We like bugs, and Adventures in Mzuzu

Greetings, from the end of a very exciting week!
This week, we saw the central hospital, inventoried the clinic's pharmacy in preparation for the community-wide clinic, fitted all the standard 1 and kindergarten children with new school sweaters, and ate Indian food in Mzuzu. Also, today one of the Overseas Staff took me with her to see a local secondary school. So we've had a pretty adventurous week.

Wednesday night, we had a sort of "Girl's night out," and six of us went into town to a new Indian restaurant that had been recommended to the ROS by previous mini-missionaries and other ROS. It was really neat, and amazing food. We were basically the only people inside, so we had the full attention of the waiter, the owner, and his family. The owner kept recommending things to us to try, so in the end, we had 3 different types of flat bread, about 4 varieties of naan, chicken tikka, and "pea potato bobs" in addition to our actual meals. "Pea potato bobs" are some kind of green kebab something involved green peas, potatoes, spinach, and some other vegetables made into patties and fried. It was so spicy, though! We downed tons of water and rice, so we could continue tasting the things we had ordered.

Dr. Tan took us into Mzuzu to run errands earlier this week, in preparation for the community clinic coming up soon, so we got to see quite a bit more of the town. We visited a veterinarian's office (which shares a building with a dentist- one side the the vet, the other is the dentist- I think they're married), and got tours of Central Hospital and a more extensive tour of the health clinic. Dr. Tan says that the hospital, which was built by a combination of Taiwanese and Malawian funds, is very good, compared to most hospitals in the developing world. It is a one-story collection of smaller buildings, each housing a ward or a specific office (ie. Ob, radiology, physiotherapy, or the Pediatric ward, etc.) connected by a series of covered sidewalks. We went into the pediatric ward, which was not crowded at the moment, but was certainly very full of beds to keep children, each with it's own mosquito net. There is not a whole lot of technology available, for example, no CT scan or radiation treatment, but Dr. Tan says they take sanitation very seriously and provide pretty good patient-care, comparatively.

The children start school next week, and they are getting pretty excited. The oldest group will very willingly tell you that they are going into Standard 1 this term (basically first grade), and they were so excited to receive their special school sweaters! Emily and I went to the cottages one by one, fitting the Standard 1's and Kindergartener's in navy blue sweaters, which we had approximately separated by "size"- quite a feat as they were all basically the same size, with slight variations in the lengths of the sleeves and the widths of the body. But everybody who needed one got a sweater, and it was a little sad, because the three and four year olds crowded around the bin, waiting for theirs, and then we had to explain that next year, or in two years, then they would get sweaters, too. That couldn't dampen the shining faces of the older kids, though, looking so neat and ready for school in theirs.

You can't help but love these kids. Each of them is very different- there are trouble makers, like the "fearsome five", and some so shy they'll hardly look you in the face, like little Wanangwa, who is three years old and a very new addition to Rafiki (he's been here a month), although when you can get a smile out of him, it's adorable. They still love showing us things that they can do, having us praise their drawings, or running towards us to show us the new bug they just caught (most often these are grasshoppers, but today Stanley (member of Mama Ronsi's fearsome five) brought us this funny, stick-looking bug with long brown legs). Our usual response to the bugs is, "Wow, that's really neat! (backing away slightly) Why don't you put it back in the grass so it can hop away now?"