Yeah yeah I miss the first updaqte after I post a "schedule," what did you expect from me?
Ok, as the title suggests, its 9 oclock, and my sleep meds are kicking in hard. So this will either be short, or a little funky, we see what I decide as I write.
Went driving after my post two nights ago. Freaky this are as follows: Trucks are powerful, and have more kick than I'm used to. Circles, they creep up on you without warning. Figgering the distance on the left side of the car from the right is hard. But I'm in (mostly) one peice, so I did OK at least.
So anyway, I went home, we fixed the light, and got to bed at 11, (WAY TOO FREAKING LATE) but somehow I got up this morning.
Then, since we have a new driver, Gerald, we had 5 people in the car. Leslie and Gerald in front, and me crammed in the back. (Two big nurses cramming me against the wall) Somehow I managed to sleep, not sure how. Once we got there, I showed Gerald how to give the chiponde out. He is very meticulous. Overall he does everything right, he just has trouble with the cards from kids that became healthy. Way too lazy (tired) too explain.
So anyway, I slept in the Stool study car for two hours while Leslie and Gerald went too look for defaulters, and then Victor, and the nurse for stool study(can't remember what I named her) and I went to look for a defaulter of our own. To do so we went all over the mountains. One time this funny guy stopped our car and was like (in chichewa) "Follow me", and insisted on running inn front of us. So funny!
Then, eventually, omitting many details for times sake, we got to this clearing while we waited for the mom. While we were waiting this kid bounds up a tree at a height that would make a Bevard blanch and knocked down some mangoes for us. After we cleared up the defaulter we went to find, he brought a bowl full of the fruits he just risked life and limb to get and gives them to us, then he asks for 50 Kwatcha. (For anyone who doesn't get the extange rate, its 1 USD to 170 K, so 50 K is like 30 cents) Someone started to haggle but I was thinking "Bull, all he wants is 50? and handed it over.
After that we dropped off our hsa and headed home. One quick thing that should probably go to a day when I have nothing to say, but something struck me when we were on the way home, and I saw two sets of goals made by three sticks each. My dad and I used to have talks about why soccer was so pervasive everywhere in the world. (He would eventually get to what soccer would have to change to cater to American tastes, while my answer was that they didn't give a flying...well I should probably omit that...) I understand now. Soccer is so pervasive because anyone can play it anywhere. Think about it, what do you need to play "real" baseball? A baseball bat, gloves, and oodles of balls if you have a tendency to lose them. In a country where most don't have enough to afford enough food how are they going to afford that? For soccer all you need is a ball, doesn't even have to be a soccer ball, a field, and sticks to mark your goal. Football, there are so many rules, plays, and other things to memorize, how is a young boy going to remember them all? Soccer is as easy as this: Here ball. There goal. Make ball go in goal. Soccer is so pervasive because its so easy go get, and because its easy (or hard) enough for anyone to have fun playing it. And unless you have as many resources as we do in America, many sports simply aren't feasible.
So anyway, back to bizness. We drove home, this time in the stool study car (THANK GODs!!!!) and I was talking to them the whole way home. In fact one time I mentioned when I'm coming home...oh god I need to preface this too don't I? I am staying a minimum of three months and then I re-evaluate. Then I maybe stay another three. Repeat. To maybe as total of nine. Victor's reaction was I have to stay a minimum of nine. =) So I'm doing a random poll thing, when do you think I should come home, 3 months, 6, or 9? (Sorry Dad, today isn't one of the options.)
We got home late, and then I pretty much ate and hit the hay. Nothing much to comment on that.
Oh yeah, and our faster net is set up. FANTASTIC!!!
Woke up the next day (we got to leave at 7! WOOHOOO!!!!) Slept on the way to the site. Then I taught Gerald some more. He learns pretty quickly. And he puts up with me talking to fact. But anyway I spare you the boring details, but he'll be ready by Friday if we decide to hire him.
Today's site was at a school, and since there Azungu (White people!) there after clinic was over about 20-40 kids crowded around me. Its hard to talk to them, but I learned (and promptly forgot) hot to say "what's your name?" That went over real well with the kids. In fact there was a group of three little girls that would giggle whenever I looked at them, and one little girl who would follow me where ever I went. Cuute! But anyway, we had few defaulters, so all we had to do was take a mother and sick child to the hospital. But since we didn't have space, into the trunk I went! When we were driving away all of the little kids ran after the truck, waving at (I assume because I was the only one visible, and whenever I waved back they increased the waving motion) me. Real freaking bumpy, I was so glad when we got to the hospital, and I got out.
Then we switched up some cars to a random professor lady could go home more quickly, and we picked up some liquid nitrogen in one of our canisters, and then headed home. (what we were switching cars so she wouldn't have to waste her time waiting for)
Once we got home Joy and I dropped a car off at the mechanic. I was driving the car to go, and he was driving the car we would ride home in. I got kinda freaked out because after a really dense intersection there were 5 cars between me and Joy, who was showing me the way. But somehow we made it. Then we ransacked about 7 shops and eventually managed to find an adaptor for our fridge, which didn't have one, and a couple fuses. I think all the cheeze and meat went bad anyway though. Meh. I'll live without for a day.
By the way, I finally won over the Ceaser! She's the compound dog, a young puppy, and I think she gets hit a lot. By guys. So I was working uphill trying to get her to like me. Every sharp move would send her flying. But finally, finally, I got her, not only to wag when I petted her, but to show me her belly too! VICTORAAAAAAY!!!!!!! So yeah, Ive got a furry friend. Maybe I should buy a doggie toy so she doesn't gnaw on my hand so much. =)
Joy left, and Leslie and I watched the first 40 minutes of the debates to catch up with what Joy saw. I think we'll have all of them by Thursday. We ate. Good food, as usual. As I write this Joy is playing the guitar and singing. My only reaction. HOLY CRAP. HE'S VURRY VURRY GOOD. HE CAN SING AND PLAY. WELL. I could sit here all night typing and listening to him, but tomorrows a busy day.
TTYL
---The one who smacks his head into too many things =/
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Lazy weekend
Well its been a very lazy and quiet weekend...but before I get into what I did, I have a couple announcement thingies to make.
First, If any of you have an extraordinary good memory you will remember my little ran about how my mom is a jerk for getting me all those letters with the lumps in them. Well guess what, the lumps are skittles and starburst! This is AWESOME (and sucks) because I LOVE them! (and now have to resist eating them all at once) I had meant to mention this, but every blog I write is usually finished at 9:30 (half an hour after I should be sleeping) and all my carefully laid blog ideas get scattered in the rush to post SOMETHING and get to sleep. So I'm sorry mom, I really appreciate them, I've just forgotten to tell you.
Actually I had intended to answer most comments with comments and keep a running dialogue, but I (obviously) don't have time for that. But I do read all your comments, even if it doesn't seem like I'm noticing yours, trust me, I am.
Also, I think I've developed a tentative posting schedule. It will be every weekday that I have internet access, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and Sunday for good measure. In the future I may not have many interesting things to say for the weekdays, though I am sure I'll always have to say on Sunday, so if I have very little I'll include a fun fact or detail about Malawi, so even though there may not be much new on how I'm doing, by reading more and more you will get a better picture of Malawi as time goes on.
So anyway, Saturday was our (the guys) shopping day. First went to pick up Victor from his house so he could show us around and help us find some straw mats. Though it was a while before we got to see any good ones. We had lots of detours, like picking up the car from the mechanics. Actually while we were there Victor showed up this car he's gonna fix up in two weeks. It had NOTHING, and EVERYTHING. I mean, Nothing was where it was supposed to be and EVERYTHING was in one HUGE mess. Joy said if he gets it done in two weeks he'd buy Vic a coke. I said I'd buy him three.
But anyway, eventually we made it to Blantyre market, and we, (after much haggling) picked up two nice straw mats and a straw basket for my laundry bag. Then we proceeded to browbeat Vic untill he agreed to let us take him to luch (it was Ali Babas again, and I'm sorry Ulf, I couldn't resist the tandori chicken.)
After that it was off to the supermarket for our food items (I specifically had to by skim milk, thanks mom and dad, 2% is forever ruined for me...) and we went off to game (=walmart) to get a couple other odds and ends. I got some shower materials. J got a dangly light bulb socket so i can replace the broken one. (I think thats gonna be my lest electrical job)
Then we went home to struggle with downloading the presidential debates. I think we ended up being able to see 20 minutes of it. My summary. I think Barack's sound bites were far better thann Mccains. And he was much more specific. What I didn't like: Mccains shpeal about responsibility. Ive been there before, it solves nothing and only serves to take your mind off of whats wrong by finding someone to blame. I also didnt like Barack's back patting (Mccain did it too but Barack started it) on how he warned about wall street and the war. Thats all in the past, and dwelling on it solves nothing.
And then I tried to rewrite my "maze" program on one of the computers, and got so wrapped up in it that I didn't even notice that I was burning my food. Note for Mr. C If he ever reads this: Can you email me the Ready to Program specific classes, I want to try to incorporate them into Eclipse. (And I think I can)
Neway, then we went to bed.
Today has been even lazier. Joy went on a hike earlier today and came back around 1ish. Before that, Leslie and I were sitting in the Downhouse, doing random things, like me adding more songs to my garganutan (300 big) playlist, screwing a whiteboard into the concrete, and putting some algorithms into one of our databases, and putting about 15 cards worth of data in it. Speaking of which, mom, if you ever have any free time, could you mail me a bunch of pointers on excel coding? Functions,, how to merge...etc? I think having that knowledge would be helpful.
But seriously, only if you have time, I know you overwork yourself too much as it is.
And them when Joy got back we went to Maky's. Yum! And then I hurried back to write this.
Oh and one last thing, I tried uploading some pics at the cafe. No beans. I think that the pics will fit (says max 8 mb and they're 2) but the connection needs to be faster. Wait till october-ish when we get the faster internet set up mk?
TTYL.
First, If any of you have an extraordinary good memory you will remember my little ran about how my mom is a jerk for getting me all those letters with the lumps in them. Well guess what, the lumps are skittles and starburst! This is AWESOME (and sucks) because I LOVE them! (and now have to resist eating them all at once) I had meant to mention this, but every blog I write is usually finished at 9:30 (half an hour after I should be sleeping) and all my carefully laid blog ideas get scattered in the rush to post SOMETHING and get to sleep. So I'm sorry mom, I really appreciate them, I've just forgotten to tell you.
