Out of Africa

Hard to imagine that I am leaving for home today – for a trip that at times seemed endless, now that the end is actually here, I am surprised. This has seemed like an interruption of my “normal” life, and yet, at the same time, after a while, living here felt normal. I will miss Africa, the people I met here, the new friends, and my students, who energized and inspired me with their determination to learn. I will also miss the time that I had to experience the culture, and sometimes, just to enjoy the peace of unallocated time.

As part of my exit interview, Linda asked me this question: “What did you learn about yourself, other people, and about other cultures.” I assured her, last night over dinner that I would try to condense my response, currently a four page document. It’s funny, considering that I was here to teach, I ended up learning so much!

I wonder what my last memory of Africa will be, before it all becomes a memory?

I am currently sitting in my room, at the Cluney Lodge, reaquainting myself with the Internet, email and Facebook. My last placement in Nkhoma didn't have a particularly reliable Internet service, so although I did a bunch of blog postings, I wasn't able to get them posted until today.

Here's a few pictures to brighten up the blog a bit!

This is the guest house in Nkhoma, where I stayed from last Tuesday until this morning.

On Sunday, I went for a short hike, towards, but not up, a local mountain. It was kind of overcast and late in the day, when I started on my trek. But the scenery was quite nice:

En route, I encountered a little goat family - the mother was tethered, but the kids weren't.

I thought I'd take a picture of myself along the way. Apparently, I was concentrating so hard on taking the picture, that it didn't occur to me to smile. And yes, I know I need a haircut!

Prior to my walk, I had lunch at Nelly's home. Nelly is one of my current students, and she had invited me to lunch on Sunday. She served a delicious meal of nsima (ground maize), chicken, beef and a stewed vegetable. Nelly is sitting on the left, wearing a blue shirt, her husband is next to her. The other woman is Christina, the woman who serves us coffee every day.

One last picture, then I'm off to bed! Some local vegetation, for those of you who are currently enjoying the brisk January weather in Canada!

Which reminds me, now that I am over my toilet paper and soap hang-ups - my new obsession: should I wear jeans or a skirt or my long past the knees shorts (I am suddenly drawing a blank on what they are called - all that comes to mind is "pedal pushers" but I know there is a more modern word for them...). If I wear jeans, I will be all set for the second half of my trip, but will be hot and sweaty for the first half. If I dress lighter, then I will be comfortable for the first half, but cold to the bone for the second half. I could bring a change of clothes, but then I have to lug them around.

Decisions, decisions...

God and QuickBooks

(Written on Monday, January 24)

I was reflecting this morning on the writing I have done lately, and my obvious obsession with the miniscule – such as my soap. (Incidentally, I had to fold it over onto itself this morning, in order to have enough to use. I anticipate breaking into the 1 ounce bar tomorrow morning, which means I will have enough to get me back to Lilongwe. My last two nights will be spent at the Cluny Lodge in Lilongwe – a somewhat upscale guest house – where there is ample soap!) I suppose my explanation is that my world is even smaller here, than it is in Chatham, and so small things consume me.

Somehow, that line of thought led me to a reflection on when I felt God most near to me, during the two months I have been in Malawi. Prior to leaving, I had anticipated/hoped for some kind of major religious experience here – what I will call a “Namaste moment” – seeing God within others. (I picked up the term “Namaste” when reading about Mother Teresa last spring. The term also cropped up during the last episode of “Lost” – it’s a sign on one of the buildings, at the end, just before they all show up in church.)

But, that wasn’t what happened.

I most felt God’s presence when He was helping me to learn and then teach QuickBooks to my students. I never imagined that I could do that – especially after I looked at Saul’s accounting spreadsheet, the source of information to be converted into QuickBooks, and was filled with utter dread. (Doug W will recall I experienced similar panic attack moments, when faced with the myriad of spreadsheets that make up the day job of an IT leader. I’ve begun wishing I had known about QuickBooks, back then!)

Numbers have never made sense to me – and yet suddenly, I was chomping my way through all this new material, with a feeling of energy and excitement. It was the oddest thing – and I knew I was being helped. Really – I am well acquainted with my personal learning curve and consequent deficiencies. And not only was I learning QuickBooks, but I was applying it in a non-profit environment – and every time I guessed what I should be doing, the guesses turned out to be appropriate.

I kind of wish, as a Christian on a mission, that I would have a more moving or inspiring story to offer up than that, but I guess He reveals himself in different ways. And I also know that without the prayer support from my family and friends back home, that I would have felt more alone and vulnerable here.

I had also kind of hoped to become more prayerful while here, and I don’t think that has happened. On the other hand, when Nelly asked me to say a prayer before lunch, yesterday, I think I handled it more gracefully than I would have back in December. And I continue to about the different forms of prayer – a line of thinking that Margaret Koomans sparked, a couple of weeks ago, which has been enlightening.

Sunday

(Written on Sunday, January 23rd)

As I worshiped at the Nkhoma Church this morning, it occurred to me that, barring some en route delay, the next time I worship in church, I will be back in my home church, Grace Christian Reformed Church in Chatham. This choked me up a bit – it hasn’t been all that long, and yet, this has been a lengthy experience. I was able to listen in on a few home services, using Skype, back when I was in Lilongwe. And it has been comforting to know that people in my church have been keeping me and my mission here, in their prayers.

Am I ready to come home? Yes – but as Friday approaches, the day I am to fly from Lilongwe, to Johannesburg, to Paris, to Detroit, I am becoming more pensive, and trying to hold onto as much as I can from here – to wring as much out of every experience as possible. I think that’s why I have been writing to much this weekend.

I am told that many travellers experience a form of culture shock when they return. Will that happen to me? How will it feel, returning from the land of want, to the land of abundance? I try to imagine it, memories of my home, my church, my workplace, and the family and friends who inhabit these physical spaces, as well as the spaces in my mind. What will they want to know about this trip? I’ve tried to bring people along with me, through this blog. But to experience Africa, you need to be here, because there’s a lot that I can’t capture without feeling like I’m exploiting the experience, acting more like a tourist and less like a volunteer – being a voyeur rather than a guest.

The sights, the sounds, the smells, the tranquility, the countless markets and roadside stalls, the people, sitting, lying on the hard ground, walking, biking, riding the roads, going about their daily business, women carrying infants and others, bearing heavy loads on their heads, and the women who do both! And some of the infants aren't so small, either! I'm sure I've seen three year olds being backpacked around!

The rolling hills, the blue skies, the goats, the chickens, the children, waving and calling out “Azungu! Azungu!"

How does one understand another country, another culture? Two months of experience and a bit of reading – I sure don’t understand it.

As I walked through the hospital grounds today, a small boy came up to me, looked plaintively at me, and said, “No father.”

What does he want from me? Money? Sympathy? I just looked at him and said, “Is your mother here?” We stared at each other, and I walked away. Even worse – the day before, as I walked home at lunch, I ended up behind another boy, slightly older, maybe 9 years old, who seemed to be struggling not to cry. I approached him from behind, and said a few words of comfort, patting  him on the shoulder, wondering what was wrong. He didn’t seem to speak English. I felt helpless – how to help? Was he sick? Scared? Lost? Grieving? Ultimately, I walked away – assuring myself that there were plenty of adults around who could speak to him, find out what was wrong. And sure enough, I heard an older boy call to him.

