Mosquitoes and Malaria

November 14, 2006 - Mzuzu, Malawi
Mosquitoes and Malaria

The transition to the rainy season has begun and has made today a pleasant one. It has been stifling hot for the past few days, but today we have had intermittent thunderstorms, the first we’ve experienced since our July arrival. Last week we experienced our first rain showers. It is nice to have the reduced dust as well. I’d like to say the air is clean, but burning of brush and garbage, as well as the small cook fires refill the air with smoke within hours of a rain.

Patricia is still very tired and while the Malarone seems to have prevented her malaria from being as debilitating as it has been for some people we have known, she never quit her activities and therefore suffering from continuing fatigue. Also she is genetically anemic, so the destruction of millions of red blood cells is not good and may take her longer to recover from.

With the little amount of rain we have had so far, the insect population has grown rapidly. Fortunately, we have screens on our house, although that has only limited control – because we still have many small openings around windows, doors, etc. Mosquitoes are not so easily stopped!

Mosquitoes are not a subject I’ve paid a lot of attention to before arriving in Africa, but I do now. I can see a mosquito flying on the other side of the room and can feel the slightest brush against my skin. We were a little paranoid for a long time, now we live with them, but on constant watch.

Here is what we have learned about mosquitoes and malaria (more than most people want to know):

Malaria infects more than 300 million people per year and kills 1 million (some literature I’ve read says up to 3 million). It is a parasite that is carried by the Anopheles genus mosquito. The microscopic, single cell organisms of the genus Plasmodium that carry malaria in humans is probably among the oldest of human and pre-human parasites (at least 60 million years, with mosquitoes being around at least 35 million years). Of the 3,000 species of mosquitoes only the female anopheles transfers the malaria parasites to humans. She must have a meal of blood before she can lay eggs (the male is a vegetarian who dines on nectars of flowers). Exhalation of carbon dioxide directs the bloodthirsty females to their victims, and moisture, warmth, and aroma points them in to a point of attack. They prefer some excretions over others, so some people may have a greater attractiveness than others. For instance, my cholesterol lowering medication is known to increase their attractiveness to me. Men are more frequently bitten than women.

The mosquito-biting technique that I’ll skip over as too technical is how the malaria is injected. Simply a mosquito dines on someone that has the malaria in their blood and then when it goes on to a healthy person, she injects the malaria as part of the anticoagulant she injects to enable her to dine on that person’s blood. In humans, the parasite’s life cycle invokes the periodic destruction of millions of red corpuscles, provoking waves of fever and debilitating weakness in the human host as the plasmodia circulate freely in the bloodstream for a day or two before taking up residence again in new red corpuscles. There are four different forms, one of which is more virulent than others, Plasmodium falciparum, and can kill, and almost always does in its most severe form, when the parasite invades the brain and causes cerebral malaria.

In the tropics the most common form is this Falciparum, and nearly all children are infected by the time they are 2 years old. It is in this population where most deaths occur, especially among the malnourished and lack adequate medical care. Mosquito netting has been distributed to millions of Africans by international relief organizations. This hungry female mosquito primarily feeds between sundown and sunup with peak feeding around midnight. A mosquito is very tenacious and patient, she will work for hours trying to find a minute hole or opening in mosquito netting.

One of the most unsettling experiences is when you are tucked in under your mosquito netting and then a mosquito buzzes by your ear- it’s enclosed in the netting with you! We now keep our netting in place all day and try hard to slip in quickly. We may spray inside the netting if suspect an entry during the day. Crazy, but when you realize that one lousy little mosquito bite may make you very ill for a week or so, and require a doctor’s visit, or if left too long some folks have to hospitalized. We take our Malarone religiously everyday.

When we have a reason to go out at night we spray our clothes with 99+% Permathrin and spray any exposed skin with 99% Deet. But you can’t live like that all of the time due to the oiliness and odor- don’t think the skin would like it all of the time. It does work- we’ve sat in the computer lab at night (windows are always open in classrooms and offices on campus, with no screens) and have been dive bombed by mosquitoes, but they don’t land on us. Thanks to Sue Gee’s efforts we now have “no pest strips” hanging all around our house, and while mosquito populations are on the rise, we seem to have fewer in the house.

Our several visits down to the lake have probably been our most exposed periods, since mosquito populations are high there. Also the not so refined places we stay have mosquito netting with holes. We don’t know when Pat was bitten, although the folks around here say it was likely 9-14 days previous. However all of the literature says that you may contract malaria and not be aware of it for up to 4 months, so we’ll have to sort out flu versus malaria this winter and focus our doctors accordingly. We plan to get complete checkups (especially lab work) upon our return home.

