Arrival of the Data

Today I want to share my love of Malawian cuisine with you. While the food in Malawi lacks diversity, it does not lack flavor. Below I have included a link to a website that gives a great overview on the cuisine of Malawi as well as provides recipes for those wishing to try some of the dishes. 

http://www.friendsofmalawi.org/learn_about_malawi/volunteer_life/recipes.html

Tonight we had another go and preparing nsima and relish. Nsima is actually much harder to make than it looks. You have to mix the corn flour into the boiling water quickly and consistently or lumps will form in the dough and the bottom will burn in the pan. Each time we make it improve and I have no doubt that by the time we leave Malawi we will be professionals. We eat a lot of nsima and relish. Our relish usually consists of cabbage, but it can also be made from rape leaves, pumpkin leaves, sweet potato leaves, or mustard greens.

A quick flashback to work today… We received the data from Mpingu, which is incredible because in Africa NOTHING is ever finished on time. We walked to work early in the morning (7am), received the data from Gibson, and got to work on entering the data for analysis. Days like these I am extra grateful for Andrew. Without a word, he entered all the data from all 50 surveys that we collected. I have discovered that all my research, data collection, and checklist items go much faster with Andrew around. He is such a wonderful man and I am so grateful to have him in my life.

  
(Below: Andrew’s post)

Hard to recall things from today (I’ll be honest I had missed recording for today and now it’s a bit of s blur).

Most of today was pretty slow as Kylie and I worked at the office. Only memorable thing for me was the number of people I reached out to in Couchsurfer as we started planning our next adventure… Zambia! 

The issue is that our Malawian tourist visa expires on the 19th and the renewal fee is around $20 USD. That doesn’t seem like a lot, but $20 goes along way here. The idea of going to Zambia is we take the trip we had already planned (with the other BYU kids) and move it earlier so we don’t renew our visa, and then leave the country (which also renews it).

Fingers crossed the planning goes smoothly! Things tend to get crazy prior to the ‘launch date’ for our travels.