When we were in Tanzania visiting Marissa's sister, Sami, and I stumbled across a very interesting discussion of poverty in a copy of the magazine NewAfrican January 2006 no. 447 in the article “Is Poverty African?” pg. 14:

In the article, Dr. Vandan Shiva says, “Poverty is a final state, not an initial state in the economic paradigm which destroys ecological and social systems for maintaining life, health, and sustenance of the planet and people.”

This may sound straightforward to some, but poverty is a word that I find most people use too carelessly. There are many who talk about it and even fight against it, but very few, I find, who can define it. It seems to me that dealing with social problems is just like dealing with anything else. You cannot fight against something effectively until you have defined it fully in your mind. Know your opponent.

There are an increasing number of Ubuntu Linux machines on the Mzuzu University campus network (DHCP, squid, iptables, email, web, and some desktops). As you all know, keeping both Windows and Linux machines up-to-date with security updates can be very bandwidth intensive. Because our 256 kb/s connection is used heavily during the day we are trying to schedule all security updates to run once at night and then have all of our client machines connect to the local repository during the day for their security updates so as not to use bandwidth while students and professors are trying to connect online.

Yesterday was an absolutely increadible day. It was a I'm-so-glad-I'm-in-Malawi day.
Earlier last week Jon received a text message on his cell from a mysterious sender saying, "Hie Marissa - paintlady says be there Saturday26Aug". Which painter lady? Lilongwe or Mzuzu? Who sent this? I had so many questions, but we were hystarical with laughter because this baffled, utterly confused feeling has become such a part of life.

Eventually we found out that it was Isaac, a friend's housekeeper and my translator for art visits out to the villages. What a sweet person! He had set up a meeting for me to visit a family who paint murals on their house. This would be my second visit, this time I was hoping to learn how they make their paints and conceive their designs.

If backyard landfills won't do it...

This will.

We had our first visitors in June. Fran, Jon’s mom, and Kris, Jon’s sister, spent time with us in Mzuzu and traveling a few of the country’s tourist attractions (i.e. Lake Malawi, safari in Liwonde National Park, etc). One of my favorite things is sharing our life with the people I love, so I was excited to have them see and experience everything from shopping at the markets, to visiting schools, to IT stuff with Jon at the University.

Over the two weeks, they heard many of our stories about the adventures of living and traveling in Malawi. What surprised me was that time and again, Fran wasn’t surprised. She was continually commenting that life in the States 30 or 40 years ago was much like the life we are living here in Malawi in 2006.

One of the joys of being married to an artist, is that my artist accentuates life in her paintings and shows me things I never would have noticed on my own. If any of you out there are not yet married, I highly recommend that you look into finding yourself an artist as well.

Last month Marissa and I took a long 24 hour train ride across the whole of Tanzania. As we watched the plains and mountains and villages of Africa pass by for hours, we were asking ourselves things like: “Why does this land seem so beautiful?” and “Why is it that I feel like I could stare at this countryside for hours on end and never become tired of it?”

I am skimming a book by David Bornstien called "How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas". Somehow I have managed to get past the incredibly modest title and short introduction yet still have no idea what a Social Entrepreneur actually is... but we can come back to that
in a later blog.

The book begins with a discussion of the explosive expansion of the Non-profit (NGO) sector in recent years. Both the number of organizations and the amount of money invested in the non-profit sector have increased greatly since 1960. This "explosion" of non-profits is something that you can't ignore living in Malawi (especially when you travel to Lilongwe, the capital city) ... non-profits are everywhere. There is an acronym and organization for every type of social cause you can imagine, even the ones you could never have imagined. The only one i havent seen is an NGO to help other struggling NGOs. But i am sure its on the way.

I am deeply impressed by the strength of people’s souls in this place. Jon and I are have settled down enough, that we interact with Malawians on a daily basis and are developing many friendships along the way. We have noticed that as we get more and more integrated into the community, death seems to take a stronger and stronger presence. Just the other day we realized that it had been more than 2 days since hearing about the death of one person or another connected in some way to our friends or colleagues. Learning to deal with death on a daily bases is hard, but what I find more challenging is learning to grasp how my Malawian friends go on living life with such joy, such strong spirits, always so helpful, always with a smile.

I think that I have found my dream job. Directly across from Mzuzu University, down a dirt road, through a corn field you will find the Ungweru Community Center. There you will find nice 4 computers, the latest news papers, sodas and cookies for sale. Ungweru Community Center is a for-profit endeavor, started by the catholic church and the university, to offer technology classes to the public at very reasonable prices. Currently there are typing and basic computing classes (Microsoft Word and Windows XP) offered at Ungweru. I have been asked to help them begin teaching basic computer networking and internet skills... without using the internet of course!!

In Malawi, like many places in the world electricity services are sporadic. The strength and the amount of the electricity fluctuate frequently and without notice throughout most every day. This is a real problem for computer equipment which needs a consistent and constant supply of electricity. For this reason, every computer in Malawi, that any one depends upon to get work done, is attached to a device called a universal power supply (UPS). A UPS is a large battery that sits between the computer and the electrical grid to both regulate the power going into the computer and to provide power to the computer for long enough to save important documents when the power goes out.