatcha and donate it in small bills such as 20kwatcha to make it look like a lot. Nobody really warned us about that but we could leave so we did but we couldn’t go back to SAFI because the minister wanted to meet with us.

                Yeah, that was also weird. We thought we were just meeting with the minister and saying hi and whatnot but he took us to his home and fed us lunch. When people feed us they like to feed us a lot. The food was ok aside from the beef and the chicken. I only had beef and it was on the bone and we only had spoons to eat with because usually people just eat with their hands. That made it really hard to eat and my spoon was really wimpy and bent when I tried to use it to get the meat off the bone or to cut it into manageable sized pieces. Apparently the chicken wasn’t any better. Adam said it was like rubber and must have been way undercooked or way overcooked because it also was next to impossible to eat. Whitney sat between the minister and the accountant for SAFI so she was nervous about trying too hard to cut her meat and it flying off her plate or whatever because we were eating with our plates on our laps. When we were done we had some soda and that was probably the safest part.

                When we got back to SAFI I just wanted to relax so I lay on my bed and read a little before I started falling asleep. Then Whitney knocked on my door and told me that we had to go eat lunch that the ladies at SAFI prepared for us so we didn’t offend them. At this point it was like 3 and dinner is a 6. We got lots of food today.

                So today was just one of those days were I was really sarcastic and a little rude so when I was talking to Whitney I wouldn’t talk very loud because I didn’t want everybody to hear. She was complaining that I always mumble but then I told her that I was just being sarcastic and kind of rude so she leaned in and I whispered what I was thinking to her. It wasn’t offensive or anything it’s just that sometimes people get on my nerves. After that she said it was okay if I said those things quietly, at least in certain company.

                Things are going well, our research hit a bump and we don’t really know where we’re going with it right now so that’s on hold but other than that, things are pretty awesome.