More on the lake

The project has begun! KASO started collecting data Wednesday, the day after we went to Senga Bay.



I'll start with the trip to the lake, though. I took the team + Richard (KASO's director) and two of KASO's nearly full-time volunteers as a thank you for all of their hard work on my project and to celebrate Labor Day (a few days early). It was incredible. I'd already been a couple of times on this trip (it's only an hour and a half away), but it was Mary (one of the permanent KASO volunteers) and Jona's first time seeing the lake. They are 44 and 37 years old and had never seen a large body of water. The expressions on their faces were priceless when they saw the lake. Even better was the sight of the whole group swimming. Everyone splashing around having fun, genuinely without a care in the world at that moment.

I didn't realize that there are no public beaches along Senga Bay. So...we were denied picnic access by three hotel/ restaurants (all owned by white people). Finally got to one owned by Malawians who let us use their patio for eating (including 2 tables and lots of chairs), their yard for cooking, their grill and their toilet facilities all day for about $15.00 total.

Both cars were stuck in the sand when we tried to leave, so there was a lot of pushing and digging when it came time to go.

I facilitated the death of two chickens that day. My unvegetarian selfish side was glad that they were freshly killed b/c I thought it significantly reduced the chance of my side of the road cabbage salad getting contaminated with salamanila as a result of knife sharing. We also got to eat rice instead of nsima, a very welcome treat! I'm getting used to the nsima, and actually look forward to it after a long hard day of biking (I'm usually starving), but I love rice much more.

I also aided in the destruction of Malawian forests by buying side of the road charcoal. I couldn't convince my friends that my four kilo bag from shoprite was enough for one meal, so we bought a basket of it as tall as me.

We all wore Obama t-shirts to the lake. I felt extremely silly walking through town that morning with the shirt on AND carrying a big bag of charcoal.