Oct. 28 – Nov 14.

As my date to return to the States approaches, I begin to think of all the things I still want to say to the staff, and all the things I hope to accomplish before leaving. I went to school at 6:30 this past Thursday and didn’t return home for lunch until 4:30 pm, I just got started working on things in the library and couldn’t stop. This is Saturday and I planned to hem the green curtains for the PreK class. I had been surprised that the un-hemmed curtains had been hung when the rods were put up. I quickly discovered why they were hung when I could not get them down because they were hung with towel rack hardware!! TIA (This is Africa.) I don’t know when the rods will be fixed for curtains so I spent the day sitting on a chair on top of a table basting in the hems. Someone else may hem them one day!

Just as the electricity goes off a few times each week to conserve electrical power, there is a shortage of gasoline in Malawi, and suddenly every once in awhile the gas stations just give out of gas. Maralise, Debby, and I were planning our trip south to get out of the heat when the gas stations gave out of gas. We had a tank of gas so our destination for our outing changed to a place we could go and return on one tank of gas because we didn’t know how many days there would be before we could buy more gas. We ended up going to the closest resort place on Malawi Lake. The facilities were nice and the fish was delicious. We had a nice water front cottage with a shaded grassy area right at the edge of the beach. A wonderful area in which to sit, listen to the breaking waves, read, and meditate on God’s beautiful world. We three agogo (an endearing African name for grandmother) gals enjoyed our girly time together. For a long time I did not know what the word was and I was hearing only gogo: thus I was having lots of trouble applying that term to myself.

The beaches were crowded just as they are at the NC and SC beaches. However we did see DIFFERENT things on the beach, namely a herd of cows! They were chased off the beach by the young people several times as we sat on the peer watching the crowds. In one of our shade trees a hammer head bird had built its nest. It was the biggest nest of trash that you could possibly imagine. It was an ordeal just for the bird to enter its nest for there was not a top entry. The bird made its entry to the nest from one side at the bottom through hanging trash of discarded paper, plastic, etc. Maralise from South Africa told us that the bid’s nest reminded her of the lives of us who live in the wealthy nations of our world. It is just a gathering of material things to clutter up our lives, making it difficult to get to the middle of life and see the important aspects thereof.
I think that’s preachable.

Last night Barbara was called to the hospital to see the chief of the closest Nkhoma tribe. He was critically ill and she had him sent to the hospital in Lilongwe for intensive care. She was so concerned about him that she went with him. She didn’t get home for dinner until about 9:30, and this morning she returned to Lilongwe to check on him. He was doing better today.

We have just returned from a pizza supper with Rebecca Morton. Will end this and go to bed early so I’ll be refreshed to start the new school week in the morning.