I have just finished entering class ranks for a few high school students on scholarship thanks to LISAP. (I have an Avalon song stuck in my head). I remember when my report cards from Vipya and Wukani used to have class rank on them. I drove past Wukani on Tuesday last week. It brought back memories of the sky and royal blue uniforms, the wooden temporary classrooms, fingernail inspections, fishtailing on the dirt road if it had been raining hard, Mrs. Mwase, and the Xmas field trip to the Lake. I had forgotten how good 1st and 2nd grade were.
I’m about to start entering in data from the 176 microfinance groups that LISAP is monitoring. They have to have all the information for their quarterly meeting with donors on Wednesday. This means that I’ll probably have something to keep me busy for the next two days.
Last week there were only five people in the office. Everyone else was at two different meetings—one in Karonga and one in Nkhotakota (I’m sure you don’t know where these places are, but they’re fun to type and to try to say). I arrived Tuesday morning in Ekwendeni and sat in the office playing on the internet and occasionally helping when asked from 7:30-5 on Tuesday and Wednesday. The four girls that I’m sharing a house with (One from England, one from Northern Ireland, and two from Canada) drove down to Lilongwe on Wednesday afternoon and I went to stay with the McGills in Mzuzu rather than stay at the house alone. Wednesday night was the Champions League finals between Manchester United and Chelsea. I went over to the Steele’s house (Irish missionaries working in Mzuzu) to watch because they have DSTV and projected it onto the wall. It was quite a game with 8 yellow cards, one red card, and a 1-1 draw after two overtimes. Man. Utd. won on the second round of penalty kicks. The room was extremely divided and occasionally very loud. I was cheering against Man U because they beat Liverpool, but not necessarily for Chelsea because they beat Barcelona. After the game ended at 11:30 we could see all the Man U fans celebrating at the bars as we drove home. Selina (one of their daughters who lived at my house before she was adopted) was sick and stayed home from school the next day. I stayed with her and we watched Barbie: The Twelve Dancing Princesses. It was epic. The kids kept dropping like flies and by Saturday the four youngest were in bed with 102 F temps. I went to the Lake with the oldest two and they had a horse riding lesson and then we went swimming. It was so good to be at Lake Malawi! On Sunday we had a picnic out by the dam (it was spaghetti…I’m not sure why) and then they drove me back to Ekwendeni.
The girls were back from Lilongwe and one of them, Lauren, has three friends from Canada visiting so it’s a fairly full house right now. I’m hoping to go out with the Hospital staff on Wednesday for their Palliative care visits (that’s in between volunteer-trained home-based care and hospice care). Until then, I think I will be entering data into excel spreadsheets. Should be good fun.
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