A Few New Challenges

Mzuzu, Malawi Nov. 5 with a Nov. 8, 2006 update

Today we returned from a few days at the lake. Unfortunately for Pat we were there as part of an off-site workshop that she and the rest of the Education Department was holding. We arrived Thursday evening and they worked all day Friday, Saturday, and a couple of hours on Sunday morning. Also unfortunately for Pat, she had been feeling poorly for a couple of days before our departure and upon a doctor’s office visit on Thursday afternoon, we learned that she had malaria. (Ouch, the ink wasn’t even dry on my last blog where I was crowing about how the medication Malarone had seemed to be successful in holding off the disease).

[ Nov. 8 update:The good news is that it seems that it was caught relatively early so the impact wasn’t too bad; especially since starting medication Thursday night. She has subsequently nearly recovered and after letting Ed substitute for her on Monday and Tuesday, is back teaching today.]

The weather has gotten very hot (90’s during the day), but near the lake there was a breeze during the day and we use our fan at night. The Sabani Lodge where we stayed is fair by Malawi standards and relatively rustic by our standards. But it sits on a beautiful white sand beach and the sandy bottom extends out to the depth as far as I could walk. By mid-day the sand was too hot to walk on but cooled off nicely by late afternoon, while the lake water remained warm near shore. The lodge had a bar for socializing and a dining area where meals were served. As most of these facilities, breakfast was cereal, eggs, toast, sausage, and bacon, Then for lunch and dinner the choices are always the same: fried chicken, fried chambo (a local fish), or beef tips with rice, chips (our French fries), or nsima (pulverized corn mush- the Malawi mainstay mentioned, but misspelled in my last blog). Near the lake we especially have to sleep under mosquito netting and except for one window, the room windows had no screens. I killed about 10 wasp in the room over our 3 nights stay. We always oil up with Deet every evening at sundown since our cottage was a walk from the lodge and as noted above the bar and dining area are all outdoors (under covered roof).

We do get cell phone reception there, but only about 2 spots outside the cabins work decently, so people are always standing in one of these 2 spots when they make calls. Mom called me and the call kept breaking up until I could walk out to the nearest hotspot (just like at home on Signal Mountain).

Well we never know when a new adventure may spring up, but we had one this morning. The road from the main highway to the lodge is very rough. However, as we arrived Thursday a road grader was leveling and widening the road, and continued to do so all weekend. Apparently this angered one of the nearby villagers, because he built a road block out of rocks and branches. When we left the inn this morning we came upon the road-block. We tried to talk to anyone around (we had one of the Malawian faculty with us), but they spoke a different language in this village than she knew. So we decided to go back to the lodge and discuss it with them or get someone who could speak the language. Well, the owner (who we know) was away, the manager was at church, and some of the employees were knocking heads with the villager this morning coming to work and were afraid to confront him again. So I had had enough- we were in a 4 wheel drive off rode capable vehicle, so I didn’t feel I needed to remove too much stuff before I could drive over it without scraping the vehicle bottom. So I turned around and sped up towards the road-block and found he had started another with just limbs. Well no problem for our vehicle, I just plowed right over them. I pulled up to the big road-block, got out acting very angry, and just started throwing rocks and limbs around (my back is a little sore tonight from this display of bravo). Everyone stood and watched in awe to see if the villager was going to let me get away with this (plus they haven’t seen too many white people so they’re not sure of this whole situation). (I will note at this time I had already separated my large denomination bills in one pocket and all the others in the other in case things turned south on me and I needed to quickly offer money to get myself out of a situation). Pat, who avidly reads the newspaper here that is a scandal sheet as much as a newspaper, is probably thinking this guy may come at me with an axe or something. So I’m throwing stuff around and accidentally knocked my own glasses off my face, but catch them and put them in my pocket. I finish my task and climb back into the vehicle, put it into 4-wheel drive low, and proudly just drive right over that baby.

Unfortunately we get down the road just a bit and the angry villager is walking opposite us towards his road-block. I just get past him and realize I don’t have my eyeglasses in my pocket- no where in pockets or vehicle. Now these are $175 designer frames and prescription, coated, light weight, etc. etc. $200+expensive lenses. So I tell the ladies, who were just sighing a breath of relief, that I have got to go back and find them. So I turn around and start back and arrive with no angry villager in sight (may have thought we were coming after him and disappeared). So I climb out and start searching for them. With time the village youngsters all work their way over. One young man was fairly good at English and I end up offering a reward and get them all helping me. Unfortunately we had no luck- they claimed no one picked them up. So I left word I was offering a reward and they could turn them into the Lodge and I’d get the reward to them- we left.

So I’m out a couple of hundred bucks for glasses, and I’m sure for US$3 I could have paid the guy to let us through. Such is another chapter in our Malawi adventure.

Tonight we sit here in the dark (Sunday night after our return from the lake) as we have been without power all day. Now we have no water since we only have a small elevated water tank on campus that is filled by an electric pump. So we’ll hope by morning we have electricity so we can make our coffee and water for our showers.

