Celebrity, stars, weight, miracle

Feb 26, 2009

I forgot to mention that about a week ago, we went to Krazy Foods to eat lunch and the place was packed. Esther and Stephano found two tables in the back that had 2 chairs available at each so we sat in those until the occupants of our table left and we pushed the two tables together. Esther & Stephano had been sitting with and visiting with two very attractive young ladies. All four of them were very engrossed in the conversation. They introduced us to them and they exchanged phone numbers with one of the young ladies. When these two young women left, Stephano asked us if we knew who the one sitting across from him was. Ray said she looked familiar but we did not know from where. He said that she is Miss Malawi. She lives in Lilongwe but was in Blantyre for business. So, we can say (ok, not really), that we had lunch with Miss Malawi.

The stars at night here are absolutely brilliant. We live part way up a mountain and because of that the clouds are lower too and fog is really dense at times. Because of where we live, we also feel like we are closer to heaven. There are a grouping of stars at night that appear to be the milky way but we’re not sure. I’ll have to ask my brother Ron to get us some charts of the southern hemisphere. Anyway, one night during a blackout when we were outside, we decided that we would tell people that we live ½ way up Mount Chilobwe, under the Milky Way. It is beautiful and one of the good things about blackouts at night is that we get to admire the stars and really be in awe of God’s creation.

During the past few weeks, we have registered all 80 children presently at the orphanage and yesterday we weighed and measured the height on all of them. What fun. They laughed at what they weighed and teased each other about either being too tall or too fat. The look on their faces when they were on the scale and some of them weighed a lot more than they should because Ray had his foot on the back of the scale. They’d laugh and we’d laugh.

Also, we mentioned in an earlier blog that we have a pastor friend from the U.S. who has lived here about 13 years. She has a pregnant young lady staying with her and we got a call the other evening to take her to the hospital. She lives about 30 minutes from us and of course we had to drive through downtown Blantyre in rush hour (such as it is) to get to her house to pick up this young lady. I commented to Ray that this was the first time he got to drive a woman in labor to the hospital. He was not nervous but I was. I really didn’t want to deliver a baby in our galimoto (car). Well, as it turned out, we made it to the hospital and she had the baby about 3 hours later. The pastor told us that they have women come to the hospital at the first signs of labor because it is very difficult for most of them to get to the hospital so they don’t make women wait like they do in the U.S. Babies are delivered by midwives unless there is an issue. They also do not give pain medication and you are not allowed to cry. If you cry, they think something is wrong and they call the doctor in. When they call the doctor, it costs money and most people don’t have it. So we dropped her off at the hospital on Tuesday night and got call on Wednesday morning that she was ready to leave. It was that quick – have the baby and leave. So we got to take her and her new baby girl back home. The baby does not have a name yet. They usually wait a few days before naming babies. But what a beautiful baby girl – a miracle from the Lord! We are honored that we had a small part in bringing another beautiful life into this world.