But still, it bothers me that I, who have so much, can do so little.

Productivity

As I was drinking my tea and reading this morning, I started to think. This is one side benefit of being in Africa – thinking time. Lots of it. Because my day isn’t loaded up with post-work tasks, I am finding time to read, write, obsess over minor things, meditate (a form of prayer, for me – the fruits of which show up in my writing – as Margaret pointed out to me)  – and I really enjoy it. That’s the tragedy of modernity – the clutter of so much to do, so little time to do it in. Why have I let that happen to me? And is there any way to avoid it, really?

I was thinking about the older people who are living productive lives in Africa, contributing their skills to improving lives here – and they are doing this well into their seventies! I began counting – I am 49 now, so if I haul my butt back to the gym, resume more healthy eating habits, try to get a decent night sleep, and generally try to keep my personal engine in good repair, it’s not unrealistic to think that I could be productive into my mid-seventies. That gives me another 25 good years – in other words, I would have the same amount of time that I have experienced from age 25 to 50. This suddenly opened up a lot of doors in my mind.

Heck, I’m not nearing the END of my work-life, I’m only halfway through it!

Rats!

(Written on Sunday, January 23)

As I was boiling water for my breakfast tea – Ada, the anaesthetist, informed me, “I saw a rat in the cupboard.”

I am immediately grateful that I have been storing my food, all unopened, in my room, not in the kitchen cupboard.

“How big was it?”

“Not very big.” She says, and matter-of-factly pulls her hands apart to indicate a size approximately four times larger than my personal version of “not very big” – about 8 inches long.

I think back to the sound of breathing in my room the other night. I calculate – would there be any possible way for a rat to have snuck into my room while I was sleeping? I’ve never been brave enough to look under the bed – who knows – maybe there’s a tiny door or crevice down there. (This is a mystery which will go unsolved, as I don’t have the internal fortitude to even look down there…and because, basically – I DON’T WANT TO KNOW! )

Ada brings out a piece of corn and shows me where the rat has been eating. I am not surprised to see that the rat didn’t have much more gnawing success than I did. It has also been eating Ada’s tomatoes.

I also find out, thanks to Ada, that it is possible to boil the corn in order to make it palatable to western tastes and teeth. [Later – Betty tells me that she and Ken boiled two cobs of corn and that didn’t make it any easier to eat. I suspect Ada has levels of dental and intestinal fortitude that I can only dream of. She also seems to survive on endless variations of “stampot” – it turns out that, although she is Polish, she married a Dutch man and speaks and cooks fluently in Dutch.]

She tells me some good news – she was called out during the night, and was able to help save the life of a child.

Ada is heading to Zambia today, as her three month VISA for Malawi has expired, and it’s more cost effective (and fun) to go on a short safari in nearby Zambia. One of the young interns, Nick from Australia, was telling me about the safari he took prior to starting here – “Have you seen the beginning of Jurassic Park, when the opening scene flashes up – it’s like that!”

I recall the scene and do some quick mental substitution – “You mean, with elephants instead of dinosaurs?”

He nods, eyes gleaming at the memory. I am immediately sorry that I didn’t organize a safari for myself – my reasoning was that since so many people had contributed to the expenses of this trip, that I should not, even on my own dime, circumvent the nature of my time here, by tourist activities. But if I ever return, I will definitely make a point of including a safari. I think the other reason I didn’t, was that something like a safari sounds like more fun, if you are with a companion. Although, I note, Ada is going alone.

A World Away

(Written on Saturday, January 22) Malaria claimed another life at the hospital – the anaesthetist was called over this afternoon because a five year old went into cardiac arrest. The usual story – the child had been sick for about five days, and by the time he or she arrived here, it was too late to do anything. They had started a blood transfusion, as malaria attacks the red blood cells, leaving its victims as white as azungu - but the transfusion was too late. Nelly was telling me that parents are afraid to bring their children in – the nasal catheters, for example, which are used to tube feed malnourished kids (kids who suffer from Kwashiorkor, a protein deficiency, lose their appetite) – scare people.

I also asked, today, how people bring their dead home from the hospital. I wanted to believe that there was a system in place for that – if not an actual hearse, at least a motorized vehicle.

Nope – few can afford that. The lucky ones may have the use of an oxcart. Alternatively, the mothers will wrap their dead children in the same colourful fabric they carried them to the hospital in, and will carry them home, lifeless, on their backs. Or two people will carry a larger deceased person, back along the same road they walked down, when they first came to the hospital, hoping for a cure.

How can I be living in 2011 and hearing these things? It is beyond sad, past tragic – it’s criminal. After all, I’m only a plane ride away from where these things are unthinkable –ahhh, rather -  a world away.

The Little Prince

(Written on Saturday, January 22)

For some reason, as my time in Africa is drawing to an end, I am remembering the end of the book, The Little Prince. At the end, the narrator, the Pilot who had crash-landed in the Sahara Desert and encountered the Little Prince, is left wondering .  The Little Prince has returned to his planet (via the fox, who has killed him) – and the Pilot realizes that when he drew a muzzle for the Little Prince’s sheep, he didn’t include a buckle or something. So he wonders if the sheep will get loose, eat the Little Prince’s Rose, or if The Little Prince will remember to take care of the Baobab trees etc. (This is the best I can draw from my memory.)

Anyhow, I am similarly having these thoughts – once I leave Africa:

Will Saul the Accountant manage to migrate his Excel Accounting spreadsheet into QuickBooks when his fiscal year begins, in July?

Will Mr. Chitete and the ladies be able to do their own computer work, freeing up Anold so he doesn`t have to work so hard?

Will the MCP Supervisors continue to work on their websites?

Will the CRWRC staff remember how to compress pictures so they can upload them faster?

It is strange to be in a place that I never expected to be in, and to meet people, who, logic tells me, I should never have met, and to now be leaving, and all these students, whom I likely will never see again –their lives will continue, and the things I have taught them – what difference will these lessons have made? I will leave but what am I leaving behind – is there any permanence in what I have done here? Have I made a material difference here – change, even if on a small scale? And how does computer literacy help Africa, anyway?

Wondering, I am.

A Day in the Life - at Nkhoma

(Written on Saturday, January 22nd) - I am battling a bout of stomach-ickiness tonight, started this afternoon. It probably didn’t help that I decided to walk down to the large market here, and wandered around the stalls for a while, picking my way carefully over the lumpy, bumpy ground – all dry red earth and rocks. There was a lot of local produce – but little variety – tomatoes, potatoes, mangoes and bananas – pretty much exclusively. I had an urge for carrots – not a scrap of orange in sight! And a lot of deep-fried baked goods, like plain, round, giant-sized hole-less donuts, but given my queasiness, I opted out. I also avoided the meat which was being cooked over the open fire, although it was tempting…I have yet to eat goat here, although everywhere I turn I see goats! All the relief and development programs seem to include “goat programs” and from what I can see, goats are thriving. It helps that Malawi has had enough rain to produce greenery. I did buy some mangoes and bananas, which are now in the fridge. I also decided that I shouldn’t leave Malawi without trying a cob of corn, so I spent 20 kwatchas to buy a cob. They cook them over an open fire pit, and so I thought it would be a nice snack.

