Oct 18, God bless the rains down in Africa
This weekend has been very interesting. I finally meet the met the project leader/ head master Chilote (sp), I met a sick Lawrence in town, and I did my laundry for the first time; by hand and in a bucket. Hey mom I also woke up this morning with my first bug bite  , think Its Malaria? I guess we will have to wait and see. Dad it was good to chat with you, I was shocked when your voice actually came through, I didn’t think it was possible. I was on the head master’s internet, so I will have to ask her if I can use it on thanksgiving and possibly Christmas if I’m around. I feel bad for bailey. We now have a tri-pod for a dog. Bailey, my dad and step-mom’s dog had to have a leg amputated. He got into a fight with a grizzly bear up at our cabin in Idaho Springs. Bailey was just trying to protect our house and the bear severely severed Bailey’s right leg. Poor guy, he was always our special dog before this tragedy; one thing is for sure he is not going to be a happy camper for the next few months! So maybe there was no grizzly, but if there was that would be one heck of a story right? So back in Africa, I finally met the project leader Charlotte. This whole time I could not figure out for the life of me what everyone was saying when they pronounced her name. Even my two new Japanese and Korean friends who speak English very well, never gave me the slightest insight as to what her name really was. I came up with Chilote as my best guess, but I finally saw it written and it is Charlotte. I was like wow, and just started laughing. If anyone wants to mail me something the address to send it to is:
Paul Titterington
DAPP Amalika TTC
2732 Blantyre, Malawi

That is a PO Box, by the way. I am very impressed so far with Charlotte. She is a very knowledgeable and kind woman. What I like about her the most is the way she is running the college. She has a new age kind of mind. She likes to try new things like giving students money and responsibilities. So far I think there have been a couple of misuses of the school’s money, but Charlotte expected some bumps in the road at first. I like how she is teaching the students responsibility and giving them a chance to prove that they can be trusted with large sums of money. The other head masters/ project leaders think she is crazy for doing things like letting the students go out and buy things for the whole college, but Charlotte doesn’t mind, she is always looking for a new way for things to work. We had a meeting on Monday morning where one of the students said, “Culturally, some of the students were afraid to speak their mind or even ask a Charlotte a question because of her position in the school and the power that she had.” She immediately countered this statement by talking about how we are all equal in this world and no one should ever tell you different. It was very Martin Luther King-esk(?), and very inspirational. The students listened to what she had to say, but it will take a lot longer than 30 minutes to change a lot of their minds on this subject. I find that very sad, there are so many great students here who are afraid to talk b/c they don’t have a high self worth, I hope I can help improve their self esteem and confidence in some way, but I get the feeling a lot of them look at me in the same way.
I did my first presentation yesterday. I gave my Planet Aid presentation and did some short facts about the USA. I asked all of the students after what they wanted to know about the USA? I told them I would make a presentation for them. I thought there would be a lot more suggestions, but that’s when I could feel the cultural suppression. The suggestions I did get were, to talk about how and why the US has a Black president, to talk about 9-11 and Guantanamo Bay, to explain more about how Christopher Columbus and how he founded America, and about that actor that became a politician and yes they mean the TERMINATOR! So I will start on that in my free time. I also got a new project to work on, on Monday. I am going to create a survey for the primary schools so that Charlotte and the Dean can see the progression of the 7 primary schools in our area over the next few years as Amalika teachers graduate and start working at these schools. I am actually interested to keep up on the survey also. It will be interesting to see how the enrollment of girls fluctuates over the next few years as well as graduation rates and the overall environment of these schools. As the title of this post says, we had a great rain storm yesterday. It was all day, I was very excited. The rains here are intense. I think some of the storms could get pretty bad though, because there is a very strong wind that rips through the campus on a regular basis. We are supposed to be in the Amalika Forest district, but all the trees have been cut down by the people who live around here. They need to wood for day-to-day survival. The pictures that I have of the “Forest” are shockingly sad. There is nothing, it reminds me of the flint hills by Manhattan, with a little red dirt mixed in. I think this problem could make for some terrible weather when the rainy season does get here, but I will keep you posted. I’m sure that will turn out to be quite an adventure.