Actually I had intended to answer most comments with comments and keep a running dialogue, but I (obviously) don't have time for that. But I do read all your comments, even if it doesn't seem like I'm noticing yours, trust me, I am.
Also, I think I've developed a tentative posting schedule. It will be every weekday that I have internet access, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and Sunday for good measure. In the future I may not have many interesting things to say for the weekdays, though I am sure I'll always have to say on Sunday, so if I have very little I'll include a fun fact or detail about Malawi, so even though there may not be much new on how I'm doing, by reading more and more you will get a better picture of Malawi as time goes on.
So anyway, Saturday was our (the guys) shopping day. First went to pick up Victor from his house so he could show us around and help us find some straw mats. Though it was a while before we got to see any good ones. We had lots of detours, like picking up the car from the mechanics. Actually while we were there Victor showed up this car he's gonna fix up in two weeks. It had NOTHING, and EVERYTHING. I mean, Nothing was where it was supposed to be and EVERYTHING was in one HUGE mess. Joy said if he gets it done in two weeks he'd buy Vic a coke. I said I'd buy him three.
But anyway, eventually we made it to Blantyre market, and we, (after much haggling) picked up two nice straw mats and a straw basket for my laundry bag. Then we proceeded to browbeat Vic untill he agreed to let us take him to luch (it was Ali Babas again, and I'm sorry Ulf, I couldn't resist the tandori chicken.)
After that it was off to the supermarket for our food items (I specifically had to by skim milk, thanks mom and dad, 2% is forever ruined for me...) and we went off to game (=walmart) to get a couple other odds and ends. I got some shower materials. J got a dangly light bulb socket so i can replace the broken one. (I think thats gonna be my lest electrical job)
Then we went home to struggle with downloading the presidential debates. I think we ended up being able to see 20 minutes of it. My summary. I think Barack's sound bites were far better thann Mccains. And he was much more specific. What I didn't like: Mccains shpeal about responsibility. Ive been there before, it solves nothing and only serves to take your mind off of whats wrong by finding someone to blame. I also didnt like Barack's back patting (Mccain did it too but Barack started it) on how he warned about wall street and the war. Thats all in the past, and dwelling on it solves nothing.
And then I tried to rewrite my "maze" program on one of the computers, and got so wrapped up in it that I didn't even notice that I was burning my food. Note for Mr. C If he ever reads this: Can you email me the Ready to Program specific classes, I want to try to incorporate them into Eclipse. (And I think I can)
Neway, then we went to bed.
Today has been even lazier. Joy went on a hike earlier today and came back around 1ish. Before that, Leslie and I were sitting in the Downhouse, doing random things, like me adding more songs to my garganutan (300 big) playlist, screwing a whiteboard into the concrete, and putting some algorithms into one of our databases, and putting about 15 cards worth of data in it. Speaking of which, mom, if you ever have any free time, could you mail me a bunch of pointers on excel coding? Functions,, how to merge...etc? I think having that knowledge would be helpful.
But seriously, only if you have time, I know you overwork yourself too much as it is.
And them when Joy got back we went to Maky's. Yum! And then I hurried back to write this.
Oh and one last thing, I tried uploading some pics at the cafe. No beans. I think that the pics will fit (says max 8 mb and they're 2) but the connection needs to be faster. Wait till october-ish when we get the faster internet set up mk?
TTYL.
Friday, September 26, 2008
Sorry for the wait (did you miss me?)
Sorry about the wait, it never seemed like an oppourtune time to post the last couple days, but with four days to go this should be a decent (at least) sized post. (Actually I'll be trying to trim it down)
Well for starters, on Tuesday I left with Willie to see the Stool study. (Or as one of my friends to helpfully noted, "Scat" study) It really can be very time consuming, considering how many poopers you have and how many just regular checkups. This requires an explanation. (Oh my god ANOTHER ONE!?!) A little reiteration, with possible misspellings. There are two main types of malnutrition, (there may only be two, iunno) Kwashiorkor and Marasmus. Marasmus is those reallly, really thin babies they always show you on TV, the ones with the ribcages almost peircing through the skin. Kwash on the other hand, are the kinda fat puffy looking babies they don't show you pictures of because they kinda look...well...fat. Its not fat though, Kwash is caused by all the water in your bloodstream going out of your veins, where its supposed to be, and into everywhere else. Hence, they look bloated somewhat. I'm not exactly sure which is worse, but neither is good for a growing baby. (Or anyone else, for that matter) Marasmus (and Kwash) are caused by not getting enough food, but Kwash is more specifically caused by not getting enough variety in your diet. They used to think that because hemoglobin (a protein) is what keeps your blood where its supposed to be, obviously they need more meat. They were wrong though. (All of this explained in blah blah blah medical speak...OK its actually pretty interesting and I'm glad they spare no deatails but I'm sure you will.) So they think theHowever answer to this Kwash trigger may be in the "bowel flora." (bacteria in your stomach) And since malnourished twins often get differing malnutrition conditions, they started a study to try to determine if there is a corrolation between the bowel flora and Kwash/Marasmus.
So anyway, we get twins from age 6 months to 2 yearsish, and put them in the study. If they stay healthy, then they come once a month, and we weigh, measure their height, arm width, the usual stuff. Then, most of the time, we let them go, after giving them their incentive. (sugar, beans, soap, oil, etc.) Healthy babies only get stool collected from them four times a year. However, should they become malnourished we start taking stool from them every two weeks. (as they are the baby data we need, really) The incentives increase as well.
To make them poop we feed them lots of porrige and baby food as soon as they get there. (The porrige is supposed to be prepared ahead of time and never is, but that's a long story.) So anyway, we try to make them poop as fast as possible, so we (and they) can leave as soon as possible. Some babies just refuse to take a dump though! So in that case we (at around 10-11) insert a suppository. Usually that takes care of it. However, if there are enough kids, and it is hectic enough, they may not be given the suppository when they need to, or sometimes even fed. Hence stool study sometimes arrives home super-late.
Anyway, there weren't a terrible number of kids when we went, and everything went smoothly. I don't feel like getting into too much detail now, I'll save that for when I've run out of things to say.
So anyhow, we went back home, and slept. There may be more details, but I can't remember them.
The next day was our last day with Shandie and Willie, as they were leaving the following thursday morning, and Wednesday-Thursday is our overnight at Namandaje (The two sites there are too far to travel there and back two in one day.) And since there will be no more post concerning them (probably) I feel like a short description of them is needed. Willie was my roomate, and GOD did he smile a lot. And not just a normal smile, oh no. This was a super-pervasive, beaming, contagious smile. I still dont understand how a baby could ever cry when looking at that ear to ear smile, but they did. And he also acted taht happy too. For example, when we first met,(when he was sent back to meet me because everyone else was going to Namandaje) I was expecting a "Hey, how are you." But no. I got an "Awesome! Its great to meet you!" or something to that effect. I didn't talk to Shandie as much, because she wasn't my roomate, and she was kinda quiet. But nontheless, we talked some, and she was very nice and easygoing. She was the only other person who had and used her camera, and a lot better sense for it too, so I found myself taking duplicates of a lot of her shots.
But anyway, this day I went with Shandie, with Willie taking my place. Very, very uneventful. We had only three poopers. So...I read a lot of the Hitch Hikers Guide, Victor slept in the car...etc. We had a slow day. I did take a lot of pictures for Shandie though. Her mom wanted them apparently. Which reminds me, there was this real cute baby feeding tself Chiponde, and getting it everywhere. It was so cute we had to take a picture or two of it! In fact, the mom wants the pictures too, so we are going to bring her a copy the neext time we go.
After that, we waited for the other team to finish up and reach us, adn thenwe said our tearful goodbyes. (Not that I was crying of course.) After we parted ways, we left for another long haul to Namandaje. Namandaje, by the way, is a place with a mission in it. That is where we stay. We saw a bunch of kids and met some world travelers. (been traveling around africa for 11 months) After we packed our stuff away, we got to eat an AMAZING FEAST. THERE WAS GREAT SOUP AND TOAST AND GOOD TEA AND CHICKENANDOHMYGODIMSALIVATINGAGAIN...sorry...it was really good though. Me n Joy bunked together. Kinda funny, we got a huge bugnet, but no way to put it up...except for the light dangling waaay too high up to reach. He actually had to use me as a stool to reach it. =)
Oh I forgot to mention, we spent half an hour entering data.
Anyway, breakfast was as good as dinner, and we got to get up at 7:30!!! I worked the 10-25 at the site. (Stool study doesn't go to Namandaje) Uneventful. The trip home was an *insert curse word of your choice here*. 3-4 hours...god that was annoying. I spent a good tqo hours entering the data we didn't get on Wednesday...untill the power died. Anyway, we dropped by the gym, and let me tell you, Joy is so crazy at the gym. He's built, first of all, but its like he can't pick which workout to do. He just JUMPS from method to method. Crazyness. Also, Apparently I average 30 km per hour on the bike. So because we were ravenous after that we found a open food court at 9 p.m. Funny fact, there's lots of Muslims here. And its ramadan. No eating when the suns out. That food court - open late was PACKED with them. Joy even got hit on by one of them! So we got pizza there, headed home, and put half an hour more of data in. Ewwww. We got to bed at 11.
And I woke up at 5:30, to my phone calling for "where are you." We leave at 5:30. So I woke up put my shoes on, and hit the ground running. Forgot breakfast. Forgot deo. Forgot water. Ewww. I woulda died if it hadn't been for Leslie giving me a boiled egg. And today I was on chiponde hander outer duty. Hot as hell. Everyone wanted a spoon. (They are only supposed to get one, on their first day. And once someone looses a spoon and askss for one, and you give her one, EVERYONE wants one.) Other than that though, I met a nice HSA called Andrew. Gotta remember his name. He was really nice and super helpful. Probably wont be able to meet him again though, because after two interviews, (and a lot of uneccesary drama, which I will spare you) we got a new driver. And since stool study doesn't go to the site, I will probably never see him again. =( But anyway, I came back, and did nothing I was so tired. Except for write this. And eat. EAT. So anyway, probably lots of little details missed, but I don't give a crap.