Nov. 8-
Pat has nearly returned to good health and I am doing well. The rains began yesterday with heavy pre-dawn rain (the first rain we have had except for one small shower since we arrived here in July) and a nice cool day today we have had heavier and longer rains so far a cool day. Quite a change from the sweltering heat of a few days ago. Now we were see an upsurge in mosquitoes.

We have also been warned by our gardener and housekeeper that we have a huge ant colony (looked around 15 ft by 15ft) in the rear of our yard. With the rains filling their nests in the ground they will be on the move soon. Our next door neighbor tells us she had an invasion a couple of night ago- thousands of ants came into the rear of her home. She used numerous cans of insect spray and literally scooped handfuls of them out of her bathtub. They attack in swarms and bite viciously. So last night we were spreading a barrier of paraffin around the rear of the house, since apparently they avoid soil with the paraffin in it- we will hope and see. I’ll be looking for some insecticides to spread as well today. They say they sometimes will disrupt an entire village in the country-side by their invasions.

General Life for the People of Malawi

Malawi 10/31/2006

General Life for the People of Malawi

We’ve shared with you the general living conditions while we’ve been in Malawi. Pat calls it indoor camping. Some days we lack water or electricity and for months we went to bed crawling under our mosquito netting and using flashlights to read by. We’ve now added reading lights above our bed so we continue to move toward normalcy. Mosquito management is still a subject I’ll address individually, since it is such a constant part of life. We have become less paranoid since we’ve both had mosquito bites and no bad cases of malaria yet (Malarone medication seems to be working well). What we need to convey now is that we are living as the wealthiest 3-4% of Malawians.

A recent newspaper report establishes that only 4% of the population in Malawi has electricity in their homes. This is a rural farming country so most people live in the thousands of villages (50-200 people each). The estimated population of Malawi is 13 million with 1 million orphans. Historically this area was populated by hunters and scavengers, and then became predominantly farmers and scavengers. “Scavengers” is not a derogatory term; it represents the people, predominantly women, who would go out to find berries, fruits, vegetables, etc. while the men hunted. Over time hunting disappeared and left the males semi-idle while the women continued scavenging, cooking, caring for children, etc. As farming took over in many areas the men and women shared many of the farming duties, while women continued farming, preparing the harvested food, cooking, scavenging, and caring for the children. It remains a strongly male dominated society where you witness during the dry non-farming season many idle men while the women must do the daily chores. The oddities of much of the society is another long story, but there remains multiple wife families and much ignorance and superstition; problems of alcoholism, etc. that all intertwines with the explosion of the spread of HIV-Aids.

A small picture of the normal life style is seen in the housekeepers that take care of the house across the street from us (and our own housekeeper and family). The women rise at 5-6 am each day and start a wood fire to boil water for tea and prepare breakfast. By the time we get up most mornings (between 6 and 8:30 am depending on how late we stay up- our subjects are in bed by 9 pm), these folks have fed their families, washed their clothes by hand and hung them on the clothesline, and sent their children off to school in clean clothes (school starts at 7 am- out at 12:30 for elementary school). The wood that they use is collected up from wandering around the campus (like we use to do when we camped) or from chopping down dead trees. The women across the street (no males appear present although small children and a newborn exists) have been out swinging a huge double bladed axe to cut up a tree trunk. (I don’t think I’d tackle the axe as dangerous and heavy as it is). Of course this is in a beautiful clean and colorful dress and sandals or bare feet.

Another fuel widely used is charcoal, which our housekeeper Isaac has been kind enough to use to boil our water for morning coffee on a couple of mornings when we had no electricity. Charcoal is illegal to sell because of the massive deforestation problem it is causing- however no one is enforcing the law considering you are talking about 12.5 million people that do not yet have electricity. We upset Isaac’s wife’s normal routine of getting up and starting a wood fire to boil tea for their kids by buying for them an electric hot water pot.

The mainstay of the Malawian diet is “sema” which is corn ground up by the women using a large mortar and pestle and then cooked to a semi-dry mush consistency that the eater can ball up with their hands and eat with their hands (even in their finest restaurants). Beef and chicken are the primary meats, although most people can only afford to eat once or twice a month, if at all. While we can afford to eat meat daily, often none of the stores in town have one or the other or both.

Another mainstay is fish due to the proximity of the huge Lake Malawi (similar in size to lake Erie). That is often our 3rd mainstay, but you have to get to market (market stalls- not grocery stores) early in the morning to get them fresh since they are not refrigerated (as by the way is our milk- comes in warm cartons and must be refrigerated upon opening and used within 4 days).

Fishing is done out of wooden dugout canoes most of it takes place late in the day. Pat, while at a workshop at the lake, experienced the fishermen coming in singing at 2 a.m. with their catch. The fish are then sold and transported to reach restaurants and market by early morning. The boats as mentioned are dugout wooden logs of a design that must be a couple of thousand years old.

