Back home in Malawi.

We are both back in our house in Malawi. Nora came on the 10^th and I arrived on the 21^st. We are settling in again, pretty well. Yesterday I did some baking and cooking with the propane stove. It took a while to get the oven going. I borrowed the neighbour’s cook and he figured out how to light it. I had been hoping it was self-lighting, but you need to get down on hands and knees with a match and a prayer. The scones turned out okay. As did the chili. We have plans for chili sauce, too, but that might be for another week.

The new challenge we have is keeping insects (ants and cockroaches) from our food stores. We set up a chair with its legs in pans of water. Our pantry is on the seat of the chair. This should keep the ants away, but we’re not so sure about the cockroaches.

We went for a walk today and bought some bananas from a woman selling by the roadside. They are pretty good bananas, but we got too many. Maybe I will make some banana loaf if some of the bananas get too ripe. But the important thing is that we hadn’t been so bold as to buy things from the roadside all on our own until now. The poor woman almost had a heart attack when we didn’t haggle over the price. She gave us a couple of free bananas for her conscience.

School is turning out fine. I’ve been teaching the Form 1 Chemistry and Math and Form 3 Chemistry classes. I’d like to know who is teaching everything else and who taught my students before me. We overhear the other teachers, but we haven’t talked with any of them. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that the students don’t know about algebra or chemistry. The classes are pretty informal and attendance is spotty. My oldest student looks to be in his 70s. Last week he told me that he had never seen the algebra I had written on the chalkboard. We agreed, though, that he will learn it. This morning the class tried to calculate the average molecular weight of chlorine, which we all know is 75% chlorine -35 and 25% chlorine -37. If only chlorine could be predictable and be 100% chlorine -34, then life would be easier. Since I teach math (algebra) and chemistry (isotopes) to this same class, maybe I can bring the two subjects together for this exercise.

Today, Nora and I entered the prison together and made our way to the reformatory school without help and no guard to accompany us. We wandered in with some other people and stood by the guard shack until a guard came out and greeted us. We said hello, he said, “welcome with both hands,” and we walked through the next two gates and to the school office. This was the first time we were allowed into the prison without a guard or the CCAP volunteer to lead us. The volunteer told me that Nora got lost when he let her lead the way last week, so he was pleased that we got to school without incident. I hope we keep our get-out-of-jail card handy.

My eyesight is improving slowly. I think the right eye, after its recent operation, is improving like the left eye did a year ago. So I know what I should expect. I won’t be able to eyeball straight lines to tell if they are indeed straight any more. My left eye still puts a little wiggle in any straight line.

I have uploaded a few photos from our vacation in December. The one of the hippo is pretty large. I have a lot of hippo photos. And I managed to get a few elephants, too.