Well for starters, on Tuesday I left with Willie to see the Stool study. (Or as one of my friends to helpfully noted, "Scat" study) It really can be very time consuming, considering how many poopers you have and how many just regular checkups. This requires an explanation. (Oh my god ANOTHER ONE!?!) A little reiteration, with possible misspellings. There are two main types of malnutrition, (there may only be two, iunno) Kwashiorkor and Marasmus. Marasmus is those reallly, really thin babies they always show you on TV, the ones with the ribcages almost peircing through the skin. Kwash on the other hand, are the kinda fat puffy looking babies they don't show you pictures of because they kinda look...well...fat. Its not fat though, Kwash is caused by all the water in your bloodstream going out of your veins, where its supposed to be, and into everywhere else. Hence, they look bloated somewhat. I'm not exactly sure which is worse, but neither is good for a growing baby. (Or anyone else, for that matter) Marasmus (and Kwash) are caused by not getting enough food, but Kwash is more specifically caused by not getting enough variety in your diet. They used to think that because hemoglobin (a protein) is what keeps your blood where its supposed to be, obviously they need more meat. They were wrong though. (All of this explained in blah blah blah medical speak...OK its actually pretty interesting and I'm glad they spare no deatails but I'm sure you will.) So they think theHowever answer to this Kwash trigger may be in the "bowel flora." (bacteria in your stomach) And since malnourished twins often get differing malnutrition conditions, they started a study to try to determine if there is a corrolation between the bowel flora and Kwash/Marasmus.
So anyway, we get twins from age 6 months to 2 yearsish, and put them in the study. If they stay healthy, then they come once a month, and we weigh, measure their height, arm width, the usual stuff. Then, most of the time, we let them go, after giving them their incentive. (sugar, beans, soap, oil, etc.) Healthy babies only get stool collected from them four times a year. However, should they become malnourished we start taking stool from them every two weeks. (as they are the baby data we need, really) The incentives increase as well.
To make them poop we feed them lots of porrige and baby food as soon as they get there. (The porrige is supposed to be prepared ahead of time and never is, but that's a long story.) So anyway, we try to make them poop as fast as possible, so we (and they) can leave as soon as possible. Some babies just refuse to take a dump though! So in that case we (at around 10-11) insert a suppository. Usually that takes care of it. However, if there are enough kids, and it is hectic enough, they may not be given the suppository when they need to, or sometimes even fed. Hence stool study sometimes arrives home super-late.
Anyway, there weren't a terrible number of kids when we went, and everything went smoothly. I don't feel like getting into too much detail now, I'll save that for when I've run out of things to say.
So anyhow, we went back home, and slept. There may be more details, but I can't remember them.
The next day was our last day with Shandie and Willie, as they were leaving the following thursday morning, and Wednesday-Thursday is our overnight at Namandaje (The two sites there are too far to travel there and back two in one day.) And since there will be no more post concerning them (probably) I feel like a short description of them is needed. Willie was my roomate, and GOD did he smile a lot. And not just a normal smile, oh no. This was a super-pervasive, beaming, contagious smile. I still dont understand how a baby could ever cry when looking at that ear to ear smile, but they did. And he also acted taht happy too. For example, when we first met,(when he was sent back to meet me because everyone else was going to Namandaje) I was expecting a "Hey, how are you." But no. I got an "Awesome! Its great to meet you!" or something to that effect. I didn't talk to Shandie as much, because she wasn't my roomate, and she was kinda quiet. But nontheless, we talked some, and she was very nice and easygoing. She was the only other person who had and used her camera, and a lot better sense for it too, so I found myself taking duplicates of a lot of her shots.
But anyway, this day I went with Shandie, with Willie taking my place. Very, very uneventful. We had only three poopers. So...I read a lot of the Hitch Hikers Guide, Victor slept in the car...etc. We had a slow day. I did take a lot of pictures for Shandie though. Her mom wanted them apparently. Which reminds me, there was this real cute baby feeding tself Chiponde, and getting it everywhere. It was so cute we had to take a picture or two of it! In fact, the mom wants the pictures too, so we are going to bring her a copy the neext time we go.
After that, we waited for the other team to finish up and reach us, adn thenwe said our tearful goodbyes. (Not that I was crying of course.) After we parted ways, we left for another long haul to Namandaje. Namandaje, by the way, is a place with a mission in it. That is where we stay. We saw a bunch of kids and met some world travelers. (been traveling around africa for 11 months) After we packed our stuff away, we got to eat an AMAZING FEAST. THERE WAS GREAT SOUP AND TOAST AND GOOD TEA AND CHICKENANDOHMYGODIMSALIVATINGAGAIN...sorry...it was really good though. Me n Joy bunked together. Kinda funny, we got a huge bugnet, but no way to put it up...except for the light dangling waaay too high up to reach. He actually had to use me as a stool to reach it. =)
Oh I forgot to mention, we spent half an hour entering data.
Anyway, breakfast was as good as dinner, and we got to get up at 7:30!!! I worked the 10-25 at the site. (Stool study doesn't go to Namandaje) Uneventful. The trip home was an *insert curse word of your choice here*. 3-4 hours...god that was annoying. I spent a good tqo hours entering the data we didn't get on Wednesday...untill the power died. Anyway, we dropped by the gym, and let me tell you, Joy is so crazy at the gym. He's built, first of all, but its like he can't pick which workout to do. He just JUMPS from method to method. Crazyness. Also, Apparently I average 30 km per hour on the bike. So because we were ravenous after that we found a open food court at 9 p.m. Funny fact, there's lots of Muslims here. And its ramadan. No eating when the suns out. That food court - open late was PACKED with them. Joy even got hit on by one of them! So we got pizza there, headed home, and put half an hour more of data in. Ewwww. We got to bed at 11.
And I woke up at 5:30, to my phone calling for "where are you." We leave at 5:30. So I woke up put my shoes on, and hit the ground running. Forgot breakfast. Forgot deo. Forgot water. Ewww. I woulda died if it hadn't been for Leslie giving me a boiled egg. And today I was on chiponde hander outer duty. Hot as hell. Everyone wanted a spoon. (They are only supposed to get one, on their first day. And once someone looses a spoon and askss for one, and you give her one, EVERYONE wants one.) Other than that though, I met a nice HSA called Andrew. Gotta remember his name. He was really nice and super helpful. Probably wont be able to meet him again though, because after two interviews, (and a lot of uneccesary drama, which I will spare you) we got a new driver. And since stool study doesn't go to the site, I will probably never see him again. =( But anyway, I came back, and did nothing I was so tired. Except for write this. And eat. EAT. So anyway, probably lots of little details missed, but I don't give a crap.
Monday, September 22, 2008
Car trouble
Thought this post would be late because the entire internet in Blantyre is out. Shot. Gone. Kaput. Turns out it came on five minutes ago. So I'm posting now
Today started out normal, kinda thought it would be a nondescript day, one where I might have to pull out one of the fun facts that I’ve been storing up. Little tidbits to fill in the blog for days where I can only say “normal day, few kids…etc…” But too bad, today turned out to be interesting after all. Tough nuts for you, you get an interesting story instead.
Because I was up till eleven last night writing, I was very, very brain-dead this morning. No matter though, I got up at five without too much trouble, and my mosquito net lasted the night this time! So I left with Leslie this time, to wherever we were going…I have no idea what it’s called actually, at this stage I don’t really need to know. So anyway, we picked up one of our nurses, Candace, and are going back for Lauren (another nurse) when we get a phone call. Turns out, the Land Rover (one of our many trucks) broke down, and they needed help. So we drove over, and tried many, many things to get it out of the middle of the road. We broke a piece of rope trying to tow it for one thing. Got a pic of that, before the rope broke. Eventually the Rover crawled its way over the top, and we decided to leave it by the nearby police station, and just send two people back to pick up another vehicle. Total time wasted: about one hour. After that, we continued our drive to today’s site. And man let me tell you, Victor (one of the two locals on the stool study) got skills! He was really booking it down those roads, a good 90-100 km/hr. And considering how many pedestrians there are, that takes real skill! Or at least, he was booking it until we hit such a heavy layer of fog that everything 10 feet in front of you was completely obscured. And after that iunno, ‘cause Willie and I fell asleep, which in retrospect is pretty amazing, because those roads are ALMOST as bad a Pennsylvania roads.
So anyway we got there and it was pretty much business as usual. Read card. Give Chiponde. Repeat. I got to talk to a couple of the HSA’s (Health Service Assistant) though. (They are our local hired help, helping us fill out forms with the locals, many of whom can’t read, and more importantly, they speak the local language AND English.) Not much other than that though. Then we drove home.
After dropping off the nurses, Leslie and I picked up all the empty Chiponde bottles we had been storing at the factory and took them to the cleaning facility. (We reuse cleaned bottles for various reasons.) Then went back to the factory to get more Chiponde. And after that we took a trip to the internet café. Where we found the internet dead. Yay!
After that we went home and I killed time with The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. (Will I ever finish a book?) When I got partway into that I stopped by the Downhouse and got to say hi to Amy, our manager, and the person who supplies our funds. She is the person that I lugged the care package (movies and perfume) in my luggage over for. I listened to Joy and Leslie talk to her about finance for twenty minutes simple because I had nothing better to do.
It was six to seven by the time the stool study group got back, which is obscene, considering that even with everything that we did after the 10-25 chiponde, we still got back at four. Stool study’s hours really need to be cut back. Something that will be hit up on later.
After that, we (FINALLY!!!) got our dinner. Sarah, in addition to the usual eggs and rice, included a new dish. Its peanut flour stuff with “potatoes and goodness” as Willie said. Following this new fantastical dish (an adjective that can describe everything Sarah cooks) we (they) talked about logistics of the stool study. I just kinda read Hitchhiker’s Guide because I haven’t been involved with stool study yet. But it seems that I will be! After they talked a couple details out, the topic turned to the problem of no one staying with stool study for any length of time, (Joy and Leslie are decidedly 10-25) and lookie! Here is a spare high school student that is here for three (to nine) months! So tomorrow I’m gonna trade with Shandie and I’ll learn the ropes of the stool. Everyone who is laughing at me now…I’m sure I know where most of you live…so watch yourselves…
Today started out normal, kinda thought it would be a nondescript day, one where I might have to pull out one of the fun facts that I’ve been storing up. Little tidbits to fill in the blog for days where I can only say “normal day, few kids…etc…” But too bad, today turned out to be interesting after all. Tough nuts for you, you get an interesting story instead.
Because I was up till eleven last night writing, I was very, very brain-dead this morning. No matter though, I got up at five without too much trouble, and my mosquito net lasted the night this time! So I left with Leslie this time, to wherever we were going…I have no idea what it’s called actually, at this stage I don’t really need to know. So anyway, we picked up one of our nurses, Candace, and are going back for Lauren (another nurse) when we get a phone call. Turns out, the Land Rover (one of our many trucks) broke down, and they needed help. So we drove over, and tried many, many things to get it out of the middle of the road. We broke a piece of rope trying to tow it for one thing. Got a pic of that, before the rope broke. Eventually the Rover crawled its way over the top, and we decided to leave it by the nearby police station, and just send two people back to pick up another vehicle. Total time wasted: about one hour. After that, we continued our drive to today’s site. And man let me tell you, Victor (one of the two locals on the stool study) got skills! He was really booking it down those roads, a good 90-100 km/hr. And considering how many pedestrians there are, that takes real skill! Or at least, he was booking it until we hit such a heavy layer of fog that everything 10 feet in front of you was completely obscured. And after that iunno, ‘cause Willie and I fell asleep, which in retrospect is pretty amazing, because those roads are ALMOST as bad a Pennsylvania roads.
So anyway we got there and it was pretty much business as usual. Read card. Give Chiponde. Repeat. I got to talk to a couple of the HSA’s (Health Service Assistant) though. (They are our local hired help, helping us fill out forms with the locals, many of whom can’t read, and more importantly, they speak the local language AND English.) Not much other than that though. Then we drove home.
After dropping off the nurses, Leslie and I picked up all the empty Chiponde bottles we had been storing at the factory and took them to the cleaning facility. (We reuse cleaned bottles for various reasons.) Then went back to the factory to get more Chiponde. And after that we took a trip to the internet café. Where we found the internet dead. Yay!
After that we went home and I killed time with The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. (Will I ever finish a book?) When I got partway into that I stopped by the Downhouse and got to say hi to Amy, our manager, and the person who supplies our funds. She is the person that I lugged the care package (movies and perfume) in my luggage over for. I listened to Joy and Leslie talk to her about finance for twenty minutes simple because I had nothing better to do.
It was six to seven by the time the stool study group got back, which is obscene, considering that even with everything that we did after the 10-25 chiponde, we still got back at four. Stool study’s hours really need to be cut back. Something that will be hit up on later.
After that, we (FINALLY!!!) got our dinner. Sarah, in addition to the usual eggs and rice, included a new dish. Its peanut flour stuff with “potatoes and goodness” as Willie said. Following this new fantastical dish (an adjective that can describe everything Sarah cooks) we (they) talked about logistics of the stool study. I just kinda read Hitchhiker’s Guide because I haven’t been involved with stool study yet. But it seems that I will be! After they talked a couple details out, the topic turned to the problem of no one staying with stool study for any length of time, (Joy and Leslie are decidedly 10-25) and lookie! Here is a spare high school student that is here for three (to nine) months! So tomorrow I’m gonna trade with Shandie and I’ll learn the ropes of the stool. Everyone who is laughing at me now…I’m sure I know where most of you live…so watch yourselves…
Sunday, September 21, 2008
One day late (O.M.G.)
Well lookie here. I didn’t post for a day. Let. It. Go. (This is not intended to anyone except those who sent me comments or emails expressing a consternation that I might, *gasp* not be able to post every single day…Mom…Dad…) So anyway, I’ve had a busy but nice weekend. Woke up to a ramen breakfast on Saturday. Say what you will that non-nutritional crap is good! So anyway. Wandered around because I was bored. Read most of Forrest Gump. Seriously, good book. Everyone who is reading this should, in turn, read it. Bevard twin #1, you’re excused on account of being illiterate. (Or close enough, when was the last time you read a book?)
So anyway, eventually I ended up in the Downhouse. If I haven’t explained this yet, The Downhouse is our storage area, the Uphouse is the girl’s dorm, and where most of the food and books are. The Mouse is our newest acquisition, and where the guys bunk for the night. Because its so new, it is pretty stark, and Joy (a guy, believe it or not) and I will probably dedicate some time over the next couple weeks to making it “home.”
So anyway, off topic. In the Downhouse we spent a good 2 hours or so responding to one of the Doctor’s emails. He sends us this email, “I need the data from these cards...and then lists about 50-75 cards to find in an old project. So we spend about one hour finding the cards…because they are strewn throughout the files, and another hour entering them. Meeeeeh. About 5 cards were completely empty, and a bunch of the data he was asking for were very easy to find the errors. The data not there. Funfun. From now on I’m going to double check the cards before I give the chiponde so we don’t have that issue.
After that we spent a LONG time reorganizing the Downhouse. The desks got pushed together, we put the new shelves in (It’s actually ingenious, order a bunch of benches, and stack them! It makes very good, portable shelves!) and moved the binder shelves. I may show you a picture later. OH YEAH! On the picture subject, I don’t think the connection here is fast enough to upload pics, so it’ll have to wait till later. I spent a long time organizing our computer equipment too. Useless, Useful, wiring, packing…etc.
Then…we switched the fridges…me ‘n Joy grabbed the new fridge in the Downhouse and dragged it ALL the way up to the Mouse, and vice versa with the old one in the Mouse. PAIN. MUCH PAIN! And after that we tore the plug…pushed the fridge too far and *pop* it goes. And since I think (based of my “majoring in computer science”) I’m being trained to be a electrician of sorts here, me and Leslie (The other Med student staying for a year along with Joy, Willie and Shandie are leaving Thursday) spent a little while figgering how to put it back together. After that we doused a couple bugnets in mosquitoicide. Which reminds me, I’ve been pulling my bugnet down in my sleep. Putting it back up requires me to be conscious, so all in all between waking up and falling asleep it cuts half an hour into my sleep.
Following this, the last of our chores, we went and got our next week’s worth of chiponde. Don’t have enough of one kind though, we will probably have to go back to get more. Turns out though, that with the way we reorganized this place, we can stack more than we’d need for a week! And not having to go back to the factory is fantastic!
So anyway, after that, we went to this awesome place called Macky’s, which basically is a B&B, with the most amazing ambiance. (Jazz background, great scenery, and AWESOME FOOD. I had the Mongolian Beef.) We had dinner, and sat around and talked. For about two hours. It was fantastic. Bats flying above, great temperature, and near the end a Rastafarian guitarist came in and started playing some awesome music. (I have a pic of him. Again, later.) I think that Leslie’s toast sums it up best. “To a perfect night.
And afterwards we went right home and collapsed. SO THERE. Off my case you fools!
And today, we did more of the same chorewise. We woke up, more arranging of the Downhouse, though not even near as much as yesterday. Actually I finished two projects today. I took apart the gal’s broken water boiler, put it back together again (I lost a little plastic thingy…I don’t think it matters…) and changed the plug and VOILA! It works. I’m starting to feel a little more self confident about this whole electrician thing. Grandpa would be proud. (He fixed broken stuff all the time. At one point he had seven working TV’s! And I don’t think he even bought any of ‘em!) After that me n Leslie switched a broken wall socket. Last electrical job left is to replace a dangly light bulb socket thing.
Newayz, after that we drove to a “Reggae” concert. Explanation. Thirty minutes of waiting, followed by forty-five minutes of a seven piece boys band, with thirty more minutes of waiting, and finally, forty minutes of “Reggae”. Except it wasn’t. It was high speed Creole rap. With dancing. Whaaaaatever. He wasn’t that bad. And it was quite an experience.
Afterwards we met back up with Shandie and Willie, who had been to Mount Mulanje. We met up at a restaurant called Ali Baba’s. Again, food fantastic. I had the Chicken Tandori, and my nose started running halfway through my meal. Now that’s what I call Spicay!
And then we went home. End of story.
Oh yeah, I’m reading a fantastic novel called Dr Norrel and Mr. Strange. Pretty good book. Weird thing is, it’s the authors first book. And its good. And its 800 pages. How do you start with that?!
So anyway, eventually I ended up in the Downhouse. If I haven’t explained this yet, The Downhouse is our storage area, the Uphouse is the girl’s dorm, and where most of the food and books are. The Mouse is our newest acquisition, and where the guys bunk for the night. Because its so new, it is pretty stark, and Joy (a guy, believe it or not) and I will probably dedicate some time over the next couple weeks to making it “home.”
So anyway, off topic. In the Downhouse we spent a good 2 hours or so responding to one of the Doctor’s emails. He sends us this email, “I need the data from these cards...and then lists about 50-75 cards to find in an old project. So we spend about one hour finding the cards…because they are strewn throughout the files, and another hour entering them. Meeeeeh. About 5 cards were completely empty, and a bunch of the data he was asking for were very easy to find the errors. The data not there. Funfun. From now on I’m going to double check the cards before I give the chiponde so we don’t have that issue.
After that we spent a LONG time reorganizing the Downhouse. The desks got pushed together, we put the new shelves in (It’s actually ingenious, order a bunch of benches, and stack them! It makes very good, portable shelves!) and moved the binder shelves. I may show you a picture later. OH YEAH! On the picture subject, I don’t think the connection here is fast enough to upload pics, so it’ll have to wait till later. I spent a long time organizing our computer equipment too. Useless, Useful, wiring, packing…etc.
Then…we switched the fridges…me ‘n Joy grabbed the new fridge in the Downhouse and dragged it ALL the way up to the Mouse, and vice versa with the old one in the Mouse. PAIN. MUCH PAIN! And after that we tore the plug…pushed the fridge too far and *pop* it goes. And since I think (based of my “majoring in computer science”) I’m being trained to be a electrician of sorts here, me and Leslie (The other Med student staying for a year along with Joy, Willie and Shandie are leaving Thursday) spent a little while figgering how to put it back together. After that we doused a couple bugnets in mosquitoicide. Which reminds me, I’ve been pulling my bugnet down in my sleep. Putting it back up requires me to be conscious, so all in all between waking up and falling asleep it cuts half an hour into my sleep.