That brings up the subject of water. Villagers that live near the lake still come down and wash their laundry, bathe and bathe their families, and carry back drinking water as their ancestors have for the past several thousand years. Other streams and rivers this time of year are dry or nearly dry. When rainy season comes, Dec- April they will be used similarly. Now many people rely on wells and the shallower boreholes with pumps for their water. These locations are gathering places as people do laundry, bathe, and collect water to take home. Some people have to walk miles to reach these. Adding more of these is an ongoing effort by many foreign and church support groups; and is Betsy’s largest focus as a Peace Corps volunteer. Unfortunately during the drier season, polluted (often fecal-coliform) ponds are used instead. Much education is still required.

Walking and bicycling are the major modes of transportation. Bicycle taxis have cropped up as well (a ride on the back fender/ seat). Proportionately on a very minor number of cars- mostly just us rich people driving around. For example, a tank of gas costs what we pay our house-keeper for an entire month, and we pay our housekeeper as much or more than most school-teachers, government employees, etc. are paid. There are mini-buses designed to hold 11-14 passengers crammed with 20-25 people and many are in disrepair (like held together with baling wire, shattered windshields, etc.). There are also buses (one per day on major city routes that are in questionable condition (for example the bus available to Betsy between Mzuzu and Karonga has broken down enroute 2 of the last 14 days).

As a result Peace Corps workers such as Betsy have to walk long distances and rely heavily on their bicycles. When traveling long distances, they use minibus, bus, or often hitch-hike. The latter may mean they ride on the back of a truck or if really lucky get to ride with and meet some of the wealthier Malawians or other ex-patriots like us. There are about 5 major highways (which mean paved 2-lane roads) including the M-1 which runs north-south through the length of the country, which we use the most often since goes south from Mzuzu to the capital city, Lilongwe, and north to Betsy’s village north of Karonga and just south of the Tanzanian border. The remaining roads are dirt roads.

One does not drive at night, although we may venture out within town occasionally. A hugs percent of trucks, cars, or mini-buses have one or no headlight; or one or no taillight. For the most part police are not out at night since they operate on foot, not in vehicles. Bicycles mostly have no lights and often no reflectors, yet riding in the road; as are pedestrians walking in he road. In the country-side you’re apt to come up on broken down vehicles in the middle of the road with no lights; there is apt to be cattle, goats, chickens, monkeys, baboons, ox-carts, etc. Challenging enough in the daytime when you’re traveling 50-75 mph; also many pot-holes and other challenges like washed out road parts.

Again, as white people we are a unique sight, so many children yell and wave as we drive by and adults will often stare. South Africa was so different than Malawi (wealthy, many whites, modern, electrified, etc.) and will be a subject for another day.

Our Daily Life is Comfortable Now

Mazuni, September 20-22, 2006

We are now fully nested, pretty well acclimated (although the weather is now starting to warm up), and in a highly productive phase. What does this mean?

For one we have overcome the strangeness of a new location and are pretty much comfortable (maybe me more than Pat) with being strange and standing out in a crowd; and being approached often for handouts, jobs, gifts, sponsorship of students to school, etc. We have learned to adjust and be thankful that we are rich compared to nearly everyone else, and have been able to throw a little money or skill at anything that has been a problem. That is we are beyond accepting the environment thrown at us and are now much more in control of it. We have enough friends, [and also with the help of our housekeeper, Isaac (maybe 26-28 years old 24 years old with a wife and three children (ages 3 to 8)who all live in the quarters right behind us) and our 1/2 –time gardener, Gracious (maybe 24 years old with a wife, baby girl and #2 due in November)], that we are able to find out what is going on, get or make translations at times when needed, and point us to resources we need. Unfortunately that is not to say that many things are not available in Mzuzu even if we do have the money to afford it, but we have a stock of stuff and will return to Lilongwe next month to restock.

Here is a quick example of overcoming barriers by using our relative wealth (before getting too far off track of describing our normal life). We did not bring a computer printer with us. The only one we have access to is the department’s secretary, who is very busy and originally not open to helping us new people when she was already over-worked. Well, resources are nil for everyone at this university. We noticed before our last trip to Lilongwe that her ink was running out. So we purchased an ink cartridge for her for her computer and gave it to her. (We also asked if she needed anything in Lilongwe and purchased some special (Revlon) skin lotion she uses and gifted it to her). So, as a result, Pat was loaned the key to her office just before classes stated to make her transparencies and copies of her handouts. (She probably makes $30-40 US per month, since the university lecturers (most instructors at the university have masters degrees) make about $65 US per month (so most have other income streams like helping their wives run a business- Pat’s cohort’s wife sells clothing on the side and they have a small chicken farm; more on these later).

