mini safari

Today was pretty cool. My coworker, Yolanda, and I set off for Nyala Park near the sugar estates south of Blantyre. The drive down was really the best part, since the road winds through village after village. I see a good deal more of the real Malawi from the road when between towns. Just like home, most live in the towns, but the village folk confirm the vision of Africa that most people have. Only, now you're really face to face with it...children skinny as a toothpick, barefoot mothers carrying children on their backs lugging water uphill for miles, and other lovely images that make you want to throttle every member of government in existance. We do what we can, stopping along the way to buy goods from them, but the problem is so chronic.

We did make it to the mini game park and had great fun making our way through the dirt roads. Thank you 4 wheel drive and Yolanda, driver extraordinaire!

Blantyre...at last

It's been a busy week, but I wanted to get a few pix up. Tuesday I was up and off to work. Arriving in Malawi can only be described as a warm homecoming - seeing people who are now long time friends and being greeted with big hugs and huge smiles.

I had a very nice lunch with Desiree before she left for Cape Town - it is her mothers 91st birthday!!!! She travels all the way from Holland to be with Desiree and the boys. That night I treated myself to a nice dinner and it's really been work ever since.

Pic of school group at the airport who had come to see the planes.

View from the road going from the clinic at Ndirande to the office This is the view from the clinic door. Ndirande is one of the poorest areas in Blantyre, though certainly not the worst off. In the foreground are some of our staff - mostly home health workers who visit the moms each week to check on the babies we have vaccinated with the rota vaccine.

I seriously couldn't make this up

Yeah, um, I think I angered the gods.

After much time packing and preparation and getting every last little detail organized, Park took me to the airport on Thursday, April 19th. My flight was at 4:45pm arriving at 4 in the afternoon in Johannesburg on Friday. I had a hotel reservation and would set out to Malawi Saturday morning. Mmmhmmm.

"Denied Boarding"

Apparently, my passport did not have two COMPLETELY clean pages available for entry into South Africa. Now, mind you that I do have 3 clean pages, but those are the wrong type of pages. As I have NOW learned, the last few pages are for amendments........get your microscope and you can see the difference between "visa" pages and "amendment" pages. So, I paid 650 bucks to get an expedited passport in 24 hours so that I could make the Saturday flight. So I pretty much spent all of Thurs and Fri to get all the flight re-bookings done, get the passport, etc. Oh, and all the airlines say it's my fault so they are "waived" the penalty fees THIS time. How kind.

So, anyway, damage done, I got my passport and gpt checked in for the Saturday flight. Delta said it was close to the flight for a seat assignment, but just to get one at the gate. FAMOUS LAST WORDS. I was allowed to get on the plane 5 minutes before departing since someone thankfully didn't show up. Shall I stop there? Nah. How bout I go on to tell about getting 3 hours into the flight before having to turn around and change planes? Ha! It actually was pretty flippin funny when I called Park at midnight from the airport to say hi........he and Sarah were oh so amused. As were all 300 of us waiting in this hallway where they put us between planes.

As if that wasn't enough, when we finally finihsed the 8 hour flight to Dakar (scheduled stop), which was actually 15 hours into this little adventure, the pilot landed us so hard (now I know how a water balloon feels) we had to sit in Dakar for 2 hours while they changed the tire! There's more that followed my 26 hour flight time - arriving in JNB at 1:30 in the morn (murder capital of the world), 2 hrs sleep before Malawi flight, 7 hour layover - but it would just start sounding pathetic to go on, and I've really hit the high points!

I'm here and I don't think I'm gonna risk trying to come back. Please forward my mail.

Countdown to the next Malawi trip

3 days............will be gone from April 19 to May 22. almost 5 weeks.

ashley is slightly losing her mind. park be-eth my rock.

Welcome little ones!

It's been a very exciting month with babies abounding! We are so excited for everyone and can't wait to meet them all!

The Austin family welcomes the first member of the next generation! Mr. Sebastian was born to papa Jay (aka, James, Jamie) and mama Monica on Tuesday, February 13th in Miami, FL.
Next to arrive is the beautiful Ava! She was born to Scott and Sandy on Tuesday, February 21st (we think - we're a little worried it may have been the 20th - oops, sorry!). Last, but most CERTAINLY not least, we welcome the triplets (!!!) born to my very good friends Kat & Torrey. The Threealls are Gretchen, Blythe and Ronin. Ronin is on the far right, Gretchen in the middle and Blythe on the left. I just had to include a second picture because this is absolutely the most awesome, beautiful picture I think I've ever seen! Congrats to you both and your gorgeous family!

Friends xmas in January

So, we headed down to Penseys (Pensacola to everyone who is not Burk) to celebrate the holidays, albeit a bit late, but celebrate nonetheless. We drove separately to accommodate the fact that we were delivering two dining room tables to both Adam & Lori and Angie & Allen. While Ashley & Sarah cruised merrily, merrily, merrily down the stream to the beach, Park got to listen to some newly purchased CD's (Dylan, Trey, Coltrane, Tribe) intermixed with some rattling wood. We all made it safely and proceeded into the usual late night of hellos and general catching up. Particpants were Adam, Lori, Carter (the friend, not the dad or nephew), Sarah, Neil, and Abby. The significance of the last names mentioned is the following: Sarah is from Chicago and the McClures are from New Orleans. There was playoff football on... it was exciting. And ultimately a very good sports weekend for Sarah (boooooooo hissssssssss).

