nkhona mountain

One of the best days in Malawi and the trip, really. I got early, around 4:55 when they started the prayer song at the mosque. Right after the prayer a few birds start chirping, then a lot more birds. When it got a little lighter I went out to the porch and did a drawing, the air was very misty, partly smoky but made for good atmospheric effects.




After breakfast, the same thing every day, scrambled eggs and chips (fries), sometimes fruit, I took my malaria pill and we went to the close village to pick up a couple of the women to take to town. They were not quite ready, so we gave out the soccer ball and the older girls and young women, some with babies strapped to their back started throwing it back and forth and around. I was struck by how gracefully they caught and threw the ball, never dropping it, in their bare feet on the ground.

We drove the women to town.  We had the earrings all mounted on paper, with a stamp we had printed that told about the work, also one nativity scene, actually we brought 4 or 5, each with a Mary, Joseph, and baby on the back of Mary, African style, and a star made out of sticks.  But only one could stand up. We took everything to a crafts store, one of the more fancy ones.  The owner looked at everything and then took a bunch of the earrings and the nativity scene, talked with the women about how to get their money and encouraged them to make more, he was very nice to them.  It was quite a different scene, seeing the women more dressed up, in town, instead of sitting on the ground in the village.  The students were pretty excited to have got this far, especially since the nativity scene has been such a problem for months, even when we were in Provo.

I wanted to go climb up this mountain called Nkhoma mountain, it is close to a hospital and some kind of a mission, about an hour away. First the other adults thought it would be dangerous because of the deadly black mombo snake, or we wouldn’t have time, but some of the kids kept bringing it up, so today, instead of going to parliament, 9 of us went to the mountain place in one of the vans. It was such a nice place, we walked through the hospital, which was kind of indoor and outdoor, then along some wide very pleasant roads/trails with beautiful flowers, big palm trees, flowering trees, and brick English like cottages. It was the best thing I had seen yet. The mountain was breezy with great views and lots of rock. The students were very excited to be outside hiking. I met an old man in the house about halfway up, I felt very glad to see him.