So we have a good life as we have learned to work around barriers. Typically we get up between 6 and 8 a.m. depending on Pat’s teaching schedule (classes are 7:45 am MW, and 10:45am on T-TH). We shower unless there is no water pressure (often in the morning we do shower to a very low water flow- a second shower when the pressure is good at night is called for). We normally fix ourselves cereal with fresh bananas, toast (with orange marmalade- a British influence here), orange juice, and coffee. A couple of days per week we have bacon and eggs (Isaac will cook them on weekdays and is off on weekends).

Coffee has been a challenge that we overcame. We brought with us (in our “book” boxes we shipped) a coffee maker. Of course it was 125-volt. Since all outlets are the British style 220-volt outlet, we purchased a converter. Well, converters work well on heavy-duty stuff, but our coffee maker had a nice electronic digital clock and control system that fried the first night it was left plugged in. That put us relying on the locally available instant coffee that is full of chicory as filler. About a week ago, an expatriate at the university who is married to a Malawian, loaned us one of her extra French coffee presses. So we use our electric tea kettle that was supplied with our house to boil the tap water and we have great coffee.

On most days Pat is then off to the university and I go with her as the audio-visual man. I then use the internet before the traffic gets too heavy. Following that I am often off to town for hardware items for my latest project and groceries. Isaac does laundry by hand 2 days per week (I always cringe when I see the still soapy water draining off of the clothes as he puts them on the clothesline. So things come back rather stiff, but what items he presses this acts as a good starch and those items look very crisp). He sweeps and mops the house every weekday (he is off on weekends), we now have him cleaning windows, and a few other special projects. The winds seem to constantly blow on most days and there is a lot of bare ground so we always have this fine red dust layer that builds up everyday. But with all of this cleaning things are dusty but basically very sanitation-wise clean (I guess like that “sterile” dust you see in operating rooms).

The local “grocery” stores have very limited selection, so often have to go two or three just for the simplest item. Like 1/3 of the time there is no orange juice is available; at times no beef is available anywhere; we are unable to find any salad dressing (now making our own); often have no skim milk (our milk is actually comes in unrefrigerated cartons which must refrigerated and used within 3 days once opened); etc. I realize this is all no great catastrophe, but we like what we like. We buy our bread at a bakery (brown and white), we buy fish at the open market (go early and it has been just transported up from Lake Malawi which is 1 to 1-1/2 hours away), as well as the vegetables, chickens, eggs, etc. (Actually I transport Isaac to the open market shopping, because he can do it much more cheaply, although Pat and I enjoy going at times and bargaining).

Pat may pack a lunch or come home for lunch. We mostly eat sandwiches (usually ham, lettuce, tomato, and mayonnaise, or egg salad, tuna salad, etc) and possibly some potato chips (25 cents per bag). We drink bottled water and/ or soda (we found Coke Light in Lilongwe and I just found some and stocked up from Karonga when I visited Betsy earlier this week). Before and/or after lunch we do school work and get on the internet (which can eat up hours doing the simplest tasks). We try to take walks around the soccer field (crazy “mazungus” walking around in circles).

Pat has been very busy working on some other assigned projects. She has been helping with revamping the education curriculum. Mzuni has also decided there is money to be made in distance learning and brought a consulting team in from South Africa. They held a 6-day workshop that Pat participated in which was time and energy draining. In follow-up the participants worked offsite Thursday evening through Sunday last weekend (at a rustic beach resort a couple of hours away). Great for breaking down barriers with cohorts and find out peoples’ abilities and work ethic. She wasn’t too impressed with most in either category and showed what she was made of in both. So she has earned some real respect of those that stayed in there and helped the team produce. I’ve helped out here and there with logistics and repairing stuff so projects keep popping up with my name on it.

On weeknights we dine around 5 to 6 pm. Isaac prepares our dinners, goes home to eat, and then comes back to wash dishes. Dinner is most often chicken with vegetables, rice or potatoes, and possibly salad. The cooking is different from what we are use to; things are all cooked in vegetable oil. We have gotten Isaac to change his ways so the chicken is now baked, and the vegetables boiled in water. A big problem we had initially and figured out the problem, was Montezuma’s revenge from the salads. The rule of thumb is “if it isn’t cooked and you can’t peel it, don’t eat it”. So now we scrub the tomatoes and we treat all of the lettuce in a chlorine solution, and the carrots are well peeled. No problems with home-cooked meals since. We have not eaten out except for Pat when she was at her workshops (and when we are in Lilongwe which has many acceptable restaurants as long as we don’t eat the salads or cole slaw). Our other mainstays are pasta and meat sauce (Pat’s is great and she is close to getting Isaac to make it her way- his is more like mashed up meatloaf), hamburgers, beef stew, and chambo (the local fish from Lake Malawi).