Oh, and did we mention the incredibly adorable little ones????

Those wedding pix I promised last month...

We had such a great time at the wedding, and even though I'm a little behind in posting. I have lots of photos, but thought it best that I keep the ones here to a minimum. The rest will go on the Flickr site.

Joyce & Guy cuttin a rug!


Bride & Groom!

mom & Allen

Mimi, Mike & Jill

Allen & Mimi on the dance floor

Tripp to Baltimore (get it?)

After a year of worrying that the January in Baltimore wedding of my cousin Tripp's would bring a new level of freezing to my life, I am happy to report that it was sunny and 70!

The night we arrived (we were supposed to arrive at noon but after our flight was cancelled then the next delayed, it was night) we met up with my friend from work, Sara. She is currently working on her PhD at Johns Hopkins - so great to see her and do some catching up.


The groom and his bride Angel at the rehearsal dinner at La Tavola in Little Italy (we saw the governor of Maryland that night after the Nancy Pelosi street dedication festivities).

Of course later that night, we were waaaay too tempted to torture Greg once he started snoring like a chainsaw. Good times. That's his older sister, Shannon. Yep, growing up little bro cannot be easy. If Stubbie reads this, I recommend making fun of Greg for a long time. Notice the lotion.

Saturday was sunny and 70, so we spent the day at the harbor. On the far left is Jan, my aunt and if I recall correctly, second to the youngest of the 5 Austin kids.


Park is very sad to report that he did not get the VIP tour of Camden Yards (Tripp was busy doing that whole 'getting married' thing), but he has already begun planning our return.

Pics of the wedding to follow soon!

NYE

This has definitely been an interesting holiday season. I've never had so much time off work - some given and some taken. I took an extra couple of days around Christmas, then promptly got food poisoning and had to take another day. Then we received a 4 day weekend for NYE and President Ford memorial. Since December 21st, I have worked SIX days....hee.

So, for NYE, we had a wonderful dinner with good friends Eric & Hillary, Chris & Jackie and Pete & Katie. Really fun, nice dinner.

Afterwards, Pete and Katie came back with us to the casa de Fowlkes where we rang in the New Year. Sarah was massively delayed on her flight from Chicago, so we sang again at 1:00 when she arrived, which of course we labeled our Central Time Celebration. Later, Lee & Felicia came by to join our gawl dang country bear jamboroo.


Yup, that's my fearless leader drinking some tiny bottles of whiskey Thomas gave us one year - they were very tastey and added to the scramble perfectly. To say that New Year's Day was painful, would be a drastic understatement. Apparently, mere mortals were not intended to drink a whole bottle of champagne on their own. Considering that each of us had one, I can only say that I was not surprised when Pete reported the next day that we were all in the same boat. This definitely goes down as an all-time top New Year's Eve.

Christmas 1

A few Santa moments from Christmas #1 at the LaMonte family household!

Josh with his African truck
Brett clearly very excited about his Avatar game
Christian smiling about his game cube thingy that is far beyond my knowledge of "what the kids are doing these days."

gratuitous plane pix

they never turn out nearly as cool as the actual vista

malawi
zambia

zimbabwe

jomwa

my favorite artist and some of his works

home!

i need some ruby slippers to tap...

my last few days in malawi were crazy busy, but definitely fun. i had good dinners, good times with friends and colleagues and actually managed to squeeze some work into the mix. i left friday for johannesburg with 3 others. one new friend, Jim, invited me to his house to dinner. let me just say, he and his partner have the most awesome little abode in a very ecclectic and artsy part of the city - they made a fantastic dinner and we drank faboo south african wine into the night!

oh, and by the way, i just thought others should know that bleeping post-apartheid South Africa is more liberal and socially accepting than the US. here are some other pictures from around!
my closest colleagues Edward and Andrewour home health workers
everything is bigger in africajim & henrick's awesome pad

oddities

malawi is definitely one of the world's poorest nations, so there are many simple activities that must be carried out in rather difficult ways. there are the gravel makers sitting on the side of the side of the road pounding rocks with other rocks, the men riding bicycles carrying a load that we would put on a truck, and of course women carrying babies on their backs, bags in their hands and enormous loads on their heads. with as sad as some of realities are, some are also not without their element of humor...

the mouse trap
egg salesman
lumber transport
down a mountain

haggis?

it's been a few days since i've done any posting, but not because i haven't had anything to share. quite the opposite! we got our third study site kicked off on friday (photos to come), i went for a drive with my colleagues out to see the tea estates, and then attended a scottish celebration of St. Andrew! let me tell you, haggis is not your friend. i did my best to smile and say 'not bad', but whoa. man, does that stuff leave a taste with you! i should email Steve. fortunately, to make up for the mandatory tasting of haggis, each table was supplied with a bottle of fine Scottish whiskey. woohoo! the photos below are the best i could do to document the ever-challengingly fast pace of traditional scottish dancing and bagpipe playing.




by the way, here is what happens when you leave your camera on the table to go do some said traditional scottish dancing: