Day 16: Mary and Esme

Alice made my favorite Malawian hot cereal this morning. I have no idea what it is and I’d forgotten all about it so it was a fun surprise. Alice is a great cook. She once taught me to make Nsima, the traditional Malawian food made with maize, and because we can’t speak each other’s language we made up sign language and managed to communicate just fine.

Olipa arrived at about 8:30. She’d gotten stuck in the mud on her way here and it took some time to get out but off we went to Lingadzi School to talk about a changing room that we’d seen a need for during our visit two years ago.  In collaboration with “Shake-It-So” we conducted a fundraiser last year, specifically for this school and one other – raising enough to rebuild the bathroom at Lingadzi and to produce hundreds of MoonCatcher Kits for the girls at these schools.

On the road

After a lot of planning and talking we went to visit the site for the new construction, but we found a new building with 5 new bathrooms that can easily be retrofitted for pad changing. This is exciting news as it means that the funds raised can be used to produce more kits for the schoolgirls here.

Mary and Esme were with us. It was such fun to see our tailors and to catch up on their lives. Esme is newly married and Mary has a new baby. We went to a street stand to have chips and sodas and ate right off the counter while standing around chatting. Phoebe played chef when the cook left to get us drinks. She loved playing around with the utensils and getting the chips just the way she wanted them cooked.

Finally, I got to see May’s one year old baby son. What a sweetheart; all smiles and wiggles.

Back at Alice and Andys we had pumpkin followed by eggplant, fish and pasta. All yummy.