Big Week

BIG WEEK.
On Monday I found out that there was a cornerstone event at the new TTC In Dowa on Wednesday. I was also informed that I would be attending with Lawrence. We would be the Planet Aid representatives at the event. Upon hearing the news I was very excited, because if for no other reason, I would finally get to meet at least one American! That American, which I did meet and I was able to have a brief, but nice conversation with, was the US Ambassador to Malawi, Peter Bodde. Life is funny sometimes huh? I have been trying to meet an American for two months and coincidently the first one I do meet is the second most important American in Malawi. I say second, because if you asked any Malawian who the most famous/ important American is they would all tell you Madonna. Now I don’t have very good feelings towards Madonna and her NGO Raising Malawi, because she is essentially buying her love from the people, but that is the way things are done down here and even if you don’t like it you just have to except it. If you ask me, Peter Bodde is the most influential American in Malawi and I felt very blessed that I was able to meet him and hear how he felt about DAPP, Planet Aid, and Humana People to People. He was very impressed with the work DAPP is doing and has done in Malawi. He said that he likes working with DAPP, because they get the job done and are thinking about the future. It was really nice for me to hear what he thought on a personal level. It was also nice to hear the US Ambassador support organizations that are constantly criticized and called names in the USA. He basically said the same thing that I tell people when they ask me about it, he talked about how if the money being donated wasn’t going to the right places, then the US government wouldn’t be giving millions of dollars to these organizations.
So on Monday during the day we had the worst or best (depending on how you look at it) rain storms since I had gotten here. Because of these rains I left with Charlotte Monday night. We went to Chilengoma the other TTC in Chileka. We stayed the night at Chilengoma and left for Lilongwe early in the morning on Tuesday. Chilengoma is also where the HQ is for DAPP in Malawi. The room I stayed in was like a 5-star hotel. It was so much better than the hotel room I stayed in over the weekend of Lawrence’s wedding. I couldn’t believe it. The bed was great and the best thing of all…hot water! The shower had hot and cold water, I was so shocked I didn’t know what to do. I turned on the hot water and it shocked me, it shocked me so much I ended up taking a luke warm water shower because hot even warm was just too much. After my great Tuesday morning shower I got dressed and found Lawrence already at the school at 6 am. I checked facebook and a few emails before we had to go, it was great not only does the Chilengoma TTC have hot water and comfortable beds, but it has electricity all the time and GREAT internet. Now I know why Lawrence and Amanda told me that I should go to Chilengoma instead of Amalika. Ha Ha. We were a little delayed from the start of our trip, because we had some unexpected setbacks. One was that Charlotte was going to fly to Lilongwe in the early morning, so she could meet with the Minister of Education before the session of parlament began on Tuesday, but Air Malawi is just about as reliable as you would expect it to be. The told her at 6am when the plan was supposed to leave, that the flight hadn’t taken off yet from where ever it was coming from. Flying in Malawi is on a luck basis. Most of the time you have to wait between 2-4 hours for your flight, if they don’t cancel it all together. So Charlotte came with us, the other setback we had was one of our other passengers Innock had made an il-advised trip into Blantyre without speaking to Charlotte. We spent about an hour waiting and trying to find him. He kept saying I’m only a few minutes away, when eventually we came to find out his taxi has a blown tire and he was actually stuck on the side of the road (I thought it was kind of humorous when we found out where he really was, because he was NEVER going to get to us if we would have continued to wait for him instead of going to find him). After we got all our passengers in we took off an hour and a half late. The drive to Lilongwe takes about 4 hours. I will talk more about the condition later, but one of the really interesting things is that once you have driven for about an hour the road drives right along the Malawian border. On one side of the road is Malawi and on the other side is Mozambique. It is exactly like driving down state line road in Kansas City! I guess the one minor difference is that instead of different color street signs on opposite sides of the road, there are different colored houses. One the Mozambique side all of the houses are gray and painted, and on the Malawi side the houses aren’t painted and are just the mud/clay/brick color which coincidently is all the same color red. I slept for a little bit of the ride, but mostly just stared out my window into beautiful mountains and a never ending blazing sky. The views are constantly breath taking, if for no other reason people should take vacations to remote parts of the world to just enjoy the untouched earth’s beauty. If I never make it back to Malawi, I will miss the wonders of this mystic land. When we got into Lilongwe it was time to work. Charlotte got her meeting rescheduled, Lawrence and the driver went off to the site to meet representatives from the US Embassy, and Innock and I walked around Lilongwe busily running errands. We ate lunch at a place called McDauds. I think the people tried to build the restaurant like McDonalds, but failed miserably. The food was not good and overpriced, and the food wasn’t at all fried so yea it was nothing like McDonalds. After lunch Innock and I walked to an internet café that was on the other side of town. I we had 45 minutes to kill while we were waiting on some pictures