Dowa Refugee Camp

The only interesting thing I've done lately is go and visit a refugee camp yesterday. It is a permanent camp, so no tents etc, and it mostly looks like a village, but it was still interesting. 

WUSC has a program where they get university students in Canada to fund raise to support Refugee students to study in Canada. We met with some of the potential candidates for Sept 2009 and answered some of their questions about university life in Canada. Then they took us on a tour of the camp. 

I was walking with a 20 year old guy named Patrick who is from Rwanda. His family fled the genocide in 1994 and then were later forcibly repatriated. His mom is an artist and author and wrote a book about the genocide in their local language that eventually made her a target, and people were trying to kill her (I guess there is a lot of violence from people afraid of being pinpointed as contributors to the genocide). In attempts to kill her, they killed Patrick's brother and sister instead, so they fled to Malawi 3 years ago and have been living in the camp. He is hoping to go to Canada to study film so he can make better African movies, and thank god for that because African movies are notoriously bad!

Sweet 16

This post is a bit belated, but since I don't have anything new or exciting to report (except that the rainy season has finally started!! yay!!) I decided to post this excerpt from an email I sent a couple weeks ago...

Oct 30 was Regan's 16th birthday and on the saturday we had a party for her. It was actually quite a fun party for her and her friends I think! The DJ ended up having to set up inside (he started outside but then it rained - for the first time in MONTHS! - so he moved the stuff in, which was probably better anyways cause it kept the party relatively contained). Us "adults" hung out in the backyard and only occasionally found a reason to go into the house to check up on things! Some funny stories:

1. Terri brought over a bottle of red wine and I put it on the kitchen counter - and one of the kids stole it! cheeky buggers.

2. In the morning after the party, our gardener came in to the house to give me something he found in the yard - a bottle of dark soy sauce that another of the cheeky buggers must have mistaken for red wine and stole from the fridge only to chuck it in the yard once they realized it was soy sauce

3. we have 2 1/2 bathrooms in the house - the ensuite master bathroom, and then the full bathroom regan and I share and the toilet/sink bathroom beside it where we keep Nali's litter box. For a long time the main hall bathroom was occupied and we realized that a "couple" was in there. Regan was really annoyed and was banging on the door but they wouldn't get out, so I asked her if she wanted my help and she said yes, so I banged on the door crazy style, yelled "GET OUT NOWWWWWWWWWWWW!!" and then stuck my pointy finger out at them when they came out and shamed them by telling them that they "do not disrespect us, our house or Regan like that". It was hilarious and Regan thought so too. Apparently the girl keeps apologizing. It was classic and I think will be something that comes up many a time at lilongwe functions

4.At one point I saw a guy go into Nali's bathroom but then promptly get out. I thought I should check if there was a problem (and was thinking that Nali probably dropped a big smelly load in his litter box). Nope. Wrong. There was a rat in the toilet! A RAT! I ran out to the backyard to get Jules, who thought I was in need of cockroach removal. He thinks it must have come up through the septic tank (there is no municipal sewage treatment in malawi) and through the pipes but then couldn't climb out of the toilet bowl. EWWW! It was still alive, soaking wet and looking up at me all pathetic and like "umm, ma'am, could you give a rat a hand?"

Garry's Birthday Car Rally

On Saturday, Terri, Jules, Janna, Regan and I were a team for a Birthday Car Rally (scavenger hunt). From 1 - 4:30 we drove around Lilongwe completing as many of the 100 tasks as possible. The whole activity was organized by Claire in celebration of Garry's birthday. The different items on the list included a variety of things including things to collect, answer, take pictures of or do. We had a great time! 

There were 4 cars and 18 people in total involved. We certainly lived up to the Malawian impression of mzungu's (foreigners) as crazy!

Item #1 was to create a team theme with costumes (10 points). We then got 5 extra points for each picture/activity done in costume. Our team had prepared a basket full of random items we thought might be helpful (though we didn't know what would be on the list until the Rally started) and it happened to include a bunch of scarves, that became our hippy team theme!

Here are some of the other photo activities we did...

#5: Fish with the kids at the reservoir on Blantyre St. - 8 points

#73: A picture of a team member selling bananas with a banana seller - 9 points

#33: A photo of the team at Robert Mugabe Crescent - 15 points

#3: A picture of your team on the little island at Claude's restaurant - 40 points

#11: Get a picture of the team outside the former presidents tomb - 15 points

# 48: Team picture with a non-team member with a hairy chest - 28 points 

(thanks Avik!)

#77: Every person on the team swap clothing and take a picture - 18 points

(nice look Jules!!)

# 14: Create a dance party outside Food Worths - 5 points for each person in the picture.

#58: A picture of the team in a mini bus - one member must be the driver - 35 points

#49: Photo at a Zain phone booth - 8 points

#10: Find Stears restaurant in the market. Moses is the owner - get a picture with him and find out the nick name he calls Claire - 31 points

(He calls her Mother Malawi. But we already knew that because we are friends with him too)

#34: A photo of each team member holding a live chicken - 20 points

#12: Wash dirty laundry in the Lilongwe River. You must be visibly in the water bent over washing clothes - 30 points

# 80: A picture of your team doing the YMCA on the middle of the market bridge - 35 points

(note: I HATE sketchy bridges!!)

# 26: "Ghost of Garry Present": a team member shaves their head (must be a team member who already has hair ie. Garry can't shave his head again) - 65 points

#57: A picture of a team member balancing a bundle of wood on their head - 40 points

# 15: Team pyramid on the green of the Lilongwe Golf Club - 17 points 

(the golf club is members only and was hosting a tournament - security guards were yelling at us as we ran in and took the pic!)

#A picture of your team with shaving cream on their faces at a roundabout - 27 points

#69: A picture of 2 team members doing a handstand outside of Shoprite - 25 points

#98: "Hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil" outside the half-constructed parliament building - 12 points

#72: A picture of 2 team members kissing - 5 points

#70: A picture of the team doing the robot, at a robot - light must be green - 26 points

(in Malawi they call traffic lights "robots")

#4: the team jumps in a pool - 35 points

After all that hard work, I'm happy to announce that our team won!! Half the prize money will go to the family of the late McDonald (WUSC Malawi employee). The rest refunded our individual entry fees, covered the fuel costs of the day, and paid for the different things we had to buy along the way.

Happy Birthday Garry!!