I forgot how clumsy I am in Malawi. The main problem is that my bike is still too tall. I told KASO to get me the shortest bike possible, but it seems they are all one size fits all. Even with the seat at the lowest level, I have to find a hill to prop myself up to get on the seat. I've finally given in and taken Charles' lead on one footed run-jump, swing one leg over. It works, but makes for a wobbly start. Getting off is even funnier, if there’s no hill to be found, I basically just tip over and fall until one of my feet hits the ground. Today my wobbling intersected with a van's illegal u-turn and I t-boned it, oops... Luckily we were both going slowly, so no harm done (well, it's possible that I may have dented the van, that could have been why the driver was yelling at me). It was absolutely my fault, I had ample warning to know that the van was turning….but just couldn’t seem to get control of the bike. The volunteers yelled at the van driver for quite some time until he (and all of his many passengers) apologized profusely to me. They are terribly protective of us, making sure we don’t get hit by cars and staking out the markets so they don’t charge us too much because we are white, for example. I honestly feel like a small child….but they don’t seem to be judging, just laughing when appropriate. Back to the clumsy biking, I have also already hit so many rocks that I had a flat tire yesterday. Two 20 cent repairs and a $2 tube later, it was all better.

Today we met an unexpected challenge when we tried to do the familiarization and sensitization at Malembe village. When we arrived at the center, there were very few people. The ECD coordinator explained that one of the village headman (a leader above several chiefs and below the traditional authority in rank) had passed away yesterday. Tragically, a small child had drowned in the river on the same day. So, most of the chiefs and adults of the community were at the funeral. We continued with the program as planned for the people who were in attendance, but will need to return on Sunday to make sure we have reached enough community members. Fortunately, Malembe is one of the closer villages.

Today the Health Sciences Research Council met in Blantyre in order to review our proposal. We should hear the results by Tuesday……