Following this, the last of our chores, we went and got our next week’s worth of chiponde. Don’t have enough of one kind though, we will probably have to go back to get more. Turns out though, that with the way we reorganized this place, we can stack more than we’d need for a week! And not having to go back to the factory is fantastic!
So anyway, after that, we went to this awesome place called Macky’s, which basically is a B&B, with the most amazing ambiance. (Jazz background, great scenery, and AWESOME FOOD. I had the Mongolian Beef.) We had dinner, and sat around and talked. For about two hours. It was fantastic. Bats flying above, great temperature, and near the end a Rastafarian guitarist came in and started playing some awesome music. (I have a pic of him. Again, later.) I think that Leslie’s toast sums it up best. “To a perfect night.
And afterwards we went right home and collapsed. SO THERE. Off my case you fools!
And today, we did more of the same chorewise. We woke up, more arranging of the Downhouse, though not even near as much as yesterday. Actually I finished two projects today. I took apart the gal’s broken water boiler, put it back together again (I lost a little plastic thingy…I don’t think it matters…) and changed the plug and VOILA! It works. I’m starting to feel a little more self confident about this whole electrician thing. Grandpa would be proud. (He fixed broken stuff all the time. At one point he had seven working TV’s! And I don’t think he even bought any of ‘em!) After that me n Leslie switched a broken wall socket. Last electrical job left is to replace a dangly light bulb socket thing.
Newayz, after that we drove to a “Reggae” concert. Explanation. Thirty minutes of waiting, followed by forty-five minutes of a seven piece boys band, with thirty more minutes of waiting, and finally, forty minutes of “Reggae”. Except it wasn’t. It was high speed Creole rap. With dancing. Whaaaaatever. He wasn’t that bad. And it was quite an experience.
Afterwards we met back up with Shandie and Willie, who had been to Mount Mulanje. We met up at a restaurant called Ali Baba’s. Again, food fantastic. I had the Chicken Tandori, and my nose started running halfway through my meal. Now that’s what I call Spicay!
And then we went home. End of story.
Oh yeah, I’m reading a fantastic novel called Dr Norrel and Mr. Strange. Pretty good book. Weird thing is, it’s the authors first book. And its good. And its 800 pages. How do you start with that?!
Thursday, September 18, 2008
First (work) Day
Well, wasn’t the picture debacle yesterday interesting? No, I haven’t gotten to fixing it yet, but I’m going to attempt fixing it after I finish writing this entry. Oh yeah, and I’ll also do my best to put the “, ”, ‘, and ! back where they belong.
The following, minus minor details, will probably be a good example of what my weekdays will be like for the foreseeable future.
So today was a busy day, up at four, out the door by 5. And for your information, you skeptics who know me too well, I was the FIRST one up. So after I ate some brekkist and did a couple sudoku, it was out to pack the truck for the day. We have to make sure it is full of the 10% and 25% chiponde, as well as the Soya. So when we left we stopped by the factory to get some more 25%, and also picked up two nurses…whose names are…wait…damnit…I tried so hard to remember them today…one starts with a C…whatever I'll figure them out later...After that it was a good hour or so until we got to…let me check…Mayaka. On the way my senior filled me in on many things. Like my job for today. And how Unqualified Palin is. And Lots of other things. You find things to talk about in a two hour car ride.
So anyway here’s my job. First things first, I need to make a clarification clear. Project Peanut Butter’s goal is not mainly to treat child malnutrition in Malawi. It’s simply not possible for a group as small as ours to make as large a difference as we would need to. Let me clarify. For example, today in Mayaka, population 57000, there are 14 Chiponde sites other than the ones we run. These are run by the CTC, a government run program. The blue sites I mentioned yesterday are sites that we now simply supply the Chiponde to, and they distribute it themselves. (The Chiponde designs were written up by a former volunteer here and sold to the government. The guy who sold them may or may not be profiting from that. Relations aren’t the best between him and PPB.) CTC makes its own Chiponde, and supplies it as well. Project Peanut Butter runs 14 sites altogether. In total. So we could not even run Mayaka completely on our own. Our main goals are determining whether the 10% is as effective as the 25%, which would allow production world-wide to be run more cheaply, and to see whether the Soya Chiponde is effective in treating moderate malnutrition. Dr Manary is attending a malnutrition council thing, group, get together, whatever it’s called, of malnutrition experts world wide to try to decide upon a treatment of moderate malnutrition.
So the 10% Vs 25% study is a double blind study, meaning that neither those receiving the peanut butter, nor those assigning who gets what know which version of the Chiponde they are getting. So basically, a nurse writes a random letter, A-F, drawn from a box, on every child’s “card.” (Cards record data such as height, target weight, weight, etc.) 3 of the letters correspond to the type 1, (25%) and 3 to type 2. (10%) So I read their cards, and depending on their weight, whether they are only moderately malnourished or seriously malnourished, (Moderates get Soya) and the letter, I give them a certain amount of the specified type of chiponde. Graduates (those who are now healthy) receive 3 bottles, a kilo of beans, and a gargantuan bar of soap.
We had a huge number of people today. Women and babies lined(nor really, more like clumped together) up as far as the eye could see. Ok so they only filled up the yard but there were still a helluva lot of them. You have never heard such a wailing and gnashing of gums.
Long day too. It was 7-1 just handing out the Chiponde, with a couple long (ten minutes to an hour) breaks in between mobs of people. I say mobs, because they never came alone. I always had either a line of 5-6 people or none. Wasn’t as hot as I feared though.
So anyway, afterwards we picked up some benches we had ordered from a local carpenter that we will soon make into bookshelves. And after that we went home. Oh and I really need to learn some Chichewa. All I know right now is Zikomo (Thank you) Madzi. (very much)
Oh and my parents are jerks. JERKS I SAY. They sent me letters. Tons of letters. Letters for every Saturday between now and January 31. YOU KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS!?!?!?! I have two options. Open all of the letters at once and feel guilty, and regretful for the rest of my stay. Or suffer, SUFFER as I wait to find out what is written in the next one. Actually I haven’t even opened the first one yet but there’s something in it I know because its fat and has a lump and it might not be so bad after I figure out what the lump is but the jerks didntevensendmealetterforwhenIgotherethefirstisforSaturday…JERKS…Thanks…jerks…
The following, minus minor details, will probably be a good example of what my weekdays will be like for the foreseeable future.
So today was a busy day, up at four, out the door by 5. And for your information, you skeptics who know me too well, I was the FIRST one up. So after I ate some brekkist and did a couple sudoku, it was out to pack the truck for the day. We have to make sure it is full of the 10% and 25% chiponde, as well as the Soya. So when we left we stopped by the factory to get some more 25%, and also picked up two nurses…whose names are…wait…damnit…I tried so hard to remember them today…one starts with a C…whatever I'll figure them out later...After that it was a good hour or so until we got to…let me check…Mayaka. On the way my senior filled me in on many things. Like my job for today. And how Unqualified Palin is. And Lots of other things. You find things to talk about in a two hour car ride.
So anyway here’s my job. First things first, I need to make a clarification clear. Project Peanut Butter’s goal is not mainly to treat child malnutrition in Malawi. It’s simply not possible for a group as small as ours to make as large a difference as we would need to. Let me clarify. For example, today in Mayaka, population 57000, there are 14 Chiponde sites other than the ones we run. These are run by the CTC, a government run program. The blue sites I mentioned yesterday are sites that we now simply supply the Chiponde to, and they distribute it themselves. (The Chiponde designs were written up by a former volunteer here and sold to the government. The guy who sold them may or may not be profiting from that. Relations aren’t the best between him and PPB.) CTC makes its own Chiponde, and supplies it as well. Project Peanut Butter runs 14 sites altogether. In total. So we could not even run Mayaka completely on our own. Our main goals are determining whether the 10% is as effective as the 25%, which would allow production world-wide to be run more cheaply, and to see whether the Soya Chiponde is effective in treating moderate malnutrition. Dr Manary is attending a malnutrition council thing, group, get together, whatever it’s called, of malnutrition experts world wide to try to decide upon a treatment of moderate malnutrition.
So the 10% Vs 25% study is a double blind study, meaning that neither those receiving the peanut butter, nor those assigning who gets what know which version of the Chiponde they are getting. So basically, a nurse writes a random letter, A-F, drawn from a box, on every child’s “card.” (Cards record data such as height, target weight, weight, etc.) 3 of the letters correspond to the type 1, (25%) and 3 to type 2. (10%) So I read their cards, and depending on their weight, whether they are only moderately malnourished or seriously malnourished, (Moderates get Soya) and the letter, I give them a certain amount of the specified type of chiponde. Graduates (those who are now healthy) receive 3 bottles, a kilo of beans, and a gargantuan bar of soap.
We had a huge number of people today. Women and babies lined(nor really, more like clumped together) up as far as the eye could see. Ok so they only filled up the yard but there were still a helluva lot of them. You have never heard such a wailing and gnashing of gums.
Long day too. It was 7-1 just handing out the Chiponde, with a couple long (ten minutes to an hour) breaks in between mobs of people. I say mobs, because they never came alone. I always had either a line of 5-6 people or none. Wasn’t as hot as I feared though.
So anyway, afterwards we picked up some benches we had ordered from a local carpenter that we will soon make into bookshelves. And after that we went home. Oh and I really need to learn some Chichewa. All I know right now is Zikomo (Thank you) Madzi. (very much)
Oh and my parents are jerks. JERKS I SAY. They sent me letters. Tons of letters. Letters for every Saturday between now and January 31. YOU KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS!?!?!?! I have two options. Open all of the letters at once and feel guilty, and regretful for the rest of my stay. Or suffer, SUFFER as I wait to find out what is written in the next one. Actually I haven’t even opened the first one yet but there’s something in it I know because its fat and has a lump and it might not be so bad after I figure out what the lump is but the jerks didntevensendmealetterforwhenIgotherethefirstisforSaturday…JERKS…Thanks…jerks…
Picture day...or not?