Turns out that Malawi corn is even tougher than the local chicken! I could not even bite into it! I am mystified as to how the locals eat it – although I suppose they exhibit more sheer determination than me. Judging by some of the teeth I have seen, the corn is a tough combatant. I ended up throwing my cob in the communal garbage here, and it made quite a THUD when it hit the bottom. Local corn must be an acquired taste – I see why they grind it to smithereens to make nsima.

I have now been at Nkhoma for five days – over half the time I will spend here. My work days are pretty routine – here’s how a typical day goes:

5:10 AM – Wake up, lay in bed thinking about getting up before everyone else, in order to have exclusive use of the toilet and tub.

5:30 AM – Get up, in order to have exclusive use of the toilet and tub – which are located in separate, side by side rooms.

5:35 AM – Exclusively using the toilet.

5:37 AM – Run the water in the tub, admiring the water’s light brown color. The tub water is pumped from the lake, and filtered down the mountain, through various sizes of ground rock, from large to small – apparently the filter I brought here did not work, so they continue to basically use a natural approach. (The water we drink here, comes from a borehole in the ground, and is not discoloured. I’ve been using my SteriPen to UV-zap it, but I think that’s overkill – pun intended.) However, the water is HOT, which is more than can be said about my Mozambique showering experience!

5:47 AM – As there is no lock on the tub room, rather than a long, soothing soaking, as soon as I am finished, I scoot up and scramble to dress, making a loud racket so no one will accidentally walk in on me. This is more for the sake of the unwary intruder, as I think I left my modesty back in Chatham.

6:00 AM – Breakfast – Muesli and milk, and hot Milo to drink – during the drink, I down my vitamins – multi, B and D, and, every other day or so, an allergy pill.

6:15 AM – Back in room, reading until…

7:45 AM - I pop a candy into my mouth (I bought a bag of fruit flavoured South African sweets along) and walk from the Guest House, through the hospital grounds, down the road, over to the office buildings where I teach. The walk through the hospital grounds takes me past the area where the “guardians” (relatives and friends of the patients) cook over open fires, for the patients. I walk past several laundry lines, where sheets and blankets dry in the air – the guardians do the laundry outside as well. There’s barely enough money to run the hospital, let alone cater to the non-essential needs of the patients. I walk through a passageway that takes me past an area where a myriad of mothers and babies wait to see doctors. As I walk through a bit of town, people stare at me – some with friendliness, especially children, who often wave or smile, and some with – not so friendliness. In fact, in the faces of the older adults, I most often see a mixture of suspicion or anger – or maybe it’s just a general tiredness or unhappiness, I don’t know. I’m pretty sure it’s not personal – and it makes me wonder, as I walk along, what they think of us, the white “azungu” who regularly show up, then disappear, in and out of Nkhoma.

8:00 AM – I am in the office of Mr. Chitete, my first student. He is the Program Director for Relief and Development, an older gentleman who is incredibly tidy, meticulous and diligent. We have been working on converting his monthly summary report into a Word template, which should save him time, as he currently handwrites everything, and a lot of it is repetitious. We recently moved onto Excel, which he tells me, after watching it calculate, is “beautiful.”

9:15 AM – As my time with Mr. Chitete progresses, I begin eyeing the clock – as fairly soon, a woman, Christina, will arrive with our morning coffee!

9:30 AM – The coffee arrives – I am presented with a mug on a saucer and a tiny spoon with which I carefully measure out a small amount of instant coffee and a generous dose of whole milk powder. Then Christina pours some steaming water into the mug. “Zikomo!” I say, thanking her. “Zikomo!” she replies, thanking me – presumably for thanking her.

9:50 AM – I remind Mr. Chitete that he is working too hard and should remember to take a coffee break himself.

Between 10:05 and 10:20 AM – My two hours with Mr. Chitete ends – depending on my coffee drinking speed, I may rapidly guzzle down the last dregs, before heading over to:

10:06 to 10:21 AM – I unplug my laptop and pick up my old blue chair and go next door to work with Nelly.

12:00 Noon – Nelly and I wrap up our time together – we first worked on a PowerPoint presentation about Malnutrition, based on notes she used the last time she did an oral presentation. It has turned out quite well, but the photos, which we painstakingly downloaded from the Internet, are depressing. Kids with various forms of malnutrition – I will bring the presentation home as one of the “deliverables” from my time here.

12:01 to 12:15 – I retrace my steps, back through the hospital, to the Guest House for lunch. Lunch is usually a grilled cheese sandwich, a glass of mango juice and an apple. In honour of the Dutch who originally built this whole mission, I brought along some Gouda slices of cheese, from Lilongwe. (Which reminds me – I must put a good word in for the Amsterdam airport – there was a cheese store there which had a generous supply of cheeses to sample – since I spent the better part of the day in the airport on the way down, I became well acquainted with various Dutch cheeses – the older and more flavourful, the better. I kept wondering if someone was going to notice my frequent trips to the sampling table. I also bought a package of those mini wafer things, the ones that look like thin dry waffles with caramel in between. I had them once in Chatham, and didn’t think they were anything to write home about. Either my tastes have changed, or these were fresher, but they were really good – the texture of dry waffle nestled against gooey syrupy caramel – mmm….)

12:30 to 1:15 – Back in room, reading again.

1:15 to 1:30 – Returning to Mr. Chitete’s office, to resume the lesson.

2:40 PM - As my time with Mr. Chitete progresses, I begin eyeing the clock – as fairly soon, Christina will arrive with our afternoon coffee!

2:55 PM – The coffee arrives etc. OR, on two occasions, we are given, instead, Fanta Orange pop.

3:45 PM – Around about this time, I unplug my laptop, grab my chair, and head next door to Nelly, and we resume our lesson. Unlike Mr. Chitete, she doesn’t have a laptop, so I basically sit next to her, coaching her through the lesson, and when she is working on something, and isn’t requiring my assistance, I muse. Some of my musing is philosophical, other musing is more practical – namely, which can will I open for dinner?

5:00 PM – The afternoon lessons end, and I walk back, through the town, through the hospital, up the slight slope, to the guest house.

5:15 PM – I discovered, on Thursday, that there’s an Internet room I can use at the hospital, so it’s possible I will stop in and use it (and post this..)

5:30 PM – Depending upon the results of the afternoon musing, I will pull out a particular can of South African fare. By the end of the day, I am tired (the one-on-one teaching, for some reason, is actually more mentally draining than the larger groups), so I often will just eat in my room, rather than go to the kitchen and eat in the dining room, with others. This means cold canned food, but depending on my level of introversion, I am ok with this. Until today, I would have had cookies for dessert, but I ate my way through those as of yesterday.

6:00 PM – Unlike Mozambique, I brought along toilet paper, which turns out to be unnecessary, as we are well supplied here (although I did donate a communal roll last Tuesday, as we had run short for some reason.) Instead, this trip, I have been preoccupied with a fear of running out of soap. Here’s why:

I originally brought two bars of Dove along on the trip – and went through them in the first month. So I purchased a large bar of some South African brand – a macadamia and aloe bar or something. One of those soap “flavours” which sounds good enough to eat…but – please note – I haven’t.

