Happy Holidays from Balaka!!!
Here are some action photos of a lab session on electricity.
11 December '03
Well, now I can check the malaria box on my medical forms - been there, done that, and it's no fun! I recall writing in a previous update that everyone around here seems to react to malaria like a common cold or flu. Well, now I can say that it's a heavy hitter - in a whole different league from a cold or flu and the treatment isn't any better. It started as weak legs and light headedness on Monday morning, 1 December. I had been up for about 45 minutes when I realized that I wasn't going to be of much use that day and then a fever came on quickly and my kidneys started aching. I took a treatment dose of Lariam (mefloquin) and that had all kinds of side effects that lasted about a week.confusion, sleeplessness, dizziness, and upset stomach. It had me flat on my back until Thursday, which is when I could get up and around a little bit, but I was still very tired all of the time. Jenny, Lisa, and Justyna took good care of me and made sure that I had taken each treatment dose on time (even woke up at 12:30 am to check), that I had water, and whatever food I thought I could eat. They were great.
I had been taking paludrine every day to prevent malaria, but I went away for a retreat over the weekend and forgot to bring it along. I guess I gave the little bugs the window of opportunity and they took it. I'm back on the meds now and I'm sure that I'll be more diligent about taking it.
One good thing was that I was able to read a lot while I was sick. I read the Alchemist in one go and really enjoyed it. That's one of those ones that I want to go back over again, but more slowly.
We have completed the 1st year of the Secondary School. We made the tough decision not to advance 20 out of 67 students into Form 2 (10th grade.) We don't know if they will actually come back here to repeat Form 1 or go somewhere else to get into Form 2, or drop out of school all together. We are eager to see them back here. The line was drawn at failing to get a 35% or higher on 7 out of 10 classes, a pretty low bar itself. We debated many different aspects of the concept of promoting students on to the next level and we settled on this as being the best way for all of the students involved.
Last Sunday we put Lisa on the plane back to Rome and we picked up Katy and Gabriella. They seem to be getting settled pretty well and are beginning to discover Balaka for themselves. It's fun to have the new energy and the fresh perspective on everything that we are trying to do here.
It has rained a few times in the last week and everything is very green already. We've been through one complete annual cycle now of the crops. When I finally got up and out of bed and went towards town, I was surprised not to see anyone. It was like a ghost town. It turned out that everyone had gone out to the fields that day to do the planting. Now they rely on a fairly steady supply of rain for the next 120 days until it gets harvested, so pray for rain in Malawi!
OK. I'm going to try and get this put onto the website as soon as I can before something else comes up. I hope to check in again soon. Take care and may God bless you and your families over the holidays.
28 November '03
Well, time is marching on. We are quickly closing in on the one-year mark in Malawi. Lisa (from Washington DC) is leaving on 7 December and two new volunteers (Katie from New Jersey and Gabriela from Poland) are arriving on the same day. With the one going home and the 2 new ones coming in, we'll be 3 from the US and 2 from Poland.
Last week we said goodbye to the Form 1 (9th grade) students until January. They put together a farewell presentation for Lisa on their own initiative. They did a good job and we all felt that it was a good demonstration of how much they have grown over the last year. The next day we held entrance exams for next year's Form 1 students. The many different aspects of growth of our students was quite evident between the incoming students and the ones who have finished the year. So all of the hard work by both the teachers and the students is paying off. It's a good feeling.
However busy I find myself during the term, it gets turned up one more notch when it comes time to grade all of the exams and compile the grades. It's looking like we'll have covered all of the topics on the syllabi for my Business Math and Management classes, which is a big relief because it was in doubt for a while. We have final exams left in the college and then entrance exams for the incoming secretarial students.
I've also been substitute teaching English at a local seminary since October. There was going to be a volunteer coming from Canada, but his father had a stroke right before he was to leave so he didn't come. They didn't have anyone else, so I'm doing it. I'll be teaching until a priest comes from Ireland to take over in December. It is a fun class to teach, even though it is on Saturday mornings, because the 25 seminarians are very eager to improve their English and everyone is very active in class discussions (a contrast to the college classes here.) I've run into them around town a few times and its fun to know more people.