This looks funny because of a mac-windows transfer problem. Suffice it to say, ì = first ", Ö=!, î= ending ", í='. You'll live. I'll fix it up later. When I don't have to sleep 20 minutes ago. OK, I lied again. I can get pics to show up yet. Very spotty internet. Suffice it to say that I have the pics I claim to, and will put them in when I am able. Have fun imagining what the pics I have look like. Good night.
Fixed the typos, but I am loath to delete anything in the blog...I'd rather just put a line through the words...any internet gurus out there that wanna tell me how to do that? Oh and again too lazy to figure the picture thing out.
Well apparently the general chorus that I am hearing from your comments is a small “cool you arrived safe” and a big “where are the pictures you promised!” Thanks, I love you guys too. Well since I have trouble doing anything halfway, you will get your pictures, oh you will get them. More than you ever dreamed possible…OK well there’s only 20ish, but that’s a lot. You’re welcome. Jerks.
Let’s start with the basics; here are pics of my parents who funded this whole enterprise. I’m sorry, but they really aren’t very photogenic, and the best I could manage was the devil-eyed father and my mom puffing up. Seriously, you don’t want to see the other pics I had.
Here is a quick pic I took of the travel in in Joburg, (South Africa) not the nicest of places but it was very good considering all I was expecting was a bed. (It had 2 beds, some clean water you could heat up for coffee or tea, and a bathroom all to meself)
And here is what the different gates look like at Joburg. Pretty simple I thought. Oh, and by the way, there were only 3ish gate rooms in international departures, as big as the one in the pic and yet the airport was still as large as a normal one. How? Lots. And Lots. And Lots. (Yes the L is capitalized for a reason.) Of shops. It was turn here for gates A 7-50…then you walked past no less than 20 shops. Only one of which was food. And then you turn left, down an escalator, and bam! A 10-30, all in one room. No pic in Blantyre, too concerned with the whole one month thing. Which someone cleared up for me by the way. They want me to pay to stay longer. And I have two choices. Pay, Or go to out of country for a day, come back, and let them stamp me for free again.
Here’s a bunch of Blantyre from the compound, The first is one at night, with all the fires lighting up the mountain. The camera missed a bunch by the way. There is a whole hell of a lot more fires than just that. The next one is as close up as I could get to the soccer field. (Which is by the way, very, very uneven.) And a mountain pic, and a pic of Blantyre in the day.
Here are the two giant spiders that reside under one of our canopies. Me like. They big. Probably eat mosquitoes. And also, the walls with lights on them are crawling with geckos at night. Another think I found cool.
Here’s a cool Gazebo thing on the compound. I don’t think it gets used very much. Tis’ a shame eh?
And random pics of the compound. Also, the tree has some fruits on it. NO idea what kind. They can be whatever you want them to be.
Here is the down house. (Correction from bottom house) The computer I’m sending it on in down house. And the chair I dozed off in for about two hours while waiting for Gene and Vegas to get back. (More on that later.) Oh and the cool out of scale drawing of the sites we work at. The red ones we are going to, and the blue ones are old sites.
So. I woke up at 7ish (shut up mom and dad) and eat breakfast (cereal). Did some random crap (Reading, talking. And other stuff not important enough for me to remember.) We left early though to go see downtown Blantyre. (which by the way you will probably never see pics of. I will NOT go running around with an expensive camera. I also wont go running around like I'm some tourist.) We found the best exchange rate locally, (160ish Kwatcha per dollar) and hit up the market. Boy that was weird. I got accosted by EVERYONE. “Here, I give you good price.” “This small, you take with you, I give you good price.” Three in particular were the most aggressive. Chaps, Francis, and Kevin (I know their names because they told it to me 3-4 times in hope than when I come back I would remember them.) Chaps actually game me a bracelet as a gift. My roomie got a small figurine.
After that we went to the supermarket to pick up something for a little girl. She had been picked up at one of their chiponde (the peanut butter) clinics. Her dress had caught on fire, and she had burns all over her body. And in the hospitals they don’t give pain medication after the first couple days. And for burns, they have to rub, no, SCRUB the skin off. So we bought some fruit chews and some M&M’s. I hope she likes them. He mentioned that he remembered something about her “not having teeth.” Heavy.
After that, we had lunch, and waited for two of the local stool study workers to get back. Now, I need to give you a little back story here. Project peanut butter, in addition to feeding the malnourished children, is running two experiments right now. One is called the stool study, and the other is the Chiponde/Soya study. Milk is the most expensive and hard to get ingredient of the chiponde, (flown in from South Africa) so a study is being conducted to see if the milk content can be lowered from 25% to 10%, or just replaced with soy. The merely moderately malnourished children are given soy, and the severe cases are given either a 25% or 10%. If the study shows that soy or 10% is as effective, then they will switch to that kind, and will be able to produce more chiponde.
The stool study is attempting to figure out the causes of the two different kinds of malnutrition “cases.” As none of the med students are on hand, I cannot name them, but one causes severe emaciation, and the other causes swelling and the large gut protrusion. They use twins, as in many cases two twins under similar circumstances may develop the two differing conditions, and it is as close to the same person as you can get. Since the different conditions are supposed to be caused by different bacteria in the bowel, stool is collected from each child participating in the study. We get them to come by giving mothers “incentives” every time they come. The incentives consist of beans, sugar, oil, and other things that mothers would otherwise have to sell their crops to afford.
So we waited from one to four for them to return, with me falling asleep in the big, comfy, *yawn,* chair. Once they got here though, we spent a good hour or so restocking the materials for the next week. Most of which was spent taping lining into the diapers for the stool study. The three other med students on sabbatical arrived partway through that. So after we just ate, talked and chilled in the up house. Tomorrow I get up early, and out the door by 5. First day of work. Wish me luck!
Fixed the typos, but I am loath to delete anything in the blog...I'd rather just put a line through the words...any internet gurus out there that wanna tell me how to do that? Oh and again too lazy to figure the picture thing out.
Well apparently the general chorus that I am hearing from your comments is a small “cool you arrived safe” and a big “where are the pictures you promised!” Thanks, I love you guys too. Well since I have trouble doing anything halfway, you will get your pictures, oh you will get them. More than you ever dreamed possible…OK well there’s only 20ish, but that’s a lot. You’re welcome. Jerks.
Let’s start with the basics; here are pics of my parents who funded this whole enterprise. I’m sorry, but they really aren’t very photogenic, and the best I could manage was the devil-eyed father and my mom puffing up. Seriously, you don’t want to see the other pics I had.
Here is a quick pic I took of the travel in in Joburg, (South Africa) not the nicest of places but it was very good considering all I was expecting was a bed. (It had 2 beds, some clean water you could heat up for coffee or tea, and a bathroom all to meself)
And here is what the different gates look like at Joburg. Pretty simple I thought. Oh, and by the way, there were only 3ish gate rooms in international departures, as big as the one in the pic and yet the airport was still as large as a normal one. How? Lots. And Lots. And Lots. (Yes the L is capitalized for a reason.) Of shops. It was turn here for gates A 7-50…then you walked past no less than 20 shops. Only one of which was food. And then you turn left, down an escalator, and bam! A 10-30, all in one room. No pic in Blantyre, too concerned with the whole one month thing. Which someone cleared up for me by the way. They want me to pay to stay longer. And I have two choices. Pay, Or go to out of country for a day, come back, and let them stamp me for free again.
Here’s a bunch of Blantyre from the compound, The first is one at night, with all the fires lighting up the mountain. The camera missed a bunch by the way. There is a whole hell of a lot more fires than just that. The next one is as close up as I could get to the soccer field. (Which is by the way, very, very uneven.) And a mountain pic, and a pic of Blantyre in the day.
Here are the two giant spiders that reside under one of our canopies. Me like. They big. Probably eat mosquitoes. And also, the walls with lights on them are crawling with geckos at night. Another think I found cool.
Here’s a cool Gazebo thing on the compound. I don’t think it gets used very much. Tis’ a shame eh?
And random pics of the compound. Also, the tree has some fruits on it. NO idea what kind. They can be whatever you want them to be.
Here is the down house. (Correction from bottom house) The computer I’m sending it on in down house. And the chair I dozed off in for about two hours while waiting for Gene and Vegas to get back. (More on that later.) Oh and the cool out of scale drawing of the sites we work at. The red ones we are going to, and the blue ones are old sites.
So. I woke up at 7ish (shut up mom and dad) and eat breakfast (cereal). Did some random crap (Reading, talking. And other stuff not important enough for me to remember.) We left early though to go see downtown Blantyre. (which by the way you will probably never see pics of. I will NOT go running around with an expensive camera. I also wont go running around like I'm some tourist.) We found the best exchange rate locally, (160ish Kwatcha per dollar) and hit up the market. Boy that was weird. I got accosted by EVERYONE. “Here, I give you good price.” “This small, you take with you, I give you good price.” Three in particular were the most aggressive. Chaps, Francis, and Kevin (I know their names because they told it to me 3-4 times in hope than when I come back I would remember them.) Chaps actually game me a bracelet as a gift. My roomie got a small figurine.
After that we went to the supermarket to pick up something for a little girl. She had been picked up at one of their chiponde (the peanut butter) clinics. Her dress had caught on fire, and she had burns all over her body. And in the hospitals they don’t give pain medication after the first couple days. And for burns, they have to rub, no, SCRUB the skin off. So we bought some fruit chews and some M&M’s. I hope she likes them. He mentioned that he remembered something about her “not having teeth.” Heavy.
After that, we had lunch, and waited for two of the local stool study workers to get back. Now, I need to give you a little back story here. Project peanut butter, in addition to feeding the malnourished children, is running two experiments right now. One is called the stool study, and the other is the Chiponde/Soya study. Milk is the most expensive and hard to get ingredient of the chiponde, (flown in from South Africa) so a study is being conducted to see if the milk content can be lowered from 25% to 10%, or just replaced with soy. The merely moderately malnourished children are given soy, and the severe cases are given either a 25% or 10%. If the study shows that soy or 10% is as effective, then they will switch to that kind, and will be able to produce more chiponde.