Prior to leaving Lilongwe, while shopping for groceries and toilet paper, I put some thought into whether or not to purchase another bar of soap. I decided not to, partially because soap is expensive – over 500 kwatchas (e.g. $3.50) and I am stingy – and partially because I was PRETTY sure, I would have enough to last the remaining week and a half. (Note – for some reason, I think nothing of spending 500 kwatchas on a large bar of Cadbury chocolate…or a container of Pringles chips. I suspect my priorities are…suspect.)

After unpacking and investigating the communal bathroom, I come to the conclusion that I will be using my own soap for every toilet trip, not just for showering, and that my bar of soap looks smaller now than when I last recall looking at it. I am glad that I have the bar of “authentically fragrant Lemon Verbena soap – enriched with Shea Butter for added nourishment to your skin” which Karen tucked into my Christmas Care package. But it’s a small one ounce bar.

So I have been rationing soap rather than toilet paper this time around.

Wondering, will I have enough to get through my time in Nkhoma – calculating the odds, eyeing the bar size, trying desperately to remember to leave the soap out to air dry, as it seems to go further when it’s not soggy.

The stress is getting to me. It also means I shouldn’t have more than a bath a day – although I cheated twice and had evening baths.

So far my luck is holding, and I think I will be OK. But I skipped a bath today, since I had one last night.

And I suspect  that “fresh and clean-smelling” are not currently words which you would use to describe me. Or my attire.

Actually, another current major preoccupation has been over when and how to do laundry. In Mozambique, I did it by hand in a basin, and the young man who helped out on the week days, did a load or two as well. Here, I could pay one of the ladies here to do it, but the laundry, too, appears to be communal, so I thought I’d do my own. But then, I had nowhere obvious to do it – so I ended up washing a full load in the sink, rinsing it in the tub, and then hanging it to air dry in my room.

But determining how to fit that into my crowded daily schedule, as documented above, was quite all-encompassing. It took me three days, before I eventually concluded that it should be done on Friday, so that both bras could be washed, with the expectation that one would be dry by Saturday.

That reasoning paid off, more or less – which is to say that one bra was dry, more or less.

6:05 – 9:05 PM – In room, reading, or working on the computer or pondering when to fit laundry in. On Friday, I treated myself to the last movie in Karen’s Christmas Care package – Cary Grant in Penny Serenade, which is a tear jerker – the little girl in it is magnificent. Oh, and I laughed out loud when Cary Grant and his wife get their adopted daughter – as an infant. When the baby cries for the first time, they don’t know what to do – Cary Grant shrieks at his wife, “Do something, can’t you see it’s suffering?”

(Non sequitur: I have been doing battery conservation here, as Nkhoma turned out to have South African plugs, which are different from the rest of Malawi, and my extension cord didn’t work. Tonight, I finally found an extension cord to borrow, so I have more than 2 ½ hours of laptop time to look forward to! Hence this long, rambling blog. If anyone is actally still reading – what stamina you have!)

9:05 PM – Realize that I am tired already, and that if I want to beat the morning bathroom rush (which, in all honesty, I have never actually seen…and probably never happens – I think most people fight over the shower at the other end of the hall – rather than soak in a tub of light brown water) – I should go to sleep. Read my Bible (I downloaded an iPhone app which I am using, as the hardcopy Bible I brought has really small text. I plan to leave it with Linda to give to Grace, the girl I am sponsoring.), pray, think about home.

11:30 PM – Wake up, lie in bed for a while, wondering what time it is. Turn on the iPhone (which I sleep with – that and my mosquito net are my two bedmates, and constant overseas friends) – note the time with a certain level of dismay/indignation – thinking, “You’ve got to be kidding…” and return to sleep.

2:30 AM – 3:30 AM – Wake up again, on and off, possibly awake for a while… all my sleep here, however, is dreamless.

5:15 AM – The day begins anew.

And, periodically throughout the day: Worry about mosquitoes, assess self for new bites, wondering if itches are mosquito bites or some other kind of bite. Every day or so, I encounter an actual mosquito in my room, which results in The Hunt. Armed with my can of Raid, I take aim, and spray, and watch, and wonder – did I make contact? Was it enough for a kill? Perhaps I see the mosquito begin a downwards flight – but is it flying or falling to its doom? As the floor is dark concrete, I can never find any mosquito bodies as evidence of a kill….one night I woke up and could hear the high-pitched hum of a mosquito, outside of my net. But could it get in? And a while later, I swear I heard the sound of breathing, from somewhere on the floor, near the end of the bed. I started wondering if perhaps someone was sleeping under my bed, as they do at the hospital. Then I told myself I was being irrational – there was no way there could be someone under the bed, as I would surely have heard more than one isolated moment of breathing. Still, I froze in my bed, suspended my own breathing, and listened intensely for any “hidden man under the bed” sounds. A while later, I heard another noise, of some kind of animal of some sort – bumping into something, and remembered a day or so earlier, seeing something walk along the wall – but I didn’t have my glasses on, so I couldn’t really be sure if it was just a small lizard or – gasp – a spider.

But I haven’t seen any spiders here in my room, so I told myself it was probably just a lizard, and went back to sleep.

Life and Death in Nkhoma

(Typed yesterday - January 18th) I am now at my last placement – in Nkhoma, which is about an hour away from Lilongwe. Nkhoma was originally a mission station started in 1897 by the Dutch Reformed Church of South Africa. It is now headquarters of the Nkhoma Synod Church in Central Africa Presbyterian. It is about 50 km from Lilongwe; Linda drove me out here on Monday, which was a holiday, in honour of John Chilibwe, a Malawian pastor who killed a white landowner, decapitated him and placed his head on a table near his pulpit. This was an early anti-colonial movement – in addition to the one day holiday, Chilibwe’s picture graces all the Malawian money. Linda says that used to keep a low profile on John Chilibwe Day, but now, they go about their regular business…!

I am staying at a guest house here – which means I have my own room, with a single bed, desk, wardrobe, and share a bathroom, kitchen and living room with other guests.

Nkhoma is now the site for a hospital, a nursing school (which is currently closed), two secondary schools, one primary school, and a seminary, as well as several synodical buildings, including the Relief and Development Office, which is partnered with the CRWRC.

Most of the other guests here are associated with the hospital – including two young interns from Australia, five or so student nurses from Holland, and one anesthesiologist from Poland. The anestheiologist is quite amazing – she is 76 years old, and this is about her third trip here. As she says, “I am healthy, I get bored at home.” She is heading back to Poland in mid-February, as the seven day weeks are starting to tire her out. However, as she is a widow and her children are grown, she expects she will return again, once she gets her strength back.

In order to walk down to the Relief and Development office, I take a shortcut through the hospital grounds. Hospitals here are quite different from what I am accustomed to. For example, as I pass through the grounds, I walk by a large mound of logs, which are cut daily. They are provided to the family and friends of the patients. See, every patient has to have at least one guardian at the hospital – to cook meals and to do laundry. The hospital doesn’t provide these services, except for tuberculosis patients and children under the age of 5. So there is a constant stream of visitors into the hospital, carrying containers of food. These people will also sleep at the hospital, often under the beds. Some patients have several relatives staying on site. When the doctors do the morning rounds, they ask everyone to leave, unless a guardian has some information to share.

Also, because the hospital is crowded, it is not unusual to find patients, especially children, sharing beds. And everyone shares cups, dishes and cutlery.

Despite what would seem to be somewhat unhygienic conditions, many patients make remarkable progress, and the hospital has a very good reputation.