The planning for next year shows a lot of changes and the year long view has really made next year seem to shrink. For now it looks like I'm going to be teaching a couple of classes on spreadsheets, a couple of math review classes, and 9th grade Physical Science. We're also going to try and find time over the break to hold computer classes for the sisters and local teachers so that they can begin doing their grade calculations on the computer. We are growing from just Form 1 to Form 1 & 2, which will mean about 100 more students on campus. We are not going to take 1st year accounting students next year because we don't have enough teachers, but there may be up to 30 new 1st year secretarial students coming in. We are hiring 3 or 4 local teachers for the secondary school and the college and staffing the hostel and dining hall which open in January. Definitely an increase in momentum of the school and a very different environment here on the campus.
As for me, I'm doing pretty well. I missed a day of school in mid-October because I was sick. It came on quickly with a lot of body aches, fever, and a sore throat. They sent me for a malaria check right away. They didn't see any malaria parasites in my blood cells, but they did say that I've had malaria for some time because they saw "polymorphs" in my blood using pigment dyes. Jenny (from Wisconsin) & Justyna (from Poland) had had strep throat in early October and I may have gotten a mild dose of that. Whether is was the strep or the polymorphs or a combination, they knocked me down for a few hours. Some "new generation" of antibiotics from a visiting Italian doctor and a dose of stronger anti-malarial medicine set me right. A few weeks ago I got a heat rash on my stomach and arms. I finally developed a hunch that it was related to eating mangos. I stopped eating them and it cleared up and then it came back when I started eating them again. When I mentioned it to the others it turns out that one of the sisters is also allergic to mangos with the same symptoms and some people knew others who were as well. It's a bummer because we get some big, sweet, and fresh mangos here. Not worth the rash though. The pineapples have just started showing up in the market, so I'll just move on to them.
October to December is the hot season, but I haven't been too uncomfortable. It's been getting up over 100 F (39 C) and just going down to the low 90's at night. I suppose it's pretty low humidity or maybe I'm just lucky. It's rained a couple of times this month and it's so nice and cool when it does rain. Looking forward to the daily showers that should start in mid-December.
There are some visitors starting to line up for next year. My sister, my brother, and the brother of one of the other volunteers will come over the Easter break. They got flights for around $1000, so if you're thinking about coming, check into the prices soon! There is another tentative visitor at the end of July/early August, and then it'll be just the last few months before we leave!
Some local news:
+ My 92 year old friend, Agogo Makalande, is doing just OK. He had a tough time for a while with a dose of dysentery and he is losing some range of motion in his arms. Some traditional medicine helped him with the dysentery. He laughs about walking like he's drunk whenever he goes anywhere. I've seen him bounce back from worse shape over the last year, so I hope that he is able to again. Pray for him, eh? A local youth group just put a new roof of plastic sheets and grass on his house that will keep him dry.
+ My friend's son, Mattias, was in the hospital for a week with malaria. He lost a lot of weight, but he's coming back strong now (his mom is a nurse.)
+ There was some problem with the import of salt to the country, so there was a shortage for about a week. We didn't run out, but it makes you think about the people who do run out of the necessities.
+ One of the little neighbor girls met me on my way to Mass with a big smile on her face. On the way, she pulled a dead bird out of her pocket. She explained that she "went 'Pow!' with a rock and got it!" When I asked if she was going to eat it she looked at me like I was crazy and said "sure!" (or I should say "shuwa!")" She put it back in her pocket and off we went to church.
+ There have been about 4 kids hunting grasshoppers in the long grass near the cemetery with a bow & really long arrow. They were pretty successful and had a handy way of skewering them along the side of their bows. So I asked again "Are you going to eat them?" and again, "shuwa!"
+ Our housekeeper told us that she heard something and wanted to check with us."Is it true that Azungus (white people) put clothespins on their babies' noses to make them pointed?" I laughed and said "shuwa!" but she didn't believe it.