After dinner we have tea or decaf coffee (instant that we bought in Lilongwe or bag that we brought from home) and usually I have a cookie for dessert. Then we sit in the living room (bare concrete floor and concrete walls with a couple of wall hangings we purchased, but do have a nice sofa and 2 matching cushioned chairs that the previous Americans had purchased and left here) and read the newspaper, work on our laptops, or read a book. This is usually combined with fighting off the mosquitoes buzzing us. If it gets too bad, we retreat and read under the mosquito netting in our bed. We usually read in bed by flashlights and get off to sleep between 9:30pm to 11:30pm. Most nights we each dream, and these are vivid dreams in full Technicolor. There isn’t anyone reading this that I haven’t included in my dreams, along with long ago fellow workers, all family members near and far, etc. We’re taking Malarone and that is the least dream conducive anti-malaria medicine. So although we sleep long, we don’t always wake up rested. I’ve had a few spells where I woke up drenched in sweat and wondered whether or not I had a slight case of malaria. Since Malarone is one of the treatment drugs they give as well, I may have and then licked it.

On the few weekends that we’ve been here in Mzuzu we pretty much work on school or other stuff and Pat has spent two Saturdays cooking and baking. I watch the soccer games played here on campus (school team or local adult leagues) on Sunday afternoons (no bleachers, just stand along the sidelines). Last Sunday I went to the 7:30 am (to 10:00am) English service at the large Scottish Presbyterian Church. I was the only white person there, and didn’t really feel all that welcome. We’ll keep looking for options.

So that is our routine, but it seems like most days don’t work out as a routine. For instance, last Tuesday at 9a.m. Betsy asked for a ride back to her site. We hadn’t seen her since early August so I obliged her and her friend who lives 30-minutes from her site). So I drove her up Tuesday and returned Wednesday. This was my first visit to her site; more on that adventure at a later date. On Thursday night Pat called me as I was finishing up on the internet on campus and asked if we could give her secretary a ride home, she had some live chickens that she had purchased (and had been locked in the storage closet next to Pat’s office) and needed to transport, as well as several other items.

Well we did, and in appreciation she gave us one of the live chickens and instructed Pat how to cut its throat and prepare it for cooking. Well our housekeeper Isaac keeps chickens for eggs and meat, so we got instructions from him 0on how to keep up a chicken, and we are now chicken farmers. Friday morning we bought 50 kg of “layers mash” and the medicine we need to feed it (and Isaac’s). We ‘re hoping to get some fresh eggs out of this deal. Yesterday it got into several fights with Isaac’s chickens (which have chicks) over the mash, so we had to help break up the squabbles. Today (Saturday) I spent all day on campus taking some of the tests for correspondence classes I’m taking for engineering refresher course so I can renew my professional engineer license next month. Pat was home baking and leading the neighborhood children in play and drawing and coloring pictures. Entwined in all this was the children helping look after our chicken, who was staying near to Pat and the house.

The other aspect of our life routine that adds a challenge is that some days we have no water, some days you lose it in the midst of showering, and some days we have no electricity. Friday, when we woke up to no electricity, Isaac was kind enough to boil water over a charcoal stove so we had our coffee. Sunday is usually the high-risk day. We understand we can expect 12-hour outages every other Sunday (usually about 6am to 6pm). This week we have been without water for 2 separate days and electricity for 12 hours on Sunday, and parts of 2-3 other days. We are now taking showers whenever water is available and recharging our laptops as soon as we run down a battery. Tonight (Saturday) we are filling a thermos with hot water so we can be assured of our coffee in the a.m.

Weather has generally been dry, in the 70’s during the day and 50-60’s at night. One night this week stayed real warm after being in the 80’s during the day, so we got a taste of the warm and humid weather heading our way. The next night the wind blew hard all night and it got very cool and stayed cloudy, looked like rain, but none. We have experienced only 2 rain showers since we arrived in Malawi.

Well I’m going to sign-off of this monologue since no one has probably read this far anyway. I’ll try to select some new topics now that our living conditions have been addressed. Much to share about the people and the country; hopefully we’ll be traveling weekends for the near future: beautiful Lake Malawi, Nyika National Park, Livingstonia (as in “Dr. Livingston I presume”), Karonga, Lilongwe, and probably a jaunt by airplane down to South Africa

School Life Begins

Mzuni on Sep 5, 2006

The campus is now full of students and activities again. Pat starts teaching her class of 70 at 7:45 a.m. tomorrow morning. This morning she is meeting with one of her fellow faculty members who is a young female that is both the Dean of Women and on faculty. Pat has been asked to take over the responsibility of working with her (Ambumuliere) to get a paper, which she has been working on, published.