I was walking home at lunch today, and as I approached the hospital, I could hear the sound of a woman wailing. Slightly ahead, I could see a small crowd of people, and a woman who was distraught – she collapsed on the ground, while most of us watched, unable to do anything to help her. I wondered – had she just lost her spouse? A child? She looked quite young – another woman began helping her to get up. It was horrible, wanting to help, not knowing how – and feeling like such an outsider – almost an intruder on someone else’s catastrophe.

Later, I was talking to the anestheologist who told me that the hospital is having a bad time with malaria – they lose an average of two children a day right now, as it is the rainy season and there are lots of mosquitoes. This morning, they lost a baby boy. He had been at a smaller hospital about an hour’s drive from Nhkoma – but the mother didn’t have enough money to pay for transportation. So instead, she had wrapped her baby up in a tchewa, the all-purpose fabric wrap which women wear as skirts and baby carriers, and biked her way to the hospital. By the time she got here, it was too late to save the infant – he had died along the way.

I wonder – was she the woman I saw at lunch time?  A woman who had done what she could to save her baby, and failed?

And why, in 2011, when malaria medication is relatively inexpensive, and early treatment, so effective, are Africans dying from it?

As I type this, I look towards my suitcase, in which sits a malaria test kit, one round of treatment and a month or so of prophylactic treatment – enough to have saved a life today, had they been in the hands of the mother or the first hospital she went to.

There is something very wrong here.

Some Pictures

A few assorted snaps - my heart is moved with the knowledge that some of you have been ploughing through dry text with nary a photo in sight!

This is the mango tree which grows outside the CRWRC office in Lilongwe. The green mangoes aren't ripe yet, but every so often we'll find a ripe one on the ground, ready to eat. These ones tend to be quite small. Nancy showed me a useful trick she learned from some missionaries, for those of you travelling in tropical places. Before peeling and eating fruit, wash them in a mixture of water and bleach - heavy on the water, light on the bleach - just enough to flash-kill any little microorganisms. And don't leave them in there too long! As a rule, you should always peel fruits, and avoid fresh salads. Cooked foods are generally safe. I have been following these rules of engagement (ROE), and aside from that first week of stomach upsets, I have been eating like a trooper again. Well, a trooper who is living on canned foods and cookies. Although tonight I got braved, walked to the small market and looked around a bit.

Compared to North America, there is not a lot of food variety here - even compared to Lilongwe. All I wanted was a box of granola cereal. All I ended up with was a box of chocolate cookies and a box of mango cream cookies. The mango ones bear a resemblance, in both taste and texture, to hard tack, which I seem to recall was a food that the early Voyageurs in Upper Canada used to subsist on.

We drove through some beautiful scenery last week, on the trip from Lilongwe to Mozambique. This was taken near the border to Mozambique - look upon it and weep, all you unfortunate ice and snowbound souls!

More landscape, with a field in the foreground:

The next shots are from Lilongwe. I decided to walk to the shopping part of town, got lost, and ended up in a nearby shopping area called "Indian Town" because many of the vendors are East Indian. I wandered around for a while, getting sunburned on my shoulders, and taking some pictures. Even though it's called Indian Town, there was actually more evidence of Chinese vendors, so go figure. And here's the entrance to a large mosque which demarcates the beginning of Indian Town:

I'm pretty sure this guy is wondering what I'm doing - when I take pictures with the iPhone, I'm not sure it's obvious what I'm doing!

It strikes me as odd to see giant billboards advertising products the majority of Malawians can barely afford. That's a red Coca Cola sign in the middle:

Here's a better shot, along with some of the local signage:



One Lonely Night

This was a few nights ago, I had retreated to the safety of my netted bed, safe from mosquitoes, with only a book and the iPhone for company. Before I knew it, I had hauled out my iPhone and using "Elf U'RSelf", created some magnificent art work, featuring family and friends. Here's my favorite, my sister Lisa and granddaugher, Aaliyah:

Spiders - Up Close and Personal

The Internet is moving with break-neck speed tonight (153.6 kbits/s to be exact), so I am going to try to post a couple of pictures.

This is NOT the largest spider, the one that almost took me down the other night - this was it's slightly smaller cousin which I cornered in the hallway, and was able to catch in a glass, for disposal outside. I'm all about wildlife preservation. Second only to self-preservation.

Note the teabag, for scale. After capturing it, I had my morning cold shower, and came back. Apparently, the spider had made itself at home by constructing a web in the interim! The half-full vitamin bottle, in case you're wondering, is to prevent the spider from bursting past the Dutch-language postcard which was the only barrier between itself and freedom. In case it had noticed....



Power Outages

The power outages here are making it really hard for me to teach the eight to ten students who have become my afternoon class. As a group, they have little English and fewer computer skills. What they need is time on the computer, to become comfortable with the mouse and keyboard. I can’t teach that – you gain it through exposure.

But you should see their enthusiasm, as they cluster around my laptop, the only hardware able to persist through a power outage – nodding their understanding as I coach them through the use of PowerPoint. What an ideal tool for computer literacy, PowerPoint is turning out to be.

But try to explain the difference between a drawing object with a cursor inside, and a drawing object with the border highlighted, and that the former can’t be dragged and dropped – all without any English! Everyone is picking up the word “Click”, as well as “Click-Click.” And how many times have I thrust two or four fingers in front of some poor student’s face, to emphasize the difference between a two-headed arrow and a four-headed arrow. And now that I think back, I have the horrible realization that I was holding up three fingers, rather than four. No wonder there’s confusion!

But despite these challenges, these students, who range in age from mid-twenties to early forties, are determined to learn, excited to learn – and that’s contagious.

Computers and technology, even here, in a continent which has faced so many challenges, are going to change things. I think people believe that, which is why there is such an appetite for technology. You wouldn’t believe the number of street vendors here who are hawking mCel Internet cards, or cell phone cards.

Today, one of my students came over to show me some accounting printouts, and volunteered to loan me his mCel USB modem. So we drove to the small market nearby, and sure enough, there were five different places with the yellow “mCel” signs, all within eyeshot – each with a street seller eager to do business. For about $7, I bought a couple of cards, from a young man who had a thick wad of them in his pocket! Only a few steps away, I bought two mangoes from a woman who had them spread out on a small, bright piece of fabric, and eyed the small bags of soya nuts someone else was selling. Another guy had plastic jugs full of petrol, and I saw cases of pop for sale. It’s quite a cornucopia – but I get the feeling that some people do without the basics, just to get their communication and connectivity fix.

Oh, and I finally got some more toilet paper, too. Speaking of which, the local toilet paper brings new meaning to the term “see-through.”

Rainy Days in a Rainy Season

January 9, 6:25 AM – Unlike Lilongwe, Tete, Mozambique seems to be immersed in a rainy season – rain, rain, and more rain when I woke up this morning. Periods of rain are punctuated with long power outages. These seem to hit in the afternoon and last until the evening – at least that has been the pattern for the last four days – at least I have had electricity in the evening, which is when the spiders are at their most active.

I met my second group of students last Thursday afternoon – a group of ten who have no computer skills. Nor do most of them speak English.

