Field Trip 2

The secondary went on their yearly field trip this week.  This time it was the entire secondary together for a trip to the lake to visit the Maldeco Fishery (Its smells about like it sounds).  The buses were questionable at best, but thankfully there weren't any breakdowns.  We had three of them filled with about 200 girls from pre-teens to late teens.  It was...well, I'm beyond being terrified by that kind of thing at this point, but I'm sure that's how I would have felt about a year and a half ago.  The bus trip with the singing, talking, shouting, and squealing is now on my list of the loudest things I've ever experienced.  That was agreed with by our visitor Natasha who has 10 years experience teaching highschool.  It wasn't close to Easter Mass at Outstation but still impressive.  The Fishery itself wasn't all that impressive.  "Here's a dock with no boats, a conveyer belt with no fish, and some walk in freezers."  I think the most exciting part for the girls was getting to grab a handful of ice from the ice maker.  It's not like they've never seen ice, but who doesn't love a big handful when they get the chance.  After the fishery we went to the beach and the girls swam for an hour.  It was...okay, I wasn't beyond being terrified this time.  I kept a safe distance from the 200 pre-teen to late teen girls who are even more excited about swimming than they are about ice.

Malawian Wedding

Mr. Kadangwe is a local teacher in our secondary school.  He is actually a retired headmaster so he's older than the rest of the teachers.  One of his daughters is attending Bakhita in the secondary, another is attending the college, and another daughter was married this weekend.  The service was at the Catholic Parish and it was pretty typical.  The bridal party arrived in a mini-bus decked out in balloons and streamers.  There was a best man, maid of honor, flower girls, and a group of dancing kids (mostly typical).  The mass was like a normal wedding except after the vows everyone started singing and the guests processed/danced up to congratulate the couple.  The strange thing was that the service included the wedding ceremony and an entire mass and still managed to finish in an hour while a regular Sunday mass can't seem to finish in under two.  Afterwards, the bridal party took the mini-bus and as many guests as could fit piled onto a flatbed truck and drove out to the village for the reception.  The volunteers and teachers went in the Sisters' truck arriving a little late so we missed out on the meal.  We arrived at the reception and they had a temporary canopy set up with speakers and a DJ.  The DJ setup was basically a big speaker, microphone and a CD player/Tape deck.  They introduced the bride and groom and began the presentation of money and gifts.  Giving money began with individuals coming up while music was playing and tossing small bills (5 Kwacha) into a basket the couple was holding one bill at a time.  It continued for a while and the people became less concerned about getting it into the basket and were just throwing it into the air or in the couples general direction.  The money was gathered off the ground and given to some money counters off to the side.  Then groups of people started going up announced by the DJ and danced to the music again while just tossing the money up into the air.  One of the groups announced was the Bakhita teachers so I went with the local teachers and got some change from the money counters.  We worked our way through the crowd and waited until it was our turn.  Then we entered the circle danced around tossing money into the air.  Like other times I have danced in a large crowd here, the dancing white guy got a little bit more attention.  This time at least Gary and Eva were with me.  The money tossing lasted about 2 hours.  I guess the closest thing to compare it to is the Dollar Dance.  Maybe it is for people to show off how much money they are giving, but maybe its just to meant to be a little more fun than sticking the money in a card and putting it in a box.  I don't know.  Then the gifts were presented one at a time by the guests.  It was approaching evening at that point so after we gave our gift we had to leave which is unfortunate because I think the party at night would have been a lot of fun.

Republic Day

Not only did we celebrate the 4th of July with a visit from our Slovenian Friend Natasha and ice cream, but this week was also Republic Day in Malawi.  It is similarly celebrating the countries independence from Britain.  It is normally celebrated on the 6th of July with a day off of work.  This year it was announced on the 4th of July that the public holiday would be extended from the 5th to the 7th of July.  After a lot of confusion with our school schedule, everything was worked out until on the 6th of July it was announced again that an error was made and everyone should return to work on the 7th.  Surprisingly, some of our day scholars actually showed up, but the classes were still only about three quarters full

Back Online

So the weblog hasn't been working for awhile thanks to a combination of things.  It might have had something to do with me changing the settings to keep out unwanted comments or my crazy email address with a .mw suffix, but they thought I was something called a "Spam Blog".  I don't even know what that is.  Anyways they were requiring me to confirm all my posts through the website which might have been easy if internet connection in town hadn't been out of commission for a month.  There was some international confusion with Belgium about new equipment or settings and they didn't realize it until everything stopped working.  It's back online now but its really slow and nearly impossible to get anything done.  Should that explaination I just gave seem strange, because at this point it sounded perfectly normal to me. 

 

Anyways, Last week I noticed that the sink in my computer lab was draining slow which was weird because the only thing I use it for is the rag to clean the chalkboard.  I removed the trap at the bottom to find the problem and a frog was staring back at me.  I couldn't get him to come out my direction so I unscrewed the pipe from where it went into the wall to find a few frogs at the other end and a few more head the other way into the wall.  After clearing the pipe I had unscrewed and pushing a hose through the wall to the gutter outside, I had removed 8 to 10 frogs from the drain.  Spam Blog? Belgium? Sink? Computer Lab? Frogs?  I think this post started out bizarre and took a major turn for the worst.