This past weekend, our Regional Director came in to Lilongwe to visit with the volunteers. Since CIDA is here evaluating the Uniterra program (after the weekend), WUSC brought all the volunteers together from throughout the country, so our RD decided to meet with us all over the weekend. It was great to see some of the volunteers from all over the country that we don't get the chance to visit with all the time! And we met the one volunteer we hadn't met yet (though she is leaving Malawi in 5 days) as well.
All in all, there was a lot of time spent in meetings, but we also got a lot of free food (so none of the volunteers were complaining about that!). On Friday night we took it (relatively) easy in preparation for the I love Malawi party on Saturday. We had Melissa and Shawn home for a welcome home dinner from Shawn, as he has finally returned from 3 months in the Sudan working to get refugees safely out of the country. Melissa and Shawn hosted my birthday dinner just 2 weeks after we had arrived (and shortly before Shawn left), and I wanted to repay the favour. We found sweet corn (it was SO yummy!!) and pork spare ribs (pigs are not a big thing for livestock farmers here, so pork is relatively scarce...it was delicious and the company was great.
On Saturday, Heather's mom wasn't feeling that great, but she did manage to make it to our volunteer dinner at Claud's. Claud's is one of the two italian places in Lilongwe, and although I am committing sacriledge by saying this (to most Lilongweans), it is not my favorite place. They have an excellen peri-peri chicken dish, but whenever I have ventured off the peri-peri, I haven't enjoyed my meal (not for the price anyways)...unfortunately Saturday was no exception...but the gin and tonics were great.
After dinner, we headed to the I love Malawi party we have been excited about all week - it was a blast - tons of Malawians as well as Mzungus and we actually drank the bar dry (not me personally!!!) and then headed to Chezntemba - site of many past dancing excursions. Unfortunately, Chez had a band on outside and we had to wait forever for them to put music on inside...oh well...
Sunday was an all afternoon meeting with our RD, followed by a cocktail party with our CIDA evaluator. Heather's mom went to the clinic in the morning as she still wasn't well, and she has Malaria!!! And she was taking Malarone (supposedly effective prophylaxis)!!! Our friend Meilssa just got over a bout of Malaria as well, so it is odd, given that it is dry season.
We went home after the cocktail party and started a movie...I think I saw all of 5 minutes before falling asleep at like 7:30.
On Monday we had presentations for the CIDA evaluator, and were invited to join her for dinner at our favorite restaurant in Lilongwe, Babas Delhi Darbar - it was fabulous...seriously one of the best indian restaurants I have ever been to. Our Malawian guests did not feel the same way though and just picked at their food - I don't want to generalize, but on the whole, most Malawians really do not vary their diet and are not as interested in exploring new options.
Anyways, did I blog that 'Chambo with head' (my volleyball team) actually won a game last week!!! Changing our record from 0 for 5 to 1 win of 6 games??? Progress! Anyways, we face off again tonight and unluckily pulled the late game, so we don't play until 9:45...wish us luck!
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