Thanks to the power outage, we couldn’t use the eight computers which make up the high school computer lab, so everyone ended up taking turns on this laptop. I had found a mouse training program, which uses some basic games to get adults to practice clicking, double-clicking, drag and drop. Everyone seemed to enjoy that. Then I put them into PowerPoint and had them try to “draw and color” a picture of a simple house, to give them further practice. Unfortunately, if we continue this way, they won’t have a chance to progress much, as the key to progress is computer time, especially to get them comfortable with the mouse. If you’ve been using a computer forever, you’ve probably forgotten how difficult it is to get the hang of the mouse.

As far as I’m concerned, PowerPoint is an ideal program for computer literacy, as it provides lots of opportunities to use a mouse, and you don’t need to understand English to use it. And it’s a lot more interesting than typing plain text into Word!

I had planned to walk to town yesterday, but the rain and consequent mud kept me inside. It made for a long Saturday – and has contributed to this morning’s primary consideration, that I am going to have to get to town in a day or so as my toilet paper stash has dwindled to almost nothing. I am about to start my second of two emergency rolls, Coghlan’s Tissue on the Go!, which I picked up from Mountain Equipment Coop on a whim, when I was buying my last load of travel supplies. Perhaps the glamour of real North American 2-ply tissue went to my head, but I went through almost an entire roll yesterday. Well, they are small. I highly recommend keeping one or two around, for when you are going, on the go.

On the bright side, I put my time to good use, and assembled a 37 slide PowerPoint deck for teaching QuickBooks, as well as a Non-Profit Accounting simulation exercise, which I’ll use next week. We spent last week converting Saul’s July 2010 spreadsheet into Quickbooks, and learning the basics of creating a Chart of Accounts, and using the general journal. My simulation is a simplified version to practice what we learned, and to move beyond, to take advantage of the QuickBooks customer and vendor workflow, budgeting etc. It includes 19 different accounting transactions to highlight QuickBooks functionality. Working on it gave me a great sense of satisfaction, knowing I have gone from not understanding the program myself, to being able to grasp the basics of how to use it for non-profits. Of course, I am somewhat hindered by my lack of sophisticated Accounting knowledge, but fortunately, the accountants here don’t need to bother with taxes, depreciation and buying on credit.

Understanding QuickBooks is a feat which took the better part of all my spare time last week! But I converted my knowledge into PowerPoint so I am quite pleased with myself. Figuring it all out, although taxing, was also exhilarating.

To cut through the silence here, I am on my second listening of Larry’s audiobook, Lord of the Flies, which is one of my all-time favourite books. I am currently on disk 3, Ralph is, coincidentally, planning his toilet, dreaming of having a proper wash, haircut, doing his nails etc. I had similar thoughts while in bed this morning – the lack of hot water has reduced me to quick in and out shower moments, and boiling water to fill the sink for spot-jobs.

I also woke up to another jolt – the sound of someone clearing his throat and moving about. Although it sounded like that someone was in the house, I forced myself, again, to recognize that is impossible, and that the person was likely at the back of the house, probably the guard. Since I keep the screened windows open for fresh air, sound travels. Although I consciously believe this, I am subconsciously expecting to encounter an intruder.

I’ve finally gotten to use my two water filters – to remove invisible sentiment first, and then a zap with my ultraviolet generating SteriPen to kill any microorganisms which otherwise would be partying in my digestive tract. This means that I can say that I have been able to use virtually everything that I brought with me, including a sweater, as it is quite chilly here this morning – probably in the low 70s. VERY low 70s.

I am staring down a LONG Sunday – I had planned to walk to church, but I’m not sure what time it starts and suspect it will be in Portuguese – not to mention the mud and frequent rain showers which discourage me from leaving home.

I may spend some time trying to barrel through the other PowerPoint slideshow that I need to finish here – two sets, one of basic Office skills, one of more complex skills. I started it already, but it’s kind of boring, as I know that material inside and out. It currently has 114 slides, and I’m on slide 16. My goal is to have it finished before I leave here. The students had asked for notes, so I thought this would be a good way to distribute them – I’ll convert them to Adobe reader.

Time for breakfast – granola and milk. I brought supplies here, which I have been going through quickly – unlike Bill`s assertion that ``no one gains weight in Africa``, I have done just that! It`s distressing, but fortunately I had a supply of cookies to help me overcome the weight gain anxiety. I brought non-perishables, expecting to supplement with fresh food from the local market, but since I didn`t go out yesterday, that hasn`t happened.

Rebecca would be proud of me – I had a can of vegetarian curry last night, which had beans, potatoes, carrots and some kind of ``meat protein``, which resembled ground beef. Thanks to the thick curry sauce, I was able to convince myself it was actually meat, so felt better. There`s not a huge variety of canned products available here – most are from South Africa. I also enjoyed a can of Mussel Soup, although it tasted like mussels, I couldn`t see evidence of any large pieces of mussel. I finished up the small jar of crunchy Skippy peanut butter yesterday, which had seen me through the Korea Garden Hotel experience as well. I could have bought Malawi peanut butter, but wasn`t sure of its keeping properties, so I spent more to get the imported kind. I also found some of those ubiquitous Chinese noodles, which I`ll have for lunch. As a brief nod to food variety, I do have a bag of Granny Smith apples, which are disappearing at a rate much slower than the cookies (I`m down to a half box of peanut butter ones), and three individual servings of fruit yogurt, which I have been rationing. The cookies were meant for my students, but since the first group didn`t seem all that hungry, I ended up chowing down through them myself. Yes, I admit that was wrong.

Minority Report

JANUARY 6 - I have lived in four different cultures during my life – my first five years were spent in England, but the majority of my life has been lived in Canada, with thirteen years at Whitefish Bay (Naotkamegwanning), an Ojibwe reserve in northwestern Ontario. And now this – two months in Africa. I was thinking about this during my five minute walk from my quaint little brick house, along a steep dirt path, to the Mozambique Synod’s offices, where I am conducting the QuickBooks training.

In addition to my own experiences, I am also responsible for raising Brandon as a cross-cultural child – a native Canadian by birthright, raised within the dominant white culture by a white woman. I happened to have a recent Facebook conversation with a man who now lives in Whitefish, but was, strangely enough, adopted by a non-native family and raised in Chatham. I was asking about the challenges he has faced due to his bi-culturalism. He agreed that there had been challenges, but that he had finally come to terms with it. “Just accept it”, was his advice. I think he means “accept that there is a difference, but don’t think of it as either positive or negative. It just is what it is.” In other words, the fact of biculturalism doesn’t have to be a controlling influence over your life.

Probably easier said than done.

I don’t claim to be an expert on living as a minority, although certainly that is how it felt when I was at Whitefish, and even more so here. I’m in a place where being white is unusual, and brings along with it the status of being, not just a foreigner, but based on my North American origin, richer. The fact is that in a land where so many are poor, my whiteness is a signal that I’m not. Thanks to the accident of birth, I have had opportunities to enrich myself and to enjoy comfort – and the majority of people in Africa don’t have those opportunities, and never will. For many, each day has a predictable sameness, as they lack the novelty that finances bring – the chance for travel, for new things, for enough comfort that you don’t have to spend time washing clothes by hand, or hauling buckets of water.

And they lack books – one doorway to escape. It has struck me that although I have seen many people who appear to be sitting around, never have I seen anyone reading. Guards, as an example, spend hours and hours watching over homes and compounds, and only occasionally do they even seem to have a radio. Books, even if you are poor, can expose you to faraway places and ideas which stir, and insights that reveal not just our differences, but the universality of the human experience.