+ We held mock interviews for the students here at the school. We tried to make them as formal and realistic as possible. We gave the students an opportunity to ask questions at the end and one student asked: "If I get pregnant, will I still have a job here?" (Answer: shuwa.) Her next question: "If I die, will you supply a coffin and pay for the transport of the coffin to my mother's village?" (Wow! I wasn't expecting that one, but the sisters said that this is a critical item for contracts with the AIDS epidemic. There was also an article in the paper about the ministry of education taking a big financial hit from unbudgeted funeral costs.)
+ In one of my exams the accounting students were to use the 'Net Present Value' (NPV) to evaluate an investment proposal and then comment on whether the investment was viable or not. She got a positive value for the NPV (which indicates that it is viable) but she said that the investment should not be made "because in the end, the debtors will not bring the money back." OK, so the NPV may not be the best method for evaluating the investments here.
+ There has been some attrition in the college. We've had some girls fail three out of 4 classes and we recommended that they not waste their money by trying to go into the next level of classes. Some of the accounting students are going to restart next year as secretarial students, and some secretarial students are going to start over again.
+ I made some simple circuits for the Physical Science class using scrap building materials from around the complex. They could arrange batteries and light bulbs in different numbers in series or parallel circuits and note the results. It was a little building project that kept me busy for a few months and I wasn't sure how well it would go over or be understood. Well, it went over really well with lots of benefits from "hands-on" learning. The students were playing with them and learning what a short-circuit does and getting a better understanding of the differences between circuits arranged in series and in parallel. I was particularly proud of a couple of students with learning disabilities that jumped right in and played around with them. The wiring connections were kind of flaky, but that added to the lesson because it allowed them to troubleshoot them and make sure that there was a continuous path. Good stuff!
+ I've been attending a "Small Church Community" meeting called Mphakati on Sunday afternoons where a group of 10 - 20 people get together to read the Gospel readings from that day and discuss them. I read along in my English Bible, but everything else is in Chichewa. It's been very cool to see the honor and respect given to the Agogos (elders/grandparents) and the behavior of the kids with each other and around their parents. They asked me to lead the prayer a few times, but I balked the first few times. I finally wrote out a prayer in Chichewa ahead of time and then the next time they asked me I whipped it out. They really appreciated my efforts to try with the language. One week they came to the school for the meeting. When I showed Agogo Joshua (82 years old) where the bathroom is, he double-checked with me to make sure that he was going to use the toilet the right way - "push here for the water, yes?"
+ When I go to visit Agogo Makalande I usually see a bunch of his little neighbor kids. I greet them and as I walk away to leave, they all say "bye!" and then I say "bye" and then they say "bye!" and it keeps on going. I eventually have to start walking and it ends with them shouting as loud as they can and I just wave over my shoulder as I go down the path and disappear into a curve in the tall grass near the cemetery. It's fun.
+ The fields are all being prepared to plant corn next month, so the grasses that come in after the corn is harvested have all been cleared. I was walking up the road one day from town and I heard some very faint, high-pitched screams "Johni!" I turned and looked and the little kids that live near Agogo were calling and waving to me from about a 1/4 mile away across the fields. When I waved back they all started cheering and jumping, they were so excited that I'd heard them. It was pretty cool.
+ We walked out to the orphanage again last Sunday. Some of the smallest kids that we saw on our 1st trips have been moved in with the older kids and many of the older kids have been sent back to their extended families, so that was good to hear. There are many new little ones, less that a month old these days.
+ A buddy of mine from San Diego was checking into a few different ways in which he could help out at the school. He has donated a subscription of Time magazine. It comes every week and some weeks we get a special report or extra publication with it. It is printed in South Africa, so we get it within a few days. It's a great addition to the school library and we have really enjoyed the timely news from home. Thanks Arty!
+ We've had the nephew of one of the sisters visiting here at the complex for 3 weeks, from Australia. It's been good to have another guy around. He's pretty cool and he brings a fresh perspective and enthusiasm to what we're doing here. It's been good to talk things over with him and he's been doing a lot of work around the school as well and teaching make-up classes for some students during their break.
That's all that I have for now. I'll try and do an update at the beginning of the school year next year. "What I did on my holiday vacation." Thanks for checking in. I'll certainly be thinking of my family and friends over the coming holidays. Take care and may God bless you during these holidays.
St. Brigid Roman Catholic Church