Call from Mom

Well, I had a call from my Mom on Saturday which was really nice as we haven’t talked to her since we arrived a month ago. I would like to say a belated happy birthday to her and to wish her well on her pending, possible shift change. It was nice to get an update on family matters in Canada and to get to talk to her and my Dad.
I have tried once again to upload photos but I can’t get it to work. The connections here just can’t seem to handle it. We are going to try Plan B which is to put the pictures on CD and then mail that to a friend who will post them for us. Hopefully that will be viable, and hopefully not too expensive.
That will still take awhile though so I have to ask for patience from all those who have asked to see pictures. Janna went in to her work today and they told her that she needs to leave today for the whole week. That is after she just was away from Wednesday to Friday at midnight last week. There’s nothing wrong with her going and in fact it is great for her to get to see the country, it is just a tad funny to not tell someone with more notice than that. I have found that as well but not to such a dramatic degree. If meetings or work projects go late no one asks you if you can stay or if that is ok. There is no consideration given towards whether you may need to get home for your daughter or other plans etc. That is on top of a long work day. I start at 8 am and finish at 5 pm with no coffee breaks and a one hour lunch. The transportation whether it is bike or minibus takes almost an hour so you have to leave home at 7 am and you return at 6 pm. That is when you are done at 5 pm, twice in the last week and a half my work day has ended after 6 pm so by the time you get home you definitely aren’t a bundle of energy. I feel for my Malawian colleagues though as they often work far later and also work on weekends, all without any overtime pay or consideration of their plans.
We had really nice weather on the weekend even though all we did was hang out at home it was nice. On Saturday we went to a get together for Valentines day at an Englishman named Matt’s house. It was funny to bump into people we had met at the last get together a few weeks ago as the expat community is relatively small.
Janna had a great time in the south of Malawi last week as I’m sure you’ll hear in her blog. It has made us reconsider getting a car again as Janna said that things were so beautiful on the drive and there are not always easy ways to get around and sometimes there aren’t any ways to get to the areas you would like to see. Some of the single volunteers we know seem to get invites in other people’s cars but a family of three doesn’t seem to get that as we have yet to receive an invitation to see anything outside of the city. We are going to look at our finances again to see if we can afford it. The funny thing about cars here is that they don’t depreciate like in Canada. Most volunteers told me that they were able to sell the car for what they bought it for so it is more an issue of accessing the capital to purchase it.
Regan went to a basketball tournament with her school on Friday where one of the big questions from the other schools was if she was the only Caucasion at Mt. Sinai (which she is). It was actually strange to see so many non-Malawian kids from two other schools with their parents cheering them on, one called the African Bible College and one called Bishop MacKenzie International School. Regan seems to be fitting in to her school really well and she has made some friends but she finds their styles outside of school to be quite different from hers. Most of the kids she has met outside of school dress heavily influenced by American Hip-Hop and Regan has said they have no problem commenting negatively on how she dresses. The other day one of her classmates told her that she needs to remove her dark nail polish. This advice wasn’t given as a suggestion but as a necessary action for her to perform. Regan just laughs at all this and remains her own person.