A Happy Note

I realize that the last two entries have been less than cheery so I think I need to fill you in on some parts of life outside Bottom. Life is good.

I feel very content here. Of course I miss friends and family from home, but this place is really growing on me and in me. All the sights, and smells, and sounds, and foods that were at first foreign are becoming familiar and comforting. I am really loving my nsmia and am becoming pretty good at eating with my hands. I can hum along with all the popular songs. And, I know a lot of the city - unfortunately you do really need a car to get around this place. My Chichewa is not great but I'm still trying. (I speak so much English now. I realize that the women in the hospital don't speak any English so I'm thinking that I'll hire a tutor again.)

As for my social life. . . I am still running with the expats every Wednesday (and usually feel like I'm dying during the run) and sometimes I run with them on Mondays. There is a bigger group that runs on Mondays, they call it the hash. Apparently there are hash races all over the world. Anyway, it involves searching for a trail that is set earlier in the day by "the hare" and then afterwards everyone just hangs out for a while drinking and talking. The expats I have met are all really nice and I have received a lot of invitations to different activities and outings but so far the running is all I have done. I'm enjoying my evenings at home with the Kaponda family and I have a few Malawian friends that I spend time with on the weekends. I even met a neighbor who runs so I've been waking at 5am to run with Cromwell a couple times a week. It is pitch black at that time here, since the days are getting shorter and we're entering "winter," but there are few cars on the road so you're not inhaling exhaust with each deep breath.

The Kapondas are wonderful and I still feel great being in their home. Yankho, Dr. Kaponda's daughter, just left this past weekend for Chicago to begin her undergrad there. So, that was a big event. It was nice to be a part of her send off, seeing her nervousness and her excitement made me feel like we were trading places on the planet. Chimwemwe, a niece to the Kapondas, and I go for walks a couple times a week. Janet, their cook, makes me practice my Chichewa daily, with great patience, I should add. And, Tonto, their son, makes sure my weekends are not entirely spent within the walls of the house - last night we went out with a couple of his friends to play pool and eat pizza.

So all this to say, I am living well. People are taking good care of me. And Malawi, which was once a small unknown spot on the map, now has its place in my heart.