I knew, before I came to Africa, that a culture of comfort and materialism was going to be glaringly lacking here – and I expected to carry with me, across the Atlantic, and down through Europe and Africa, the guilt of relative opulence. However, aside from a few distinct encounters, most of the time, I have been around expats, who enjoy a comfortable standard of western style living, or locals who are professional employees and relatively speaking, wealthier than the majority.

I’m sure it would have been different if I had been placed in a village, constructing a building or a well, living among and like the poor. But the nature of this mission is different – there are no computers in those villages and many don’t have electricity. I’ve heard that some organizations are beginning to put public computer centers in some remote and impoverished areas, and the government of Malawi is laying fiber optic cable to improve the infrastructure, so clearly change is afoot. But it will take time, and the challenges here include sporadic power outages, slow and inconsistent Internet access, aging hardware, non-standardized and occasionally piloted software, and a general lack of availability to trained computer professionals.

So I am blessed - by virtue of birth, education and opportunity.

In one of Larry’s books, I read about a missionary who wanted to become fully African. He decided to learn the language, thinking that language was the key to acceptance. But the people still called him “Mister”, setting him apart. So he moved from his compound to a village, and lived like an African for many years – adopting the African clothes, the African food, the African music – and still people called him “Mister.” Finally, in frustration, he asked the village elder why this was so. “It’s because you had a white mother,” he was told.

So by the whim of birth, we are trapped. Maybe that’s why, even though I have lived in Canada since I was five, my occasional visits to England always feels like a homecoming. It’s not just from the perspective of others that we are set apart, it’s biologically wired into us, to belong to the geography we first understood as home.

I suppose that is why my father had asked for his ashes to be returned to England.

Arachnophobia

Arachnophobia

January 5 - I have had time for two terrible insect encounters tonight.

First, I saw something that I thought was a large spider, which I was about to catch under a glass for live release tomorrow morning. Then it hopped! A few times! Rather high and erratically! And I lost track of where it was. Was it even a spider, or some other kind of large insect? Shortly afterwards, I heard another clicking sound. I think it hopped again, but I didn’t know where! How terrible! Enough is enough – I decided to remove the kid gloves and forsake the live release method. I vowed, if it ventured anywhere near me, I would be dosing it with Raid. Unlike my intrepid missionary friend, Linda, I don’t have the internal fortitude to squish insects underfoot. But this one had to die – I couldn’t stand knowing it was in the house with me.

 Come out into the open, horrible scary insect – so I can kill you!

Then, about an hour later, I encountered another large spider – or possibly the same one as was hopping in the kitchen earlier – although this one was on the living room curtain. If it’s the same one, I shudder to think of how it crossed from kitchen to living room without being seen, as I was sitting in the junction between them – and the entire open space is probably no more than 36 feet wide!

To give you an idea of the spider’s massiveness and presence – you can hear a sound when it scuttles up the curtain - footsteps. It would be arrested if it parked itself in a Handicapped Parking space. It has limbs and if I moved close enough, and mustered up some courage, I suspect I could take its pulse and feel its breath. If this spider needed formal wear, a tailor would need a large tape measure to figure out how much material to buy. Get it – it’s BIG!!!

True to my word, I doused the giant spider with a multiple sprays of Raid – which appear to have been entirely ineffective, as it is, as far as I can ascertain, still alive! I never did hear the thud of its body slipping from the curtain to the floor.

I even tried to capture it in a drinking glass, thinking the Raid might at least have weakened it, but it just shuffled quickly away down the curtain, at which point I was afraid of a possible hand to hand combat encounter and backed off. All the GoodLife Fitness BodyCombat classes in the world couldn’t have prepared me enough for that!

 I am now eying it from a safer distance – as well as a third spider - a medium-sized relative which is scurrying about on the floor near the bedroom. I suspect I could capture or spray the smaller one, but I am too defeated to even try. How many times have I thanked God for Lisa Anderson’s mosquito net, which is also a sanctuary from spiders? How could I sleep without it, wondering if spiders were dropping onto me from the ceiling? Bless you, Lisa!

Unless – what if the big one comes at the net with a pair of scissors, or even rips it open with its bare hands, which, judging from its size and dexterity, is a possibility.

Do spiders have hands?

What if I wake up in the morning, like Frodo Baggins, encased in spider webbing?

Yikes two more spiders, one quite small, and another medium-small! I’m going to retreat to my cocoon and finish writing in there, where I have to believe it is safe.

 I made a small videotape of me confronting the failure-to-die spider, for future reference or, should my circumstances take a bad turn , it will be my legacy, a final testimony.

Ha – upon climbing through the net, into bed, in the soft glow of my flashlight – I see movement. Turns out it’s a lizard! I don’t mind lizards – maybe it will eat some spiders. At any rate, even spiders are easier to deal with in the morning.

Silence

JANUARY 5 - I thought I was accomplished at dealing with silence – after all, I have lived alone for long chunks of my life, most recently from January 2008 (when Brandon moved back to Whitefish Bay) to July 2010 (when my nephew Lucas moved in.) And I gave up the habit of having the TV on for background noise, back in 2007. I rarely listen to music. I enjoy peace and quiet.

But here in Mozambique, alone in a brick home which I share with untold insects, large, small, fliers, crawlers – with no neighbours (all the expats are still away on extended Christmas holidays), I am really alone.

And the silence is deeper. It is a still silence, with perhaps the sound of cheerful crickets at night, or odd gurgling noises from the bathroom. The sharp, high “tink” sound when small, hard-shelled winged beetles hit the hard florescent light in the kitchen. Even worse, last night, in the dead of night, I awoke, and I could swear I heard someone in the kitchen, turning on the taps. I cowered in my bed, under my mosquito net, assuring myself it is literally impossible to break into this house without making a great deal of racket. And there’s a guard outside – or at least, someone impersonating a guard.

During the daytime hours, I can hear people off in the distance sometimes. At night, those mysterious sounds, scary!

I’m glad that Karen loaded up some music on my iPhone before I left, although repeated listenings of Annie Get Your Gun, Rita McNeil and The Sound of Music is getting a little tiresome. Ah – tonight I dipped into an album I had somehow missed – Queen. Bohemian Rhapsody – bring it on! Spiders and other crawlers – be warned, I am jazzed now!

You Can't Give What You Don't Have

JANUARY 5 - Teaching in Mozambique has been an interesting challenge. On Tuesday, I met Saul, who is my English-speaking contact person, and number one student. As Linda explained to me, Saul is a very bright young man who is the accountant for the Mozambique Synod’s Relief and Development Program. He is doing his accounting in an Excel spreadsheet, and is interested in switching to QuickBooks. My primary purpose here is to make that happen.

I had done a day of QuickBooks training with the CRWRC staff – and it was, from my perspective, the least successful day I’ve had here. With the exception of Linda, who uses QuickBooks already, the students were new to the program, and weren’t accountants. I gave an overview of the software and then had them try to setup a company using the only handouts I brought from Canada – from the QuickBooks training guide I had. I don’t think they got much out of it.

The thing is, as Star Trek’s Dr. McCoy might have growled to Captain James T. Kirk, “I’m an English teacher, not an accountant, Jim!”

