Looks like Zimbabwe might be ready to pop. I read that "On Monday, dozens of protesting women were arrested in the capital by police." and I was reminded of Las Madres de La Plaza de Mayo who helped bring down the dictatorship in Argentina.

The article doesn't offer much information on these women. Who were they? Are they modern day Madres?

Will the world be watching and take notice? I hope so.

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.