The stool study is attempting to figure out the causes of the two different kinds of malnutrition “cases.” As none of the med students are on hand, I cannot name them, but one causes severe emaciation, and the other causes swelling and the large gut protrusion. They use twins, as in many cases two twins under similar circumstances may develop the two differing conditions, and it is as close to the same person as you can get. Since the different conditions are supposed to be caused by different bacteria in the bowel, stool is collected from each child participating in the study. We get them to come by giving mothers “incentives” every time they come. The incentives consist of beans, sugar, oil, and other things that mothers would otherwise have to sell their crops to afford.
So we waited from one to four for them to return, with me falling asleep in the big, comfy, *yawn,* chair. Once they got here though, we spent a good hour or so restocking the materials for the next week. Most of which was spent taping lining into the diapers for the stool study. The three other med students on sabbatical arrived partway through that. So after we just ate, talked and chilled in the up house. Tomorrow I get up early, and out the door by 5. First day of work. Wish me luck!
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
AwayInMalawi
Yes I know the title isn't very interesting. You'll live though. First things first, apparently this computer is german, because I got this error message from Gmail, proving that some people still have a sense of humor.
So I arrived today, had to wake myself up at 8, which was interesting...considering that it was 5 o'clock in my biological clock when I had to lay meself down to rest. Oh yeah, forgot to mention, I came to the doves nest dinner area around 9, and it was actually past the dinner time, but they still served me! Nice people. This morning I came too late for breakfast but the lady insisted on giving me some yogurt to go. Vurry nice people. So after I worked out how to get them to bill Dr Manary, (I sure as hell didn't have 400+ rand, about 60$, well I had the 60$ but it was USD) we left and I got on my plane to Blantyre. Uneventful plane ride.
First thing that happened in Blantyre was the official inspecting my passport, after I said that I was staying for 3 months, mumbled something about "one month!" Yup. I'm getting that sorted out ASAP. Afterwards my driver, who is actually the guy running the chiponde plant, picked me out of the crowd! He didn't have a sign or anything, but just asked me, "are you Billy?" Apparently he has done this oodles of time and with just an age group he can guess who I am based of of my looks and the fact that I look like I am looking for a sign. Impressive eh?
The second thing that strikes me is the massive poverty here. Along the main road are tons of houses that you would picture seeing a homeless residing in in the states. I mean, quite a few have the body made of brick or clay, but windows are few and far between and the roofs are quite shoddy. Also, people walk everywhere, and the streets are thronged with them. And horns are used ALL THE TIME. He explained it to me as, you are supposed to use the horn, to warn the people that you are coming. If you hit someone without using the horn, they'd say something like, "Is your horn broken?" But If you hit ("or kill") someone but use it,they'd say, "At least he used is horn." Weiiiird. But I guess I'll get used to it.
So noone was at the house today, they were all going overnight to...let me see...Namandaje. Too far away to do in a day. Actually, they only figured out I was arriving today yesterday, they thought I was coming on Thursday! Wouldn't that have been interesting...but its all good because I got picked up in the end. Also, they sent back someone who wasn't essential to what they were doing in Namandje. He's roommate actually! He's pretty cool, about 25, another med student. When he got here he showed me around the three houses, lower house, middle house (m'ouse) and upper house. The lower is storage, upper is where the girls and the food are, go figure, and the mouse is for the males. We ate the food prepared by out housekeeper and chef. Lentils, a salad, and some rice. All very good I might add. Even the lentils were tasty! She, by the way, showed me around a little too, and gave me my keys and my cell phone.
SO anyway, thats probably a little much for one day. See you soon.
We can't provide service under the Gmail name in Germany; we're called Google Mail here instead.
If you're travelling in Germany, you can access your mail at http://mail.google.com.
Oh, and we'd like to link the URL above, but we're not allowed to do that either. Drat.
For general information about Google, please visit www.google.com or www.google.de.
Funny eh?So I arrived today, had to wake myself up at 8, which was interesting...considering that it was 5 o'clock in my biological clock when I had to lay meself down to rest. Oh yeah, forgot to mention, I came to the doves nest dinner area around 9, and it was actually past the dinner time, but they still served me! Nice people. This morning I came too late for breakfast but the lady insisted on giving me some yogurt to go. Vurry nice people. So after I worked out how to get them to bill Dr Manary, (I sure as hell didn't have 400+ rand, about 60$, well I had the 60$ but it was USD) we left and I got on my plane to Blantyre. Uneventful plane ride.
First thing that happened in Blantyre was the official inspecting my passport, after I said that I was staying for 3 months, mumbled something about "one month!" Yup. I'm getting that sorted out ASAP. Afterwards my driver, who is actually the guy running the chiponde plant, picked me out of the crowd! He didn't have a sign or anything, but just asked me, "are you Billy?" Apparently he has done this oodles of time and with just an age group he can guess who I am based of of my looks and the fact that I look like I am looking for a sign. Impressive eh?
The second thing that strikes me is the massive poverty here. Along the main road are tons of houses that you would picture seeing a homeless residing in in the states. I mean, quite a few have the body made of brick or clay, but windows are few and far between and the roofs are quite shoddy. Also, people walk everywhere, and the streets are thronged with them. And horns are used ALL THE TIME. He explained it to me as, you are supposed to use the horn, to warn the people that you are coming. If you hit someone without using the horn, they'd say something like, "Is your horn broken?" But If you hit ("or kill") someone but use it,they'd say, "At least he used is horn." Weiiiird. But I guess I'll get used to it.
So noone was at the house today, they were all going overnight to...let me see...Namandaje. Too far away to do in a day. Actually, they only figured out I was arriving today yesterday, they thought I was coming on Thursday! Wouldn't that have been interesting...but its all good because I got picked up in the end. Also, they sent back someone who wasn't essential to what they were doing in Namandje. He's roommate actually! He's pretty cool, about 25, another med student. When he got here he showed me around the three houses, lower house, middle house (m'ouse) and upper house. The lower is storage, upper is where the girls and the food are, go figure, and the mouse is for the males. We ate the food prepared by out housekeeper and chef. Lentils, a salad, and some rice. All very good I might add. Even the lentils were tasty! She, by the way, showed me around a little too, and gave me my keys and my cell phone.
SO anyway, thats probably a little much for one day. See you soon.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Touchdown
Before I begin, I need to state that the following message was written without firefox, and therefore not quite spellchecked. Maybe.
Well, I'm in Africa now. Very glad to be out of the airplane. No matter what anyone tells you, 16 hour airplane trips suck. Alot. When your butt starts hurting...yeah that is too much sitting. And trying to sleep there? Forget it! unless you are sleep deprived you'll never make it! There were perks though! Airplanes have been upgraded, so that theres a screen for every seat! And you can pick the movie you want to watch. I watched Made of Honor, the Fantastic 4, and What Happens in Vegas. There weren't any good hardcore movies btw. So it was romantic comedies or kids movies.
There was, at first, a nice african lady sitting next to me, and she gave me even more advice on how act in africa. Apparently, there's a great respect for your elders here, and in some cultures, it is rude to look at the elder's face, or make a move towards greeting him, until he makes the first move. Also, maze is apparently used in everything, and can range(based on how it prepared) from kus kus texture to a kinda riceball paste.
And then the nice lady I was talking to wanted me to switch seats with a friend of hers across the aisle, so I moved and started sitting next to a girl about my age who is going in a group. All I could find out was that they are, like me, going to be in africa for (hopefully) 9 months. Cause after the customary greetings and conversation were over, she (like anyone going wiht friends) spent the rest of the time talking with her friends.
Once I touched down, and got through the passport check, I was amazed at their strick, BRUTAL customs check. You walk to the left and they check you. You walk to the right and nothing. No forms. Just "I have nothing to declare" written on the wall and a "if you have something to declare you are committing a felony by walking here." WTH that is obnoxiously lax. Whatever, I don't mind.
After that I converted some money to rand (pronounced rend) I made a call to my guest house and waited outside for half an hour. It wasnt until I started chatting with another patient person waiting for a ridwe that I found out that they were waiting for me inside next to the information booth! Oh how embarrassing that was. But I'm here at the Doves Nest now, thankfully, and all that is left is to finish this post. Which I guess it is, go figure.
Oh one thing I forgot. Almost everyone here speaks english, but I have some trouble understanding their accent.
Well, I'm in Africa now. Very glad to be out of the airplane. No matter what anyone tells you, 16 hour airplane trips suck. Alot. When your butt starts hurting...yeah that is too much sitting. And trying to sleep there? Forget it! unless you are sleep deprived you'll never make it! There were perks though! Airplanes have been upgraded, so that theres a screen for every seat! And you can pick the movie you want to watch. I watched Made of Honor, the Fantastic 4, and What Happens in Vegas. There weren't any good hardcore movies btw. So it was romantic comedies or kids movies.
There was, at first, a nice african lady sitting next to me, and she gave me even more advice on how act in africa. Apparently, there's a great respect for your elders here, and in some cultures, it is rude to look at the elder's face, or make a move towards greeting him, until he makes the first move. Also, maze is apparently used in everything, and can range(based on how it prepared) from kus kus texture to a kinda riceball paste.
And then the nice lady I was talking to wanted me to switch seats with a friend of hers across the aisle, so I moved and started sitting next to a girl about my age who is going in a group. All I could find out was that they are, like me, going to be in africa for (hopefully) 9 months. Cause after the customary greetings and conversation were over, she (like anyone going wiht friends) spent the rest of the time talking with her friends.
Once I touched down, and got through the passport check, I was amazed at their strick, BRUTAL customs check. You walk to the left and they check you. You walk to the right and nothing. No forms. Just "I have nothing to declare" written on the wall and a "if you have something to declare you are committing a felony by walking here." WTH that is obnoxiously lax. Whatever, I don't mind.
After that I converted some money to rand (pronounced rend) I made a call to my guest house and waited outside for half an hour. It wasnt until I started chatting with another patient person waiting for a ridwe that I found out that they were waiting for me inside next to the information booth! Oh how embarrassing that was. But I'm here at the Doves Nest now, thankfully, and all that is left is to finish this post. Which I guess it is, go figure.
Oh one thing I forgot. Almost everyone here speaks english, but I have some trouble understanding their accent.
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Terms of Use
OK! Everyone! I have a couple "rules" for the blog.