I spent part of yesterday buying electrical materials to build a very long extension wire for Pat’s overhead projector. She was disturbed by the fact that we had worked hard to get the overhead projector repaired, purchased transparencies and burned them on the photocopier, only to learn that the major lecture hall that she is to teach in has no (zero) electrical outlets. So I purchased the materials to tie into the classroom next door and run a wire out the window of one and into the window of the lecture hall. Pat asked a fellow instructor (Joseph, who is a real go-getter) if he knew where I could get a drill to attach the outlet to the wall. Well he dragged Pat over to the maintenance shop and they tracked down a junior electrician, who came to see what I was doing. I suggested to him that going through the wall could be done as a permanent fix, but showed him what I was doing as a temporary. He and Joseph seemed embarrassed that this “mazungu” (“white person”, or in some contexts like when we enter some market areas and the word is being spread around “ahh, rich white person”) had to be doing this work, so he promised to have the permanent job done by today using the materials that I had purchased. Amazing, for 5 years instructors have complained about no power in the lecture hall and overnight we get it corrected. Score one for bwana.

Pat has gotten to know numerous faculty members through the workshop they were in together last week. It is nicer in that a few she has grown friendly and can joke around with. Pat has also volunteered to be a key participant in building a distance-learning module for school teachers, so she will be leaving her mark.

Transition Continues

September 2, 2006, Mzuzu, Malawi

Well we seem to be pretty well nested into our home here on the Mzuzu University (Mzuni) campus. The guards around campus are use to us now, and many have been snapping to attention and saluting as I walk or drive by, but that has been declining. Not sure if it is the official US Embassy license plates that we are still displaying on our car or some of it is the friendly bwana salute I give them. Having a car makes all the difference in the world for establishing a comfort level, such freedom. Hope we can get most of our money back out of it when we leave. I’ve e-mailed our Fulbrighter coming into country behind us to try to start the process of their buying it, no response yet.
I’ve about completed all of the projects I plan for the house here and getting tired of spending money for things we’ll be leaving behind, although that is what part of the Fulbright allowance is intended for. Shower’s installed, new mosquito netting, repaired front light fixture, new hose pipe for gardener, etc. So I’m ready to open myself up to beginning some volunteer work. Spent part of this past week repairing the only overhead projector in the Education Department. They had turned over to their Purchasing folks to get the broken mirror repaired and was told it couldn’t be fixed. Yet when I went to their Procurement office and obtained it, there was a repair estimate of MK131 (~ US$1.00) inside the case (2-1/2 weeks old). I took it to the glass & mirror shop downtown and it was finished in less than30 minutes (figure that one out- guess someone planned to keep it for themselves?). Then I spent most of a day trying to find a spare bulb- none to be found here in Mzuzu; hopefully we can find one in Lilongwe and have it picked up.
I also need to get online and complete continuing education courses so I can renew my PE license next month.
Pat now has her teaching schedule, M&W 7:45 am and T&TH 10:45 am, with up to 70+ students per class. It is all the same course, really just 2 new class preparations per week. It has its challenges since there are no textbooks available. Nice for weekend activities. I hope to get up to Livingstonia soon (yes, named in the honor of Dr. Livingston, I presume) and down to the beach at Lake Malawi. The Nyika National Park is highly recommended for when it gets warmer (such high elevation it still gets down to near 0 deg C at night this time of year.
The mosquitoes have been getting more plentiful lately, as the weather has been warming up into the low 80’s during the day. We did have a cold snap yesterday, with hard blowing winds and the temperature stayed in the 50’s at night and 60’s until late afternoon; cool again this morning. But sun is out again, has been out part of every day we’ve been here and seems to be in the low 70’s today.
Pat has been at a seminar all week and has worn down, as those things tend to do to a person. The instructor- facilitators are from the University of South Africa. Mzuni is planning on beginning long-distance learning classes; so about 60 participants have been learning to write online class modules. Pat is one of 2 white participants, and one of 7 women. I’ve been providing the taxi service since it is being held off-campus.

Settling into Mzuzu University

August 18, 2006- Mzuzu University, Malawi

· Wanted to share some information about Mzuzu University, etc.

Isaac, our housekeeper, was just sharing with us the demonstration-strike that took place at the university earlier this year.
A group of students were upset about the severe lack of computers on campus. The administration had been giving them lip service for quite some time, but the students had run out of patience. They proceeded to block the front gate to prevent other students and faculty from entering the campus until something was done about the computer situation. After some toleration of this the administration invited the local police to come and to open a way for the students and faculty to come and go. However, the striking students made the mistake of throwing stones at the police and others. This angered the police, who eventually used tear gas on the students two days in a row. Eventually the striking students gave up after not having plans for cooking, etc. and things settled down. The university has purchased more computers and one of the large banks contributed numerous of their outdated computers, which are fine for internet and e-mail.

We had heard about this and it was shared with us that the students actually are given more liberties than some faculty believe is appropriate, but no one wants to get into a position again where police are brought back onto the campus.

