Radio Silence....Continued

Well, I am sorry for the extended radio silence on this end, but I am sorry to report that it will likely continue for another week - but I do hope to get another post up before the end of the month (fingers crossed).
Mom and Meghan and the Arntz-Grays had a fabulous trip around Malawi. We viewed the majestic tea fields south of Blantyre, found out that it rains. Hard. In dry season on the Zomba plateau, saw TONS of elephants, hippos, warthogs, waterbuck, crocs and birds in Liwonde National Park, went snorkeling at Cape Maclear, and visited Senga Bay. Mom and I also discovered a great little place called Ntchisi Forest Lodge and went hiking in the temperate rain forest there.
With only one day of rest, we were back into travel gear and heading to Zambia, where we had a fabulous safari (food excepted) in South Luangwa National Park, viewing giraffes, zebra, lions, hippos, crocs and even the elusive leopard.
With spectacularly poor foresight I planned my major Monitoring and Evaluation workshop for this week, and Mom and Meghan just left on Friday...the result being that I have been working all weekend to try and finish due to my lack of focus last week...
Since I am (still) preparing, and the workshop is out of town in Zomba (we are leaving today at three), I will likely not have access to internet. It will be a hectic week (last workshop involved many 12 hour days and it was just a three day workshop whereas this is FIVE), so I expect to crawl into bed on Friday night and not emerge for some time. Hopefully I can pull together a better post with pics on Sunday - chat with you then!

Visitors!

So my Mom and Regan’s friend Meghan arrived safely on Monday. Thanks to my roommate Heather, we found out that there is a viewing platform at the airport from which you can watch the plane come in. Regan and I each paid 5 kwacha to go up and waited excitedly. The plane was pretty much on time, and we could see well enough to watch our guests come down the ramp. We waved excitedly and they saw us waving down at them.
We had thought they might be too tired from their trip to do anything, so had nothing planned, but they got a second wind and we took them down to the big vegetable market, then Regan and Meghan went out for chips with Regan’s best friend from school, Hawah, while I took my Mom to see where Jules works.
On Tuesday, the girls had some sleeping in planned and an afternoon shopping trip. Mom and I attended the Rotary Club of Lilongwe lunch meeting – it was my first Rotary experience here and it was very nice. Afterwards, we went to my workplace to meet some of my colleagues, though I hope we will visit again as there were many people away.
On Wednesday we were scheduled to drop off a donation of medical supplies that my Mom arranged at Madisi hospital, about an hour north of Lilongwe. We met the Hospital Administrator, the Matron and the doctor who will be working with the drugs. The drugs were very gratefully received and I think my Mom was inspired to make a presentation to her Rotary Club upon her return to see if more assistance can be given.
Thursday was the monitoring trip I had planned to take my Mom and Meghan along for so that they could see a Malawian village. Jules and Regan joined us for the trip, since neither of them has had an opportunity to see a village yet. The day started in the regional CADECOM office, where my colleagues briefed us on the work being done under the I-Life DAP program – a program being delivered throughout Malawi by a consortium of NGOs. In Mchingi, it is delivered by CADECOM. The strength CADECOM has at accomplishing work on the ground was apparent – CADECOM’s I-Life beneficiaries are the only ones (of the seven I-Life NGOs) to succeed in motivating their beneficiaries achieve self-sustainability in an irrigation scheme, as well as in a warehouse building project.

Since we were going into a village, we dressed in chitenges, traditional wear for females:

The event we were there to witness was a bicycle handover – the community members who volunteer to be leaders of actions in their communities receive bicycles in order to complete their work (they also act as an incentive). Nine bicycles were distributed and the event was attended by the local parish priest as well as the Traditional Authority (chief). At the village level, each village is represented by a village head, and a group of village heads will be organized under a GVH (group village head). A group of GVH’s will then be organized under the TA (Traditional Authority) – so you can imagine his importance. It was thrilling after the event for my Mom to formally be introduced to the chief and to sit for a short chat.
After the handover, my colleagues took us around to show us some of the work completed under the program. We met with a Village Savings and Loans committee that had saved up 104,000 kwacha, a marketing group who had completed building a warehouse and a group involved in an irrigation scheme. It happened to be the day a new chief was being inducted, and the gulewankulu (masked dancers) were out dancing as part of the celebration. It is a rare even to happen upon gulewankulu and from our cultural training we learned that outsiders are not always welcomed into the ceremony. I don’t know if it was because we were with CADECOM staff who are known to the community or if these dancers were just more open to outsiders, but we stopped the car and got out and were encouraged to take photos and mingle with the dancers – it was an incredible experience. Once we got back into our car, dancers jumped onto the back for a ride…again, very unusual and exciting. It was a very long and tiring day, but worth every minute….what an experience for us, and for Mom and Meghan as well.
Last night we invited all the WUSC volunteers to dinner at our favorite restaurant, Blue Ginger. The food, as always, was delicious and the company was great – Mom got to meet almost everyone we know here in Lilongwe in one night.
Now it is Saturday morning and we are finalizing our packing to leave on our big trip today…not sure how often I will have internet access, but I will try to keep you up to date!