On Friday 17th, I had my followup meeting with the doctor and he said he was happy with my progress. Before the operation he said my chances of recovery were 90% and a week after the operation, my chances have improved to 98%. I think he was quoting real statistics, not expecting me to do 110% and score the winning goal in the 5th inning. So this is pretty good. I haven’t scored A+ since my last blood test. The doctor also said that now that I have experienced torn retinas in each eye, my chance of future torn retinas is lower than the average person without previous events. My brother just had a torn retina, too, so this is good news for the two of us.
I now need to wait for my gas bubble to deplete to nothing before I can fly back to Malawi. It looks like Monday, maybe Tuesday. It would take 14 days to walk, 23 hours to drive the 1700 km, according to Google Maps. You go straight north into Zimbabwe, then angle NE through Mozambique to Blantyre. I do not want to chance another visa in Zimbabwe, so I will fly when I am allowed. I return at the end of February for a followup exam.
Nora has been back in Malawi for a week now (yes, seems longer), teaching MacBeth. And the periodic tables I ordered from eBay and Amazon have all arrived, so I hope to join Nora and get some teaching done. I have been studying the Form 3 chemistry text that the prison gave me (I wonder what they are doing on this subject without their one and only text). It is challenging, with information that I have not looked at in 40 years and some I probably never looked at. I am glad to have Wikipedia as a resource, which the prisoner-students do not have. Some of the textbook information is simply wrong! That is partly why I chose to get some periodic tables. They will be decorative as well as accurately informative. The students do not have their own text books, so I imagine that teaching will entail the teacher writing the text material on the chalk boards, to be copied into the students’ notebooks without passing through the minds of anyone. I wonder how much incorrect information has been copied, studied, and remembered. And I wonder how much incorrect information will be expected to be regurgitated on the final exams.
The chemistry text describes numerous experiments that are to be performed in a form 3 classroom, but we are not going to do them – no running water and no fuel for bunsen burners. Where would I get a jug of sulphuric acid? I believe the idea is to describe the experiment and the likely results that the students might observe. I did not enjoy lab work in school, since nothing ever worked out as planned. I hope we can all appreciate that me describing what was supposed to happen is a bonus. And no one will get hurt.
Back in Johannesburg, I am learning to fillet mangoes. I bought a bunch of these, the photo shows the last two. The are just about perfect in ripeness now. I might refrain from buying any more groceries, since I really hope to be leaving in a couple of days. The mangoes were quite green when I first bought them, but after a day they were ripening. Probably better than Loblaws, but maybe not. I need to try my technique when we get home. That will be all too soon, I think.
More next week with some real Malawi news, I hope.
In the Warm Heart of Africa 