It has been shared with us that the government has only provided a fraction of the funds it budgets for the university. Many of the students don’t realize that the faculty is actually going without part of their salaries to keep classes going. This has all been complicated by the fact that the vice-chancellor for finance and some of his staff were arrested earlier this year for stealing funds. One of the key actors experienced a Tom DeLay type of death, so the facts will probably never all come out.

The university faculty has a combination of situations. Apparently most people who achieve an education level satisfactory for university teaching go outside the country for employment, where they can make much more than what is available to them in this country. Thus with this brain-drain much of the faculty has a masters degree level of education. Another problem is that the culture has long accepted multiple partner sexual activities by men, and because educated men are more affluent, they make up a very high portion of the HIV infected population. They often frequent bars/ lounges after work and avail themselves of the prostitutes. Thus, HIV-AIDS is another significant drain on the teaching population. Pat has just completed grading 120+ final exams for a professor is currently very ill with AIDS and in the hospital in South Africa. As a result, many of the faculty are retirees who have returned to Malawi to teach at the university.

· Some information about the facilities at Mzuzu University

The campus is roughly 1 mile x 2 miles in size, with a brick wall and iron bars surrounding the whole campus. Parts of the walls have barbed wire on them and some don’t. The main entrance is made up of 2 large iron-barred gates that are manned 24-hours a day by a couple of guards. They keep the gates closed, and open them for our vehicle as we come and go. There are unarmed security guards spread out throughout the campus, often sitting in chairs in some of the yards of our residential area. The university currently has an enrollment of 1,000+ students and growing rapidly. They are holding entrance exams tomorrow for 2 new majors- biomedical sciences and fisheries. There are several permanent brick buildings that make up administration, faculty offices, the library, dining hall, and classrooms. They have discovered however that prefabricated buildings can go up faster and provide for their growth much more cheaply. So we now have two prefab buildings, and a new one is going up as we speak.

Buildings and homes have no heat or air conditioning. We are fortunate in that our house was previously occupied by an American couple who lived here for three years, so they installed screens in the windows. None of the doors, etc. are airtight so we still swat mosquitoes every evening sitting at the dinner table and in our living room, and retreat to our mosquito-netted bed for some reading before lights out.

The terrain is similar to what one would experience in Mexico. Mzuzu is on a plateau at a couple of thousand feet elevation. We can see beautiful mountains in the distance to the northwest from here. The ground is very sparsely vegetated with scrub type of vegetation. Fortunately there are many trees among the housing area so we do have some shade. We have a patch of rough green grass behind our house and some vegetable and flower gardens around the house, maintained by our gardener who works 4 hours per day, 6 days per week for $42/ month. The rest of the ground is red clay that is hard and makes up the roadway and driveway in our residential area. As the dry season progresses we are told that it turns into a very dusty area.

We are well off in terms of creature comforts. We are very fortunate in that we are very wealthy by Malawi standards. Our house is all brick exterior all concrete interior. The walls and floors are all smooth concrete, reminiscent of my freshman college dorm, which had tiled floors where these are bare concrete. The doors are solid plywood doors, painted solid gray. We have three bedrooms, dining area, living room, and kitchen. The walls are painted beige and white, so pleasant while Spartan. We have a toilet room and a bathroom.

The bathroom has a tub with a worn out hand-held shower wand and a sink. Showering is often an adventure. I am still able to take my morning shower, although some days this may be a challenge and be more of a dribbly rinse than a shower. Very early we learned that if one tries to take a shower and there is no water pressure, i.e. the water drips out of the shower wand- check to be sure no one is using the garden hose to water the plants, wash clothes, etc. Once we overcame that we learned to be sparing with the hot water use since the tank is small. Now even on the best of days, the water pressure is such that I can hold the wand above my head and get a shower type flow. If I turn the wand to face upward the water only dribbles out- so this is a challenge. Since there is no shower curtain, this is probably just as well.


Post-script Aug. 24
In the good old American tradition of ‘if you’re not happy with your environment, change it’, we made some home improvements today.
· A new bed mattress was purchased and installed to replace the worn out one that majorly sagged to the middle (so we both woke up with sore backs each morning);
· Further refinements made to a mosquito net frame I built out of PVC pipe so that the net hangs straight around the sides of the bed instead of draping down in a cone shape that was very constricting (especially since you were afraid to sleep touching the net since a mosquito can bite through it even though it can’t fly through it);
· A new shower wand and wall holder was purchased and installed (after much shopping- first store wanted MK9,500 (US$75.00) and I found it in the hardware market for MW1,500 (US$12.00), the latter is plastic vs. chrome);
· A shower curtain rod was purchased and cut to size along with brackets (now need to find a drill to use to install it on the concrete wall);
· And some straw mats were purchased at the market and placed on the bedroom floor so we don’t have to get out of bed onto the cold concrete floor.
So we are settling in and getting much more comfortable.


We have also started adding some wall hangings, added a reading light in the living room, and hung a mirror that we purchased.