Blantyre Malawi

This week we went to Blantyre Malawi to start two new projects that the Area office wanted. 

 One was replacing latrines at schools that had been damaged by cyclone storms

 and the other was desks for schools.  

These 4 latrines fell over when the storm washed away the back side.  Hope no one was using them at the time!
 Another set like this was also washed out.  The church will replace these and build a water diversion wall
 around them to avoid this happening in the future.

The roof of this 12 hole latrine was blown off.  The building was so deteriorated,

 the church is just going to build a whole new latrine building for them. 

We visited several schools that need desks.  We have found that here in Malawi, the schools usually only have enough desks for the 7th and 8th graders so grades 1-6 just sit on the cement floors. 

 We are planning on providing 100-150 new desks and 30-70 repaired desks at two school. 

 Even with that it seems like a drop in the bucket.   At one school these kids sang for us.

Grandpa checking out desktop wood.

This is a Kachere Tree at a school which symbolizes unity of the village. 
Communities meet in the shade under its branches to discuss issues in the village and to settle disputes.

Malawi had an election last month that is being disputed.  While we were there, they had a protest march.
 We tried to avoid going out where it was and thought it would be completely over when we needed to go
back to our hotel.  But we got caught right in the middle of it.  In the past these have turned ugly but
 we were able to get through without any problem. 

Had a couple of hours to kill so went to their museum.
 Would have loved to drive this old steam engine tractor.

Some preschool kids at the museum.  

We see lots of sugar cane being sold on the road. 
Just a fun snack for them as they chew on the inside and suck out the sugar.  

The Blantyre Zone had zone conference while we were there.  Great Elders!
 We were working on setting up these projects so couldn't attend.  But we will catch it in two weeks in Lusaka.  We stayed with the Rowans (on the right) for a couple of nights and played "Lucky Duck".  They always are so fun and nice to us.  

Drove out to Mulanje mountain.  They have large tea plantations there.  It is just gorgeous!