And, to make matters worse, when I took Accounting at St. Clair College, back in the fall of 2007, I failed it! So back in June, when I found out I would be teaching not just Microsoft Office, a program which I have decent mastery of, but also the accounting program, QuickBooks, I wasn’t too happy!

So I registered for Accounting 101, Wednesday evenings, at St. Clair College – again. And as luck would have it, the course lasted from early September until the second week of December, meaning that I would miss the last two weeks – I would have to teach myself the last two chapters, and arrange to write the final exam ahead of the class.

As part of my Mission Malawi preparation, I also signed up for two sessions of QuickBook training at the college. These courses would occur alongside Accounting - QuickBooks Level One, Saturday mornings in October, and Level 2, Saturday mornings in November.

Yes, the teacher would become a student, and in a subject in which I had demonstrated less than average aptitude.

After the second QuickBooks lesson, in mid-October, I realized that I was spreading myself too thin. I hoped that, because of my computer background, if I could understand accounting, I would be able to teach myself QuickBooks. So I opted out of the remainder of the QuickBooks training, and concentrated on understanding accounting.

It wasn’t easy – but I stuck it out – I had no choice – and accounting began to make sense – debits, credits, amortization, closing the books – not only did it start making sense, but it was kind of – dare I say it – interesting? And as I learned it, I got that little buzz you get when your brain is being stretched – as well as the self-satisfaction of overcoming a challenge.

However, when I met Saul on Tuesday, looked at his accounting spreadsheets, and realized, as he was explaining it to me, that he assumed that I was a QuickBooks expert, I felt rising panic. Sure, I had a basic appreciation for some fundamental accounting concepts, but I had barely progressed beyond the introductory lesson in QuickBooks myself! I didn’t understand his spreadsheet – in fact, looking at it made me queasy. I forced myself to hide my fear from Saul, and projected my usual “everything is in order, we will begin tomorrow” confidence.

Then I returned to my temporary lodgings, shut the door, hauled out the laptop, and spent six hours, from 7 pm to 1 am – learning enough about QuickBooks, that I could stand up in front of the class, Saul and two others, without looking like an idiot.

Guess what? It’s been some of my best teaching!

Now, at the end of day two, my class has received the entire content of what I remembered from my Accounting class, supplemented by what the QuickBooks Help could provide. It turned out that although the Mozambique accountants were keeping books, they weren’t necessarily conversant with double-entry accounting and the English versions of accounting terminology, so I have spent a lot of time covering that. Along the way, we’ve been applying the concepts by converting Saul’s spreadsheet into QuickBooks. Fortunately, they have their experience as accountants, which has helped us all immensely.

For the sake of full disclosure, I did explain to them that I’m not an accountant, that I would be relying on their accounting knowledge – but I didn’t confess my lack of QuickBooks experience –I held that back. I do have a modicum of pride, and I didn’t want them to lose confidence in me – well, and I figured I could “fake it” successfully.

Yesterday, during class, I realized that non-profit organizations have different accounting needs than a typical small to medium sized business – and that I didn’t have a clue as to how to make those adaptations in QuickBooks.

And, even worse, there’s no Internet onsite! Without Google, I didn’t know how I could figure out what to do. Fortunately, Saul walked me to a nearby Internet business, where I could connect, paying by the minute in the local currency (Mozambique Metacais).

 In just under an hour, I had downloaded the 284 page QuickBooks User Guide (since it isn’t included in the software DVD!), two brief documents which summarized basic accounting concepts (to supplement/confirm my memories of what I had learned during the fall), and, the mother lode – two small manuals, Introduction to QuickBooks for Non- Profits and Grant Tracking and Fund Accounting. If I can get a wireless signal somewhere, I am also going to purchase a book from Amazon, to download to my iPhone, to help.

Armed with these learning aids, I spent another six or so hours last night, figuring out how to deal with donors, grants and the multiple programs and projects, each with a separate set of income and expenses, which Saul currently tracks in separate Excel spreadsheets, compiling them together manually, in yet another spreadsheet.

We’re getting there – it’s been challenging, but also fun, as I cram at night, figuring new things out, and then work through it with the students the next day. Tomorrow should be easier, as I will only be spending the morning with the accountants, and we're still working through today's material. I will be back in my Microsoft Office comfort zone, with a new group of students, in the afternoon.

Today, I told the class that I think there’s a better way to manage grants, but that I would need to “figure it out.” Pascael, who has taught computers himself (Microsoft Windows and Office) nodded his acknowledgement, saying, “You can’t give what you don’t have.”

You can’t give what you don’t have – that is true in so many ways, not just in teaching.

Guards

JANUARY 4 - It is 6:53 pm in Mozambique – I was plunged into darkness about 20 minutes ago. Not utter darkness, as I was reading Introduction to QuickBooks for Non-Profits and the screen glow gave me and the surrounding insects, a source of light.

I didn’t bother to get the flashlight, assuming the electricity would return soon enough.

As I continued reading, I could hear what sounded like voices near the front of the house.

I chocked them up to passerbys ambling down the street in front of the house – they would have to open the main gate to get into this property.

I started hearing a louder racket at the back of the house – almost, but not quite, like rain was pouring on the tin roof.  But not quite like that. I froze at my keyboard, listening, a little nervous.

The sounds continued – I reached for my nearby iPhone and turned on the Flashlight application. With that light, I made it to my kit bag in the bathroom, where I remembered leaving my glasses, and from there, over to the kitchen table where my Energizer Weather Ready flashlight/lantern was… ready.

I walked to the back window, which is in the kitchen, and carefully drew the curtain back, shining the flashlight, expecting to see nothing…

And saw - a man! He was standing there, wearing a blue jacket, and with a flashlight of his own. He was turned half away from me.

Now this is the point where I would normally fall to pieces, but I recalled being told that there was a guard who would watch over the house at night. Could this be the guard? Or some soon-to-be-intruder? Or just some guy who liked hanging out behind homes in Mozambique whenever the power failed.

I didn’t really know, but I thought I would once again enlist Occam’s Razor and go with the most likely scenario – that the older man was the guard. In the seconds it took me to come to that hopeful conclusion, I also called through the open screen, with feigned confidence, “I heard noises, and was checking to see what was going on. Thanks!” I have no idea if he understood me, as most people here speak Portuguese. [As I am typing this, the power went on, stayed on for about two minutes, went off for about two minutes and has just returned. I am getting the feeling that evenings in Tete, Mozambique, will be intermittently dark.]

The man, who looked to be in his early 60s, and may have a problem with one eye, kind of said something I didn’t catch, so I smiled, waved, and returned to type this blog article.

The whole security thing here, both in Mozambique and Malawi, is kind of puzzling – multiple and massive locks on doors, barbed-wire and glass topped walls, locked gates, and security guards everywhere. And don’t get me started about the police checks on the roads – you run into them everywhere.  Sometimes, it feels like we’re paying guards in order to provide them with an income so they don’t turn to crime – keeping people employed is an occupation itself. It’s why I am paying a man the equivalent of $12 a week to do, on a daily basis, my dishes, laundry, empty my garbage and wash the floors.

As I type, the electricity coming and going, the noise continues outside.

Hopefully the man in blue is the guard, and not someone who is busily burying the real guard’s body somewhere in the garden.