By Karen Baker

Wednesday morning began as most of our days have with breakfast, picking up Agnes (our wonderful site cook) and the carpenters, and heading to Mbidi to work on the usual tasks – painting, carpentry and other assorted work we are asked to do or see needs to be done. Our workday was short however as we headed to Blantyre for a bit of shopping and a Rotary meeting.

Cleaned up and fed, we headed south to Blantyre and were treated to some history and geography lessons along the way. After 25 years in Malawi, our host Paul knows the country well and can point out who owns which farm, what new construction is on the horizon and who comes from where. After 90 minutes of bumpy travel on Malawi’s first paved road (which is being widened), we entered Blantyre and stopped at La Caverna(Mandala House). This is an Malawi archive museum, bistro and curio shop owned by a Malawian couple. The art was beautiful and we all left some money in the till. The group enjoyed a drink on the patio after our shopping was complete and then ventured on foot to the city market. Julie and Norma bought some sneakers for one of the men who hangs around the school and wanted Norma`s shoes, and Karen and Abi went looking for 18 backpacks for the new academic scholarships we have created at Mbidi – one for each boy and girl in each of the 9 classes at the School. By the end of our trip, each will be filled with a workbook, ruler, pen, pencil and lollipop. We did manage to find the bags for about KW500 each ($2.00).
When the stores and market began to close (about 4:30 – Islamic prayer call), we trekked up the hill to Mount Soche for a drink and eventually to attend the Rotary meeting.

The meeting began at 7 pm with much socializing and a typical Malawian dinner (chicken, rice, nsema) followed by Chris` presentation on the 2010 Misangu School project (a 20 minute video) and an impassioned presentation by Peter and Elaine for Rotary Saskatoon who are also in Malawi working with 47 villages. Elaine had the room in tears by the time she was finished and everyone appreciated the passion and commitment of their counterparts from across Canada. The Limbe Club presented our team with 8 plastic chairs, kindly donated from Rotarian Chestan of PK Plastics in Blantyre, to give to Mbidi School so that the teachers will finally have some chairs to sit on. When we arrived, there was one broken plastic chair with 3 legs that sits on a box – not so good for the posture and also hard to share among 10 teachers.

The meeting was closed at 10 pm and the now tired team made their way to the bus for the somewhat quiet ride back to Zomba and Annie`s Lodge for some shut eye before embarking on our full and final day of work at the school on Thursday. We even get to sleep to 8 am tomorrow.

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