to get laminated, but we walked across town when there was an internet café basically next door to where we were so I was little clueless about that decision. On the way back it started to rain, but Innock said “Do you see the people running for shelter? If you don’t then it’s not really raining!” I got what he was saying, but by the time we got back to the copy center I was still soaking wet. Oh well T.I.A (this is Africa) right? Later we met back up with Charlotte and ran some more errands before going back to the hotel. When we got to the hotel we had to order dinner at the front desk, I was famished so I ordered chicken and chips with an extra side of rice. Since I didn’t put in my order till after 5pm, it wasn’t ready until almost 8:15. Let’s just say by the time I got my food I was very visibly frustrated, I almost didn’t eat. I got up to leave and just go to bed when Lawrence said Paul your food is on the table. The lady at the desk said that there were several other orders in front of mine, and that mine was the last to be served for the night. I really didn’t want to hear excuses I just wanted to eat, but excuses or a certain reasons why always come out of someone’s mouth before you get what you’re looking for, and yes it is ten times worse here. People here start sentences with, “well the problem is”, constantly. Ahh, that is frustrating. [On a quick side note I just received my Bday care package from my mom! I was sitting in room reading Dark Star Safari and one of the new comers Hannah knocked on my door with a package for me. I was so happy/excited I wanted to just grab her and kiss her! I don’t know if that would have gone over so well seeing as she is a very nice/ respectful South Korean girl, so I calmly took the package and then gave her a big hug. I opened the package expecting there to be a note from some South African customs agent reading: Sorry my family needed the contents of this package more than you do, better luck next time. But in fact everything was still inside. Today is Monday November 30, so it only took 6 weeks for the package to get to me, but the important thing is that it got here! Thanks so much mom I feel like a little kiddy on Christmas, or like a young Paul Titterington on Halloween(b/c Halloween is my bday, so my neighbors would give me extra candy and other stuff). I am so excited to charge my new computer battery and that I will actually have more than 45 minutes of battery life. I usually hate Mondays, but this Monday has turned out to be a pretty darn good day. Thanks again mom, love you! Oh and as a note to everyone else, I would not suggest sending anything else since this is now my 8th week and now I only have a little over a month left, so I most likely wouldn’t receive anything. So if you have something for me I know I will enjoy it immensely when I get back to the states…now back to paulsadventuresinmalawi] So the day of the Cornerstone presentation finally came, and we got up around 6 and ate an interesting breakfast and set off. We had to stop by the airport and pick up the DAPP Malawi country director Lisbeth Thompson at the airport, but it was on the way so it didn’t set us back at all. After we picked her up we drove out to the building site for the third TTC. The site is in an area called Dowa, I actually really liked where they had chosen the site for this new school. The other two TTCs are far away from almost everything, but this new one was close to a new primary and secondary schools and from across the road towards the horizon you can see the Somalinian/Ethiopian/ Congolese(I think those are all right and there might be more) refugee camp. I like that the students and staff will have the opportunity to work with refugees. I guess you can say I was excited for the future prospects of this school. So once we had arrived we starting setting up the day. We put together as much as we could, while we waited and waited and waited on the contractor to bring out a small generator, a table, and display boards. The function was supposed to start at ten sharp and wouldn’t you know it the contractor and his crew didn’t show up until right at 9:30, I thought Charlotte was going to have a heart attack. I was nervous also, because I didn’t want the ceremony to look sloppy for all the people that were coming. There was supposed to be a DAPP choir to sing for all the guests, that didn’t show up until 10:45, let’s just say Charlotte and Lisbeth were not very happy with them, it was a little embarrassing for all of us. When the contractor’s workers finally got to the site they obnoxiously kept honking their horns, they dropped off the two display boards, one of which that was broken and left honking and laughing, thinking they were making some grand entrance and exit. Lawrence said that they are just boys and these kids have no respect for anything or anybody, which I agree with and have seen on several occasions. Once the guests started to arrive and the ceremony started it was quick and efficient. It was a nice one hour ceremony, because that was all the time the US Ambassador could spare. I got to chat with him a little about Thanksgiving and I also got to meet a representative from the Finnish (Finland) consulot (sp). I really enjoyed talking to this lady she was very nice and very curious about me. It was the first time that someone had shown genuine interest about who I was and what I was doing since I had gotten here, well besides Charlotte. At the end of the ceremony I helped the Ambassador plant a tree and then there were refreshments. At some point on this cloudy morning the sun had popped out for just about an hour. During that hour it roasted me like your Thanksgiving turkey. I haven’t had that bad of sun burn in a few years. The only good thing that comes out of this sun burn is that I should have a great tan when I get back to the states, well at least a great farmer’s tan, because it’s kind of disrespectful to take off your shirt to even out your tan lines down here.