First. Everyone who reads a post, please comment. I WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU! I'm "away in Malawi," and wont be able to be able to get into any real contact with anyone from home. In fact, I'd even like to hear from people I don't know! (Apparently Mr James' Icons class and SJV will be reading this) There will be nothing more depressing for me than going on to make a new post and seeing that the only people who have "looked"(commented) on my last one are my parents. So let me reiterate. PLEASE LET ME KNOW YOU CHECKED UP ON ME, COMMENT!
Second, please don't make me moderate. I don't want to have to delete any comments because they are vulgar or somesuch.
And as I type this It strikes me that some people may not have all of the info on what I'm doing. Well, I be called Billy, Bill, or some variant of the name William,(except Willy, call me Willy and you die) and I am leaving tomorrow to a small country in Africa called Malawi, which is...let me check...the 7th to 9th poorest country in the world (out of 180) based on how much money the average person makes a year. In fact...the average person in Malawi makes $44 a year. Take a minute to digest that. Now I'm going to this country to work in an organization called Project Peanut Butter, an organization dedicated to reducing child starvation by feeding starving young children an enriched peanut butter solution until they are healthy again, while also teaching the families how to keep then from relapsing. To put it into perspective for you. Before PPB started working, almost one in four died before their fifth birthday. (23%) Now that has been almost halved into a little over one in eight. (13%) You can find out more details here if you are so inclined.
Anyhow I'll be staying in the city of Blantyre with two medical students on sabbatical, Jay and Eleanor. I will probably be getting up around 4-5 every morning, and will be either driving to a village to help treat the children there, or help work in the peanut butter factory. Either way, I will probably be getting back to the apartment by early in the evening, and will probably collapse around 9. Repeat. Not sure what my weekends will be like.
So thats my overview as I understand it. If you have any more questions, post them as a comment and I will be oh-so-happy to answer them. =)
First. Everyone who reads a post, please comment. I WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU! I'm "away in Malawi," and wont be able to be able to get into any real contact with anyone from home. In fact, I'd even like to hear from people I don't know! (Apparently Mr James' Icons class and SJV will be reading this) There will be nothing more depressing for me than going on to make a new post and seeing that the only people who have "looked"(commented) on my last one are my parents. So let me reiterate. PLEASE LET ME KNOW YOU CHECKED UP ON ME, COMMENT!
Second, please don't make me moderate. I don't want to have to delete any comments because they are vulgar or somesuch.
And as I type this It strikes me that some people may not have all of the info on what I'm doing. Well, I be called Billy, Bill, or some variant of the name William,(except Willy, call me Willy and you die) and I am leaving tomorrow to a small country in Africa called Malawi, which is...let me check...the 7th to 9th poorest country in the world (out of 180) based on how much money the average person makes a year. In fact...the average person in Malawi makes $44 a year. Take a minute to digest that. Now I'm going to this country to work in an organization called Project Peanut Butter, an organization dedicated to reducing child starvation by feeding starving young children an enriched peanut butter solution until they are healthy again, while also teaching the families how to keep then from relapsing. To put it into perspective for you. Before PPB started working, almost one in four died before their fifth birthday. (23%) Now that has been almost halved into a little over one in eight. (13%) You can find out more details here if you are so inclined.
Anyhow I'll be staying in the city of Blantyre with two medical students on sabbatical, Jay and Eleanor. I will probably be getting up around 4-5 every morning, and will be either driving to a village to help treat the children there, or help work in the peanut butter factory. Either way, I will probably be getting back to the apartment by early in the evening, and will probably collapse around 9. Repeat. Not sure what my weekends will be like.
So thats my overview as I understand it. If you have any more questions, post them as a comment and I will be oh-so-happy to answer them. =)
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Laff at me everyone!!!!!!
Hehe...hehehehehe....*audible snap* BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaowowow it hurts to laugh...
For anyone who is wondering what that was, that snap was me losing the last vestiges of my self control...It's been a very trying day...don't judge me because of my manic laugh...why are you still looking at me funny...? Well anyhoo, today took a turn downhill and I don't really know whe...OK that's a lie, I know exactly where. Let me begin my tale of woe...
I took a double dose of my sleep meds last night, so I got to bed at 11-ish, and woke up at 7! (about 4 hours earlier than I usually wake up) And I figured, why not take the bike route I mapped out yesterday? I had 10 hours to kill, so a good long bike ride should do me some good, right? Eventually I finished everything up in my house, and I left for my ride around 9-ish. Now my ride was SUPPOSED to take me to North Beach, then cross the county to the west side, and take the road near Kings Landing. I got to North Beach fine, had a sub and got some powerade. (I had forgotten to bring any water) I went up towards route 2 from North Beach (I have absolutely no idea what that road is called) and after much toil, reached Mt. Harmony road...the start of the complex road system I had never been on before. I got kinda confused when Mt. Harmony LN crossed Mt Harmony RD, but using my onstar-phone utility (calling my boss and asking for help) I was able to determine the correct route...and yadda yadda yadda, everything was cool until I hit Chaneyville RD...That my friends...and other random people my mom sent the blog link to...Is where the day took its fatal turn...
Now I could almost see the river from where I was, so I stopped looking at the road for a sec to try to get a look...and when I looked back ohwaitthestreetdroopsoffhere...*SLAM* I could immediately tell two things, my elbow now had a lot less skin than it did a couple seconds ago...and my PSP stopped making noise (Its very quiet for your information! I can hear the cars fine!) Under closer inspection my arm and PSP still worked fine...but the surfaces are scratched/cracked...OH JOY!!! I just bought the PSP!!! On the bright side, the PSP still works, and since I have all of the icons' locations memorized I can work it just fine...except for games. No thought was spent on my arm at this point, I've hurt meself much worse in the past, and what's more, I heal for free. Buuuuut...my PSP wasn't the only expensive thing broken, nono! The camera my parents bought for me that I had taken to get a picture of the river also had a cracked screen...yup...I may not be going to Africa...because when my parents read this they are going to KILL ME. Why oh why did I post this you might ask? Because I love to live on the "hairy edge" as my mom calls it.
So then I go further (still biking) and eventually take a wrong turn...not sure where...but instead of kings landing I end up in Richville...with no Idea how to get back to anything I know. Funny thing though, I can confirm that someone's richness is (usually) inversely proportional to their kindness! It was 20 minutes, and 20-30 cars before anyone would stop to give me directions, and I was right next to a stop sign too! But eventually I got pointed on the right direction, and got back on the 2-4 split. Then...I just suffered until I got to the bookstore I work at, barring a stop at 7-11 to get an energy drink or two. Once there, my bosses and I marveled at the unsolvable mysteries of life...like why I haven't killed myself yet...and why I'm still allowed to carry expensive electronics...and why my parents haven't killed me yet...and how long it will be before I get my nomination to the Darwin Awards.
I try to always look at the bright side of things, and well, this is all I could come up with. I must have used up all my bad karma for the next year and a half with this escapade, so I shouldn't have any left for my stay in Africa! =)
For anyone who is wondering what that was, that snap was me losing the last vestiges of my self control...It's been a very trying day...don't judge me because of my manic laugh...why are you still looking at me funny...? Well anyhoo, today took a turn downhill and I don't really know whe...OK that's a lie, I know exactly where. Let me begin my tale of woe...
I took a double dose of my sleep meds last night, so I got to bed at 11-ish, and woke up at 7! (about 4 hours earlier than I usually wake up) And I figured, why not take the bike route I mapped out yesterday? I had 10 hours to kill, so a good long bike ride should do me some good, right? Eventually I finished everything up in my house, and I left for my ride around 9-ish. Now my ride was SUPPOSED to take me to North Beach, then cross the county to the west side, and take the road near Kings Landing. I got to North Beach fine, had a sub and got some powerade. (I had forgotten to bring any water) I went up towards route 2 from North Beach (I have absolutely no idea what that road is called) and after much toil, reached Mt. Harmony road...the start of the complex road system I had never been on before. I got kinda confused when Mt. Harmony LN crossed Mt Harmony RD, but using my onstar-phone utility (calling my boss and asking for help) I was able to determine the correct route...and yadda yadda yadda, everything was cool until I hit Chaneyville RD...That my friends...and other random people my mom sent the blog link to...Is where the day took its fatal turn...
Now I could almost see the river from where I was, so I stopped looking at the road for a sec to try to get a look...and when I looked back ohwaitthestreetdroopsoffhere...*SLAM* I could immediately tell two things, my elbow now had a lot less skin than it did a couple seconds ago...and my PSP stopped making noise (Its very quiet for your information! I can hear the cars fine!) Under closer inspection my arm and PSP still worked fine...but the surfaces are scratched/cracked...OH JOY!!! I just bought the PSP!!! On the bright side, the PSP still works, and since I have all of the icons' locations memorized I can work it just fine...except for games. No thought was spent on my arm at this point, I've hurt meself much worse in the past, and what's more, I heal for free. Buuuuut...my PSP wasn't the only expensive thing broken, nono! The camera my parents bought for me that I had taken to get a picture of the river also had a cracked screen...yup...I may not be going to Africa...because when my parents read this they are going to KILL ME. Why oh why did I post this you might ask? Because I love to live on the "hairy edge" as my mom calls it.
So then I go further (still biking) and eventually take a wrong turn...not sure where...but instead of kings landing I end up in Richville...with no Idea how to get back to anything I know. Funny thing though, I can confirm that someone's richness is (usually) inversely proportional to their kindness! It was 20 minutes, and 20-30 cars before anyone would stop to give me directions, and I was right next to a stop sign too! But eventually I got pointed on the right direction, and got back on the 2-4 split. Then...I just suffered until I got to the bookstore I work at, barring a stop at 7-11 to get an energy drink or two. Once there, my bosses and I marveled at the unsolvable mysteries of life...like why I haven't killed myself yet...and why I'm still allowed to carry expensive electronics...and why my parents haven't killed me yet...and how long it will be before I get my nomination to the Darwin Awards.
I try to always look at the bright side of things, and well, this is all I could come up with. I must have used up all my bad karma for the next year and a half with this escapade, so I shouldn't have any left for my stay in Africa! =)
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Testing, Testing.
I figure before I leave I probably should test out this whole blog thing, make sure it works n whatnot. So I'll be posting a couple things to get used to it.
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