Mon, Feb 23, 2009

Happy Birthday Ray!

On Saturday, we were registering 9 new kids from Chicwawa who were brought by the pastor when two other gentlemen arrived. One was an American from the Seattle area, the other a Malawian. The Malawian is a pastor who runs a program for street children. He works with them, teaches them Sunday school and gives them a snack before they leave. He is trying to find a place to stay for several of the more vulnerable street children and presently has 4 boys he would like the orphanage to take. None of the children at Hope Children’s Centre were city kids from the streets. The children at HCC are all from surrounding villages. Street children and village children have different issues and different outlooks on life. Therefore, it may not be wise to mix the two immediately. So, we are looking for a house to rent nearby the orphanage and staff that will supervise these boys until they can be transitioned into the orphanage with the other children. So now, Hope Children’s Center will have a transition house. The children will go to school with the other children at Hope and will come to the orphanage to eat with them but will sleep in their own house until they feel they can safely transition in with the other 80 children presently at HCC.

While talking to the guy from the US, we mentioned that it is nice to meet other Americans here. They have been here the same length of time we have. We said that we’ve met a few other Americans and the best place to meet them is either the internet café or Shoprite (grocery store). He said that he and his wife have met some at Hostaria, an Italian restaurant. Well, that intrigued us. We had never heard of Hostaria and did not know there was an Italian restaurant in town. He told us where it was and since it was lunch time, we went there. What a place! I thought I was in the Old Market! The food was absolutely wonderful. The prices were high for Malawi but very reasonable for US restaurant prices. We laughed and said that we are sure that all the weight we both lost will be put back on in the next few days before we leave here.

Blackouts have been terrible lately because of the rainy season. They even announced on the radio (we don’t have a radio but our staff do) that they are shutting down power in most parts of the city for several hours at a time during the next few weeks so they can clean the trash out of the machines. A couple of days recently, we’ve only had power for about 8 of the 24 hours. That happened several days in a row.

I should not have spoken of blackout because the power just went off. Gotta go……….must save my battery power on the laptop.

God bless you!